Punch Card Controlled Vintage Valve Tester? Mullard High Speed Valve Tester

Mullard Valve Tester!
for more video logs, livestreams, music and support these videos :- / lookmumnocomputer
You can watch back livestreams after! needless to say this supports the upcoming museum.
more info on the museum of everything else :-
www.museumofev...
Support
Patreon :-
/ lookmumnocomputer
Paypal :-
www.paypal.me/...
ARCHIVE COPY :-
worldradiohist...
other issues here :-
worldradiohist...
#electronics #science #retro

[@THISMUSEUMISNOTOBSOLETE]

Have you had experience with the Mullard High Speed Valve Tester? after looking the top pin row I mention in the punch card assembly part. I think turns on the heater pins of the correct sockets. Support these vids/museum, builders livestream tomorrow night building a sequencer! www.patreon.com/lookmumnocomputer This month I got hold of a couple of things for upcoming videos and for the museum aswell as a lapel mic pack. used in this vid and future vids! so thanks very much for the support it makes these vids possible! :)

[@THISMUSEUMISNOTOBSOLETE]

@Jarodd 2 nice!

[@johnpossum556]

@@THISMUSEUMISNOTOBSOLETE I have a more portable one that is built in to a very small suitcase. I remember when I was a kid in the 70s that Radio Shack had a big one. Like almost phone booth sized. It stood erect taller than me with woodgrain sides. I just told my mother about the punch card one because she was on the phone with me as I was checking my YT notifications. She worked with punch cards doing data entry so she is more familiar with them than I.

[@sonosus]

The audio is much improved this week with your new mic :) Can't wait to come to the museum once it opens!

[@The_Studioworkshop]

I myself have one. Very handy, and heavy!

[@profpep]

I have the schematics from when I had on in for repair in the 1970s. Get in touch if you want them.

[@amyshaw893]

ooo, that's pretty nice

[@THISMUSEUMISNOTOBSOLETE]

hahahaha

[@CausticCatastrophe]

I love how ticktok sam sounds like classic LMNC videos :)

[@goodun2974]

Here in the States, Hickok made a series of "Card-Matic" punchcard-operated tube testers. The tester came in a large suitcase and a full set of cards would require another large suitcase. The readout was done on an analog meter, and they also sold blank cards and a special hole punch so you could make your own cards as new tube types came on the market. BTW, a friend of mine once had a Scott FM tuner that had a Nixie-tube frequency display and used punchcards to select the radio stations!! .

[@profpep]

If I remember rightly, there is an overload lockout relay in case of a shorted valve, If it trips, the reset button resets it.

[@VladoT]

That socket is not for CRTs but for old rectifier tubes like the AZ-1

[@THISMUSEUMISNOTOBSOLETE]

good to knoqw!

[@gabekarp3008]

In America during the 50's and 60's customer-accessible tube testers in drug stores were a common sight. If I remember correctly, a lot of them had RCA company designations, as I think they manufactured the replacement tubes.

[@tabriff3832]

In Canada, and it was as late as early 70s, I’m sure, we used to take tv tubes to the newspaper / tobacco shop, and they had a basic tube tester. If you had a dead tube, you just opened the cupboard door below and found the appropriate one. Happy days.

[@sebbothebushnerd]

The only slot machine where the grand prize is peace of mind!

[@DetroitMicroSound]

VERY COOL!!!!!!! I could use that right about now, to test all these mid 1960's Baldwin branded Sylvania 12AX7's I have. Also have some 1962 IEC branded Mullards that could use a good heating..... 😁

[@unkowndata2338]

That punch card mechanism is so cool! It's fascinating how these analogue electronics worked.

[@johnrehwinkel7241]

The "heater-cathode" test is probably for leakage between the heater and cathode: in many circuits, they're operated at different voltages, so leakage can upset the circuits. Additionally many heaters are AC operated, and leakage to the cathode would introduce strong hum into the signal. While I don't have experience with that particular unit, I have a lot of experience with tube testers and CRT circuitry in general, so I'd be happy to answer questions, or even come look at it the next time I'm in the UK.

[@mr-huggy]

I wish we had one when I use to work for Maplin and had people come in with valves.

[@THISMUSEUMISNOTOBSOLETE]

ha maplin must have had em back in the day surely :D wonder what happened to em. oh maplin. sad it had to go

[@mr-huggy]

@@THISMUSEUMISNOTOBSOLETE I used to work for them from 2003 till 2011, and yes we had people come in with valves, learnt a lot working for them. Sadly they went down the tube due to new bad management and instead of keeping it's nerdiness and selling the electronics that no one else sold it went mainstream. :(

[@THISMUSEUMISNOTOBSOLETE]

indeed! by the end of it they were just selling utter tat haha

[@quesoestbonne]

Our dad recalled the lady operating the valve-tester in a shop in Preston was quite careless and ham-fisted because she would invariably manage to forcefully insert any valve into the incorrect socket, resulting in bent pins or broken valve-bases. It could well have been another strategy for selling more valves

