(For those wondering: It looks like the oldest still-running digital computer on Earth is the 'Wolverhampton Instrument for Teaching Computation from Harwell which dates to the early 1950s and is at the National Museum of Computing in Bletchley Park.)
Important to note that Usagi said "in North America" in the video. It does make me wonder what the current oldest functioning digital computer in NA is. It is hard to research since it doesn't seem that anybody is out there publicizing themselves as owning the oldest one in NA. Once the Bendix is running, it really seems like a golden opportunity for System Source to get some more visitors by publicizing that fact.
I would suggest connecting the clock track to one channel and the timing track to the other channel of your DSO and capturing the waveform with the highest memory depth your scope supports. That way you have a backup that could potentially be used to recover it if anything happens.
I second this. That way, if worst comes to worst you have a backup, and you can use it to restore the other drum when you get around to resurfacing it.
It's an excellent idea! However, the clock track is just a simple sine wave with 3,596 pulses per rotation. That can be recreated with any signal generator with ease. The timing track is a little more tricky, but again, we know exactly what it should look like thanks to the documentation. The really tricky part when rewriting those tracks is synchronizing it perfectly to the rotational speed of the drum and motor. At a perfect 60Hz with a new motor and good bearings, it should rotate at exactly 30 Revolutions Per Second or 1,800 RPM. That should result in a clock track frequency of 107.8kHz. But, as we saw on ours, we were rotating a little slow. That means that even if we got an exact copy of the timing track, laying it back down would be not quite possible if the RPM of the drum has changed even slightly. Knowing exactly what the timing track and clock track look like means we can drop a hall-effect sensor on the drum and use a microcontroller to perfectly synchronize everything and drop new tracks down if we need to. So, fret not, we're well equipped to replicate those tracks if anything ever happens!
The documentation is beautiful in its own way. What always impresses me about these vintage computers (even 1970s and 1980s home computers) is how rapidly they seemed to be developed from concept to manufacture without (obviously) the benefit of modern computers to assist in designing them and managing their development. A lot of talent and hard work!
my first job at Control Data (1967) was in the systems refurbishment group (G15's, G20's, 160''s 160A's 8090's 1604's etc). I'd like to tell you that I remember everything about a G15 but I don't, wait I do remember 1 thing... if it's not working, open the doors, turn off the light and look for the blue tube and replace it. in 1968 the US government 31 G15 under contract.
I had my first experience with programming on one of these machines back in 1964 when I worked at a weather station in the Marshall Islands. I programmed the computer to process radiosonde readings that had previously been treated manually. Can't wait for you to get that paper tape reader going!
Wow i did not realise this was the first computer Ken Thompson ever used. The change this machine made to the world is quite possibly incalculable, if its what got the guy who wrote Unix hooked
And it gets even crazier when you throw in that the designer, Harry Huskey, worked closely with Alan Turing and the G15 is inspired by Turing's ACE computer. This thing is definitely a historically significant machine, and I'm so excited to see it wake up and stretch its legs again!
I love how you sidestepped all the comments about how you hooked up the AC wrong by telling everyone you did it exactly the way people think it should be done. Classic, well played!
But then he shows us a plug which looks like a NEMA 10-50 which is 200% the wrong plug to use. It's the incorrect configuration (used for _ungrounded_ 240v hookups) and on top of that it's banned for _all_ new work, only being allowed in some replacement scenarios where fed from the main service panel and no ground wire is present.
I appreciate your proper caution in the power-on testing. You are saving yourself much potential grief. Seeing the filament load decrease as each voltage step settles was fun. The heaters increase in resistance as the warm up and that causes the voltage to ramp betweek the steps. Do consider powering the DC supplies externally the first time and ramp up the applied AC voltage slowly to re-form the capacitors and limits any surge current from unforeseen faults. I know you will have already checked the resistance across the DC main busses as the first step. The ghosts of Engineers Past will be watching over you as you proceed 😀
Congrats David! That was probably the first time in decades the 'Big Switch' was thrown with power applied. I can't wait to see how the revival of the G-15 evolves. BTW, great meeting you at System Source when you did the drum swap. I'm they guy you borrowed the Swiss Army Knife from.
Thanks! And thanks for lending the Swiss Army knife! Eventually, once this machine is up and running and back at System Source, we'll do demonstrations and let people get hands on with it for sure. It's just too cool not to share with everyone in person!
Drum bearings try to pull the drum out, and get it on it's side. Then take the bearing facing up, and warm it up a little after cleaning, and apply some EP90 gear oil to the edge of the steel dust shield, to make a thin layer on the seal, and let the bearing cool down, which should allow some to enter past the seal, and mix with the old grease there and revive it. Leave overnight with it up, and next day clean off the excess, and turn so the other side is up, and do the same warm up to around 70C, and apply the oil, and allow to cool and pull some past the seal. Quick fix is to make a sort of dam there if not moving the drum, and fill with the oil, and leave the bearing half covered overnight, so it can seep past the dust shield into the grease there, and give it some lighter oil components again, and reconstitute it a little. Otherwise you need to gently pry the shield off, and then pack with a little moly based grease, and put the cover back on. Look for the same bearings, and order a cheap one, and sacrifice the bearing, using a grinder, to get the shields off them, and thus get new ones if you damage the old ones pulling them off. Have done this to a lot of bearings, especially where a new one was either not available, or needed a lot of specialised tooling not available to set the preloads, and the lube would get you another few years of running out of them.
A simple and safe modification you can do to help preserve the clock and timing tracks is to put a ~470pf capacitor of any type in series with the read heads. This will create a high pass filter set at ~60khz. the timing signals should pass through unmolested while any dc bias created by a shorted tube or other malfunction will be blocked. You can verify this by probing pin 2 of the appropriate preamp tube socket before and after the modification. you ~may~ need to adjust the gain pot (R7 on the schematic) up a tad to compensate, but you just have to make the trace look the same before/after the modification. Worst case you'll lose 2-3 cycles of the track in a short. if you want to be extra paranoid you should be able to lower that cap to 220pf, and then it should be nearly impossible for the tracks to self-destruct; though there may not be enough gain adjustment left to compensate. Regardless, it's a simple modification with little to no risk and nearly perfect reversibility, should that be desired, but great reliability gains.
I know this may be too late, but get/borrow a 4 channel logging scope, record & save on a PC the clock timing and control tracks with the index all in parallel for each single revolution so you have record of how to recreate those tracks if you ever need to recreate them on another drum which may have been damaged to needs to be resurfaced. Otherwise if you ever need to regenerate those tracks, you may need to recreate the original hardware which did so.
The seals on those bearings will, if done carefully, just pop out. The seals are only designed to keep dust out and are just a push in seal. Careful use of a dentists pick will get them to pop out. I would flush the bearings with cleaner and then refill with grease. The seals can thun be poped back in. Also, just before you shut it off the first time you can see the string on the top fan vent start to blow up. So atleast that fan is working somewhat.
