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Television Standards Converters, Modulators etc Standards converters, modulators anything else for providing signals to vintage televisions.

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Old 7th Oct 2022, 3:02 pm   #1
G6ONEDave
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Default Kennedy 9610

Hi, I hope that there are some forum members who can help me with this request.

I have a Kennedy 9610 reel to reel tape deck, I was told at the time I received it (some 20 years ago) that it was used for Channel 4 racing programmes. I am trying to confirm this statement and so far have been in touch with Channel 4, who have informed me that the Channel 4 racing programmes were produced by a company called Highflyer Productions. Unfortunately this company ceased trading some years back, so I can't find a way to contact anyone there to answer my questions.

What I would like to know is if this Kennedy 9610 would have been used for video/audio. What computer system would have been used and what software.

The Kennedy 9610 tape deck takes 10" spools of magnetic tape that is 1/2" wide. The machine is a 9 track type and will run in reverse direction. It uses the SCSI interface for connection to a computer/editor.

I do have a pdf copy of the installation info that includes a desription of it's workings and connections. The tape deck is both analogue and digital.

I look forward to any further info, thanks.

Dave
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Old 7th Oct 2022, 5:38 pm   #2
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Default Re: Kennedy 9610

This looks to be a normal 9-track computer tape drive. I am not sure what you mean by 'both analogue and digital', does it have analogue input/output connectors as well as the SCSI interface?

My experience of 9-track tape drives in general (I do not have this specific model) is that no way would they have the data rate or capacity to handle full motion video. It might have been used to back up the hard disks and/or install software on some computer system used for video processing.
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Old 7th Oct 2022, 7:20 pm   #3
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Default Re: Kennedy 9610

Looks like an evolution of the Kennedy open reel tape drives I used to fix in the early eighties. They used vacuum tubes that the tape was sucked into, as part of the tape feed and take up servo system. They were 800bpi nrzi and 1600 bpi pe dual speed drives and cost thousands back then.

Cheers

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Old 8th Oct 2022, 11:50 am   #4
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Default Re: Kennedy 9610

This tape deck is early 1990's as far as I can find. Here is a link to the internet archive site where there are some scans of manuals for this item:- https://archive.org/search.php?query=kennedy+9610

Hope the link helps anyone interested in checking out this beast. I'll try and get a pic of the rear panel at some point but it's currently a bit buried in the workshop.

An excerpt from the installation guide reads "The drive can operate in streaming mode at 100 ips or start/stop mode at 50 ips, and can read in either forward or reverse direction in all densities".

Whilst it won't be upto modern digital signals we are talking about an early system that perhaps could have been used for slomo or even freeze frame images. I only have what I was told at the time I aquired the deck hence my question.

If this equipment is proved to have been used in early digital or even analogue video then I'm donating it to the BECG.

The title on one of the tape spools reads:- Diver film 7206 x 2529 Please keep it a good blue like diver.

Dave
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Old 8th Oct 2022, 2:36 pm   #5
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Default Re: Kennedy 9610

I used to work for a large famous imaging company with a yellow and red logo.

In the early 90's I worked primarily in the professional digital imaging arena and was involved with various systems that used 9 Track tape to transfer still images between various systems and sites. Transferring image files was far more common by tape that networking at that time - 8mm Exabyte was also fairly standard.

Film processors would (drum) scan the film to tape, then send it to a digital retouching house who would then send off the retouched image to someone with a digital image writer, often writing it back to film! So there were couriers flying around central London, and other cities, moving tapes back and forth all day long. Sometimes, a single agency would have all the kit on one site, but they still tended to moved the images between scanner, retouching system and output device by tape until systems and networking options became faster and more compatible.

I think what you probably have there is a tape containing a 7206 x 2529 pixel image of a Diver and the instruction is to ensure that the retouching or finished print output portrays the Diver as nicely blue.
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Old 8th Oct 2022, 4:37 pm   #6
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Default Re: Kennedy 9610

Thanks for that SunSPARC, so it seems that this tape deck may have been used in the preparation of video after all, even if it's only stills. This might explain a little as to why it came with a Howtek A3 scanner and a Kodak printer. The printer and scanner use the GPIB system of connection, if memory serves. Here are some more tape titles in no particular order that might help further:-

DDES Dan's Spider 1 x scan 28-7-94.
DDES Vol: Class of 76 1 x scan 14-7-94.
DDES Vol: Landscape Sky 1 x scan 25-7-94.
Mainfin 2 5892 x 3960 Boss with grain girl 21-7-95.
DDES Car 1 1 x scan 4-8-94.
M&W Bach 5957 x 4294 do not wipe.

