I don't know who this Stuart fellow is, but I feel like I owe him a beer as well for getting you (and by proxy all of us) all this sweet new kit. This is excellent!
While I don't have even a fraction of the electronics knowledge, just watching Adrian get excited over the current tracer has made my day. Definitely coming back to watch him use it in another project!
Boys and their toys. The happiness on Adrian's face is how one can explain what being happy really feels like. I can relate to that happiness. You rock Stuart.
The old HP stuff was wonderfully over-engineered - I've got a HP 5245M frequency counter (50MHz !) that based on the ink stamps on the chassis was made in 1969 - it still works correctly and you can go through the whole calibration procedure and everything is still in spec. I was a bit worried about all the electrolytics - they are 50 years old, after all - but when I checked them I found that although they were down to about 60-70% of their marked value there was so much design margin in the product that everything remained in spec anyway.
Seeing how excited Adrian gets about stuff makes me happy. It really shows how much he appriciates these things (especially old ones). He really deserved that Current Tracer, as well as the microscope.
The 9pin on the Keyboard Encoder is for a user installed Numpad. S2 can be installed to enable quad mode encoding (4 states per key, including lowercase, CTRL, CTRL+SHIFT) but you will need a new ROM for those characters and also cut a few traces on the encoder. I don't remember how to do it exactly.
Just to add to the others mentioning yes, those are real wafers. Discarded error wagers end up on eBay and are super cool! Those look like the more silvery ones, different parts end up looking different being made with different ratios of materials. I'm envious, I've always wanted one! Very cool! :)
Sometimes when they test the dies, the yield rate is so low it's not worth chopping the wafer up to get the good ones out. It would have to be pretty bad though, something like 10% or less before it isn't worth bothering.
They repurposed some of those for a shot in The Expanse season 4! They 3D printed(?) small orange holders around each of them, and a brief shot says around the edge that it’s an encryption subsystem. It’s surely presented that way just because that’s how these come when bought from eBay (especially because the rest of the computer hardware shown are side-lit laser-etched acrylic “chips” much like in Star Trek), but I like the idea that the encryption is so complex a few centuries from now, and thusly their designs are so large, that the hardware codec has to be split across an entire bank of a dozen wafers to function. Moore’s law having physical limits, after all, and die sizes are already growing nowadays!
Awesome work. Adrian. Hearing the 8bit beep music was such a memory jog. 1970-1971 I had the old hard deck terminal, timeshare on community college mainframe , no disks, just punched tape for saving work and reloading work or programs. Following came a texas instruments pc around 1978, then commadore series, and many others. In 1984 I was employed as a quality control inspector and records were kept on the apple II e. Basic A.
Thanks for giving a thumbs up to the Soldapult. I lived next door to one of the original people behind that product - great guy. Let us use his pool all the time - he was a single guy who did a lot of tinkering around the house. Owned a VW camper van, and one of those old Volvos.
At about the 4:00 minute mark you ask about the S2 switch and the J2 9 pin D-Sub connector (both unpopulated). According to "The Apple II Circuit Description" book by Winston D. Gaylor that you mentioned earlier in this series, S2 was supposed to be used as part of a lowercase mod for the keyboard and J2 was meant for adding a numeric keypad to the keyboard's matrix.
They are all over ebay. I want one super bad! The question is always where they come from, some more expensive than others especially depending what they are made of.
@@hi_tech_reptiles a lot of wafers get rejected. When the wafer is made they do some initial testing to look for defects, if there are too many the whole wafer is discarded before they actually cut out the individual chips for further packaging and testing as that is expensive. I'd guess the pricing depends on factors such as what chips they are (popular CPUs are probably preferred), and what kind of process (what nm feature size etc).
I saw some of these when I was taking Electrical Engineering courses in college. We were told that every single chip on the wafers were defective, so these wafers could be full of defective chips as well. I once got a key fob from IBM that was a single wafer chip embedded in clear plastic, most likely defective, but still cool to see. What is also interesting is the size of the wafers themselves. They were relatively small back then.
@@TheGuyThatEveryoneIgnores I have a pretty old AMD key ring with a chip in it. No idea what it is, but it's pretty old so could be a K6 of some sort - or something really boring!
And here I am, cooking my breakfast and watching this video. And exactly when Adrian pushed power button back in place, timer for coffee goes beeping. With seconds precision, no kidding
Fun fact: the texture of the key indicates what is made of. The shiny one is probably made from ABS, while the textured one is probably PBT. They both start with the texture, but ABS wears down much faster than PBT.
Back in my tech days, we used the solder pullit and the mini version. We were really good at using them on the bench with Weller soldering stations. For really tough parts we would use a Pace de-soldering station. Those were the days my friend I thought they would never end.....
