Getting the Bendix G15 Drum Memory from System Source Museum

Ғылым және технология

In the previous episode, we discovered that our drum had unfortunately suffered multiple head crashes, stopping us dead in our tracks. In this episode, we rectify that situation! We removed the crashed drum, tossed it in the car, and then set out on a 4,000 mile round trip around the Northeast, ultimately stopping at System Source museum. So, come along as we explore some of the new setups at System Source, remove the good drum, and then finally install it into our machine back here in Texas!
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museum.syssrc.com/
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/ @techtimetraveller
• One of the first print...
• Raising the Digital De...
Thanks to Fred Blonder for rescuing me!
• Bendix G-15: David Lo...
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Intro Music adapted from:
Artist: The Runaway Five
Title: The Shinra Shuffle
ocremix.org/remix/OCR01847
Thanks for watching!
Chapters
0:00 Welcome to System Source Museum!
1:30 Univac 490
3:50 Univac 1218
5:46 IBM DisplayWriter
8:50 Wang Model 360 Electronic Calculator
11:23 Original Apple 1
14:25 And so much more
15:50 The open house was epic!
17:50 But what about the “new” drum?
20:34 Titanium?!
24:29 Let’s get the “new” drum into the machine
26:13 Sunny-kun!

Пікірлер: 233

  • @TechTimeTraveller
    @TechTimeTraveller6 ай бұрын

    Thanks so much for the shout out! I had this big surge of views snd subscribers this morning and couldn't figure it out until I watched this video! I am a total goof though compared to the stuff you do. Every video where you're doing a repair I'm learning something in a way that was impenetrable to me before!

  • @UsagiElectric

    @UsagiElectric

    6 ай бұрын

    Thanks for highlighting so many awesome systems I'd never heard about before! Glad to hear we got some cross-pollination going on between our groups!

  • @Pickelhaube808
    @Pickelhaube8086 ай бұрын

    After both drums are back up and working, the next step is to put them in RAID 0 😎

  • @dynad00d15

    @dynad00d15

    6 ай бұрын

    sure.. nothing spells risk free like a RAID0 with hard drives dating from the BETAMAX era.. :)

  • @yeetman6416

    @yeetman6416

    6 ай бұрын

    I believe this might work

  • @dynad00d15

    @dynad00d15

    6 ай бұрын

    @@yeetman6416 if it works or not is not the issue here..

  • @PepeGod1st

    @PepeGod1st

    6 ай бұрын

    Don't forget to overclock the drum motor for extra performance 😂

  • @tarajoe07

    @tarajoe07

    6 ай бұрын

    Any other raid is just a waste 😂

  • @charlesanthony3248
    @charlesanthony32486 ай бұрын

    As soon as you get the drum spinning, attach a scope to the timing track and capture the wave form and timing. With that you should be able to build and debug a timing track writer.

  • @UsagiElectric

    @UsagiElectric

    6 ай бұрын

    That's the plan! My friend Lloyd has a G15 as well, and has figured out which pin on the Canon connector to check, so we're all primed and ready, I just gotta get the electrons from the breaker box to the machine.

  • @agranero6
    @agranero66 ай бұрын

    I thought no one else would be crazy enough to calculate the density of something you can't dismantle to know its composition. This was the most incredible part of this video. Coolest thing I saw in the last 3 months.

  • @JD3Gamer
    @JD3Gamer6 ай бұрын

    Seeing that wire mess really put into perspective the complexity that is hidden by modern nanoscale computer architecture.

  • @shawnaburns5158

    @shawnaburns5158

    3 ай бұрын

    Lots of spaghetti for sure😅

  • @SimonBauer7

    @SimonBauer7

    3 ай бұрын

    yeah it is, of course how even in ics Things are more orderly, and "cable managed" (if you can call it that)

  • @danmenes3143
    @danmenes31436 ай бұрын

    It was great meeting you at System Source!

  • @douro20
    @douro206 ай бұрын

    The 1218 on the USS Midway is still fully operational. And there's a working 1219-B at the Vintage Computer Federation in Eatontown, NJ.

  • @FinnBojorgensen
    @FinnBojorgensen6 ай бұрын

    That drum brings back memories. In the late sixties and early seventies, I wrote a few programs on a computer that used a drum as "mass" storage and 5 KBytes of core memory. I remember that the instructions in case of loss of power were to wait for several hours before powering up so as to insure a complete cooling of the drum. The drum had different dimensions compared to the one you're working on, smaller diameter and several times longer so during the cooling it tended to warp slightly due to the heat migrating upwards. If you powered up too rapidly, there was a risk of head crash due to the warp of the drum, so you may be right about the thermal theory.