[@Xsses]

1:00 This is for side contact type sockets, during the WWII and bit before it was a standard tube socket for many different tubes

[@peskyparttimers8239]

A button that says "Do not touch".....that's just tempting fate😂

[@michaelmcgreevy9950]

wow, that reminds me of the WW2 Enigma cypher machine, only more complicated, nice find

[@trevorhaddox6884]

10:01 You can see it is a bit more complicated there are three tubes at the back and some stuff underneath, make sure there are no old caps hanging out under there. There are also a few small tubes on the side 9:00

[@NinoJoel]

Thats one hell of a nice find. Im currently building one that is "modern" and computer controlled. It will be finished quite soon if I get a job / monney again. I never knew there where tube testers that are controlled with punch cards. As for your test with the magic eye. Even if the tube is still working their output strength can decrease overtime. With a magic eye it is not realy dramatic. It will just fade over time and at one point stop working. To oversimplify it a bit.... A precise tube tester can test working tubes for output strength to determine how used they are. Kinda like a used battery. In some application is is important to know how well they are still doing since to low output can cause faulti operation of the equipment.

[@UkiMalefu]

ooh, that's pretty nice

[@gnarlycharlie4u]

"Funky waffle maker" got me.

[@sparkyprojects]

mr Carlson's Lab featured a valve tester that was intyended for customers to use, bit dodgy with the flying HT lead A valve tester is very basic, it powers the heater and applies a positive voltage to the anode and all grids. the cathode is connected to negative, yours may have a couple of extra tests than the basic one a friend has. I thnk the cards are SRPB (synthetic resin bonded paper) aka paxolin. The problem with the punch cards is that you need to get new ones for any new valve, rather than just finding an equivalent and working out the connections like me and my friend have done a couple of times (his only used slide switch selections) did you read my email yet ?

[@eDoc2020]

Surely you could make your own cards for something like this. It wouldn't surprise me if the manual included their format in an appendix.

[@dykodesigns]

Nice bit of kit, that mechanism is so neat. I bet you need a lot contact cleaner though to maintain it.

[@trevorhaddox6884]

Heater cathode tests the high temp, high voltage insulation between the actual heating element and the metal cathode cylinder.

[@proxxima038]

Fun, I'm currently restoring one of these Mullard E7600/4 testers...

[@wgm-en2gx]

Very cool. Thanks for presenting it.

[@xKatjaxPurrsx]

I love how regular people used to just take vacuum tubes out of their electronics and take them down to the store to test. We really have gone backwards haven't we?

[@pileofstuff]

That's quite a bit different from the B&K "Dyna-Jet" tube tester I have. Mine was designed to be portable - for the travelling repairman. Instead of the punch cards it has a whole lot of multi-position rotary switches that you need to set according to a book full of codes.

[@weapea]

If you got anotherone of those, make an selectable musical machine out of it! Selection made by cards. Like, it could be an drum machine, the cards holds the "memory" for different drumming patterns. And if you pull the lever without any card inside, all drums sounds sounds the same time chaosly.

[@trevorhaddox6884]

Don't pointlessly destroy vintage tech unless the display tube is broken or something. You could easily make something with paper or 3D printed plastic cards and an optical reader.

[@Sharklops]

now you need another one so you can test the tubes inside the tube tester😜

[@johnpossum556]

At 9:02 you must have caught them, too. I would guess maybe they are rectifiers. They don't seem to have a base but then we can't see the whole tube.

[@joanrue5169]

How cool is that!!!??? Damn King!!!

[@K-Effect]

It reminds me of some type of gear that would be on the original Star Trek

[@DIY-valvular]

Just amazing! The weirdest contraption ever turn into the Rolls Royce of the valve checkers. As the car, the most expensive of the kind and more complicated over complex... It's a WOW! elevated to the Mullard +1 power! ;-)))

[@Kuprichard]

Funny how I seen your tic tok on this first before watching this. I must admit this was very interesting to see.

[@paulbangash4317]

Love it

[@McTroyd]

Damn Sam. Nicely presented! Gorgeous piece of kit too. Now Paul Carlson needs to get into analog synthesizers and I really *won't* know which end is "up"... 😅😁👍

[@toolzshed]

Wow that's so cool 😲

[@Colin_Ames]

That is cool. I have seen quite a few valve testers over the years, but never a punch card one.

[@iancain6647]

Freaking awesome video!

[@newtronix]

Valves valves valves, looking for a good time.

[@gnarlysoundscapes7210]

I need to find an excuse to put a big lever arm like that on a synth.

[@hotmailcompany52]

Not gonna lie it'd be awesome if you could set up a maker space in the Museum of Everything Else

[@ih4t3u28]

like something that you could rent for a day or so

[@THISMUSEUMISNOTOBSOLETE]

indeed however baby steps atm, theres 1 thing managing a museum on the side, managing a makerspace is something else entirely haha, step by step!