Those circular gizmos are the blanks for integrated circuit chips. The next step in the process, is to cut all those little squares out, add wires and mold the whole thing into a chip. I have a couple of them, and they are fragile. Also cool. :-)
I actually gasped when I saw the contour of what was in that foam packaging. The HP 547A current tracer is awesome. Invaluable piece of kit. It's like magic. They are close to unobtainium by now. The 547A could be bought in a kit with the 546A logic pulser and 545A logic probe along with a few other goodies. I have that kit and the 547A tracer and the 546A pulser it a wonderful combo. You can use the pulser to inject pulses unto an unpowered board and probe around to find where the current goes. Great for finding shorted tantalums! The pulser function can be replaced with other things but the magic voodoo of the tracer is simply not manufactured anymore. The indicator light in the front assembly is actually not an LED but a small incandescent bulb. It's part of the voodoo and probably difficult to replace so be gentle with it. The 547A tracer can also be used to detect bad RAM chips. No more thumbing around for hot chips. Just probe the top of the RAM chips and compare the internal currents. I said it before but it is like magic. Can't wait to see you use it :)
🤣🤣🤣🤣 Made me laugh when you pulled out the Digi View which clearly states on it "Digi View" and "NewTek" and then said "This looks like a NewTek Digi View"!!! 🤣🤣🤣🤣
Man that is a nostalgia bomb. Covington Jr. High School in Vancouver had one of those Digitek digitizers with that identical camera! I have old artwork hanging at my parent's house that was made in part using digitized images from old Nintendo Power magazines! The light that we used when doing the digitizing actually melted the glue on the spine of one of my magazines back in the day and put an end to my then-pristine collection!
I can't wait to see an in-depth video of the current tracer! Such a cool tool you got! Thank you Stuart for the wonderful donations which benefit not just Adrian but all of the viewers so he can do more technical repairs.
I had a Digi-View back when. The original for the A1000 used with a gender adapter to work with my A500. I also had a color wheel, but mine was a circle with quadrants of CRGB plexi or something. It came with a motorized mount that connected to a joystick port so that the Digi-View software could automatically change filters as it scanned the input.
I've been using a Soldapullt for 40+ years. Nothing else will do. The trick is to let the connection get good and hot, remove the soldering iron, then be deliberate about applying the sucker. Don't hurry. I would kill for that current tracer! You can't buy anything like it anymore. I've needed it dozens of times and will end up building my own.
You're not kidding about some of those solder suckers, one of my plastic ones blows itself apart every time I try to use it. And the metal anodized blue one I have tends to come apart, every few clicks or so.
Final form is a Tiny shop right across from the St. John's Burgerville. If you don't know it's there, it very easy to miss :), a local artist created the atari st Johns shirt and you can even find it sold at the St Johns Ace Hardware. The wafers look like failed prints (lots get discarded )
The ferrite core is usually for fixing EMC issues. That means, it works in the RF range. It blocks the high frequencies from going into the keyboard cable, where they are then emitted. You have been taking care of it a long time, before us in Europe. EMC and CE certification is mandatory since 1997, here. So our C64s don’t have a ferrite core at the keyboard cable. And yes, it is good to place it as close to the mainboard as possible. The ferrite core will not improve functionality, I think, because bouncing and whatever interference happens on such a keyboard has a way lower frequency that what the core attenuates. A sensitivity to RF usually does not play a role. In all EMC tests, that I have been conducting, I have only seen it once, that was with a capacitive button UI.
Hey Adrian! Thanks for the hint with the high quality mechanical solder pump! :) One piece of advice about mechanical solder pumps: Not sure if you do that already, but I noticed you have to clean them regularly by taking them apart and wiping the inner side of the piston and the rubber O-ring with isoprop to remove solder and flux residues and potentially (carefully, because solder is hot as we all know!) grease them with something like Ballistol (let's call it German WD-40) and even the cheap 2.5$ ones will last for years! I suspect even the genuine pump will degrade in performance unless it gets cleaned from time to time. I'm looking forward to testing this! Stay healthy and safe as well!
Adafruit sells a smaller solder sucker with a metal body and, most importantly, the nozzle is a bit of silicone tubing. The silicone tube let's you shove the tip right into a molten solder joint with no I'll effect and get a good suction action. If the silicone tip ever does get messed up in any way you just cut off another 3/8" section of tubing and stick it on.
Manuals are on the EEVBlog forums, eg. this link (if Adrian allows links...) www.eevblog.com/forum/reviews/hp-547a-current-tracer/msg537563/#msg537563 Cheers,
There's a channel here on UA-cam named CuriousMarc, and I swear he's used one of those HP current-tracers in a couple of his videos... He has a *LOT* of old HP test-equipment that he's always repairing and restoring for use in repairing and restoring other old electronics. It's a great channel if you like retro electronics.
I'm happy You fixed the switches with the ultrasonic cleaner, it's an essential tool for us vintage keyboard restorers. It can make wonders also for cleaning keycaps.
Keep in mind that the same die can be used in multiple EPROMs. They might wire up a higher capacity as a lower capacity if there was a defect in the unused part of it, but the part number would not correspond.
Funny...I’m 45 and love candy, and yet I have never in my life had a Pez. In this age of 3D printers, I’m surprised there aren’t custom made Pez heads on the market.
Hi Adrian, I also have one of those "cheapo Keyboards" for the Apple two. Also this is not meant to be, I figured out that you CAN use the keycaps for the Alps-Keyboard by removing the little plastic adopters on the ALPS Switches. I used this for a while until I got a proper replacement cap.
Keyboard snob here. The "other" keyboard is an ITT snap action which is just essentially a leaf spring design similar to the old Fujitsu switches. Pretty much just a metal dome membrane style linear switch. The SKCC is definitely a much more desirable switch.
I have a - you could say - bootleg copy of the Soldapullt. It was just 30 cents more than the cheapest model but it is awesome, works several orders of magnitude better and lasts a lot longer. The only reason I had to buy another one is because I mislaid / lost the first one.
