Here are some clips of our opening of an early Apollo Block I inverter, obviously a prototype. This is one of the three high power supplies that generated the 115V 3-Phase 400 Hz that powered much of the spacecraft, from the 28V DC coming from the fuel cells. We weren't prepared for what we found inside!
Marc & team
2023-03-02 08:30:38 +0000 UTC View PostYouTube version:
It's spinning good now! You can see how the longitude equation is not simple, it accelerates and decelerates. Also the day/night indicator is nicely visible at the bottom.
Yesterday we made the landing indicator light glow for the first time with Master Ken. It's an electro-luminescent indicator, requires AC high voltage.
2023-02-20 23:46:09 +0000 UTC
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Thanks to Marcel, we finally got our hands on a Globus from the Soyuz capsule. Enjoy this rough cut of the raw video footage (let me know if the Patreon video player works OK on such long videos - if not I can upload on YouTube). This one of my all time favorite space instruments, a mechanical analog orbit calculator, that poetically displays your position on a painted earth globe...
2023-02-11 08:26:48 +0000 UTC View PostAll in all, the Samtec-sponsored exhibit was a smashing success. We extracted the whole setup - 650 lbs of it! - out of my basement, and set it up in less than a day. After the usual few scares, we eventually got everything working. It's so freaking complicated, I can't imagine how they kept it all together on the real missions. I do not have footage of the actual reception event, as we were all very busy explaining and demonstrating to a very appreciative crowd of seasoned electrical enginee...
2023-02-02 09:16:34 +0000 UTC View Post
I totally forgot to advertise this here, but we’ll be exhibiting our working Apollo comms setup at the DesignCon conference reception, tomorrow Tuesday, Jan. 31, 2023. If you happen to be near in Silicon Valley near Santa Clara, California, come see us. The 6-8pm reception is sponsored by Samtec and free to all registered attendees (registration is free too).
Marc and team
2023-01-31 02:47:01 +0000 UTC View PostFrom viewer Bob:
"Hi Marc,
If you or any of your subscribers would like their very own 8" drives, they can have them. They are a Heathkit with an external enclosure (very heavy) They are Mitsubishi DSDD drives.
I'm in SE Wisconsin and the recipient would need to arrange transportation. If you would know of anyone interested, please let me know.
Back to your channel, I just found your channel and want to watch some videos.
bob"
Let me...
2023-01-25 23:01:10 +0000 UTC View PostKen brought some vintage IBM boards from the IBM 360 or 370 era. There is something very special about IBM boards of that period. IBM went its own way with packaging and PCBs, and developed what Fran Blanche calls an alternate electronics universe, where packages are silvery squares, and PCBs have all their holes drilled, they are all vias, and lines run only in one direction per side.
In the 360 era, IBM was far ahead in PCB manufacturing and chip packaging. The technology had been pus...
2023-01-23 08:59:52 +0000 UTC View PostThese recently came in through a donation from a viewer (thank you Austin, you rock!). These weird looking gray cylinders are actually lights for the control panels. They are very gray and looking like pushbuttons much more than like indicators, so I had never noticed them before.
As usual, Mike rummaged through his large collection of drawings and quickly identified them as Lunar Module Caution Lights, and shows us how and where they were wired in the LM control panel. He also fo...
2023-01-18 06:14:42 +0000 UTC View PostI got flack from not having mentioned the hard sectored 8" floppy in my last video, so Eric brought one to straighten things out. But even more interesting, he brought an IBM Demi disk drive, which I didn't even know existed. Even better, that's the prototype unit that his grandfather worked on!
Marc & Eric
2023-01-16 07:19:36 +0000 UTC View PostPeople keep asking me about particular tools or products I use in my videos. For good reason, because it sometimes takes me a while and a few trials to find the right ones.
I just discovered that Amazon has a feature where I can just post links to my favorite things, and, double whammy, it's supposed to earn the channel a small commission if you buy from there. Or so they say. So we'll give it a try.
