Fritz: All Fritz

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Text File | 1989-11-07 | 15KB | 422 lines

This file is about 14,000 characters long, which takes 8 minuites to list at 300 baud, and 40 minuites at 45 Baud. A printed copy of this file is available on request free of charge. Use "S" to pause, or "K" to abort listing. Hello. Our technicians and staff have decided to consolidate our list of hints and tips on system care into this booklet. We hope this information will be helpful in keeping your computer up and running. In this age of complex electronic equipment proper care is essential. As a doctor tries to keep his patients healthy, we care also for your equipment. Please take the time to read this booklet. The computer you save may be your own. If you have any comments on this booklet, we would like to hear them. Thank You, Arthur E.Barker, Jr. Service Manager HOW NOT TO BREAK IT Copyright (C) 1985, AAA Computer Repair. This document may be freely reproduced and distributed for any non- profit purpose provided its content remains unchanged. All other rights reserved. Preventing expensive repairs is not difficult, but it does require constant attention to problems, and resolving them as quickly as possible. The main sources of problems with electronic equipment are heat, vibration, surges, dust, and operator malfunction. Heat is a real enemy of electronic equipment. The life of silicon components is inversely proportional to their operating temperature. By keeping it cool, you save money. Look over your equipment; notice the cooling vents. It is wise to keep them free from anything that will block airflow. A good three or four inches is necessary for good circulation. Don't place papers or books on top of a monitor, as most have vents on top. A fan is often used to force air into or out of an enclosure to reduce heat build-up. This aids in reducing package size by allowing less room for airflow, but heat build-up will drastically increase if the fan were to malfunction. It is a very bad idea to use equipment if this happens, as some other component will overheat and fail very rapidly. Fans also cause increased dust buildup, which blocks the airflow, and causes mechanical problems. One way to eliminate the dust problem is to install a fan filter. This will eliminate almost all of the dust, but if not cleaned very often the filter will clog up with dust and shut off airflow. Cleaning the filter daily would be a good idea. Fans also make noise, and their vibrations can cause mechanical problems. Dust is usually an easy problem to overcome. A plastic sheet available at any hardware store for a dollar makes an excellent dust cover. One size fits all. A little overhang is acceptable, although possibly not appealing. For a higher price dust covers are available for most brands of computers. Dust covers also prevent liquid spills. Surges can be devastating to electronic equipment. They can originate on the power line, the phone line, or from local electrostatic sources. Surge suppressors are available for the power lines and are well worth the money. Surges can originate on the ground line as well; so unplugging equipment is the only sure way to prevent damage. The ground line is connected even with power off. Controlling static electricity can be a problem. The best solution is not to use equipment on a carpet. If this is not possible static mats are available, though expensive. Static sprays are inexpensive and effective if used regularly. Wrist straps, heel clips and other devices are nice to have, but get the spray first. The pump style is more cost effective than the aerosol can. Vibration is a very easy problem to cure if your system is not portable. Just put it somewhere and leave it there. Moving a computer around is a sure way to cause a cable or board to loosen. Hard disk drives are very sensitive to vibration, especially sudden shocks. Always "ship" the heads of a hard disk before shutting it off. You may destroy your hard disk if you do not. Never move the drive with power applied. Not even an inch. If you must move a hard disk system, ship the head first on the drive, shut it off, then wait for the drive to stop spinning (30 seconds or so). When you move it use two people, be careful, and set it down gently. Opening the sealed cover on a hard disk outside of a class 100 clean room will destroy the drive. If you want to see what is inside, we have one we can show you one. Don't take yours apart. Operator malfunction is usually caused by communications breakdown between the operator and the manuals. (Remember the manuals? Those dusty books on the shelf!?) Reading your manual will tell you all kinds of neat things about your equipment. Some of them were written by programmers so they are bound to be confusing. Figure out what you can and see if the rest is important. Don't forget to check for the errata sheet and make corrections in your manual. Other sources of operator malfunction are take-apart-itis, cola- ina-keyboard, and the canine-cable-chew syndrome. Printers tend to be a maintenance headache. The problem is dust caused by paper lint, and vibration caused by its mechanics. Cleaning out the dust is not difficult and aerosol cans of compressed air are quite useful for this purpose. The old ink can be removed with denatured alcohol obtainable at most pharmacies. Most dot matrix printers require lubricating ink to prevent printhead failure. Use of standard typewriter ribbons should be avoided in matrix printers for this reason. Daisy wheel printers do not require lubricating ribbons, although care should be used while installing the ribbon to prevent it from being fed between the daisy wheel petals. Check your manual for proper ribbon installation. Some of the ribbon installation procedures are pretty obscure, and many printers can be broken by improper ribbon installation. Daisywheels and thimbles are a very nice way to print, but they too have their quirks. A broken petal on a printwheel will cause a single character to leave a ink blob rather than a formed character. Daisywheels should be tested for flatness before installing in a printer. To do this, simply lay the printwheel on a table characters up, and turn it by hand, checking for wobble. When you place the printwheel in the printer, be sure to seat it