JKL Museum Picturephone Arrival

[G-Man]

Picturephone     
Posted By: handyhoward 
  Sat Feb 23, 2013 3:44 pm  | 

The picturephone the JKL Museum purchased recently on eBay arrived safely.  And it is as good as everyone thought it might be.  The sellers were very nice and did an outstanding job packing it.  We had it sent in 4 different boxes; monitor, tel set, power supply and documentation.  The docs seem very inclusive.  It is just amazing that things like this survive the years.

We gave it a small test:

Plugged the tel set and the monitor into the power supply.  Everything is very well marked.

The only thing with an on/off switch is the power supply.  So we turned it on and stepped back.

Nothing popped, no smoke...  just the hum you would expect.  The light by the switch came on.


No picture.  Pushed the 'view self' button, nothing happened.  And we didn't take the back off the monitor to see what might be going on there either.  The tel set speakerphone worked.  The transmitter is in the base of the tel set, the speaker below the screen on the monitor.

We are just now getting into the documentation.  It seems pretty inclusive so we are hopeful for a happy ending to this story.  It would make a great JKL Museum display.


Stay tuned...

Wayne Merit


--

There are 10 types of people: those that understand binary and those that don't.

[G-Man]

I forgot to preface that this appeared earlier on the TCI singingwires listserve.

[MagicMo]

That is so cool. Thanks for sharing.
I cried like a baby the day we sent it. Just seeing that pic gets me emotional. I will have to visit it soon.
Mo

[AE_Collector]

There are 10 types of people: those that understand binary and those that don't.

Is that Wayne's tag line? That is great!

Terry

[MagicMo]

Terry,
I had to google binery! 
So you all know what category I fall into. LOL
Mo

[AE_Collector]

Absolutely everything digital "runs on binary"! To make it a bit more manageable they "invented" HEX (hexadecimal). I used to program early PBX's in HEX and can still easily convert decimal to binary to hex in my head. Now if I can find my keys I'm outta here.....

Terry

[MagicMo]

Absolutely everything digital "runs on binary"! To make it a bit more manageable they "invented" HEX (hexadecimal). I used to program early PBX's in HEX and can still easily convert decimal to binary to hex in my head. Now if I can find my keys I'm outta here.....

Terry

Hi Terry,
I think your above post would be very interesting if I knew what you were talking about.   
LOL!
Mo

[paul-f]

Number systems can be based on any number of digits.  The decimal system we use the most has 10 digits: 0 thru 9.

Computers like number systems that are based on a power of 2, as it makes the most compact use of the available storage.  10 is not a power of 2, so is not favored by computer designers.

Binary has 2 digits: 0 thru 1.   (two to the first power.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_number_system

Hexadecimal has 16 digits: 0 thru 9 plus A thru F.  (two to the fourth power.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexadecimal

Another favorite, especially for minicomputers is Octal with 8 digits: 0 thru 7.  (two cubed.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octal

Counting in binary is entertaining:

001
010
011
100
101
110
111

So, in binary,    1 + 1 = 10

[Greg G.]

Picturephone     
Posted By: handyhoward 
  Sat Feb 23, 2013 3:44 pm  | 

The picturephone the JKL Museum purchased recently on eBay arrived safely.  And it is as good as everyone thought it might be.  The sellers were very nice and did an outstanding job packing it.  We had it sent in 4 different boxes; monitor, tel set, power supply and documentation.  The docs seem very inclusive.  It is just amazing that things like this survive the years.

We gave it a small test:

Plugged the tel set and the monitor into the power supply.  Everything is very well marked.

The only thing with an on/off switch is the power supply.  So we turned it on and stepped back.

Nothing popped, no smoke...  just the hum you would expect.  The light by the switch came on.


No picture.  Pushed the 'view self' button, nothing happened.  And we didn't take the back off the monitor to see what might be going on there either.  The tel set speakerphone worked.  The transmitter is in the base of the tel set, the speaker below the screen on the monitor.

We are just now getting into the documentation.  It seems pretty inclusive so we are hopeful for a happy ending to this story.  It would make a great JKL Museum display.


Stay tuned...

Wayne Merit

I thought I read somewhere that the black spots on the screen indicated that it had lost it's vacuum and the coating on the inside was starting to flake away.  The same source said there are places or people out there who could fix that.  Sorry, I don't remember where I saw that mentioned.

[rdelius]

Sometimes the spots are on the plastic safety faceplate over the CRT.1960s color TVs sometimes suffered from this.The CRT would be good but dirty

[AE_Collector]

I thought I read somewhere that the black spots on the screen indicated that it had lost it's vacuum and the coating on the inside was starting to flake away.  The same source said there are places or people out there who could fix that.  Sorry, I don't remember where I saw that mentioned.

In the main "PicturePhone" Topic.

Terry