The bell is in the typewriter. I have programmed on a computer with a bell like that. Now that I am reminded of it, I find the memories to be fond ones. Debugging software on one of those older machines was in some ways easier than on the new ones. The guys who designed them planned on having to debug. It wasn't an after thought.
@@lvl90dru1d Somewhere I still have a little addition to DOS-EMU that I created that played a bell sound out the speakers any time a DOS program thought is was making the PC speaker go.
Amazing detective work on this. Congratulations! I am a trained operator of the world's oldest working digital computer (the Harwell Dekatron or WITCH) at the National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park and it is wonderful to see another first generation machine being brought back to life.
That line gave me a 50 year flashback. As a young, green computer technician I approached an experienced coworker, showed her a flip card and said "Does this work?" And she said "Did it work before?" I replied "Yes.'" and she said "Worked before, works again!"
@@UsagiElectric I agree 100%, it's a lot of work but also incredibly rewarding, be it a full-blown vacuum tube computer, or a Commodore 64 - troubleshooting rules for digital computers basically remain the same, so for some part it's a bit easier to wrap your head in how they work. Vacuum tube and earliest transistor computers are just plainly difficult since you got so many wires in the backplanes to choose and crimp the oscilloscope probes onto.
@@Dr_Mario2007 I once told a professor I was helping that computers are like magic in that the most powerful component is belief. As long as you believe it can work you will continue tinkering until it does.
I've had an over 50 year career in electronic engineering, engineering test and debug and a lot of other engineering related stuff. The feeling of seeing something either come to life or come back to life is one of the best experiences I can get from a job. And given all the problems, read blocks and all you and your colleagues went through to get this amazing piece of history working, you definitely need to be excited. Looking forward to seeing the G15 go through all its tests and ultimately running some application code. Congratulations on a job well done.
Then there is the feeling you get when something works perfectly the first time - you look over your shoulder for weeks wondering when Karma is going to arrive to even the scales 🙂
It might be the teletype's bell. In the typewriter era, these were designed to warn of the imminent arrival of the right margin, but teletypes used them to notify operator, and they were added to the teletypes' coding system fairly early, definitely before the Bendix G-15 came out.
@@rileyfaelan true, and if the UE1 can be made to communicate via serial with a teletype then it's just a matter of sending the right bits for ASCII 07 (BEL). That's probably a big if though.
Keysight really has been supportive of a lot of tinkerers, engineers, etc. I get that it's a form of marketing, but I think it's the best kind. Their equipment is pretty great, tracing their lineage through Agilent to the golden era of HP test equipment. So I appreciate that they hooked you up, their scopes are really expensive for a non-profession EE.
It makes pretty good sense; if there is a viewer base that is most likely to have people who are in a position to buy lab equipment or influence purchasing decisions for such, it would be those of this channel, CuriousMarc, and other vintage tech appreciation and restoration channels.
Does it usually loaned with sponsorship or given away? There's a lot of Keysight scoped used by TH-camrs to the point I don't know any other brand lol. But honestly 20k is a rounding error in current tech marketing spending.
That scope is in the best place it can be. Not on the expensive desk of some youtuber who whines about having only 1 terabyte of RAM, but in the hands of somebody who works on a computer with a rotating drum memory :)
Just looked at it on Mouser, and indeed it is 19.000€ before taxes. I wonder why it is THAT expensive...? 5GSa/s is quite substantial of course. But not quite needed for the Bendix. :)
When I see so many youtubers endorse or show a particular beand or product in their videos it makes me very suspicious about the company and its quality, regardless of what it is. Advertising on youtube is generally a big red flag.
Man, diagnosing this is crazy enough... But could you imagine INVENTING it!? Like these schematics are crazy! Whose brain came up with this out of thin air
The best bit of television timing used to be James Burke’s intro before an Apollo rocket took off from the launchpad. This has now been trounced by the bell ringing at end of program on the wrap! Fantastic achievement and gripping television. Congratulations!
No, it runs fine without it. You load the diaper in case the machine has pooped its pants and _doesn't_ run anymore. To examine the ... er ... entrails?
@@rileyfaelanWe must have another program. The 'ENDOScope' for monitoring what goes on inside of the computer in real-time by invading it's low-level backend with a rootkit. /j Ethereal Nanny Debugger/Daemon Online Scope
I hope that there's some organization out there getting ready to pin a medal on you and award you a prize! You've not only revived a piece of computing history, but you invited a worldwide audience into your lab repeatedly so we could see the blow-by-blow of how this magnificent work was done. I confess that despite building radio kits in the 1970s, majoring in computer science in the mid 1980s and even taking a class in logic circuits, I only understood maybe half of what you were doing, but I was fascinated every step of the way. I wish my dad were alive to see this. He wasn't a technology professional, but he enthusiastically followed developments in computers and was a relatively early adopter of personal computers. Your whole series on the Bendix G15 deserves to be on a Best of TH-cam list.
The pure joy in your voice as each bell rings alone makes this video worth watching. It's just lovely to see someone experiencing a load of hard work paying off.
Wow amazing. The timing on that final bell ring flurry is chef's kiss! I did not know there was a connection between the G15 and Alan Turing/Tommy Flowers, which goes back to the vacuum tube Colossus and the war-time code breaking at Bletchley Park in the UK. That makes this actually running code again all the more special. Thank you so much.
I mean, all computers do. There hasn't been anything revolutionary about the computer since WW2, only evolutionary changes bringing over all the old cruft.
@@T-Ball-o Presumably the tubes doing much the same stuff, but now smaller as the diodes are not tube diodes, and the resistors have probably shrunk in size along with PCB tracing rather than all jump leads. I think Flowers was working on another machine (at Manchester?) but at the same time the British Govt wanted the technology secret in order to retain codes/codebreakability
Just wow! Seeing that thing running and producing output brought a tear to my eye. So amazing. Thank you so much to you and collaborators for all your effort.
