15:25 What setup is needed for retrobrighting beyond plastic bins to hold the pieces, plastic wrap, hydrogen peroxide activator from a beauty supply store, water and sunlight? I dont understand why you make it out to be more complicated then it really is..

@TechTangents

5 жыл бұрын

I've acquired all the materials needed to take the ozone method to the next level. So I'm going to be trying that out. I don't like the idea of having to buy hydrogen peroxide all the time. The ozone method would be a zero consumable, completely renewable option that I could just drop something in a dedicated tank and let it set. I also don't want to rely on sunlight because I want my results to be consistent.

@MrTruth-yn7pq

5 жыл бұрын

Ahhhhhhh you're going high tech instead of oldschool like the 8-bit Guy. I'm looking forward to seeing the turbocharged ozone method in operation. Thanks for replying, it's appreciated.

@dingdongbells3314

5 жыл бұрын

He might not have a proper drive way for washing down the computer with his hose. That's a requirement if you've seen 8 bit guy's retrobrighting process.

@StarkRG

5 жыл бұрын

The ozone method still requires heat or UV light in order to make it progress faster otherwise you're probably looking at several weeks of constant immersion in ozone. I'm thinking, though, that the ozone method would have the added advantage that the electronics wouldn't need to be removed from the plastics since electronics tend to produce ozone on their own anyway (though they usually aren't bathed in it for extended periods). UV light isn't hard to produce artificially if you don't want to deal with the variability of sunlight. There are several UV-only LED grow-lights that you can get either online or from your local hardware store (the LED variety is going to be much more economical in the long run than fluorescent, though slightly more expensive initially).

@olik136

5 жыл бұрын

@@dingdongbells3314 you also have to live in ̶h̶̶e̶̶l̶̶l̶ Texas to get enough UV light from the sun

Nice machine and restoration! '78 '79 on the CPU are copyright years. I think the datecode is 533, 33rd week 1985.

Retrobrighting is a necessary thing in almost every retro computer restoration.

Your dedication to these projects is something else man, huge respect!

With your voice, your look and your attitude I could totally imagine you as a character from "Waynes World"

Man you're the best. No BS NCS Music in background.. Only your peaceful voice and pure knowledge. 😊

@friendlyjapanesebusinesswoman

5 жыл бұрын

YEAH! FUCK MUSIC!

@freezetile8588

5 жыл бұрын

What does NCS mean?

@spikefallyt3350

5 жыл бұрын

Gamecubes0 It means NoCopyrightSounds

@freezetile8588

5 жыл бұрын

Oh, I see. Thank you!

@blackneos940

5 жыл бұрын

@@freezetile8588That Profile pic tho. :P

I always wondered how to make coiled up cables myself, now I know, thanks.

@benbaselet2026

5 жыл бұрын

I'm still wondering what they are good for..

@DasMrOSi

5 жыл бұрын

@@benbaselet2026 They stay put without being stiff

Oh man the spring loaded cover of the keyboard cable going up is absolutely fantastic. Such eye for quality.

You can 'invert' the coiled cable after it cools down to make the coil even more 'coily'.

Super relaxing video dude! Great restoration on this classic piece of tech!

I was happy to see this video show up. I picked up the same machine 5 years ago from a thrift store for 3 bucks. There wasn't much info online when I checked back then. Luckily I didn't need much because mine was 100% functional. I remember as I walked up on it in the store I thought it was a sewing machine.

Love the music you used while you did the quick time of the cleaning.

the number of views of your videos is a nice example of how popularity is basically generated by the youtube algorithm that suggests videos- your videos are all really well made and interesting (well the one where you install office from diskette may be slightly less dense in information... :) ) yet a few videos have 10x the views than average... I like your stuff and I am looking forward to watch your computer wizardry that is absolutely out of my ballpark!

I'm stoked to finally see a restoration video of this unit. I have one of these but the power supply is dead. I hope someone posts a repair video on that :-)

I am really enjoying ALL of your videos. It's the weekend, the lawn is overgrown, and my garage could use a good cleaning. But I'd rather just sit in my Dark room, with a cup of Coffee and enjoy your TLC videos.

Favorite channel now, no joke. Thanks for the awesome content!

