Collecting in Quarantine

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://youtu.be/VYSWIdDcbGU drove all the way from Nevada, I drove from Silicon Valley and we met at Bob Rosenbloom's collection in the woods https://youtu.be/2OkTm0vI7As in the Santa Cruz seqouia forest. We stayed masked, outdoors, and within respectable distance from each other. Each of us had a large vehicle fully loaded with stuff that we wanted to give to the other two, to thin out our collections. With the expected result that we returned with the SUVs fully loaded, but with different stuff. 

Pic 3: Gift from John. I got two more of the military CV-89 RTTY decoders, so I have now a grand total of 3. They come from Henry, a Nevada collector and friend of John, who used to run an antique radio museum. These are for putting our Model 19 and 15 TTY on the air.

Pic 4: I got a "guaranteed working, 100% tested" HP 4957 serial protocol analyzer from eBay. Which of course does not work. But it's still cute. Tube and case are in good shape, so I kept it, but I'll need a donor motherboard.

Pic 5 and 6: A BE-77-C Line Unit. Gift from John Lawson. This is a better version of my "blue boxes" from this TTY episode https://youtu.be/xDZkqIIWofk . It is a field box used to adjust and monitor the current in the loop. It also has a sensitive and adjustable repeater relay for long distance Baudot communications. The schematics are drawn on a metal side plate.

Pic 7: Now that's what I call a joystick.  Bought on eBay.  Supposedly from former eastern block military equipment, but I think it is actually French. Any military buff that knows where this could be from? This is to make a joystick to do simulation Moon landings with the AGC. Believe it or not, the original LM controllers can still be found at auction. Needless to say, this was waaaaaay cheaper.

Pic 8 and 9: Complete TIP engineering documentation package for the HP 2645 terminal from this episode https://youtu.be/QikO0WOAGWI . Gift from Bob Rosenbloom. Has all the schematics of every board, with explanations. All the source code of the firmware also. 

Pic 10: From two local auctions, a 2.4 kW DC programmable power supply and an 800W AC 3 Phase programmable power supply. Both for powering aerospace stuff, including the Shuttle computer and my Apollo IRIG gyro. I might also be able to power one of the IBM tapes from the 3 phase supply. The 3-phase supply was a tip from a viewer that cringed when he saw what I used on my gyro video here: https://youtu.be/wYsG-lXfih8 .

Pic 11: An RS-232, 24-port serial switch. Gift from an engineer that works at WTI. So I can connect any TTY/Terminal to any computer. Or any TTY to any other TTY.

Pic 12: Complete set of accessories for a Russian R-354 spy radio. Power cables, headset, antenna with weight at the end so you can throw it over a tree. The hope is to use the radio as a receiver for the RTTY with the CV-89.

Pic 13: R-354 spy radio in question. I won it at the latest RRauction, has not arrived yet.

Pic 14: The R-354 accessories include a mini-punch and a film cutter so you can punch a coded message on a 35mm film sliced in two. Then you feed the coded message into a mini-reader in the transmitter, and that sends the message in a burst with a bare minimum of on-air time.

Pic 15 and 16: 1969 HP catalog. Gift from Sherie McGraw, the widow of an HP engineer, via David Collins, curator of the hpmuseum.net. I looked at my collection, and to my surprise, I have no less than 15 instruments from that 1969 catalog! Including the HP 458 tube-base ammeter that was used in the repair of the NAD amplifier. 

Pic 17 to 20: The IBM 2501 card punch. Purchased from Bob Rosenbloom. My IBM 360 system is growing in the garage, it is essentially complete. Believe it or not, this card reader is the miniature one. Carl is going to get the large one which is downright giant, but includes a sorter and a punch. It took a forklift to put in my car, and it fit by some miracle. Took 6 people to unload it at the other end.

That's it for this post. Thanks for your generosity in supporting the channel which makes all this possible. Expect videos on all of this stuff in the coming weeks and months. I can't wait for the whole team to get back together once the pandemic is over.