Grandpa Al’s Panasonic JE-1603U Calculator

My in-laws brought us some items that belonged to Felice’s Grandpa Al. He was a great guy. This lovely calculator was probably used for all of his book keeping and such. Unfortunately it didn’t turn on anymore and the battery compartment had crusty deposits.


Removing 4 screws.


Pretty self-explanatory.


That’s a vacuum fluorescent display.


Crusty power jack.


I don’t know what the wet/varnish looking deposits on the PC board are.


Close-up of the display.


More crust on the battery terminals. Vinegar cleaned it up.


So many screws holding the keypad PCB on.


The main IC, interestingly enough it’s a TI chip.


The board was held on with two rubber mounts.


PCB layout was such an artform back then.


Almost done with those screws.


Slider switches and rubber dome switches with carbon contacts.


That’s a thing of beauty.


Those damn contacts kept jumping off. I lost one and glued the other to the slider.


Keys. I’m really glad I took pictures of the thing before I inadvertently dumped all of the keys out of the housing.


A quick contact clean and de-crustifying and it works.


The refresh of the VFD is captured by the camera at different distances oddly.

BK Precision Dynascan Corporation 2806 Multimeter Repair.

I picked up this latest addition to my collection yesterday, a BK Precision Dynascan Corporation 2806 multimeter. It did not function. Neither the display nor the continuity beep. There is nothing about this particular model on the internet, I found one picture from Ebay and that was it.


The batteries were good (swapped them out anyway) and the fuse was good.


So I opened it up. At some point it had solvent of some sort spilled on it(?) or it was glued shut so prying took a bit of effort and was slightly destructive.


One side. Notice the input jacks are on their own PCB. Spoiler – you can see the problem in this picture, but it isn’t obvious.


The other side. The big input fuse was ok as well.


The switch solder points were corroded so I cleaned them up. I also doused the all the various switches contacts in contact cleaner.


Success? Sort of but no. It comes on but no matter what setting the large switch is set to, it only functions as a voltmeter. Hmmm…


I spied this little ding on the PCB. The trace is broken.



A quick and dirty repair (scrape the solder mask off and solder on a strand of copper wire)…


  
Each setting now works.

Stuff I Did And Am Doing, Places I Was.

I’m in the middle of a few projects right now, here are some interesting bits of things I’ve played with and stuff I’ve done in the past weeks. If I don’t post it now it’ll just sit and get all moldy.

   
Some rocks off of Yaquina Head.


My Cousin Jennifer and Cousin Saro visited from Boston.


Felice and Jennifer being all contemplative.


Yaquina Head lighthouse.


Max was lost in thought.


Sandstorm at Agate Beach.


I scored this Apple IIe computer at a yard sale for $5.00. This is bad as it’s the sort of thing I can get obsessed with. I have a reputation for hating Apple Products, but this retina display is awesome.


Well how the heck am I going to do that? Much learning ensued. I’ll have a separate post or two about it, but let me say that ADTPro is very cool.


This is the latest bit of research…


This was free at a yard sale. Felice said she doesn’t mind me opening the Philomath Vintage computer museum. It’s a word processor but I think it counts as a computer.


Ron wasn’t that bad looking. This was the only file on the floppy disk.


Oh…I discovered that the Internet Archive has a vast software archive. I always wanted to play Ogre on a computer running DOS. If you run it in Dosbox, use D-Fend. I have.


It’s there for the Apple IIe as well.


We missed the Steam-Up last year, but went this year. Gregg made us tee shirts from our logo (nonsequitur).


This is your hair on a giant squirrel cage fan.


Riding the rails.


Some really cool home made treadle woodworking tools.


And an antique one.


I told you I collect VOMs. Picked this up at the Steam-up swap meet for $1.00.


Ok, what is this thing? Found it at the OSU surplus sale. It’s a great argument starter, toss it into a room of engineers and they’ll rip each other apart.


A box for $3.00 at a yard sale.


More components…I’m getting lucky or nobody wants this stuff. The crimp pins are going to be handy and are surprisingly expensive.


Speaking of things I don’t know about, what are these?