A Labor of Labels

After going through a pile of label images that I’ve been collecting in the recent past, it seems like I can start to make some generalizations. They might be right. [Warning: a lot of these pictures have just been lifted from eBay auctions, most of them aren’t mine.] [Warning 2: […]

I am a diagnostic genius

I finally decided to open up and deal with the problem I’ve been having with the Bell & Howell power supply. Let’s recap where we are so far. I tested the power supply in the machine by plugging it in directly. It works fine. I tested the backpack’s auxiliary outlets. […]

Isolating the power problem to the backpack

I did some testing of the power situation with the Bell & Howell ][+. As it stood, the machine would not power up when I turned it on using the backpack, but did respond when I connected a different power supply, so I initially thought the power supply needed replacement. […]

Bell & Howell: Power test, and the outlines of a crazy plan

On the Bell & Howell front, I have now cleaned it all up, and reassembled it. In the process, I found this stamped under the keyboard, which pretty definitively indicates that I was right about this being an August, 1981, machine. (Further evidence that the “8138” really does mean “38th […]

Bell & Howell Apple ][+

Today, the current king of my collection arrived, a Bell & Howell Apple ][+, notable both because it’s quite rare, and because it was really “my first” computer. I never owned one, although this is what I started using at school when I was in 6th grade, and they even […]