The remodel of the IBM 1401 room is complete

We now have a lighted sign outside our new room.

The picture below is of a sign that shows an IBM 1401 in use.

This sign is 10 feet wide and 40 feet tall.

You have to stand close to the sign and look up to see the rest of the sign!

And as if that was not enough, they painted 1401 on the wall in large numbers.

 

As you enter the room, the whole left wall is a picture of an IBM data center in Toronto Canada.

An IBM 1401 is shown on the left side of the image.

And in case you did not know why you were in the room.....

One of the signs on the back wall talking about the beginning of the IBM 1401

More information about the IBM 1401 

A tribute to the volunteers that brought the machines back to life.

The top picture is that of Bob Erickson fixing a very small wire in a bank of 1401 memory.

A private demonstration was held by Robert Garner, Ed Thelen and Stan Paddock for the VIP 1401 visitors and their families in the new room on Sunday night, November 17, 2013.

The list of people visiting is as follows

Jim J Ingram

Jim H Ingram

Kate Ingram

Jud McCarthy

David Schwaderer

Scott Bellefleur

Chuck Branscomb

Tia Branscomb

Chuck Branscomb

Andy Branscomb

Debbie Branscomb

Rick Johnson

Eric Branscomb

Ruth Randa

Wednesday Workday October 30, 2013

The workday started with trying to fix the German 1401's memory problem.
We all suspected Alzheimer's disease but it was decided it cannot be transmitted from the workers to the machine.

Bill Newman was looking into the circuitry of the IBM 1406 expanded memory and found a disconnect.
When re-connected, all 16,000 locations of memory came back to life.
Now if it was that easy for our memory.

Filled with success, Bill tryed to find out why the A register on the same machine would not latch.

Bill said "It is this card right here". Let's replace it and see if the problem goes away.

This is, in fact, the bad SMS circuit card Bill identified.
George Ahearn replaced the bad transistor and all is well with the world.

While people were marking floor tiles to be cut and fixing broken machines, Ed Thelen was cleaning old labels off the tape drives and taking pictures of the others.

Dave Lion, Ed Thelen and Stan Paddock were looking for the connector in the main power line for the Connecticut 1401 system.
After lifting several floor tiles, we found it.

Dave Lion suggested that if we had a floor tile numbering schema, we could document where the connector is in case we need to do something with it.
Dave started with the tile in the North East corner of the room as A-1. The tiles going East to West are A,B,C,....
The tiles going from North to South are 1,2,3,4,5,6...

Frank King and Ron Williams lifted p a corner of the Connecticut 1401 in order to feed in the connection to first IBM 729 tape drive.

The first tape drive of the German system  did not respond to a rewind command from the 1401.
We have had this problem with this drive on and off for the last year.
Maybe this is the time we can find it and fix it.

The first tape drive of the Connecticut machine appears to work OK.

Stan Paddock