  • @SeanBZA
    @SeanBZA6 ай бұрын

    HP 1000 was part of an ATE system I used in the military. Computer was the most reliable part of the entire ATE, while the mercury relays it used were the source, along with connections, of most of the troubles we had with it. Yes we did have our own guru who was in charge of the ATE system, and plenty of work in removing mercury relays so that you could take it, tap it to settle the mercury drop to the correct position in the bottom of the relay, test it a few dozen times, and solder it back in to position. Self test would then run for nearly a full day, testing every single relay, and every single combination of the internals, before you moved to the self test testing all the DUT cabling as well.

  • @jussikuusela7345
    @jussikuusela73456 ай бұрын

    15:10 My father was a "linotypist"... he never learned the new computerized system so he had to eventually change to other tasks in the shop in the 80's. There is a whole page about the machine on Wikipedia. Awesome technology for its time, and possibly one of the first applications of binary code in the matrix sorter.

  • @dougshaw4287
    @dougshaw42876 ай бұрын

    Thank you so much for these wonderful videos. Wish I could have been at the open house. My first real programming experience was on a G-15 in high school in 1963. Fond memories of programming in INTERCOM, assembly language and ALGO, connecting an audio amp to the track 19 (I think; might have been a shorter track) banana plugs to play music, poring over schematic blueprints with a friend trying to understand the instruction decoding, etc. I believe System Source Museum also has a DEC PDP-5, my next computer on which I built up a callous on my index finger by repeatedly swiping all the metal toggle switches to clear them while toggling in the RIM loader (to bootstrap the machine from paper tape on the ASR-33) or binary, self-assembled programs. 10 years later used the Univac 1218 (U-1500; AN/UYK-5) on board the Navy repair ship USS AJAX (AR-6). I will be looking forward to your future videos.

  • @UsagiElectric

    @UsagiElectric

    6 ай бұрын

    That's awesome that you actually got to use a G15 in anger! We actually have tape back ups of Intercom and Algo, so hopefully, I'll get the opportunity to experience those first hand as well. System Source does indeed have a PDP-5, it's a really gorgeous machine with its big round CRT. That's awesome that you got to use so many of the machines on display at the museum! Thanks for checking the videos out!

  • @jnelson4765
    @jnelson47656 ай бұрын

    The open house was my first trip up there, their Sun, Cray, and SGI collection alone is pretty damn impressive. Definitely an awesome crowd.

  • @UsagiElectric

    @UsagiElectric

    6 ай бұрын

    Thanks for coming out to visit! It's an awesome museum for sure!

  • @stephensanner1315
    @stephensanner13156 ай бұрын

    If you're serious about trying to recoat the crashed drum, reach out to Kodak in Rochester or Harman Technology/Ilford in the UK. Manufacturing photographic film has much the same requirements as the drum memory: an extremely even, micrometers-thick homogeneous coating with finely-dispersed solids deposited onto a curved surface. And film needs multiple layers to boot. This is squarely in their wheelhouse. Wish I could have been there for the open house! I'm really hoping that there's another one sometime. Maybe for when the G-15 is all set to return to System Source? 😉

  • @RobAbshear
    @RobAbshear5 ай бұрын

    I was an engineer on a Honeywell DPS6 in the US Navy. It was a huge system. The shipboard versions were in these big, black, ruggedized racks. On shore-based installations they were in normal cabinets. We had card-punch/readers, 10 inch mag tape drives of various types. High-speed printers. Chain-train printers. There is very little information on the Internet about these systems. This system was used primarily for payroll and accounting on the ships I was on. The OS was GCOS Mod 400. I still remember the front panel boot sequence stop/clear/load/ready/execute. lol. Those were the days. Serial terminals running all over the ship.

  • @jeremiefaucher-goulet3365
    @jeremiefaucher-goulet33656 ай бұрын

    5:20 These connectors look like the ones on the AGC that @curiousmarc and his team had great difficulty to source and re-create. Nice to see this was used elsewhere, and were not just custom to the Apollo program.

  • @Iceykitsune

    @Iceykitsune

    6 ай бұрын

    Apollo used a lot of off the shelf components.

  • @jeremiefaucher-goulet3365

    @jeremiefaucher-goulet3365

    6 ай бұрын

    @@IceykitsuneThat kinda is my point here. These connectors weren't very "off the shelf" seeing how difficult they were to obtain for the AGC work. Hence my surprise to see them on the Bendix. Assuming of course they are one and the same....

