This is a summary video made from the Soyuz Clock Patreon Livestream. The majority of the footage is much higher quality though, coming from my regular SONY RX-10 camera. This will likely will become the base for the later public video. Thanks to all who followed the Livestream!
2021-02-11 08:10:00 +0000 UTC View Post
We've got another Soyuz clock, this time from Steve Jurvetson’s collection. This one is older than my digital one which we already restored, and it’s entirely electro-mechanical. Join us on Livestream on Tuesday, Feb. 9 at 10 am Pacific Standard Time (GMT-8) as we open it up, try to figure out it works, and see if we can get it going again.
2021-02-09 03:54:52 +0000 UTC View Post
Folks, the official Livestream with the clock will be tomorrow, but I am doing a test run right now while I am setting up and getting the Cesium clock restarted. Hop on if you want to follow it!
Marc
2021-02-08 20:23:35 +0000 UTC View Post
Dear Patrons,
We are going to try something new with our first Patreon Livestream attempt. I am planning to work on this magnificent Soyuz clock, which we have on loan from Steve Jurvetson's space collection. The rest of the team will be Zooming in, watching along with you.
The Livestream is tentatively scheduled for Tuesday Feb. 9. Final time has not been set yet, but likely starting sometime in the morning, California time (GMT-8 hours), ending whenever.
I'll make another ...
2021-02-08 04:26:42 +0000 UTC View Post
Here is a small treat for the higher Patreon tiers. Sorry folks, I haven't done very much extra for the higher tiers. I'm just hopelessly behind all the time, and when I do small Patreon videos it is still non-negligible work, and it seems silly not to open it up to the whole Patreon audience. So you guys mainly give me more love, which is much appreciated. Here is a little raw snippe...
2021-02-05 08:30:25 +0000 UTC View Post
There was (and still is) an ongoing auction in Los Angeles from the former Max Sands test instrument rental company. Which has tons of very, very antiquated instruments (how could they still possibly rent them?). I could have bought my entire collection in one fell swoop. Instead I went looking for odd instruments that would help us in restoring Apollo communications equipment (in the 2GHz S-band). And got quite a few more while I was at it ;-). On the table are also three gifts from viewers,...
2021-02-05 08:05:33 +0000 UTC View Post
While on my expedition to Excess Solutions to pick up my enclosure for the Apollo GSE box project, I also snatched this 1970's "Dial-A-Level" contraption. I was looking for an on/off controller to do the temperature control for my Apollo IRIG gyroscope. The gyro needs to be regulated to within 0.5 °C, and that was done in the spacecraft with a simple on/off control off a thermistor. So I need a box that can monitor a resistance, or the voltage across it, and trigger an on/off heater within a...
2021-01-24 05:44:39 +0000 UTC View Post
It seems that a few of you had Apollo Twist-Lite switches in your drawers, and on top of that are generous enough to donate them to the channel. Thanks to your generosity, and also to some good eBay scraping for the few reasonably priced bits and pieces of Twist Lite switches, I have now accumulated a collection big enough that I could cobble together a small control panel.
That also meant I ha...
2021-01-06 23:15:51 +0000 UTC View Post
2020 was *really* a rotten year. While I was filming my 100k subs video, on the last day of 2020, my HP 9825 had an "accident". See details in the video. The one you see in the 100k subs video is a backup unit that had been recently donated by viewer Bob Walance (from the HP Bonanza episode). Not everything yet works on it...
2021-01-06 22:23:04 +0000 UTC View PostYou guessed it, I won yet another auction lot. The "reason" I got this was for the Bird Wattmeter (that is, if there ever was any reasoning in this of course). But it turned out the juicy stuff was elsewhere.
Let's start with the Bird Model 43 Thruline Wattmeter. It's a meter to measure the directional RF power traveling through a coax line, usually for measuring transmitted radio power to an a...
2020-12-05 06:10:01 +0000 UTC View PostI thought this repair was going to be trivial and a bit boring, so I didn't film it. However it predictably degenerated into the usual bunch of unexpected surprises, so here is the story in pictures.
