Return to index"Center for Technology & Innovation" has web site and had this report. Table of Contents An IBM 1440 Restoration,
in IBM's Heartland, Binghamton, N. Y.Early E-Mail April 30, 2010
- Early E-Mail April 30, 2010
- PowerUp This Afternoon? July 15, 2010
- From Jud McCarthy July 17, 2010
- Quarterly Report Sept 28, 2010
- Bill Green visited Mountain View & Computer History Museum May 17, 2013 -
- In 2013, the museum acquired an IBM 1403 printer. This IBM 1440 does not have the electronics to drive it. So students from a local college were attracted to design and construct an interface from a PC to their proposed interface to the 1403 printer. (maybe later a link from 1440 to this interface ??)
- Team PowerPoint Slides .pdf - December 2013
- IBM 1403-N1 Printer Interface, Project Report with Design .pdf - December 2013
PowerUp This Afternoon? July 15, 2010
Subject: Re: 2010-04-27 Update IBM 1440 project From: Robert Garner Date: Fri, Apr 30, 2010 2:30 pm To: Susan Sherwood < director @ ctandi . org > Cc: ... Thanks for the update on your 1440 project! Van Snyder has the Sindelfingen contact info, in fact he is traveling there soon. (I've cc'd him). Regarding 1440 parts & CE manuals, it looks like Al has the parts and several CE manuals on his \"www.bitsavers.org" website. Paul may have some too. I believe you have all the ALDs (schematics), right? I've cc' some of the 1401 team here for their thoughts.(Allen Palmer supported 1440s) Good luck! Robert =============================== On Apr 29, 2010, at 8:06 PM, Susan Sherwood < director@ctandi.org > wrote: > Good progress was made on Tuesday 27 April by the team that included: > > Charlie Davis, Gary DeBlieck, Kalesh Kapur, Donovan McCarty, Carl > Mosher, Fred Petrus, and Don Seraphim. > > Testing on the 1441 unit determined that all filter capacitors were > a-ok and they were reformated (reformed?). The line voltage power > filter was reinstalled, after raising the machine onto wood > blocks. Future work in this line awaits installation of 3-phase > power in the workshop area. > Next week's session will focus on inspecting and cleaning SMS cards > in the areas of previous mouse occupancy. There is no evidence of > chewing (so far), and the cards, which where coated, are in good to > very good condition. > > Work began on cleaning up the 1447 console - removing uninhabited > mouse house, cleaning surfaces, partial disassembly of mechanism. > Next steps include further disassembly - somethings stuck - > polishing the rail, and running the motor. We need to find someone > who understands or can decipher the power system of the device. > Ribbons and tilt/rotate tapes are available for purchase through the > Web. > > We need to find a Parts Catalog for the 1441 and a Systems Guy or > someone who can understand the architecture of the 1441. > > IBM's office in Sindelfingen has a museum where all devices are > operational, and are operated by a team of retirees similar to the > 1440 team. It may be a great source of assistance and spare parts. > I'm seeking contacts through the IBM Corporate Archivist; if anyone > has Sindelfingen connections, please see what you can find out. > > We are still looking for a 1403 printer (without an optimized > character set), a card punch/reader, and programs that run on the > 1440. Anchors Away or other musical applications will be a special > treat. > > Last, but not least, we are looking for someone to write up the > progress reports who has more knowledge than I. Volunteers? > > Next Work Session will be Tuesday 4 May 1:15 PM. The workshop > will be open Tuesday evening from 5-7:30 PM for the Blue Box Team to > work, and the IBM 1440 will be available. Please feel free to stop > by and see what's happening Tuesday evening. > Thanks to all, > > Susan > > S. I. Sherwood, Executive Director > Center for Technology & Innovation,Inc. > 321 Water Street, Binghamton, NY 13901 > Future home of TechWorks! museum > > Tel 607-773-0092 > Fax 607-722-6616 > Cell 607-624-1090From Jud McCarthy JHMcCarthy atsign aol dot com - July 17, 2010
With what I have come to observe as typical, Jud McCarthy's persistence directed with his laser-like focus on a particular goal yields results. Jud has been in Binghamton this week and is intent upon putting power to the 1440 before he leaves this evening. To this end, a small group of hardy souls have braved less than ideal work conditions to, among other things, remove nuts from the California dessert (and another mouse house or two) that were jamming fan motors, cable the 1440 to the 1447 console, and reinstall reformed caps and voltage regulators (which deliver to spec after 50 years). Hat's off to IBM's manufacturing quality. Many thanks to Bill Davis, Charlie Davis, Jud McCarthy, Don McCarty and his student, Nick, Fred Petras, and Bob Pratt for their contributions in this week's heat. With some more work that starts at 1 PM today, the team expects to be able to repower the system by mid-afternoon. Please stop by the former Binghamton Ice Cream Company building at 321 Water Street this afternoon and help mark their progress. Best to park on either side of the railroad trestle, west side of Water Street, entering at the south door. Next week, Don Crandall, who designed the 1440 diagnostics, will be up from Florida to help move the project along. There will be a work session with Don and Gerry Schrag, who worked on the 1440 systems team, Monday 19 July, and probably others later in the week, depending on progress. If you want to be on the contact list for the work session scheduling and other project logistics, please send me an email. Keep cool, Susan S. I. Sherwood, Executive Director Center for Technology & Innovation, Inc. 321 Water Street, Binghamton, NY 13901 Future home of TechWorks! museum of invention and upstate NY industry tel - 607-624-1090 www.ctandi.orgSubject: IBM 1440 System Restoration Status (USA) 1440RestorationStatus2010-07-16
Gentlemen: Attached, please find the latest subject status of our activities here in Binghamton / Endicott, NY USA. Please be aware that we have only a 1441 Processor, a 1447-3 (Console / KB/ Selectric Printer), and a 1311 disk unit.
