I was shocked at what was keeping this Acorn Electron from working (Acorn Electron Repair)

All Acorn 8-bit machines have the ‘Old’ command. Hitting break is a reset and typing OLD or O. will restore the programme. It’s really useful, as are a lot of BBC Basic’s shorthand commands

Fantastic to see the Electron come up! I’m the one who sent it to you and was so excited for when it would pop up. As for its story like you asked, unfortunately I don’t have much to go off of. I bought second hand as not working and only did quick checks, like you I did a bunch of initial checks and found it not working despite presumably all voltages and such accounted for. However I didn’t turn over the board to find the obvious issue! Like I said in my letter I did test keyboard on my working machine, so knew it was completely fine luckily. I also did clean it up cause I didn’t wanna send a gross machine though! Hence the tidiness 😅 Anyways I’m glad it worked in end, can’t wait to see more of it. Quick edit: also a fun fact, in the time since sending the Electron I actually came out as trans and am actually Diana now! 😅

One of the best repair videos you’ve ever put out! Thanks Adrian and thanks to the viewer who sent that awesome little machine in!

RESTORE is used with READ and DATA. BBC BASIC had a nice little extra keyword called OLD. It's the opposite of NEW! So after a reset you might be able to get your old program back, but do it first thing. Any other messing about you do is likely to scramble the memory pointers and make the old program irrecoverable.

Great video, Adrian! You can get back your program after hitting BREAK using the OLD command.

You using the Metal Gear Solid guard alert sound when you discovered the ULA was desoldered made my life. I even showed my wife. I have grown up playing the games and love the Metal Gear series to death, so it really was funny and cool to hear it out of nowhere. I can’t wait for part 2, and you’re a gem, Adrian. I’m so happy to be a patron and support you. Your content has really taken an upswing and it has to be that you can finally full time do what you love, and it shows. Love ya, Adrian, keep it up!

You didn't need to replace the original power supply. You can use any laptop DC supply, 15 to 19 Volts DC on the Electron. The switching supply on the power supply board generates the + and -5V supplys without any need to have an AC input.

In the mid-1980s to early 1990s, I wrote software for the BBC and designed hardware for a specific group, the physically disabled people. The BBC was the easiest computer to do this on, and in Belgium these old computers are still used in some locations. It is a wonderful machine that has helped many people. I still have a BBC in my house and would not part with it for the world. Due to being idle, several components needed replacing, but it was wonderful to maintain and repair. There is still a whole group of people working on this day in and day out.

My first ever home computer... Brings back so many memories.

How cool! I am from London and still have a 40 year old Acorn Electron in a drawer with loads of game tapes and a tape player. I was about 6 when my dad bought it and we spent hours typing in printed magazine listings and running them. That influenced my education path into computer science and then software engineering.

As A brit, I was screaming at the screen when you called it an Acorn Electirc!! lol twice!

Between the BBC Micro, the Electon and the Archimedes, they all put me on a career in IT, Thanks for the memories Adrian.

I think you're right. The 6502 probably gave up first. Then someone changed it for the wrong version. That lead them to believe the ULA was at fault and started to remove it, damaging a trace in the process, but then gave up and didn't bother to try and re-solder it back. That all makes sense.

Not sure if anyone else has mentioned it, but the first computer Acorn produced was the Atom, had the BBC not taken up their next machine, the BBC Micro would have been called the Proton, and thus calling this the Electron makes a nice trio of names

About the tape connector: I noticed that the manual mentioned that you can plug it straight into a standard tape recorder if it has the (then) standard DIN audio connector. You mentioned that you saw about 2.5V of audio signal, and in that case the problem might be that it is too loud. IIRC the DIN standard specified a line level of 600 mV.

I think what I like about this channel is that you insist on finding out WHY things don't work or why they were 'fixed' (or not) the way they were. I spent six years working with my dad's contracting company, and my dad was always looking at previous renovations or repairs and trying to figure out why the previous contractor (or owner) would have done things the way they did. (And the more bizarre the 'fix,' the more entertaining the sleuthing!) I loved that part of working with him, and I've never seen that kind of side-questing anywhere else but here in your videos.

Yay! Pleased to see my BBC Master again! 😍

Finally seeing someone adding solder while desoldering. I see so many people just fussing forever to get those pins clean. A bit of fresh solder does the trick way better! Great video as always! :)

I worked for a company near Brighton in the UK in the mid 80’s who made ultrasonic wire bonders, we were given Acorn Electron motherboards that had the ULA chip wafer, bonded directly to the PCB without any connections, Acorn wanted to manufacture the motherboards at an even more cost reduced than the version than the one in the video. The machines we made were used to manually bond each contact on the chip wafer to the PCB, and once proven all was good, the process would have been automated, the completed PCB’s were returned to Acorn, and we never did any more work on the Electron. I think at this point, its days were numbered!

Jude is very generous and thoughtful. What a wonderful gift and gesture. Very cool, Jude, if you’re reading this.