Maintenance Guides
| RetroTechCollection Maintenance Guides |
|---|
| Preserving yesterday's technology for tomorrow |
This is the index to the wiki's maintenance and repair material: the general procedures that apply to any machine, and the routes into the machine-specific guides.
Every link on this page goes to a page that exists. If you find one that does not, it is a fault — please report it or fix it.
Read these first
| Guide | What it covers |
|---|---|
| CRT Discharge Procedure | Anode charge, the earth return point, discharge tooling and the implosion hazard. Read 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 manufacturers actually say about replacement |
| Recommended Tools | What you need, what a specification actually means, and static and electrical safety |
General procedures
- Capacitor Failure Symptoms — recognising and testing failed capacitors of every family
- Battery Refurbishment — replacing and refurbishing battery packs
- Battery Explosion, Capacitor or Corrosion Damage — cleaning up and repairing corrosion damage
- Floppy Drive Repair — cleaning, lubrication, alignment and common faults
- Hard Drive Maintenance and Repair — stiction, head bumpers, controller boards, and what is realistically repairable
- Retrobrite — the hydrogen peroxide process, its hazards, and the evidence on whether it is worth doing
- CRT Discharge Procedure — high-voltage safety before opening a monitor or all-in-one machine
- Recommended Tools — equipment for the bench
Diagnostics
- Sad Mac Error Codes — decoding compact Macintosh start-up failure codes
- Sad Mac Decoder — the interactive decoder
- 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 | Apple capacitor guides |
| Atari | Atari maintenance guides | Atari troubleshooting guides | Atari capacitor guides |
| Sega | Sega maintenance guides | Sega troubleshooting guides | in the general capacitor category |
| Osborne | Osborne maintenance guides | in the general troubleshooting category | in the general capacitor category |
| Commodore, Sinclair, IBM, Acorn, Amstrad, Nintendo and the rest | all maintenance guides | all troubleshooting guides | all capacitor replacement guides |
Starting points
Storage devices
- Storage Devices — the drives themselves
- Floppy Drive Repair · Hard Drive Maintenance and Repair
- Disk II · Tandon TM100-1 · Tandon TM100-2 — worked examples with manufacturer figures
- Macintosh Floppy Drive Maintenance · Macintosh HDD Maintenance
Parts and documentation
- Service Manuals — manufacturer service documentation hosted on this wiki
- Schematics — circuit diagrams and board drawings
- Documentation — datasheets, application notes and technical literature
- Capacitor Replacement Guides — machine-specific replacement lists
Contribute
Corrections are more valuable here than new pages. If a figure on this wiki has no source behind it, it should be corrected or removed — see Help:Editing, or raise it on the RTC forum.