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Four-Phase Systems IV/90

I was going to go with the latches initially since I have an inventory of salvaged ones but it was taking us more than ten minutes to get the measurements and placement correct so we just made two large holes and called it good.
 
Oh, okay. I've also seen PCB extraction tools that hook onto the bottom of a card near the connector and are equipped with a spring-loaded handle. Hook the ends (either through holes in the PCB or card edge), squeeze the handle and pull and Bob's your uncle. Typically not cheap,, but avoids shredded fingers. Not general-purpose; custom for the application. My last exposure to one was about 40 years ago--saved my fingertips.
 
I would think what you would want would be an "L: that fit into the hole and a "T" on top to wrap your hand around
One for each hand, and pull..
I wonder why no one ever built any. Only useful for pulling boards.
 
I've worked on analog switchers where it was a J-hook that was used to reach down and into holes in the board specifically for mechanically pulling but the other ends were bent into a ring you you could put a finger through and then use two of them to pull the board straight out. Central Dynamics (not General dynamics) actually had clips under the lid for storing them with the cabinet.
 
The absolute worst card ejectors are the cheap metal ones DG used in Novas.
With the pair of 100 pin high insertion force sockets they used, they just bent.
 
Al Kossow said:
The absolute worst card ejectors are the cheap metal ones DG used in Novas.
With the pair of 100 pin high insertion force sockets they used, they just bent.
Click to expand...
I've not had any of mine bend the lever, but rather the spring steel that they push against on the card cage frame. Or worse, the lever broke clean out of the PCB somehow... either way, it wasn't ideal.
 
Thank you for uploading the ForeWord docs to bitsavers Al!

This is great. ForeWord was a multi-user word processing application that ran on multiple configurations.

archive.org

ForeWord word processing - Four-Phase Systems: : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

ForeWord word processing - Four-Phase Systems
archive.org

The docs uploaded also contain administration information for how to handle recovery of the earlier tape archive and write it back to a disk. It also contains information on fault handling, core dumping and bootstrapping which until now was missing because the reference manuals for IDOS are still missing.
 
Two more boards came and went on ebay. I ended up wagering my paycheck and considered digging into my line of credit but ultimately it got silly by someone who from their history is sniping listings through the vintage computing section on ebay. Unlikely to be a typical gold bug. Chip collector? Either way, considering the number of people who admit they own a system you can count with one hand and none of them were bidding on this, they're gone into the black hole.
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Jack, I know you are a regular here. For the love of god please reply to your emails next time. I tried all week to reach you for a private sale and got total silence. I need parts. I especially need RAM-9 chips. Uncool.


Anyways, I've scraped the listing images and sent them off to bitsavers, along with an updated chip catalog and photos of the boardset Four-Phase customized Diablo printers with to work on their console chains. I have not dumped the EPROM for the API board but I can be persuaded if someone wants to.
 
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This is insane. I do not get it at all.....
When I started this thread in 2022, Four-Phase Systems was a complete unknown. Bitsavers didn't even have much if anything and neither did the Internet in general. I have flipped every stone imaginable to connect with whoever else is left in the world who also has any information on these machines and none of them either had systems or pockets deep enough to start considering getting back into them now so that I can tell it's still me and three other people on this planet. The last few listings it was hard to tell if I was being outsold or outbid by goldbugs but this ins just insane. We are over $3000usd ($4100cad!) and there's *someone* out there to whom the seller has alluded has bid far "closer to five figures" for this stash.
This was a seller who right now has two smaller listings for only two chips. We worked out a deal in PM's to sell it as a lot and I bid in excess of the amount it's worth for the gold to keep that crowd away. I can only speculate given how there's a crazy number of views that multiple chip collectors went in on a group buy, which means my money has no meaning here but this is very depressing because it more or less confirms that sourcing replacement chips is near-impossible on the open market.


(for those of you who want to point out that posting these prices is not helping my cause, you can shut up at any time. At least I'm keeping track of this madness.)
 
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