At 02:22 AM 17/01/2020 -0800, you wrote: > >On 2020-Jan-17, at 12:11 AM, William Maddox on CCTalk via cctalk wrote: > >> The seller thinks this may be a drum memory, but it is clearly not. My >> guess is that it is some kind of clock generator. Anyone recognize this? >> >> https://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-Mainframe-Computer-Part-Drum-Memory-Control-Data/312942951497 > > >The circumferential wire bundles feed two-stage transistor amplifiers that >drive toward the center, then drop down to the interior board through >inductors and then feed back toward the circumference near the coax connectors.
Reversed. The wire bundles are LF power. The radial circuit drives from the center outwards towards the TNC connectors. Judging by the progression of semiconductor beefyness. The thing at the center looks like it might be an avalanche diode pulse generator. Maybe. Something to generate a very fast edge. Someone wanted those coax signals to all be very precise and coincident. Now where... Oh yes, 'physics packages.' My guess - nothing to do with computers, but rather an implosion detonator for a nuke. Or something less drastic, like explosive metal forming? That board with 'DISCH' and 'GATE' might be some kind of coincident/code detector, related to making sure the round thing doesn't fire except when it's really supposed to? If they are related at all. >It looks like one of the coax connectors (J26) is out of regular angular >displacement from the others. >I'm wondering if it could be some sort of rotating / multi-phase modulator. An >RF carrier injected on the odd-one-out coax connector, modulated or switched >in a rotating sequence via the circle of drivers, out to the circle of coax >connectors. >Sheer guess as I've never seen one, but perhaps for a VOR station, to set up >the (electronically-generated) rotating beacon, the coax connectors would feed >out to RF amps and a circle of antenna segments. Nah, that's fast circuity but not AC RF. >It looks a little too engineered to be for a lab experiment. Very definitely. Lots of work in that round thing. Guy
