Wow, good work. How did you make the metal piece? What kinds of tools did you use?

Did you see the new scans?

Thanks. It's all just manual work. A little careful marking, some holes to remove the bulk of the cutout, and a couple of days of tedious filing...testing...filing...testing... I was worried about drilling into the front panel, it would be just like me to screw it up, but it came out OK.

Yes, very useful, thank you.

I've finished soldering the board but haven't populated the sockets yet. I did install the chips for the clock circuit and that's running nicely. When I finish wiring the front panel I'll install the rest of the chips and see what happens.

Can you take a picture of your PCB? Make it nice and BIG (e-mail it to me).

I think it would be handy to show kit builders exactly what is required to check the clock. Did you install enough to get the 2 phase clock?

It would be a lot easier for you to get the picture than for me to remove everything not needed. ;)

I have posted a scan of the section of the board with the clock chips installed at http://www.solivant.com/misc_images/...scan_clock.jpg (~400k).
With those 6 chips installed you should see the following 2 phase clock signals at R10 & R12.

http://www.solivant.com/misc_images/...hase_clock.jpg

Well, everything's assembled, chips installed and power applied. There's no smoke, which always a relief.

It's almost working, the front panel responds correctly to some of the buttons, but not to others. E.g., pressing a data button turns on all the data lights, pressing clear clears the data lights, but also turns on the run and memory lights.

Time for some debugging.

The run and memory lights should come on for the memory read button.

If its not too late for me to call you and step you through this let me know.

Grant

Pusing a data button and having all the lights come on doesn't seem right. I might be able to help you figure out how much is wrong...

It's up and running :D

I had a bad 7420 at location 120. I swapped that out and it's running just fine, at least for the basic initial checkout tests in the manual. I'll try entering a program and see how that works.

Can you explain the procedure you used for locating/identifying the bad part to help other kit users?

I like the counting program I have that memorized. :)

Its the first "real" program in the book.

Let us know how it goes ASAP! Any overall pictures of the completed computer?

Grant

Not really much to share there. I just looked through the circuit diagrams to find the sections that might be involved and then swapped chips until it worked. Trial and error.

However, I spoke too soon about it working correctly :(

The front panel works perfectly, but it's not currently running programs correctly. I'll keep you posted on what I find.