We do not havea 1442 or 1402 card I/O unit, and we do not have a 1443 or 1403 rinter unit.
Any suggestions you may have for us to locate these units would be welcomed. However, the main reason for this note is to see if you, in Germany, have any logic diagramson the 1447 console lights and switches, and / or 1441 logics showing the paddle card feed through B gate in the 1441.
Please note that although we do have the 1447 Model 3 logics for the KB & Selectric Printer portions of the 1447, the Mod 1 (Console Only) logics would have the logics of the lights and switches we are looking for. .Best regards ------ Jud PS: By copy to Robert Garner, I am asking him to check with the guys at the Mt View museum to see if they have any suggestions or input. PSS: By copy to David Clapp (System Donator): David, this is for your info, and to ask the following questions: Thanks in advance ------- Jud Justin (Jud) McCarthy
- Did you ever have Card I/O and / or printer output units with the subject 1440 system? If so, input for us?
- Can you check to se if there any system documents that may still be in your posssion, such as the 1447 Console unit
- Did you or your company ever have power up on the 1441 unit, and if so can you provide a history of the usage?
- If you never powered the units up, was it sold to you as a functioning set of units.
- Who did you actually procure the units from?
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Quarterly Report Sept 28, 2010May 17, 2013 - Bill Green, of Center for Technology & Innovation visited Mountain View & Computer History Museum
Subject: 1440 Restoration in Progress - Quarterly Report From: Susan SherwoodDate: Tue, Sep 28, 2010 12:02 pm To: ... This report covers the time period between 8/04/2010 and 9/15/2010. Progress continues at a reasonable pace since power on in July. A summary of problems encountered and corrective actions follow. * We determined that additional connections between the 1447 and 1440 were required. 2 logic signal cables and a voltage(AC) cable were located and installed. * 2 broken cable paddle cards were replaced. * While checking 1440 clock and trigger ring circuits, time 000-030 driver output was loaded down. The problem was that 2 logic cards gate 1A3, positions H18 and H26 were transposed. * Transposed wires on paddle card 47C2H12 were corrected. * Several communication problems between the 1447 console switches and indicators and the 1440 were noted during continuing debug. We determined that cable paddle cards 47C1H13,14,and 16 were incorrectly labeled, and therefore incorrectly plugged. It appears that this was a factory error, and corrected during Customer installation by transposing the other end of the cables in gate 1B3, without re labeling the connectors. The paddle cards at 47C1 were correctly labeled and plugged. This corrected many of the problems including LAMP TEST. * When attempting to manually enter addresses to the storage address register from the console switches, units position 1 and 8 bits were on all the time. A shorted transistor on a card involved in this function was found and replaced correcting that problem. * A Start Reset line loading problem was noted while working on the previous problem. The was caused by transposed cable connectors 1B3C09 and C10. * Carl Mosher has worked the past couple of sessions on the selectric printer. He changed the drive belt, and has been working on replacing the type carriage drive cord. to this point we don't have one that is the right length. Communication between the 1447 Console switches and the 1440 Processor is about 75% complete.(Est.). We can enter addresses manually into the storage address register, instruction address register, and A&B storage address registers. Some problems affecting parity as incorrect "C" bits show up. We have started some checking of main storage including 1B2 gate voltages and storage clocking. We have reached this status point through the efforts of Charlie Davis, Gary deBlieck, Fred Petras, and John Westermann, under the watchful eyes of Bill Davis. We expect steady progress through year end. Compiled by Fred Petras, 9/20/2010
Bill and Linda Green visited the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA. They were joined by Bill Worthington, Doug Martin, Carl Claunch, Ed Thelen and Stan Paddock. Bill brought a batch of pictures from the Tech Works and we discussed the progress that has been made there. With the discussion, presentation of the Babbage Machine (down for repair), the presentation of the 1401 room, amd Bill writing and running his first program using Vay Snyder's Autocoder we did not have time for seeing Revolution. Bill also gave us - 1440 processor code "cheat sheets" - sheet 1, sheet 2
Bill says "The description of the MLZS instruction says that the zone bits of field A are moved to the zone bits of field B but the B zone bits stay!"
Bill also gave us - Bill Green's 1440 math routines - 3.2 MBytes, printed with 5x7 dot matrix, with Memory map, Multiply, SquareRoot, Read/write console, FloatingPoint, ...