Post #4383981

2026-08-04 21:47 UTC

@nottinghack@hachyderm.io The story began on Friday 24th July 2026, when I see this holy grail of computing history on eBay for a price I can afford; and ensuring I am not dreaming, I buy it Cut to the very next day, I roll into Nottingham hackspace on my Sinclair C5 after doing half a day at Nottingham pride to meet with the seller who insisted they drive 2 hours to hand deliver it to me This turned out to be nearly perfect, as @philpem@digipres.club (who I cannot thank ENOUGH) happened to be down, and I discovered on that day they happen to have an encyclopaedic knowledge of Tektronix equipment and documentation to the point where they instantly told me where it was made as soon as I had removed the front cover and showed the Sharpied on serial number The original owner reported that they turned it on once, saw the whole screen light up and immediately turned it off, given that these CRTs are very rare and very bespoke, that is an understandable reaction, however based off of advice from Tom Stepleton (from the very good video above) and the user manual (which the previous owner had) showed this is normal, and you simply need to press PAGE to clear the screen. Getting the front panel off showed a more pressing problem though, a fuse had blown! #tektronix #tektronix4010 #vectorgraphics #terminal #vintagecomputing

Replies (1)

@crashtestdev@woof.tech 2026-08-04 21:57

@nottinghack@hachyderm.io Specifically on the +20v unregulated section, either that could just be that it is very old or because something made it blow We reformed the capacitors on a variac, checked over the PSU and made sure it gave out correct voltages, which it amazingly did, and got to work Of course, the fuse was blown due to a problem on the +20v unreg line, thankfully the genuinely amazing Philpem was there and found the closest matching service manual and found the wiring harness diagram, after several more blown fuses and multiple replaced tantalum capacitors later, we had +20v up! But oh dear, no lights or signs of life, after some more checks, +/-15v regulated was being tanked and was thus taking out the +5v where all the logic and the power LED lived, shortly after this Phil had to head home and myself, having been shown the ropes continued on an hours long task of finding dead tantalum caps on the +/-15v and later +5v, replacing, powering on, more dying and replacing more; eventually, we had all lines coming up, it was powering on, making a bleep, and showing a glowing display, and clearing it on PAGE being pressed Sadly, it wasn't doing much else

Open ##4384216