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Likes: That would scare the bejezzus out of me knowing who made the electronics.Originally Posted by BLADE
You'd be tormented to death forever asking your self, did they update the firmware....
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That would scare the bejezzus out of me knowing who made the electronics.
You'd be tormented to death forever asking your self, did they update the firmware....
Inauguration to the "AI cancel-culture" fraternity 1997...
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Yes been there done almost all of the same. Worked originally on equipment for the US Army. Machines called Friden Flexowriters and of course even the IBM series of data punch card readers, card punch machines . sorters , verifiers, and collators. Even weirder and definitely out of the Twilight Zone I still remember the Hollerith code for those punch cards. If you are old enough those were the cards that used to be what you electric bill was printed on. Then moved on to the IBM office products , typewriters, selectric and executives and standards. Plus IBM dictation equipment that used a belt instead of a cassette to record. And I also remember those duplicating machine, or mimeographs. Lots of fun when we actually had a school district still using some into the 90's and just could not understand why I would not work on it. Even insisted I could get parts for a forty year old hand cranked machine.I originally started on mechanical cash tills and adding machines, NCR, Gold, Olympia and Olivetti, also typewriters, had special tools to bend bars, and a mechanical turntable on my bench to turn the tills round as they were too heavy to move. The amount of "technical adjustments" we made on metal parts.
We used to have a tank with a foot pump, it had a mixture of various flammable liquids, where we'd strip the machine down to just the metal parts, and then pump, it over it to clean and lubricate it, every 6 months it would get emptied down the toilet, and a big no smoking sign on the door for the next 2 weeks.
2 of us used to spend a day at the local university, servicing the typewriters they used to teach typing, it was done twice a year.
Those were the days customers used to look after you, whenever I went to a butchers to fix a till, I came out with "something for my tea" usually steak, when I went to a perfume shop, I'd come out with a full size tester, I didn't have to buy my then wife any perfume for ages. Just about every shop I went in, I got a discount, as I looked after their tills.
I remember fixing pocket calculators, as they cost a weeks wages, so weren't thrown away.
Customers used to bring in their manual typewriter, so we could change the ribbon, we'd charge £1.50.
I remember repairing circuit boards, and actually stripping down units and replacing parts.
I could go on, but the more I go on....the older I feel.....
Yeap a lot of fun remembering all those ancient machines and how much fun sometimes it was to tell someone "There it works but you have a brake light warranty. When my brake lights on my car light up when backing out of the parking spot that is when your warranty expires."
"Yeap a lot of fun remembering all those ancient machines and how much fun sometimes it was to tell someone "There it works but you have a brake light warranty. When my brake lights on my car light up when backing out of the parking spot that is when your warranty expires."
Hey! I thought I was only one that used the "tail light warranty". Funny how a saying can be used in another part of the country or world for that matter.
Heck I heard that when i worked at my dad's auto repair shop when I worked there after school in high school. That was in Miami Florida. I used it in class when training on the IBM typewriters when the instructor asked if I thought my "repair would work. And had everyone in the classroom in stitches. Even made the office manager chuckle when he heard about it.
What I used to hear was a "drive way warranty" The warranty covers you until you get to the end of the drive way.
Oh yeah another variation of the brake lights. Warranty expires when your brake lights come on at the end of the driveway.
I always called it the "5 minute/5 mile" warranty, whichever comes first. =^..^=
If you'd like a serious answer to your request:
1) demonstrate that you've read the manual
2) demonstrate that you made some attempt to fix it.
3) if you're going to ask about jams include the jam code.
4) if you're going to ask about an error code include the error code.
5) You are the person onsite. Only you can make observations.
blackcat: Master Of The Obvious =^..^=
Haven't read this entire thread yet but will get to it at some point.
When I started in the fall of '88 one of the things that seemed to happen frequently was the heat lamp contacts getting corroded and causing a heat up failure on Minolta machines. We would always have to use a file and clean them and the ends of the lamps up if not too bad or just replace the contacts and lamps.
We used to always troubleshoot the individual components on boards back then.
Power supply boards would frequently fail because of cold solder joints and could usually be fixed by re-soldering most, if not all solder connections on the back of the board.
When the old Minolta 530/R/RII machines would jam, you could just reset the code and the machine would go to pre-drive even if the paper wasn't removed, sometimes feeding the paper out of the machine in the process.
Oh, and the same 530/R/RII machines would feed corrugated cardboard through the machine as well. Yes, we had customers try it.
Last edited by srvctec; 06-11-2019 at 07:36 PM.
Started in the copier service business in the fall of 1988 and worked at the same company for 33.5 years, becoming the senior tech in 2004 but left to pursue another career on 4/29/22.
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