Restoration of a Tandy 1000 SL: Part 2 Cleaning the 20+ Years of Grime

The Tandy 1000 SL

//Wiping Off The Grit and Grime

    Continuing from Part 1 on the Tandy 1000 SL Restoration, We had a quite dirty machine. As soon as I had paid my brother for the computer I took to the attic to uncover the computer from its dusty tomb. There in the corner I saw this majestic machine in a sorry state. After fumbling up and down a set of attic stairs too rickety for my weight let alone the 50ish pounds this computer weighs the computer was fully mine! Once in my room, and on my desk I began taking photos to document everything. The photos actually led me to start this blog. I thought I should share these experiences and mishaps I deal with when attempting to restore stuff. Onto the cleaning!

    With Windex in one hand and an assortment of rags and paper towels, I took to cleaning the monitor first. The monitor is a Tandy CM-5 320x200 CGA/TGA 16 Color unit. I tried looking up the original market price, but I could not find it. It was bundled as a budget monitor with many Tandy's of the day. When I encountered some hard to clean spots and adhesive, a melamine sponge managed to do the trick. Although slightly yellowed, the monitor turned out alright! Well except for one small issue, but we will discuss that in Part 3.

    Look at that monitor, it's all squeaky clean! It almost looks brand new. After finishing up with the monitor I turned my attention to the 1000 SL.

Did I mention in what a sorry shape this computer was in? Well let's take care of that! I spent two hours in just cleaning the computer using gunk removers, Windex, melamine erasers, IPA, water, different cloths, paper towels.

    After cotton swabs and all other methods of cleaning, the computer began to appear before my eyes! What was a pile of dust, mildew, and cobwebs began to take shape into the computer I remembered from all those years ago.

    The painted metal case does still have some stains, however they are not as pronounced, It's mostly discoloration from the dirt etched into the textured paint. The texture was actually acting like a cheese grater to my sponge. I'll finish cleaning that another day. If you remember from Part 1 when I said that the computer was shielded from the sun in a basement most of it's life, well that preserved the original color of the plastic! This computer is a stunning ivory white the lighting and my phone's camera does not do it justice.

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    Well, you know what they say, don't turn it on, take it apart!

All jokes aside, the last thing I wanted to do was turn on this computer with either something in there that could short it out, or the fan blow out 30 years of built up dust inside the computer.

    Once opened we can see the inside of this beautiful computer and it's heart the Inte... I mean AMD 8086? Yeah, years before AMD and Intel's rivalry of the PC market, AMD was just a chip fab and licensed the x86 chips up until the Pentium hit the market. Well moving on we can see the custom motherboard with 5 ISA slots, 5 1/4" Floppy, 3.5" Floppy, The Tandy's "sound card," and power supply. 

    After seeing no apparent issues on the main board, I instinctively went to service the floppy drives. I went through both, cleaning the heads with 90% alcohol and lubricating the drives with the appropriate greases. To remove the drives, I had to first carefully remove the Power switch's shaft. A common component on Most XT and AT compatibles with a front panel power switch. It was blocking the screws on the drive caddy. 

    The stepper motor for the head was of an interesting design, I had never seen one that wasn't driven by a worm gear before? Were these common on older drives? The floppy drives were blown out with air and cleaned of any grime. The ribbon cable was weird with holes in it which apparently would carry voltage to power Tandy specific drives in the HX and EX. A strange daughter board was on the 720K drive which adapted the Tandy specific ribbon cable to a standard 3.5" drive. I later found out that the Tandy has software drive select, so a twist in the cable in not present opposed to other drives of the era. 

    After Reassembling the inside of the computer, babying the power stalk, putting on some finishing touches, and wiping down the keyboard just enough to use the keyboard without feeling the need to wash my hands after every key press. I set it up to test the first boot. 

    

    The Tandy 1000 SL Looking pretty good form her first boot in maybe 25+ years!

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And the moment of truth

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Awwwww Rats....

    The Good news is she didn't catch fire. The bad news though she didn't boot up at this point. Clearly there are some nightmares sleeping away in her memory. With the Cosmetic portion of the restoration finished we will be moving onto the electronic section of the restoration and diagnose why the RAM check failed! All that and more in Part 3!

~Ian L.