- 2023
- Jun
- 27
Checking out an Eico 145 Signal Tracer
This is an Eico 145 Signal Tracer that I picked up at the Breezeshooters’ Hamfest in Butler, PA. I didn’t really need it, but the gentleman that was selling it only had a few bucks on it, so why not? This is basically a test amplifier, replacement speaker, and a replacement output transformer for troubleshooting radio and other basic consumer electronics from the vacuum tube era.
Tube compliment is:
6X5 dual diode rectifier
6SJ7 pentode as the audio preamp
6K6 pentode as the audio power amp
All the tubes for this device are octal. Later models used miniature tubes.
The unit has multiple manufacturers present in the tube lineup, so this thing probably saw a fair bit of use during it’s day. Counterclockwise from the left, it’s GE, RCA, and Sylvania, although the RCA and Sylvania tubes both exhibit the octagonal tube number symbol that indicate they were made by RCA. You can’t trust the label on these things, every manufacturer made things for every other manufacturer!
The front panel is in well-used condition, with a spray of bronze paint across the top. Was someone trying to repaint another piece of Eico gear with that sandalwood-bronze paint they liked to use?
The top is rusty-ish, more so that the rest of the chassis. Perhaps it was someplace damp enough that water condensed on the top due to temperature differentials? Who knows. The handle is in excellent condition, and present - always a plus for these units.
Chassis isn’t in too bad of condition, although there are definite signs of repairs and modifications along the way, especially the jack that’s been added to the front to allow a later model signal tracer’s RF probe to be used with this device.
The bottom of the unit was in acceptable condition. This unit was most likely built by the end user. It’s put together in a decent manner, but is a bit of routing and soldering here and there that reveal it was built by a non-professional. That’s not an issue, it’s worked this long. (You could buy these pre-built by the factory or you could do it yourself.)
There were some parts just floating around in the chassis, including two wax capacitors for the input. These just went up through the chassis and connected to repaired wires near the function selection switch. They may be original, but have been touched at some point in their life. Note also the across-the-line capacitor (800V 0.05uF) and the added jack for the later RF probe.
There was some burnt insulation suggesting a soldering iron had been a little careless over the years. That needs to be replaced or covered at some point, but since that’s part of the electrolytic assembly it will probably just get replaced. The electrolytic itself appears to be a replacement, as the soldering job is different (and messier) than the other joints.
One I noted here was the black cloth-coated wire running up to the top of the tube socket. This has a cold joint with enough mechanical connection to make it work. How long has this been like it is? Probably since it was built. That needs to be cleaned up and fixed if this device is ever going into use.
Since there’s no obvious shorts, and a quick check of the capacitors didn’t reveal anything unusual, I decided to give it the ‘ol Brute Force Reform, aka just plug it in (to a fused socket of course!) After a bit of warmup, I have light!
There’s no hum or excessive noise, so the device is still functional. I applied a 1KHz signal to the input, set it to Trace, and yep. It works fine. Sounds just a bit ragged, so there may be something wrong, or perhaps my cheap well used signal generator needs some work. But everything important here is operational, tubes, transformers, switches. The rest can be replaced if need be.
This gets buttoned up and is now awaiting a few minor replacements before going into use as-is. Nothing like a battle-scarred piece of equipment on your desk!
Next part of this series: https://wereboar.com … ignal-tracer-part-0/
- 2023
- Jun
- 10
Dayton purchase: An HP3440 NIXIE DVM
One of the things I keep an eye out for is NIXIE equipment. I have a few pieces in service, and as these devices age they are getting harder to find. People such as myself buy them for parts and spares, and godless heathens destroy them for the tubes so as to build clocks. It’s not uncommon to find an empty chassis where all the boards were discarded when the tubes were removed.
Fortunately, this wasn’t one of those. Cosmetically, it was in ok shape. Covers were all present, feet and bail were there, it looked it’s age. Wood screws holding the bottom cover on suggested someone had been in it and lost parts, so that was taken into account. The vendor said that it worked, but examination and experience said it probably didn’t. I was right.