Remember that cute HP fellow from one of my previous posts? It's an HP 8447F, 100 kHz to 1.3 GHz RF preamp and power amplifier. I got it as an "extra" in an auction lot that I purchased for another HP instrument. But, wanted child or not, I still cleaned it and tested it as I would do...
2020-11-26 07:27:48 +0000 UTC View Post
Shameless plug for merch. I made a reproduction of the HP dude's magic pants on my Teespring store: https://curiousmarcs-store.myteespring.co/listing/magic-repair-pants?product=1166
Your vintage electronics repairs are guaranteed to be successful if you wear it!
Says "Magic Vintage Repair Pants" on your graceful behind and claims: "Repairs any vintage electroni...
2020-11-09 23:23:32 +0000 UTC View Post
I recently bought yet another HP 8447F. Actually it came bundled in a very cheap lot that I got for another instrument so it is sort of a nice freebee. It contains two lab grade wideband amplifiers to 1.3 GHz. One of the channels (the preamp) passed the VNA test with legendary HP performance, almost perfectly flat across the band. The other one not so much, it was completely dead (unless you like 50 dB attenuators). So I gave it the ominous "THIS CHANNEL IS DEAD" sticker treatment.
<... 2020-10-24 23:35:55 +0000 UTC View Post
YouTube direct link: https://youtu.be/wbbx4Mam3as
Today I was able to visualize the HP 9825 and the Nanoprocessor interacting with the clock chip by hooking up my clock chip test board to a live HP clock board. I got a kick out of that and wanted to share it with you.
After that brief moment of success, it all quickly went to hell, with just about every board failing in weird ways and even a release of magi...
2020-10-16 05:42:27 +0000 UTC View Post
I had to know. I opened (carefully) the 1 MHz crystal that had failed. I suspected some kind of mechanical failure and boy, did it have one. Or many. A big bad scallop had been taken out, you can see where it hit the can. Also at 90 degrees of that, there is another mark on the can and a smaller chip on the crystal. This guy was hit pretty hard. And then to top it all, one of the contact springs had just separated. You can see pictures of both the good and the separated suspension contact. Lo...
2020-10-06 07:18:50 +0000 UTC View Post
My previous video on TI clock chips was a (rewarding) detour on the road to repair my HP 98035 clock modules. Thanks to the contributions of former HP 9825 developer Steve Leibson http://www.hp9825.com/ Patron Jack Rubin, collector Bob Rosenbloom https://youtu.be/2OkTm0vI7As and vintage HP warehouse extraordinaire Ed Blacksmith 2020-10-04 02:52:38 +0000 UTC View Post
Dang. Even if you put cover music and cover artist credits, these days it still gets demonetized. But the Patrons get the better version no matter what :-).
2020-09-28 01:26:14 +0000 UTC View Post
Remember that Chinese sourced TI clock chip that we decapped with Antoine? Not fake at all tells me Ken Shirriff. But does it actually work? It sure did not when I put it on my HP board. One simple way to find out. Chinese sourced TI chip, 1970's HP bubble LED, proto board, and a bit of fun reverse engineering as this chip is completely undocumented. 2.5V power, kooooontakt! Result is beautifully vintage! Video should be out soon.
2020-09-27 08:31:42 +0000 UTC View Post
After putting back together my Soyuz clock, I assembled my various other clocks for a family portrait:
- the large flip clock is my Solari Dator 10 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-_93BVApb59Xs5gCX_Sch1LoIm8TcWQ2 which you often hear clunking in the background.
- two HP instruments with clocks on them: an HP 5150A data logger and an HP 59309A HP-IB Digital Clock...
2020-09-10 04:39:51 +0000 UTC View Post
Antoine sent me this giant printout of one of his many splendid chip pictures. It has been installed as part of the lab beautification project. Thanks Antoine! I feel a chip poster business coming. I'll be waiting for Ken's report on what every single transistor does...
2020-09-08 00:57:54 +0000 UTC View Post
I have been taking a little pause from videos to re-organize and do an inventory of my collection. I was starting to lose track of which item came from whom, when and for how much, and with quite a few patrons and viewers making donations, I also need to quickly be able check for duplicates, particularly when it comes to manuals.
