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