[vcf-midatlantic] UNIVAC updates

Evan Koblentz evan at vcfed.org
Wed Apr 11 23:40:46 EDT 2018


Bill Drom. and Duane were at the museum Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday to 
do more UNIVAC restoration.

Bill sent me a report today:

----------------------------

We spent most of our time running down intermittent faults in the 1219B 
computer. Mainly using the oscilloscope and logic prints in addition to 
the diagnostic program used by the navy we were able to find several bad 
cards in the computer. We finally got it to run full un-jumpered 
diagnostics for over an hour before we stopped it.

We also tried to get the paper tape punch in the 1532 console to operate 
properly. Duane even ran the computer in slow op step mode so we could 
observe the reader in slow motion. We had less success with that. We 
switched to the mylar tape donated by, I think it was Alex at the last 
workshop. It looks like it works about 95% but haven’t been able to get 
perfect tape copies yet.

Duane brought a full new box of magnetic tape and two original master 
head alignment tapes with him for the museum. We looked at the 1540 tape 
handler but it looks like we need to do some pinch roller adjustments. 
We only have a copy of the schematics from NASA which is slightly 
different from our unit. We are still trying to get the correct books on 
that but our hope is getting low.

We left for home on Tuesday with the computer still working but with one 
intermittent problem in channel 17 I/O section.

----------------------------

Bill also sent two videos and two pictures: https://tinyurl.com/y9dwqe8t.

-Evan




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