Teletype or Facit 4070

[Andrew Gabriel]

cross-posting to uk.comp.vintage

[Andrew Gabriel]

Still got a Newbury NL7009 somewhere, and all the servicing manuals. Last time I turned it on (probably 10 years ago), it was rather dim. The thing which killed them was failure of the Brimar tube driving modules, which were unobtainable. Various other things did go wrong (such as the PSU rectifier diodes blowing), but they were easily fixed.

Got a Cifer 2634 too, which was working fine last time I tried it, and also a Cifer 2684 which could run CP/M in its own right, although the floppy disk drive is head-crashed on this one, and I don't have any of the CP/M disks, but I think it still works as a terminal.

[Andrew Mawson]

Yes Bob, they were my responsibility! There were actually three - the A & B suites and a Model L programme development machine. Originally equipped with Bryant Drum stores, we upgraded them to Burroughs 2Mb disks ! two hundred tracks with a read head per track and average latency of 17mSec. Heads loaded onto the surface of the disk with compressed air. The interface from the A suite also traversed the B and vice versa, with 'highway switching units' (305 way double pole switching!!!!) allowing either suite to take over the others peripherals. Cutting edge for its time.

AWEM

[Andy Champ]

Oi! De mortuis nil nisi bonum dicendum est!

You probably dumped K about the time it _was_ getting reliable.

Back to the tape - surely all you need is one of the old manual punches, which being a DIY person could be made.

Like this:

[Bob Eager]

No, we dumped it when they did a major re-jig and removed some vital features that were essential to us.

We had a rollong MTBF of 20 hours for that system. Within a year, with the new operating system, it was just over 2000 hours!

[Bob Eager]

Yes, we were actually shown all three. At thew time they were building security doors to the building...

It was very interesting...it was an IEE visit. Bet you can't get in there these days.

[Andrew Gabriel]

Tony Sale had several 6V8G beam tetrode valves from me for Colossus.

I tried offering a working Tektronics 4012, but they had no space for it (it was early days when it wasn't really up and running), so unfortunately it got scrapped.

I have a working GEC 4160 minicomputer which will probably go there when I let go of it. (I now have an emulator of it fully working.)

[Jules Richardson]

Where are you located?

Spitting the data out via serial to a more modern PC might be the best approach - while I don't think that finding an establishment which has the kit is going to be a problem, finding anyone who'll let you borrow it is another matter entirely (and I assume that your machine is too big/ heavy to move?)

There were plenty of ASR33s at Bletchley (the NMoC side, not the park as a whole) when I worked there, and I remember Facit punches too, but not which models.

I remember bubble memory - there never was much of it about; very uncommon stuff!

cheers

Jules

[dennis]

I remember bubble memory.. it was cr@p. The bubbles used to wander off the chevrons and even duplicate themselves. Then there were sense amps where the charge built up in the substrate causing them to fail out in the field only to work perfectly when you got them back to test. I got rid of them and replaced them with cards of extended refresh DRAM and batteries. It made System X five times faster.

The only thing good about it was the ability to erase it by putting current through the erase coil.

[Andrew Mawson]

...er ..cough ... I have one just like that, AND the sticky 'all holes' patches to splice tapes !

AWEM

[Andrew Mawson]

Those security doors were actually supposed to be nuclear blast doors, same things closed across all the windows as well. I'm sure they'd let you in now as it's all been split up and move to Wokingham & St Albans !!!!

AWEM

[Andrew Mawson]

Sadly the RS232 is not an option due to oddities in the Fanuc 6 firmware the relevant way is only the tape reader / punch which are a proprietary non standard parallel implementation

AWEM

[dennis]

Can you feed the outputs into an I/O board on a PC and pretend to be a paper tape?

[The Natural Philosopher]

Probably have to build a board. Wasn't that interface a current loop?

[Bob Eager]

Ah, now you need two nuclear bombs!

[Andrew Mawson]

Yes Denis that is one option. I've been looking at the Arduino Max2560 which gives me ample ttl level outputs and also the benefit of USB input - but it's yet another project to knuckle down to and learn!

AWEM

[Paul D Smith]

Admittedly we're computer nerds but my colleagues who've played with Arduino tell me its a doddle if you understand 'C' programming.

Paul DS

[Another Dave]

That's going back a bit. I used to teach System 4 Assembler and the 5E and 5J operating systems at Kidsgrove. I left when ICT took over English Electric (1967?) and they tried to move me darn sarf.

Another Dave

[The Other Mike]

Wouldn't it be easier to donate the Fanuc to a museum, and use a PC with EMC2 ?

[Andrew Mawson]

Wouldn't get much edm wire cutting done that way!

AWEM