I just got an Apple II+ in poor condition a couple weeks ago. The board was obviously untested (but it was Apple-refurbished in 1984). The power supply was missing its fuse and there's no life in it when I replaced the fuse. Hooking the board to a good power supply gets me random crashing and no video most of the time. I reseated every chip and was rewarded for that with a 74LS161 trying to let the magic smoke out. It got very hot. I'm baffled as to what the issue (probably issue*s*) could be, as the symptoms change every time. At least I have a case and a keyboard to put my good spare board in (that one's an earlier Apple II mainboard with no RAM select blocks that was reconfigured as a II+, with the 8T28s in place of the 8304 for the data bus). Just the keyboard costs more than what I paid for this untested II+, so at least it was worth buying! Mine is the Datanetics type and it came with the encoder set to do RESET without CTRL. (Fun fact: the IIe and IIc have provisions for RESET without CTRL, but you have to cut one trace and bridge another to do it.) I'd never had any luck with the spring-loaded solder sucker things, so when my Aoyue desoldering gun packed up, I got Hakko FR-301 desoldering gun. It's a bit more expensive than the Soldapullt (at $250 after a handshake with the devil named "Amazon"), but I was able to make quick work of replacing an entire slot on the II+. 100 connections done and dusted. And oh... at least your cover latches WORK and stay stuck down, unlike my stupid ones that I'm about to screw down because no adhesive in the world sticks to 40-year-old Beige Apple II+ case.
I bought one of those same solder suckers at a HAMfest years ago. I recently used it to cleanly desolder the VRAM chip in a faulty NES I repaired for friends. New chip easily plunked into place.
I will NEVER thumbs down a video. I don't think you are capable of producing garbage. Congrats on that gift of a current tracer. I can't wait for future videos of you using it!
The 9 pin connector allows a numeric key pad to be plugged in you would have to set a switch matrix to figure out the layout to create your own, encoded board supports it as well as lower case output. That requires cutting to triangle jumped pass at the double pole double throw switch rocker or toggle. Place the app!e char Rom with the Franklin using a socket adapter. Also Tarn-X cleans corroded IC pins no damage just rinse with water and dry.
Aah the Soldapult. I used one of those at a previous position for several years. Technique-wise, you can hold the Soldapult in your left hand and make a fist with your finger on the button, soldering iron in your right hand as normal. Slam the spring plunger against your left thigh to arm the unit, then twist your wrist to put it up to the work-piece and push the trigger. With a little practice, you can desolder an entire 10-pin IEC connector in under a minute. The next upgrade is either a Hakko 808 for around US$200, or a vintage Weller WR3000 for US$2000+
Those HP probes came in a few variants, Years ago 'we' dispatched a few logic probe variants to techs at a telephone exchange. A few weeks later we heard them say 'they went off like shotgun cartridges'. The twit didn't notice the decimal point between the '5' and the '0' on the label, and read it as '50V' then promptly connected them to the 48V supply of the phone exchange. The poor HP probe complained violently to the gross over voltage..... What a waste.
my cheapy solder sucker is identical to yours. all I had to do to mine to get it working excellently was pull it apart and put a lick of silicone grease on the piston's sealing o-ring.
HP 547a is now really hard to find, take good care of it. Mine was stolen in 90's, never had a chance to buy another one. I've developed an 'all-in-one' replacement, with pulse generator and digital probe.
I remember changing loads of those Alps switches from 1987 onwards in Olympia typewriters and other computers. Then other switches I used to see on Brother and TEC typewriters. The Alps keyboards Was The best one. I used to repair home and business systems and still have most of the original service manuals. WOW a current tracer is the best tool ever I had one and on a move I lost it and never replaced it. SO COOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It will make fault finding so much easier
Does Stewart worked on Rockwell? That wafer pictures could be gems. Ask him about high speed ADCs and/or DSP video processors. Thank you for showing us up that material!
Adrian's Digital basement brought to you by Stewart. The shirt looks good on you. If people keep sending you sweets you may need a large in the future.
Glad to see you got one of those solder suckers. They work real well, but you do need to clean them regularly, including the face of the plunger, as the solder will eventually build up into a disc you can just pry off. There is definitely a technique when it comes to using it. A quick way to reload the unit is to push the plunger with the heel of your other hand (yes, the hand currently holding the iron), but once you get the hang of it, sipping out solder will go fast.
Super entertaining, thank you for posting this amazing video repairing older hardware! I am very fascinated about things like this, and even found out that the NES uses the same processor with the 6502 MOS architecture, but being produced by Ricoh, and clocking at 1.79 mhz instead of the slightly slower 1.072 mhz that the Apple II here uses! So fascinating!
Those solder suckers are awesome. I need to get one soon. We used to use them in the Navy (I was an electronics technician) and I don't think I've ever used a better model since then.
37:58 just looked up the 547a current tracer, the only sale listings I could find were POA so definitely know I'm not affording one of those puppies right now lol... Sure you'll get 100 times the usefulness out of it anyway, and it's nice to see folk with the means actually stepping up and supporting good creators on YT in this way. Thank you Stewart, this benefits us all greatly & you are indeed a gent. 73
There used to be a place in AZ, that I visited when I was on a trip working in the area, called Trx2, who sold only retro games and LPs. Very interesting shoppe, but horribly overpriced. The record prices were fine, but they wanted (I am deadly serious here) US$30 for the pack-in NTSC SMB/Duck Hunt cart. I bought a few albums there and took them back home. I do not know if they are still in business, as that was over a decade ago. Those IC 'discs' are what we call 'wafers'. Probably flawed wafers that were being discarded for some reason. They aren't reproductions. I used to take home defect wafers on a weekly basis, and some of them were as big as dinner plates.
