Xerox Alto Restoration Part 1 - power supply restoration, disk drive surprise

We begin our very gentle and progressive power up of the seminal Xerox Alto. No magic smoke, but one power supply is faulty. Opening it up reveals that it had a tough life, having suffered a catastrophic short of some sort, hastily repaired, and some traces almost entirely corroded through. But the source of the malfunction seems to be a somewhat classic case of bad electrolytic capacitors, way too far gone for any hope of reforming. After replacing them and repairing the supply, we turn our attention to the Diablo disc drive and cartridge, and have a bit of a surprise.

Many thanks to my CHM restorers colleagues Ron Crane, Ken Shirriff, Carl Claunch and Luca Severini.

See previous video introducing this historically significant machine:
https://youtu.be/YupOC_6bfMI

For much more details and references, see Ken Shirriff's blog entry corresponding to this video here:
http://www.righto.com/2016/06/restoring-y-combinators-xerox-alto-day.html

Видео Xerox Alto Restoration Part 1 - power supply restoration, disk drive surprise канала CuriousMarc