I found your channel by sheer accident on my feed a few days ago. I am far, FAR from any sort of computer tech, let alone on ancient tube computers. I understand literally nothing about what your talking about beyond some very, very basic understanding of how the logic gates flow into one another (thanks to your explanations). All that being said, your excitement for this old computer running is infectious. I've watched all your videos on the G15 just out of sheer excitement to see something this old and complex get brought back to life and to see someone so engrossed in their passion. I will definitely have to look at some of your other videos, especially on your home built vacuum tube computer. Congrats on getting that thing up and running!
The most important thing to understand is that it's pretty amazing to be able to get a computer this ancient into a working state. And I think you understand that. This computer is from 1956! Imagine the concept of a 1950s computer! It's wild
@UsagiElectric Honestly I can't even wrap my head around how you look at something like this and say 'yeah, I'll fix that'. I almost bought an LGP-30 that was for sale up here but chickened out as soon as I heard 'rotating drum memory' (and shipping cost). Anyway well done. It's so cool to see something like this doing something in 2024 rather than in an old black and white film or in a cartoon like Duck Dodgers lol
I remember either late, late 60's or extremely early 70's seeing one of those in use at an administration office on an Air Force base. Most were replaced with newer equipment shortly after. But as a kid hearing those bells ringing every time some one typed something into the type writer it was fascinating. It was like something out of SciFi! When Dad had t go into the base on his days off he would take me with him. As a kid I could not go any further than the reception area. But the ladies there typing away, and the bells coming from the other room was mesmerizing. Plus as a child the ladies fawned over me giving treats and such. Sometimes the door would be open and you could see all the flashing lights. I was in awe. No idea what it was doing, but it was still amazing.
Congrats Dave! What a great start to the morning this news is!!! I'm totally happy for you, and thankful to Lloyd, System Source, everyone else who chipped in to make this amazing moment happen, a fidgety vacuum tube-based digital computer as old as my father up and running all over again! Utterly mind blowing. 😁
I remember seeing a brief TV interview with Tommy Flowers in the early 1990s. He was at home with an IBM PC, and I marvelled at how far we had come in a relatively short time with the efforts of people like him.
@@chriswareham I mostly knew about him as he was a telecoms engineer in the GPO research facility, my father and grandfather were also both telecoms engineers with the GPO. Whilst the details of his war work weren’t well known the fact that he’d had some involvement was and much of what he’d been doing before the war was so it wasn’t too hard to work out at least the broad strokes. Much of the initial circuit design that formed the basis of the early Bletchley Park machines was from work he’d done to develop an electronic telephone exchange to replace the electro-mechanical ones. When you get down to it, it’s all just flipping switches based on data being fed in.
@@Dont_Gnaw_on_the_Kitty_1 Great minds think alike. Brilliant minds think alone. Turing thought alone. I've been to Bletchley Part and seen Flowers work. Definitely worth a visit..
I remember (barely) in the late '60s "programming" a G15 to calculate the quadratic equation. If the numbers were simple, we could get the answer first manually. It was in a small, hot room and gave a spooky aura when it was typing by itself. In the '70s I very briefly met Prof. Bill Tutte, a colleague of Turing. I had no idea of the connection of the G15 and Colossus.
As I've gotten older, these kind of memories have become more remarkable to me. I was born in 1980 and I have a hard time remembering things even from the 1990s sometimes! Amazing to think of someone in 2024 recalling memories from the 1960s! Sounds like you had a fascinating career.
In the summer of 1963, I went to the Summer Science Program in Ojai, California. One of the tasks was to calculate the orbit of an asteroid from observations made with a 16" reflector telescope. Over three nights, we took photographic plates of the estimated location of the asteroid and three adjoining stars (it moved with respect to the stars), mechanically measured their locations on the three plates, then calculated the orbit using two methods: logrithmic tables and Friden calculators, and using a Bendix G-15. The exposures of the plates took, if I remember correctly, several hours, and during that time the telescope needed to be held on a guide star using a primitive joy stick. The calculations on the Fridens meant meant keeping track of 10 digit numbers. For the G-15, we used a mechanical punch to enter the coordinates of the asteroid and stars on a paper tape and fed that into the computer. Needless to say, the computer was much quicker and there was less chance for mistakes. This was my first exposure to a computer - I ended up spending my career in the semiconductor industry.
Well done! Many years ago, I worked for Burroughs. One of our customers got a new B800 and none of us techs could figure out what was wrong with it. So, we got a tech rep in from Chicago and he and I probed into this thing for an hour or two and nothing. Then, I noticed an anomaly on the flashing LEDs on the test board. Not an error, just a "Huh, that looks funny" sort of moment. These things used wire-wrapped backplanes, and one of the wires had turned a corner against a square(!) pin a bit too tightly and was just barely making contact. Replacing the (tiny red) backplane wire fixed it. Anyway, watching you get this old thing running brought back a bunch of old memories.
Holy crap! This is God tier status for retro computer repair. Amazing work by you, the discord, and everyone who helped along the way. More code please! :-)
As an electronics engineering student, this here is the kinda stuff that keeps me going. Thank you for this. What a fascinating world this era of computing was - hell every era of computing is
This sounded like you were commentating a nascar race, and holding that camera looked like a mic - very cool and very high energy, awesome to see this ALIVE!!
So exciting! And the bell is comedic to a certain extent - I laughed every time it rang knowing that another test passed. Congratulations to you and the rest of the brains that put this back online.
Nice gesture from Keysight! Really like how they handle their marketing through youtube and also like their products. May I be warning you for a mistake that is at least three times as likely on a 4ch scope than on a 2ch one? They all share the same ground. So please take care when measuring over isolated parts of the circuit or when they have different ground levels. Notoriously difficult are switch mode power supplies, but your tube-toys may also have AC and DC circuits that don’t share a common gnd level. Make sure your new precious scope is not providing those anxious electrons a path over which they hurry to the other side!
Yes, even when nondestructive this can cause a lot of misleading results. A lot of years ago now, I had three isolated scopes connected to a thing I was developing for exactly that reason. If you have a 100 foot cable between parts of a system, there is no such thing as "ground"
I only connect one lead ground and remove the rest of the ground clips. Popped breakers a couple times before that. Would love to have a set of diff probes one day.