I use the same microscope (with a better stand) for micro soldering. Just like the homemade RAM modules you have soldered. I even replaced a broken micro USB port in a Lenovo tablet with the help of this microscope
The stand that came with it is useless. You can buy a usb microscope with a better stand. www.ebay.com/itm/USB-1000X-Digital-Microscope-2MP-8-LED-Endoscope-90X-Magnifier-Camera-Lift-Stand/264005968026?hash=item3d77fb609a%3Ag%3ArZMAAOSwN%7Etb0Ydh&LH_BIN=1
My II plus I just finished working on has that other keyboard type. Luckily my friend had a spare keyboard, because if those stems break, theyre unobtanium. Really would like to start 3D printing replacements, but I don't have the know-how. Also helpful to see another one of those keyboards, I thought my space bar was upside down but yours is the same way!
The. button broke in my soldapullt back in the 80s after just a couple of months. I have a small orange one with aluminum barrel that’s been going since then. I had to wedge the barrel on as the thread in the plastic handle failed.
I handled silicon wafers back in the 80's at a fab plant, they looked pretty much like that. A little less shiny perhaps, so maybe someone has laquered them. If they are silicon they will feel and sound like glass when tapped (gently!).
@@adriansdigitalbasement Well, Silicon, being a semiconductor, is sort of half way between metal and crystal. If you try bending it, it will likely shatter.
The wafers looks real. Probably made in the mid 80's given the size. Put it under a microscope (100x or less) and examine the corners of one of the dies. You should find the manufacturer's name and internal ID (possibly the actual part number). Sometimes you will find a list of names. These would be the project engineers who designed the chip. If they are from the mid 80's, they very likely were hand designed and only had two or three metal layers meaning you should clearly see the individual transistors (modern processes have many metal layers and all see is the top couple of layers of interconnect). Probably a 2 micron process (minimum feature size).
Hi ! I have two black Soldapullts for 25+ years. Got fed with these aluminium powerless short-ones that always stick when you need them most. The DS-017 use to stick after heavy use as well - but if you use a silicon spray regularly you have best results over decades. These go very quickly apart and "service time" is quite short usually. Except you' sucked out massive and totally dirty crap like from old tube gear ... :-)
![Fixes for the Apple ][ plus Language Card and Keyboard](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/wVUWaodwNNI/mqdefault.jpg)
![Fixes for the Apple ][ plus Language Card and Keyboard](/img/tr.png)
I don't know who this Stuart fellow is, but I feel like I owe him a beer as well for getting you (and by proxy all of us) all this sweet new kit. This is excellent!
Yeah I really do!
Hey Alex! How are you :) lol I'm not stalking you, I swear. Hope your Amiga 2000s are doing well.
@@thomasandrews9355 They are doing great thanks to you sir! Was playing Batman earlier today!
@@blitzwing1 It is our little oasis of retro tech goodness, glad to have you with us!
While I don't have even a fraction of the electronics knowledge, just watching Adrian get excited over the current tracer has made my day. Definitely coming back to watch him use it in another project!
This Stuart fellow is a real gentleman! This world needs "good guys"....
m.ua-cam.com/video/V62Uw-h0pUc/v-deo.html
Just as long as they aren’t “nice guys”
Boys and their toys. The happiness on Adrian's face is how one can explain what being happy really feels like. I can relate to that happiness. You rock Stuart.
Back when HP made stuff that gave engineers that "opening a present on Christmas morning" feeling :)
As the direct descendant hopefully Keysight can give the same feeling today.
I’m not that old but I heard it gives the old heads a stiffy like those blue candies.
The old HP stuff was wonderfully over-engineered - I've got a HP 5245M frequency counter (50MHz !) that based on the ink stamps on the chassis was made in 1969 - it still works correctly and you can go through the whole calibration procedure and everything is still in spec. I was a bit worried about all the electrolytics - they are 50 years old, after all - but when I checked them I found that although they were down to about 60-70% of their marked value there was so much design margin in the product that everything remained in spec anyway.
@@TrimeshSZ Mr Carlson would like a word.
Seeing how excited Adrian gets about stuff makes me happy. It really shows how much he appriciates these things (especially old ones). He really deserved that Current Tracer, as well as the microscope.
The 9pin on the Keyboard Encoder is for a user installed Numpad.
S2 can be installed to enable quad mode encoding (4 states per key, including lowercase, CTRL, CTRL+SHIFT) but you will need a new ROM for those characters and also cut a few traces on the encoder. I don't remember how to do it exactly.
3:07 I absolutely love those old-man slippers!
My dad has a few pairs of them to lol.
Just to add to the others mentioning yes, those are real wafers. Discarded error wagers end up on eBay and are super cool! Those look like the more silvery ones, different parts end up looking different being made with different ratios of materials. I'm envious, I've always wanted one! Very cool! :)
Sometimes when they test the dies, the yield rate is so low it's not worth chopping the wafer up to get the good ones out. It would have to be pretty bad though, something like 10% or less before it isn't worth bothering.
They repurposed some of those for a shot in The Expanse season 4! They 3D printed(?) small orange holders around each of them, and a brief shot says around the edge that it’s an encryption subsystem.
