EEVblog Electronics Community Forum

EEVblog => EEVblog Specific => Topic started by: EEVblog on October 08, 2018, 11:34:19 pm

Title: EEVblog #1130 - Mailbag Monday
Post by: EEVblog on October 08, 2018, 11:34:19 pm
More Mailbag Monday

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwNBfnNO4AY (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwNBfnNO4AY)

SPOILERS:
A-TEK AT-601 PC ISA Bus Design Breadboarding Tool
Gigatron TTL computer update
https://gigatron.io/ (https://gigatron.io/)
VintageTek museum XY demo board
https://www.ebay.com/str/vintagetek (https://www.ebay.com/str/vintagetek)
1970's Casio CQ-1 Calculator
Zofz PCB Gerber Viewer
https://www.zofzpcb.com/ (https://www.zofzpcb.com/)
Title: Re: EEVblog #1130 - Mailbag Monday
Post by: maginnovision on October 09, 2018, 12:01:31 am
I was just messing with one of those tek boards and some other oscilloscope art stuff last night.
Title: Re: EEVblog #1130 - Mailbag Monday
Post by: Muttley Snickers on October 09, 2018, 12:02:50 am
8:30
Use [Arrows] to select
Press [A] to start program


"Do I have to read the instructions"

 :palm:
Title: Re: EEVblog #1130 - Mailbag Monday
Post by: EEVblog on October 09, 2018, 12:47:43 am
8:30
Use [Arrows] to select
Press [A] to start program

"Do I have to read the instructions"
 :palm:

They are the same instructions as for the original ROM that used the Nintendo controller thing, so I kinda just subconsciously ignored them assuming that the keyboard version worked more sensibly.
Title: Re: EEVblog #1130 - Mailbag Monday
Post by: marcelk on October 09, 2018, 01:06:58 am
The programmer* also didn't see that line for months.
https://github.com/kervinck/gigatron-rom/issues/38

*me
Title: Re: EEVblog #1130 - Mailbag Monday
Post by: drussell on October 09, 2018, 02:36:32 am
Great Mailbag episode...  :)

i would expect that the 244 on the ISA card was probably fried and replaced by a user rather than being mismatched from the factory.  I've certainly blown up my share of 244 and 245 chips.   :-[

Does the CQ-1 power up at all?  It shouldn't be terribly difficult to diagnose basically what is wrong.   ;)
Title: Re: EEVblog #1130 - Mailbag Monday
Post by: mrpackethead on October 09, 2018, 03:26:33 am
 Hey Dave, just noticed this particually on this video

The audio in your video is below the Youtube Reference level by 4.9db     Youtube does weird things with normalisaton and stuff, ( you can google this topic ).

You might want to run a loudness meter in your audio, before you push it up to Youtube, to get it up to about  -22 LUFS
Title: Re: EEVblog #1130 - Mailbag Monday
Post by: ggchab on October 09, 2018, 07:13:09 am
Nice video  :)
Another demo of the Tektronix logo board by w2aew: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tTeXPmbxW0&t=3s (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tTeXPmbxW0&t=3s)
Title: Re: EEVblog #1130 - Mailbag Monday
Post by: Brumby on October 09, 2018, 01:54:40 pm
Tandy were selling their Radio Shack branded version of that Casio alarm/calculator back in the day.  I remember working in their store in Westfield Parramatta when they came in.  They were the ants pants.

(https://www.eevblog.com/forum/blog/eevblog-1130-mailbag-monday/?action=dlattach;attach=543320;image)
Title: Re: EEVblog #1130 - Mailbag Monday
Post by: Lajon on October 09, 2018, 03:51:26 pm
Still have my Casio CQ-1 (from 1977 in my case), it stopped working some years ago (the display and one or more switches I think). It's actually not strictly a "4 banger", it can compute with date and time (like number of days between dates). Ok, not super useful but everyone got to know their age in days.
/Lars
Title: Re: EEVblog #1130 - Mailbag Monday
Post by: Ferenc on October 09, 2018, 05:01:17 pm
That's a knife!
Title: Re: EEVblog #1130 - Mailbag Monday
Post by: SeoulBigChris on October 09, 2018, 10:29:29 pm
I built a circuit back in the day to display the polarization of an RF signal in real-time on an oscilloscope, similar to this Tek device but not quite so fancy. I only drew a polarization ellipse on-screen, and used the z-axis to make the trace look like a dashed line for counter-clockwise polarization (solid was clockwise). I’m surprised the Tek device doesn’t use the z-axis to “pick up the pen”, so to speak, while tracing out the sketch. Without z-axis modulation, it’s like drawing something on an etch-a-sketch.
Title: Re: EEVblog #1130 - Mailbag Monday
Post by: bitwelder on October 11, 2018, 11:02:49 am
It seems Dave missed one special feature of the Vintagetek XY demo board: play tennis on the CRO!
Quote
With no jumpers, the board alternates between the logo and the Wizard, a few seconds each. The images are displaced slightly periodically to reduce the possibility of screen burn-in. To draw only the Logo, connect the pad marked “L” to ground. To draw only the Wizard, connect the pad marked “W” to ground. To play tennis, connect two pots to +5 and ground, with wipers to the P1 and P2 pads and ground both W and L pads. The mode is determined at power-on. Thereafter, any changes to the W and L pads have no effect. The pots should be linear-taper and between 1K and 10K.