A possible triumph:
This morning Mdd0127 reinstalled the boards he'd extensively repaired into my ASR88, and fixed the mouse-eaten cabling, and now it powers on and comes up with the classic display I'd expect with no boot disk attached or inserted:
I coulda kissed him, upon seeing that screen. :lol:
Wasnt' enough time to go back to my house to dig out the boot floppy disks or the external SCSI harddisk and cabling, so we'll do that tomorrow morning, and verify if it actually is completely fixed or still needs other work or parts. If it will actually boot and load sounds and play, I'm all set.
If it has other problems, the first place i'll check is bad caps, as the power supply end of it did get kinda hot, given that the high-C key is warped out of shape from the heat:
Thankfully the rest of the keys seem ok, though most of the highest octave is permanently smoke-discolored. I guess I can live with taht if it works anyway.
Having not yet lost this piece of my music equipment (unlike the Takamine acoustic guitar, Yamaha G10 MIDI guitar, the ocmputer itself, a sound I/O box, and some other stuff, all of which are ash and goo) lifts my spirits a lot, because it is like an old friend, and I know it well enough to almost use it in my sleep (actually, I think I have composed several good pieces of music on it that way, including Darkness on the Uncommon Ground CD). Hopefully I still have all the media that goes with it, and that my harddisks for it are still functional, too.
Here's to hoping tomorrow will see as much success as today.
Work today, on the other hand...it is a lot more stressful working my normal job at my home store than it was doign the remodel job at a different store laid out completely differently, etc. There were still items on shelves, etc, that triggered bad memories at the remodel, but every inch of my home store brings them back, and seeing customers whom I've talked about my dogs with, using mine as examples of problems similar to the customers' so I can show how I solved it adn what items I used to do it, and wishing I could stop and tell them about what happened but knowing it is totally inappropriate and would just upset them pointlessly, just adds to teh stress.
I was so tired and worn out by luncthime that I started to eat and then dozed off sitting there holding Phideaux, and my boss came in and woke me about 20 mnutes paast when i shoudl ahve been back from lunch already.
After that i was still so groggy for hours that i don't know if i did even a passable job or not, and barely remember the people I helped.
I figured out that based on stress levels and how I feel and the things I do and say and forget, etc., and when during the last few workdays, that I am good for about 4-5 hours at most (sometimes not even that, but usually that much) before I am too stressed to do my job properly (well, actually I am not doing it properly even before that, most of the time, but I dont' see that until afterward and it's too late). So I asked if I could do much shorter shifts, basicaly cutting me down to part-time for the next couple of weeks, to see if that helps me readjust to working "normally" again, enough to come back as full time.
This is all a lot harder than I imagined it could be--I had trouble readjusting after Bonnie died in 2011, seeing pictures of border collies on magazines, dog treats and food, etc., triggering my memories of her, and of her stroke and eventual death, and making it a lot harder to deal with than i had thought it woudl be then. But now, I don't have the other dogs to lean on or think of when this stuff happens, because it is them beign dead that I am remembering/thinking of already.
I'm not sure how long this is going to take, but it is goiong to be a lot longer than I think other people are going to expect, and maybe longer than they will want to deal with. I just hope they can let me heal however I can in whatever time it takes me to do so. So far, most of them seem to be fine with things as they are going, but I expect at some point some of them won't be. i don't know which ones; I just figure people beign what they are, impatience will get to some of them sooner rather than later.
Last night/ today i woke to more of the same nightmarses as usual, plus some new variations ona theme. Dozed and woke for a while, at 530am when it was fully light i woke almost for good but did get to doze off for a little while after getting up for potty break and then laying down again trying to read emails. Woke again around 8am-ish with my head under the pillows again. Couldn't find Phideaux and had been having vague panicky feelings all morning so far when i realized I had neve rpicked it up off teh table last night so it was still downstairs the whole time.
I guess I have a dependency on it. Am trying to wean myself away but it is too stressful to do right now, causing anxiety/panic if I can't find it quickly once the feeligns start. Will have to do the weaning after i have gotten past the major parts of the reintroduction-to-work stress.
Rest of the ASR88 pics. Can't see most of the reparirs, on teh backsied of the PCBs, though.