It’s surely presented that way just because that’s how these come when bought from eBay (especially because the rest of the computer hardware shown are side-lit laser-etched acrylic “chips” much like in Star Trek), but I like the idea that the encryption is so complex a few centuries from now, and thusly their designs are so large, that the hardware codec has to be split across an entire bank of a dozen wafers to function. Moore’s law having physical limits, after all, and die sizes are already growing nowadays!
Awesome work. Adrian. Hearing the 8bit beep music was such a memory jog. 1970-1971 I had the old hard deck terminal, timeshare on community college mainframe , no disks, just punched tape for saving work and reloading work or programs. Following came a texas instruments pc around 1978, then commadore series, and many others. In 1984 I was employed as a quality control inspector and records were kept on the apple II e. Basic A.
Apple ][ and a SOLDAPULLT !!!!! The one and only original in my mind. Brings back good memories for me. Great video
After watching many of your videos, might I sugggest that in my humble opinion, you've more than earned your 547A current tracer. Thanks, Stewart!
Thanks for giving a thumbs up to the Soldapult. I lived next door to one of the original people behind that product - great guy. Let us use his pool all the time - he was a single guy who did a lot of tinkering around the house. Owned a VW camper van, and one of those old Volvos.
At about the 4:00 minute mark you ask about the S2 switch and the J2 9 pin D-Sub connector (both unpopulated). According to "The Apple II Circuit Description" book by Winston D. Gaylor that you mentioned earlier in this series, S2 was supposed to be used as part of a lowercase mod for the keyboard and J2 was meant for adding a numeric keypad to the keyboard's matrix.
Definitely real wafers. A lot of them get discarded due to errors.
They are all over ebay. I want one super bad! The question is always where they come from, some more expensive than others especially depending what they are made of.
@@hi_tech_reptiles a lot of wafers get rejected. When the wafer is made they do some initial testing to look for defects, if there are too many the whole wafer is discarded before they actually cut out the individual chips for further packaging and testing as that is expensive. I'd guess the pricing depends on factors such as what chips they are (popular CPUs are probably preferred), and what kind of process (what nm feature size etc).
@@hi_tech_reptiles Process engineers toss them after determining the faults source.
I saw some of these when I was taking Electrical Engineering courses in college. We were told that every single chip on the wafers were defective, so these wafers could be full of defective chips as well. I once got a key fob from IBM that was a single wafer chip embedded in clear plastic, most likely defective, but still cool to see. What is also interesting is the size of the wafers themselves. They were relatively small back then.
@@TheGuyThatEveryoneIgnores I have a pretty old AMD key ring with a chip in it. No idea what it is, but it's pretty old so could be a K6 of some sort - or something really boring!
And here I am, cooking my breakfast and watching this video. And exactly when Adrian pushed power button back in place, timer for coffee goes beeping. With seconds precision, no kidding
Fun fact: the texture of the key indicates what is made of. The shiny one is probably made from ABS, while the textured one is probably PBT. They both start with the texture, but ABS wears down much faster than PBT.
Back in my tech days, we used the solder pullit and the mini version. We were really good at using them on the bench with Weller soldering stations. For really tough parts we would use a Pace de-soldering station. Those were the days my friend I thought they would never end.....
Those circular gizmos are the blanks for integrated circuit chips. The next step in the process, is to cut all those little squares out, add wires and mold the whole thing into a chip. I have a couple of them, and they are fragile. Also cool. :-)
I actually gasped when I saw the contour of what was in that foam packaging. The HP 547A current tracer is awesome. Invaluable piece of kit. It's like magic. They are close to unobtainium by now. The 547A could be bought in a kit with the 546A logic pulser and 545A logic probe along with a few other goodies. I have that kit and the 547A tracer and the 546A pulser it a wonderful combo. You can use the pulser to inject pulses unto an unpowered board and probe around to find where the current goes. Great for finding shorted tantalums! The pulser function can be replaced with other things but the magic voodoo of the tracer is simply not manufactured anymore. The indicator light in the front assembly is actually not an LED but a small incandescent bulb. It's part of the voodoo and probably difficult to replace so be gentle with it. The 547A tracer can also be used to detect bad RAM chips. No more thumbing around for hot chips. Just probe the top of the RAM chips and compare the internal currents. I said it before but it is like magic. Can't wait to see you use it :)
Love that the new 'Power' key works. It's those little details that make you smile 😊
That current tracer is a beautiful gift.
Glad to hear that those DP8304's worked out I wiil order some for spares for my Apple ! Far as SOLDAPULLT I have been using them for 30 plus years.
🤣🤣🤣🤣 Made me laugh when you pulled out the Digi View which clearly states on it "Digi View" and "NewTek" and then said "This looks like a NewTek Digi View"!!! 🤣🤣🤣🤣
Man that is a nostalgia bomb. Covington Jr. High School in Vancouver had one of those Digitek digitizers with that identical camera! I have old artwork hanging at my parent's house that was made in part using digitized images from old Nintendo Power magazines! The light that we used when doing the digitizing actually melted the glue on the spine of one of my magazines back in the day and put an end to my then-pristine collection!
I've never seen someone so excited getting a probe lol. Congrats.
Even I am excited, 'cause I realize of what it can be.
from the Cheeze-it commercial "its a PROBE"
HALLOWEEN 666 KEYBOARD PROBLEMS, THE GHOST OF STEVE JOBS! HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!
