Bendix G-15

Message: 10 Date: Sun, 17 Mar 2013 18:32:26 -0500 From: "Craig Solomonson" <craig at solomonson.net> To: cctech at classiccmp.org Subject: Resurrecting a Bendix G-15 Message-ID: <8e4be175ad314f9ab0f5ebe075accc8a.squirrel at www.solomonson.net> Content-Type: text/plain;charset=iso-8859-1 I was going through some boxes of old documents as I prepare to thin out my computer collection and ran across a couple leads that I had 30+ years ago on a couple early vacuum tube era computers--one was a Bendix G-15 and the other was a Royal Precision LGP-30. Thought it would be fun to see if either computer was still there and turns out that the Bendix G-15 is buried in a storage unit yet! I haven't heard back on the LGP-30 yet. When the weather warms up, I will get a chance to help dig out the Bendix and hopefully make a deal on it. Apparently, the Bendix was operational before going into storage in the mid-1970's. So, what are the chances that after sitting for almost 40 years that it would still be operational? I know that vaccum tubes can deteriorate but those are easy to replace. What about the capacitors, resistors, and diodes? I do not know if the storage unit was climate controlled, but if not, I assume corrosion could be a problem with all the contacts. What other issues might one expect with an old system like this? Unfortunately, I am not an electronics expert but always like a challenge. I now regret selling my Bendix Diode tester a few years ago on eBay! Maybe I will have to rent in some day if I make the deal! Wow, that would be a real antique, and there are VERY few G-15's running. Testing the diode cards would not be that big a problem even without the tester. Major capacitors in the power supply would be best replaced before they exploded. Our G-15 had a scored drum, where dirt packed against the heads and burned a groove through the oxide coating. The other thing that didn't work well was the typewriter. I don't know if it was the typewriter itself or the huge box of relays that encoded/decoded the character codes that was flaky. Jon