Hi. This is going to be another follow-up video on the Vintage Sony 1985 Uh CCD camcorder that I've torn down in a couple of previous videos because I wanted to have a look at the delay lines used in these pal uh camcorders. Now we had a a delay line in the video head. if you remember, this was the board from the video head.

If you haven't seen the video, if you're coming in late, the game uh, the link will be down below where we to this down. Now this has a delay line in it and you can see the delay line there. And I've found the service manual for this thing. so I know exactly what the delay in that thing is.

So uh, we'll have a look at that in a minute. but I thought we'd actually have a look at these delay lines see, um, how they work because I think we got a couple of different types here in this camcorder. This one's in the video head and the other one is in the video8 uh tape transport system here and if you flip if we flip it over, there's the other delay line down in there which you saw in, uh, the first tear down as well and you can see that they're physically different types. This one is long and cylindrical like this and this one is flat and you know, almost like a well surface mounty.

um, and a large form factor like that. so they're clearly operating on different principles. So I thought we'd uh, have a look at how delay lines work and maybe see if we can crack these things open. cuz I think these two will work on different principles.

could be interesting. Let's go and just to follow up to that Uh microscope thing I had in the previous video I won't explain it again. you have to watch the previous one if you haven't seen it. Um, a couple of people suggested that it might be a polarizing filter on the front of the Um CCD sensor.

Well, it's not and I've got the Uh chip in the other orientation. now to where it was last time and I can rotate it around I Got to be careful here we go. I'll rotate it all the way around to where we saw it last time and Bingo! you can see that it's still exactly the same so it's not anything to do with the polarization filter and check this out. I've got my finger about ah 30 a good 30 cm away from that eye piece.

the second eyepiece down in here of the microscope, the one that's uh, getting all the light. and of course if I turn off my ambient lights here in the lab bang, that's all. It hasn't quite vanished cuz I have got my ring light uh turned on around the base of it down there. but if I turn the my main lights back on.

hello Remote control? There we go about 30. my finger's about 30 cm away and you can see the image of my finger in the field of view through the light being reflected through this eyepiece down onto the chip and back out if if that was a wider field of view. I could do like cute little bunny rabbits and hand puppet and Shadow puppetry there but that is that is cool I like that. Now check this out.

What I've done is I've folded the tape transport system like this completely open that we didn't see before in the uh previous tear down and I've got the delay this that second delay line. there it is under there and there's a whole bunch of other stuff under there we didn't uh, we didn't see but this thing. it looks like it's designed to operate even when it's like completely folded out like that. I think I should be able to power this thing up and uh and put the tape in and then be able to probe the delay line on the bottom and probe other stuff and well, let's give it a go.

so you only need the uh battery power coming in and that's it. and if I switch it on Yep, we got our tape counter on there. the tape transport system is going. if I press eject sorry, you can't see that I probably should, uh whack the camera around the other way but there we go, it's out.

Put the tape in and not a problem, it's playing and counting up. Look at that. Brilliant. The whole thing operates while it's completely unfolded.

A beautiful bit of systems engineering that just beautiful. Well, I've got in there and probed the delay line in there. all eight pins. This is an eight pin delay line in there.

and I'm getting nothing on any of the pins at all when this thing is. uh, when this thing is playing. So um, I don't think that delay line is used at all. Perhaps it's used for the recording function instead of the Uh instead of the playback function perhaps.

And there's our second delay lighting there. you can see it's an 8 Pin device and it's a a glass. It's you know, it's made by what a Sashi glass. Co So it's most likely a glass based delay line.

Uh, I would be assuming very complex bit of system engineering really really is quite quite amazing. And it works when it's all folded out thanks to those hinge connectors. Those Sony hinge connectors down in there that work brilliantly. They don't have to be folded, of course, because they've got the metal uh, going right through there regardless of whether or not they're open or closed.

So there you go. That is one neat bit of gear. I Really like it. really designed for servicing I'm certainly getting information I'll show you on the scope in a second from this pin.