The aforementioned screws told a story that someone had probably opened it, let it set, and someone else hastily tied it up for sale. It had several non-factory features installed, including both the clogged-with-mud input terminals, and the rust-onna-nut package for the plug-in module. This thing probably sat in a barn or garage for a while.
As Shango066 says, the first thing you do is look at the device thoroughly to note anything unusual. The inside had several things to see. The device had about the level of dirt I’d expect, although it’s not really that old for one of these units. Date codes on capacitors suggested this had been made (or repaired) at some point in the early 80s. That it didn’t have ICs for the driver cards suggests it’s not one of the last ones, but it’s getting close.
The first thing of note was the missing fuse at the top of the device. This wasn’t as much of a concern as you’d think, as it fed the recorder output instead of being a fuse for one of the power supplies.
The plugin module had some interesting things going on as well. One of the cards was not seated properly in it’s slot - this could be from vibration or other mechanical stress, so that was simply a matter of pulling it out and re-seating it properly. The card was slightly warped, so it had been like that for some time.
The most interesting thing here was the two orange dry electrolytics in the middle of the module. This most certainly isn’t factory, and as they were just hanging loose and kind of tied together. It’s pretty obvious this isn’t a factory part - if you hadn’t guessed that already.
I don’t know that you could get that style of capacitor in the 80s, so those may have been hanging around in someone’s parts bin, or may have even been rescued from an old television set before making their way into this device. If I plan on putting this module into service in one of my other devices, it will need to be repaired correctly.
Note the ultra-precision resistors present in this module. 10.114k (!)
The bottom wasn’t as bad, but still showed some work.
There was some dirt along the wires indicating it had been in use for quite some time, and one of the clamps was broken. I’m not sure if this was due to age or someone moving wires frequently, but it’s not that big of an issue. The big takeaway here is the rat’s nest in the upper left hand corner of the unit. The string ties had all been removed and this bundle had been poked at numerous times. Nothing was broken or showed signs of insulation damage, so I ignored it and moved on.
So…what’s actually wrong with this unit? As you can see from the first picture, almost all of the tubes light up. The second numeric tube has some bad segments, but that’s to be expected. This unit simply didn’t DVM. Normally, the neon lamp to the left will flash, one flash per read. This one did not, it was like it was in hold mode. You could mess with the 8000 button, and the sample rate control to get it to manually change, but it was not performing those reads automatically like it should.
Often times, that will be because the cards are in need of an edge cleaning, so I decided to do that. You simply pull the card, clean the fingers with a pencil eraser, make sure it free of debris, and re-insert. I have to do this to most of my units once a year or so.
This is the power supply card. Notice that there’s been a lot of repair to the unit, as evidenced by the flux-coated joints. This is not how HP would have left anything from the factory. There’s also a bit of corrosion on some of the larger joints, as evidenced by the darkened solder. This has been exposed to some dampness at some point in it’s life.
The fingers weren’t that bad, normally they exhibit marks where they’ve been placed and removed multiple times. This may have just been out a few times. Power supply is operational, so nothing to do here other than clean and replace.
This is one of the NIXIE driver cards. The fingers on this didn’t indicate any removal, and none of these cards showed any repairs.
How does this work? These are an up-counter with a wheatstone bridge. One of the bridge sides is a ramp voltage, another side is the unknown input. The ramp voltage increases and the cards count up, when the bridge becomes balanced the unit stops counting and displays the unknown input on the tubes. Of particular note is how HP decoded the output - the black “socket” for the tube contains a photoconductive plate with neon bulbs driven by the flip-flops on the card. Depending on what sequence of bulbs is lit, certain parts of the photoconductive plate are active and drive the segments of the display tube. It’s fascinating how they did that and is worth a paper of it’s own. Maybe for a future post?
Here’s the card that’s most likely the problem. The ramp generator. It had marks on the fingers indicating this had been in and out of it’s socket many times. It, for some reason, also had a lot of bug debris on it. Only this card hard that, so I wonder if this was pulled from another unit originally - usually when insects get into a device like this, their crap is all over the thing.
If you look closely, Q8 right in the middle of the card has been lifted as if someone was troubleshooting the device before I got it. So this is indeed the problem (probably!) and if I wanted to fix the device, I’d start here.