It's a shame that I can't currently play these tapes back to see the content.

Dave
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Old 8th Oct 2022, 5:26 pm   #7
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Default Re: Kennedy 9610

I would imagine that the printer is probably an XL7700 then. Can you lift it?! Always 'fun' to repair

The tapes are likely to have single image files on them. The pixel dimensions were required because the images were often written to tape in raw data format without such niceties stored in a file header.

I still think this is more likely to be digital pre-press stuff, rather than video related.
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Old 9th Oct 2022, 2:41 pm   #8
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Default Re: Kennedy 9610

SunSPARC you are correct re the Kodak XL7700 printer, it uses the thermal dye transfer process (dye-sublimation). I have a little paperwork that came with the printer and to confirm the model I dug it out. I may have answered one of my questions in doing so. The paperwork mentions drivers for both Windows 3.11 or later and Macintosh but not tested on version 7.1 or later.

The printer info mentions Photoshop and any info re which version and if the tape deck will also work with Photoshop would be very helpful. Also what specifications would the computers have had from say 1990 era? Did they use something of higher specification than the typical models available then?

Re the printer, I could lift it 20 years ago but not sure now. Not done anything with it, so don't know if it actually works, but if not, it's probably due to lack of use and the usual component failures such as capacitors. I'm fairly sure that all the kit was in working order when I aquired it.

All this kit has just been sitting around in my office and workshop, at least it's been kept dry. The Howtek A3 scanner is a Scanmaster 3. I've not powered up any of this kit as I could not find a way to get it working with my Windows XP computer at the time. Issues with driver interface cards and compatibility etc. It would however be great to get it working again.

Please do let me know anything else that could be of help with this kit. For instance was this a custom set-up for production companies.

Dave
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Old 9th Oct 2022, 3:13 pm   #9
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Default Re: Kennedy 9610

Photoshop is now only available on subscription. Stop paying and lose access to your files, unless you've carefully exported them in a non-adobe format.

David
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Old 9th Oct 2022, 4:16 pm   #10
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Default Re: Kennedy 9610

I would be surprised if the computer system that went with this stuff was a normal PC of the time. I would have thought it was a workstation type machine from Sun, HP, DEC, etc. Quite which one I have no idea,
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Old 9th Oct 2022, 5:05 pm   #11
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Default Re: Kennedy 9610

In the early '90s my firm looked after part of a satellite image acquisition system on behalf of PA News at newspaper offices. The machine we looked after was a fairly standard PC, which normally ran headless, it ran the iRMX operating system.

I remember one office was still running an analogue drum scanner.
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Old 10th Oct 2022, 3:04 pm   #12
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Default Re: Kennedy 9610

Thanks Radio Wrangler re the comment about Photoshop. The current version probably won't work on a 16 bit system. I say 16 bit because of Rambo1152's comment about the iRMX real time operating system. Having looked this iRMX up online it initially seems to have been written for the 8080, 8086 processors and then followed by the 386 processor the 286 seems to have been missed out. I actually still have an IBM clone desktop computer with a 486DX2-66 processor and a seperate maths co-processor (possibly 487). The computer has 4Mb RAM and a 420Mb HDD. All very obsolete by todays standards but possibly OK for early 1990's and the Kennedy 9610. There also appears to be a version of iRMX that works with Windows 3.1. I'll do some more investigation on this.

One thought though, is would the required computer use only one processor or would it have say a couple of processors fitted to the mobo (excluding maths co-processors). Also were there any systems that could go beyond the 4Mb RAM limit?

The other option is to look into the Sun, HP, DEC perhaps even IBM etc. I'll have to check out the software specifications to see if these were also an option.

Thanks all and please keep the comments coming.

Dave
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Old 11th Oct 2022, 11:37 am   #13
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Default Re: Kennedy 9610

I now have a pdf copy of the installation and operation manual for the iRMX v2.2 OS, which has details of system requirements. I have also dug out the paperwork for my 486 desktop and it turns out that it is an IBM. The manual is titled Opal 486SLC2 system board revision C. It also says that the RAM can be extended to a max of 16Mb. So this something else that I'll be looking into. I'll do a seperate request for this if I don't have any in my collection of RAM modules.

