thanks for sharing! Its incredible how small our world is now that KZfaq / Google has brought us together.

The great ancient ones are rising and commenting on youtube! Iä! Iä! :D

...no offense, but this was like trying to read the owners manual..!!

Very cool to see one of the original designers responding here! Do you happen to know if these are still in active use today? The architecture you describe make it sound like they would still be damn useful in certain use cases.

Kellee Crisafulli You and Your Team are Legend . Thanks for sharing your early memories ...

No more work than any other video. Editing isn't that hard when you shoot everything in sequence.

@@EEVblog hey Dave Jones a big fan here. My question is actually about the programmer itself. In terms of the relays. Just curious what the coil voltage on the relays were and how much current. When you've got that many relays it adds up in terms of current you know. I would think that would be 5 volts or 12 volts. But could be even higher. When you have that many relays. As you know the higher the voltage the lower the current. Oftentimes equipment I've seen I've noticed that you might think there might be a fine for a 12 volt relay Or relays. Maybe a piece of control gear or something. And oftentimes if there's a higher voltage available on the system in terms of power. Re-lace will be at the highest voltage often times. I'm speaking from personal experience here Also I have a torn down some stuff for for parts. Initially I had noticed sometimes there was like 24 volts on one power supply rail. But scratch my head why do it be 24 volts when nothing would require that high voltage at least until I saw the relay voltage. The only thing that was using it in some devices it was only the relays using that voltage nothing else. Also I've seen this in line powered equipment using a resistor in either a full Bridge rectifier for a single diode to operate relays. Over 24 volt relay. Example of this a soft start board with Ableton delay to power resistors one in the mall Takei Region 4 Prime power any other much much lower value for the soft start.. Obviously inductive load big big Transformer. Which this device will end up becoming my bench AC power supply for almost any voltage imaginable. Also additional voltage has the neighbors will provide. Also before I had that. I built something similar. From scratch. Had a isolation Transformer a variac. And many other Transformers. Of course amp and voltage meters analog by the way. Tons of binding posts. Of course overcurrent protection. And a key switch no kidding. There were people in my home shop that were not exactly qualified to turn it on. also I had another box I built that used various different things in terms of Transformers Doorbell Transformers signaling Transformers one of them was 24 volts at a hundred Watts Plus. Any type of Transformer with multiple windings. All the wiring was brought out by banana plugs and or binding posts. Every single one had an individual fuse. Rating for the current of that winding. even some of the Transformers were salvaged model train Transformers including Lionel Transformers American Flyer whatever I can get my hands on that the voltage would be in the right range. By the way if the crest Warhead variable voltage of any type there are knobs that came out the front panel. Also there were Chris Ward from battery chargers. If it has a Transformer you probably find one in there. by the way that thing was on wheels. It still exists. Same with a lot of buy custom equipment i built. And by the way that piece of equipment weighed in excess of 50 lb possibly coaster to over 60 pounds.

Hahaha. Good job, Dougie.

Have you really tested it?

Wow 😳 nice to meet you here, Doug ! You have also tested mine - lol 😝

Woah, what's that in today's money?

Bloody hell! 35,000+. You certainly couldn't afford it.

Around $80,000

Im glad this got salvaged instead of discarded ...All for the want of a capacitor

@@greenvm Wow. That's not including support contracts and various parts/modules. Truly the high end market focused device Dave suggested.

Yep, will give it a go.

EEVblog I depended on this equipment for decades. So nice to see it and hear the summary. Great topic!

Ok, I'll get the beers in, wife is off to cribb evening so can spend all nightwatching the fix video. Some time soon Dave.

Trust you to know that Steve!

Sadly, I also know that my friend Jim Ready, a very kind soul, passed away late last year. Loved the teardown, by the way. This Data I/O box is crammed with electronics history lore. The GI Clare relays are from General Instruments/Clare, I believe. CP Clare was a huge, old-line player in relays dating back to tube/valve days, has gone through many name changes, and is now part of IXYS. The small white relays with the Bar-F-Bar logo are from Fujitsu, the high-end relay vendor in Japan. And as Mike'sElectricStuff already pointed out, the Toshiba gate arrays are not programmable--they're an early form of ASIC. They're stamped at the factory with a layer or two of final metal interconnect to define the part's function. FPGAs only appeared on the market in 1985, the very year that Data I/O designed this beast. You could certainly get PALs by then, I designed with those myself, but they were likely too simple to be used in this application. And the Boschert power supply comes from the very company that invented off-the-shelf, low-cost switching power supplies (or at least a power supply company they bought to expand their product line). (And from the video, that mains-side transformer might have released the schmoo. At least it looks like that but it could just be varnish.)