But, that’s the thing. I bought this knowing that it probably didn’t work due to the condition of the unit. It was purchased solely for parts, and parts it is. I’m not sure how much time I want to spend on this, but who knows. I may have a spare ramp card in my box ‘o junk, as I’ve purchased these units before in tear-down condition. I might wait until the snow flies and dig that box of cards out of storage and see what’s in there.
Until then, this unit is going to serve it’s function of being a parts donor for my other units.
Stay tuned, next week there’s one more show’s worth of pictures to post until late summer. The Butler Breezeshooter’s hamfest was a nice show, and I brought home stuff I didn’t need. As usual!
- 2023
- Jun
- 3
Dayton 2023: Stuff I drug home.
I made good on my promise to not drag home too much junk this year, but a few boat anchors did manage to make their way in my car. Both of them had an immediate use, but the one that was going to go in to the rack didn’t work. Not a big deal, but still…it gives me a chance to re-engineer some stuff. The rest of the items were parts for later use, whenever the need arises.
Just some random bits I picked up. An old LED display (made in the USA!) from Rat Shack, and a 1971 Allied/Radio Shack catalog. The catalog is fascinating, the prices that some of the things cost was incredible, and it’s interesting seeing some of the Shack’s staples like the Weather Cube. It’s fun to look through it and see things I wish I could still buy.
A vendor was selling older Jim-Pak parts, as well as a handful of things from other vendors. Some were $1 per, others were 2 or 4 per $1. I picked a selection of parts, as well as some of those oddball fuses old meters used for their current sections.
This is a unit that was meant to monitor the audio feeds in a studio. At it’s heart, it’s two “channels” with a center channel. Unfortunately, it didn’t work. Examination reveals a lot of white corrosion on the input board, and it looks like some water was spilled and lay on the board for a long period of time. That’s not really a big deal, I’m thinking a couple of LM386 ICs can fix this guy right up. I’m not interested in studio accuracy, I want something for my rack that I can connect to the plugboard for audio testing.
According to the vendor, this works. Well…it didn’t. Mostly. I picked it up for parts since many of these are being torn down for the displays so they can become clocks. :( The device itself had a hard life, evidenced by the replacement screws in the bottom and the considerable cosmetic damage to the unit itself. It had all of it’s feet and bail, so that’s quite nice.
An examination on the inside revealed many repairs, some boards that had left their slots, and a missing fuse. Bringing the device up on power revealed that it indeed did not work, the master clock was not present so the device wouldn’t sample. One of the tubes was also partially bad, but it had the incredibly rare polarity indicating tube, probably worth the price of the device itself.
While cleaning the card edges I found that the clock card had a transistor leg lifted, so someone was troubleshooting the device when it was put aside. As this was supposed to be a parts unit, I’m not sure how far I want to go fixing it - if at all - but it will be the subject of a future post detailing the examination.
This is one of Radio Shack’s oddball devices from the CB radio era. It’s a crystal-controlled device that listens to Channel 9, which was commonly used as the emergency channel It was designed for antenna passthrough, and has it’s own speaker. If I can find a schematic for this, I may see if I can re-tune it to Channel 19, since there’s still a little activity there.
A friend of mine said he wanted a 2-pin cable for a battery box project he made. Said he needed an extension, so I found this. It’s not going to get warm anytime soon.
This was a CB-era piece in the bins with the Jim-Pack parts. I don’t know why I got this other than it’s funny. Rip-off characters, anyone?
The slim haul wasn’t because I didn’t see things I wanted. I did. A lot of it. There were a couple of pieces that I saw that I wanted to bring home, but didn’t have a need for - a WWV receiver and some other devices among them. I figured if they were there Sunday, I’d bargain, but they weren’t. That’s me being told that I don’t need them, leave them where you found them.
(But you know very well if i see that receiver again I may pick it up because I’m being told it’s still here so you know you want it!)
Overall, I think I got some good stuff. The meter may make an interesting project, should I decide to repair it, but I think it’s just parts with a good plug-in for my other devices.