The "bearing noise" might be a dragging co-axial brake on the drum motor. Marvelous to watch it come up again. Wish the yUK Science Museum would find the courage to try the same on their Ferranti Pegasus. Good luck with the Sprague condensors (capacitors) as those are going to be difficult to replace if they are sickly.
It also might be a dragging brush. That style of GE Repulsion Induction motor starts with carbon brushes and switches to induction at speed. There is a centrifugal clutch that pulls the brushes away after starting, and that might be gummed up.
For those Siglent scopes, if you want to see the full sequence, you'll need to zoom out and stop the capture, then you can zoom back in and scroll across until you find the start of the sequence. You can also safely enable the 20Mhz bandwidth limit to help reduce the noise on the trace, and you should also be able to increase the number of points that it captures (although that may decrease the update frequency at the expense of a nicer stopped trace). That said, I'm hugely relieved that you're seeing the expected signals and also filament voltage. This definitely bodes well for the future of this machine. Those definitely look like selenium rectifiers, although I'm not hugely familiar with these early semiconductors. I feel like silicon diodes weren't that common until sometime in the 60s? Maybe be prepared with some extra ventilation just in case. Apparently selenium diodes smell pretty bad when they blow.
For bearings - a lot of bearings are standardized, I doubt that they have used some custom size bearings. There should be a four digit number of the bearing like 6202 or a five digit number. Then there could be some letters like 2RS that indicates a sealed bearing. Try out a replacement on the damaged drum and see if it's feasible. It would be even cooler if you could get someone to resurface the damaged drum.
CONGRADULATIONS! A Big first step, glad the drum is spinning and talking! Harry Huskey has got to be smiling also! Wish I still had some of my G15 programs I wrote in the day! Looked for them but no luck! Glad that you are taking slow steps to bring the baby up and working again!
I have no idea what is going on, these computers are way too old and analogue for me to really understand, but your enthusiasm alone deserves a like! :)
My nerves were jangling when you went for the Big Power, ye gods. I never thought I'd see a G15 ever, aside from history books, and suddenly there's 2 and you have one and it's on the way do being powered up! Awesome. All the best to you and Mrs Usagi from across the little pond.
Thanks for sharing this. It brings back awesome memories working on similar systems with the military back in the 80s. Yes folks we were not always bleeding edge. Working second shift, TS with old school schematics, drinking coffee and listening to the radio. Some great times for sure.
Oh wow, it's aliiiiiiive! I always am watching out for updates on G15, because man, this is a restoration project for the history books. The excitement you have for this machine is just infectious! I hope the restoration goes smoothly from this moment on and we see this hulking behemoth crunching numbers like it's 1950s again!
The orange rectifiers stamped "Federal 1101A" are selenium type for sure, they look to be in good condition, are unlikely to be bad and would probably leave them alone. The big black ones are selenium as well and are probably also okay, they are tricky to replace since they have a high internal resistance between stacks resulting in lower rectified voltages compared to silicon diodes. If the capacitor bank has no shorts in it the big rectifiers are probably also okay, the biggest problem with the old can caps is capacitance can check great but leakage breaks down when they have full voltage and ripple current applied so watch out for that! I would pull one out and do a test with it, maybe make a DC supply with a load and see if it holds up for minimal leakage and ripple. If it doesn't hold up none of those cap cans are trustworthy as they are likely from the same batch and will all start to fail at which point I would just change them all which will also save those fragile rectifiers from burning out as well.
This is such an exciting project! I love seeing the Bendix G15 come to life. It scares me a little bit to see computers that were built during my lifetime being displayed in computer museums. I was 2 years old when this Bendix was built, but I've worked on some of it's descendants including the PDP-8 and PDP-11 both at the DEC factory and in the field.
I want to comment on your channel in general. Seeing the various projects and working through them "with" you is like a refresher course in the old technology. Seeing you interact with those such as Curious Marc and building a comaradare with them, priceless!
Wow, what an amazing project! It's baffling to see what engineering marvels were done back then. I had the privilege to see a working Zuse Z23 from 1961(?) executing code in March 2020, in Erlangen, Germany. Also with drum memory, slowly (and noisily) spinning up over a long time... That's the already transitorized variant of the Zuse Z22 (design 1955) that also uses vacuum tubes, like the G15. A Z22 still in working order exists in Karlsruhe, Germany.
I'm really glad you went with solid 2AWG gold and titanium wires with dupont connectors as I would wanted. Better keep the fire extinguisher handy when in use tho
If not for early systems like this one, DEC, IBM and others, our modern smart phones, raspberry pies and so many advanced tech systems would not exist. Thanks for your amazing work to restore one of the MANY shoulders, our modern technology stand on !!
Very cool to see this machine working! We had a G-15 in our museum for many years, but we didn't have the knowledge or expertise to get it working. So wonderful to see this machine actually working. Can't wait to see your progress!
Magnetic media is really quite reliable, despite claims to the contrary. As long as the material doesn't get heated past its Curie temperature, doesn't get exposed to strong magnetic fields, or has some ridiculously thin/unreliable coating, any stored data should last for a very long time. In the case of the Bendix I think they also went out of their way to ensure long-term reliability, hence the spare clock track.
There exists a number of hard disks there the timming data ie servo is on a separate platter - bad servo data platter - that disk is a boat anchor. AND a number of them (ST256 ? ie 40 years?) STILL WORKS TODAY !!!
This is exciting for me too, because at Skyline High School ( Oakland California ) in 1969 and 1970, I got to play with the Bendix G-15. At that time, I was only interested in having fun, so my skill set never progressed beyond using INTERCOM 550. I had 1 hour each day, and ( somewhat sadly, in retrospect ) my time was spent writing what I called the " G-15 Trash Bulletin. " In the summer of 1969, I was also able to spend many hours , along with a friend, using the G-15 that was at the Chabot Science Center, located ( at that time ) on Mountain Blvd, just a short distance from my home. I am waiting anxiously for the next phase of this project !
Had a little chuckle to myself at the power circuit wiring comment but it did get me thinking. There's really not a lot of places with general power circuits, wall socket type things that you plug your TV etc into, that could actually carry this beast. The UK's 32A 230V ring circuit with an appropriately chunky step down transformer would manage it at around 24A on the primary side. The actual normal outlet wouldn't cope with it, 13A is their limit I think.
In the UK we also have 45A 230V radial circuits for ovens, electric showers etc., which gives you 10kW. Pretty much every house and flat has them as long as it's got a 100A feed to the premises, which has been the norm for many decades.
Pretty freaking great. Last night you're singing from the moon, today you're resurrecting this behemoth. Thanks for the work preserving history and thanks for bringing us so much joy.
Here I thought my boss's 1984 Ikegai AX25 was the loudest machine around! Get some ear protection, better safe. Really cool seeing this fired up, thanks for all the effort. Merry Christmas & here's to a healthy 2024!