  • @Iceykitsune

    @Iceykitsune

    6 ай бұрын

    ​@@jeremiefaucher-goulet3365 They were off the shelf in the 60's, but have since been discontinued.

  • @macgvrs
    @macgvrs6 ай бұрын

    Got my fingers crossed for you that it powers up with no major issues. Definitely looking forward to the next video.

  • @davethetaswegian
    @davethetaswegian6 ай бұрын

    Interesting to see the Wang 360. As it happens I have a complete Wang 362E system that I have been trying to figure out what to do with. And by complete I mean everything, The 362E, 370 programming keyboard, 372 Storage unit (16 extra magnetic core registers), 3 X 371 Card readers, plus programs on card, blank cards, and a full set of manuals and documentation. While it is in fairly good physical condition it would need a full restoration which is beyond my abilities.

  • @user-gx1rk8yw6l
    @user-gx1rk8yw6l6 ай бұрын

    Seen any ModComps anywhere? NASA used a few of these mini-mainframes in a so-called "frozen" state, ie NO changes/updates/&c whatsoever were allowed, so that they were truly identical in every aspect. The 2 that I was sysop of in the mid-1980s still had toggle switches & the same removable disks as your Centurions have. OUR problem with them in The Netherlands was the power supplied to it. The conversion from 220V to 127V was right at the edge of its tolerance. Flexing computer-room floor panels (built on a CARPET under-flooring!) caused electrostatic sparks when one walked along the rack-mount cabinets that resulted in frequent power-downs... From ModComp's Irish technician I remember learning what "hang fire" meant, but very quickly forgot how to use those toggle switches.

  • @exidy-yt
    @exidy-yt6 ай бұрын

    i've never hated living in Vancouver B.C. (west coast of Canada) as much as i did hearing about this open house at System Source knowing there wasn't a snowball's chance in hell of attending. :( Still super glad it turned out so well, and may the day come when I can afford to travel wherever I want when I want!

  • @afreezaphorogiancossack2194
    @afreezaphorogiancossack21946 ай бұрын

    I was aware that Bendix was involved in early computers but of course I mostly know them from bicycles LOL. This is my first time seeing any of their computer hardware. Awesome!

  • @SOMERANDOMDUDESomething
    @SOMERANDOMDUDESomething6 ай бұрын

    The 6360 floppy drive looks like a toaster

  • @billklement2492
    @billklement24926 ай бұрын

    Sorry I missed you guys! Monday is complicated. The calculator was what got Wang started. While there were a lot of Display Writers out there, Wang owned the word processing market in the same way Word Perfect owned it in the early PC days. A friend of mine specialized in transferring word processing data into different formats. They did court reporting and input into Wang systems, but could send you the data in any word processing format you asked for. He had the first Compaq 386 in the DC area. Pretty cool! Thanks for the video!

  • @StringerNews1

    @StringerNews1

    6 ай бұрын

    Yes, Wang was all alone in the market in the mid to late '70s. In the '60s and '70s, the family would go to my dad's office on weekends to use the WATS lines to call relatives down south. As my parents talked and talked, I would occupy myself by exploring the office, and try to figure out how to use the office equipment. At first my interest was in the calculating mechines, but when the Wang word processors showed up, that was my new fascination. Back then it was either the IBM Selectric typewriter or the Wang. There were no other word processors, and no IBM computers or terminals in sight. The company had a massive data center, but the executive offices found no need for computers at the time.

  • @UsagiElectric

    @UsagiElectric

    6 ай бұрын

    Monday was just how the trip worked out this time, I think if we turn this into a yearly thing, we'll figure out a better day for people to come visit! The Wangwriter that I have is an excellent Wang Word Processor (unfortunately, I do all my typing on a modern computer, so it doesn't get used that much since it can't really do anything else). I do really like Wang's early stuff though, they were definitely swinging for the fences!

  • @wdolgae
    @wdolgae6 ай бұрын

    Need to take the drum to a PCB manufacturer and see if they can run it thru the oxide line. That would put a new layer of magnetic material on it!

  • @edgeeffect
    @edgeeffect6 ай бұрын

    Yeah... I'm not sure how I'd feel about working on priceless vintage computers in front of an audience... however polite. But it looks like you got the drum swapped without freaking out... so go you! ;)

  • @brentpolk2431
    @brentpolk24316 ай бұрын

    This sort of stuff is what got me interested in computers when I was 12. I'm 48 now and because of the fascination in 1986 I still love this older stuff! We are living in an amazing age of silicon history...

