[Coco] Cured MPI

[Gene Heskett]

On Thursday 16 April 2009, Boisy Pitre wrote:
>I thought I would share this experience with the list.
>
>Over the past few months,my 26-3124 MPI has been behaving
>erratically.  Turning on the CoCo would sometimes register Disk BASIC
>in slot 4, sometimes not.  Often unplugging and replugging the MPI
>into the CoCo 3 would fix the issue for a while, but not always.
>
>Today I went to Radio Shack and bought a twin pack of DeoxIT cleaner
>and DeoxIT cleaner Gold.  Following the instructions, I cleaned the
>contacts on the MPI and all of the cartridge peripherals that I use in
>the MPI.  It took about 25 minutes to clean everything (including the
>recommended 2 minute wait time between each application).  After
>cleaning everything, wiping the excess, and putting things back
>together, my system is operating 100% properly.
>
>Just a little public service announcement for all of you out there...

I also used that, and found that once it was used, I had to keep on using it, 
at what seemed like ever decreasing intervals.  Not on coco's per sei, but on 
contacts in general.  Finally I said screw it and washed as much of it off as 
I could with plain old paint thinner type alcohol, scrubbing it with Scott 
Toweling.  Suddenly I wasn't doing it weekly anymore.  More like yearly.

As for my MPI, I sawed that solder plated bad dream finger pattern off mine 20 
years ago, then found a pile of old ISA cards that were gold plated, sawed the 
finger pattern off one of those, verified there were no internal shorts (the 
first one I sawed off had 4!) then filed & fitted it to the edge of the MPI's 
board and put a single small drop of Rotainium brand silver bearing solder, 
rated as 50k pounds tensile, so that each finger pattern was bridged across 
the joint, effectively putting that gold plated finger pattern on my MPI.  No 
reinforcing wire or anything.

No, none, nada, zip, zilch failures since.  It Just Works(TM).

>Regards,
>Boisy G. Pitre
>--
>Tee-Boy
>Mobile: 337.781.3570
>Email: boisy at tee-boy.com
>Web: http://www.tee-boy.com
>
>
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-- 
Cheers, Gene
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