By coincidence, I visited the UK's National Museum of Computing at Bletchely Park last week and saw the Harwell Dekatron - later known as the Wolverhampton Instrument for Teaching Computing from Harwell (WITCH). It's the world's oldest digital computer, dating back to 1952, and mostly uses telephone exchange technology. Amazing to see it operating in person - if you ever get across to the UK, a visit to Bletchley Park and the NMoC is well worth the time!
wow man! That's a hair over 5KW to power on. Sir, you always make the coolest and most interesting videos. Definitely one of the top 10 best channels on the entire platform and you should have a million subscribers. (a million and one, including myself). Merry Chrisstmas and all good wishes through 2024!
I'm really surprised they didn't design this for 240 V like most heavy equipment (even domestic kitchen appliances and AC compressors). Or even 277 V like large commercial/industrial lighting and bigger motors. This isn't something that would have sat in a small office, let alone home office, where all you'd have available is 120 V.
Congratulations! This was an amazing achievement, and honestly I was amazed that so much of the mechanics and magnetics of this old thing still are apparently working fine. Can't wait to see the further progress.
Better watch those selenium rectifiers. Chances are some are bad and the rest may fail after some amount of use. You can replace with silicon diodes if you put a series resistor with them.
Very cool first start David! Your methodical approach to making sure all elements are actually _ready_ to have power put to them, is vital to getting a working machine in the endgame. I'm amazed that drum has actually retained the clock and timing signals after all these years. All in all, the drum doesn't sound any worse than the old Seagate ST 225 MFM drive in my old IBM AT did when I was running it regularly, and it worked fine! Looks like the caps in that tape drive are a little 'fuzzy'. Probably due for replacement for sure. The electrolytics in the DC bank may or may not come back with reforming.😉 It wouldn't be a crime to replace them with their modern counterparts though, for continued reliability.😊 Looking forward to more on this old tank!😄👍👍
To maintain visual authenticity in a restoration, Mr. Carlson (Mr. Carlson’s Lab) will sometimes replace components by hiding the modern equivalent either inside the original after he hollows out the guts, or else simply leaving the original in place, but taking it out of the circuit and relocating the replacement to an inconspicuous location, usually on the opposite (generally unseen) side of the circuit board or chassis.
14:51 Shortly after you said "Woah! Something else clicked.", you can see that little piece of yarn tied to one of the fans on the other side in the top started fluttering. I think that was just the relay for those fans, and maybe the big bottom fan.
You know you have the good gear when it has oiling points and a sequencer to bring things up in order :) Love the AC adjust knob too. Computers now are so boring!
Great video! Your videos encouraged me about a year ago to fire up the PDP-11/23+ and large drives. Had a few bad Sprague caps I had to replace. Hopefully, you will show your process for reformatting the caps in the G-15. Unlike when I powered the PDP-11, I want to test the caps in my Vax 11/30 next before power up which had not been powered up since I purchased it off a BBS swap page in 1994. I am also worried that when I moved, I didn’t lock down the heads. Thanks for the videos.
It’s Christmas day down here in New Zealand, I’ve got shingles and my Dad has had chemo so I’m staying away from my family and it’s just me & the cat. This video is the best present ever. Can’t wait to see it up and running, good you cut your teeth on the Centurion, this seems like a very well engineered piece if equipment and quite amazing such a complicated machine still functions after all these years. Merry Christmas to you and yours 🎅🎄💝
I can totally see him hook up a teletypewriter to it, turn it on, install a short paper tape in the reader, hit start, the machine reads the paper tape and the teletype spits out "HELLORLD"
It's so cool to watch and listen to this thing come to life. From a screeching, fighting start to the bearings smoothing out and reading the clocks. Crazy man, love what you are doing. Merry Christmas!
a 50a 120v circuit in a regular home is something special, but 50a 240v for an electric stove/range is pretty common. You would use the same type of wire for 120v, but only one side of the 240v.
With sealed bearings that have a rubber shield,you can poke a syringe through the rubber,and squirt a little thin oil inside. Thicker oil can be hard to squirt through the needle of the syringe. If there's enough of a gap with a metal shield,sometimes you can use the syringe to squirt a little oil between the shield and inner race.
About the reforming of the caps, for the domestic devices I usually just use a HV DC bench power supply, limited to about 10mA, and slowly bring it up. I just connect it after the rectifier or anywhere the B+ is located (sometimes I just use a magic eye B+ line, as it is normally exposed). So I doubt you would need to take all the caps out. Also about the selenium rectifiers, they should also be dim-bulbed if possible. They are self-healing, but their healing current can be too large if not limited and they could destroy themselves. Despite what the internet says, those are usually okay. If worn out, their output voltage drops, like a worn rectifier tube... but this happens after 10-15k hours of use
Great progress, those bearings definitely need some love. Watch out for those orange selenium rectifiers in the paper tape mechanism, I’ve had many blow up and fill the room with acrid smoke
The drum motor appears to be an old GE Repulsion Induction model. I have a nearly identical one running my shop compressor. They start up using carbon brushes, but then switch to induction when running at speed. It allows a cleaner start without a big capacitor and inrush current. The bad noise you hear might be dragging brush, there is a centrifugal system to lift them away once the motor has started. Yours is probably gummed up, but it’s an easy fix to clean and re-grease it.
Amazing, I love seeing stuff from this era working, so thank you for the efforts involved (which must've been no small feat). Please put the old gal to use, these machines were meant to be.
For the power that's easy! Just use half of a 220 breaker, OR, just a good old fashion screw in fuse. As long as the wire gauge is sufficient either will work fine.
Whew, just took this video off the backlog, haha. Pure awesomeness indeed! Waiting for DC reset after any recombobulation necessary. The chart reminds me of modern OS bootcharts. Some things don't change :).
Congratulations! You turned it on and it didn't go bang! Brave man. The only safety device on the supply side of the main switch was ..... ? Anyway, it's good to know you got it this far. For servicing there is a DC safety lockout switch, as I am sure you know, which prevents the DC Reset button doing anything when you don't intend it to. Looking at the G15 Theory of Operation docs, that procedure they promised on page 17 that Customer Engineering could supply for repairing a clock track in the field looks as though it was going to be limited to making a fresh copy of the clock track off the spare track, thus they would automatically be in sync. Making a fresh one from scratch, though ... ? Is the drum motor a synchronous motor relying on the AC mains frequency? I can't see anything else in the schematics. So could the motor be powered independently from a synthesised frequency supply? You quote the motor's specified rotational speed as 1800 rpm. If the clock has precisely 3596 pulses per revolution, and you were getting a frequency at the head output of 106.486kHz, then that drum must have been spinning at 1776.74 rpm. Is your grid AC supply frequency really so low at 59.22 Hz? I thought that the tolerance In the US was +/- 0.05Hz, and that is way off. A figure that low would normally indicate fairly severe grid overloading -- or is this symptomatic of the way you are powering the device? A slower clock speed will mean lengthened pulses in all of the system timing. Are you sure that will be within tolerance, as I see there are considerably precise expectations in the relationship between the various pulses? Might it be a good idea to see if you can drive that drum motor independently of the mains frequency?