I just nabbed a PC-7200 at a garage sale and the display is actually REALLY nice. Super crisp and bright by today's standards let alone for a 35 year old computer. Unfortunately I can find almost nothing on this specific model so I have no idea what change was made to make it so much better.

Are you sure it's the backlight that's dipping and not the image on the lcd? Check the driving voltage of the lcd, i'ts probably a negative -24v rail. This may shake the contrast around making it look like the backlight is dipping. Also hate to be negative but the modem port is probably just a internal com port with some power rails alongside it. What I have done on some of my retro portables is to wire this up to a "wifi232" internally but make sure it runs on its own com port first sometimes it is shared with the external one. EDIT: For the modem. Just realized that you showed the bios on screen. So I checked and sure enough: Bad news: internal modem is serial. Good news: it has its own com port.

@TechTangents

5 жыл бұрын

I had a feeling it was going to be that since that connector was so much smaller than the one for the CGA card. Time for plan B then, I'll run a ribbon cable up from the bottom expansion port to the area where the modem would be and use that as mounting point for the ISA to CF adapter. For style points I may as well internally integrate an RPI0W onto that serial port while I'm laying out the board. The bottom port should definitely be full ISA since they planned on making an external ISA enclosure. I'm not sure if that ever happened, but it means the possibility is there.

I don't know if it's because I'm sleep deprived and feeling really silly, but I died laughing at "January 39th".

@sadmac356

4 жыл бұрын

I mean, it's a completely nonsensical value and that amuses me

I know it's an old video, and I assume it's been mentioned before, but when you make a coiled cable the trick is to turn it "inside out" to reverse the handedness after the initial coiling - once you've done that, when the wire attempts to return to its original shape it actually tightens itself rather than straightening out.

Cool little portable! And MAN, cable making! I will NEVER enjoy making cables. You have more patience than I have LOL.

This thing almost has the build construction of a modern day oscilloscope. Awesome video too.

I've seen those stepper motors before. Googling doesn't turn up anything but I guess that's because they are so old they never appeared in any online catalogues, but I've seen them or some that looked very similar (and may be compatible) in Japan before. An electronics shop in Akihabara had some if I recall... Probably Nichibei Shoji. Not a lot of help but maybe if you check Yahoo Japan auctions one will come up.

J A N U A R Y 3 9 , 2 0 1 9

First thought was, the cable looks like a RJ-11 telephone cable, got even more convinced when you said it was a 6 conductor cable :)

You should also reverse coil it after first coiling and heat it again, then the coil is more "snappy" and has more "spring" :D. Trust me, I've made dozens of coiled cables (also sleeved with Paracord or Techflex)

You should replace the EL panel behind the LCD. You can get cut-to-size EL sheet in various colors, and it will REALLY do well for improving the visibility of the shoddy LCD contrast.

Nice restoration. I look forwards to seeing how it comes up once you're set up for retrobrighting. Did the power supply turn out to be ok in the end?

@TechTangents

5 жыл бұрын

So far it seems fine, just the odd flickering of the backlight. Which, upon retrospect, could be failing itself. "off" never fully turns off, "dim" is the same as off, "standard" is completely useless, and "bright" is the one that flickers. There is a spec in between some of the layers in the LCD that I intentionally did not try to remove. I read about someone attempting something similar and ruining the display because it is connected with a conductive adhesive based on their description. I didn't look for my self, I just filed it under the category of "not worth the risk". I assume the backlight is mixed in all that unpleasantness so I didn't bother trying to dig deeper to determine it's health.

@jamesvalentine925

5 жыл бұрын

I'd completely agree, back lighting was never intended to last this long. The only workable solution would be to replace the entire LCD panel which I imagine would be relatively easy to do (depending on the tilting mechanism), finding one on the other hand could prove to be a very long and possibly expensive experience with little guarantee that a 30 odd year old replacement would work any better. At least with it being a reflective LCD the back light isn't essential unless you plan on making it your new workhorse and need to use it at night.

