This is a summary video made from the Soyuz Clock Patreon Livestream. The majority of the footage is much higher quality though, coming from my regular SONY RX-10 camera. This will likely will become the base for the later ...
2021-02-11 08:10:00 +0000 UTC View Post
We've got another Soyuz clock, this time from Steve Jurvetson’s collection. This one is older than my digital one which we already restored, and it’s entirely electro-mechanical. Join us on Livestream on Tuesday, Feb. 9 at 10 am Pacific Standard Time (GMT-8) as we open it up, try to figure out it works, ...
2021-02-09 03:54:52 +0000 UTC View Post
Folks, the official Livestream with the clock will be tomorrow, but I am doing a test run right now while I am setting up and getting the Cesium clock restarted. Hop on if you want to follow it!
Marc
2021-02-08 20:23:35 +0000 UTC View Post
Dear Patrons,
We are going to try something new with our first Patreon Livestream attempt. I am planning to work on this magnificent Soyuz clock, which we have on loan from Steve Jurvetson's space collection. The rest of the team will be Zooming in, watching along with you.
The Livestream is tentatively scheduled ...
2021-02-08 04:26:42 +0000 UTC View Post
Here is a small treat for the higher Patreon tiers. Sorry folks, I haven't done very much extra for the higher tiers. I'm just hopelessly behind all the time, and when I do small Patreon videos it is still non-negligi...
2021-02-05 08:30:25 +0000 UTC View Post
There was (and still is) an ongoing auction in Los Angeles from the former Max Sands test instrument rental company. Which has tons of very, very antiquated instruments (how could they still possibly rent them?). I could have bought my entire collection in one fell swoop. Instead I went looking for odd instruments that would ...
2021-02-05 08:05:33 +0000 UTC View Post
While on my expedition to Excess Solutions to pick up my enclosure for the Apollo GSE box project, I also snatched this 1970's "Dial-A-Level" contraption. I was looking for an on/off controller to do the temperature control for my Apollo IRIG gyroscope. The gyro needs to be regulated to within 0.5 °C, and that was done in th...
2021-01-24 05:44:39 +0000 UTC View Post
It seems that a few of you had Apollo Twist-Lite switches in your drawers, and on top of that are generous enough to donate them to the channel. Thanks to your generosity, and also to some good eBay scraping for the few reasonably priced bits and pieces of Twist Lite switches, I have now accumulated a collection big enough th...
2021-01-06 23:15:51 +0000 UTC View Post
2020 was *really* a rotten year. While I was filming my 100k subs video, on the last day of 2020, my HP 9825 had an "accident". See details in the video. The one you see in the 100k subs video is a backup unit that had been...
2021-01-06 22:23:04 +0000 UTC View PostYou guessed it, I won yet another auction lot. The "reason" I got this was for the Bird Wattmeter (that is, if there ever was any reasoning in this of course). But it turned out the juicy stuff was elsewhere.
Let's start with t...
2020-12-05 06:10:01 +0000 UTC View PostI thought this repair was going to be trivial and a bit boring, so I didn't film it. However it predictably degenerated into the usual bunch of unexpected surprises, so here is the story in pictures.
Remember that cute HP fellow from one of my previous posts? It's an HP 8447F, 100 kHz to 1.3 GHz RF preamp and powe...
2020-11-26 07:27:48 +0000 UTC View Post
Shameless plug for merch. I made a reproduction of the HP dude's magic pants on my Teespring store: https://curiousmarcs-store.myteespring.co/listing/magic-repair-pants?product=1166
Your vintage elec...
2020-11-09 23:23:32 +0000 UTC View Post
I recently bought yet another HP 8447F. Actually it came bundled in a very cheap lot that I got for another instrument so it is sort of a nice freebee. It contains two lab grade wideband amplifiers to 1.3 GHz. One of the channels (the preamp) passed the VNA test with legendary HP performance, almost perfectly flat across the ...
2020-10-24 23:35:55 +0000 UTC View Post
YouTube direct link: https://youtu.be/wbbx4Mam3as
Today I was able to visualize the HP 9825 and the Nanoprocessor interacting with the clock chip by hooking up my clock chip test board to a live HP clock board. I got a kick out of that and wanted to sh...
2020-10-16 05:42:27 +0000 UTC View Post
I had to know. I opened (carefully) the 1 MHz crystal that had failed. I suspected some kind of mechanical failure and boy, did it have one. Or many. A big bad scallop had been taken out, you can see where it hit the can. Also at 90 degrees of that, there is another mark on the can and a smaller chip on the crystal. This guy ...