Incredible and good work. Both for those designing this machine in the first place in the days, and to you David for the restauration of it! thank you for sharing this!
you should be able to pop the black seal off the bearing with a pick. if u wanna clean the old grease out use some solvent, otherwise just pack in some new grease.
Wonderful! Very happy to see this working (to the extent it is.) Thanks for your effort on this machine! While I really respect your work here, I don't have much experience with vacuum tubes. Loving to learn from watching you. With mechanical things having bearings, I have worked on them quite a lot. The squeal from ball bearings is almost always due to sliding of the rolling elements due to dried grease. Since you can't get the bearings out of the drum to clean and service them; your idea of using a needle is a good idea. You may want to inject a light oil as opposed to grease, because pretty much any light oil (just a few drops) will help to dilute and soften the grease. Adding grease opens up the worry that it could be incompatible with the existing grease and worsen the problem. I've had good luck adding Lucas Chain lube (aerosol) to sealed bearings to help them out. I would spray it into a syringe and then use the needle to inject it drop at a time. Definitely don't risk spraying the aerosol near the drum and getting oily spots on the coating.
Hi! Maybe - once you finish your vacuum tube computer - you can program it yourself to do unit tests on the logic modules from the Bendix G15? Now THAT would be epic! Using one vacuum tube computer to test another vacuum tube computer! Worthy of the next VCF show! Of course, I don’t expect you to lug the entire G15 up there, just a copy of one of the (tube) logic modules. 😂
Awesome. I think I'm going to get to go to System Source when I pick up a car I purchased not far from it. Wish this was there so I could see it. Amazing work. BTW, I'd love a segment on some.of those crazy cars I see in your video like that Honda Beat too!
Wonderful work! Your joy and enthusiasm is infectious! Merry Christmas Eve! I sincerely doubt there are many out there who would put in the level of care and commitment that you put in. It's great to see it!
So exciting to see signs of life from the old machine! What a mind-bending thought that the 'clock signal' for the machine comes from a magnetic drum; given that it's using the drum as 'RAM', though, it makes some sense.
Those are selenium rectifiers recommend to change all of them because they will cause you problems in the long run . I’ve been in electronics for 57 years TV broadcast
congratulations! an exciting step forward for sure. and to all those folks who talk about selenium rectifiers failing and putting out nasty-smelling smoke: have you personally experienced this, or are you repeating something you heard from someone else? genuinely curious to hear from you IF you've personally experienced it.
I guess I remember selenium rectifiers like that from an old movie theater projection booth? Would they have used them? (The projectors originally had carbon arcs, but had long since been upgraded to 1970s era Xenon lamps). My recollection was that they were more or less out in the open where you could touch the plates if your were foolish enough.
I haven't personally seen one catastrophically fail and put out smoke but I have had a weak one which got hot and started to smell. If I let it continue I wouldn't be surprised if it let out all the smoke. I've also heard firsthand accounts of them putting out the nasty smoke (most recently from Bob Anderson @bandersentv) and I'm sure other channels working on old radios/TVs will have similar stories. You can probably find videos showing them failing, just like there are tons of vintage computer channels which have captured failing RIFA capacitors.
@@eDoc2020 Can confirm, selenium rectifiers were used in a lot of old radio equipment. They have a... unique smell when they get hot. Although my understanding is that selenium compounds are similar to sulfur compounds in that they tend to stink to high Heaven. But worse.
Amazing project and what a milestone. I’ve had to restore a few irreplaceable sealed bearings and have found that with few exceptions you can usually pick the seals of the sides with something similar to dentist picks. The problem is to clean and regressed them you really need to get them out of the assembly (definitely don’t want to contaminate the media!)…. So if disassembly not an option I’m a +1 on a feeding a few drops of gear oil in sideways either through the shields or under a seal lip or with a hypodermic syringe. Though judging by oiler cap at least some are unsealed
Thanks for your inspiring work. Being a kind of maker myself, I estimate that you spend a big amount of time creating this high quality content. Cheers from Argentina! 🎉🎉🎉
This is incredible! And it's the result of a lot of hard work and brain power on the part of yourself and your partners here. A great Christmas present for all of us, I'd say 🙂
Great stuff Usagi! Thank you for a wonderful Christmas present, and thank you for sharing your journey with all us other nerds and hackers this past year. May you and your family be blessed this Christmas!
Really good to hear it's going well, how clearly ecstatic you are with this is great to see, I can't help smiling from your enthusiasm and hope I can get somewhere close to it.
Even 5 1/4" hard drives from the late 80s and early 90s sounded extremely similar, especially full-height ones. That remindes me I need to spin up my 650 MB external SCSI drive that I used for backing up all kinds of stuff from 68k Macs. I try to run that every once in a while to keep the grease from getting too stiff.
(For those wondering: It looks like the oldest still-running digital computer on Earth is the 'Wolverhampton Instrument for Teaching Computation from Harwell which dates to the early 1950s and is at the National Museum of Computing in Bletchley Park.)
Important to note that Usagi said "in North America" in the video. It does make me wonder what the current oldest functioning digital computer in NA is. It is hard to research since it doesn't seem that anybody is out there publicizing themselves as owning the oldest one in NA. Once the Bendix is running, it really seems like a golden opportunity for System Source to get some more visitors by publicizing that fact.
ive seen it in person it really is impressive. in the musuem it is labelled at the W.I.T.C.H
I have to diagree here. The Z3 in Deutsche Museum in Minich Germany is, to my knowleg in working condition
The example on display is a replica built in the 1960's.@@xiano1336
I’ve seen the WITCH in action, it sounds incredible!!
I would suggest connecting the clock track to one channel and the timing track to the other channel of your DSO and capturing the waveform with the highest memory depth your scope supports. That way you have a backup that could potentially be used to recover it if anything happens.
I think this is a very, very good idea.
I'm surprised this wasn't done while it was running
@@JoshVennixit may well have been off camera
I second this. That way, if worst comes to worst you have a backup, and you can use it to restore the other drum when you get around to resurfacing it.
It's an excellent idea!
However, the clock track is just a simple sine wave with 3,596 pulses per rotation. That can be recreated with any signal generator with ease. The timing track is a little more tricky, but again, we know exactly what it should look like thanks to the documentation. The really tricky part when rewriting those tracks is synchronizing it perfectly to the rotational speed of the drum and motor. At a perfect 60Hz with a new motor and good bearings, it should rotate at exactly 30 Revolutions Per Second or 1,800 RPM. That should result in a clock track frequency of 107.8kHz. But, as we saw on ours, we were rotating a little slow. That means that even if we got an exact copy of the timing track, laying it back down would be not quite possible if the RPM of the drum has changed even slightly.
Knowing exactly what the timing track and clock track look like means we can drop a hall-effect sensor on the drum and use a microcontroller to perfectly synchronize everything and drop new tracks down if we need to. So, fret not, we're well equipped to replicate those tracks if anything ever happens!