@legomasterj

5 жыл бұрын

See my other comment on this video. The EL backlight is getting worn out, but it is not failing. They all do that.

you have to coil it, warm it to set the insulation memory, once its cooled back down, twist the entire thing inside out and then it will hold (that's how they make them for real real)

Excellent video on an underrated (and not well-documented AFAICT) computer. I'm also very curious about the ISA and/or HDD connections. Might you be willing to share the system disk image(s)? We have it running vanilla MS-DOS 3.1, but I believe we'd need the Sharp disk(s) to get into that setup menu.

@TechTangents

5 жыл бұрын

I don't have the original disks. It just has a key on the keyboard for entering the setup menu. It is thankfully unrelated to the OS.

@echristopherson78

5 жыл бұрын

Ah yes, there it is! I guess I forgot that bit after not poking at it for a while. Thanks.

Holy moly, you were all in on retrobrighting back then huh.

Wow that dual monitor gaming was so immersive!

Just got one of these, seems pretty cool. I don’t have a boot disk tho, so I can’t really use it. But still pretty cool

Hey man I got to give you props you do a lot of really good work please keep up the good work I hope my likes and subscription help you out man

nice job on coiling the cable. I might try that. why so much trouble terminating it? I haven't had to buy one in quite a few years, but 6-pin crimp tools used to be quite common since "business" phones often had 6 conductors and even the $15 tools would do it.

just a note on the keyboard cable, what you can try to do is to coild the cable up, and once it's coiled then reverse the coil all the way and it should stay coiled

It’s hard to terminate non solid pairs. That is how you make coiled wire. A pvc case can be tempered to any shape.

Now that’s some serious fucking technology

@MRB16th

3 жыл бұрын

You're damn right it is. And with the modem, external monitor, printer, a 10MB external hard drive and a backlight for night work - you have one hell of a machine.

That's a cool luggable and I really like the Idea you expressed in the comments of trying to internally wire up a ISA to CF card! Another cool idea would be designing a full blown base unit faeturing multiple ISA connectors. Especially since that would let you use memory upgrades or different graphics cards and basically provide you with a full blown 8086 computer instead of "just" a luggable. But it probably isn't worth the extensive amount of work. Even though I will agree upon the CMOS battery working great for a 30 years old battery I would still replace it. (Or maybe unsolder it from the board and use some long wires to reconnect it while keeping it at a distance from the board.) The risk of the electrolyte spilling would make me too nervous. This is only based on instinct though. On that note: I have heard about replacing those cells with super capacitors. Would you consider this a good idea?

did you try just putting new connectors on the old cable?

@TechTangents

5 жыл бұрын

No, being a coiled cable makes it really difficult to "bend test" it to see where the internal break is. And it is so hard to put a crimp connector on soft cables by hand that if I'm going to do it again I'm going to start with new cable with no problems.

@RetroBerner

5 жыл бұрын

right on, good luck

You said that the restoration was complete, but a 'restoration' is where you restore the color, touch up paint, clean it up, fill in cracks, etc.; what you did was a repair and _partial_ restoration.

Why do you have a 10 min limit on your camera?

@TechTangents

5 жыл бұрын

The sensor in my camera overheats because it's not designed for constant video recording (I use a DSLR).

@abhimaanmayadam5713

5 жыл бұрын

I'd actually buy a dedicated camera at this point for recording

@Nelwyn

5 жыл бұрын

Interesting, I was considering a DSLR for video for use in low light situations. I have a camcorder now and it just does ok in low light but can record as long as there is memory available. I guess there's pros and cons for each. I guess that's why some phone manufacturers have a 10 minute video limit also.

@TechTangents

5 жыл бұрын

The reason I don't just switch to a dedicated video camera is that I have a lot invested in Nikon F-Mount lenses and use then regularly while shooting. It would be very limiting for me to change to a fixed lens camera and be much more restricted in how I can shoot.

@SUPERBOBESPONJA1000

5 жыл бұрын

Werid my Sony NEX 3 dosent overheat the sensor is because is a Mirrorless or cmos?

