[Coco] Opening and cleaning an FD-501 controller.

[wdg3rd at comcast.net]

 -------------- Original message ----------------------
From: Joel Ewy <jcewy at swbell.net>
> Unfortunately, the label sticker on the top covers a screw hole.  I've
> got an Orchestra 90-CC on which I tried to peel back the label
> non-destructively to expose the screw hole.  That didn't go very well
> and the label looks pretty bad now.  I also have a 26-3029 FDC on which
> I simply found the screw hole with my fingernail (right on the '2' in
> the catalog number) and punched a philips screwdriver through the label
> to remove the screw.  It leaves a hole, but I think that looks less bad
> than having a half-peeled-up label.
> 
> Once you have the screw out, there are some little tabs on either side
> of the front end of the cartridge (the end that plugs into the CoCo)
> that snap the case together.  One at a time, push inward (toward the PC
> board and the back of the card) on the front (leading) surface of the
> bottom half of the case near where the edge connector grounding ears are
> unhook the tabs (bottom half) from their mating recesses (top half),
> while gently pulling the two halves of the case apart.  It should come
> apart really easily.  There are also similar tabs on the opposite end
> (the ribbon cable end), but these will be loose once you have the front
> tabs disengaged.
> 
> These cases seem to be molded from good quality plastic.  Mine are still
> flexible and haven't become brittle.  They open and close very easily
> and none of the tabs have broken off in 25-30 years, which strikes me as
> pretty rare for snap-together two-part plastic housings.

It's a bummer that our marketing people had so much control over our products, their construction and their packaging.  I was usually in software tech support at an RSCC, so of course I had no input and it wouldn't have been accepted anyway.  Had I been in a position of power in Fort Worth, decisions might have gone differently.  Knowing what I know now, things would have big-time gone differently.  But any idiot can play what-if.

For a bit of history, I was the instructor at the RSCC during its first year where Bill Vergona got most of his upgrades (our tech helped him with his first piggy-back and punched in a "32k" button that had been removed from a Model 3) since it was the only one in Las Vegas.  Later, in Los Angeles, my ex-wife worked out of the same Radio Shack Repair Center as the lady Steve Bjork married.  (Is it a weird version of geekdom where men who do software are hooked up with women who do hardware?)

I'm going senile.  RSCC 7237, RSCC 7556.  Can't remember which one was Las Vegas, which one was Los Angeles.  Anybody got a list?  The addresses on the backs of the old flyers don't have the store numbers, and nobody younger than corporate executive at Radio Shack even remembers there ever were Radio Shack Computer Centers.  And we knew 20 years ago what corporate executives thought of those mutant offshoots.  (Corp execs who cheerfully bought crap like Video Concepts and that forgettable furniture company and expected the stock to split -- it didn't).
--
Ward Griffiths    wdg3rd at comcast.net

Well, if you're gonna buy a ticket on the Titanic, you might as well go First Class.

Captain Audie Murphy, Texas Ranger, in _Roswell, Texas_ by L. Neil Smith, Rex May and Scott Bieser.
http://www.bigheadpress.com/roswell/