Next show is Butler, PA, and then nothing for a few month. Stay tuned for some show posts from that one, and some detail posts on a few of the devices I’ve picked up over the last year.
- 2023
- Apr
- 23
Returning a Kaypro 2 to it’s original owner… but,
I’ve had this Kaypro 2 Luggable Computer since about 1993, I believe. I purchased it from a fellow college student with the disclaimer that if I ever needed to get rid of it, he would like it back. Since it’s been 30 years, I figure it’s time for it to go back home since it’s not doing anything here at the pygg pen.
A little history…
Kaypro, aka Non-Linear Systems, is credited with manufacturing one of the first widely available DVMs in the world. Using a relay driven wheatstone bridge, it was a concept that would have been difficult earlier, but transistors made it easy enough (if expensive) to make. NLS continued the test equipment line, making voltmeters, panel meters, scopes, and other items. Non-Linear Systems still exists as an entity, making panel voltmeters as usual. Find them here https://nonlinearsystems.com/.
In the 80s, however, NLS decided to get into the nascent home computing market with their entry, the Kaycomp. Named after the founder Alan Kay, these Ferguson Big Board clones rapidly gained a following due to their simple robustness and the fact that you received an entire library of software with them - OS (CP/M), Word processing, spreadsheet, programming, games - the machine was ready to go out of the box. Businesses loved them, and they were reasonable enough that home users bought them. Kaypro went on to make several offerings including hard drive models, and even a PC based model on the luggable form factor.
Kaypro eventually succumbed to that which kills all PC makers. PCs became commodity devices, and their IBM-PC based offerings weren’t any different (but they did manage to get a 286 machine out the door before IBM released the AT!) - and they released some machines that had crippling issues. The 90s saw bankruptcy and closure of the computer manufacturing, with test equipment continuing.
The Kaypro name has been resurrected a few times over the years, but has never stuck, and has faded to legends of a world before the IBM compatible devices took over.
And now, the main(board) feature.
This machine suffered a failure some years ago where the 8048 keyboard decoder went bad, got hot, and destroyed the relatively narrow +5V supply line. I, um, fixed it (yeah) years ago, but did a terrible job. The first order of business was to fix what younger me did. That was as easy as removing the wire fix, cleaning everything up, and re-placing it with some hot glue to keep things in place. Easy enough, and that’s done.
(Just as a note, the 8048 was a common microcontroller used as a keyboard decoder, and often had a mask-program ROM onboard for the decoder portion. Replacing it was impossible unless you had a pull from another machine handy.)
Next thing was to give things a good cleaning. The connectors that I could access got a squirt of DeOxit for metal-to-metal contacts, and the scratchy brightness control got a squirt of DeOxit for controls. All good, and the brightness pot now feels nice and smooth. A dust removal and the inside looks good.
Of note here is the mainboard ROM is populated with a Micro Cornucopia Pro-Monitor ROM. Micro C, as it was fondly called, was a magazine/tech house dedicated to the Big Board machines, and later it’s clones like the Kaypro and Xerox devices. Micro Cornucopia manufactured several enhanced ROMs for these machines, and this one is no different. I believe this one allows the use of DSDD drives (instead of SSDD,) as well as provides the ability for 4 floppies. While it looks like I or someone may have modified it to do such, I can’t remember if this had the ROM onboard when I got it, or if I put it there from one of my other machines. It will simply remain lost to the mysteries of time.
Also of note: There’s a keyboard in here. I do not remember putting that in, but again, it must have come from one of the many junkers I purchased over the years. Another mystery.
But now, the but…
A quick inspection didn’t show any noticeable physical damage.
A few quick checks didn’t reveal any shorts or other electrical problems. So, plug into a fused outlet and…
The Kaypro “Grrrrrrk!” of the drives spinning up greets me. All LEDs are lit. The drives are running. That’s good - the drives on this spin constantly and load the head on and off the disk during access. It’s a way of getting quicker access, but you’re spinning the disks all the time.
However, there’s a problem. Not surprising after sitting for 20+ years.
