Wednesday January 15, 2011

Attendees: Ron Williams, Bob Erickson, Robert Garner,  Stan Paddock,  Frank King, Don Luke,  Bill Newman, Joe Preston, Ed Thelen and Allen Palmer

Allen Palmer worked with Joe Preston on the third tape drive of the German system. A problem with the head mechanism was fixed.

Joe went back working on other problems with that tape drive while Allen continued his work on the right reel brake on the second tape drive of the same system.

Ron Williams, Bob Erickson, Bill Newman and Stan Paddock continued to work on the card read problem of the Connecticut machine. 

At Ron's suggestion, the voltage of the -20 volt power supply was raised one tap. This made a significant difference in the performance. The errors at the second read station disappeared. 

We still had errors reported and they were every other line. Suspect X or Y plane errors. 
The two wires were switched to use the first read station to be switched with the second.
Now the characters were not being read into memory correct.

At Bob Erickson's suggestion, we checked the brushes that provide ground to the first read contact roller. It was worn and only one of the two brushes was in contact with the roller. 

We are in the process of installing new brushes and will finish the job next week.