Hi All, i had a Toshiba T1000 for a while at work back in 1988, it is probably 10 years newer than your sharp PC-7000, but the similarity is that they are both basically IBM XT class with 8088 style 4.7mh processor and i think it has 512 ram. The good points were the built in Dos 2 or 3 in ram , but it also had a built in 3.5 floppy, it would boot of that disk if it was a system disk. The negative was even when new the display was horrible, i was just wearing glasses at that stage and i dont think i could have done more than 1 hour on it at a time, glare and lack of contrast annoys me. Luckily it has a external CGA or EGA monitor cable, so at work or home i use the external screen. I am not sure if there was a switch to disable the built in LCD screen but i definitly remember that the screen refresh rate is very slow, even using Multiplan or Microsoft Works 1 or 2, luckily multiplan has options to change colors on the spreadsheet and menu and Works has a few preset colour "skins" or laptop or reverse option as color presets. Games, yeah pretty much no, i am sure i played a few but the ghosting effect is very annoying, ( rougue was ok as was a few star trek text based games ) or the basic style games. If you have a good working parallel port, try laplink, pinouts for the standard parallel port should be used as you wont have advanced or fast / turbo / enhanced parallel port options in the bios it works with 8088 processor and you can map a remote pc hard drive and "share or copy" it like a network drive, it will be slow but i can use a XT -AT machine to get files from a Pentium 100 running dos only ( DOS or Win95 - Win98 class machines, as later models do not allow old programs to function at hardware level eg Win 2000 - XP ) You only need to look at a calculator from the time of that style of LCD and compare the washed out style of text and lack of clarity - it did its job and worked and saved on power usage Regards George

I do love a good luggable. I have bot a TRS80 4P and a Compaq. But both of these are CRT monitors, which would make yours a pretty early attempt at an LCD, so in that regard it could be worse :)

love the channel. enjoyed the video on this system. i as well have one of these i plan to work on some time soon. did you ever find out about the connectors inside the system and for there pin outs. also. were you able to get a copy of the schematics for this system. . if you have any info on these systems that you could share. that would be greatly appreciated.

I've got a 7100 (With 20 MB MFM hard disk) and the screen is perfect. Only problem is the HD fails every now and then. Any tips on attaching an IDE or other drive?

Does DOS directly address each character-cell? I was under the impression that it sent serial ASCII to the monitor much like a UNIX terminal would. And of course since that process can happen to paper, the screen would just show whatever the most recent 25 lines of text were. That's how I always thought these old wide monitors did it anyway. Oh interesting, those keys are Alps mount. Are the switches actual Alps?

*chortles at the BIOS screen* I'm fairly sure your system isn't Y2K compliant.

If it's truely an EL backlight, you may want to look closely at the EL power supply circuitry. EL displays use high voltage to illuminate the panel, so it'll be converting the 12v up to some higher voltage.

The same principle used to do springs should be used for coiling cables, as the cable, much like a spring, will expand a bit once free from the thing it was wrapped to.

Would love to pick one of these up, but currently the only items on eBay are in the States and shipping to Europe in "covid-times" are both expensive and time consuming.. Nice one!

Do you know where the break in the keyboard cable is? It may have gone under one of the cord clamps in the plugs so a new plug would fix it.

damn, remember when you could just walk into a store and buy a bottle of rubbing alcohol? Shit's wild

I know I'm a bit late to the game on this one. But How It's made did a piece that showed how phone cord was made. They got the snapback by inverting the coil after they heat set it. And by inverting it they just wound the coil in the opposite direction after it was set. It's hard to explain but I hope you understood. If not please go watch that segment to see what I'm talking about.

Hi AkBKukU, do you have or know where to get a service manual for this machine? I have one that I'm having a hard time getting the fdd to work (i know the fdd is good as i've tried it in another machine). When I pulled it apart there was no data cable connected to the drive which was odd so I've used a normal PC cable but still not working. So wondering if the pinout on the motherboard is the same or if sharp made them slightly different. Cheers

This guy is beating the pants off the 8-Bit guy in terms quality of content and I would love to see the sub count reflect how good this channel is. I'm tired of 30 minutes retro Brite videos which it feels like is the only thing happening on that channel these days. I love this channel for the raw knowledge and repair sequences and I found the key cleaning timelapse oddly mesmerizing.

@e.9785

5 жыл бұрын

What? Maybe you have a short attention span, but 8-bit guy does so much more than retrobrighting! He's probably just as knowledgeable, and if not he makes sure to get to the bottom of things to get it fixed in the end after all. Don't diss him like that, they're both good channels!