Bravo! Christmas a few days early! (Bob @ System Source)
The documentation is beautiful in its own way. What always impresses me about these vintage computers (even 1970s and 1980s home computers) is how rapidly they seemed to be developed from concept to manufacture without (obviously) the benefit of modern computers to assist in designing them and managing their development. A lot of talent and hard work!
my first job at Control Data (1967) was in the systems refurbishment group (G15's, G20's, 160''s 160A's 8090's 1604's etc). I'd like to tell you that I remember everything about a G15 but I don't, wait I do remember 1 thing... if it's not working, open the doors, turn off the light and look for the blue tube and replace it. in 1968 the US government 31 G15 under contract.
I had my first experience with programming on one of these machines back in 1964 when I worked at a weather station in the Marshall Islands. I programmed the computer to process radiosonde readings that had previously been treated manually. Can't wait for you to get that paper tape reader going!
Wow i did not realise this was the first computer Ken Thompson ever used. The change this machine made to the world is quite possibly incalculable, if its what got the guy who wrote Unix hooked
And it gets even crazier when you throw in that the designer, Harry Huskey, worked closely with Alan Turing and the G15 is inspired by Turing's ACE computer. This thing is definitely a historically significant machine, and I'm so excited to see it wake up and stretch its legs again!
It's also the first computer that Niklaus Wirth ever reliably used. Mr Wirth contribution to computer science is invaluable.
Love the way you trace schematics. It makes it much easier to understand and follow power and signals through circuits.
Thanks!
It definitely adds a lot of time to the editing process, but it's great to hear that it's worth it!
I love how you sidestepped all the comments about how you hooked up the AC wrong by telling everyone you did it exactly the way people think it should be done. Classic, well played!
But then he shows us a plug which looks like a NEMA 10-50 which is 200% the wrong plug to use. It's the incorrect configuration (used for _ungrounded_ 240v hookups) and on top of that it's banned for _all_ new work, only being allowed in some replacement scenarios where fed from the main service panel and no ground wire is present.
Damn he should have hid the plug too.
I appreciate your proper caution in the power-on testing. You are saving yourself much potential grief. Seeing the filament load decrease as each voltage step settles was fun. The heaters increase in resistance as the warm up and that causes the voltage to ramp betweek the steps. Do consider powering the DC supplies externally the first time and ramp up the applied AC voltage slowly to re-form the capacitors and limits any surge current from unforeseen faults. I know you will have already checked the resistance across the DC main busses as the first step. The ghosts of Engineers Past will be watching over you as you proceed 😀
Congrats David! That was probably the first time in decades the 'Big Switch' was thrown with power applied. I can't wait to see how the revival of the G-15 evolves. BTW, great meeting you at System Source when you did the drum swap. I'm they guy you borrowed the Swiss Army Knife from.
Thanks!
And thanks for lending the Swiss Army knife! Eventually, once this machine is up and running and back at System Source, we'll do demonstrations and let people get hands on with it for sure. It's just too cool not to share with everyone in person!
Drum bearings try to pull the drum out, and get it on it's side. Then take the bearing facing up, and warm it up a little after cleaning, and apply some EP90 gear oil to the edge of the steel dust shield, to make a thin layer on the seal, and let the bearing cool down, which should allow some to enter past the seal, and mix with the old grease there and revive it. Leave overnight with it up, and next day clean off the excess, and turn so the other side is up, and do the same warm up to around 70C, and apply the oil, and allow to cool and pull some past the seal. Quick fix is to make a sort of dam there if not moving the drum, and fill with the oil, and leave the bearing half covered overnight, so it can seep past the dust shield into the grease there, and give it some lighter oil components again, and reconstitute it a little.
Otherwise you need to gently pry the shield off, and then pack with a little moly based grease, and put the cover back on. Look for the same bearings, and order a cheap one, and sacrifice the bearing, using a grinder, to get the shields off them, and thus get new ones if you damage the old ones pulling them off. Have done this to a lot of bearings, especially where a new one was either not available, or needed a lot of specialised tooling not available to set the preloads, and the lube would get you another few years of running out of them.
The smoothness of those signals was awesome. What a beast of a machine.
The sine wave was beautifully clean! That drum is a masterpiece of 1950's engineering!
19:26 that's an amazingly clean signal, after over sixty years! 😍
A simple and safe modification you can do to help preserve the clock and timing tracks is to put a ~470pf capacitor of any type in series with the read heads. This will create a high pass filter set at ~60khz. the timing signals should pass through unmolested while any dc bias created by a shorted tube or other malfunction will be blocked. You can verify this by probing pin 2 of the appropriate preamp tube socket before and after the modification. you ~may~ need to adjust the gain pot (R7 on the schematic) up a tad to compensate, but you just have to make the trace look the same before/after the modification.
Worst case you'll lose 2-3 cycles of the track in a short. if you want to be extra paranoid you should be able to lower that cap to 220pf, and then it should be nearly impossible for the tracks to self-destruct; though there may not be enough gain adjustment left to compensate.
Regardless, it's a simple modification with little to no risk and nearly perfect reversibility, should that be desired, but great reliability gains.
That sounds like a really good idea!
I know this may be too late, but get/borrow a 4 channel logging scope, record & save on a PC the clock timing and control tracks with the index all in parallel for each single revolution so you have record of how to recreate those tracks if you ever need to recreate them on another drum which may have been damaged to needs to be resurfaced. Otherwise if you ever need to regenerate those tracks, you may need to recreate the original hardware which did so.
The seals on those bearings will, if done carefully, just pop out. The seals are only designed to keep dust out and are just a push in seal. Careful use of a dentists pick will get them to pop out. I would flush the bearings with cleaner and then refill with grease. The seals can thun be poped back in.
Also, just before you shut it off the first time you can see the string on the top fan vent start to blow up. So atleast that fan is working somewhat.
Back in 2001 I ran an old Japanese Punch press machine from the early 60a. The computer absolutely reminds me of that thing. Same color too
The "bearing noise" might be a dragging co-axial brake on the drum motor. Marvelous to watch it come up again. Wish the yUK Science Museum would find the courage to try the same on their Ferranti Pegasus. Good luck with the Sprague condensors (capacitors) as those are going to be difficult to replace if they are sickly.
It also might be a dragging brush. That style of GE Repulsion Induction motor starts with carbon brushes and switches to induction at speed. There is a centrifugal clutch that pulls the brushes away after starting, and that might be gummed up.
That style of capacitors is still being made, by more than one company, so getting replacements is not that big of a problem...
@@PrebleStreetRecordsthat would explaine the noise going aways after a while of running
For those Siglent scopes, if you want to see the full sequence, you'll need to zoom out and stop the capture, then you can zoom back in and scroll across until you find the start of the sequence. You can also safely enable the 20Mhz bandwidth limit to help reduce the noise on the trace, and you should also be able to increase the number of points that it captures (although that may decrease the update frequency at the expense of a nicer stopped trace).