I know it’s hard to see, and I apologize. The screen has multiple issues. The first, that of the characters are partially formed. The second, and the problem which prevented me from troubleshooting the first is the screen is dim and goes dark.
Since the brightness is controlled by an analog pot, this is probably indicative of something in the power supply failing. I turned it off immediately so as not to destroy potentially unobtainable parts.
We can theorize about the malformed characters without power.
For a bigger copy of this, click here: https://files.catbox.moe/pgldav.png
Video is generated with some RAM, a character EPROM, and a bunch of TTL glue. There are several things that strike me as potentially being bad here. Those are (but, not limited to of course!):
- A bad character EPROM. These can fade over the years.
- Bad RAM.
- A bad TTL part.
- One of the socketed chips just needs pulled and reseated.
- Data from the monitor EPROM is bad, for the same reason as above.
- An interconnect problem between the mainboard and CRT.
To be fair, this would probably be easy enough to track down with a logic probe or scope, but I’m unwilling to run it for any length of time because of the screen going black. I don’t have any CRT device troubleshooting tools left, and I don’t want to destroy the device to a point where I can’t get a part.
I’m not sure how the original owner wants to use if (if at all,) so it stays in the state it’s in.
- 2023
- Mar
- 19
Random board shot - a commercial weather radio.
It’s always interesting to open a device and see ancient chips you’ve never run across before. The LM389 is a LM386 with three transistors for RF, IF, and 2nd IF on the substrate. This ancient commercial weather radio uses one for it’s audio final, if I want to keep it in operation it’s probably best to find a couple of spares along with the MC3357 IF chip next door. This device was made in the USA, even the circuit board was made right here in Ohio as evidenced by the GE Textolite “T” in the substrate of the board.
It’s well built, but the electrolytic capacitors with the long leads surprise me. I would think for a device with RF floating around inside, you’d want to keep those short.
It needs a new power cord, the old one is short and worn, as well as some DeOxit sprayed in the controls and switches. I may also replace the power supply filter capacitor, but that’s only because it was laying against the regulator for untold years and has a nice discolored spot on it.
More on this device later…
- 2023
- Mar
- 12
A General Electric T-125A “All American Five” Radio, Part III
This is part 3, and the final part of working with this radio. It didn’t turn out as good as I’d hoped, some of the other capacitors are leaky - and some of those are in a couplet. The customer just wanted it to make voices come from the air, so I’ve left it at that for now.
The original diagnosis I came up with was bad filters, and that was the case. The original electrolytic capacitors were bad, and were simply acting as opens instead of capacitors. The device in questions was a dual section, wax sealed tubular device, consisting of a 50uF and a 30uF part. I chose to replace them with Cornell-Dublier 47uF capacitors, which should be good for another 50 years. The across-the-line capacitor also got replaced with a Vishay 0.047uF @ 600VDC device. Just as good as the original without the bumblebomb problems.
The parts, fresh from Mouser:
What we’re working with. The black tubular part in front, and the metal cased tube in back are the suspects. If you look in the middle of the board, you’ll see a reddish-brown rectangle That’s the couplet, and was a cost-saving multi-part unit. When they go bad you rebuild what’s in them…
Other problems reared their head as it was being taken apart. The biggest is the age of the plastics. The knob used a metal band on the plastic to tension it on the shaft of the tuning capacitor. Pulling this knob from the shaft left the tension band on the shaft (it had little ears that were probably used during manufacture as an install aid,) and the plastic is so brittle and dried out that it just crumbles to dust. There was enough left to put it back on, so I broke the ears on the band off and replaced the tension band and said “Don’t touch this again” to myself.
The other bad thing, and something I didn’t notice before, is the speaker had a tear. The paper was so rotten it felt like wet tissue and just kept tearing itself. Well, it still works, and this can be replaced easily enough if desired.
So, on to the repair. It was a simple matter to desolder the parts, the heavy copper on the board let it’s old solder go with a 35W iron and some wick. The parts pulled out easily and the board cleaned up well.
You’ll notice the board is discolored. That’s where the 50C5 power amp tube sits, and it gets toasty. The solder joints are exhibiting potential cracks, so they all got touched up.