2020-10-06 07:18:50 +0000 UTC View Post
My previous video on TI clock chips was a (rewarding) detour on the road to repair my HP 98035 clock modules. Thanks to the contributions of former HP 9825 developer Steve Leibson http://www.hp9825.com/ Patron Jack Rubin, collector Bob Rosenbloom 2020-10-04 02:52:38 +0000 UTC View Post
Dang. Even if you put cover music and cover artist credits, these days it still gets demonetized. But the Patrons get the better version no matter what :-).
2020-09-28 01:26:14 +0000 UTC View Post
Remember that Chinese sourced TI clock chip that we decapped with Antoine? Not fake at all tells me Ken Shirriff. But does it actually work? It sure did not when I put it on my HP board. One simple way to find out. Chinese sourced TI chip, 1970's HP bubble LED, proto board, and a bit of fun reverse engineering as this c...
2020-09-27 08:31:42 +0000 UTC View Post
After putting back together my Soyuz clock, I assembled my various other clocks for a family portrait:
- the large flip clock is my Solari Dator 10 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-_93BVApb59Xs5gCX_Sch1Lo...
2020-09-10 04:39:51 +0000 UTC View Post
Antoine sent me this giant printout of one of his many splendid chip pictures. It has been installed as part of the lab beautification project. Thanks Antoine! I feel a chip poster business coming. I'll be waiting for Ken's report on what every single transistor does...
2020-09-08 00:57:54 +0000 UTC View Post
I have been taking a little pause from videos to re-organize and do an inventory of my collection. I was starting to lose track of which item came from whom, when and for how much, and with quite a few patrons and viewers making donations, I also need to quickly be able check for duplicates, particularly when it comes to manu...
2020-08-27 06:32:46 +0000 UTC View Post
Pic 1: We might be in quarantine, but July has been a great month for the collection. And in no small part thanks to viewers and generous Patrons.
Pic 2: Patron John Lawson, whose tube shack you have seen in the radio active tube video https://...
2020-07-30 09:01:56 +0000 UTC View Post
If you had not seen this before, Canadian modeling genius Nicolas Temese keeps making astounding models of retro gear.
His HP 2645A terminal has a screen that actually works! View his full post here: https://imgur.com/gallery/bSbs0L3
H...
2020-07-17 21:56:36 +0000 UTC View Post
I took out the old HP 428B current probe to check that the current going in my power supply components is normal, and that I just didn't cover up another fault, as the conspiracy mill says on YouTube. It is a very old instrument (using tubes!), but still in perfect calibration. I checked it of course, it is within 1% of my Te...
2020-07-13 06:40:41 +0000 UTC View Post
Carl has released a nice short video were he shows his progress on re-lighting two original Apollo DSKY displays. He has now switched on the second display which is similar to the flown ones, and has the more greenish final color. This spare display was never used, and appears to be in superb shape. I'd say this is some spect...
2020-07-08 00:05:43 +0000 UTC View Post
This is a little epilogue to the HP 8082A pulser repair. I swapped the second circuit in, with the faster transistors, and it indeed produces narrower minimum width pulses, with the required 1 ns rise time. But at the minimum pulse width, the non-delayed pulse was still fatter than the delayed one by about 1 ns. Reading the s...
2020-06-28 04:27:37 +0000 UTC View Post
Carl sent us this video of his DSKY clicking away. This is a genuine Block I DSKY screen controlled by a genuine DSKY Block I relay module. These were latching relays (with mechanical "memory"), and they are deliciously noisy. We have only one relay module, so he cannot control the whole DSKY (the whole thing requires three o...
2020-06-27 07:33:19 +0000 UTC View Post
Looks like Carl has hit a 1202 in the lab while in P63! He has been working on trying to light up an original DSKY luminescent display from Marcel's collection. He's got an original DSKY high voltage 800 Hz power supply, a relay module (also from Marcel) and the precious Samtec NASA female pins to complete his experiment. The...
2020-06-08 18:07:56 +0000 UTC View Post
Well it ended up all good, but not without a few more twists. Just finished the video, will likely make it public tomorrow, but you get to know (and post public comments if you watch in on YouTube) earlier. And if you wonder, I was relieved too. I wasn't so confident this was going to work out. Thanks for your support! Stay s...
2020-05-24 01:23:13 +0000 UTC View Post
While I was waiting for the replacement ICs that died in a sparky power supply incident last week, I decided to turn my attention to a recently acquired HP 8082A fast pulse generator. I thought it was going to be another quick one-afternoon power supply job. Well, this "does not power up" unit turned out to power on just fine...
2020-05-18 00:59:30 +0000 UTC View Post