  • @tubeDude48
    @tubeDude486 ай бұрын

    It was exciting to see the Heathkit H-8 Computer and the H-9 Monitor!

  • @msylvain59
    @msylvain596 ай бұрын

    Can't you get access to a portable X-ray fluorescence spectrometer ? It would give the answer about the alloy and maybe also some hints for the magnetic coating.

  • @inothome

    @inothome

    6 ай бұрын

    That's what I was expecting him to say they used... Not the mass calculation.

  • @muchosa1
    @muchosa16 ай бұрын

    You need a shop close to System Source to restore some of the equipment.

  • @rlzr.
    @rlzr.6 ай бұрын

    I just can't wait for next Bendix video! Your videos are entertaining and made really well. It's a must-watch for me every Sunday :)

  • @UsagiElectric

    @UsagiElectric

    6 ай бұрын

    Thank you! It's awesome to hear that you're enjoying the videos!

  • @danmenes3143
    @danmenes31436 ай бұрын

    Those heads are HUGE! I'm officially back in the "wrap the bad drum in audio tape" camp. Wrap the tape in a helix, so each track effectively has a diagonal splice. I think you can get it flat enough. Maybe shellac for a cement--thin, and if things go bad it can be removed with alcohol.

  • @dhpbear2
    @dhpbear26 ай бұрын

    8:51 - That WANG Calculator was a WORKING exhibit at the Museum of Science in Boston back in the late 60s. It consisted of the main unit that was behind glass and 4 of those NIXIE tube keyboard/display units attached. I *DO* remember that the keys had a very short 'travel'.

  • @chrisjpf33
    @chrisjpf336 ай бұрын

    It was great seeing you in person again. It was absolutely worth the trip! Thanks for all you do!!! Can't wait for the next video.

  • @UsagiElectric

    @UsagiElectric

    6 ай бұрын

    Looking forward to digging into that HP 120B!

  • @barryhills6744
    @barryhills67446 ай бұрын

    As a ex-Bendix owner I watch the G15 revival with enormous anticipation. I have a handful of new old stock parts if you are in need. For example, I just stumbled upon unused stock of the T1425 light sensor for optical tape reader if you need or want.

  • @ernstoud
    @ernstoud6 ай бұрын

    04:19 … the Univac 1218 had an MTBF of 2100 hrs. Geez… every 3 months a breakdown…

  • @highpath4776

    @highpath4776

    6 ай бұрын

    presumably the mechanical and power feed lines followed by odd resitors and transistors.

  • @ianneill9188
    @ianneill91886 ай бұрын

    Wow, just fantastic! Loved the mini tour around the museum, and the dive into some of those super machines. Thank you.

  • @UsagiElectric

    @UsagiElectric

    6 ай бұрын

    Thank you so much for checking the video out!

  • @trox355
    @trox3556 ай бұрын

    Such an excellent time. Thanks for putting this on! My office is only a half hour away and I never knew about this before your first video.

  • @RoundSparrow
    @RoundSparrow6 ай бұрын

    Great Episode. Good writing, good images of the hardware, good staging. Thank you!

  • @UsagiElectric

    @UsagiElectric

    6 ай бұрын

    Thank you so much! I wasn't sure how the editing would turn out this time, but I'm glad to hear it came out well!

  • @N8Monk
    @N8Monk6 ай бұрын

    It was definitely worth the 9 and a half hour drive to check out the museum! We had a great time!

  • @SimonBauer7
    @SimonBauer73 ай бұрын

    reading the title i imagined you just secretly swapping the hard drives and then running away with the working one 😂.

  • @WolfmanDude
    @WolfmanDude6 ай бұрын

    Interesting, the drum looks like it has been coated and them ground to be flat. That would make your job to recoat the drum way easier. You just need to find the correct "magnetic paint", coat the drum in excess. Then any machine shop with a precision grinder can make it flat and round. They do this all the time for bearing pressfits!

  • @seanmarsella3071
    @seanmarsella30716 ай бұрын

    I found your channel by accident. Thoroughly enjoying watching you try to get all this vintage tech up & running again.

  • @WagonLoads
    @WagonLoads6 ай бұрын

    If you ever run across a S-100 bus computer called Xitan made by Technical Design Labs, I hope you will make a full video on how to make it run...