This - so much this. I learned the hard way while diagnosing a high-voltage system that scope grounds can be trouble. I now use a ground isolation transformer when possible, but at the time, the best we could manage was an unplugged UPS. Notably, the scope was fine. The device we were testing? Not so much.
@@maurvir3197 We had built plexiglass enclosures for our Tek scope floated at between 3,000 and 30 kV depending on the test station ... this was for use during development of grid-controlled TWT based airborne transmitters .. those were the days! I actually got mildly shocked from 115V 400 Hz 3 phase, but never the HV stuff ... i was reaching around a 3 phase 115V breaker and the top contacts/screw studs were the 'hot ones ...
Hats off to Keysight! In a world where 99.9999999% of advertising is just annoying, irrelevant NOISE interrupting our content. It's good that Keysight can advertise their products by being helpful to people. :)
Mazel Tov, David! My son and I have been watching your channel for a couple of years now. Your getting the Bendix running has been AWESOME! This may seem strange coming from a stranger, but I'm very proud of you! Amazing work!
I love following this restoration project of yours. It's awesome and amazing that you have made it this far given the age of the parts involved. I look forward to all your updates - and lastly - of course all your fuzzy friends showcased at the closing of all your videos.😊
There's no way you timed that "Thank you all so much for watching" so perfectly! Anyway, I got to see a (non-functional) G15 recently in the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. I hope someday I'll get to see this one working in person at System Source. Congratulations!
Well done, Dave! I was thinking that you are now in possession of one of the simplest vacuum tube computers ever built and also one of the most complex vacuum tube computers ever built. I am so glad to see them in the same room together. It really gives us a neat perspective on how it all happened back in those heady days when all of this was brand spanking new. It sill amazes me that the engineers back then could design something so complex, look at those freakishly complex plans and say "Yeah, I can build that!" The bell was totally amazing and I pretty much jumped when the printer hit the cabinet. And shout out to Keysight for donating such an excellent scope. Most of all kudos to you Dave. It has been a grind and sometimes I even feel kinda guilty when you look like you haven't had enough sleep and let your beard go for way too long (I see why so many engineers have beards now!), just to let us share in the amazing stuff you do. Well, you have earned your place in nerd history now, but we know you are not one to rest on your laurels and I can't wait to see what else you have for us in future!
"It Freakin Works!" to quote Adrian Black. So great to see it starting to work. It was like once the Bendix G15 started it wasn't going to stop until it had finished running all the code on the first paper tape. Keep up the good work Dave and team.
MASSIVE success! And the imminent 100K subs will be another one - what better occasion than fixing the Bendix and having the oldest working computer on the American soil, thanks to you and a bunch of really smart people? CuriousMarc would be proud. Celebration time coming up... RealSoon! You're truly going major leagues with the Keysight. Well deserved. And knowing that you fixed its grand grandfather, the HP 150A, is friggin' epic.
I literally took my hat off to you, Sir. It's winter in Canada and I'm outdoors. Been following the project from day 1 ... this episode was simply unforgettable. BRAVO. 👊
Just loved this episode. The culmination of a lot of hard work over a long time, resulting in an absolutely resounding success. Well done and many congratulations!
On behalf of the Harrison family, whose basement the G-15 serial #238(and 3 others) resided since the late 1960's, we were so excited to see it up and running. It brought back childhood memories of our dad J. H. Harrison proudly showing them off to friends and relatives. It was amazing to watch the mesmerizing lights, listen to the bell ring, and the teal color made them seem science fiction. Congratulations and fantastic(probably often tedious) work by you Dave and big congratulations to owner Bob Roswell at System Source Museum....he loves bringing old technology back to life. We hope and plan to be there when it comes back to Maryland.
Beautiful and very clean early computer. When I was a kid (about 1962) there was a company selling these near the old LA airport for parts. It's wonderful you got it working and have preserved it. The first gen solid state computers are just as rare now days. boards filled with discrete transistors. Bravo from an old Intel engineer -
Well that's a good start to my Sunday! Brilliant work! I love that silly little bell too. Good job on Keysight for sending out that 4 channel scope, I'm sure it came in very handy.
Wow! The first computer I worked on in college. Seeing it and looking at the old schematics really brought back memories. Then you got it working. I was almost as excited as you to see that. What a fantastic job you did. Lots of hard work paying off. Thanks for making my day.
Ohhhh awesome! I think you're the first creator that I won't switch out on Patreon to support someone else, I only have money for one so.. :) Love your work. The bell going off is a thing I need in my computer. :)
Brilliant work... well worth the Patreonage. A 68 year old piece of computer history lives again...and executes. Be most interested to see what the mods in red wire do.
The successful technical troubleshooting of computers of this era is a thrill few in the world get the chance to experience. 100% well done, can't wait to see what other work is yet to come! Hoping for more future troubleshooting success! From: a fellow computer(Varian Data Machines V72) technician!
That bell triggered my ole memory banks but i can't nail it down to what computer i heard do that before. Just awesome how u bring these machines back to life. Luv it.
I discovered this series last week and binged it all up. This is definitely my favorite series on TH-cam. I can't believe this machine can still run into today's day and age. Keep up the good work, it's incredibly satisfying
_Omedetou gozai-masu, Usagi-san! Sore Bendixi-wa shiawase-imasu!_ (Congratulations, Master Rabbit! This Bendix is awesome! (if I remembered my grammar correctly, I'm implying that _it's alive_ ...)) Man, how does it _feel_ to know you have contributed in a huge way to restoring a piece of computing history? You oughta publish a thesis in the computer technology discipline. This is hot stuff!
shiawase is more like happy and lucky, which is fine. I think you want subarashii desu, but let's just add kakko-ii and erai-zo because this is just that awesome.
@@8bitwiz_ Thanks. I learned Japanese many years ago on Uchinaa (Okinawa), so my memory of the vocabulary may not be all it should be. It was decades later I discovered a lot of the words I thought were Nihongo were actually Uchinaa Guchi.
Jingle Bells are the old fashioned car horn, they were to warn pedestrians of an incoming sleight... This is why the original song with this name was about youngsters racing their one horse sleights and has nothing to do with xmas. The real lyrics and song is in youtube.