I can't wait to see an in-depth video of the current tracer! Such a cool tool you got! Thank you Stuart for the wonderful donations which benefit not just Adrian but all of the viewers so he can do more technical repairs.
I had a Digi-View back when. The original for the A1000 used with a gender adapter to work with my A500. I also had a color wheel, but mine was a circle with quadrants of CRGB plexi or something. It came with a motorized mount that connected to a joystick port so that the Digi-View software could automatically change filters as it scanned the input.
Ah, I found a video that show the Digi-Droid hardware! ua-cam.com/video/rFqZvzcarrs/v-deo.html
I bet someone is losing their mind over the opening of the PEZ dispensers,🤣.
Holy cow, Stuart, you're such an awesome, awesome dude! Very happy to see you so happy Adrian! All this neat stuff is gonna be fun to dig into. :D
I've been using a Soldapullt for 40+ years. Nothing else will do. The trick is to let the connection get good and hot, remove the soldering iron, then be deliberate about applying the sucker. Don't hurry. I would kill for that current tracer! You can't buy anything like it anymore. I've needed it dozens of times and will end up building my own.
That thumbnail made my day. It's like the "What Pokèmon is it" vignette, but with computer parts.
You're not kidding about some of those solder suckers, one of my plastic ones blows itself apart every time I try to use it. And the metal anodized blue one I have tends to come apart, every few clicks or so.
3:50 you are correct. The switch controls whether or not control is needed with the reset button
Final form is a Tiny shop right across from the St. John's Burgerville. If you don't know it's there, it very easy to miss :), a local artist created the atari st Johns shirt and you can even find it sold at the St Johns Ace Hardware.
The wafers look like failed prints (lots get discarded )
The ferrite core is usually for fixing EMC issues. That means, it works in the RF range. It blocks the high frequencies from going into the keyboard cable, where they are then emitted. You have been taking care of it a long time, before us in Europe. EMC and CE certification is mandatory since 1997, here. So our C64s don’t have a ferrite core at the keyboard cable. And yes, it is good to place it as close to the mainboard as possible.
The ferrite core will not improve functionality, I think, because bouncing and whatever interference happens on such a keyboard has a way lower frequency that what the core attenuates. A sensitivity to RF usually does not play a role. In all EMC tests, that I have been conducting, I have only seen it once, that was with a capacitive button UI.
Hey Adrian!
Thanks for the hint with the high quality mechanical solder pump! :)
One piece of advice about mechanical solder pumps:
Not sure if you do that already, but I noticed you have to clean them regularly by taking them apart and wiping the inner side of the piston and the rubber O-ring with isoprop to remove solder and flux residues and potentially (carefully, because solder is hot as we all know!) grease them with something like Ballistol (let's call it German WD-40) and even the cheap 2.5$ ones will last for years!
I suspect even the genuine pump will degrade in performance unless it gets cleaned from time to time. I'm looking forward to testing this!
Stay healthy and safe as well!
Adafruit sells a smaller solder sucker with a metal body and, most importantly, the nozzle is a bit of silicone tubing. The silicone tube let's you shove the tip right into a molten solder joint with no I'll effect and get a good suction action. If the silicone tip ever does get messed up in any way you just cut off another 3/8" section of tubing and stick it on.
The HP 547A is awesome. I have one, too, but don't yet really know how to use it properly.
Looking forward to your video on this! :)
Manuals are on the EEVBlog forums, eg. this link (if Adrian allows links...)
www.eevblog.com/forum/reviews/hp-547a-current-tracer/msg537563/#msg537563
Cheers,
Thanks! Saved
There's a channel here on UA-cam named CuriousMarc, and I swear he's used one of those HP current-tracers in a couple of his videos... He has a *LOT* of old HP test-equipment that he's always repairing and restoring for use in repairing and restoring other old electronics. It's a great channel if you like retro electronics.
Hah, that ultrasonic cleaning for switches might come handy one day. Thanks!
I'm happy You fixed the switches with the ultrasonic cleaner, it's an essential tool for us vintage keyboard restorers. It can make wonders also for cleaning keycaps.
Keep in mind that the same die can be used in multiple EPROMs. They might wire up a higher capacity as a lower capacity if there was a defect in the unused part of it, but the part number would not correspond.
Funny...I’m 45 and love candy, and yet I have never in my life had a Pez. In this age of 3D printers, I’m surprised there aren’t custom made Pez heads on the market.
Hi Adrian, I also have one of those "cheapo Keyboards" for the Apple two. Also this is not meant to be, I figured out that you CAN use the keycaps for the Alps-Keyboard by removing the little plastic adopters on the ALPS Switches. I used this for a while until I got a proper replacement cap.
solder pullit was used in australian telephone exchanges really good
Knowing you were from Quebec I was expecting the St. John's stuff to be a Maritimes reference!
I also fully expected something to do with Newfoundland!
Newfoundlander here. Was thinking the same. :)
Keyboard snob here. The "other" keyboard is an ITT snap action which is just essentially a leaf spring design similar to the old Fujitsu switches. Pretty much just a metal dome membrane style linear switch. The SKCC is definitely a much more desirable switch.
I have a - you could say - bootleg copy of the Soldapullt. It was just 30 cents more than the cheapest model but it is awesome, works several orders of magnitude better and lasts a lot longer. The only reason I had to buy another one is because I mislaid / lost the first one.