  • @absalomdraconis
    @absalomdraconis6 ай бұрын

    The 400 Hz power on Navy ships is probably because the higher frequency allows smaller transformers to be used for the same power: aircraft use the same frequency for the same reason, and 400 Hz is still low enough that the advantages of 60 Hz will likely still apply (though I'm not sure about arc-snuffing in switches...).

  • @oliverer3
    @oliverer36 ай бұрын

    Now I want to design a beam spring keyboard... I swear for every one of your videos I watch I end up with a new project idea.

  • @JD3Gamer
    @JD3Gamer6 ай бұрын

    4:46 Shout out Minnesota! Heck yeah!

  • @TheHylianBatman
    @TheHylianBatman6 ай бұрын

    I'm glad that the open house was a fun success! Also glad that we now know more about the Bendix!

  • @bcostin
    @bcostin6 ай бұрын

    I really wanted to see you guys at SystemSource but was out of town that week - hopefully next time! My grandmother used IBM DisplayWriters back in the 1980s while working for a government agency. When she retired, she wanted something familiar for her own personal use. As I recall, my father and I set her up with an IBM PC-AT running WordPerfect using a WheelWriter for output.

  • @ristopoho824
    @ristopoho8246 ай бұрын

    I have been binge rewatching tech videos and it bothered me that there was a channel i don't remember that had videos about, well. Well it's tech time traveler. Thank you very very much for mentioning him. Will continue the binge there after this video. Such amazing channel, and underappreciated too, not popping up in youtube frontpage unless you know what to look for.

  • @ahbushnell1
    @ahbushnell16 ай бұрын

    If you are using a 50 amp breaker the continuous load should be 40 amps or less. So 38 sounds good.

  • @uki352
    @uki3526 ай бұрын

    Is there a way to machine the scratched drum and re-coat it? Wouldn't that be a really interesting project? On the other hand, someone could hide some FPGA down deep inside that emulates the drum memory, so all known machines could run again. And you can pull the heads back to a safe position on all the working drums to preserve them for an even longer time. Even an STM32 would be fast enough to do that and enables some serial / USB debugging. Having a safe option to run the unit any time but preserving the original state by pulling a plug ad inserting it in another socket seems fine to me. A little like changing the cap at the APPLE I but keeping the original one aside with it.

  • @dadawoodslife
    @dadawoodslife6 ай бұрын

    First computer i ever used was a Data General Nova at Nottingham University, Physics Dept, UK in 1977. Core memory and boot strapped with a switch panel on the front I think it had 4 teletype terminals, each allocated 4K of memory if i remember correctly.

  • @btraker
    @btraker6 ай бұрын

    Wish I could have joined you at System Source, I work a half mile from there! Didn't realize it was an RSVP event until the event had no more space left.

  • @ipavemyownroad
    @ipavemyownroad6 ай бұрын

    I saw that you went to System Source and changed my whole summer trip up the East Coast to Quebec to give me time to see it. Thanks so much for telling us about it!

  • @fredblonder7850
    @fredblonder78506 ай бұрын

    Just to be pedantic, I shot my video with an Olympus OM-D, not my phone. ;-) Also, regarding the Wang 360 Calculator, I used one of these in 1970 in a class given by the Maryland Academy of Science, back when it was a single rowhouse on Mulberry Street in Baltimore. This video did not show the bizarre manual punch-card programming system it used.

  • @larryk731
    @larryk7316 ай бұрын

    The wang calculator family uses RPN - it's not as complicated but it is very different

  • @computerdude8726
    @computerdude87266 ай бұрын

    man, that drive is massive.

  • @robot797
    @robot7976 ай бұрын

    yay more tube stuff not the tube stuff I wanted but any tube stuff is good enough

  • @garyarnold8288
    @garyarnold82886 ай бұрын

    We had the 1218 and three 642 B NTDS computers on the USS South Carolina. It was commissioned in 1974.

  • @velho6298
    @velho62986 ай бұрын

    Can't wait for the timing issues in the next episode!

  • @danielkawano206
    @danielkawano2066 ай бұрын

    Hi David, I have been following your channel for a while and I can assure that you are (and probably Adrian Black too) one of the few mainstream KZreadrs in the retro community that still preserves the same brigth in your eyes since the beginning of the channel. I posetivelly appreciate your contents but what I most admire is your enpathy and you excitement about your projects. So Bro, I am sure anything you upload in your channel is going to be Epic! A warm regards from you followers from Brazil.

