On 12/23/2016 08:06 AM, Cory Heisterkamp wrote:
Hi Folks,
I recently became the owner of an LGP-30, supposedly in 'working'
condition.
I worked just a little bit on a Bendix G-15, a machine from
about the same vintage. 300 vacuum tubes, about 3000
silicon (I think) diodes, and a drum. Really, there are so
MANY parts in a machine of that vintage that would be really
tough to get, it could be an incredible project to get it
running. The G-15 had an IBM executive typewriter modded as
the console, with a box of about 50 telephone relays as the
decode/encode matrix, driven by thyratron tubes. Our drum
came pre-scored, I think 3 tracks were grooved down to the
brass layer. They had REALLY poor sealing of the drum.
Part of it was very good, but several large wire bundles
came in through a drawn aluminum cover with caterpillar
grommets. So, no attempt to seal the drum at all, therefore
lots of dirt got in and packed under the fixed heads.
Hopefully your LGP-30 has a better arrangement there.
But, lots of connectors, tube sockets, and similar parts may
be hard to get, not to mention the number of marginal tubes
that you might need to replace.
I know on the Bendix G-15 the logic was really convoluted,
to save tubes. So, they chained several layers of and and
or gates together before an amplifying tube, to do as much
logic as possible with each tube.
Then, of course, you'd need to resurrect some bit of
software to do anything meaningful. Wow, sounds like a big
project.
Jon