🍿
Topic suggestion: 3,5" Floppydrives for the Apple 2e / 2c
I usually put a rubber from the crt cap on my solder sucker to improve the suction and to not melt the tip of the sucker
Glad the ultrasonic cleaner tip worked out fine. :)
I can't wait to see a demo of the current tracer.
🤭 Oh man, that's one hell of a Halloween Treat!
I just got an Apple II+ in poor condition a couple weeks ago. The board was obviously untested (but it was Apple-refurbished in 1984). The power supply was missing its fuse and there's no life in it when I replaced the fuse. Hooking the board to a good power supply gets me random crashing and no video most of the time.
I reseated every chip and was rewarded for that with a 74LS161 trying to let the magic smoke out. It got very hot. I'm baffled as to what the issue (probably issue*s*) could be, as the symptoms change every time.
At least I have a case and a keyboard to put my good spare board in (that one's an earlier Apple II mainboard with no RAM select blocks that was reconfigured as a II+, with the 8T28s in place of the 8304 for the data bus). Just the keyboard costs more than what I paid for this untested II+, so at least it was worth buying! Mine is the Datanetics type and it came with the encoder set to do RESET without CTRL. (Fun fact: the IIe and IIc have provisions for RESET without CTRL, but you have to cut one trace and bridge another to do it.)
I'd never had any luck with the spring-loaded solder sucker things, so when my Aoyue desoldering gun packed up, I got Hakko FR-301 desoldering gun. It's a bit more expensive than the Soldapullt (at $250 after a handshake with the devil named "Amazon"), but I was able to make quick work of replacing an entire slot on the II+. 100 connections done and dusted.
And oh... at least your cover latches WORK and stay stuck down, unlike my stupid ones that I'm about to screw down because no adhesive in the world sticks to 40-year-old Beige Apple II+ case.
Coolest 😎
I bought one of those same solder suckers at a HAMfest years ago. I recently used it to cleanly desolder the VRAM chip in a faulty NES I repaired for friends. New chip easily plunked into place.
Adrian, I think Stewart is your fairy Godfather! What a guy! As always great video to watch on a wet and very windy Saturday afternoon here in the UK.
I will NEVER thumbs down a video. I don't think you are capable of producing garbage. Congrats on that gift of a current tracer. I can't wait for future videos of you using it!
The 9 pin connector allows a numeric key pad to be plugged in you would have to set a switch matrix to figure out the layout to create your own, encoded board supports it as well as lower case output. That requires cutting to triangle jumped pass at the double pole double throw switch rocker or toggle. Place the app!e char Rom with the Franklin using a socket adapter. Also Tarn-X cleans corroded IC pins no damage just rinse with water and dry.
Aah the Soldapult. I used one of those at a previous position for several years.
Technique-wise, you can hold the Soldapult in your left hand and make a fist with your finger on the button, soldering iron in your right hand as normal. Slam the spring plunger against your left thigh to arm the unit, then twist your wrist to put it up to the work-piece and push the trigger. With a little practice, you can desolder an entire 10-pin IEC connector in under a minute.
The next upgrade is either a Hakko 808 for around US$200, or a vintage Weller WR3000 for US$2000+
Those HP probes came in a few variants, Years ago 'we' dispatched a few logic probe variants to techs at a telephone exchange. A few weeks later we heard them say 'they went off like shotgun cartridges'. The twit didn't notice the decimal point between the '5' and the '0' on the label, and read it as '50V' then promptly connected them to the 48V supply of the phone exchange. The poor HP probe complained violently to the gross over voltage.....
What a waste.
Part 5 never got linked in part 4 fwiw. Great series!
my cheapy solder sucker is identical to yours. all I had to do to mine to get it working excellently was pull it apart and put a lick of silicone grease on the piston's sealing o-ring.
HP 547a is now really hard to find, take good care of it. Mine was stolen in 90's, never had a chance to buy another one. I've developed an 'all-in-one' replacement, with pulse generator and digital probe.
I remember changing loads of those Alps switches from 1987 onwards in Olympia typewriters and other computers. Then other switches I used to see on Brother and TEC typewriters. The Alps keyboards Was The best one. I used to repair home and business systems and still have most of the original service manuals. WOW a current tracer is the best tool ever I had one and on a move I lost it and never replaced it. SO COOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It will make fault finding so much easier
I have the manual for the current tracer if you need it plus several other manuals of digital repair before the internet
So lucky. I've been wanting one of those HP's for the longest time. Would have been great during my last repair
That solder suck is the best out there. But be careful, it can pull pads and traces.. so it would mean you need to use solder wick. Excellent video!
Does Stewart worked on Rockwell?
That wafer pictures could be gems.
Ask him about high speed ADCs and/or DSP video processors.
Thank you for showing us up that material!
Adrian's Digital basement brought to you by Stewart. The shirt looks good on you. If people keep sending you sweets you may need a large in the future.
Glad to see you got one of those solder suckers. They work real well, but you do need to clean them regularly, including the face of the plunger, as the solder will eventually build up into a disc you can just pry off. There is definitely a technique when it comes to using it. A quick way to reload the unit is to push the plunger with the heel of your other hand (yes, the hand currently holding the iron), but once you get the hang of it, sipping out solder will go fast.
Rockwell International?! Those are clearly wafers to make chips to go into a Turbo Encabulator! Rad!
Another great way to start my Saturday! I'll put the yardwork off until I'm done with this one.