[@Herrcookiekiller]

the lenght of that tiktok probably exceeds a lot of zoomers attention spans

[@THISMUSEUMISNOTOBSOLETE]

amazingly enough it got alright traction crazy right

[@bengelman2600]

It's in super good shape. Pretty

[@IndianaDipper194]

no dislikes. ooo thats pretty nice. :)

[@theknarlyboy]

Can you put it on display for people to use? People could come and test their valves like an old radio repair shop📻

[@jdave1157]

That tiny file cabinet is tripping me out. Looks like it should be much bigger for some reason

[@the_washingmachine1295]

Imagine your country exits Lockdown and kinda goes back to normal. ~This post was made from Germany Duuuuudeeeeee, I would LOVE to go to the museum 😭😭😭

[@THISMUSEUMISNOTOBSOLETE]

whats happening in Germany? tbh we dont get much multi country news here. not many people have been vaccinated yet I heard?

[@the_washingmachine1295]

@@THISMUSEUMISNOTOBSOLETE yeah, that's it basically. I think we are at about 10% of the people who received a vaccine yet. The problem is (or has been) the supply. And the government has no real other strategy to deal with covid than deciding on Lockdowns which, to be honest, don't really help. The number of people which are infected per 100.000 inhabitants keeps rising (at least in my area). Estimations say that we won't be done with the vaccinations till the end of this summer. Other germans: feel free to correct me if I told something wrong 😬 Anyway, you did a great video again👍

[@Recoils-electronics-repairs]

nice tester i have a b&k 700 and a precision 612 in my collection of test gear

[@Xsses]

0:00 Good

[@Elektronenregen]

Very pretty thing you have there!

[@TheRamtops]

I see lumps of sharp leaky dangerous strung together with electric. You see " not much going on " great video but I'm still no nearer understanding that thing 😂👍

[@RichardHolmesSyr]

Punch card sequencer anyone?

[@waldemar.golebski]

Same thoughts!

[@simoncrabb]

I need a valve tester in order to test and sell a few thousand valves. I'm astonished how much they are fetching. Not found one yet...

[@ellopropello]

whan an awesome unit. you need to secure power supply for your museum, once earth goes back to stoneage ppl could still glorify that collection question tho, who checks the valves inside the valve tester

[@NinoJoel]

These things where sent in to a service point and where calibrated and tested from the manufacturing staff.

[@ellopropello]

@@NinoJoel yea, it was more a joke than a real question ;)

[@256byteram]

The lever is very Wallace and Gromit

[@TurnierRustung]

*mullard branded* SUPAH NUT

[@nevek20]

The fact you're on TikTok makes me consider downloading it...

[@TheRealNici]

Are all the punch cards publicly documented somewhere? Like, the hole layouts. I imagine there'd be quite a few of these out in the world with some or all of the cards missing. If that's the case, then someone with nothing better to do and a flatbed scanner going through all of these and throwing them up on the Internet Archive or something would be potentially useful to some other weirdos out there. Not suggesting you do all that labour btw since that'd be quite time consuming, but maybe after all the pandemic stuff someone trustworthy enough not to lose the cards might volunteer.

[@LOOKMUMNOCOMPUTER]

yeah hahah i dont think im up for that! there is somewhere i saw with the cards up but yeah if anyone was feeling fruity enough to spend a day scanning them there is a scanner at the museum so i guess ill wait and see!!

[@AndrewAHayes]

Anything electro-mechanical piques my interest, the design of this is beautiful!

[@johnpossum556]

mikeselectricalstuff does some good teardown of medical equipment that has a similar sort of feel to it. You might like some of his videos.

[@kevinvc9571]

curiousmarc lmnc collab comming up?

[@peskyparttimers8239]

I wonder why they used a CRT rather than a meter, thought it was a light spot galvonometer for a start.

[@THISMUSEUMISNOTOBSOLETE]

meters were more expensive at the time

[@THISMUSEUMISNOTOBSOLETE]

i read it in a magazine i cant remember which but they just said small crt's and magic eyes etc "are (at the time) more economical than mechanical meters"

[@peskyparttimers8239]

@@THISMUSEUMISNOTOBSOLETE I suppose they could have been using up "old stock" round CRT's made for wartime scopes still in the 1960's.

[@quesoestbonne]

Mullard made CRTs, so adding one in to their own tester machine, if only for a 1Dvmoving dot would be cheap. It could even be a CRT tube that had a low quality second from production with faulty phosphor, misaligned second axis plate etc.

[@zetaconvex1987]

For some reason I always think of Jesse Pinkman when I watch his vids. Yeah bitch, electricity! But more seriously, I wish Sam all the best for his museum.

[@BravoBen2007]

Bro - tik tok? TikTok is aids

[@THISMUSEUMISNOTOBSOLETE]

as someone who creates videos as a purpose of promoting building things and stuff, its sometimes necessary to use different platforms to reach different types of people. think what you will. it is what it is

[@CircularMirror7]

There is quite a bit of educational content on tik tok. It not all about dancing and pranks. I was not interested for quite sometime. But decided to give it a go and was pleasantly surprised of some of the creators on there.