The system, as it arrived, looked like this:
I set the monitor aside as a separate project. It had very crude and broken mod that held a sheet of coloured perspex over the screen. I will eventually add that back.
The main unit was in good shape. I just reseated the main RAM.
To judge from the date codes, it was made in 1981 when I was still at high school.
This machine uses an old school linear supply. I inspected it and reformed the power supply capacitors by bring up the supply voltage slowly with a variac.
Two new keys where the second shift key was. The sideways A is the tab key.
Switch added at the top of the pic. Shift changed to backspace. Backspace to clear.
With power (and a kludge for the video cable) it came to life.
The plastic had melted against the soft plastic dust cover. It looked pretty awful.
I had to make some compromises. I used a combination of acetone and wet & dry paper to get it back to an acceptable finish. It may be possible to do better.
I crafted, and then glued on, a replacement door latch. It failed, so i had a second go and that is still holding several years later. To be fair, i don’t use the cassette deck very much.
The tape unit itself was gummed up, but after a clean and lube, it seemed like it might work.