fully against the motor shaft. Another thing to watch out for around printers is your fingers. Make sure the printer is offline (preferably off all together) before lifting the cover. Most printers will perform a self test, which is useful when you have problems. The usual procedure is install paper, disconnect interface cable, then press and hold the line feed button while turning the power on. Some printers are different, so check your manual. This self test will often be enough to determine if the printer or the computer is failing. If you are having problems with your printer, check the following things: ribbon installed properly and not empty, paper installed, cover closed, cable connected, and printer online. If the printout is in italics, double size, compressed, and it shouldn't be, try shutting your printer off and back on. Printers normally contain small computers, which can remember a command you gave it three programs ago. Shutting the printer off will clear all of those old commands. Last and most important is the problem of a label stuck under the platen. If you can, feed labels from the bottom of the printer, or use a printer with a removable platen. If you can't, see if you can borrow a printer. All else failing, check your service contract, and pray. Never try to feed a labels backwards out of the printer. Cut the labels as close as you can, and line feed the rest out. Many printers have mechanisms that will snag a label going backwards and cause a jam. Don't use a metal object to try to remove a jammed label, try something plastic or wood, or else you may destroy the platen. If you can't get it out, take it to your favorite service center. (That's us.) The next biggest mechanical device, and therefore headache, is the floppy disk drive. It suffers from the same vibration headache as the printer. Dust in a floppy drive is not nearly the problem as with printers. The heads on a floppy disk drive stay remarkably clean, as the floppy disk drive jacket contains a cleaning pad. If your system contains a fan which draws air into the drive, you may need to clean your heads annually, but do not do it more frequently. Improper use of a cleaning disk can destroy the head load pad in a single sided drive. Read the directions carefully. The read/write head in a floppy disk drive must be in the proper place on the diskette, or else improper operation will result. This adjustment, the radial head alignment, should be checked by a qualified technician if you are experiencing disk problems. Using quality media cannot be over emphasized, regardless of the form. Cheap media is like a cheap parachute. Turning a single sided disk over and cutting out the notches is bad practice, and can cause problems. You must make a valiant effort to protect your media from magnetic fields caused by monitors, transformers, telephones, motors, etc. Don't forget to make backups. Proper care of your disks is very important. Keep them in the jacket in the box, or in the drive. Anywhere else, and you are playing russian roulette with your data. Keep them from temperature extremes, do not fold, bend, staple, paper clip or touch the shiny part. Insert the disk carefully into the drive, and close the door gently. The label (almost always) goes away from the red light. Never write on a floppy disk, you will ruin it. Write on a label, and then put the label on the disk. Be sure to peel the old one off first. Too many labels will keep a disk from turning. There is a bad batch of diskettes around. They have a label with "RK05". We have had many reports of failures, and have had many failures ourselves. We threw all of ours away. Cassette drives need to have their heads cleaned often. Every ten to twenty hours of use is a good figure. See your local stereo shop for everything you need. Don't forget to rewind your tapes and remove from the drive as soon as possible. Keep your cassette drives as far away from your monitor as possible. Those of you with Commodore cassettes and a VIC-20 or a 64 should tape the ground lead to the cable to prevent it from wandering into your computer and shorting something out. Monitors are usually very nice machines. Don't twiddle with all those little knobs inside, or you could cause problems. Clean the front of the tube once in a while with glass cleaner sprayed on a paper towel. Pull the plug first. Modems are usually cooperative, except when the phone lines aren't. Some are better than others. See if your modem has a loopback test. It can tell you if a majority of the modem is working without calling anyone. Surges are just as much a problem on the phone lines as on the power lines. Some surge suppressors are available with phone jacks, but they are rather expensive. Unplugging the phone line is certain to prevent a surge. It is good practice to mark the location and orientation of your cables to prevent them from being plugged in wrong. Watch out for frayed wires, and loose strain relief clamps. Route your cables neatly around your system, wrapping up the extra length by making a loop and securing it with tape. "Flat" cable requires extra care to prevent damage, as it has no outer sheath. Cartridges and circuit boards should be handled carefully to prevent damage to the edge connector. If the edge connector becomes damaged, do not attempt to insert it into the machine as you may damage the socket as well. Do not clean the edge connector with an eraser, as you will remove the gold plating. Store in a static safe container. Make sure power is turned off before you insert or remove any board or cartridge. If it is possible to insert a cartridge upside down, put a warning sticker on the bottom. Always be careful when inserting or removing cartridges or cables. Electrical noise is occasionally a problem. Most common is a computer messing up someone else's TV set. If this happens, a noise filter attached to the computer power line will usually cure it. Establish a working relationship with a service center. The tips presented here are a general guide, but a technician may be able to give you more specific tips. If you have any tips you would like to see added, please write or call. Don't forget to call our electronic bulletin board. The phone number is 834-0649. It operates at 300 baud, 1 stop bit, no parity, 8 data bits. 24 hours per day.