A great channel is one you watch even when you don’t know half of what they’re talking about! I make electronics videos, but this channel is just next next next level. Super inspiring. Keep it up!
Even thought i understand less then 1% of all the electronic and schematics stuff I think you guys are doing an amazing job. Also the quality of the videos is great. Sound is good, picture is good and the graphics on schematics and stuff like this is great too. Keep up the good work!
Dave, Congrats on the first diaper tape run. Cant wait to see the second tape execute. Does the typewriter have a ribbon loaded. If so and its dried out try this. We used to pull old ribbons off the printer and spray them with wd-40, let sit for 2 days and reload them. The ink came back and made passable output. Some old band printers were industrial only and getting the ribbons were impossible even the late 70's.
Congratulations from across the pond. I think this shows why it is so important to preserve history in a working manner. The thing is awesome. Your hard work has paid off. Well done.
I don't know a tenth of what you explain here, but it's fascinating and I'm learning. Thanks for your hard work. It's becoming critical to preserve these instruments. They are a huge part of history!
Woah, this is impressive work you did here. Congratulations! I've been following this video series about bringing back to life this Bendix G15. This behemoth actually executing instructions in 2024 is mind-blowing.
That is truly the most amazing thing I think ive seen with vintage computers, ever. To think how far back this goes into the roots of early computing and its almost now up and running again blows the mind. Awesome stuff, Usagi. Truly awesome.
This is incredible!!! I haven't seen a G-15 run since I was in high school (1965), where we had the FIRST computer located on a high school campus in the USA specifically for student use!! I was at the Smithsonian Museum of American History, in January 2004, and they have a G15 there with a Mag Tape drive on it. I don't know if it is working though. I look forward to seeing Diaper 2 episodes, and the further troubleshooting, and what those bodge wires are all about. Great Work!!!
This series has been so awesome to watch through. Truly a significant part of history being brought back to life. Can you make a short video on how you actually make that second paper tape? Can't wait to see this machine running some custom programs!
Truly wonderful. It’s so satisfying when a computer does something that has taken time to prepare for. Many time more satisfying when you have an antique computer like that come to life. Cracking job. Well done
Congratulations! This was so exciting to watch! It has been an awesome journey watching you get this far. I immediately wanted to share this video with some friends, but I realized I do not know anyone that gets a kick out of watching the problem solving involved, or get a boost of adrenaline every time a schematic is shown. THANK YOU for sharing! What a great way to start the day!
I love it! You guys have REALLY accomplished something here. Thanks so much for sharing this journey with us all along the way! I am certainly interested in the findings when you investigate the second part of the DIAPER program and the bodge wires. Fascinating and amazing stuff!
Every time that bell rings, a vacuum-tube angel gets its wings!
🥰
I love that film
A "vacuum-tube angel" sounds like a very nerdy Christmas tree ornament from the Upper Midwest. ;-)
That is exactly what I was thinking. Just in time for Christmas. The machine needs to be named Clarence.
It’s a wonderful tube computer.
Next video: "Well, the Bendix ran for seven and a half million years, and then printed 42."
Thanks for all the...
Fish
Apologies for the inconvenience
ROFL!
Ah, working perfectly then
I want a bell in my computer now.
A Bell that rings on every ASCII \BEL control character would be cool. I'm pretty sure there's a linux driver for an actual bell somewhere.
The bell is in the typewriter. I have programmed on a computer with a bell like that. Now that I am reminded of it, I find the memories to be fond ones. Debugging software on one of those older machines was in some ways easier than on the new ones. The guys who designed them planned on having to debug. It wasn't an after thought.
ASCII 7 gets you a bell. I don't think Unicode has a bell.
i guess you can just connect it to the pc speaker wires somehow if your machine is old enough
@@lvl90dru1d Somewhere I still have a little addition to DOS-EMU that I created that played a bell sound out the speakers any time a DOS program thought is was making the PC speaker go.
Amazing detective work on this. Congratulations! I am a trained operator of the world's oldest working digital computer (the Harwell Dekatron or WITCH) at the National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park and it is wonderful to see another first generation machine being brought back to life.
Thank you so much!
That's awesome that you get to get hands on with the WITCH! Bletchley Park is a bucket list destination for me. Someday!
I think you might be my new hero!
@@UsagiElectricbe sure to tell people if you plan a visit - i live in the same area
@@UsagiElectric Bletchley is such a trip to visit, and amazing docents and staff there and the computing musuem!!
Can I be you when I grow up? What a dream job.
"Hey, if it worked once, we CAN actually get it to work twice."
This here is the retrocomputing credo.
MASSIVE CONGRATULATIONS!!
That line gave me a 50 year flashback. As a young, green computer technician I approached an experienced coworker, showed her a flip card and said "Does this work?" And she said "Did it work before?" I replied "Yes.'" and she said "Worked before, works again!"
It just takes a little bit of stubbornness and not knowing when to quit and everything can work twice!
@@UsagiElectric I agree 100%, it's a lot of work but also incredibly rewarding, be it a full-blown vacuum tube computer, or a Commodore 64 - troubleshooting rules for digital computers basically remain the same, so for some part it's a bit easier to wrap your head in how they work. Vacuum tube and earliest transistor computers are just plainly difficult since you got so many wires in the backplanes to choose and crimp the oscilloscope probes onto.
@@Dr_Mario2007 I once told a professor I was helping that computers are like magic in that the most powerful component is belief. As long as you believe it can work you will continue tinkering until it does.
I've had an over 50 year career in electronic engineering, engineering test and debug and a lot of other engineering related stuff. The feeling of seeing something either come to life or come back to life is one of the best experiences I can get from a job. And given all the problems, read blocks and all you and your colleagues went through to get this amazing piece of history working, you definitely need to be excited. Looking forward to seeing the G15 go through all its tests and ultimately running some application code. Congratulations on a job well done.
Then there is the feeling you get when something works perfectly the first time - you look over your shoulder for weeks wondering when Karma is going to arrive to even the scales 🙂
You know the UE-1 needs a bell now too.