Steven Leibson wow

Steven Leibson AvE fan spotted :D

Thanks. Only took 8 years, an overnight success.

D'oh! Now you tell him.

They still offer support for them as well. I would club a baby seal to get my hands on one for a good price.

They thought of everything

mikeselectricstuff Just wondering if you managed to get hold of a manual for any Eidophor stuff? I watched your presentation vid recently. It was fantastic. I always assumed that the big screens at places like NASA just used CRT projectors, but now I know different. What a completely bonkers bit of vintage tech. The Eidophor puts the inefficiency of my Argon laser to shame. lol

If I remember rightly, there's a blog post out there from someone who'd reverse-engineered these gate arrays explaining exactly how the technology works

@mikeselectricstuff sounds similar to the Ferranti ULA !

There is a book on how the ULA for the Sinclair Spectrum was designed. Well worth a read!

ElectronAsh added that presentation to my "watch later" list :)

You aint kidding. I can remember the 2732 from Mitsubishi needed 18.5V for 50ms on the prog pin. It was a pain in the neck to design a home brew programmer for them when I got some freebies.

Hey Mike did you ever see that music video i made with you in? ..i sent you an email about it ages ago asking if you minded me using parts of your original one. it's one about the iris scanner, its called "The Mirror - By Orbinc Feat 'Mikeselectricstuff'"

Yep..Ramp voltages too fast or slow and nasty things can happen. Also some chips needed current limit on PGM. Just in case ;-) I do wonder if this system was capable to program real old eproms with multiple voltages ( +5/-5/PGM)

Yep, the EPROM programmer software I wrote was a dog to maintain all the different subtle differences in brands and devices, and that's just algorithms, not including any weird electrical requirements.

Yep, indeed it can handle the old devices with multiple voltages (e.g. TMS2708/2716)

You think that machine is cool, I'm sure the gear that these wonderful engineer nerds who made this is GOD LIKE, super 1337 tech, haa

Go deep enough and you'll see guys with literal mechanical switches and a lot of patience. That's how people used to bootstrap their PCs back in the days: mechanical switches and hex printouts.

Yep. Before the first programmer, they would've used dip switches and a button to literally burn individual bits into the PROM chips.

apaaaaatt

The price of being able to smell when something was made

I didn't know there was additional mil spec for programming. There wasn't for the parts I programmed in military products that I recall.

Craig, those 1702A were tough to program. Weird -48v programming pulses IIRC. Not easy with the semis of the day.

I worked as a lead tech for Data I/O in the late 70s. We built "personality" card sets to program the 1702A. Most of the orders we got for this device by the late 70s were from the military. We built a new programmer every few years until the Unisite. We also built paper tape punches, readers, and Hollerith card readers. Our early programmers used TTL sequencers until the Model 9 which used a Motorola 6800. The next product was the System 19 which used the 6802. The two engineers who started Data I/O were amazing engineers and individuals. There were some early PMOS electrically alterable devices that used some exotic voltages in the -48V range. I had a blast working for Data I/O. I laugh when I think of Data and their impact on the electronics industry. I was so proud that I did the "first article" test of the personality card set of the +5V single voltage Intel 2716:) The device that revolutionized the microprocessor industry. PALs were popularized with PALASM, Scenario, and Data I/O products. Great company with an interesting history.

Yes, they don't do anything fancy.

mikeselectricstuff Even so, the specifications for those relays required gold plated bifricated contacts.

I wonder why that functionality wasn't incorporated into the pin driver circuitry.

The interesting thing about that old caps is that they are probably perfectly fine after 30 years. Most of the time the "new" caps made in the past decade or so that notoriusly going to fail after a few years.

Not true. Electrolytic caps have a lifespan of 30-35 years. The Japanese back in the 1980's to increase their production levels raised the temperature of the soldering mechanisms to several degrees over the manufacturer's rated temp. This shortened the lifespan of those caps by 10 years. Electrolytic capacitor replacement in Japanese made radio equipment is well known, and many kits offer complete electrolytic cap replacement exist. Absolute dodgy capacitors are all Chinese made, no name and ripoff products. absolutely no reliability with them at any specification. Switching power supplies are extremely hard on electrolytic capacitors and will shorten the lifespan of any professionally made cap by 1/3rd to 1/2 of their normal life span.

It would make one hell of an LED blinker :)