  • @aserta
    @aserta6 ай бұрын

    3:11 crazy to think that that machine is closer to real bugs inside the system than it is to today. :))

  • @maskddingo1779
    @maskddingo17796 ай бұрын

    OMG! I see an Ithaca Intersystems DPS-1 there! I have one that also includes the original dual external floppy drives that I restored a couple years ago. I also managed to find an unbuilt ithaca intersystems 256k ram board (and built it). Everything works! Since then I have been collecting Ithaca stuff. I need to go to this museum. I wanted to come (i live in pa) but i messed my car up the day before.

  • @CATech1138
    @CATech11386 ай бұрын

    i would think one of the non magnetic stainless steels.....that drum is a flywheel, weight is a benefit towards reducing change in velocity---this is extremely important in maintaining timing within the very small tolerences available at computer cycle speeds.....heavy and non magnetic as well as cost effective Titanium was prohibitively expensive due to it's requirement in aerospace in that era.... Ben Rich's writing about getting Ti for the SR-71 in his book The Skunkworks is i believe the easiest reference to find on the topic.... Ti is the literally basis of the concept of Unobtanium....it is also very light for it's strength and so wouldn't be a good choice for a flywheel in a ground based device.... of course i would very interested in what design criteria would be met by Ti should i be wrong, any drum memory engineers out there?

  • @kpnconsulting8739

    @kpnconsulting8739

    6 ай бұрын

    Yeah, I thought of stainless as well when I looked at it. Nonmagnetic and dimensionally stable. I think the gouge happened because some tech dropped a tool when servicing the beast.

  • @OscarSommerbo

    @OscarSommerbo

    6 ай бұрын

    @@kpnconsulting8739 I tried to get my brain to remember thermal expansion, and to close a 0.0254mm gap would require more than a 1000C. So a dropped tool seems much more likely. Invar (another aerospace metal) has a thermal expansion coefficient 2.5 higher than aluminum, which makes the thermal theory more plausible but still improbable.

  • @idio-syncrasy

    @idio-syncrasy

    6 ай бұрын

    I agree. Doesn't seem likely it was Ti. The question would be why use such an expensive material that was nearly impossible to machine and.balance.

  • @landspide
    @landspide6 ай бұрын

    Visited in October, amazing experience.

  • @beefchicken
    @beefchicken6 ай бұрын

    Woohoo thank you for showing the Linotype! That’s a Model 31 with a Hydraquadder, I have the same model made 1224 units after theirs in my garage!

  • @miketriesmotorsports6080
    @miketriesmotorsports60806 ай бұрын

    Man, I am sooo dumb. You were at System Source on a Monday, and I was looking forward to coming out for the open house for WEEKS! But, for some reason, I kept putting it on my various calendars as a Tuesday! So, when Tuesday came around, and I went to verify... 😞

  • @nasabear
    @nasabear6 ай бұрын

    It was great meeting you and all the others at the open house.

  • @dannydoolhoff7657
    @dannydoolhoff76576 ай бұрын

    If I had known the Display Writer was so versatile, I would have kept the 2 I acquired in a bulk pallet purchase... Long gone now.

  • @clyde3013
    @clyde30136 ай бұрын

    Ive been waiting for this vid! Had a great time at the museum.

  • @williamsquires3070
    @williamsquires30706 ай бұрын

    I wonder if the 6502 on that Apple I was one of the original “buggy” ones that lacked the LSR instruction? My guess would be, yes.

  • @thomasguilder9288
    @thomasguilder92886 ай бұрын

    Wow many years ago my dad brought three DisplayWriters and the big printer home when they got replaced by ibm pc‘s in the company. I think I was about 9 to 10 years old and started learning english words using the displaywriter gui and looking through the service data books :) The set included a service 8 inch disk which could run several system tests and make memory dumps, accidently I destroyed it by pushing the little pushbutton on the back of the unit which dumps the ram content on the floppy… great days… later I had a 386sx and started tearing down the displaywriters, if I just kept one! Especially seeing how much they ask for the keyboard 😅 still have some of the special hybrid packaged chips in aluminum cans in my drawer salvaged from these units and the typewheel punch electromagnet !

  • @vinatron8075
    @vinatron80756 ай бұрын

    Interesting did you know that there was something called DisplayWrite/370. It was designed to be the same interface as the display writer but on a mainframe 3270 session pretty neat.

  • @vinatron8075

    @vinatron8075

    6 ай бұрын

    Posted a photo on discord in case someone wanted to see the 370 version.

  • @RetroJack
    @RetroJack6 ай бұрын

    Having watched your journey with the Centurion, this is equally as interesting and I can't wait to see where it goes!

