Wednesday April 20, 2011

Attendees: Ron Williams, Bob Erickson, George Ahearn, Stan Paddock, Frank King, Don Luke, Bill Newman, Joe Preston, Ed Thelen, Jim Hunt

Ron Williams shows off the finer points of an IBM 1403 printer to Ed Thalen. Ed still thinks the printers made by GE were better in that their failure rate kept him gainfully employed.

Joe Preston, Jim Hunt and Frank King discuss the finer points the installation of a cotter pin.

This is the card reader end of the Connecticut system as we received it. While operational, it leaves lots of spaces for fingers to be caught.

This is the same end with the right shoulder installed. The part was inside the machine when we received it. The part was sand blasted and re-painted to mach the two new parts.

The bottom support plate was fabricated by Stan Paddock, Sam Seibert, Paul Williams and George Ahearns.

This picture shows George Ahearns attaching the newly fabricated left shoulder. We are very thankful to IBM Almaden  for fabricating this part using the same part borrowed from the German IBM system as a pattern.

 Joe Preston read through all of the manuals for the IBM 729 tape drive to find the last problem with the number three tape drive on the German system. When Joe left today, his tape drive was fully functional for the first time since we have received the system.


Stan Paddock

Wednesday April 13, 2011

Attendees: Ron Williams, Bob Erickson, Robert Garner, George Ahearn, Stan Paddock, Bill Flora, Frank King, Glenn Lea, Don Luke, Douglas Martin, Bill Newman, Joe Preston,  Allen Palmer, Jim Hunt, Ron Crane, Judith Haemmerle

Visitors: a mother and her daughter. The daughter was in a school play as Grace Hopper.

Stan made a presentation to this Mother and Daughter pair.

Frank King provided hands-on training to the daughter.

The German 1402 had a non-operational  “Reader Stop” lamp.

Bill Flora opened the doors, checked the wires,  found the problem and fixed it.

 

The German 1402 did not feed cards right from the big feed stacker.

Bill flora and Ron Williams found that problem and fixed it.

The Connecticut 1402 did not feed cards right form the big feed stacker.

Bill flora Showed George Ahearn where to look and George fixed it.

George Ahearn brought in the card feed tray from home.

Stan further modified it to allow space adjustment.

Stan brought in the new end piece for the Connecticut 1402.

George assembled all of these new parts on the Connecticut 1402.

While everything was close to be perfect, George decided that a little more machine in his home shop would make it perfect.

George took both parts home for final touches.

Jim hunt researched the problem with the X sync pulse not appearing on the control panel of the Connecticut 1401.

After studying the ALD’s, Jim suggested running the system with the punch turned on.

 That fixed the problem. Why?, we are not sure. Robert garner and Jim talked about it for some time with no idea coming up.

Allen Palmer came in and fixed a high speed rewind problem on the second IBM 729 tape drive of the German machine.

Allen worked with Joe Preston on the third tape drive of the German machine.

Allan had to go home and Bill Newman worked with Joe on this strange problem.

Then Joe Preston had to go home and Bill Newman told Ron Crane about the problem.

Ron crane found a bad reading on one of the lines that generate the universal reference voltages in the tape drive.

Ron pulled the power supply out of the machine and found a loose lead to the main transformer.

He soldered the lead back and the machine came back to life.

Joe should be happy when he comes back in on next Wednesday.

Ron Crane has figured out the correct values to add to the power lines on the German 1401 system to correct the power factor.

Now he is looking for a place to mount the capacitors. The three caps shown might be a bit small for his needs.

Bob Erickson and Frank were talking about power indicator lights on the IBM 077 collator.

 Frank was able to remove the existing light and gave it to Ron Crane.

On went back to his stash of various light bulbs and found a match. We installed the light and tested it. It is strange that the light is on when the machine is on and the machine is not running.

This was a great day for the IBM 1401 Restoration Team. Eight problems were resolved in the same day. 

Stan Paddock

Saturday, April 09, 2011

Attendees: Ron Williams, Bob Erickson,  Stan Paddock,  Bill Newman, Jim Hunt, , Judith Haemmerle, Bill Worthington, Ron Mak

Visitors:

Samantha Domville, Christopher Douglass , Chio Saeteurn, Christopher Ward, Dinesh Kakumani, Christopher Nelson, Srividya Viveganandan, Jeffrey Ellak, Daniel Li, Andrew Maturi, Tung Bui, Brian LaChance, Denny Tran, Annie Huang, Duc Nguyen, Steven Terpe, Michael Dougherty, Victor Frandsen, Thomas Skrainar, Mason Winner 

 Ron Mak brought in students from his classes at San Jose State. They were all in awe at how data processing was done in the 1960's.

While Ron was testing tape drives o the German IBM 1401 system, he noticed tape drive number two did not behave right. It made ribbons from the tape and cut it in two.

There is always next week.

=========================================

I have been late the last two weeks and only got those done tonight.

If you want to keep everything up to date, go back to the March 23 blog and go forward.

