Time Code Generator - Wire Wrap

[pamperchu]

I got this device a few months ago and finally got around to opening it up to do some repairs. surprised to find that its all point to point wire wrap with ~100 TTL  chips. amazing!
I will post the video of the repair work later...


more pictures;
https://imgur.com/a/JrTsdWF

[rrinker]

 As Dave would say, a thing of beauty and a joy forever. There's something artistic and pleasing looking at that wire wrap side. I guess that's why I'm an engineer and not an artist, since I find that artistic 

[duak]

I worked with Datum TCRs in satellite ground stations in the late 70's but never had one apart.  One of my responsibiliities was to design and test boards for customized systems.  It was all done on wire wrap with the common boards converted to PCB as we built more systems.  Our boards were mostly single sided, ie. the WW pins were on the same side as the chips.  Less density, but easier to figure out.  I designed and built an 8088 with graphics for myself on some used WW boards.  I should see if it still boots up.

Do you have a build date on this one?  Would you know what sort of system it came from?

Cheers,

[tpowell1830]

At first glance I thought you said time warp generator... and I was right!   

I did a bit of wire wrapping myself in the late '70s. The hand tool was okay, but the electric one was super speed.

[pamperchu]

turns out it didn't need any repair, I just had the switch set to stop.

[dexters_lab]

that looks really cool, i'd be tempted to make it into a clock...

fit a perspex cover to it and hang it on a wall, make a small mirror so you can still see the display and then rig up something that makes it reset every 86,400 seconds

[German_EE]

There are some people who would sell their left testicle to get a protoboard that size, everything these days is Eurocard.

[mansaxel]

that looks really cool, i'd be tempted to make it into a clock...

fit a perspex cover to it and hang it on a wall, make a small mirror so you can still see the display and then rig up something that makes it reset every 86,400 seconds

It is a clock. if you input the right time code on the right jack in the rear, it will display the time just right. No need to reset at midnight etc.

[pamperchu]

it can be programed from the front by setting the number dials to what time you want to sync to, flipping the run switch to stop and hitting the "preset" button, after 2-4 sec it will update the display to what is set on the number dials and replay that 1sec frame over and over until set/run switch is flipped back to run.

I can get it exactly on WWV time that way and after 30 days so far, there is no noticeable timediff and that's expected.
 It uses a Oven controlled crystal oscillator (OCXO)@ 10mhz... 10.0000Mhz
The OCOX 10Mhz has an Accuracy of 2 x 10<sup>−8
A Rubidium atomic clock, RbOX, is 10^-9 and is a possible option unit  if i ever find one at the surplus store

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_oven
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubidium_standard</sup>

[cdev]

Check out the Lars GPSDO thread if you want to build a GPSDO around your frequency standard!

There is also a Canadian company, universal-solder.ca that sells a very inexpensive SPI enabled WWVB receiver kit based on a simple chip receiver.  There was a thread on the time-nuts mailing list about it recently.

[pamperchu]

if i find hardware i will keep adding to the system, I would like to avoid GPSDO unless its 1970s 80s electronics doing all the work. still learning how it could have been done back then, or was done. WWV is going off the air soon so i dont know yet my options.

[nad007007]

That's cool it works, Got to love those TTL chips.

[basinstreetdesign]

I got this device a few months ago and finally got around to opening it up to do some repairs. surprised to find that its all point to point wire wrap with ~100 TTL  chips. amazing!

Point-to-point wirewrap was a real option in the 70's not only for protos and one-offs like the TCG you have but for production, too.  Digital Equipment Corp made the back planes for their PDP-11s and VAX's with wire-wrap block with all wires traveling at 45 deg angles to the frame so that the whole back plane criss-crossed at right angles for minimal cross talk.  I know because one of my jobs then was to build custom plug-in interfaces for PDP-11s.

My first job out of university (1977 - 1981) was with a very small company in Toronto who made and sold time code equipment.  I designed a portable TCG/TCR for field production of NTSC/PAL news-gathering.  It hung from the cameramans belt.

I also designed and built a larger machine, a post-production video colour corrector that would record and apply colour correction to video on a scene-by-scene basis.  It was driven by time code from two video playback machines and record the result onto a third machine with colour changes, dissolves, etc.  It had a colour CRT display for the operator and a control desk for 11 colour adjustments and all machine-control operations.  Since my boss thought he could save money by avoiding pcb layout and because he distrusted microprocessors (strange new technology and SW a completely foreign concept) I had to design it using 74XX logic only (not 74LSXX but 74XX).  It took me a year to design on paper and took a builder-person about 2 months to wire it up completely with wire wrap tools.  It was 500 chips and sucked down about 8 Amps of 5V power.

By then the customer was calling every day asking when it would ship.  I had only about 20% of it debugged when my boss finally caved to pressure and told me and my helper to pack it all into the trunk of a rental car and drive to Chicago where I would install it into the customers machine room.  I had to debug the rest of it at the customers site with them still sayin' "well... ,well... ".  I was there 9 weeks with everything, hotels, restaurants , drinking binges, everything paid for.  It was heaven and hell combined but I made friends there in the studio.
I would never wish the experience  on anyone.