[GreenKeys] 33 Troubleshooting

[Mike Arrington]

I'll give it a try.  Remember, this is my experience with a single Model 33.

When the 33 is plugged in, the selector magnet electronics are active.
When the 33 is unplugged and "off" and you plug it in, you'll hear a click
from the selector magnet.  BTW, you should probably unplug it when not in
use.

On the left side (with the keyboard being the front), there are 8 code bars
sticking out.  If you have a punch, the punch will be connected to these,
but on the left side of the punch, its own "code bars" will also stick
out.

When the code bars are in a marking position, they will be shifted to the
left and up.  The code bars, from the back to the front are 1, 2, 3, 4, 5,
7, 6, 8.  Note that 7 and 6 are exchanged.  When the printer is idle, the
code bars will be in the right and down position or spacing (0) position.

While the 33 is "off", with the selector magnet energized, the distributor
is also active.  If you press a key, you should hear a click and see the
H-plate shift.  You can then rotate the motor by turning the fan on the top
towards the front.  The correct direction is also marked on the motor.

You'll see the distributor rotate.  When the distributor stops, the code
bars should be setup.  Sometimes when running at this slow of a speed, the
code bars don't always work perfectly.  In that case, you can manually set
them by poking a probe to get them to pop out or you can push them back in
to get the code you want.  Continue rotating the motor to let the printer
process the function or print a character. At the end of the cycle, all the
code bars will be set to spacing.

Handy keys for testing are ctrl-shift-P (@) to select no code bars and RUB
OUT to set all of the code bars.  See an ASCII code chart for other values.

If you have a even parity keyboard, it will set the 8th code bar to
maintain an even count of 1's.

These directions let you test the path from the keyboard to the code bars.
If you are getting incorrect results, the problem could be anywhere in the
keyboard, distributor, selector mechanism, or code bars themselves.  To
determine if the problem is in the keyboard, you may need to select a key
on the keyboard and check to see if that is correctly set in the
distributor.  I haven't had to do that so I can't speak to that at this
time.

CAUTION:  When the 33 is plugged in, there are high voltages present at
various points.

Good luck and I hope this may be helpful.

--Mike A

On Tue, Jul 30, 2019 at 2:28 PM Ken Wiebe <me at networkguy.com> wrote:

> Looking for a high-level strategy to isolate cause of problem:
>
> In local mode, I don't get the right characters to print when I type.
>
> I understand the principles of operation.  The keyboard contacts are
> connected to the distributor which generates a series of pulses
> representing the key pressed.  Got it.
>
> Then the selector mechanism senses the pulses and sets up the code bars
> accordingly.
>
> One thing I'd like to do is turn the motor over by hand and confirm or
> deny the code bar positioning given a known pulse pattern.  I think I have
> to manipulate the selector mechanism in some way but I'm not sure how.  A
> video was posted a while back which included someone doing this, but I
> couldn't quite get it from the camera angle/description.  I thought maybe
> someone here could describe it better.
>
> I also had the thought of connecting to the signal line to ensure the
> distributor was sending the right pulses.  But that would probably come
> after checking the code bar positioning (?)  Wondered what the group
> thought.
>
> Any other ideas to isolate quickly?  Am I on the right track?
>
> Thanks everyone!
>
> -Ken
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