Greetings! [My first (hopefully not the last) post here... I think I understand the instructions I read...]

I was wondering if anyone could guide me towards trying to figure out what this thing is. I got it as part of an estate auction for a fellow who worked in the Silicon Valley starting in the 1970s, in the area of chip manufacturing. The device might very well be from the 70s or 80s.

What is really puzzling me is the big red drum. Some kind of inductor with lots of taps? I've tried searching on various parts numbers, and nothing comes up. The inset picture at lower left has a transformer, diodes, and a great big cap--so I'm thinking power supply. But the whole thing--radar emitter? Microwave oven magnetron? I have not tried applying any power or test equipment to it, as I don't want to take a chance that it emits microwave energy that would cook my brain.

I'll probably end up desoldering it for parts, but I thought I might just check here first (in case it turns out to be a flux capacitor that would allow me to return to 1985 and get my hair back).

Thank you in advance for any clues you might be able to share with me.
Cheers, John

 

Well that's a super, extra-whamodyne gizmo you got there. I'm clueless. Kinda looks like old airplane controls, but then old airplane controls kinda look like lots of other stuff too.

That big drum, could it be a logic drum? I tried googling for an example but unfortunately there is a drumkit software by that name and results for it completely wash out the kind of results I'm looking for, which is an old-school motorized logic sequencer.

 

Government agents are heading to your location to recover the lost OSCILLATION OVERTHRUSTER.

A power supply section, lots of voltage regulators and what looks to be a poly-phase transformer (2-3 phase 400Hz?) with drivers.

 

What is really puzzling me is the big red drum. Some kind of inductor with lots of taps?

Is there any part of it that sticks out the other side of the mounting plate?
IOW, does it indicate something rotary in nature?

 

1950-1960s technology.
The big round red item looks like a magnetic drum memory storage device. The rest are power supplies.

 

Drum memory were rotary driven somehow, I wondered if this is the case with this unit?

 

Is there any part of it that sticks out the other side of the mounting plate?
IOW, does it indicate something rotary in nature?

I don't see anything going through (that main power supply is on the other side). The red "drum skin" feels like some kind of red wax. I tap on it, and it feels pretty solid. Maybe either a solid ferrite core or else just solid wrap of magnet wire, would be my guess. Maybe the wax was to fix the windings in place?

 

From the components o the filter board, it it appears to be a low frequency device, perhaps audio or something in the kHz. The drum could be a custom transformer for wide range impedance matching or selective output voltages. My first thought was an underground cable tracer, but there are too many filter paths and those tracers only used a few frequencies.

The power supply transformer is relatively small, so we know its low power and, with the filters, it has multiple frequencies.

Could it be a super clean low frequency sweep generator with multiple output voltages????
The filter units are diode switched, suggesting the need for speed...

 

Drum memory were rotary driven somehow, I wondered if this is the case with this unit?

It could be some sort of rate gyroscopic device. Poly-phase rotation drive coils and pickup coils to detect movements.
http://www.tpub.com/neets/book15/63e.htm

 

Studying the pics, there does not appear to be any external means of rotating the device???

 

I'm surprised! You experts don't recognize a flux capacitor when you see one.

 

Studying the pics, there does not appear to be any external means of rotating the device???

WAG. If it is some type navigational (the puck is a vacuum sealed gyro?) device the packaging suggest it was mounted to some larger module that would move as a part of some larger 'Thing'. Looking at the interlocking machining on the internal plates this thing was designed to take some decent G forces without internally twisting or moving very much.

 

Be interesting to see if the red cover pops off some how, see what the innards reveal.?

 

Be interesting to see if the red cover pops off some how, see what the innards reveal.?

It would also be nice to see it there was a name plate or other identifier(s) on the front side of the mounting base plate.

 

I have tried twisting the red-drum, and I can move it back and forth by around ten degrees. It feels like it may be mounted on some sort of post. I do not see any way to pop the red waxy cover off. I would have to cut it away with my Dremel. I'm going to try some other things first.
I tend to agree this may be low power, because what looks like the power input wires are like 24 AWG...really thin. And I have tried to identify these black boxes--plastic components with the same logo but different part numbers. I have tried to identify the logo/company, but I haven't managed to find it yet. One of the boxes has a hand-written note on tape affixed to it: "16.5 k w/ 0.002mF" 'w' for webers? Inductor and cap--maybe these are band-pass filters? (LC tank units tuned to different frequencies?)
And I have scoured every surface looking for badges or writing of any kind. The only thing I could find was a piece of masking tape affixed to one of the boards, and "Serial # 2.04" was written on it. So it feels like it may be a prototype of something. Anyway, I'm probably going to start disassembling it for parts, and see if I can liberate that drum from the rest of it.

 

...and the mystery deepens! I could see that there was a black plastic cylinder between two PCBs, and when I separated them it revealed a smaller version of the red drum. This one has a green cap and has only two wire connections (compared to the 34 connections of the red drum). The green drum is 4.5cm in diameter and 2cm tall (red is 7cm dia and 3cm tall), and was mounted on a plane perpendicular to the red. Early solid state accelerometers? I just get more and more puzzled by this thing...