0x001A - SOBAX ICC-1600 Nixie Calculator from 1973

I am still fawning over this calculator! 1973, Nixies, Sony... this thing is oozing cool.
I really enjoyed restoring this thing. Unfortunately I cleaned out the old smell, but it's better that it's not full of dust.
Playlists of more stuff like this:
Calculators: • Calculators
1970s: • 1970s
Other Links
KZbin: / akbkuku
Github: github.com/AkB...
Thingiverse: www.thingivers...
Patreon: / akbkuku
Discord: / discord

[@majoryoshi]

The difference between Druaga completely tearing something apart and AkBKukU is that AkBKuku gets it back in one piece and it still works.

[@MrShambles]

Also, AkBKukU didn't have those Nixie tubes displaying 420 or 80085 or anything like that.

[@MrShambles]

Oh wait, I just noticed 5318008 at 0:25.

[@richfiles]

I built a hand wired mechanical keyboard, and laced all my wires with waxed nylon string. I don't even care if it never gets seen... I know it's there, and I love the build quality! Zip ties have taken away such a satisfying level of craftsmanship from electronic assembly.

[@PH96Official]

I didn't even know this was a thing people did.

[@prizedcoffeecup]

This is like a foreshadowing of office computers in its own strange way and I love it....EXTREMELY unique piece and amazing that none of the years on it have slowed it down. Keep it up!

[@zombiechan]

Ha! I used to work in a manufacturing plant that made reed switches and my QA process was a magnetic test. Such memories.

[@Crazytesseract]

Thanks for the nice video. SOBAX was one of the best calculators to be ever made in 1970s, and it was made by Sony (To-tsu-ko).

[@borayurt66]

Oh man... This is porn. I can't believe you have a working nixie calculator! Change all the electrolytic caps, they will be very leaky, causing unnecessary currents to flow on the nixie tubes. Unbelievable how they made these things so servicable back in those days. Great video!

[@TobyCowles]

The intro needed some dramatic music :) Great video, I love nixie tubes there is just something about that in our modern world is so overly complicated compaired to LED yet so cool

[@hlebofsky]

Thank you so much. Definitely a time travel event for me.

[@RODALCO2007]

That reed switch design for the buttons is awesome. Fantastic design for easy servicing. Thanks for showing. New Subscriber from New Zealand

[@jj74qformerlyjailbreak3]

Yea those switches surprised me as well I got the 500 model today. His is Clean Clean compared to mine. Between all the old logic tubes, and reeds these things are gold mines. God Bless Friend.

[@VidweII]

This thing is stunning, inside and out.

[@runrin_]

that uninspired voice over in the intro had me cracking up. also i find the engineering involved in making this calculator about 100 times more impressive than modern electrical engineering.

[@VolpeInCalze]

If you like those wires wrapped with string you'll love my oscilloscope. It's a tektronix 533A. Mostly tubes and all the wires are wrapped like that.

[@LaskyLabs]

String wrapped wire bundles? This was hand assembled. That's wonderful.

[@sivalley]

The chip numbers actually are all standard! the 50XX family is ECL and the 3 digit number would cross-reference (functionality ONLY) to 74XX series TTL chips. Ex: 5090 = 7490 = decade counter Boards are (from top to bottom): Display and discrete drivers (duh :D), display decoder, counter logic (actual calculator guts), and key decoder/memory. Edit for typo

[@TechTangents]

Firstly, I want to say thank you for that info. I do have some followup questions. The chips only have 50X printed on them, part of what I was going on for them being unique to the calculator comes here: www.oldcalculatormuseum.com/sony1500.html . Are you fairly confident that they do match the ECL series with fewer digits? How did you determine which boards do what?