I Presume that's going in, but I'm getting nothing on the other pin so looks like something's going in, but nothing's coming out. So there it is that that's what's uh, going in there and if we have a look at that, we can can certainly see that there's information going in there. We can capture that and and zoom in on that, but there's certainly something going in and you can see some drift there as well. If we turn the intensity down, you can see data moving back and forth.

there, sort of that analog video data moving around. that that would be the individual line data. I would presume it's jumping around the place there, but uh, it doesn't seem to be. uh I presume that's the input to the delay line and there doesn't seem to be anything else coming out.

Strange. I Was able to download the service manual for this particular camcorder of the CCD V8 AF and check out the date there October 1985 and you can see the amount of work that went into this thing in 1985. I Mean you know this is pretty much uh, predates the Uh desktop publishing. Well, you know, almost predates the Uh desktop publishing thing where producing documents like this is.

You know it. It's still a lot of work these days, but imagine what it was like back then. just you know. serious amount of work.

Look at all these handdrawn uh diagrams that have gone in here showing you how to disassemble each and every nut and screw on the thing. It's just. it's absolutely crazy. So in addition to all these beautiful handdrawn diagrams, they've also got internal photos as well inside the thing pointing out every aspect, every individual part, showing you all the boards flipped open and then we get down into some more uh, exploded view stuff and then wooho! Check this out folks.

Look at this. Uh, see if I can get this whole thing on here I Got to zoom right out. There it is. We have a block diagram of the whole complete system operation and check out this down here.

This whole operational block diagram complete with waveforms and everything else spread across multiple Pages Ah, it's a thing of beauty and a joy forever. Look at this. I Mean you know you just don't get service manuals like this. Well, anymore.

Well, you do. I Mean, there's still service manuals for commercial stuff, but you know? I Don't know if they're this good anymore. I Mean this is just phenomenal stuff and we haven't even. you know we're still at the Block system block diagram level, separated into separate boards and everything like that and it looks like we're finally getting down into no, that's more block diagram.

We'll probably eventually get down into the actual schematics, more block diagrams. There's our Um CRT View F So excellent. We've got the schematic for our CRT viewfinder, so that'll be another separate video and we eventually get down into look at this. I Mean it's just.

ah, it's phenomenal. Look at all the waveform diagrams over here for all the points and then we're getting down into overlay diagrams of all the boards. I Just ah. I Love this.

Look at this. Here we go. It looks like we got some real schematics now, but uh, the schematics don't necessarily. uh, interest us.

You can see the uh. when they've scanned this document, you can see all the uh, the page behind that. uh, unfortunately. but it's still very, very clear.

And yeah, that's fantastic I mean just the amount of work which went into producing these service manuals I'd love to know how many people worked on it and how long it took them to do this in 1985. It'd be hard enough to do it today. If you've ever produced documentation for, you'll know what I'm talking about. and these are all fold out diagrams.

Folks, these are all I can't even get them all completely on the uh screen capture here. and so these are all fold out diagrams. This service manual would have been worth its weight in gold. And here's all the detailed schematics.

Ah, you've got to be kidding me. This is great. I could just scroll through this all day long I Love it! And check out this schematic here of what looks like the audio board and look. Not only have they done the schematic and showing you the chip, but they've also showing you the internal operation of the chip test.

Point Voltages all the way around this thing and and the flow and the signal flow directions as well. Line in, mute, line out Vco. All that, it's just. it's fantastic.

My hats off to whoever has put together this service manual and yeah, there are names are long forgotten I'm sure, but how much work went in? Man, it's just incredible. So let's try and find our delay. Lines within this uh block huge block diagram view. oh the waveforms, look at a just beautiful.

