Building an original Philips pattern generator from scratch

[inaxeon]

Hey folks. Just thought I would share this one with the forum:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqOodLWSI5g

[Vintage Engr]

That takes home construction to a new all-time high! what a fabulous outcome, I wonder how many man-hours it took!

David.

[Chris55000]

WOW!

The GitHub Repository is currently downloading at the moment and it's an enormous one – 2.80 GB and still climbing!

Five stars and Mega–kudos to this Danish chap who has so willingly shared it for us all to look at and enjoy – I think I'd need to win the (free!) ITV7 to afford to be able to build one of these boards described here!

Chris Williams

PS!

Just completed downloading – 4.86 GB!

[Lloyd 1985]

Wow, all that just for a test pattern!!

Regards
Lloyd

[inaxeon]

Originally Posted by Vintage Engr

That takes home construction to a new all-time high! what a fabulous outcome, I wonder how many man-hours it took!

David.

The actual build time was about 6 hours. Half the time it took to edit the video. But there is no denying it was a big project overall. I first started on the preparation 3 months ago and it has consumed the bulk of my spare time since then.

[See_Mos]

WOW from me as well!

[Ted Kendall]

Strewth!

[wd40addict]

Amazing! Even more amazing that the data to do it has been open sourced. There's definitely a dark age from roughly the mid 90s on when proper service manuals and circuit diagrams became unavailable.

Companies like Keysight have no interest in releasing info on no longer supported kit from this era, they just want you to buy a new one. Obviously the Philips test gear business doesn't exist anymore so I wonder who had all the IP to release it and did they have to get approval from Fluke?

[inaxeon]

Originally Posted by wd40addict

Amazing! Even more amazing that the data to do it has been open sourced. There's definitely a dark age from roughly the mid 90s on when proper service manuals and circuit diagrams became unavailable.

Companies like Keysight have no interest in releasing info on no longer supported kit from this era, they just want you to buy a new one. Obviously the Philips test gear business doesn't exist anymore so I wonder who had all the IP to release it and did they have to get approval from Fluke?

I sort-of outlined that in the opening of the video. No approval from Fluke needed. TV related Philips test equipment was split out of Fluke's portfolio in the mid 1990s and remained under the ownership of Philips. But then Philips sold everything they still had to a US based private equity company in 1998.

-some- of it (i.e. the more recent stuff) was bought up by DK-Audio A/S in 2001 when that US company decided to sell out. DK-Audio was recently wrapped up when its founder and CEO retired, and that is why it got open sourced. He owns 100% of the IP. He can do it.

But as for the rest, it is a mess. The engineering archives are (probably) held by ProTelevision Technologies Corp A/S (protelevision.com) but the IP is owned by Trescal. The whole lot of it was sold off them and in return they could collect any calibration/service revenue till all of the remaining kit died off. A shame and we'll probably not see anything more open sourced as a result of it.

[greg_simons]

Wow!, that takes a special kind of madness to attempt the replication of something so complex, very good result, I'm in genuine awe, i built the hedgehog mk2 but it kind of pales in comparison!.
Greg.

[Philips210]

What a splendid project and an incredible achievement!

Regards,
Symon