Only a ... dingaling ... would add a bell to the UE-1 ;)
It might be the teletype's bell. In the typewriter era, these were designed to warn of the imminent arrival of the right margin, but teletypes used them to notify operator, and they were added to the teletypes' coding system fairly early, definitely before the Bendix G-15 came out.
@@rileyfaelan true, and if the UE1 can be made to communicate via serial with a teletype then it's just a matter of sending the right bits for ASCII 07 (BEL). That's probably a big if though.
@@rileyfaelanthe bell is in the G15,
Its shameful that modern machines lack a bell. How can we even call them modern computers without one?
Congrats on this awesome achievement 👏👏👏! I’m sure it wants to hug you back. And Bob should make it coin operated to add to the bell ding vibe…
The huggable computer got a hug, but after I made sure it had cooled down, haha.
Keysight, you made a great investment here. Congratulations everyone!
Keysight really has been supportive of a lot of tinkerers, engineers, etc. I get that it's a form of marketing, but I think it's the best kind. Their equipment is pretty great, tracing their lineage through Agilent to the golden era of HP test equipment. So I appreciate that they hooked you up, their scopes are really expensive for a non-profession EE.
It makes pretty good sense; if there is a viewer base that is most likely to have people who are in a position to buy lab equipment or influence purchasing decisions for such, it would be those of this channel, CuriousMarc, and other vintage tech appreciation and restoration channels.
I used to work for Keysight, that scope is $20000+. Nice. :)
Does it usually loaned with sponsorship or given away? There's a lot of Keysight scoped used by TH-camrs to the point I don't know any other brand lol. But honestly 20k is a rounding error in current tech marketing spending.
That scope is in the best place it can be. Not on the expensive desk of some youtuber who whines about having only 1 terabyte of RAM, but in the hands of somebody who works on a computer with a rotating drum memory :)
Just looked at it on Mouser, and indeed it is 19.000€ before taxes. I wonder why it is THAT expensive...? 5GSa/s is quite substantial of course. But not quite needed for the Bendix. :)
@@robertosutrisno8604I think Rigol and Siglent are the brands to look at if Keysight isn't sponsoring you?
When I see so many youtubers endorse or show a particular beand or product in their videos it makes me very suspicious about the company and its quality, regardless of what it is. Advertising on youtube is generally a big red flag.
Man, diagnosing this is crazy enough... But could you imagine INVENTING it!? Like these schematics are crazy! Whose brain came up with this out of thin air
Damn man, you're the last guy i thought i would find here.
@@Ray-dx2pfkinda makes sense tho
Ah, I see you have the machine that goes 'ping!'. This is my favourite.
You see, we leased this machine back from the company we sold it to.
@@DiverCTH That way it comes under the monthly current budget and not the capital account.
@@johnopalko5223 Do you also have the most expensive machine? Just in case the administrator comes?
The best bit of television timing used to be James Burke’s intro before an Apollo rocket took off from the launchpad. This has now been trounced by the bell ringing at end of program on the wrap! Fantastic achievement and gripping television. Congratulations!
The fact that this computer needs a loaded diaper to run will never not be funny to me.
Ha ha 😂 same here 😅
No, it runs fine without it. You load the diaper in case the machine has pooped its pants and _doesn't_ run anymore. To examine the ... er ... entrails?
@@rileyfaelanWe must have another program. The 'ENDOScope' for monitoring what goes on inside of the computer in real-time by invading it's low-level backend with a rootkit. /j
Ethereal Nanny
Debugger/Daemon
Online
Scope
I do love the name DIAPER and that it’s an acronym. ENGINEER HUMOR FTW.
The DIAPER is for when it sh!ts itself
I hope that there's some organization out there getting ready to pin a medal on you and award you a prize! You've not only revived a piece of computing history, but you invited a worldwide audience into your lab repeatedly so we could see the blow-by-blow of how this magnificent work was done. I confess that despite building radio kits in the 1970s, majoring in computer science in the mid 1980s and even taking a class in logic circuits, I only understood maybe half of what you were doing, but I was fascinated every step of the way. I wish my dad were alive to see this. He wasn't a technology professional, but he enthusiastically followed developments in computers and was a relatively early adopter of personal computers. Your whole series on the Bendix G15 deserves to be on a Best of TH-cam list.
Bell 'dings', man smiles - Pavlov's computer engineer.
Congratulations!
Thanks, that really cracked us up!
The pure joy in your voice as each bell rings alone makes this video worth watching. It's just lovely to see someone experiencing a load of hard work paying off.
Wow amazing. The timing on that final bell ring flurry is chef's kiss! I did not know there was a connection between the G15 and Alan Turing/Tommy Flowers, which goes back to the vacuum tube Colossus and the war-time code breaking at Bletchley Park in the UK. That makes this actually running code again all the more special. Thank you so much.
Thank you!
It's wild to think that this machine has a direct connection to Colossus!
Whoa
I mean, all computers do. There hasn't been anything revolutionary about the computer since WW2, only evolutionary changes bringing over all the old cruft.
@@T-Ball-o Presumably the tubes doing much the same stuff, but now smaller as the diodes are not tube diodes, and the resistors have probably shrunk in size along with PCB tracing rather than all jump leads. I think Flowers was working on another machine (at Manchester?) but at the same time the British Govt wanted the technology secret in order to retain codes/codebreakability
Just wow! Seeing that thing running and producing output brought a tear to my eye. So amazing. Thank you so much to you and collaborators for all your effort.
Wow, that is a very generous donation from Keysight. I am jealous!
Also, holy cow! I am so excited. I can't believe it's running!!!
4 channels but no drum decode. I'd give the scope 4/5 stars.
I found your channel by sheer accident on my feed a few days ago. I am far, FAR from any sort of computer tech, let alone on ancient tube computers. I understand literally nothing about what your talking about beyond some very, very basic understanding of how the logic gates flow into one another (thanks to your explanations).
All that being said, your excitement for this old computer running is infectious. I've watched all your videos on the G15 just out of sheer excitement to see something this old and complex get brought back to life and to see someone so engrossed in their passion. I will definitely have to look at some of your other videos, especially on your home built vacuum tube computer.
