[GreenKeys] My Model 33 ASR

[Troy Peterson]

Hi All,

I was ready to declare my 33 ASR project finished.... But alas it seems 
owning one of these beasts is a never ending project.... In any case, I 
obtained my unit in a partially disassembled state back in January.  As 
a vintage computer enthusiast I had wanted an ASR-33 for a very long 
time... this one came from someone in a Facebook group who himself had 
obtained it from an estate sale of a ham. He said it was completely in 
pieces when he received it with the keyboard totally apart. He tried to 
re-assemble it as best as he could but wasn't able to get the keyboard 
to actually move... The rest of the machine was very dirty and seized 

and the case had a lot of cracks in it.. Sadly I didn't really take too 
many 'before' pictures to show..

Upon receiving it and tearing it down I discovered that the master reset 
bar was missing from the keyboard...  Fortunately the previous owner had 
a look around his shop and was able to find it and mail it to me... But 
advice from this list was that was a major issue and may be almost 
un-fixable.... However, with a lot of help (and a spar non-working 
keyboard to use as a reference) from Wayne I was able to get it back 
together with all of the springs intact...  Then I discovered that the 
code-bars were in the wrong order...  But I eventually go that sorted.  
I cleaned and polished every key, and hosed down the inside of the 
machine with distilled water to remove the congealed grease... re-oiled 
it, fixed the motor fuse, a blown power resistor and broken trace on one 
of the pc boards and various other bits... Got a new hammer from Rob 
Jarratt, an aluminium faceplate from David Tuney, and a whole bunch of 
other odds and ends from Wayne... and it's all done and working, 
including both remote and local mode. Here's a video of a file being 
sent from my computer over an RS-232 to current loop converter.

https://youtube.com/shorts/kib_07AqcEk

A huge thankyou to eveyone on this list for all the help with this 
project! You are an amazing community.

There is just one thing... After moving it from my shop to my desk now 
the current loop connection is only receiving data from the computer and 
not sending.. I suspect a wire has simply come loose..  And I don't 
think my tape punch is properly aligned with the case still as the 
plastic buttons don't quite hit the right places on the real metal 
buttons.... and I've now lost the "Release" plastic button into the 
inside of the case.... and also now it seems my tape punch is no longer 
punching the sprocket hole... It was working perfectly fine before I 
moved it the 15 paces from my shop to my office and now it isn't... I 

need to open it up again and resolve all these issues again...... I 
guess this sort of thing is par for the course with one of these.

Cheers,
Troy.


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