[@sivalley]

AkBKukU I may have misheard you reading numbers then. I thought I heard you reading sets of four digts, but I have a feeling they would still line up since the 74XX family started in 1973 by TI. Being that the calculator is entirely composed of 14 pin chips the most likely solution involves counters, latches, and individual logic gates to make what is essentially a state machine that electronically recreates the earlier mechanical calculators. My hunch that these chips are ECL purely from the age of the unit since TTL wasn't commercially available until after 1973 and market proliferation would suggest TTL consumer products wouldn't start until after 1974-5. Board order is best guess from the shot of the backplane. You want to keep loop capacitance to a minimum between sections of high and low voltages so it makes most sense to put high voltage sections closest together. So it follows that the shift registers used to signal the cathode drivers (still popular in retro Nixie projects) would be the next board down. The more sparsely populated bottom board can easily contain 3 ring type shift registers, the relatively simple key decoding logic (since switches are not configured as a matrix as evident by the massive connector for the keypad), and the clock circuit to generate timing pulses. This leaves the third board being the state machine itself by process of elimination. Now that I think about it, the key switches were likely using reeds is possibly due to the -15V logic used by ECL which could (remotely) pose a mild shock hazard if open frame or conductive carbon switches had been used. PS: Sorry for rambling, seeing this stuff takes me back to when I worked at a repair shop when I was in high school just over 20 years ago.

[@tarstarkusz]

This thing is fascinating and just a literal couple of years later, the wristwatch calculator craze happened! I'll bet this thing uses at least 20 watts!

[@Ramdileo_sys]

ohh.. look to thouse small Nixie tube's​ @Tech Tangents....... i am sure that @Techmoan will love this one...

[@jj74qformerlyjailbreak3]

Thanks Bunches for your input here. Comment sections are where the real good info is. Yea I love watching others tearing into fancy things, but the proof is in the pudding. TY for your time sharing your Knowledge God Bless.

[@richfiles]

Loving the channel... I REALLY need to consider doing something similar myself. I have so many old calculators... Even have an old Smith Corona-Marchant Cogito 240SR, and a Friden EC-132. Sadly, both have problems. The 240SR does not transfer the resister that holds keyboard entry into other registers. The EC-132 has problems in the voltage doubler to drive the CRT, and has what I suspect are timing issues with the delay line memory. My Remington 1259S and Monroe 925 both work great, and I mention in another comment about my restored Sony Sobax ICC600W. I have many more. Some work, some don't. I just enjoy preserving these old machines though! It's what's earned you a sub! :D

[@Yasin_MN]

I'm surprised this didn't have a thermal printer attached to it. I know my dad's TI from around this time had one, although that may have been slightly later. Either way, great video, Nixie tubes always fascinate me.

[@richfiles]

I restored a Sony Sobax ICC600W a few years back. The display driver had failed. I used parts from an abysmal ICC500 with bad calculating logic to get the display drivers up and running again. The ICC600W and ICC500 were pretty unusual, in that they used hybrid modules, not integrated circuits. The hybrid module is a little ceramic plate with conductive traces and carbon trace resistors printed directly onto the ceramic plate. Individual transistor and diode dies, ceramic capacitors, and even inductors can be bonded onto the plate. The whole thing is dipped in an epoxy coat to protect it. Hybrid modules typically were used during the time when ICs were too expensive for consumer level devices, but the concept of integration had already been conceived, for cost savings. It was a short lived intermediate stage, between the transistor and the silicon chip. The ICC500 and ICC600W were made entirely from hybrid modules.

[@Crazytesseract]

If I was a trillionaire, I would give you $50 billion for restoration of all vintage products, and $100 billion as fees.

[@richfiles]

@@Crazytesseract Heh, I wish you were, and wish you could! LOL I recently acquired my holy grail, a Hewlett Packard HP9100A. It doesn't work at all (or so I was told, I have not powered it on, and won't until I verify the power supply is good or repaired). I do hope I can get it working again. I also have a Friden EC-132 with something wrong with the subtraction, and likely a flaky delay line memory, as well as bad HV diodes in the CRT drive circuit, as well as an SCM Cogito 240SR that is in near fully functional condition... I say near, cause after moving it, it lost the ability to transfer data from the keyboard register into the process register. I suspect it's just a poor connection or single bad resistor or diode somewhere. I'm currently in the process of cleaning up a long wasted desk space and getting it set up to where I can work on large devices. My regular workbench was built with PC board assembly in mind, and doesn't have a lot of vertical space. The desk, once set up, will have space for very large devices.

[@TheEPROM9]

My vintage desk calculators I have on my desk at work. One it is where they are most useful. Two it is something vintage I can use every day.