@seanc.5310

5 жыл бұрын

@@e.9785 I've seen every single one of his videos. He is very knowledgeable but the channel is way too boring now. Sorry, just the truth.

@CoWinkKeyDinkInc

5 жыл бұрын

you mean the not truth?

@seanc.5310

5 жыл бұрын

CoWinkKeyDinkInc very clever Mr Dink

@e.9785

5 жыл бұрын

@@seanc.5310 With all respect: but I think you didn't get the definition of "truth" and "opinion".

TO BE. It needs TO BE cleaned. It's not going down to the local walmart to buy some "cleaned" It needs TO BE cleaned!

That computer really needs some retrobriting! But aside from that, it looks great!

Did you make the music for the time lapse?

@TechTangents

5 жыл бұрын

yes, that's why it sucks. I'm trying to force myself to make music for the videos in between projects.

@luha628

5 жыл бұрын

I thought it sounded pretty cool tbh. It adds a personal touch to it

@tjyoyo3

5 жыл бұрын

I thought it sounded pretty good tbh.

5 жыл бұрын

Man it doesn't suck, I loved it!

@KarjamP

5 жыл бұрын

@@TechTangents You already know how music works. That's the bare minimun needed to work with music properly; many of those who you may encounter don't know how music works, or they're too busy relinquishing their own personal tastes to properly care enough. You just need to learn how to hear, to listen to the sounds of your songs and to know what they're saying, so that you can deal with them, accordingly. (Those songs on my channel? Examples of what not to do; I am planning on uploading new music once I got a certain part of my long-term plans worked out, one of which, involved myself, figuring out how to hear my own songs as I compose them, but when I do my songs, I'll upload them.)

it was very cool at the time. much smaller than the Compaq portable!

20:30 I used to play games in that speed in my netbook, even dos ones like duke nukem

@SUPERBOBESPONJA1000

5 жыл бұрын

i haved 3 netbooks and the 3 played gta sa fine

fantastic video :)

A cocktail of keyboard keys in that glass...

In coiled cables, there's usually a coiled plastic in the wire itself and then the cable is made around that, so it's basically impossible to make your own unless you make your own cable

@leektah354

4 жыл бұрын

No, the completed cable is coiled around a mandrel/rod then heated. After cooling the coil's direction is then reversed.

i love your videos :D !

Seriously bummed that you didn't retrobrite. I was looking forward to the finished look of it. This is my first of ur videos. Do you ever retrobrite?

Use white heat shrink tube to make a twist cable. After it shrinks, it may look ugly, but works every time.

How did you get MS-DOS 3.3 Booting on your’s? Mine goes into a reboot loop when I try to boot MS-DOS 3.3.

The Screen is sharp!

I picked one of these up for $25 this past summer that had a single 5.25" drive and a HardCard as well. I managed to take the HardCard apart and get it working eventually but it did die completely shortly thereafter. Unfortunately my LCD is damaged and i cant repair it. Parts machine for the time being. Cool to see one actually functioning!

@buttguy

5 жыл бұрын

if you need any info about my 7100, let me know! May be helpful.

@TechTangents

5 жыл бұрын

Does your motherboard look different? How does the hard disk connect?

@buttguy

5 жыл бұрын

@@TechTangents the HardCard is just a normal ISA one, plugs into an internal ISA slot. I have some photos up on my Instagram from when i had it apart, i'll see if i can dig them up. Did yours have an ISA slot buried in it somewhere?

@TechTangents

5 жыл бұрын

Someone emailed me some pictures of a 7100, it's very different inside compared to my 7000. A complete redesign of the motherboard and addon cards. I don't think anything is compatible between the two except maybe the display and keyboard.

@buttguy

5 жыл бұрын

@@TechTangents ah, ok. Interesting! Well, let me know if you do want a 7100, I'm probably not going to do anything more with it as the screen seems to be beyond repair. I'm keeping the HardCard, despite its failure, but probably wont do much else with it in the foreseeable future, waaaay too many other computer projects. The ISA slot opens up some interesting options, i'm guessing an XT-IDE and a CF card would fit nicely...let me know!

