Found some BBC Micros

My friend and I acquired six BBC Micros on the weekend, with
monochrome monitors (4 Philips, 2 Sanyo). Unfortunately they weren't
stored in the best of places - the old outside toilets of a primary
school - the boxes they were in looked like they had been quite damp
at some stage. There was a bit of rust on the screws and some contacts
in the computers, but the ones stored at the bottom of the boxes
didn't look too bad off at all. Didn't see any corrosion or dodgy
looking caps in the power supplies, so we tried plugging them in.

Things didn't go too well though...

With the first one, the caps lock light went on but nothing else
happened. No beeps or anything. Couldn't see if it was displaying
anything useful as we weren't sure if the monitor we were trying could
(it was displaying some flickery mess - H/V hold may have been off or
it may have just been knackered).

With the second one, it seemed to make the normal beeps when booting,
but after about 20 seconds there was some crackling and then grey
smoke started pouring out of the power supply vents. Same thing
happened with the third one, so we gave up on them after that :(

I looked at one of the blown power supplies, but didn't notice
anything particlarly unusual except for a very cracked looking yellow
film capacitor (no burn marks though) - could it have been that? I
would have expected a pop and some debris if it was an electrolytic
cap that blew.

Is it possible the beebs are still OK even after this? I only realised
after coming home (my friend has them and lives quite far away) that
an ATX power supply should be able to power several of them easily.
Anything else to watch out for, or would it not be worth it trying to
fix up such machines?

Alternatively is anyone interested in these and/or the monitors? They
are in Co. Monaghan, Ireland. I think all but one are Model As as they
had no RS232 or RGB sockets - I don't know what upgrades they've had.
They all have Econet ports (IIRC). There's also 3 floppy drives
(though they don't look great) and a rusty looking Watford Disc Drive
Sharer.

Can normal PC 5.25" floppy drives be used with these?
.

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