IBM 029 progress

To cut a long story short, we have put a 240v/50Hz motor from an IBM 56 verifier in the keypunch and that part works great. We transplanted the motor cradle and motor start relay too. The manual showed how the DC power supply could be configured for 115v or 208v or 240v, though all at 60Hz. Well we tried that and the DC produced was about 41volts instead of 48v, which was more or less what was predicted by collective list wisdom. The relay logic intermittently seems to work. The existing capacitor in the ferro-resonant power supply is marked 15MF (incidentally, how come MF does not mean Mega Farad), and rated at 330VAC. I think this means ideally I need (90/50)^2 * 15 which is 21.6MF. I have ordered two more capacitors to connect in parallel, one 5uF and one 1.5uF, to give 21.5 total, both at 440VAC. There was one wire hanging off the bottom of the mechanism which we have reconnected. The mechanical side gradually came back to life, probably the grease had gone hard at the surface or oil needed spreading about a bit. It now fairly reliably moves cards from the input hopper to the output stacker. There were chads stuck all over the place and at first, the top row did not poke the chads out of the holes and we joked about hanging chads and George Bush coming back. Comparing my old keypunch and this one, there is an auger screw in the old one but not in this, but after looking through the parts list, it seems IBM deleted that part. Anyway a 9mm twist drill pushed up the empty auger hole and twisted and wiggled and a backlog of old chads and strangely black cloth came out and now it punches cleanly, or at least it does when the relay logic feels like it. It even prints the codes. To get alpha I had to hold down the alpha key, though I think it should latch in logic, probably the low DC supply again. The whole thing looks like it has been re-sprayed in the right colour/ texture of paint and thoroughly cleaned. Maybe a factory refurbished unit. Picture of it with cards in the track here, covers off: http://www.ict1301.co.uk/emulator/029_03_09 I hope to be using it soon to correct any cards which wreck when I try to read in the library of ICT 1301 software so I can capture it on my Mac, from where I can load it via RS232 into my 1301 as well as make it available to others. Roger Holmes