NASA need help with Ampex machines

[Raveninghorde]

THis is an interesting project. NASA have early tapes and lack the
equipment to play them. I'm posting this in case any one here is able
to help.


http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/04/01/help-needed-to-recover-old-satellite-imagery/#more-6714

/quote

A message from Dennis Wingo:
The Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP), is a NASA ESMD
funded project to recover the original Lunar Orbiter analog data which
was recorded on an Ampex FR-900 2? video instrumentation recorder. As
far as we know, we have the last surviving drives of this type in the
world. We have retired Ampex engineers working with us on this
project but the FR-900 was a limited use machine (exclusively the U.S.
government at the FAA, USAF, NASA).
What we need is to find any possible source of documentation (we know
about the Stanford Archive and have been there many times) for the
FR-900 or the possibility of actual machines.

There are similar machines with the numbers FR-901, FR-902, FR-950
that are close enough that we can use any information on them.
Please email to Anthony (or drop a comment below) and he will forward
to me or drop us a note at www.moonviews.com
Thanks very much!!!
Dennis Wingo
LOIRP Project Lead

/end quote

 

[GregS]

THis is an interesting project. NASA have early tapes and lack the
equipment to play them. I'm posting this in case any one here is able
to help.


http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/04/01/help-needed-to-recover-old-satellite-imag
ery/#more-6714

/quote

A message from Dennis Wingo:
The Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP), is a NASA ESMD
funded project to recover the original Lunar Orbiter analog data which
was recorded on an Ampex FR-900 2? video instrumentation recorder. As
far as we know, we have the last surviving drives of this type in the
world. We have retired Ampex engineers working with us on this
project but the FR-900 was a limited use machine (exclusively the U.S.
government at the FAA, USAF, NASA).
What we need is to find any possible source of documentation (we know
about the Stanford Archive and have been there many times) for the
FR-900 or the possibility of actual machines.

There are similar machines with the numbers FR-901, FR-902, FR-950
that are close enough that we can use any information on them.
Please email to Anthony (or drop a comment below) and he will forward
to me or drop us a note at www.moonviews.com
Thanks very much!!!
Dennis Wingo
LOIRP Project Lead

/end quote

I just sent a note to my friend to see whats up with that.


greg

 

[[email protected]]

I am certified engineer on some Ampex VTR.
Cannot see your problem really.
If NASA was not clever enough to make backups when technology changed, then I _can_ see the problem.
Von Braun made the moon is a fraction of time you guys are now trying to copy-cat it.
He had a mars idea too.
Does the word 'improvisation' mean anything to you?
You know what puts me off, an example:
Wanted to see if I could write something (application) for Google Android.
Now imagine, a small window on a mobile phone with 'Hello' in it.
You need to install Eclipse and Java for that.
Bloat on top of more bloat.
of course JRE would not install because <quote>You do not have /bin/cp<end quote> or something.
Of course I _do_ have that, any Linux system has that, and it specified the complete path, an other big
money moron software release.
Deleted the shit.
Now if NASA works the same way, and it seems it does, why bother to help them?
They need help, but not so much technical, more on a ahum, LOL

It's very simple; technology was supposed to relieve us from work and
labour, but our social model hasn't changed.
To create more jobs, we create enormously complex software systems
that *require* years of university education to work with.

 

[GregS]

THis is an interesting project. NASA have early tapes and lack the
equipment to play them. I'm posting this in case any one here is able
to help.


http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/04/01/help-needed-to-recover-old-satellite-imag
ery/#more-6714

I was directed to a more informative page....

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-lunar22-2009mar22,0,1783495,full.story

 

[GregS]

I was directed to a more informative page....

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-lunar22-2009mar22,0,178349
5,full.story

I was doing some reporting on the search for moon landing tapes. Seems
like the orginals were erased, but there were some NTSC backups they are trying to
play.

greg

 

[[email protected]]

I am certified engineer on some Ampex VTR.
Cannot see your problem really.
If NASA was not clever enough to make backups when technology changed, then I _can_ see the problem.
Von Braun made the moon is a fraction of time you guys are now trying to copy-cat it.
He had a mars idea too.
Does the word 'improvisation' mean anything to you?
You know what puts me off, an example:
Wanted to see if I could write something (application) for Google Android..
Now imagine, a small window on a mobile phone with 'Hello' in it.
You need to install Eclipse and Java for that.
Bloat on top of more bloat.
of course JRE would not install because <quote>You do not have /bin/cp<end quote> or something.
Of course I _do_ have that, any Linux system has that, and it specified the complete path, an other big
money moron software release.
Deleted the shit.
Now if NASA works the same way, and it seems it does, why bother to help them?
They need help, but not so much technical, more on a ahum, LOL

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-lunar22-2009mar22,0,1783495,full.story

Wingo, who has an engineering physics degree from the University of
Alabama, knows his way around a computer. But repairing the FR-900s
was beyond him. It was also beyond almost everyone else they tried.

Finally, they heard about an old Army vet, Ken Zin, who knew machinery
and happened to work at Ames repairing video equipment.