  • @markryan2475
    @markryan24756 ай бұрын

    Fantastic video - really liked the Univacs

  • @WelcomeToMarkintosh
    @WelcomeToMarkintosh6 ай бұрын

    Wow-I've been waiting for this episode! I'm so sorry I missed it-I really wanted to meet you, David. Bob told my buddy & me about you last time we were there & that's how I got hooked on your channel! Looks like you and the entire gang had a blast-I hope you do it annually, I'll definitely be there next time. Isn't that place great? I live about 45 minutes away and have also shot some great B-roll & interviews with Bob for my new Mac based channel. Can't wait to see more on this BEAST! Thank you, David-YOU are EPIC!

  • @jms019
    @jms0196 ай бұрын

    What a great place I must visit.

  • @datasilouk1995
    @datasilouk19956 ай бұрын

    UCSD P-system. Oh, wonderful. Takes me back to my days of Sage IV , Pinnacle, Apricot, ACT Sirius etc.

  • @jfwfreo
    @jfwfreo6 ай бұрын

    The click sound on those calculator keys reminds me of the sort of click you might get on a mouse button on a good quality mouse.

  • @gregcarter6406
    @gregcarter64066 ай бұрын

    Puff the Magic Dragon Smoke Time? But, your comment about the metal type of the drum is valid. It is one of the reasons why Titanium is used in aerospace applications for just that reason.

  • @ristopoho824
    @ristopoho8246 ай бұрын

    I WANT to visit that place. I really want to. A long way from here, and i'm not usually willing to travel a lot. None of my friends would be willing to travel for a museum, those that were at the Chania trip with me went shopping while i crawled the museums. Could go there myself, but going to a foreign place alone would be terrifying. Also worth it. For the experience of going somewhere alone. And the System Source. Oh yes please i want to go. I will. Not yet but someday.

  • @ristopoho824

    @ristopoho824

    6 ай бұрын

    I might have commented that before, but yea. My goal in life is to study enough that i get to work on amazing things like these. I'm jealous of you, well not jealous, more like inspired. Someday i will get called to a museum to get some obscure piece working. Talked with my dad yesterday about what he used to do. Pretty much exactly that. So unknowingly i have been following in his footsteps. He's not on your level, not many are. I'm somewhat your age, and still not there on my journey. But getting closer by the day.

  • @dhpbear2
    @dhpbear26 ай бұрын

    5:58 - That floppy subsystem looks like a TOASTER!

  • @retroatx
    @retroatx6 ай бұрын

    I loved the SOL20. I seem to recall they had an S100 buss connector

  • @terrypokorny3858
    @terrypokorny38586 ай бұрын

    I am looking for tge next video on the g15 when you can get it all spined up

  • @twol78s90
    @twol78s906 ай бұрын

    Hello, David. It is absolutely awesome that you now have a good (at least so far as is known) drum for the G-15. I just hope all of the heads are good, especially those on the timing tracks. It will be so wonderful to see the G-15 back to its operating glory! I know you can do it! Speaking of timing tracks, there was an electronic calculator made back in the 1960's called the Wyle Laboratories WS-01 that used a strange type of magnetic drum (kind of an inside-out one) that had a timing track for the timebase for the calculator. It was an all-transistor calculator, with a glorious CRT display that used gated combinations of sine and cosine waves to generate the digits. They almost look handwritten on the face of the CRT. Anyway, very few, if any of those machine survived (the original prototype breadboarded machine is known to exist, but it is very, very unlikely it will ever run). The machines developed problems in the field from bumps and movement that would crash the drum, rendering the machine useless. The inside-out drum-based machines were replaced with model WS-02 that used a magnetostrictive delay line instead, solving the problem. That said, I noted in this video that you were fascinated with the Wang 360 calculator they have at System Source Museum. If you are ever in the Portland, Oregon area, please consider yourself invited to come see the Old Calculator Museum outside of Portland, OR. I know its a big jaunt from Texas, but you go to System Source in California, so maybe it's not too far out of the way. I examples of the Wyle Labs calculators, which are really amazing. I also have an operating example of every model of Wang electronic calculator made /except/ for the Wang 500 (which I'm in a long-term project to restore), including the Wang 370 and 380 Programmers for the Wang 300 calculators, as well as the amazing Wang 700 and 600 machines, and beginning of Wang's first programmable calculators, the Wang LOCI-2. That doesn't mention a few hundred other old (pre '73) vintage electronic calculators, all out on display to be used by visitors, including both HP 9100A/B and the 9810/20/30 machines, an HP-01 calculator watch(simply amazing), many Sharp and Casio calculators including some of the earliest machines from Japan, and lots of documentation and ephemera from the heyday of electronic calculators. If you wish to come visit some time, just go to the Old Calculator Museum website (oldcalculatormuseum.com) and send me a message from there.