This is a video of Carlos N. at work, while he is post-processing Jennifer's tape recording. I published the resulting sound file in my previous post. Looks like magic and witchcraft to me. Thanks Carlos!
Marc
2022-12-31 06:09:22 +0000 UTC View PostViewer Carlos N. from Portugal is a professional sound editor that specializes in recovery and cleanup of old soundtracks for the film industry. He volunteered to process the recording and correct it for flutter, hum, noise and many other defects. Here is the result. The result is so good that you don't hear any noise at the beginning of the tape, so be patient and wait for the beginning. Thanks Carlos!
Marc
2022-12-31 06:04:51 +0000 UTC View Post
We practice unboxing for Christmas, with these cool vintage MIL-spec synchros. We are planning to use them with our Bendix mechanical analog computer. Now, that's what I call proper packaging. Wishing you a Merry Christmas unboxing session to you all.
Marc
2022-12-24 00:00:48 +0000 UTC View Post
...and gets more than he bargained for. Watch this Patreon exclusive raw uncut footage of our session, as Mike goes in full Sherlock Holmes mode, and figures out what he actually got, by exploring minute details of his CDU. Which is a way more interesting and noble unit than what he thought he bought!
The CDU, or Coupling Data Unit, is a very important companion box to the Apollo Guidance Computer that we previously restored. Actually, its size and modular construction look eerily simil...
2022-12-20 08:35:56 +0000 UTC View PostI have recently collected 3 semi-modern (1970s to 1990s) Baudot FSK machines. They are basically teletypes equipped with a frequency shift keying two-tone modem. The idea is to have a pseudo modern RTTY (radio-teletype) test setup before I try to do it the original way with technology from the 1940's and 1950's, with tubes of course.
They each have their own retro display method: the 3M Telex uses a thermal TTY printer (1970s), the Japanese TONO writes on a CRT (1980s), and the Ul...
2022-12-04 06:34:04 +0000 UTC View PostI'm loving that new quick video upload feature of Patreon! Here are a few raw takes from the recent Sony monitor repair footage I did with TubeTime. It already tells the story. This free donated monitor was completely purple, just unusable. I thought, and hoped, that there was something very wrong with the electronics. But nope, after spending two days on it we could find nothing wrong with the (complicated) electronics. Turns out that TubeTime had a beautiful CRT tube tester in his collectio...
2022-11-21 08:22:46 +0000 UTC View PostYet another HP instrument rescue. It's a Nixie instrument I picked up at the Nevada hamfest for $15, or it was going to be taken apart for parts scavenging. Gave me hard time (some of it being my own doing), but it is back to its own spectacular self. I'm planning to use it in another upcoming project, to display the Apollo CTE time on the Nixies.
Marc
2022-11-15 02:58:55 +0000 UTC View PostViewer Jennifer had an unusual, very wide band tape media. She thought it was recorded in 1965 when she was 4 years old, and may contain her voice. It said IBM on the side of the tape. She wondered if I knew what it was. I did! It's for an IBM 214 Executary dictaphone. She send the magnetic band to me, I finally finished restoring my 1965 Executary, and... Well, see this uncut raw footage.
Marc
2022-11-12 21:02:49 +0000 UTC View PostTesting the new Patreon video feature some more. Here is another unedited take, where we look at the inside of the computer for the first time.
Marc
2022-11-09 06:26:28 +0000 UTC View PostWoohoo, Patreon has a new direct video upload capability, which makes it much simpler for me to upload video updates. Let's try it with the unedited footage of our opening of the MG-1 Central Air Data Computer, an electro-mechanical computer with gears and springs and resolvers and mag amplifiers, used in early jet fighters and the B-52. We aired a piece of that on our test livestream. Tell me what your experience is with Patreon's video player, and if I should continue using it. It is certai...
2022-11-09 06:21:37 +0000 UTC View Post
This is the USB peripheral you were all waiting for: the Apollo core rope reader, another creation of our AGC restoration hero Mike Stewart.
Not only he made it work, but he made it look cool, with a lightweight metal case mimicking the case design of the AGC.