The parts I installed were much smaller than their vintage counterparts, so they got bent leads to sit down on the board, and were just placed in the board. I wasn’t going for a beauty contest here, they need to be in there solid and electrically correct. You’ll notice the one electrolytic is offset a bit, I realized after I put one in that the banana slicer had one section larger than the other. Oops…that other part goes in the parts bin.
For the filters, I just jumped the two together with a loop, looped a piece of bare wire around the common and soldered it all together. The original capacitor was full of old wax and wasn’t being rebuilt.
It was all back together…but there was still no joy. The filters took care of the buzz, and the output was nice and strong - then it started to fade and get fuzzy as something started leaking. One of the coupling capacitors or other small filters on the plates is probably leaky and drawing things out of tolerance, or a tube is bad. On a whim, I tested a few of the tubes, and they seem ok, so it’s probably one of the capacitors. With some being in that couplet, that’s more of a job that a “I’ll take a look” can cover.
A short clip of the radio playing. When it’s first turned on, it’s nice and strong but fades quickly. Sorry about the download, Youtube has decided that I need to verify my identity once again, and I’m done with that game.
https://privateemail … 9e11/1/8/NjE/NjEvMTA
It goes back the owner this week, if they want more repairs that’s a different proposition. Some of the younger members of that family are starting to get into electronics, perhaps this is a good project 15 years down the road.
Beyond that, it’s really not cost-effective to repair something like this for someone else unless they understand it’s basically a replace everything deal.
- 2023
- Feb
- 7
A General Electric T-125A “All American Five” Radio
This is a radio a co-worker rescued from a barn sale, and wanted to know if it could be made to work again. The T-125A was manufactured between 1958 and 1962 (or 1963, depending on who you believe.) It still has the civil defense markings on the dial, so this radio was probably one of GE’s last radios to have this marking.
The radio apparently spent the majority of it’s life in a woodshop, and it shows. While the case plastic is in excellent condition with no chips or cracks, it’s stained with various wood coloring products. Back and original cord are present and intact, although the cord is getting stiff. It, however, exhibits no cracking so it will get left as-is for now. The inside of the radio shows you where it was for most of it’s life, being coated with wood dust.
Since these are simple inside, there wasn’t any need to grab an isolation transformer or variac, just plug the thing in. The worst that would happen would be the across-the-line capacitor would pop, so…
It exhibits exactly what you’d expect. A loud 60Hz hum, so the filters are bad. That was completely expected. It’s a dual section filter consisting of a 50uF and a 30uF capacitor, so I’m simply going to get two 47uF @ 150V caps and replace it. The across-the-line cap is .047uF at 600, it will be replaced with something similar. The only other suspect item would be the coupling capacitor between the detector and the power amplifier, so it will probably get replaced as well. The grid capacitors could be eyed with suspicion, but I’m going to leave those alone unless they show problems. One is in a couplet, which would require rebuilding the device if it’s bad.
The owner simply wants it to play long enough to go “Hey, that’s cool.”
A quick cleaning with a paintbrush and some canned air got rid of most of the dirt:
So it’s ready to repair. I’ll pick up some parts at the next few hamfests I attend.
One interesting thing about this radio is the 50C5 power amp tube. It has different color writing, so I assume it’s a (genuine GE) replacement tube. It still has something interesting about it - the getter is black. I can’t say I’ve ever seen one like this without the tube being red-plated. I have to assume this radio was on for most of it’s life. Pretty cool.
Off to a show for parts. Check back later for results on this radio.
The GE T-125A schematic.
Courtesy of radiomuseum.org
https://privateemail … 729ec/1/8/NjQ/NjQvOQ
- 2023
- Jan
- 23
StatusNet: Cleaning up the main page.
This is the second (and last?) part of my cleaning up StatusNet. This deals with removing some of the main page identifiers. While this isn’t hardening, it obscures the doorway just a bit, and hopefully drive-bys will just look at it as a not very worthwhile target. It also removes links to things that aren’t what they were when the service started, so there’s less chance for a user to click on something that may now lead to a malicious site.
