Sorting Through the Machines

I've had several machines given to me over the past year and they are piling up.  I went for years with only the one given to me and the one I bought.  Then I was fortunate enough to have several given to me.  I was fine with my original set up, but was intrigued with the idea of playing with a garter carriage.  You know what that means?  I have to get a brother machine in addition to a garter carriage.  I was given a Brother 860 and 2 Brother 930s.  I was also given 2 93 garter carriages and one 89.  All in varying degrees of condition.  I was also given 2 disc drives for what I didn't know exactly.  My friend Bonnie was looking for a disc drive for her Brother set up and offered to come over.  She would help me sort out my mess of machines and decide what worked and what I should keep.

We decided the 860 was a punch card and I already have punch card machines.  I later found out through a chart on Daisy Knits that neither garter carriage was compatible with the 860 any ways.  So, good choice deciding to pass that machine along.  We plugged in the 930 I had set up on a stand and it worked!  I still need to clean it up and replace the sponge bar, but I didn't want to put all that work in if the electronics didn't work.

Next Bonnie went to testing the disc drives.  We found out neither worked.  They turn on and try and read the disc, but an error message comes up.  Bonnie had brought her 930 or was it a 960 along with a working disc drive that she wasn't sure she wanted to purchase.  She knew both worked great.  She tested my disc drives with her machine just in case mine wasn't working correctly.  Again error messages.  Then she tested her working disc drive with my 930 and it worked great and added a pattern.

By this time we were getting tired and decided to check out the garter carriages another day.  I'll get the 930 cleaned up by the time it's time to test them out.  Question now is which garter carriage to keep?  One 93 has no box, instructions, power cords and is in pretty rough shape.  One is pretty complete as far as I can tell, but is really dirty.  The 89 is pristine and looks like it was never used or taken out of the box.  I just need to figure out which works.