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Trade Chat BBC Wales C.O.W

Trade Talk

Last Post by mfd70 3 weeks ago

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mfd70

(@mfd70)

Posts: 295

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In a previous post I mentioned that I was aware of the BBC Wales COW still in storage, well in 2025 it will be forty years since the COW first appeared on air and they would like to see if it can be made to work again, so we have been taking a look over the Christmas / New Year period. Luckily Chris was able to provide manuals and it was clear the +12V supply is missing, its and OEM PSU made by Gould/Advance. In order to see if there was any hope of getting this going I lashed up a 12V supply, snipped out the rifa caps (after they filled workshop with smoke..) and the results were rather good, see the video if you are interested;

There is no luminance as the COW does not have sync pulses on the Y output so I've just fed the YUV to SDI converter with station black and burst on the Y input to get a locked picture. Of course this is not my unit and not my decision on how much time or effort will be spent on this project. If anyone does not know what I mean by BBC COW, there is an explanation here;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Originated_World

Also a more detailed explanation here;

https://www.bbceng.info/Designs/designs_technology/new_world.htm

Posted : 04/01/2025 8:33 pm