• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

Perkin Elmer 550 Terminal Schematic?

TasKiNG

Experienced Member
Joined
Nov 12, 2016
Messages
73
Location
Derby, UK
Anyone have a service manual or schematic for a Perkin Elmer 550 Terminal please?
I'm about to restore one and it would make it a lot easier.

s-l1600.jpg
 
That looks rough, good luck (y) The vent holes on the rear are somewhat recessed so perhaps the insides are not as bad as the exterior.

I have a working unit (although with a very worn CRT), haven't been able to find a schematic or a service manual. I've added a list of electrolytics into the Terminal wiki's article. The user manual, and somewhat signal-level programming manual is available in here: https://bitsavers.org/pdf/interdata/terminal/550/
 
Thanks @MindWalker for the link to the programming manual.
The shield on the bottom was missing and it was a barn find so had had alsorts living in it so the boards were quite bad too.
The list of electrolytics will be useful :)
My main issue is with rust. I can't read the frequencies of the large and small chrystals and cannot read the values of the two large TO-3 style transistors.
If you could identify these for me from your 550 sometime I would really appreciate it. :)
I have a Perkin Elmer 3210 control panel that I'm putting a pi5 running SIMH interdata/32 (perkin elmer) simulator that I hope to connect this terminal to.
I actually have three of these 550's but they are all in the same state. Good project though :)

Cheers

Dave
 
Perhaps all three won't have the same damages and perhaps you can get at least one good out of them :) (If you end up with an extra CRT with life left on it, I might be interested ;) )

Can you post an image of the 3210 control panel? Sounds like a neat project if you could hook it up to a Pi.

I looked at my photos of my recapping, the two big TO-3 packages are MC7805CK (closer to the fuse) and MC7812CK. Bigger crystal has 1 8432 BME on it (1,8432 Mhz?), can't quite read what the smaller one says.
 

Attachments

  • 20220315_171425.jpg
    20220315_171425.jpg
    5.2 MB · Views: 12
@MindWalker Thanks for the info. Thats a nice looking board. Ah so they are voltage regulators not transistors. Looks quite a simple psu design :)
On mine, one has some keys missing, one has a cracked case at the rear. and one has a broken tube (you can see the phospor missing on the middle terminal screen).
So If I can get the electronics working I should be able to make two good ones out of the three :)

3.jpeg

Here's my rusty board.

clean_mainboard.jpg

Here's my panel

panel.jpg
 
mainboard_electrolytics.png
Just desoldered the Main Board / Keyboard electrolytic capacitors.
They were in pretty bad condition i.e. values way out, electrically leaky and also a number had leaked electrolyte.
Here's a record of the locations, polarity and values ( may help someone else in the future )
 
Back
Top