Special Services

  • Documentation of some electronics projects of the year 2005: Shutter-Goggles for the SGI-Computers and a first, rather unsuccessful replacement for the Russian micro circuit 04KN009 (1M6). Soon followed a better, patched version (140k) - the current version is documented on a dedicated page from 2010.

  • Some pages of the service manual of the Sharp MZ-3541, a Z-80 based machine from Sharp's MZ-3500 series produced in the early 90ties - 2MB, 23.9.2005.

  • Upon request I put some photos (8M3) on a seperate page documenting the internal cabling of the woderful PowerXplorer machines made by Parstec from 1993 to 1995.

  • Parts from the MegaFrame parallel computer made by Parsytec between 1989 and 1992 are still in use in my hardware projects. Some of the PCBs (1989 series) have tantalum capacitors placed in the wrong orientation leading to strange phenomena.

  • On March 20 in 2006 there was an A-380 conducting flight tests over Oberpfaffenhofen in Bayern which caused some irritation to the people living there. Sorry, only low quality photographs - 146k.

  • One of the more recent electronics/vintage computing projects is the reverse-engineering of a military computer. For a report, pictures and additional info, please see my 'Programmer Electronic Control'-Page. There is a written report in the highly interesting vintage computing mailing list (Report 3/2007) with some interesting discussion following.

  • February 2010 - still my favorite electronics picture: 160k.

  • On 16th of April 2010 I visited the ICT 1301 Resurrection Project and had an extremely nice day meeting Rod Brown and Roger Holmes there: ICT-Visit.

  • 2011: Ferranti made aritificial horizons (attitude indicator or "künstlicher Horizont" - this type was used on the GR.1 version of the Harrier VSTOL aircraft) based on mechanical gyroscopes during the 1960ties and 1970ties. Playing with one of these complex and highly sophisticated instuments lead to a technical note in German language: 911k

  • 6/2011: For those who want to have a closer look how to drive the FH7Z.8, I prepared a small paper on the gear box I build to control the instrument (including schematics, 2MB): One can externally engage the roll torquer leading to pitch adjustment, slow/fast erect can be turned on and off and the caging/flag mechanisms can be engaged via switches.

  • 5/2014: On the first weekend of May on the Vintage Computer Festival Europe (VCFe 15.0) I contributed an exhibition of two Rolms and the PEC and gave a talk on the Elliott 900 series. The poster (3M5) and the slides (2M5) are available here in German language.
  • 4/2015: Opened a ftp directory containing Solaris and Windows binaries of some self compiled and/or modified code from the WEB. First files there are the Solaris (tested under 2.6, 150k) and Windows (running on XP and Win7, 1M1) binaries for the Nova/PDP8 cross assembler from the Telegraphics WEB page.
  • 10/2015: For years I am maintaining and very rarely using an old and heavy A0 drum plotter - it's a Calcomp 1038 with OPC. As there was discussion on this plotter on the cctech mailing list, I put some more detailed pictures of its internals online. For those who have trouble configuring their OPC906/907 controller, there is a document listing the switch settings.
  • 4/2016: Since years I have got a Viasala SPT11A manual paper tape reader which refused to talk to me via its serial port. After reverse engineering its hardware I replaced the original firmware 2.02 with own, new one (To be compiled using sdcc for 8051, hex file of V1.01 for 27C256 EPROM). This firmware dumps tapes at 9600, 8N1. Use at own risk - credits welcome.
  • During populating a panel of the left cockpit panel from Tornado's front panel with flight instruments, I came accross the very interesting ADI42-124 attitude indicator and published a video on its internal mechanics and this ADI is also quite easy to operate
    This article is compiled by Erik Baigar, <erik@baigar.de>, 4/26/2014. Read times. Datenschutz & Impressum