Super entertaining, thank you for posting this amazing video repairing older hardware! I am very fascinated about things like this, and even found out that the NES uses the same processor with the 6502 MOS architecture, but being produced by Ricoh, and clocking at 1.79 mhz instead of the slightly slower 1.072 mhz that the Apple II here uses! So fascinating!
Those solder suckers are awesome. I need to get one soon. We used to use them in the Navy (I was an electronics technician) and I don't think I've ever used a better model since then.
Rockwell made modem/fax chips back in the day, I wouldn't be surprised if that wafer is a modem chip!
36:27 Did Stuart just propose to Adrian?! Tell us you said yes, Adrian!
😄lol
many thanks Adrian, I've just purchased a Soldapullt
used such a microscrope for years when i worked for LG.
Used it to document defects/flaws on LCDs.
Quite useful.
37:58 just looked up the 547a current tracer, the only sale listings I could find were POA so definitely know I'm not affording one of those puppies right now lol... Sure you'll get 100 times the usefulness out of it anyway, and it's nice to see folk with the means actually stepping up and supporting good creators on YT in this way. Thank you Stewart, this benefits us all greatly & you are indeed a gent. 73
Waaauu. Stuart must be the nicest guy around. I tip my hat in your general deirction sir.
I have the Digiview and a similar B&W security camera and the filter wheel. That thing was amazing back in the day.
There used to be a place in AZ, that I visited when I was on a trip working in the area, called Trx2, who sold only retro games and LPs. Very interesting shoppe, but horribly overpriced. The record prices were fine, but they wanted (I am deadly serious here) US$30 for the pack-in NTSC SMB/Duck Hunt cart.
I bought a few albums there and took them back home. I do not know if they are still in business, as that was over a decade ago.
Those IC 'discs' are what we call 'wafers'. Probably flawed wafers that were being discarded for some reason. They aren't reproductions. I used to take home defect wafers on a weekly basis, and some of them were as big as dinner plates.
1:37 - Adrian. Your water glass must be HUGE! :)
Apple 2 is looking great thanks for all the videos adrian
🍿🎃🍩
You can't just pull out "the towel" without verbally acknowledging the towel and it's aesthetic.
Class comment. Not sure anyone else is appreciating though.
Hey, as long as you know where your towel is, you’re hoopy, frood... 👍
@@stevesstuff1450 even better when the towel is soaked in nutrients, eh?
I use the same microscope (with a better stand) for micro soldering. Just like the homemade RAM modules you have soldered. I even replaced a broken micro USB port in a Lenovo tablet with the help of this microscope
The stand that came with it is useless. You can buy a usb microscope with a better stand. www.ebay.com/itm/USB-1000X-Digital-Microscope-2MP-8-LED-Endoscope-90X-Magnifier-Camera-Lift-Stand/264005968026?hash=item3d77fb609a%3Ag%3ArZMAAOSwN%7Etb0Ydh&LH_BIN=1
@@jimstand that is the type of stand I use too I could get it in used but ok condition. And it is compatible with most usb microscopes
My II plus I just finished working on has that other keyboard type. Luckily my friend had a spare keyboard, because if those stems break, theyre unobtanium. Really would like to start 3D printing replacements, but I don't have the know-how. Also helpful to see another one of those keyboards, I thought my space bar was upside down but yours is the same way!
2:45 The music and action there really reminds me of Mr. Rogers and the videos he would show on Picture Picture.
I’ve been using a Solderpault for decades!
The. button broke in my soldapullt back in the 80s after just a couple of months. I have a small orange one with aluminum barrel that’s been going since then. I had to wedge the barrel on as the thread in the plastic handle failed.
OMG I have the exact matching little bee mugs to go with your tumbler
Nice to see ARCHON running! My older brother and I played that on our Atari 800.
My envy level has reached an all time high. Awesome stuff, sir!
I handled silicon wafers back in the 80's at a fab plant, they looked pretty much like that. A little less shiny perhaps, so maybe someone has laquered them. If they are silicon they will feel and sound like glass when tapped (gently!).
I thought these are metal - but maybe they are glass.
@@adriansdigitalbasement Well, Silicon, being a semiconductor, is sort of half way between metal and crystal. If you try bending it, it will likely shatter.
The wafers looks real. Probably made in the mid 80's given the size. Put it under a microscope (100x or less) and examine the corners of one of the dies. You should find the manufacturer's name and internal ID (possibly the actual part number). Sometimes you will find a list of names. These would be the project engineers who designed the chip. If they are from the mid 80's, they very likely were hand designed and only had two or three metal layers meaning you should clearly see the individual transistors (modern processes have many metal layers and all see is the top couple of layers of interconnect). Probably a 2 micron process (minimum feature size).
Hi ! I have two black Soldapullts for 25+ years. Got fed with these aluminium powerless short-ones that always stick when you need them most. The DS-017 use to stick after heavy use as well - but if you use a silicon spray regularly you have best results over decades. These go very quickly apart and "service time" is quite short usually. Except you' sucked out massive and totally dirty crap like from old tube gear ... :-)
Hahaha I have a heap of notes like that then I go back to the project and have a bit of a WTF moment trying to work out my past shorthand.
ahahahahah "look like a muscle builder" this is gold!
HAHAHAHAHAHA
Hans and Frans from Saturday Night Live came to mind when Adrian mentioned that. Look at my tight shirt!
Your videos are compelling watching. Great stuff Sir!
Stuart put some thought into those donations, kudos Stuart.