Stan Paddock

Wednesday April 06, 2011

Attendees: Ron Williams, Bob Erickson, Robert Garner, George Ahearn, Stan Paddock, Frank King, Glenn Lea, Don Luke, Allen Palmer Douglas Martin, Bill Newman, Joe Preston, Ed Thelen, Ron Crane, Judith Haemmerle

Visitors: Bill Kell

Allen Palmer and Joe Preston watch in amazement as the Tape Auxiliary Unit drives the tape drives on the German 1401 system.

Bob Erickson and Judith Haemmerle review the documentation for the connection of the Connecticut 1401 system to the IBM Model B typewriter.

Stan's Father Bill Kell examines the old electronic parts used to maintain the 1401 systems. He used some of the same parts to maintain some IBM equipment for TRW down under.

Ron Crane uses the vacuum to clean out bugs, dust and old electrons from one of the Pacific Power Systems linear amplifiers.  Ron replaces the same resistor in two of the linear amplifiers to bring the total system back to life.

George Ahearn and Glenn Lea work on the mounting bracket for the Connecticut IBM 1401 System.
George volunteered to take the part home and machine adjusting slots to facilitate a precise mount.

Stan Paddock

Wednesday March 30, 2011

Attendees: Ron Williams, Bob Erickson, Robert Garner, George Ahearn, Stan Paddock, Bill Flora, Frank King, Glenn Lea, Don Luke, Douglas Martin, Bill Newman, Joe Preston, Ed Thelen, Allen Palmer, Jim Hunt, Ron Crane, Judith Haemmerle, Bill Worthington, Bob Feretich

 

 A new page has been turned!  Ed Thelen is working with Joe Preston on a failed IBM 729 SMS card. Ed said it was close to the cards he knew from the GE tape drives.

Here Ed shows where the IBM 729 tape drives is better than the GE tape drive because it uses two v belts to drive the take up reel.

Here Joe is trying to make sense of what Ed was talking about.

Ron Williams was heard to say "Chassis 1, section B drawer 6, column 3, slot 15, pin J". Now where in the hell is that?

OK, here it is. On the the card with the smoke coming out of it.

Ron Williams and Bob Feretich worked on a persistent card reader problem with the Connecticut IBM 1402 card reader. It was traced down to a faulty SMS card.


This reader has been a source of problems from the day we received the unit. We now feel comfortable that we have found and fixed the last of these problems.

 Don Luke helps Frank King (out of sight) re-assemble the underside of tape drive on the Connecticut machine.


Stan Paddock

Saturday, March 26, 2011

Attendees: Ron Williams, Bob Erickson,  Stan Paddock, Jim Hill,  Ron Crane, Judith Haemmerle

 Visitors: Steve Russel

 Somebody has brought in a MAXWELL 8GB thumb drive.


If it is yours, please retrieve it or it will be put to use.

 Ron Crane hides behind the Pacific Power Systems machine identifying  the power factor on the German IBM 1401 System.

Steve Russel comes into our area to practice with Unit Record Equipment so he can look cool on the museum display floor.

Judith gives up on a difficult problem related to the IBM Model B typewriter. Bob Erickson carries on anyway.

Jim Hunt continues to "hunt" for old parts on-line.

Ron Williams watches the cards go into the Connecticut IBM 1402 card reader. He is looking for the last bug associated reading cards on that system.



Stan Paddock

Saturday, March 25, 2011

Attendees: Ron Williams, Bob Erickson,  Stan Paddock, Jim Hunt, Bill Newman

Jim Hunt researches available devices to replace devices that were used in 1959 when the IBM 1401 was being built.

Ron Crane compares the qualities of one transistor with another.

Ron then built up a capacitor bank to test the phase shift to try to get a an AC power factor of 1.00 from the German IBM 1401.

The waveform for Ron's power test looks good. Or this is the image from Space Invaders.

Bob Edwards continues his work on the IBM model B typewriter.

In the background, Ron Williams continues looking for the read problem on the Connecticut IBM 1401.

Stan Paddock

Wednesday March 23, 2011

Attendees: Ron Williams, Bob Erickson, Robert Garner,  Stan Paddock, Bill Flora, Frank King, Glenn Lea, Don Luke, Douglas Martin, Bill Newman, Joe Preston, Ed Thelen,  Ron Crane, Judith Haemmerle,Bob Feretich

Visitors: Johann Gunnarsson, Marty Adams and Mike Lewis

 It i not often that we get 12 people all in on the same day.

A great deal of fun was enjoyed by all.

Johann Gunnarsson brought in a 1401 program he wrote to run on the two Icelandic 1401 systems.
Van Snyder has typed the program into a PC and run the program. It works very well.

Bill Newman is working on the Connecticut IBM 1401 paper Tape Interface circuit.

Glenn Lea is working on the mounting of new parts for the Connecticut IBM 1402. These new parts were fabricated at the local IBM Plant and in Stan's and other people's garages.

Bob Erickson talks with Jim Strickland and his wife about stories for Jim's interesting story documentation.

Stan