This does remove some of the boilerplate regarding the GNU license status, among other things. While I don’t like to do this, StatusNet is so old that there are probably no new installs happening, as it won’t run on modern PHP. If you’re running this commercially, you may be obligated to leave those license notifications alone, so use your own judgement.
***
Here’s the original assets, and what we’re going to change:
The first thing I like to do is get rid of the dead link to status.net, and the link to wikipedia. The first isn’t necessary because status.net is just a garbage page full of SEO grabber links, and the second both because I don’t like some of Wikipedia’s practices and you hopefully know what microblogging is now. The term itself has passed into the legend of Web 1.0, so it’s not even a relevant term these days.
(I assume you’re comfortable with your webserver and know where things are. No warranties are expressed or implied, it’s up to you to make sure you’re doing this right.)
Start by making a copy of websiteroot/actions/public.php, and then open the original for editing. (Always back up your original, just in case!). Move down to the very bottom of the file. You’ll see this:
And when we’re done, it will look something like this:
To change the header box in question, edit the ’showAnonymousMessage’ function to say whatever it is you want. Use this as a guide, essentially you’re getting rid of all of the links and creating a static header that shows regardless of the other options chosen for the site. That’s why it’s duplicated in the ‘if’ block.
Since the site in question is TheDoghouse, %%site.name%% will show that, followed by ‘Woof!’ - you don’t have to use the variable here, and you can put anything you want in the block as long as it can be printed. I chose to use a simple message that will show “This is TheDoghouse. Woof!” on the main screen where the description about StatusNet and the service description lived. The variable originally used was left intact for this step.
The next edit is just to reduce clutter. In the block directly above the one we just edited is the sidebar links. I edit those out so, while they still are there, the function to actually print them on the screen is commented out with #. This isn’t necessary and doesn’t really offer anything, it’s just something I like to do. The base skin for statusnet will show the same size box, but other skins will reduce the amount of space used based on how much or little you comment out.
Here’s what it looks like by default:
This gets rid of the “Popular”, “Groups”, and “Featured” links on the main page. While they are still available, to me and my private site it’s just unusued cruft. So away they go. I didn’t delete them in case I want to re-implement them, the function block simply doesn’t show what has been placed in the variables. Similarly with the site name, I left the if/else case alone so later edits will be less painful if certain functions need to be restored. But that’s why you made the copy, right? You did make a copy, right?
But there’s nothing preventing you from putting whatever you want there. Just replace the variable with whatever you like and let the show function print it for you. (I suggest you check out some basic php stuff before going crazy!)
Save your edits, and check that permissions and owner of public.php are correct. Since you created a copy, it’s probably now root, so change that back to whatever your webserver uses as it’s username. load your site up, and you should see your changes.
The next, last, and other thing I like to get rid of is the footer, and all of it’s links. This shows up on every page regardless, even the main page. While again, this does contain license information, many of the links are dead and the version number of the service is present. As before, there are probably no new installs happening, so having this information isn’t terribly useful. It exposes things that could make it (ever-so-slightly) easier to probe for entry, so it goes away. Again - this isn’t hardening, it’s simply covering up the door so the curious passer-by hopefully doesn’t see it. The microblogging term stays here, but be careful of your license requirements.
For this, navigate to websiteroot/lib/action.php. Make a copy, and edit the original. Navigate to showStatusNetLicense, and you’ll see this:
What gets shown is dependent on if you have the “Brought By” line filled out in your config. But I don’t care about that, as before I’ve left the if/else cases alone so they can be reverted easier, if necessary. All of the “runs the” information is gone, as is the license, and the service shows the same information regardless of config options.
The last thing I like to get rid of is the set of links present at the bottom of every page. My site is private, so some of those are not useful. The rest are dead links, and like the now defunct status.net page, may lead to something unsavory. Those are fairly easy to get rid of, navigate to the showSecondaryNav function in action.php and simply comment out the block.
Here’s the original:
And my edits:
Everything is commented out except the first few and last few lines, which give the function something to do when called. Other than that, everything else is ignored.
Save your edits, make sure permissions are correct, and check your site.
That’s it. Your main page now does not show much information about what this is, other than StatusNet.
