User:Qfissler
I might not be entirely neurotypical...
...and I sometimes apologise.
Born in London & based near London, UK.
I studied electronics engineering and love it. I find that it gives me a low level view of what systems are doing in my work with computers.
...and I work with computers a lot. I'm currently lead eng on some large gov cloud infra.
Been using Tek scopes for many, many years as a hobbyist.
I own a couple of scopes not on this wiki.
My life has changed a little and I've had to refine my planning... I've acquired a lot of equipment and it's quite a burden to catalogue, triage/assess and then plan for actual preservation and restoration... I'm looking forward to giving my favourite hobby more focus in my life - even re-organising my house to support it more...
Things I'm working on
Testing plugins
English has a habit of tripping us up... Especially as we use a variety of regional dialects here. I intend to create plugins for testing the mainframes, their power rails and some minimal features. Hopefully, along the way, I'll also gather ideas and notes to create test rigs for testing and calibrating plugins...
Inspired by some excellent plugins from Tek, Jared@NFM and others, and the fact that probing the backplane with test gear is a Royal Pita, I've cobbled some notes and parts together and intend to build something to test Telequipment, 7000 series, 5000 series and TM500 series mainframes.
Octopus
I have a 7CT1N but like the idea of making some of our old scopes more useful by adding something like the octopus idea... At its simplest, the octopus can output X-Y to a scope. With storage, we can compare traces with known-good components. With programmable hardware, we can run complicated and automated tests.
Repairs
I love repairing electronics - it's been a hobby for many years. I find it therapeutic to restore things to working order, as well as rewarding to see something recovered from a path to landfill. It's a fond memory of mine to have been greeted by nephews and nieces with excitement and pleas to get me to repair things they'd liked to play with...
I've been buying Tek and Telequipment gear cheap to support sharing my enthusiasm with folk wanting to learn about electronics. Some of the items I've acquired need repair! Some might be rare enough that I need to plan the work to include pausing for photos or even good lighting and commentary for video...
I'll add a table here ASAP as I think that I'll need to solicit info and encourage discussion...
Notes for other users
Plugin Interfaces
Not sure if these photos have a place on the main wiki - the 7000 series are a lot deeper and a fraction wider. The TM500, 5000 series and Telequipment plugins share the same chassis glide extrusions - but locations and widths of the glide keys and pins on the backs of the plugins prevent mishaps :-). The 11000 series is almost identical to the 7000 series but for the top optional connector which is shaped to prevent plugging into the wrong frame.
The TM500 and 5000 series interfaces are very similar to the JAMMA (Japanese Arcade Manufacture Marketing Association) but some connections are paired and some have a notch which removes a connection position.
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TQ, TM500 (DC and PG families) and 5000 series connectors compared
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TQ, TM500, 7000 series and 5000 series profiles compared
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Some parts for extenders and plugins
Connector summary
The various mainframe and plugin interfaces have different pitches to keep us on our toes. While the Tektronix seem to be numbered from the bottom of the connector, the Telequipment are numbered from the top.
| Attribute | TM500 | 5000 | 7000/11000 | Telequipment | 3S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pitch | 5/32" | 5/32" | 0.1" | 0.15" | 5/32" |
| Positions | 28 | 28 | 38 | 16 | 6 |
| Sides | 2 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 2 |
| Connections | <56 | 56 | 76 | 15 | 12 |
| Thickness | ⅟16" | ⅟16" | ⅟16" | <⅟16" ? | ⅟16" ? |
| Notes | Some connections use multiple positions. Multiple and optional key slots. Some positions free for local use. JAMMA is almost identical 5000 series is almost identical |
Cards have two key slots JAMMA is almost identical TM500 is almost identical |
- | Numbered from the top. Key slot uses a position Vertical slot has barrier at position 12 Horizontal slot has barrier at position 5 |
- |
A pivot of that table: (See note below)
| Pitch | Positions | Sides | Connections | Thickness | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| TM500 | 5/32" | 28 | 2 | <56 | ⅟16" | Some connections use multiple positions. Multiple and optional key slots. Some positions free for local use. JAMMA is almost identical 5000 series is almost identical |
| 5000 | 5/32" | 28 | 2 | 56 | ⅟16" | Cards have two key slots JAMMA is almost identical TM500 is almost identical |
| 7000/11000 | 0.1" | 38 | 2 | 76 | ⅟16" | - |
| Telequipment | 0.15" | 16 | 1 | 15 | <⅟16" ? | Numbered from the top. Key slot uses a position Vertical slot has barrier at position 12 Horizontal slot has barrier at position 5 |
| 3S | 5/32" | 6 | 2 | 12 | ⅟16" ? | - |
TelequipmenT Type 43
I've got a manual for the TelequipmenT Type 43 (D43/D.43/D.43R/S.43) which is from 1965, the one on this wiki is newer - I think that mine is from before Tektronix bought Telequipment. The one I've got has appendices for plugins D, G and H which are not in the 1968 printing. I see that there might be separate manuals for the plugins on the wiki - I've not checked all three but I see that my appendix for the H plugin has different content. All I've spotted so far is that the one on the wiki doesn't list all of the transistors (though the schematic shows the types) and is missing the two variable inductors, L21 and L22, which are listed as:
2.2/5.1μH Variable Inductor (Brown/Yellow)
I might add this to the H plugin page or its Discussion section.