  • @Renville80
    @Renville802 ай бұрын

    The 6502 in that Apple 1... it looks to be early enough (51st week of '75) it is likely the original version with the ROR bug. Adrian wound up with a similarly old 6502 and his was confirmed to have the original buggy silicon (think he showed documentation stating the ROR instruction was not usable on 6502s made before mid '76).

  • @NoNameForNone
    @NoNameForNone6 ай бұрын

    The dark grey color sure looks like titanium, though other metals are that color but not the weight. If you get your hands on a really good (and I mean superb) ohm meter, titanium has about double the resistance of alluminium. Do pinch though the oxide layers thoug while measuring.

  • @chibichabot9293
    @chibichabot92936 ай бұрын

    That's a glorious sounding keyboard on that display writer

  • @saintpaulsnail
    @saintpaulsnail6 ай бұрын

    In the late 70s I worked for Honeywell, with the H316 as my usual target. I heard that H316's were used as multiuser systems. Early FORTH environments could support multiple users with everyone getting their own terminal buffer and dictionary.

  • @dhpbear2
    @dhpbear26 ай бұрын

    4:35 - A 'militarized' tape system? The mind reels :)

  • @esra_erimez
    @esra_erimez6 ай бұрын

    Hello wonderful person watching this wonderful video

  • @jorgendnilsson
    @jorgendnilsson6 ай бұрын

    Considering how difficult titanium were/are to get your hands on in quantity and the high price... I can't really see why they would use that for the drum. I can't think of any immediate advantage..? (Edit: high density and non-magnetic?)

  • @highpath4776

    @highpath4776

    6 ай бұрын

    Being Bendix, and the computer surely could not have sold in major numbers , the availiblity of any metals would have been possible. I think I am tending to stainless steel - what are its thermal characteristics. ( and if it "shrinks" in the cold wont the magnetic layer fall off/become loose ? )

  • @axelBr1

    @axelBr1

    6 ай бұрын

    Additionally, I believe that titanium is very difficult to work. Also, although denser than aluminium titanium is stronger, and is used in the aircraft industry because a titanium part will be lighter than the equivalent aluminium part, so the drive should have been lighter than expected.

  • @kerryedavis
    @kerryedavis4 ай бұрын

    Back in the day, we referred to SWTPC as Swut-Puck.

  • @McTroyd
    @McTroyd6 ай бұрын

    If you do keep up your pilgrimages to System Source, please do keep announcing them. I live within easy driving distance and would love to swing in to say hi. Work schedule just didn't pan out for this one. Seeing as you live in Texas, I'm guessing we don't need to worry about the 50 degree lower temperature limit where this drum is concerned...? 😅👍

  • @godfreypoon5148
    @godfreypoon51486 ай бұрын

    Be careful, I hear Murphy is planning to crash that drum on you on the second spin-up.

  • @Ragnar8504
    @Ragnar85046 ай бұрын

    400 Hz AC is popular in airplanes because the amount of iron required for a given power rating in a motor or generator (and transformer) greatly depends on the frequency. The lower the frequency the bulkier everything gets. I guess it made sense for the military to use the same systems on boats too.

  • @SimonBauer7

    @SimonBauer7

    3 ай бұрын

    this is also why modern psus are switch mode, so chop up the ac to a higher frequency, simply because its more efficient.

  • @ToTheGAMES
    @ToTheGAMES6 ай бұрын

    Love the story!

  • @johnopalko5223
    @johnopalko52235 ай бұрын

    The 50 amp recommendation is not just for inrush. The National Electrical Code recommends that you don't draw more than 80% of your circuit's rating. Since the machine draws 38 amps, 38 / 0.8 = 47.5. The next largest standard circuit breaker size is 50 amps.

  • @dhpbear2
    @dhpbear26 ай бұрын

    3:43 - These panels look oddly Art Deco!

  • @SO_DIGITAL
    @SO_DIGITAL6 ай бұрын

    OOh, I'm tingling with excitement to see this puppy running.

  • @dhpbear2
    @dhpbear26 ай бұрын

    A 'militarized' tape system. The mind 'reels' :)

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