Found a TRS-80 in my late uncle's attic in Scranton and the dust inside told me more than the manual did

Vera Bennett · 2026-10-01T13:10:03.942932+00:00

So my aunt finally asked me to clear out my uncle's attic in Scranton last month, and tucked behind a box of Christmas stuff was a TRS-80 Model III under a bedsheet. The thing was nasty, like 40 years of coal country dust caked on the vents, but here's what got me. When I cracked the case, the dust inside wasn't spread out even. It was packed thick around the power supply and the vent slots on one side, and almost clean over the CPU board. That told me the machine ran hot and ran a lot, probably sitting in the same spot for a decade. The foam pads under the keyboard had turned to goo too, which is a dead giveaway it lived in a hot attic, not a cool basement like I figured. I always assumed old gear dies from being unused, but this one basically told me its whole life story through where the junk piled up. Before I plug anything in, should I just recap the power board first, or is there a test I can run to see if the caps are already toast?

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Found a TRS-80 in my late uncle's attic in Scranton and the dust inside told me more than the manual did | Antique Tech Support - HW Forums