Just plug it in your computer, slide in your core rope, and you are ready to go explore Apollo mission code.
2022-10-23 05:39:14 +0000 UTC
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Quick update on the Apollo comms setup. We revived one more test box: the Interface Simulator. From what we can tell from the switches, it should generate the subcarriers, both in the up and in the down direction. The up direction is under the STE MOD label (S-band Test Equipment Modulation). This section’s output connects to the ground test transmitter modulation input. The down direction is under the USBE (Unified S-Band Equipment) label, and connects to the input of the Apollo tran...
2022-10-16 23:22:34 +0000 UTC View Post
How can one have more fun than with one Cesium clock? With two Cesium clocks of course!
In my HP Cesium clock explanation video, I left out the explanation of the C-field for a future day. Well the day has come.
This C-field adjustment is used to extract even more precision from our Cesium clock by adjusting the Zeeman lines. The Zeeman effect is the sub-splitting of our hyperfine lines under a magnetic field (our C-field here), and is a very fine quantum process.
<... 2022-10-12 06:00:33 +0000 UTC View Post
You might have seen LGR's video about the Dictaphone 1680, née Sanyo ICC-0082 calculator, at the time the smallest battery powered calculator:
LGR is a great channel that reviews vintage personal computers with an eye on gaming, with great style and a unique soothing appeal. Kind of the opposite of my channel ;-).
But alas, Clint's calculator did not work, and he asked if...
2022-09-26 06:23:11 +0000 UTC View Post
I was invited to film at the Connections Museum in Seattle. This amazing museum is hard to find, hidden in a still active telephone exchange building, and only open one day a week.
Inside, amazing technology awaits, with racks and racks of vintage telephone switching equipment, most of it restored and working. You rarely get to see these, much less to have working demos!
2022-09-25 08:27:51 +0000 UTC
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I have spent a few days in Seattle visiting two vintage tech museums: the Museum of Flight and the Connections Museum, both located close to one of Boeing’s former test runway.
The Museum of Flight has an impressive collection of aircrafts, beautifully displayed, including this unique SR-71 version carrying a hypersonic drone launcher. You can also climb in an SR-71 cockpit. They even have a real Concorde that you can climb in.
2022-09-10 06:15:55 +0000 UTC
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Me and Eric spent some time re-making Apollo connectors so we can connect our Transponder, CTE and PMP and other upcoming comms boxes.
All the audio and IF signals between boxes go through mutli-coax Deutsch connectors. We could not find anywhere, unless we want them re-done for $2,000 a piece and 20 weeks lead time. Here is the one such round connector on top of the CTE box.
Eric m...
2022-09-06 06:53:02 +0000 UTC View Post
With our HP high voltage supplies all repaired, it's finally time to play with the CRTs in my collection. In the photo above, they are just lit by the UV light in the front. Note that some do light up when illuminated by UV, and some don't - they give nothing at all.
First up is the square tube below on the left, a Tektronix T-5270 tube for the Tek 527 oscilloscope. Note that I am better equipped this time, and now using proper high voltage cabling, connectors, and a 40 kV probe. ...
2022-08-27 05:42:56 +0000 UTC View Post
Our two large boards that Eric designed to reproduce the Apollo control panel section that controls the PMP have arrived, courtesy of our sponsor PCBWay.
Here is the proud dad with his boards. They are large, but that's nothing compared to the original size.
We chose one of the fancy new solder mask colors that PCBway offers in its advanced options. Besides the Apollo gray, it also includ...
2022-08-26 03:50:01 +0000 UTC View Post
I did some combined R2-D2 trooping and Apollo discovery on the USS Hornet last month. Two hobbies in one!
The USS Hornet aircraft carrier is moored in the San Francisco bay, off the Alameda island. Besides its many wartime deployments, it is best known to the public for its late career, being the recovery ship for the astronauts of Apollo 11 and Apollo 12.
The USS Hornet was celebrating the splashdown anniversary of Apollo 11, and for some reason invited our R2 builders grou...
2022-08-14 01:24:16 +0000 UTC View Post