And depending on the tip you’re using you can put it through it too and clean the whole thing without taking it apart

Motor current meter showing the servo lock come up. (the original meter is unfortunately dead.

Now with audio. (It sounds way better in person)

HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT!!! WE HAVE LIFE ON THE HEAD DRUM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I screwed up the audio recording while i was idly working but my excitement is visible

Seems good to me

caption: Subminiature AC Power Plug. it's a 1/8" audio plug. The outer shell is marked Ground (Earth). The middle ring contact is Neutral, and the central pin is Hot.

A euro-style switched outlet panel but in the middle is a small hole for an audio-style 1/8" jack.

sad that the subminiature AC power plug never took off. the design was inherently safe since kids couldn't fit forks or scissors in

Taking it slow at the end here and making sure everything is correct. Cleaning and polishing the heads and replacing the felt pads and such. I’m also taking a page out of BandersonTV’s book and using ring terminals as cap lugs. Works great!

Crusty: The Story Of The Mac SE That Could Retrocomputing often involves careful restorations, rare components, and white gloves.  This story involves none of those. This is the story of two people who sought to answer one of the greatest q…

Ever heard of Crusty the Mac? SEs’ are basically impossible to kill as a friend found out. hackaday.com/2024/01/23/c...

That is incredibly cool and funny as hell 🤣

I don’t think I have ever seen a terminal that speeds up as you typed faster. 🤣

Zenith phonevision scramblers and descrambler headend rack

Sony PV-100 with a small sony vidicon camera on top

Bell system trimline from Murray hill Nj, showing the laser cut resistors and blob IC’s with capacitors underneath the clear substrate

The marking on the clear housing showing the date of manufacture and the “X” for eXperimental i.e. lab use only

I own a few things. A Zenith PhoneVision Prototype stack (one of one afaik) from 1972, a Sony PV-100 from 1963 (one of five left in the world), and an experimental Bell System Trimline that has a double layer hybrid IC on a sapphire substrate from 1968. I have more, but those are the standouts.

Going through some old paper tapes and found this. It's version 2 of Microsoft BASIC from 1975. Version 1 was never released to the public which makes this Microsoft's first commercial product and it's not been archived anywhere! Time to break out my tape reader... 🙂

Me tapping the frame rail of the PV-100

Nearly at the end now. I have recapped all the PCB’s and am just waiting on the caps for the PSU I forgot. In the meantime I went to Ace and found out the hard way that Japan had a wild standard pre 1967. M3 .6 thread pitch!! So I had to chase the threads with a .5 to use modern screws. Worked
Great

uhhh by popular demand i think this is a t-shirt now?

this might be a bad idea, felt way too easy. i just sped through setting this up so go nuts i guess lol. dunno what the quality will be like.

cctl.creator-spring.com/listing/broa...

someone reminded me that tomorrow is also this station's 100 year anniversary!

I built this LED audio visualizer back in 2014 as well, the FFT code needs some tweaking but its an 8 bit AVR powering it and I am using every ounce of that CPU power. I also need a case for it one of these days.

A phone kiosk which is just barely off the ground. Two bent pipes flank it as protection. A tree is immediately behind and an extra tall kiosk for truckers is in the distance.

One of the last low phone kiosks on Quebec Autoroute 20 between Quebec City & Montreal. They allow drivers to chat from the comfort of their cars. Something changed. It is now so low that only a child in a pedal car or an F1 driver could use it. (Shen Hao FCL810AC, 180mmf8 Super Angulon, TXP320)

Magic 🧙‍♂️

A board with a big can capacitor

The underside of that same board

The same board but now with a smaller new cap

The underside now with a small section of perf board glued on.

Hotglue might be sacrilege for some people. But dang it, it does make stuff like this easy to do.

Note to self…. DONT DROP 760°C MOLTEN SOLDER ON KNEE

Spent the afternoon at the Microcomputer Museum in Ome. It’s actually multiple workspaces and a museum in one and it was well worth the price of admission.

And just to alleviate any doubts about the original caps. Here is a clip of me using the audio test method on a 2 section 1000uF
This measured 56pF on a cap bridge.

Finally using my very last RadioShack purchase on this. Im short two caps unfortunately, so I gotta stop working on the psu for a little until my digikey order arrives.

I will say that this thing is absolutely beautifully made. At least on the boards I’ve done in the PSU, the axial caps have rivets in the board. And it’s just plain pretty underneath.

The metal covers that go behind the reels looking all nice and clean with a tub of no. 7 rubbing compound in between them.

Two of the side trim pieces, one that has been polished with no.7 and one not. They are very noticeably different in color and appearance.

The takeup reel half polished to show the difference and how much the rubbing compound helps.

4 boards that comprise some of the regulating circuits in the power supply that have been re-capped.

I have officially started the restoration process on the PV-100 🎉
Both cosmetic and electrical.

After wanting to visit one for decades and 39 years since the last local event I have finally visited a World’s Fair. Expo 2025, Osaka.

Black and white photo of a giant bellows camera about 8 feet tall. A man is standing in front of the lens which is the size of his torso. Caption: "A copy camera of the type useful in making high-precision photographic masks."

In the 1960s, this absurdly large camera was used to make masks for integrated circuits. The layers of the integrated circuit were drawn at large scale and then optically shrunk to make the glass masks that were used in manufacturing.

YouTube video by PINKBOY1006 1963 Sony PV-100 VTR Restoration Series Introduction

As promised, here is the restoration introduction for my newest acquisition. A 1963 Sony PV-100 Portable VTR. Sony’s very first portable video recorder. And near as I can tell, I have one of 5 left in the world. youtu.be/IWFr16FXk80?...

Not anymore :-‘)