Maintenance Guides

RetroTechCollection Maintenance Guides
Preserving yesterday's technology for tomorrow

This index covers the general procedures that apply to any machine and the routes into the machine-specific maintenance, troubleshooting and capacitor guides.

Read these first

Bulged and vented electrolytic capacitors around the voltage regulator of a PC motherboard

Guide	What it covers
CRT Discharge Procedure	Anode charge, the earth return point, discharge tools and the implosion hazard. Read it before opening any machine with a picture tube
Battery Explosion, Capacitor or Corrosion Damage	Cell chemistries, which residue needs which treatment, and board repair after corrosion
Capacitor Failure Symptoms	Symptoms, testing, and what the capacitor manufacturers say
Recommended Tools	Bench equipment, with static and electrical safety

General procedures

• Battery Refurbishment: replacing and rebuilding battery packs
• Floppy Drive Repair: cleaning, alignment and common faults, by drive maker
• Hard Drive Maintenance and Repair: stiction, head bumpers, controller boards, and what can be repaired
• Retrobrite: the hydrogen peroxide process and its hazards

Diagnostics

• Sad Mac Error Codes and the Sad Mac Decoder: compact Macintosh start-up failure codes
• Diagnostic Serial Console: the Macintosh diagnostic serial port
• Commodore 64 Diagnostic Instruction and Troubleshooting Manual (326070-01): Commodore's own diagnostic procedure

By manufacturer

Family	Maintenance	Troubleshooting	Capacitor guides
Apple	Apple maintenance guides	Apple troubleshooting guides	All capacitor replacement guides
Atari	Atari maintenance guides	Atari troubleshooting guides	Atari capacitor guides
All other manufacturers	All maintenance guides	All troubleshooting guides	All capacitor replacement guides

Starting points

Family	Example guides
Apple	Macintosh 128K/512K General Maintenance, Macintosh Plus General Maintenance, Macintosh SE/30 General Maintenance, Macintosh Classic / Classic II General Maintenance, Macintosh Color Classic General Maintenance, Apple II General Maintenance, Apple Lisa General Maintenance
Commodore	Commodore 64 General Maintenance, Commodore 64C General Maintenance, Commodore VIC-20 General Maintenance, Commodore PET 2001 General Maintenance, Commodore 1541 Troubleshooting & Repair Guide
Sinclair	Sinclair ZX Spectrum General Maintenance, Sinclair ZX Spectrum+ General Maintenance, Sinclair ZX Spectrum 128 General Maintenance, Sinclair QL Maintenance Guide
Atari	Atari 2600 General Maintenance, Atari 800XL General Maintenance, Atari ST General Maintenance, Atari Falcon General Maintenance
IBM	IBM PC (5150) Maintenance Guide, IBM PC XT Maintenance Guide, IBM PC AT Maintenance Guide, IBM PS/2 Model 25 Maintenance Guide, IBM 5100 Maintenance Guide
Sega	Sega Master System General Maintenance, Sega Mega Drive / Genesis (Model 1) Maintenance Guide, Sega Saturn (Model 1) Maintenance Guide, Sega Dreamcast Maintenance Guide
Nintendo	Nintendo Entertainment System General Maintenance, Nintendo Famicom General Maintenance, Super Nintendo General Maintenance, Nintendo 64 Maintenance Guide, Nintendo GameCube Maintenance Guide
Acorn and BBC	Acorn Electron Maintenance Guide, Acorn Archimedes A3000 Maintenance Guide, Acorn A5000 Maintenance Guide, BBC Micro Model A/B General Maintenance
Amstrad	Amstrad CPC 464 Maintenance Guide, Amstrad CPC 664 Maintenance Guide
Osborne	Osborne 1 General Maintenance, Osborne Executive Maintenance Guide, Osborne Vixen Maintenance Guide
Psion	Psion Organiser II General Maintenance, Psion Series 3a General Maintenance, Psion Series 5mx General Maintenance, Psion Revo General Maintenance, Psion netBook General Maintenance

Storage devices

• Storage Devices: the drives themselves
• Floppy Drive Repair and Hard Drive Maintenance and Repair
• Disk II, Tandon TM100-1 and Tandon TM100-2, with manufacturer figures
• Macintosh Floppy Drive Maintenance and Macintosh HDD Maintenance

Manufacturer documentation without a guide yet

Some manufacturer documentation on the wiki covers equipment that has no maintenance, troubleshooting or capacitor guide yet. Each document page says what the manual contains.

• Sega Game Gear: Sega Game Gear Maintenance Manual (1992), Sega Game Gear VA1 Service Manual and Sega Game Gear TV Tuner PAL Service Manual
• Commodore 1541: Commodore 1541 Troubleshooting & Repair Guide (Sams, 1986)
• Apple printers: StyleWriter Service Source, StyleWriter II Service Source, StyleWriter 1500 Service Source, Portable StyleWriter Service Source, Color StyleWriter Pro Service Source, Color StyleWriter 2200 Service Source, Color StyleWriter 2400 Service Source, Color StyleWriter 2500 Service Source, Color StyleWriter 4100 and 4500 Service Source (the 4100 and 4500), Color StyleWriter 6500 Service Source, ImageWriter II Service Source, ImageWriter LQ Service Source and Envelope Feeder Service Source
• Apple displays: Studio Display (17" CRT, 16" viewable image size) Service Source, Studio Display (21" CRT, 19.8" viewable image size) Service Source, 17" ColorSync Displays Service Source, 20" ColorSync Displays Service Source, Macintosh Portrait Display Service Source, Studio Display (15" flat panel) Service Source and Studio Display DVI Service Source. Read CRT Discharge Procedure before opening any of the CRT models
• Apple computers: Macintosh Portable Service Source, Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh Service Source, Power Macintosh 7100 Series Service Source, Power Macintosh 8100/ WS 8150 Service Source, Power Macintosh 7200 Series/WS 7250 Service Source, Power Macintosh 4400 Service Source, Power Macintosh 7300/ 7500/7600 & WS 7350 Service Source, Power Macintosh 8200 and 8500 Series/WS 8550 Service Source, Power Macintosh 9500 Series Service Source, Power Macintosh 8600/ 9600 & WS 9650 Service Source, Power Macintosh/Performa 5200 and 5300 Service Source and Macintosh Processor Upgrade Service Source
• Schneider printers: Schneider DMP3000 Service Manual, Schneider DMP4000 Service Manual and Schneider NLQ-401 Service Manual, the German-market manuals for the Amstrad DMP3000, DMP4000 and NLQ 401

Documentation categories

• Service Manuals: manufacturer service manuals and schematics
• Documentation: datasheets, application notes and technical literature
• Apple Documentation and Macintosh Repair Resources: Apple's general publications and third-party Macintosh books, with the repair-relevant ones picked out
• Apple Programming Documentation (151 pages): programming books and compiler manuals. A few contain hardware information: Motorola's MC68030 User's Manual (pinout, supply pins and maximum ratings), Apple's MacsBug Reference and Debugging Guide (Apple's Sad Mac code tables) and Microsoft Basic 1985 (the Macintosh serial port pinout)
• Commodore Books (69 pages)
• OS 8.1 Emergency Handbook 1998: Apple's owner-level start-up troubleshooting booklet

Contribute

Corrections are as useful as new pages. A figure with no source should be sourced, corrected or removed; see Help:Editing, or raise it on the RTC forum.