So I got pictures, acquisition info, confirmed identification and condition status for the bulk of my items. I inventoried 512 of them. As you can see th...
2020-08-27 06:32:46 +0000 UTC View Post
Pic 1: We might be in quarantine, but July has been a great month for the collection. And in no small part thanks to viewers and generous Patrons.
Pic 2: Patron John Lawson, whose tube shack you have seen in the radio active tube video https://youtu.be/VYSWIdDcbGU drove all the way from Nevada, I drove from Silicon Valley and we met at Bob Rosenbloom's collection in the woods 2020-07-30 09:01:56 +0000 UTC View Post
If you had not seen this before, Canadian modeling genius Nicolas Temese keeps making astounding models of retro gear.
His HP 2645A terminal has a screen that actually works! View his full post here: https://imgur.com/gallery/bSbs0L3
He also made an IBM 1401 data center that will come to the Computer History Museum for exhibit when we reopen: 2020-07-17 21:56:36 +0000 UTC View Post
I took out the old HP 428B current probe to check that the current going in my power supply components is normal, and that I just didn't cover up another fault, as the conspiracy mill says on YouTube. It is a very old instrument (using tubes!), but still in perfect calibration. I checked it of course, it is within 1% of my Tek DMM. Conveniently there are jumpers on the board for the 55V rails, I just made them longer so I could use the current probe.
It measured 237 mA on the top rail, ...
2020-07-13 06:40:41 +0000 UTC View Post
Carl has released a nice short video were he shows his progress on re-lighting two original Apollo DSKY displays. He has now switched on the second display which is similar to the flown ones, and has the more greenish final color. This spare display was never used, and appears to be in superb shape. I'd say this is some spectacular looking digital display to this day. Imagine that in 1966 - that must have felt like science fiction!
2020-07-08 00:05:43 +0000 UTC View Post
This is a little epilogue to the HP 8082A pulser repair. I swapped the second circuit in, with the faster transistors, and it indeed produces narrower minimum width pulses, with the required 1 ns rise time. But at the minimum pulse width, the non-delayed pulse was still fatter than the delayed one by about 1 ns. Reading the service manual, I discovered there is a factory selected resistor to balance the two pulses, I suppose to adjust for how each U2 IC came out. Mine was 5.11k, middle of the...
2020-06-28 04:27:37 +0000 UTC View Post
Carl sent us this video of his DSKY clicking away. This is a genuine Block I DSKY screen controlled by a genuine DSKY Block I relay module. These were latching relays (with mechanical "memory"), and they are deliciously noisy. We have only one relay module, so he cannot control the whole DSKY (the whole thing requires three or four modules). This is as close as we have gotten to the real DSKY experience. More details hidden somewhere on Carl's blog at: 2020-06-27 07:33:19 +0000 UTC View Post
Looks like Carl has hit a 1202 in the lab while in P63! He has been working on trying to light up an original DSKY luminescent display from Marcel's collection. He's got an original DSKY high voltage 800 Hz power supply, a relay module (also from Marcel) and the precious Samtec NASA female pins to complete his experiment. The 800 Hz HV supply needed a little bit of help as I understand, and the relay module is not quite hooked up yet. But the segments are lighting up in their inimitable eery ...
2020-06-08 18:07:56 +0000 UTC View Post
Well it ended up all good, but not without a few more twists. Just finished the video, will likely make it public tomorrow, but you get to know (and post public comments if you watch in on YouTube) earlier. And if you wonder, I was relieved too. I wasn't so confident this was going to work out. Thanks for your support! Stay safe and healthy.
2020-05-24 01:23:13 +0000 UTC View Post
While I was waiting for the replacement ICs that died in a sparky power supply incident last week, I decided to turn my attention to a recently acquired HP 8082A fast pulse generator. I thought it was going to be another quick one-afternoon power supply job. Well, this "does not power up" unit turned out to power on just fine, but has many faults in it. After finding two faulty transistors, I came upon a much tougher fault: one of the special high speed ICs had failed. And it's an HP only cir...
2020-05-18 00:59:30 +0000 UTC View Post