offbeat
Earie Salmon explains why soldering skills are only the start
ARCHAEOLOGIC Repairing and restoring vintage computer hardware has grown increasingly popular, but keeping decades-old machines alive presents different challenges from fixing modern kit.Earie Salmon, of the YouTube channel Earie's 8-Bit Workshop, is one of many tinkerers documenting the process of keeping retro computers ticking over and building new examples of obsolete or never-released kit.Based in Australia, Salmon's entry point into the hobby is all too familiar – a bit of nostalgia mixed with "what would I like to have had if given the chance".
My biggest frustration with sourcing parts are counterfeit chips. You will confidently order a big bag of 74LS logic ICs to find they are in fact not 74LS. Worse, most IC testers will say 'oh yes it's a 00 IC and works fine' but it's had the label sanded off and re‑etched, it's a different family of logic chips and won't work in your computer
Earie Salmon
