Fun with New AIM-65

[Hugo Holden]

My AIM-65 finally arrived.

I was lucky to get one complete with the original Rockwell enclosure & power supply. (Photo attached of the unit with the top cover removed) It also has the original ceramic monitor ROMs, the Editor, assembler and dis-assembler ROMs and the BASIC ROMs fitted.

The power supply had some nasty scratches on the metalwork. But I disassembled it for checking and renewed the thermal conducting compound and Mica insulators on the power devices. Where I was there, checking other parts, I masked off most of the scratched area and rubbed it down with paper and polished it, now there is mainly a smooth grey rectangular area where the scratches were, I think somebody did this to remove or help stick a sticker in that area.

I removed all the socketed IC's to clean their pins of the usual oxides and lubricated the pins and sockets with MX-3. There was a very fine dust over everything, not typical house dust, almost an industrial dust, some sort of fine stone or rock dust (Rockwell how ironic). So I cleaned everything up. The fine dust was also in the keyboard and I could feel it with a key press, so I disassembled and cleaned the keyboard and keys and lubricated the moving plastic surfaces with a small amount of Silicone lubricant. Also cleaned the switch contacts by letting them close around a small section of contact cleaner soaked paper, and then sliding out the paper. (This works well for touching style gold contacts).

The printer malfunctioned after a while, the old hardened grease was restricting the lateral motion of the thermal head. So I stripped it down, cleaned and re-lubricated the printer assembly and cleaned and lubricated the timing wheel and adjusted that.

The board was electronically ok, but I had some trouble with the RAM. It might have been the result of cleaning them or changing the order in the sockets, but the RAM malfunctioned, so I put in a new set of eight 2114's, solved the issue, then re inseted the original RAM IC's, but not in the original order, and that works too. So I'm not certain if one of the original RAM IC's was borderline or partially damaged in some way, so I left the new set of RAM IC's in there. I really need to get a 2114 RAM tester.

Now I'm figuring out how to use the editor and assembler.

I'm also on the hunt for some connectors for the Expansion connector.
.

[Robbbert]

Very very nice. It looks excellent.

[daver2]

Nice purchase!

Dave

[glitch]

Good stuff! I believe you *have* a 2114 RAM tester now, though

[Hugo Holden]

Good stuff! I believe you *have* a 2114 RAM tester now, though

Yes that it true, especially since the computer won't boot if the RAM in page 0 or page 1 is defective.

I think what happened was one or two of the RAMs at higher pages were defective, but the computer was working initially. When I took them out to clean up the pins, and put them back in a different order in the sockets, the defective one was in page 0 position, knocking out the function and stopping the computer booting.

I will have to go through the original 8 RAMs and find out which one or two of them was defective.

Luckily I had some really nice new old stock ceramic body 2114's to put in there. I had bought them in anticipation of RAM troubles.

[Hugo Holden]

I found this attractive sketch on the back cover of a vintage 1981 Rockwell IC manual.

Rockwell probably made a lot of electronics gear for the space program. It is very cool. Makes me very proud to be a Rockwell computer owner.

It also reminds me of how futuristic and brilliant the space shuttles were.

[dfnr2]

Nice restoration. The machine is beautiful.

Dave