Congrats on getting that thing up and running!
if it makes you feel any better, even for Elec Engs its like trying to study ancient Greek
yeah i have some notion about what things are supposed to be... but still its way beyond my paygrade
The most important thing to understand is that it's pretty amazing to be able to get a computer this ancient into a working state. And I think you understand that. This computer is from 1956! Imagine the concept of a 1950s computer! It's wild
More joy from a 0.00001 MIPS computer than from a 1000 MIPS computer. Life is good
Nice! And you hit 100K on the same day you release this! Congrats!🎉
Thank you so much!
It's been a wild ride this past week for sure!
@UsagiElectric Honestly I can't even wrap my head around how you look at something like this and say 'yeah, I'll fix that'. I almost bought an LGP-30 that was for sale up here but chickened out as soon as I heard 'rotating drum memory' (and shipping cost). Anyway well done. It's so cool to see something like this doing something in 2024 rather than in an old black and white film or in a cartoon like Duck Dodgers lol
I remember either late, late 60's or extremely early 70's seeing one of those in use at an administration office on an Air Force base. Most were replaced with newer equipment shortly after. But as a kid hearing those bells ringing every time some one typed something into the type writer it was fascinating. It was like something out of SciFi! When Dad had t go into the base on his days off he would take me with him. As a kid I could not go any further than the reception area. But the ladies there typing away, and the bells coming from the other room was mesmerizing. Plus as a child the ladies fawned over me giving treats and such. Sometimes the door would be open and you could see all the flashing lights. I was in awe. No idea what it was doing, but it was still amazing.
Congrats Dave! What a great start to the morning this news is!!! I'm totally happy for you, and thankful to Lloyd, System Source, everyone else who chipped in to make this amazing moment happen, a fidgety vacuum tube-based digital computer as old as my father up and running all over again! Utterly mind blowing. 😁
Glad to hear Tommy Flowers get a name check. Too few people know the role he played in early electronic computing.
especially as he was forbidden to even talk about designing Colossus
I remember seeing a brief TV interview with Tommy Flowers in the early 1990s. He was at home with an IBM PC, and I marvelled at how far we had come in a relatively short time with the efforts of people like him.
@@chriswareham I mostly knew about him as he was a telecoms engineer in the GPO research facility, my father and grandfather were also both telecoms engineers with the GPO. Whilst the details of his war work weren’t well known the fact that he’d had some involvement was and much of what he’d been doing before the war was so it wasn’t too hard to work out at least the broad strokes. Much of the initial circuit design that formed the basis of the early Bletchley Park machines was from work he’d done to develop an electronic telephone exchange to replace the electro-mechanical ones. When you get down to it, it’s all just flipping switches based on data being fed in.
All this computing stuff back in the 30s was a quantum leap for mankind. How did Turing and Flowers come up with this stuff?????
@@Dont_Gnaw_on_the_Kitty_1 Great minds think alike. Brilliant minds think alone. Turing thought alone. I've been to Bletchley Part and seen Flowers work. Definitely worth a visit..
I remember (barely) in the late '60s "programming" a G15 to calculate the quadratic equation. If the numbers were simple, we could get the answer first manually. It was in a small, hot room and gave a spooky aura when it was typing by itself. In the '70s I very briefly met Prof. Bill Tutte, a colleague of Turing. I had no idea of the connection of the G15 and Colossus.
As I've gotten older, these kind of memories have become more remarkable to me. I was born in 1980 and I have a hard time remembering things even from the 1990s sometimes! Amazing to think of someone in 2024 recalling memories from the 1960s! Sounds like you had a fascinating career.
The absolutely perfect timing of the bell going off when you say "ring" at 32:08 👌
and the 32:50 is absolute cinema "I wanna thank you all so much for watching - ding ding ding ding - and i hope to see you in the next episode"
The timing at the end couldn't have been more perfect. Congrats!
Congratulations on getting the Bendix going. I love your enthusiasm when you get something working.
In the summer of 1963, I went to the Summer Science Program in Ojai, California. One of the tasks was to calculate the orbit of an asteroid from observations made with a 16" reflector telescope. Over three nights, we took photographic plates of the estimated location of the asteroid and three adjoining stars (it moved with respect to the stars), mechanically measured their locations on the three plates, then calculated the orbit using two methods: logrithmic tables and Friden calculators, and using a Bendix G-15. The exposures of the plates took, if I remember correctly, several hours, and during that time the telescope needed to be held on a guide star using a primitive joy stick. The calculations on the Fridens meant meant keeping track of 10 digit numbers. For the G-15, we used a mechanical punch to enter the coordinates of the asteroid and stars on a paper tape and fed that into the computer. Needless to say, the computer was much quicker and there was less chance for mistakes. This was my first exposure to a computer - I ended up spending my career in the semiconductor industry.
That moment when something retro works again after so many years - that's what make it all worthwhile :-) Well done!
Well done! Many years ago, I worked for Burroughs. One of our customers got a new B800 and none of us techs could figure out what was wrong with it. So, we got a tech rep in from Chicago and he and I probed into this thing for an hour or two and nothing. Then, I noticed an anomaly on the flashing LEDs on the test board. Not an error, just a "Huh, that looks funny" sort of moment. These things used wire-wrapped backplanes, and one of the wires had turned a corner against a square(!) pin a bit too tightly and was just barely making contact. Replacing the (tiny red) backplane wire fixed it. Anyway, watching you get this old thing running brought back a bunch of old memories.
Holy crap! This is God tier status for retro computer repair. Amazing work by you, the discord, and everyone who helped along the way. More code please! :-)
32:49 "I wanna thank you all so much for watching DING DING DING DING" moment replay
That timing was ridiculously good.
Tommy Flowers is the true unsung hero of electronic computing.
As an electronics engineering student, this here is the kinda stuff that keeps me going. Thank you for this. What a fascinating world this era of computing was - hell every era of computing is
You're absolutely right. My favorite era was like 70s-80s but I'm biased.
Congrats, man! This is an achievement in vintage computing as incredible as it gets!
This sounded like you were commentating a nascar race, and holding that camera looked like a mic - very cool and very high energy, awesome to see this ALIVE!!