[@hanro50]

This almost seems closer to an ancient vintage pc then what you expect a calculator would be

[@daviddavidsonn3578]

the moment when you blow the dust off. so satisfying !

[@hypnotised-clover]

Oi vei, ebil probile bipture, I call the mossad.

[@LoLSmileyFACE650]

This has to be the most magnificently over engineered and beautiful tech pieces I have ever seen. and it's a calculator... that makes it like 1000x more awesome to me imo. Thank you for this video. it was awesome start to finish for this piece of electronic history. Side note. That magnetic key press is incredible. Is that a thing for keyboards? cause I want that... maybe a simpler version though :P

[@TechTangents]

It is wonderfully basic in it's design(aside from the irreplaceable custom ICs). It's a joy to look at it let alone use it. The magnetic switches are called "reed switches". Based on some quick googling there may be some keyboards that exist, but they are very purpose built, like the calculator.

[@LoLSmileyFACE650]

Yes. correction. the overall design and use of it is very basic and simple. I love that. I was meaning going as far as using twine to cable manage and the insane amount of components on the multiple PCBs was very over engineered but in an awesome way. You just don't get that kind of time and dedication for modern tech these days. So much glue and slapped together circuits on modern stuff like this Edit; Also. Thank you for telling me the name of the switches. I appreciate that a lot :3

[@androo4519]

That was indeed extremely awesome.

[@yatesyification]

Wow the string!

[@AlexanderTrust]

This is a really huge piece of tech for that it only was a calculator.

[@BodziuM]

what a beautiful design !

[@PiddeBas]

What a beauty!

[@stopman3331]

the display is SO RETRO I LOVE IT

[@moth.monster]

I love old calculators. I actually got one not too long ago, and it seemingly worked fine, but sadly i got some random gunk all over it and that messed it up. Luckily, it wasn't anything special, just some random unknown brand with a vacuum fluorescent display.

[@ArnoWelzel]

Very interesting when considering that Canon had an LSI chip based calculator (Canola L121) at the same time with only 4 chips in total.

[@dregenius]

I do believe that's what we call a "bobby dazzler"... 😍

[@СергейЧерноткач]

Круто! Даже заработало после сборки!)))

[@JCCyC]

That beauty is about to turn 50! Is she still in good health?

[@tarstarkusz]

Like 7 years later kids in school had more powerful wristwatch calculators!

[@jj74qformerlyjailbreak3]

I picked up a sobax 50 something. It’s got a handle a little bigger and the decimal is a slider. But for free it only shows all 0 But at least the Nixies work nicely. That’s all I wanted it for and the chip.

[@jj74qformerlyjailbreak3]

Ok update mines the 500. God Bless now I need a driver for the tubes. 🤔

[@jj74qformerlyjailbreak3]

Maybe after watching this I might try to see what Isn’t working. I press numbers and no tubes change from 0.

[@jj74qformerlyjailbreak3]

Other than being dull and faded mine is missing the T key. Bottom Right. I’m sure I can figure something out. That was kinda surprising finding Reed Switches. Great score. I appreciate your care.

[@jj74qformerlyjailbreak3]

Well I don’t think you need to look too hard for parts. I’m cleaning mine up and going to try find some DataSheets. Please if you have had any luck, please link them to me. I’ll do the same. God Bless

[@leonidas14775]

A backplane!? This thing is overengineered

[@welxxonyoutube4487]

I also really like the nixies, but unfortunately prices of this kind of calculators seem to be astronomical.

[@ih4t3u28]

nixi ASMR

[@smallmoneysalvia]

Hey junkies, Druaga2 here.

[@EdwinNoorlander]

Ah, 42 = meaning of life

[@inkrpen]

The hiss is too real

[@bryceforsyth8521]

I have to fix my Sharp calculator...

[@HuntersMoon78]

SOBOX - I thought it was a SOBAX (SO-BACKS)

[@IgnatSolovey]

I use a vacuum cleaner when I encounter dusty stuff... Even if it's a calculator eight years older than myself.

[@alphabeets]

All that dust and crap is going into your lungs. Really should have taken it outside to blow that stuff off.