Sperry HT

The Sperry HT is done.  I finished refurbishing the keyboard today.

Pictures are here.

The computer pretty much worked fine when I got it.  The seller shipped it correctly and it arrived in the correct number of pieces - even the CGA monitor.

As expected, some parts were worn:

1. Clock battery was dead.  But it didn't leak.
2. Hard drive was dead.
3. The foam in the foam-and-foil keyboard was disintegrating.

So, complete disassembly and clean.  That was surprisingly easy.

Clock battery replaced.

So the Sperry HT was one of the first IBM clone systems that came with a real time clock.  The battery only keeps the clock running when the PC is off.  But that comes at a price.  You need to use the special Sperry MS-DOS 2.11 to have MS-DOS use the clock.  Some people wrote some drivers if you want to upgrade to DOS 3.x.  But the system came with the original DOS 2.11 disks.  I imaged them and uploaded them to the Internet Archive.

I pulled the hard drive and disassembled it.  I wanted the "cage" with the face plate so that I could reinstall it back in the case.  I pulled the XT-CF-IDE from the Sperry Portable and hooked up the light to the old hard drive cage.  So the old hard drive light will flash as the XT-CF-IDE access the "hard drive".

So my 1985 computer has a flash drive.  :)

I then ordered some foam-and-foil replacements from TexElec, but they were going to take a while, so I grabbed a "loaner" keyboard I had in the spare parts box and started to put the Sperry through its paces.  Once I saw it was working, I reinstalled DOS 2.11 from the Sperry disks to the CF card and set the clock.

When the foam-and-foil replacements shipped, I disassembled the keyboard and popped out all the old disks (see this video).  As expected, the foam was failing.  Some would work, but most would either not come back after being "squished" or they would disintegrate completely.

The replacements have to be installed individually and there are 101 keys on the keyboard.  I spread it out over several days so I didn't go insane.  :)  But it's done and the keyboard works fine.  I might need to lube the keys, though.