telexforum

Hello forum members!

Yesterday I acquired a new machine: RFT F2000A. Originally it was in service at the Hungarian Railways but was already decommissioned when I found it. Photos of the device are below.
Conditions:
2 keys are missing, and 2 more have weak springs, not pushing them back to normal position. Is it possible to fix the weak keys?
Somewhat loud high-frequency noise coming from the back of the device - similar to the one you hear near switching power supplies. Needs further investigation - opening the individual modules
Plastic cover for the punch tape unit is broken, and the punch tape holder wheel is bent
The most interesting one: the device is configured to communicate in the Hungarian language! When I powered it up it printed in Hungarian the following text: Data loss. Change batteries

I found the battery compartment and will change them today. Somewhere I read that the machine identifier was stored in the EPROM, so hopefully, that is still intact. But...

Hello folks.

Great to see such enthusiastic support for these old machines.

I have just acquired two ex-Royal Navy T1000 based machines (TGN4) that seem to be in reasonable operating condition - they power on and operate in local mode with functional tape punch and readers.

My eventual aim for these machines is to get them connected to each other and/or the outside world.

Whilst appearing identical, one of the machines has a clip installed on the carriage return/line feed key (enter key) to prevent it being depressed. This appears to be easy to remove but I wondered if anyone knows why this might have been installed ?

I'm also looking for some components to complete the machines.

Does anyone know a source for:
1. A chad collection box for the punch
2. The paper roll holder spindle
3. New ribbons as the installed ribbons have long since dried up.
4. An AD08 plug to allow me to attempt building an interface for the unit. These machines came with an additional Amphenol type 10 pin...

I recently bought a T1000 being sold as broken on the local auction site.

It was marked as Regie T& T

After inspecting it it seems to not have any big problems in the mechanics or core electronics: local mode works,
as does the tape punch and reader.

There was a lot of white crystalline fluff on all black hard plastic parts. It seemed to dissolve in water, so this was
not a big problem, I hope it's not toxic or anything :scratch:

The main electronics board (GE) seems to be a variant of the GE2 board I saw in the service schematics, however, the
big capacitors seem to be elkos not tantalums.

Here's a photo of the GE board.

(I did replace some of the old elko's with new ones as the telex would seem to reset as soon as it tried to print a character,
I measured 2vpp spikes on the 12V line when that happened)

However, I have not had any luck getting the line interface working. It seems to be a variant that only uses one pair,
besides this I don't know much yet.

Ich habe den Telegraphenapparat РТА-80 aus der Langzeitlagerung erhalten. Auf elektronischen Platinen mit Mikroschaltungen eine Schicht aus komprimiertem Schmutz und Staub. Darüber hinaus befinden sich versilberte Steckverbinder auf den Platinen. Beraten Sie, wie Sie diese Elektronik am besten ohne Beschädigung waschen können. DSCF2687.JPG

Hi All,

More a way to make sure that I never loose the HEX dumps I have taken from my machine (and now a spare set of EPROMS to help with repairing other machines).

Please find attached a full set of EPROM files

I had a day at the Nuclear Bunker today, and was having a bit of a tidy up in the teleprinter room.

I opened a very dusty cupboard, and look what I found :)

it looks to be a line current version, perhaps over the weekend I will clean all the dirt from the machine, and then delve into the electronics to see if it can have a short play on I-Telex.

IMG_20200529_142147_707.jpg

I think it might be ex Reuters - there are a couple more Transtel machines at the bunker (they all really do not belong there, but the owner will not dispose of them)

At least they have a home safe from the scrapman

Some of you are probably sick of hearing about the mad happenings in my radio shack, but for those of you that are slightly interested, please see some of the ramblings from me regarding the ongoing process of restoring the BT Cheetah 85 Teleprinter.

I must firstly thank Rainer, Henning, and Werner for their help so far-each of you have played a part in getting this far.

So, to set the scene.

The British Telecom Cheetah 85 and 87 Teleprinters are both very similar electrically, they were a joint venture with SEL Lorenz, and the Lo3000 is almost exactly the same machine in a slightly different case. This machine appeared on eBay earlier this year, and was a fairly good price (£75GBP) It was located in the North West of England, so required a 3 hour drive to collect it - At this point it is fair to say that my long suffering Wife accompanied me for this trip, and she does not share my enthusiasm for all things old and electrical.

My original plan was to use this machine as a source...

Not really a restoration, but at the end of last year I purchased a T56 FSG from eBay.de.

It is fully functional, but the cover was badly scuffed.

So, RAL6014 in Satin finish is a reasonable match to the original - I still need to wait for the paint to harden before doing a final cut back and light polish, but the results are acceptable.