So exciting! And the bell is comedic to a certain extent - I laughed every time it rang knowing that another test passed. Congratulations to you and the rest of the brains that put this back online.
20:00 You have to wonder what abyss of debugging hell whoever was motivated to do that board surgery was staring down into decades ago.
But most important, now you have the machine that goes "ding!"
Congrats, everyone involved.
Great to see it finally running. I know it's been a huge amount of work.
Nice gesture from Keysight! Really like how they handle their marketing through youtube and also like their products.
May I be warning you for a mistake that is at least three times as likely on a 4ch scope than on a 2ch one? They all share the same ground. So please take care when measuring over isolated parts of the circuit or when they have different ground levels. Notoriously difficult are switch mode power supplies, but your tube-toys may also have AC and DC circuits that don’t share a common gnd level. Make sure your new precious scope is not providing those anxious electrons a path over which they hurry to the other side!
Yes, even when nondestructive this can cause a lot of misleading results. A lot of years ago now, I had three isolated scopes connected to a thing I was developing for exactly that reason. If you have a 100 foot cable between parts of a system, there is no such thing as "ground"
I only connect one lead ground and remove the rest of the ground clips. Popped breakers a couple times before that. Would love to have a set of diff probes one day.
This - so much this. I learned the hard way while diagnosing a high-voltage system that scope grounds can be trouble. I now use a ground isolation transformer when possible, but at the time, the best we could manage was an unplugged UPS.
Notably, the scope was fine. The device we were testing? Not so much.
@@maurvir3197 We had built plexiglass enclosures for our Tek scope floated at between 3,000 and 30 kV depending on the test station ... this was for use during development of grid-controlled TWT based airborne transmitters .. those were the days! I actually got mildly shocked from 115V 400 Hz 3 phase, but never the HV stuff ... i was reaching around a 3 phase 115V breaker and the top contacts/screw studs were the 'hot ones ...
Hats off to Keysight! In a world where 99.9999999% of advertising is just annoying, irrelevant NOISE interrupting our content. It's good that Keysight can advertise their products by being helpful to people. :)
Mazel Tov, David! My son and I have been watching your channel for a couple of years now. Your getting the Bendix running has been AWESOME! This may seem strange coming from a stranger, but I'm very proud of you! Amazing work!
I love following this restoration project of yours. It's awesome and amazing that you have made it this far given the age of the parts involved. I look forward to all your updates - and lastly - of course all your fuzzy friends showcased at the closing of all your videos.😊
There's no way you timed that "Thank you all so much for watching" so perfectly! Anyway, I got to see a (non-functional) G15 recently in the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. I hope someday I'll get to see this one working in person at System Source. Congratulations!
Well done, Dave! I was thinking that you are now in possession of one of the simplest vacuum tube computers ever built and also one of the most complex vacuum tube computers ever built. I am so glad to see them in the same room together. It really gives us a neat perspective on how it all happened back in those heady days when all of this was brand spanking new. It sill amazes me that the engineers back then could design something so complex, look at those freakishly complex plans and say "Yeah, I can build that!"
The bell was totally amazing and I pretty much jumped when the printer hit the cabinet. And shout out to Keysight for donating such an excellent scope. Most of all kudos to you Dave. It has been a grind and sometimes I even feel kinda guilty when you look like you haven't had enough sleep and let your beard go for way too long (I see why so many engineers have beards now!), just to let us share in the amazing stuff you do. Well, you have earned your place in nerd history now, but we know you are not one to rest on your laurels and I can't wait to see what else you have for us in future!
"It Freakin Works!" to quote Adrian Black. So great to see it starting to work. It was like once the Bendix G15 started it wasn't going to stop until it had finished running all the code on the first paper tape. Keep up the good work Dave and team.
Your sheer excitement was conveyed perfectly. Congrats on executing code!
Blinken lights! Congrats to you and everyone who helped... that's amazing. thanks for all the vids.
Simply awesome!
I actually punched the air at that first bell. 🎉
What an achievement!
Please put a physical bell and bell instruction in the UE-1 🥰
MASSIVE success! And the imminent 100K subs will be another one - what better occasion than fixing the Bendix and having the oldest working computer on the American soil, thanks to you and a bunch of really smart people? CuriousMarc would be proud. Celebration time coming up... RealSoon!
You're truly going major leagues with the Keysight. Well deserved. And knowing that you fixed its grand grandfather, the HP 150A, is friggin' epic.
I literally took my hat off to you, Sir. It's winter in Canada and I'm outdoors. Been following the project from day 1 ... this episode was simply unforgettable. BRAVO. 👊
Just loved this episode. The culmination of a lot of hard work over a long time, resulting in an absolutely resounding success. Well done and many congratulations!
On behalf of the Harrison family, whose basement the G-15 serial #238(and 3 others) resided since the late 1960's, we were so excited to see it up and running. It brought back childhood memories of our dad J. H. Harrison proudly showing them off to friends and relatives. It was amazing to watch the mesmerizing lights, listen to the bell ring, and the teal color made them seem science fiction. Congratulations and fantastic(probably often tedious) work by you Dave and big congratulations to owner Bob Roswell at System Source Museum....he loves bringing old technology back to life. We hope and plan to be there when it comes back to Maryland.
After all that work, congratulations! (DING!) You have leveled up!
Beautiful and very clean early computer. When I was a kid (about 1962) there was a company selling these near the old LA airport for parts. It's wonderful you got it working and have preserved it. The first gen solid state computers are just as rare now days. boards filled with discrete transistors. Bravo from an old Intel engineer -
Well that's a good start to my Sunday! Brilliant work! I love that silly little bell too. Good job on Keysight for sending out that 4 channel scope, I'm sure it came in very handy.
Wow! The first computer I worked on in college. Seeing it and looking at the old schematics really brought back memories. Then you got it working. I was almost as excited as you to see that. What a fantastic job you did. Lots of hard work paying off. Thanks for making my day.
Ohhhh awesome! I think you're the first creator that I won't switch out on Patreon to support someone else, I only have money for one so.. :) Love your work. The bell going off is a thing I need in my computer. :)
The way that you explain things like how the computing is done and how to read the diagrams is superb, super stoked you finally got it to run man!