That said, I'm hugely relieved that you're seeing the expected signals and also filament voltage. This definitely bodes well for the future of this machine. Those definitely look like selenium rectifiers, although I'm not hugely familiar with these early semiconductors. I feel like silicon diodes weren't that common until sometime in the 60s? Maybe be prepared with some extra ventilation just in case. Apparently selenium diodes smell pretty bad when they blow.
For bearings - a lot of bearings are standardized, I doubt that they have used some custom size bearings. There should be a four digit number of the bearing like 6202 or a five digit number. Then there could be some letters like 2RS that indicates a sealed bearing.
Try out a replacement on the damaged drum and see if it's feasible.
It would be even cooler if you could get someone to resurface the damaged drum.
CONGRADULATIONS!
A Big first step, glad the drum is spinning and talking! Harry Huskey has got to be smiling also! Wish I still had some of my G15 programs I wrote in the day! Looked for them but no luck! Glad that you are taking slow steps to bring the baby up and working again!
I have no idea what is going on, these computers are way too old and analogue for me to really understand, but your enthusiasm alone deserves a like! :)
My nerves were jangling when you went for the Big Power, ye gods. I never thought I'd see a G15 ever, aside from history books, and suddenly there's 2 and you have one and it's on the way do being powered up! Awesome. All the best to you and Mrs Usagi from across the little pond.
Thanks for sharing this. It brings back awesome memories working on similar systems with the military back in the 80s. Yes folks we were not always bleeding edge. Working second shift, TS with old school schematics, drinking coffee and listening to the radio. Some great times for sure.
Oh wow, it's aliiiiiiive! I always am watching out for updates on G15, because man, this is a restoration project for the history books. The excitement you have for this machine is just infectious! I hope the restoration goes smoothly from this moment on and we see this hulking behemoth crunching numbers like it's 1950s again!
The orange rectifiers stamped "Federal 1101A" are selenium type for sure, they look to be in good condition, are unlikely to be bad and would probably leave them alone. The big black ones are selenium as well and are probably also okay, they are tricky to replace since they have a high internal resistance between stacks resulting in lower rectified voltages compared to silicon diodes. If the capacitor bank has no shorts in it the big rectifiers are probably also okay, the biggest problem with the old can caps is capacitance can check great but leakage breaks down when they have full voltage and ripple current applied so watch out for that! I would pull one out and do a test with it, maybe make a DC supply with a load and see if it holds up for minimal leakage and ripple. If it doesn't hold up none of those cap cans are trustworthy as they are likely from the same batch and will all start to fail at which point I would just change them all which will also save those fragile rectifiers from burning out as well.
This is such an exciting project! I love seeing the Bendix G15 come to life. It scares me a little bit to see computers that were built during my lifetime being displayed in computer museums. I was 2 years old when this Bendix was built, but I've worked on some of it's descendants including the PDP-8 and PDP-11 both at the DEC factory and in the field.
👏👏👏🤩🤩🤩👍👍👍⭐️⭐️⭐️🌈🌈🌈 Maybe if you sing japanese children’s song to it the bearings will become less angry ;-)
I want to comment on your channel in general. Seeing the various projects and working through them "with" you is like a refresher course in the old technology. Seeing you interact with those such as Curious Marc and building a comaradare with them, priceless!
Wow, what an amazing project! It's baffling to see what engineering marvels were done back then. I had the privilege to see a working Zuse Z23 from 1961(?) executing code in March 2020, in Erlangen, Germany. Also with drum memory, slowly (and noisily) spinning up over a long time... That's the already transitorized variant of the Zuse Z22 (design 1955) that also uses vacuum tubes, like the G15. A Z22 still in working order exists in Karlsruhe, Germany.
I'm really glad you went with solid 2AWG gold and titanium wires with dupont connectors as I would wanted. Better keep the fire extinguisher handy when in use tho
If not for early systems like this one, DEC, IBM and others, our modern smart phones, raspberry pies and so many advanced tech systems would not exist.
Thanks for your amazing work to restore one of the MANY shoulders, our modern technology stand on !!
Very cool to see this machine working! We had a G-15 in our museum for many years, but we didn't have the knowledge or expertise to get it working. So wonderful to see this machine actually working. Can't wait to see your progress!
Congratulations and Merry Christmas.
Amazing that the drum still contains the timing tracks after all these years.
Magnetic media is really quite reliable, despite claims to the contrary. As long as the material doesn't get heated past its Curie temperature, doesn't get exposed to strong magnetic fields, or has some ridiculously thin/unreliable coating, any stored data should last for a very long time. In the case of the Bendix I think they also went out of their way to ensure long-term reliability, hence the spare clock track.
There exists a number of hard disks there the timming data ie servo is on a separate platter - bad servo data platter - that disk is a boat anchor.
AND a number of them (ST256 ? ie 40 years?) STILL WORKS TODAY !!!
The G15 is what brought me to this channel. I didn’t know what it was, but it is cool. Thanks for the videos.
4:44 thank you and congrats on your safe and reliable electrical installation
This is exciting for me too, because at Skyline High School ( Oakland California ) in 1969 and 1970, I got to play with the Bendix G-15. At that time, I was only interested in having fun, so my skill set never progressed beyond using INTERCOM 550. I had 1 hour each day, and ( somewhat sadly, in retrospect ) my time was spent writing what I called the " G-15 Trash Bulletin. "
In the summer of 1969, I was also able to spend many hours , along with a friend, using the G-15 that was at the Chabot Science Center, located ( at that time ) on Mountain Blvd, just a short distance from my home. I am waiting anxiously for the next phase of this project !
Had a little chuckle to myself at the power circuit wiring comment but it did get me thinking. There's really not a lot of places with general power circuits, wall socket type things that you plug your TV etc into, that could actually carry this beast. The UK's 32A 230V ring circuit with an appropriately chunky step down transformer would manage it at around 24A on the primary side. The actual normal outlet wouldn't cope with it, 13A is their limit I think.
In the UK we also have 45A 230V radial circuits for ovens, electric showers etc., which gives you 10kW. Pretty much every house and flat has them as long as it's got a 100A feed to the premises, which has been the norm for many decades.
@@stevegreen5358 Yes, higher power circuits are certainly available but they are usually for hard wired appliances.
that clock signal was a beautiful sine wave
Seriously. Was definitely struck by how clean and stable it is.
I'm going to say it was a cosine wave just to be contrary 😂
Be aware that heating and cooling the filaments of the tubes has to be done slowly to prolong their life.
Pretty freaking great. Last night you're singing from the moon, today you're resurrecting this behemoth.
Thanks for the work preserving history and thanks for bringing us so much joy.
Here I thought my boss's 1984 Ikegai AX25 was the loudest machine around! Get some ear protection, better safe. Really cool seeing this fired up, thanks for all the effort. Merry Christmas & here's to a healthy 2024!
Re-wiring a room has it's positives and negatives. But, if you stay grounded you should see success.
