New Microbee with a 1217 colour board

[someone]

I should probably add that the 4700uF Capacitor, when removed from the mainboard has a distinct rattle when gently shaken. Methinks it may have been my root cause of issues.

John

Yikes!
Someone has several Capacitance/ESR meters - very handy for old caps.
The ESR70 by Peak Electronic is the easiest to use.
In Oz, it's not cheap available from Element14, Rockby & Altronics with Element14 being the cheapest.
The EA kit from DSE was cheaper but much less fancy.

[CheshireNoir]

OK so I did manage to get the colour output :-D
I made a janky adapter that passed through the colour pins from the Microbee across to a Necroware MCE Adapter (configured for EGA) and then into my 15KHz LCD and it all just worked!
I'm amazed. I pretty just passed through all the pins from the Microbee to the corresponding pins on the EGA end and crossed my fingers :-)
   
   
Thanks everyone for the info and advice!
John

[Ernest]

Sweet,
Having the EGA adapter made it so much easier.

Ernest

[someone]

Is that an ESD mat on your bench?

[CheshireNoir]

Well spotted someone,
Yes the entire surface is ESD mat. I custom built the desk and someone had gifted me several meters of ESD matting so I integrated it. There are clip points for ESD wrist straps along the top edge :-)

John

[someone]

Well spotted someone,
Yes the entire surface is ESD mat. I custom built the desk and someone had gifted me several meters of ESD matting so I integrated it. There are clip points for ESD wrist straps along the top edge :-)

John

Excellent Stuff! Your electronics components will appreciate that.
Here is some trivia on the matter.

Ensure that the mat is connected to an Earth via a 1 MEGOHM RESISTOR and likewise for wrist straps.
Note that these resistors are often inbuilt into the leads but measure them to ensure they're present.
The 1-2 MEGOHM value is in the Goldilocks area between a good conductor and an insulator for ES dissipation in a controlled manner.

Keep your mat clean by using a dilute solution of 2-Propanol- in water which is often sold as Rezstore ESD Surface & Mat Cleaner.
If you solder near or on the bench mat you'll probably notice it'll become brownish, someone guesses it's the vapourised solder rosin landing on it.

To minimise this staining, you can place a small rectangular offcut of the bench matting on the bench mat if stacking the bench matting still makes it ESD safe.
The small piece is sacrificed to become stained. You'll be amazed how clean the matting underneath it remains looking brand new.

Wrist straps become dirty and ineffectual with age and use. Replace periodically preferably before their elastic has perished.

To keep the ESD matting effective, minimise the number of non ESD plastic bits, bins & insulators on it because insulators accumulate charge by tribocharging and are not fully dissipated by ESD matting.  In manufacturing environments where plastics are used on ESD matting, ION generators are used to neutralize ESD charges from insulators on ESD benches but that becomes expensive.

Happy Days!