For my birthday, I asked my grandparents if I could have my dad’s old Atari 2600 video computer system. So they sent it to me, and a week later it showed up in the mail. Right when I opened the box (there were actually two boxes) I was surprised and thrilled by how much stuff there actually was. There were games, catalogs & instructions, two joysticks, 2 paddles, 2 driving paddles, a “Video Touch Pad”, and the Atari itself, which also happens to be the rarer 6-switch model.

Some people might see the computer chips in the picture and the socket they fit in. Those are actually games. Well, one is. I could not get anything from two of the chips and I noticed that one of the ones that did nothing looks a lot like an old CPU. The one working chip has casino on it, which is funny because I happen to have an empty cartridge that says casino on it. I think I know where that chip came from. The socket just plugs into the cartridge slot.

P.S. If my grandparents are reading this, thank you so much for the Atari!

The driving paddles.

All of the catalogs and instructions.

The “Video Touch Pad”.

The paddles.

All of the games.

The 6-switch Atari 2600.

The broken and semi-working joysticks.

The chips and their socket.

Recently at a thrift store I found this Texas Instruments TI-5040 electronic calculator. It was really dirty, but it worked fine so in this post I’m just going to talk about how I removed the marks and blemishes. The puzzling thing about this calculator is that it has the old (not original) Tektronix logo on it, but It’s clearly a Texas Instruments calculator. I originally thought it was a promotional gift, but it was built too nicely for being given away for free. My only guess is it was given to accountants who worked at Tektronix.

Anyway, I started by removing the screws on the bottom of the case. Then I removed all the keys so I could soak them in soapy water. I did not remove the electronics from the bottom for cleaning because I was worried about not being able to get the thermal print head back into place. I decided to clean the bottom half when it was all put back together. I started by moistening a paper towel and then putting a generous amount of baking soda on it. Since baking soda is a mild abrasive, when rubbed into the plastic it will remove a very small layer of the plastic, including the stains on it. It works wonders on tough stains. For everything else, I used rubbing alcohol. After I removed the stains I washed the case with soap and a toothbrush while the keys were soaking. Then I left everything to dry. Meanwhile, I vacuumed out the electronics, including the spot where the keys were. And lastly I removed the keys from their soapy bath and rinsed and dried them. Then I left them to air dry the rest of the way.

The next day, the top part of the case and the keys were dry, so I proceeded to reattach the keys and screw the case back together. Once it was put back together, I used baking soda to remove the stains on the bottom half of the case. Then I used rubbing alcohol to remove all the gunk the old cork feet left behind. Lastly I used baking soda on the cord, because it was covered in black stains. Then it was done! I reinserted the paper roll and enjoyed using my super cool retro calculator.

P.S. Sorry that I took so few pictures. I was feeling lazy.

The insides of the calculator.

This calculator has a super nice florescent display.

The top case drying

The keys soaking

The finished calculator!

I’m sure many of you remember my post called “The Tape Library Salvage Score!” (if you don’t, just scroll down the home page and you’ll see it). Anyway, In that post I talked about how I got 2 LTO Ultrium tape drives, a LTO 3 drive and a LTO 4 drive. The LTO 3 drive was broken and had the orange cleaning tape shown above stuck in it. I have taken apart and salvaged the LTO 3 drive, but I still have the working LTO 4 drive. For a while now I have wanted to back up my servers (I say this like I have many servers, but the truth is I only have two) on tape. The problem is my tape drive has SFP ports (read up!) on the back, limiting my options to doing an optical connection to my server, or just using an SFP cable. Sadly, as far as I know no servers or computers come with SFP or optical ports on the back, meaning you need to get a SFP/optical card for your server. Let me tell you, those are WAY overpriced for what they are. I’m never going to spend $300 on a little circuit board that will go in the back of my server. Since I had 5 boxed tapes and a drive, I tried (with no success) to sell them on eBay. to so I could get a couple hundred dollars (yeah, that much. Tape media is way overpriced) I could spend on something else.

Later my dad (he works in the IT department of a architecture firm) got the news that he and his other employees had to move out of there private room and go to some office cubicles in an old meeting area. Since they were downsizing, they need to get rid of a lot of stuff. And yes, this is the place I got the tape library. It just happened to be that they had a optical card sitting around that they were getting rid of. So he brought that home, and I shoved it into my server, took the tape drive and tapes out of their sad bubble-wrapped box, ripped off the “Thank you for purchasing” eBay stickers and ran downstairs with them. I did have to downgrade my server from Windows Server 2012 R2 to Windows Server 2008 Standard for it to work, but it worked. I could finally back up my stuff to tape. I will also build a case for the tape drive, because it’s an internal drive and has all it’s parts exposed. Also I have to have a whole separate ATX power supply to run it.

The messy tape backup setup.

The tape drive at work!

The optical card in my server.

A box of fresh 1.6 TB LTO 4 tapes.

The tape drive and all the other stuff I’ll use to make it a new enclosure.