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Emulator III : Repairs
Overview The Emulator
III is not one of the most reliable products due to the very large
number of electronic components and the card cage which has lots of
mechanical connectors. After 15+ years you are likely to encounter
failures. The main problem areas are the original hard drive, the
floppy drive, the PSU, the LCD and sliders and buttons.
Warning Please only attempt a repair yourself if you
are competent at servicing electronics, use a service centre if in
doubt. The SP-12 is easily damaged or melted by amateur attempts at
repair.
LCD Overview The Emulator III uses a 20x4
character LCD. We have not identified the LCD model, but it is
probably an Optrex.
LCD Age After around 2000 hours
use the LCD will need replacement, and its a good idea to replace
the LCD whilst parts are still available. You can check when the LCD
was manufactured by looking at the code stamped on the back of the
LCD in black. The first 2 characters are the year, and the third
character is the month. 87 or 88 is a typical build year.
LCD Inverter The LCD backlight (the blue colour) is
driven by a small inverter that generates 100VAC at 400Hz from a 5V
supply. The inverter is a NEC (NEL-D32-46), and its a small black
plastic box that sits below the LCD. The inverter can fail, which
means no blue backlight, in which case it needs
replacing.
EL Backlight Replacement An easier solution
to replacing the whole LCD is to replace just the EL backlight
itself. This works well if you know the characters are working okay
but you just cannot read them properly. An added plus is that the
black on blue lettering remains, which is easier to read.
Visit www.backlights.co.uk for more
details.
The EL backlight is easily removed by unsoldering
the two connections on the LCD and then pushing the backlight out
using a credit card. The new backlight can then be slotted in and
the connections soldered in place.
Case Fans
The Emulator
III is rather renouned for its higher than usual noise level,
created by 2 cooling fans and the internal hard drive. The cooling
fans are high quality and super low noise, so replacing them with a
more modern fan is not really an option. However they do wear out
over time and it is worth replacing them with identitical units - if
your EIII has been powered up for long hours over the
years. .
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3.5" Floppy
Drive
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New floppy drives are still easy to find,
although they are not the standard computer product. We
recommend the TEAC FD235HF-A529 which is in black and has jumpers
for setting the ID to zero. These drives cost more than the typical
PC component, but they can be found from some TEAC dealers. You will
also need the correct 41 mm bezel in black which is about $3. Order
it from a TEAC dealer or TEAC direct.
Buying Try
your local TEAC dealer Or contact Route66 Studios
TEAC Disk Drive Jumper Settings
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Slider Knobs
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The Emulator
III keyboard has two slider knobs which can be easily lost or
damaged. Try www.farnell.com for
spares.
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Push
Buttons
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We suspect these are buttons from e-switch, probably they
are 320.02E1-1.08BLK. |
Hard
Disk
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The Emulator III originally used a 5.25" Seagate 40 MB
drive, but more modern 3.5" hard drives appeared as time went by,
such as the 40 MB Conner drive also used in the Emax II. Given the
noise of these older drives its best to either remove it and use an
external ZIP drive or to use a more recent 1GB SCSI drive. The EIII
has a reasonable SCSI implementation provided the latest OS 2.42 is
used, so a variety of drives can be used. |
Rotary
Pots
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The Emulator III uses poor quality slider potentiometers
which should be replaced. |
Power
Supply
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The power supply is getting old by now and failure is not
uncommon. One of the rails may go out of specification. Replacement
PSU's are not available, so the best option is a service centre
repair or you could use one or more new linear PSU's. We don't have
the current rating of the original
PSU. | |
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