Thank

Dave
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Old 16th Oct 2022, 3:28 pm   #14
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Default Re: Kennedy 9610

When the XL7700 was launched in the late eighties Photoshop was in its infancy. All the serious players in the digital retouching and enhancement business were using bespoke systems based on Sun, Dec and Silicon Graphics platforms and, of course, there was also Quantel. PCs at that time had no hope of crunching the digits involved at any sensible speed, and MACs, always more popular with graphic artists, were only very slightly better. We had one image recorder (film writer) that required a DEC Microvax all to itself solely as the output device. Our own retouching systems were based on Sun 4/370 and 670MP pedestals and Sparc 10 and 20 desktops.

Any system comprising of a Howtek flat bed scanner and an XL7700 printer would have been relatively low end. It would explain the tape drive for IO, as film scans, or any higher res inputs, could well have been farmed out to a scanning house and any higher res, larger output sent to a company with suitable film writing or printing facilities. It may well have been PC or MAC based, but MAC is more likely.

Photoshop wouldn’t have cared less about the tape drive – that would just have been used at operating system level, probably with some other utility program, to get the files in and out of the host system. I would think that, being SCSI, an Adaptec card and ASPI drivers would be all that were needed for the OS to see the drive, and then either a standalone, or part of a larger app, utility that understood the particular command set required. The following links “may” be of help -

https://winworldpc.com/product/adaptec-ez-scsi/1x

https://www.curiousmarc.com/computin...and-tape-drive

http://www.dbit.com/pub/ibmpc/util/ <- st.exe and st.txt

The XL7700 was used across many markets, military, medical, newspaper publishers, graphic arts, professional photography etc. It was originally used by the US Air Force on board AWACS, hence the rack mounting. In a later guise, based on the updated XLT7720, it was also used to produce the index prints that were inserted into the front of the jewel cases of Photo CDs.

It will probably be an uphill struggle to resurrect an XL7700 now. For one thing, the media has been discontinued for it for many years and there was never a “compatible” equivalent manufactured. If you have some media for it that may be all you can get. There was a Photoshop Export Module, as well as Windows and MAC drivers, but they were all sold separately and were very expensive. You may struggle to find a copy of these now. Finally, the printer itself contains a 386DX based industrial single board computer as a CPU. It has, depending on version, either a back-up battery or an NVRAM chip with internal battery that will almost certainly be dead now. As an aside, internal memory is 12MB – huge at the time!

Each printer came with a floppy disk containing the specific calibration data related to the hardware (thermal head, primarily) fitted to that serial number. There was a calibration utility program to re-generate it if required (called Tablemaker if my memory is correct), but as well as that you would also need a Densitometer such as, at the time, the X-Rite 810 to complete the process.

I have some service data for the printer and have attached the diagram package and error code listing PDFs, should they be of any help. I’ve probably got more if I dig.
Attached Files
File Type: pdf xl7700_diagrams.pdf (2.65 MB, 56 views)
File Type: pdf xl7700_error_codes.pdf (220.7 KB, 44 views)
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Old 16th Oct 2022, 5:20 pm   #15
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Default Re: Kennedy 9610

Thank you SunSPARC, all very helpful. I realise that I'm extremely late to this particular party. It would be good to retrieve the images if the tapes have not degraded too much, likewise don't know what condition the heads are in either at present. The tape deck is on the floor in a corner of my workshop and has about 40 spool tapes stacked in 3 piles on top of it. There are some other odds and sods piled above those. Space is at a premium in my workshop at present.

I do have a couple of ISA slot SCSI cards around here in one of my storage areas, so I'll try to remember where they are hiding, at least that might be step forward.

I have a neighbour who is really into Mac's and I have asked him if by any chance he has copy of the software from that time. Not holding my breath but you just never know. He does currently have the A3 scanner that used to be used by the Doncaster Free Press and it sounds to be even larger than the Howtek!

Interesting that the printer is 386 based with 12 Mb of RAM, thats a higher spec than my newer 486 desktop. I have been pricing up 4Mb SIMMS with parity (4MB x 9) and every time I find a reasonable price, they only have one of it. Before anyone suggests to use the 8 bit version, I can't as the parity bit is not easily changeable in bios.

I do have a computer that is all cards in a cabinet that stands about 4ft high. Don't know what it actually is but maybe that could be a contender to use. Only problem is that it's completely buried in one of the rooms in my outbuilding. I will unearth it eventually but no time soon. I'm struggling with space to move stuff into whilst emptying a given room. I am working on this issue albeit slowly.

In the meantime I'll keep looking and will check those links out.

Thanks again.

Dave
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