Zin was a jack-of-all-trades who'd grown up on a farm in the Central
Valley, repairing tractors and dairy equipment. In the Army, he'd
graduated to fixing top-secret cryptograph machines. He sat down with
Wingo and the rest of the team. "Can you make that thing run?" they
asked him.

"Yeah, I can make it work," Zin replied.

Engineering Physicist: 0. Army Mechanic: 1. sigh...

M

 

[James Arthur]

I was doing some reporting on the search for moon landing tapes. Seems
like the orginals were erased, but there were some NTSC backups they are trying to
play.

greg

A pal of mine was running the telemetry at one of the tracking
stations when Neil Armstrong landed on the moon.

He says Armstrong's heart was galloping like a racehorse's...

Last I heard he still had a chunk of the original teletype log.

Cheers,
James Arthur

 

[GregS]

A pal of mine was running the telemetry at one of the tracking
stations when Neil Armstrong landed on the moon.

He says Armstrong's heart was galloping like a racehorse's...

Last I heard he still had a chunk of the original teletype log.

I sort of doubt if the tracking station could see stripcahrts or actual
data. The data is usually seen back at Houston.

I guess these are the same recorders they would have had to use
to play back the missing moon tapes if they existed today. Thats
another story about the Australians who bought some tapes and
took them home. Those were backup NTSC tapes of the first moon landing.

greg

 

[Benj]

I was doing some reporting on the search for moon landing tapes. Seems
like the orginals were erased, but there were some NTSC backups they are trying to
play.

Speaking of such things, that reminds me; I've got to transfer all my
old family photos to DVD before it's too late!

 

[GregS]

Tell you what, I am in the process of moving a lot of things to SDcard.
I just got about 8 hours of movies on a 8 GB SDcard... DivX4,
one is 2.2 hours encoded with about 500 kbps, with 128 kbps stereo sound.

I did stick the 8 GB card in the Canon camera, it tells me: 400 pics or 150
minutes video...
Now I am planning on buying a postage stamp collectors album (as I had as a
kid),
and putting SD and micro-SD cards in it.
Millions of pictures in one album.
You can refresh the FLASH ever so many years by reading in the card to a file

Up until two months ago, the largest sd card I had was 64 MB. That was
enough when I had cameras that would make the card unreadable. I
could not take a chance and loose vacation photos. I just bought a 1 Gb for my
newy Fuji S2000HD I got for Xmas. I don't need it for the photos, but
it will record 45 Minutes of HD movies.

The missing moon tapes were recorded on a Minicom M22 1 inch 14 track tape.
I'm told there was one FR-900 machine at one time at the Pioneer station at Goldstone.

greg

 

[GregS]

Up until two months ago, the largest sd card I had was 64 MB. That was
enough when I had cameras that would make the card unreadable. I
could not take a chance and loose vacation photos. I just bought a 1 Gb for my
newy Fuji S2000HD I got for Xmas. I don't need it for the photos, but
it will record 45 Minutes of HD movies.

Make that 2 Mb. 50 mb per minute.

 

[[email protected]]

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-lunar22-2009mar2...

Wingo, who has an engineering physics degree from the University of
Alabama, knows his way around a computer. But repairing the FR-900s
was beyond him. It was also beyond almost everyone else they tried.

Finally, they heard about an old Army vet, Ken Zin, who knew machinery
and happened to work at Ames repairing video equipment.

Zin was a jack-of-all-trades who'd grown up on a farm in the Central
Valley, repairing tractors and dairy equipment. In the Army, he'd
graduated to fixing top-secret cryptograph machines. He sat down with
Wingo and the rest of the team. "Can you make that thing run?" they
asked him.

"Yeah, I can make it work," Zin replied.

Engineering Physicist:  0.  Army Mechanic:  1.  sigh...

M

That 'whats up with that' link was posted a few months back on the
Telecine Internet Group[ (TIG). At the time I looked at it and it
appeared to be a modified 2" quadruplex transport to recode data
rather than video. Ken Zin is also a video guy who worked on
refurbishing Ampex quad machines at Merlin engineering. It's no
surprise to me that he would do just fine with the data version of the
machine. If you brought it here, the odds are very high I could get it
running too - plus we have parts and test gear like Ken likely has.

G²

 

[Eeyore]

THis is an interesting project. NASA have early tapes and lack the
equipment to play them. I'm posting this in case any one here is able
to help.

There's a guy called Scott Dorsey ( and others ) in rec.audio.pro who would know Ampex engineers.
Obviously they're audio specialists but they might have some leads.

Graham

 

[GregS]

There's a guy called Scott Dorsey ( and others ) in rec.audio.pro who would
know Ampex engineers.
Obviously they're audio specialists but they might have some leads.

I'm guessing NASA stopped using them about 38 years ago.

greg

 

[Kevin G. Rhoads]

Speaking of such things, that reminds me; I've got to transfer all my

old family photos to DVD before it's too late!

Just remember to make double copies, verify after recording -- and then
make a note to recopy them in a few years. Paper is more inherently archival
than DVD-R or DVD+R.