Im utterly baffled this channel doesn't have more subscribers o.O

Great coverage of a truly forgotten machine and company.

Thanks for the trip down memory lane. I supervised a data entry department, 1978-1980, for a large Mpls bank and we used the IV-Phase 470. About 16 terminals using key to disc and data were then written to tape for further processing on the IBM mainframes. The 470 was powered up and in use 24/6 since we ran three shifts Monday-Saturday. Quite a reliable system and only down time was during the summer 1979 President Carter energy mandate requiring room temperature at 78 Fahrenheit. We used two big fans blowing on either side of the stack for improved airflow and to prevent the overheating sensor from tripping.

As a technician for the RCN, our updated Tribal class destroyers used two disc drives the size of large dish washers to run the Command and Control System (similar to AEGIS). The same disc packs or similar to what you held in your hands. They were used for a decade before they were upgraded to Hard Drives (1987-2000). The drives were fitted into their own cabinet with pneumatic arms to dampen shock and motion, everything the sea could deliver. If the R/W heads touched the spinning disc a hair width away, or encountered a dust particle, the head would explode sending debris everywhere inside destroying all the heads and scratching the disc pack to uselessness. The CCS hardly blinked because of redundancies. Dust from the disc pack covers introduced during removal or installation was most likely the cause for catastrophic failure. A six hour repair required a card extender for the circuit card driving the heads. Monitoring test points with an oscilloscope while nudging the heads with a two foot long rod gently until they were aligned. Everything is exposed so pre-cleaning had to be immaculate with new air-filters replaced. Built-in test equipment were available post alignment in the cabinet, so what you have may be quite limited. On a naval ship, space is limited. So squeezed in beside the cabinet, hunched over the exposed device while the ship is pitching and rolling, changing coarse often was quite the chore. How I did not introduce hair or other small debris resulting in more destruction was the drive had constant air suction circulating in its round enclosure. I had test points designed to receive probes on every card and cabinet. I could not see anything on your cards. Surprisingly I sailed most of that decade, with only two such repairs required and I had spare heads, filters and disc packs (alignment/test and operational) onboard. The procedure was well documented and worked well for a analogue procedure. The packs were 300MBs if I recall correctly. Check military industrial suppliers contracted to install and document military or government systems. Or NATO countries government auctions for parts, they often hold on these parts and equipment for decades, or dealers who often bid in bulk buys of said auctions. Everything had NATO stock numbers which indicated which country supplied the stock, so reach out to a retired military stores man, he may have a set of demoted inventory on microfiche (a copy would easily fit in your pocket). Also retired electronic techs may have held onto their training course materials for similar peripherals, connectors, and documents indicating their nomenclature with references to other docs such as part numbers, schematics, and repair/fault-finding procedures. Good luck with this endeavour, your quest is steep. Qapla'.

@21:24 Those actually look like Hexadecimal displays. They can display both letters and numerals. Xerox used those for the diagnostic panel of the 860ips. I remember replacements were $25 each from Xerox in the mid 1980s.

I suspect most places just used it to transmit batches to an IBM mainframe… Shared Medical Systems (later a part of Siemens and ultimately sold to Cerner to die) was a major hospital information systems vendor that offered a remote hosted IBM mainframe system with a Four-Phase mini at each hospital to submit batches to the remote mainframe. Another vendor, HBOC (which later merged with McKesson) offered a more self-contained hospital system for the Four-Phase. At a previous employer I worked with a programmer who used to work for HBOC on that system. He spoke of being offered a decommissioned Four-Phase (which he unfortunately turned down).

Those cables are wild.

Great video as always. Your plea for help might be better served at the beginning of your next episode though.

Fascinating stuff, I'm the wrong side of the pond to help, but all the best with the quest to get a working system.

Tx/rx labs in houston has the rest of your 4-phase system components and a working rack with spare parts

Great stuff ! Too bad you weren't able to recover the Wangco tape drive, but it's excellent that you have the Pertec formatter, I myself have a Wangco Model 12 that I would like to restore, but I never found a formatter like yours after decades of searching. Good luck with all your equipment, I can't wait to see it all work :)

Each of those memory boards is 16k x 24 bits if those are 4k RAMs.

These videos have been wonderfull, and i swih you the best of luck in getting it running!

спасибо, отличный контент

24 bits? Finally something to rival my Sega Genesis. 😅

Thanks for showing this system, like everyone else I had never heard of Four Phase. I guess this was probably the only commercial 24 bit system?

well done! next what happened to Tandem computers?

Ugh, you just know those people trying to get the gold out of those old chips absolutely ignore the environmental cost of everything after they're done. Just dump mercury and sulfuric acid down the drain, because someone else's problem now

retrobri..., erm, retrogolding?!

Four Phase really put the dumb in dumb terminals.