Book Review
SERVICING DATA FOR COMPUTER BOARDS 600 AND 610
Published by Howard W. Sams and Company, Inc.
8½ × 11" Soft cover, 36 Pages, $7.95
Review by Charles L. Stanford
Howard W. Sams has long been the premier publisher of electronic service data. Their Photofact series covers virtually every audio and audio-visual component available in the free world today. Their technical book line is likewise extremely comprehensive. Collaborating with them in the production of this service manual (and one for the C4P) may well have been one of the wiser moves OSI has made in the area of documentation.
Don't get the idea that this booklet is all things to all people. As implied by the title, only the basic data needed for effective servicing of the machinery are included. But it's all there, including schematics, block diagrams, oscilloscope waveforms, parts lists, and annotated photographs of the boards. The text includes servicing precautions, disassembly instructions, and a troubleshooting guide.
The guide assumes a fairly thorough knowledge of servicing techniques. Beyond that, enough information is provided to isolate defective components or board sections, including a chip-level memory test. To aid in tracing signals, various components on the achematic are color-coded by function, such as video signals, RAM, crystal oscillator section, etc.
The schematics and photographs are on three-or four-section fold-out sheets, which minimizes tracing signals from one side of a page to another. The 600 and 610 boards are shown separately, with jack J1 as the common connector.
The parts list shows both the OSI designation for each component and a cross selection chart for most. For example, the IC chart lists eight manufacturers, and the capacitor chart three. Only a few items such as the ROMs and PROMs, rare ICs, some connectors, etc., show only OSI's part number.
If you never expect to open the case of your C1P, don't bother with this book. But if, like me, you enjoy the "hardware" side of microcomputing, don't pass it up.