I know the feeling of excitement when bringing up a piece of equipment that hasn’t been used well over 40 or 50 years
By coincidence, I visited the UK's National Museum of Computing at Bletchely Park last week and saw the Harwell Dekatron - later known as the Wolverhampton Instrument for Teaching Computing from Harwell (WITCH). It's the world's oldest digital computer, dating back to 1952, and mostly uses telephone exchange technology. Amazing to see it operating in person - if you ever get across to the UK, a visit to Bletchley Park and the NMoC is well worth the time!
What a leap forward on this! Do keep us in the loop on the tape reader and the teletype, man. It's all good.
An incredible piece of engineering of the day and to restore it into this state is an amazing achievement, well done.
Wow, I'm so glad you had all of this documentation!! It's a treasure trove!
wow man! That's a hair over 5KW to power on. Sir, you always make the coolest and most interesting videos. Definitely one of the top 10 best channels on the entire platform and you should have a million subscribers. (a million and one, including myself). Merry Chrisstmas and all good wishes through 2024!
I'm really surprised they didn't design this for 240 V like most heavy equipment (even domestic kitchen appliances and AC compressors). Or even 277 V like large commercial/industrial lighting and bigger motors. This isn't something that would have sat in a small office, let alone home office, where all you'd have available is 120 V.
Congratulations! This was an amazing achievement, and honestly I was amazed that so much of the mechanics and magnetics of this old thing still are apparently working fine. Can't wait to see the further progress.
Better watch those selenium rectifiers. Chances are some are bad and the rest may fail after some amount of use. You can replace with silicon diodes if you put a series resistor with them.
They look like selenium, but the part number on the devices and data sheet indicate they are "low current" silicon and germanium.
@@russellhltn1396 Interesting! I thought all of those type of things were selenium.
Great job! Looking forward to the next installment.
Very cool first start David! Your methodical approach to making sure all elements are actually _ready_ to have power put to them, is vital to getting a working machine in the endgame. I'm amazed that drum has actually retained the clock and timing signals after all these years. All in all, the drum doesn't sound any worse than the old Seagate ST 225 MFM drive in my old IBM AT did when I was running it regularly, and it worked fine! Looks like the caps in that tape drive are a little 'fuzzy'. Probably due for replacement for sure. The electrolytics in the DC bank may or may not come back with reforming.😉 It wouldn't be a crime to replace them with their modern counterparts though, for continued reliability.😊 Looking forward to more on this old tank!😄👍👍
To maintain visual authenticity in a restoration, Mr. Carlson (Mr. Carlson’s Lab) will sometimes replace components by hiding the modern equivalent either inside the original after he hollows out the guts, or else simply leaving the original in place, but taking it out of the circuit and relocating the replacement to an inconspicuous location, usually on the opposite (generally unseen) side of the circuit board or chassis.
14:51 Shortly after you said "Woah! Something else clicked.", you can see that little piece of yarn tied to one of the fans on the other side in the top started fluttering. I think that was just the relay for those fans, and maybe the big bottom fan.
You know you have the good gear when it has oiling points and a sequencer to bring things up in order :) Love the AC adjust knob too. Computers now are so boring!
It's been a long time since "lubricate the memory" has been part of the PM schedule for a computer...
Omg. Omg. Push. The. Green. BUTTON!!!!!!!! Im so excited for the next fee videos about this beast!!!!
Great video! Your videos encouraged me about a year ago to fire up the PDP-11/23+ and large drives. Had a few bad Sprague caps I had to replace. Hopefully, you will show your process for reformatting the caps in the G-15. Unlike when I powered the PDP-11, I want to test the caps in my Vax 11/30 next before power up which had not been powered up since I purchased it off a BBS swap page in 1994. I am also worried that when I moved, I didn’t lock down the heads. Thanks for the videos.
Had an awesome tour at System Source and got to see one of the parts machines for this Friday. Awesome place and awesome tour!
So many selenium rectifiers - so many opportunities for really acrid smoke release!
It’s Christmas day down here in New Zealand, I’ve got shingles and my Dad has had chemo so I’m staying away from my family and it’s just me & the cat. This video is the best present ever. Can’t wait to see it up and running, good you cut your teeth on the Centurion, this seems like a very well engineered piece if equipment and quite amazing such a complicated machine still functions after all these years. Merry Christmas to you and yours 🎅🎄💝
I can totally see him hook up a teletypewriter to it, turn it on, install a short paper tape in the reader, hit start, the machine reads the paper tape and the teletype spits out "HELLORLD"
I heard some of the cool kids are coding up "HELLORLD!".
Jesus. Here in Tokyo I put a 50 amp main breaker ok my house. Asked for 60 but the builders looked at me like I was nuts.
It's so cool to watch and listen to this thing come to life. From a screeching, fighting start to the bearings smoothing out and reading the clocks. Crazy man, love what you are doing. Merry Christmas!
a 50a 120v circuit in a regular home is something special, but 50a 240v for an electric stove/range is pretty common. You would use the same type of wire for 120v, but only one side of the 240v.
wow! I can understand the tension when you flipped that switch! Amazing! Looking forward to the DC button press!
With sealed bearings that have a rubber shield,you can poke a syringe through the rubber,and squirt a little thin oil inside. Thicker oil can be hard to squirt through the needle of the syringe. If there's enough of a gap with a metal shield,sometimes you can use the syringe to squirt a little oil between the shield and inner race.
About the reforming of the caps, for the domestic devices I usually just use a HV DC bench power supply, limited to about 10mA, and slowly bring it up. I just connect it after the rectifier or anywhere the B+ is located (sometimes I just use a magic eye B+ line, as it is normally exposed). So I doubt you would need to take all the caps out. Also about the selenium rectifiers, they should also be dim-bulbed if possible. They are self-healing, but their healing current can be too large if not limited and they could destroy themselves. Despite what the internet says, those are usually okay. If worn out, their output voltage drops, like a worn rectifier tube... but this happens after 10-15k hours of use
Great progress, those bearings definitely need some love. Watch out for those orange selenium rectifiers in the paper tape mechanism, I’ve had many blow up and fill the room with acrid smoke
The drum motor appears to be an old GE Repulsion Induction model. I have a nearly identical one running my shop compressor.
They start up using carbon brushes, but then switch to induction when running at speed. It allows a cleaner start without a big capacitor and inrush current. The bad noise you hear might be dragging brush, there is a centrifugal system to lift them away once the motor has started.
Yours is probably gummed up, but it’s an easy fix to clean and re-grease it.
Amazing, I love seeing stuff from this era working, so thank you for the efforts involved (which must've been no small feat).
Please put the old gal to use, these machines were meant to be.
To see that sine wave come up! WOW! So impressed with your work- your excitement is CONTAGIOUS! can't wait to see the next steps! 👍😁
For the power that's easy! Just use half of a 220 breaker, OR, just a good old fashion screw in fuse. As long as the wire gauge is sufficient either will work fine.
Whew, just took this video off the backlog, haha. Pure awesomeness indeed! Waiting for DC reset after any recombobulation necessary.
The chart reminds me of modern OS bootcharts. Some things don't change :).