Troubleshooting: If you’re having some issues where you are now getting a 500 error, check your permissions. That’s probably going to be the main issue here. Also check that you’ve used the correct syntax in the code, variables are always enclosed with %% %% and lines must end with a semicolon; Beyond that, copy your original file over the edits and try again. I found out by trial and error, so don’t be afraid to play with stuff even if you don’t understand 100% of what it’s doing.
There are a few other things you can do inside the service to remove unwanted things like maps (that don’t work,) but I’ll cover those in a separate article.
- 2023
- Jan
- 7
The TechTran 980 standalone 5 1/4” disk drive.
So what is this thing?
One of the devices I’ve had kicking around the shop for years are these TechTran 900 series standalone disk drives. These were the main storage medium for a large test platform at a former employer. They would provide commands to a computerized telco switching frame in the form of responses to a “Read next record” command. When the project finally ended, I asked the project engineer for the drive. Turns out there were 4 units, with manuals and service information.
So, it’s a disk drive?
These have two modes. First is a “File” mode, which works like you’d expect from a mass storage device. You create a file, write to it, then read it back. It also has a “Record” mode - instead of writing files with a directory, these store records, much like a punch card would store a piece of information that may or may not be part of something larger. You would write and read records - bits of text - in sequential order.
The unit does this via a RS-232C interface, using text commands. The device can operate in standalone or passthru mode, and has all the normal serial settings you’d expect - except everything is done via switches that control what is literally a box full of 74LS chips.
How does it work?
Because the device was expected to be continually available while in operation, the manufacturer set these so the disk spins at all times, and the device loads the head on to the media whenever an operation is requested. This has the effect of only requiring the time to drop the head and wait for the record of interest to arrive at the head before the operation is completed. Normally, a drive would spin up, perhaps drop the head on the disk after it was spinning, seek the correct record in the directory, and then move to read it. These spent the majority of their life reading sequences, while the time savings was small it added up to all the years the unit was in operation. File operations, of course, required seeking the record in a directory, but there was still a small time savings in not having to spin the drive up each time.
This made for a very noisy device, as the fan was spinning, the drive was spinning, and the head was being loaded on and off the media surface over and over (with an accompanying clunk of the head load solenoid) each time. Not something you’d want in a quiet space, but the noise of the test frames generally overrode any noise this thing made.
Really?
Kind of. I’m digging into the service manual more because it has a theory of operation. It looks like the record mode does create “files,” but not quite in the same way as file mode. More on that as I understand it.
I have to say I’m somewhat surprised that these things still come up. I figured the belts would have long turned to goo at this point, and the fact they’ve been sitting since about 2000 probably hasn’t done them any good either. They had a long life, being put into operation in the early 1980s and running up to early 2000 or so. But spin up they did, attesting to the fact they were well engineered (aka cost a lot of 1980 dollars) and designed to last for a long time.
The one in the pictures, a Model 980, is going to be the subject of an attempt to make it talk to something modern, which shouldn’t be that difficult as it speaks serial. Set your baud rate to 1200 and stand by for further posts in this series.
Deleted the manuals for now, will package them up again soon!
- 2022
- Oct
- 17
Deleting bad files in Windows
Windows can be quite the turd at times. For example, while it enforces a 255 character limit on a file (both path and name,) it will still happily allow programs like Chrome to save filenames that can be overly long, or even full of invalid characters. You’re left with a file that you can’t delete - or even rename - because it’s invalid to Windows.
The easiest way around this, assuming you have admin access to the computer in question, is to install 7zip.
7zip is a cross-platform archiver that supports it’s own native format, supports archive/unarchive of a number of other formats, and can unarchive just about anything under the sun. (Sorry CP/M’ers, I think SQ is too old for even this program to handle!)
Download 7zip from it’s homepage, 7-zip.org
Once you install 7zip, open the file manager interface that comes with the program and navigate to your bad file. You can delete it right from the interface, as it ignores standard windows conventions and does what it’s instructed - which is what it should do!
I use 7zip for pretty much all archiving purposes, even letting it overwrite the native zipper in Windows. It’s just that useful.