It would be fun to use the case and keyboard for more modern hardware inside.

hey do you still have this? wondering if you've tried a NEC V30 chip on it? Might get those extra frames ;)

You might see if that empty socket by the 8086 is for a 8087 math coprocessor . It might speed things up a bit for the game and other select applications .

00:28 sheit just got awesome

im dieing this is a beautiful machine

didnt the old turbo buttons slow the cpu down for compatibility? im pretty sure they did

Can you build a Ultimate Retro Gaming PC?One that can play 386, 486 and Pentium PC Games, plus Pentim to Pentium III Win9x games?Messing up with cache and configs of an AMD equivalent or Pentium 3 PC?

I have one of these a PC-7500, where can i find boot disks!! Awesome video btw!

now THAT'S ultrawide

How did they print the game cover that colorful back then?

The dates on CPU are usually the copyright for the die, brand name, and/or product names i.e. 8086 was made in 1978 or the product name Core 2 Duo was copyrighted 2005. I don't think I've ever seen a chip with a "date code" on it but it's possible manufacturer does it.

I guess for the time. That is why some other portables where using CRTs. You would not have worry about back lighting.

hello sir i pulled floppy drive from pc7000a. and install it in my 286 pc.B: driver is working proper but A: drive is not reading writing or formatting what should i do.any idea.

Try to recrimp ends on the original cable. It's unlikely that the cable itself is bad. It's more likely that the old RJ11 ends oxidized.

January 39th. The best day of the year.

What series of fluke is that voltmeter?

Omg Mister Argent was mentioned! Weird seeing IRC peeps mentioned on KZread...

The EL inverter or the tube/sheet for the backlit screen is probably a goner. You could try hacking an LED strip in its place.

Here in 2020! Not sure if anyone has asked yet & if you still have this PC, but could you drop in an Nec V30 cpu to replace the 8086? Could make it ~10%-15% faster. Maybe also try adding a slightly faster main oscillator to overclock it a little bit (or some sort of drop-in daughterboard, if it can fit). Did you also try to clean the disk heads with alcohol & swab, if you can get in there? Try also finding a pc-7000 user manual, if you don't have one, might have some more stuff in there as far as operation you may not be aware of. It is kind of odd that Slow & Standard speed look the same, it's supposed to switch between normal 4.77mhz & 7.37mhz, from what I've read. Finally, I have not looked at other youtube videos of this model, so maybe other clips have some more info, including user mods, to enhance this machine.

You should add some type of 8-Bit Guy 80's music. Or type of LGR, jazzy-comfort.

I listened more than watched this video but it reminded me of doing test and restore to a zenith EazyPC that was a 512k NEC intel clone all-in-one with pure black and white monitor built in. Man, does CGA ironically enough look good on monochrome monitors when PC's translate it to them. Same deal, only 720kb floppy drive, 2nd drive or HDD would been options someone who got the PC originally dis not opt in for, and finding zenith's specific DOS booter took it's own time. tl;dr: monochrome translated CGA is best CGA fight me.

So it uses a 3 line phone cable to connect keyboard? Those definitely exist out there.

Did you ever find screen new old stock screen replacements?

hello sir i can fit hard drive inside pc7000 computer.please reply.if yes than how.

VETTE! is amazing. It would even run on a Mac 512k. A 3D polygonal game on a machine essentially from 1984 that fit on a floppy disk, and even had networked multiplayer. But it was at its best on an EGA PC or a Mac II class machine that could do 16 colors. I always had fun messing with the gravity and crashing into things and driving into the bay. Also if you ever need some filler music and don’t feel like coming up with anything (seriously, creative motivation is hard) I’ve got some old stuff on a Bandcamp page that you’re welcome to use

What's the aspect ratio of that monitor? It's definitely not 16:9 or 16:10, I guess it's 21:9?

@closure4791

5 жыл бұрын

bundesautobahn7 he told us the resolution so you can do the math

@bundesautobahn7

5 жыл бұрын

@@closure4791 I just calculated it and it's 16:10. It sure looks wider than 16:10 though.

Nice lunchbox computer.

This! ... is a ... (nice Doug DeMuro reference.)

I wonder how long those caps are gonna last

Always start with the battery, the original is usually on it's way out, causing weirdness.