Repair notes
Some notes for going to other pages when completed.
LiI cells
I have Lithium Iodide cells in a 1240 and its 12RS01 RAM pack. Stamped 1983 and still showing 2.75 V in circuit with some bulge... I think that cell will get its own page for linking from the various device pages which contain one.
Notes to me
Wiki editing
I need to remind myself to refer to the style guide for this wiki:
...and a couple of extra handy references
Table Generator
Have a look at this link!
If you see a table you want to edit, copy the rendered table from a page viewed in your browser (ie drag to select&highlight, then copy with Ctrl-C or right-click, copy) and paste it into the editor ("File", "Paste table data...") - from there, you can transpose/pivot and transform the table!
Parts
I've got a few notes re parts refs and BOMs for various scopes - I want to collate and present them here eventually. I found a couple of useful sources and need to be able to find them when I want them... This wiki is perfect for that.
I have over 1800 parts refs, many with generic part refs for ordering. I'll not share them until I improve them (some conflicting info needs cleaning/refinement).
Screws
In the UK, UNF and UNC threads are relatively rare and expensive with metric being the norm.
Working with PDFs
Extracting Part Refs
I had fun extracting lists of references to the 151-0367-00 transistor from the 475 service manual.
Get the text from the manual
$ pdftotxt 475_SM.pdf 475_SM.txt
The tables are split but remarkably consistent so it's not too difficult to work back and pick up the previous column
$ grep -B12 151-0367 475_SM.txt
Grab the refs I want and paste them into a text editor, then turn new lines into comma space...
I'll come back to this - I intend to simplify extraction of parts lists and other info (eg Manual change appendices) from the manuals so we can have useful cross reference and more.
OCR
The upload tasks page recommends that we overwrite a PDF if we OCR it - then all existing links would continue to work. I think that we should share more info about good OCR methods as mine seemed to be less good than ones I download from this wiki. I'll share notes about what works for me...
`ocrmypdf` seems to work very well - the recognised text lines up with the image text - best results so far.
Can extract pages from a pdf
pdfimages --all infile.pdf infile-extracted # the last argument there is the prefix for the output file names
Remove any duff pages, rotate any pages which are better rotated, then img2pdf and ocrmypdf and then rebuild the pdf
Create PDF for images
$ img2pdf *.jpeg --output T940-letter-June-1983.pdf
Running OCR
$ ocrmypdf T940-letter-June-1983.pdf T940-letter-June-1983-OCR.pdf
Manuals
It seems that I have a couple of manuals for which there were no scans on this wiki.
I've scanned two already but results could be better. I'll sort out a flat bed scanner in the coming months.
I have a 24 page guide for interfacing the 2445 and 2465 Option 10 - I didn't find it online so will scan and save it here soon. Opt.10 Instrument Interfacing Guide
I have the Ops Manual for the 1200C01 070-4343-00 and 1983 corrections C1/783 - will scan within months.
Another to do is the 7603 Operators Instruction Manual 070-1310-00.pdf - left reference here to remind me and opportunity for anyone to prod me in case they need it. Done
I have a 1240 Logic Analyzer Seminar Workbook - I'll scan this ASAP - front page for ref: 1240 Workbook
Experimental pages
475 video links and components
Testing cleaner links to videos and discrete component lookups
User:Qfissler/475-parts-test-page
Formats for big lists of parts
Reminder to test these on mobile and various.
Fractions
I learned recently that the thickness of the 7000 series plugin PCBs (and presumably others) is ⅟16". There's no unicode symbol for that so I thought I'd try and take note of these options:
| Rendered | From this markup |
|---|---|
| 1/16" | 1/16" |
| ⅟16" | ⅟16" |
| 1/16" | 1/<sub>16</sub>" |
| ⅟16" | ⅟<sub>16</sub>" |
| 7/16" | <sup>7/</sup><sub>16"</sub> |
| 7/16" | <sup>7</sup>/<sub>16"</sub> |
| 7/16" | <sup>7</sup><sub>/16"</sub> |
| 7/16" | <sup>7</sup>/<sub>16</sub>" |
| 7/16" | <sup>7</sup>/<sub>16</sub><sup>"</sup> |