More work on IBM 1130 display panel upgrade

IBM 1130 DISPLAY PANEL UPGRADE

I began disassembling the existing IBM boards and wiring inside the display panel pedestal box. The boards and attached lamp holders were pulled from the white plastic honeycomb and all the yellow signal wire clips were detached from the rear of the boards.

Lamp holder and PCBs pulled out of honeycomb prior to removing yellow signal wires

Signal wires laced in position, by row, for attachment to my boards

The signal wires are laced together by the IBM manufacturing plant with each of the six rows grouped together and the wires for each column position exiting along the bundle at the appropriate point. This makes it easy to attach all 96 register signals to the right pins on the boards.

A terminal strip on the right side (from the rear) brings up the AC, lamp test and common voltages and distributes those to the individual PCBs for each row. I detached the lugs from the PCBs and removed the mass for storage, just in case someone wants to restore this to original condition in the future. 

Removed innards to be replaced by my upgrade

My three PCBs will sit flat against the honeycomb blocks, having the signal pins on the side facing the rear of the machine for attachment to the yellow signal wires. The PCBs have three turret connectors to wire them to the AC, lamp test and ground lines at the terminal strip. On the front side of the PCB, facing the honeycomb, are 2 pin header sockets where each light should be placed. 

Honeycomb blocks with a paper image of one board placed roughly where it will sit

There will be a huge increase in room inside the pedestal box with my boards in place. They are pulled back to gain access to the 2 pin socketswhere each light is plugged in, in the event that a bulb burns out and needs replacement. 

I will remove each light bulb from the existing plastic holders. These bulbs have wire leads that I will wrap around a 2 pin male header, slide a short section of paper straw over the exposed pins, and plug into a socket on the PCBs. First up, I have to remove all the working bulbs from their IBM holders in preparation for installing them in my new holders. 

I haven't fabricated the holders that will keep the boards in place against the honeycomb, with the bulbs sticking forward into the honeycomb at each location that should light up. I expect to use some rubber insulation as a standoff between my PCB and the honeycomb, thus I will wait to measure the size of the holder until the PCB is in its final location. 

Wire lead bulbs in the IBM oval plastic holders, attached to the IBM PCBs

I made up a sample light assembly to see whether I need to make any adjustments to my plan. If the bulbs are susceptible to too much tilt or misalignment, it will make it very difficult to get all 96 to slide into their holes simultaneously when I install the big board. 

The bulbs themselves are quite small, leaving plenty of margin to fit into the hole, although the 2 pin header on the bulb is oriented vertically while the honeycomb holes are wider horizontally than vertically. I had no choice, a horizontal layout for the sockets didn't leave enough room for the thyristors and other parts. 

I was able to solder in a miniature bulb onto a pin socket, rather than a machine pin header, with excellent control of the orientation and stiffness. When I attempted this with an original bulb used in the 1130, a much larger cylindrical bulb, I found the leads too oxidized to solder readily. Fifty years of oxidation built up quite a thermal barrier. 

Mini bulbs soldered into pin socket - bottom socket a quick and dirty test

Testing bulb and socket with thyristor circuit

Even if that were solved with plenty of flux, the bulbs are close enough in diameter to the hole in the honeycomb that alignment becomes too critical. With 96 bulbs in the matrix, even a few off center by a small amount would block the PCB from fitting into place. The solution is to exclusively use miniature bulbs, considerably smaller than the holes. 

Original IBM bulb with oxidized leads

IBM bulb holder, wedges into hole in honeycomb block

ALTO DISK TOOL

I set up an extension board on the fpga, allowing me to tie various inputs to 0 or 1 level and to loop back some outputs to the inputs. The goal is to drive a sector write operation without having a real disk drive attached, so that I can debug everything at home. Waiting for a few hours at Marc's lab is dragging this out way too long.

With the testbed set up, I began observing status signals emitted on the PMOD connectors where I had output likely signals that would point at the malfunctioning section of logic. With only a few minutes work, I focused in on the logic that is misbehaving.

This appears to be another of those cases where VHDL logic that appears correct does not work in the real world. The serializer should be counting bits as it shifts them out, raising a signal to request the next word when the last bit has shifted out. The raised signal isn't raised. Tomorrow I will set up a test driver and synthesize the behavior of the module.