Brilliant work... well worth the Patreonage.
A 68 year old piece of computer history lives again...and executes.
Be most interested to see what the mods in red wire do.
The successful technical troubleshooting of computers of this era is a thrill few in the world get the chance to experience.
100% well done, can't wait to see what other work is yet to come!
Hoping for more future troubleshooting success!
From: a fellow computer(Varian Data Machines V72) technician!
SO EPIC!!!.. What a Legend!!! Thanks so much for bringing us along on this journey!!!
That bell triggered my ole memory banks but i can't nail it down to what computer i heard do that before. Just awesome how u bring these machines back to life. Luv it.
Congratulations! I was at System Source yesterday and heard the good news.
Oh, this was a fantastic watch! Soo lovely seeing this beauty back in service :)
Amazing!!!! I'm glad I could witness this amazing restoration! Thank you for sharing!!
I discovered this series last week and binged it all up. This is definitely my favorite series on TH-cam. I can't believe this machine can still run into today's day and age. Keep up the good work, it's incredibly satisfying
_Omedetou gozai-masu, Usagi-san! Sore Bendixi-wa shiawase-imasu!_ (Congratulations, Master Rabbit! This Bendix is awesome! (if I remembered my grammar correctly, I'm implying that _it's alive_ ...))
Man, how does it _feel_ to know you have contributed in a huge way to restoring a piece of computing history? You oughta publish a thesis in the computer technology discipline. This is hot stuff!
shiawase is more like happy and lucky, which is fine.
I think you want subarashii desu, but let's just add kakko-ii and erai-zo because this is just that awesome.
@@8bitwiz_ Thanks. I learned Japanese many years ago on Uchinaa (Okinawa), so my memory of the vocabulary may not be all it should be. It was decades later I discovered a lot of the words I thought were Nihongo were actually Uchinaa Guchi.
Yes, "shiawase imasu" refers to a happy living thing. (Japanese has a different form of 'to be' for inanimate objects.)
@@johnprenis6059 arimasu?
Your excitement is entirely warranted! This is incredibly cool.
It seems a little bit early for jingle bells, but I think "Job Done" counts as jingle bells. 😀
Jingle Bells are the old fashioned car horn, they were to warn pedestrians of an incoming sleight... This is why the original song with this name was about youngsters racing their one horse sleights and has nothing to do with xmas. The real lyrics and song is in youtube.
A great channel is one you watch even when you don’t know half of what they’re talking about! I make electronics videos, but this channel is just next next next level. Super inspiring. Keep it up!
The first G15 video is how I initially discovered your channel. Super happy to see it come fully alive finally!
Even thought i understand less then 1% of all the electronic and schematics stuff I think you guys are doing an amazing job. Also the quality of the videos is great. Sound is good, picture is good and the graphics on schematics and stuff like this is great too. Keep up the good work!
Dave, Congrats on the first diaper tape run. Cant wait to see the second tape execute. Does the typewriter have a ribbon loaded. If so and its dried out try this. We used to pull old ribbons off the printer and spray them with wd-40, let sit for 2 days and reload them. The ink came back and made passable output. Some old band printers were industrial only and getting the ribbons were impossible even the late 70's.
Congratulations from across the pond. I think this shows why it is so important to preserve history in a working manner. The thing is awesome. Your hard work has paid off. Well done.
Thats awesome! I'm insanely happy about seeing you making it run, literally shivers down the spine! Fantastic job done by you and the guys!
I don't know a tenth of what you explain here, but it's fascinating and I'm learning. Thanks for your hard work. It's becoming critical to preserve these instruments. They are a huge part of history!
What an achievement David. I'm in awe at you, Lloyd and bobs determination. Totally brilliant
Woah, this is impressive work you did here. Congratulations! I've been following this video series about bringing back to life this Bendix G15. This behemoth actually executing instructions in 2024 is mind-blowing.
Unbelievable, awesome job!
Will visit system source from Europe, when the g15 is back.
That is truly the most amazing thing I think ive seen with vintage computers, ever. To think how far back this goes into the roots of early computing and its almost now up and running again blows the mind. Awesome stuff, Usagi. Truly awesome.
WHO RANG THAT BELL?!?! We did, we've come to see the wizard...
This is incredible!!! I haven't seen a G-15 run since I was in high school (1965), where we had the FIRST computer located on a high school campus in the USA specifically for student use!! I was at the Smithsonian Museum of American History, in January 2004, and they have a G15 there with a Mag Tape drive on it. I don't know if it is working though. I look forward to seeing Diaper 2 episodes, and the further troubleshooting, and what those bodge wires are all about. Great Work!!!
Congratulations! It's Alive!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Absolutely flabbergasted by this achievement! You guys are geniuses. This whole series is better than a thriller movie.
My admirative congratulations.
Congrats! It's good to have a win.
This series has been so awesome to watch through. Truly a significant part of history being brought back to life. Can you make a short video on how you actually make that second paper tape? Can't wait to see this machine running some custom programs!
Congratulations on the awesome win!
Truly wonderful. It’s so satisfying when a computer does something that has taken time to prepare for. Many time more satisfying when you have an antique computer like that come to life. Cracking job. Well done
Amazing work!.....but now you've gone and done it...the temptation to have the bell character on modern machines actually ring a bell is too strong 🤣
congrats, seeing this working makes me so happy.
cant imagine how much joy it would of been seeing it run in the 50s.
Wow, you guys are legends. Amazing!
Congratulations! This was so exciting to watch! It has been an awesome journey watching you get this far. I immediately wanted to share this video with some friends, but I realized I do not know anyone that gets a kick out of watching the problem solving involved, or get a boost of adrenaline every time a schematic is shown. THANK YOU for sharing! What a great way to start the day!
The machine just called me! It said, "what do you mean it's 2024? That's imPOSSible!"
I love it! You guys have REALLY accomplished something here. Thanks so much for sharing this journey with us all along the way!
I am certainly interested in the findings when you investigate the second part of the DIAPER program and the bodge wires. Fascinating and amazing stuff!