Hi Ethan, Relamping is relatively easy. I changed all the lamps in my front panel. The lamps are readily available. I bought 100 of them from Digikey for US$65.19 part number "CM2187-ND". Here is a link:
https://www.digikey.com.au/en/products/detail/visual-communications-company-vcc/2187/43433 You can get these types of lamps much cheaper directly from China via AliExpress, but unfortunately I did not find a 28V version. You might get away with using the 24V version on AliExpress. Likely the difference in brightness is not too distracting. Here is a link (but there are many others): https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005004900146314.html Select 5mm, 24V and a quantity 50 x 2 (100) and be prepared to spend less than US$5 including shipping. I bought these too, but have not actually tried them yet. The engineering drawings would be very helpful. I am surprised that no one appears to have scanned them yet. There are relatively cheap camera type scanners available which can do the large format drawings. I use a Viisan S21 with good results. A "real" large format flat bed scanner would obviously do a little better, but very few places have these here in Australia. Tom On Tue, Aug 19, 2025 at 1:46 AM Ethan Dicks <[email protected]> wrote: > On Sun, Aug 17, 2025 at 12:51 AM Tom Hunter via cctalk > <[email protected]> wrote: > > I have recently bought a DEC PDP-8/s. It hasn't been powered on for about > > 40 years before I got it. I cleaned it and did some repairs on it (glued > > broken flip-chip handles, replaced all front panel lights, restored the > > acrylic front panel to as new condition and built a new switch mode power > > supply for +10V and -15V). > > Hi, Tom, > > I'm watching this thread with interest because I've had an -8/S for > years and haven't been able to do more than superficial work on it. > I'd love to see better docs emerge. > > Mine appears to act like "Panel Lock" is always on. I've checked the > switch, it's not that, so it's likely to be whatever gate the switch > tickles. > > The other major issue I have is relamping. I'm curious what you used. > The -8/S uses flying wire bulbs and the leads coming out of the glass > are quite brittle. Many of my lamps have broken leads. I was going to > attempt repair of as many as possible (I'm sure most of the filaments > are still good) but I definitely need a source of bulbs for ones with > burned-out filaments and/or unrecoverable broken leads. > > I have dabbled with R-series logic in the past (I have some DF32 > drives) but I am pretty much a novice with testing and repair of the > older modules. > > -ethan >