Congratulations! You turned it on and it didn't go bang! Brave man. The only safety device on the supply side of the main switch was ..... ? Anyway, it's good to know you got it this far. For servicing there is a DC safety lockout switch, as I am sure you know, which prevents the DC Reset button doing anything when you don't intend it to.
Looking at the G15 Theory of Operation docs, that procedure they promised on page 17 that Customer Engineering could supply for repairing a clock track in the field looks as though it was going to be limited to making a fresh copy of the clock track off the spare track, thus they would automatically be in sync. Making a fresh one from scratch, though ... ? Is the drum motor a synchronous motor relying on the AC mains frequency? I can't see anything else in the schematics. So could the motor be powered independently from a synthesised frequency supply? You quote the motor's specified rotational speed as 1800 rpm. If the clock has precisely 3596 pulses per revolution, and you were getting a frequency at the head output of 106.486kHz, then that drum must have been spinning at 1776.74 rpm. Is your grid AC supply frequency really so low at 59.22 Hz? I thought that the tolerance In the US was +/- 0.05Hz, and that is way off. A figure that low would normally indicate fairly severe grid overloading -- or is this symptomatic of the way you are powering the device?
A slower clock speed will mean lengthened pulses in all of the system timing. Are you sure that will be within tolerance, as I see there are considerably precise expectations in the relationship between the various pulses? Might it be a good idea to see if you can drive that drum motor independently of the mains frequency?
Incredible and good work. Both for those designing this machine in the first place in the days, and to you David for the restauration of it! thank you for sharing this!
you should be able to pop the black seal off the bearing with a pick. if u wanna clean the old grease out use some solvent, otherwise just pack in some new grease.
You can pull those seals and grease no problem, carefully and with the right tool you wont damage them, and can be pushed back in
Wonderful! Very happy to see this working (to the extent it is.) Thanks for your effort on this machine!
While I really respect your work here, I don't have much experience with vacuum tubes. Loving to learn from watching you. With mechanical things having bearings, I have worked on them quite a lot. The squeal from ball bearings is almost always due to sliding of the rolling elements due to dried grease. Since you can't get the bearings out of the drum to clean and service them; your idea of using a needle is a good idea. You may want to inject a light oil as opposed to grease, because pretty much any light oil (just a few drops) will help to dilute and soften the grease. Adding grease opens up the worry that it could be incompatible with the existing grease and worsen the problem. I've had good luck adding Lucas Chain lube (aerosol) to sealed bearings to help them out. I would spray it into a syringe and then use the needle to inject it drop at a time. Definitely don't risk spraying the aerosol near the drum and getting oily spots on the coating.
That face of pure joy in the thumbnail needs to become an emote on the discord I think
Not gonna lie, those are some beautiful looking clock tracks on the scope.
Hi! Maybe - once you finish your vacuum tube computer - you can program it yourself to do unit tests on the logic modules from the Bendix G15? Now THAT would be epic! Using one vacuum tube computer to test another vacuum tube computer! Worthy of the next VCF show! Of course, I don’t expect you to lug the entire G15 up there, just a copy of one of the (tube) logic modules. 😂
Awesome. I think I'm going to get to go to System Source when I pick up a car I purchased not far from it. Wish this was there so I could see it. Amazing work. BTW, I'd love a segment on some.of those crazy cars I see in your video like that Honda Beat too!
Wonderful work! Your joy and enthusiasm is infectious!
Merry Christmas Eve!
I sincerely doubt there are many out there who would put in the level of care and commitment that you put in. It's great to see it!
So exciting to see signs of life from the old machine! What a mind-bending thought that the 'clock signal' for the machine comes from a magnetic drum; given that it's using the drum as 'RAM', though, it makes some sense.
Those are selenium rectifiers recommend to change all of them because they will cause you problems in the long run . I’ve been in electronics for 57 years TV broadcast
The bearings should be fairly simple to source. I can make out 105K... on the dust shield, which probably means a metric 25x47x12 (but might not)
The fact that anything worked at all is absolutely mind-boggling!
congratulations! an exciting step forward for sure. and to all those folks who talk about selenium rectifiers failing and putting out nasty-smelling smoke: have you personally experienced this, or are you repeating something you heard from someone else? genuinely curious to hear from you IF you've personally experienced it.
I guess I remember selenium rectifiers like that from an old movie theater projection booth? Would they have used them? (The projectors originally had carbon arcs, but had long since been upgraded to 1970s era Xenon lamps). My recollection was that they were more or less out in the open where you could touch the plates if your were foolish enough.
I haven't personally seen one catastrophically fail and put out smoke but I have had a weak one which got hot and started to smell. If I let it continue I wouldn't be surprised if it let out all the smoke. I've also heard firsthand accounts of them putting out the nasty smoke (most recently from Bob Anderson @bandersentv) and I'm sure other channels working on old radios/TVs will have similar stories. You can probably find videos showing them failing, just like there are tons of vintage computer channels which have captured failing RIFA capacitors.
@@eDoc2020 thanks. Bob would be a good person to talk to.
@@eDoc2020 Can confirm, selenium rectifiers were used in a lot of old radio equipment. They have a... unique smell when they get hot. Although my understanding is that selenium compounds are similar to sulfur compounds in that they tend to stink to high Heaven. But worse.
Amazing project and what a milestone. I’ve had to restore a few irreplaceable sealed bearings and have found that with few exceptions you can usually pick the seals of the sides with something similar to dentist picks. The problem is to clean and regressed them you really need to get them out of the assembly (definitely don’t want to contaminate the media!)…. So if disassembly not an option I’m a +1 on a feeding a few drops of gear oil in sideways either through the shields or under a seal lip or with a hypodermic syringe. Though judging by oiler cap at least some are unsealed
Edge of the seat stuff! Brilliant video, thank you!
Thanks for your inspiring work. Being a kind of maker myself, I estimate that you spend a big amount of time creating this high quality content.
Cheers from Argentina! 🎉🎉🎉
Woot! That's fantastic! Here's hoping that the rest goes smoothly!
As I watch this, I have realized that the heater voltage being ramped up like it is will also extend the life of the tubes greatly.
This is incredible! And it's the result of a lot of hard work and brain power on the part of yourself and your partners here. A great Christmas present for all of us, I'd say 🙂
Great stuff Usagi!
Thank you for a wonderful Christmas present, and thank you for sharing your journey with all us other nerds and hackers this past year.
May you and your family be blessed this Christmas!
Really good to hear it's going well, how clearly ecstatic you are with this is great to see, I can't help smiling from your enthusiasm and hope I can get somewhere close to it.
That thing spinning up sounds *very* similar to what our old CDC Phoenix on the Wang 2200 MVP used to sound like.
Good times. 🥳
Even 5 1/4" hard drives from the late 80s and early 90s sounded extremely similar, especially full-height ones. That remindes me I need to spin up my 650 MB external SCSI drive that I used for backing up all kinds of stuff from 68k Macs. I try to run that every once in a while to keep the grease from getting too stiff.
Great job. I'd recommend a hazmat suit before hitting that reset button.