I Love it. Anyway, here we go. We're at the Uh Video Transport uh system over here and you can see the drum. There's the video head and uh, well, the two video heads.

and there's the amplifiers for the video heads and all the miscellaneous circuitry for all that, we've got some traps in here H limiters All sorts of stuff and it's it's a little bit hard to uh, follow of course cuz this: these systems are incredibly complex. I You know I mean the amount of um effort which went into not only designing these systems, but you know, designing the power standard to begin with and Ntsc and all those other standards. They're incredibly complex. but I guess they U they had to do it at the time because digital really wasn't in then so they had to do all this stuff in analog.

But anyway, if we uh muck around here here, we go. Let's have a look. Bingo There it is. DL 101 2H delay there now.

Um I don't have any any further specs on that, but it would almost, uh, certainly be the 64 microsc uh line 64 microc delay line used well standard in uh, these Power Systems Cuz it had to delay a complete line of information that's what the power standard required in other. In order to get the color uh, right and technical details like that, you can go look up the Uh Power standard and power operation if you want to know more about that, but it requires all these: Power Systems require a 64 microc delay line and there it is down in there. and that does. Uh, the component designated Dl101 matches up, so that's our delay line and that will most certainly be 64 microc.

And if we look closer, we can actually see here's DL 101 up here. But there's also D102 down here. and let's try and find the other one which was on the camera system. So if we look at the camera system block diagram here I mean there's all sorts of stuff in here.

Check this out! We got signal separation. this is the process control I See, we've got all sorts of clamps and offsets and white balance adjustments and white clipping and pedestal stuff for the Uh waveform. and it shows you all the detailed waveforms at each particular point in the in the system. Here's the CCD imager around here and there you go.

There's that uh clock driver that we saw with that T Tia Moss clock driver there driving the clocks. For the CCD imager, there's the output, there's a buffer there, and there's the Uh. two other Moss uh, TT Moss uh drivers we saw on that board as well. Uh to generate the timing for the CCD sensor, there's a little clock board with its low pass filter and its oscillator.

and then we've got a sink generator all over here. and ah, man, this is you know Auto white balance? uh control IC It's all happening. but let's try and find Um that looks complex as well. There's more pedestal stuff and white balance set.

Ah, this is crazy. Look at all the work that goes into producing one of these Pal signals. It's just. ah, processing them.

It's crazy. Anyway, TDA Here it is Dl71. It's A18 microc or 180 Nond delay line and that's much smaller than 64 microc. There are big technology differences required in Uh in producing these two types of delay lines with these values.

Now, 180 nond isn't that much at all, so you can produce that with just a basically a big coil of wire. pretty much a big length of wire. Because you know the propagation uh delay roughly. you know, 15 cm per Nan or some you know, near enough to that sort of rul of thumb.

So you can work out what length wire you need to delay that signal by 180. NS So I think if we crack open Dl701 which is with the slim, uh, white one we saw there, then that one is going to be a resistive delay line or just an electrical delay line as they call them. So um, there won't be anything fancy physically in there. I Think we'll just get a big coil of wire and that's it.

But the other one? the 64 micros one that requires a different technology. Again, because you can't get the length of wire required in there to give a 64 microc delay. So that's going to use a different technology either. glass, um, sort of glass, peoc ceramic type technology.

so that one will be very physic physically. Very interesting if we're able to crack it open. and I managed to find the delay lines here. on the actual schematic, it's self.

here's IC 102 and here's delay line 102 down here. And here's delay line 101 up the top here. So um, we were getting a signal on one of those pins there, but we certainly weren't getting it on the other pin. So I H I Don't know I could analyze this and look through this whole thing all day long.

but I don't think I'm going to bother. The object of a delay line is to delay the signal by that 64 microsc in this case. So um, uh, I don't know why we're not seeing that and uh, I don't really care I'm more interested to see what's inside this delay line. And here's that: Slimline 180 nond delay line I Pulled off the board here and we don't even have to take it apart.

Taada, there it is. Now, if you do the rule of thumb math on this thing of one, Uh, Nan second for uh, every 150 mm of wire, then really, um, that works out to 27 M of wire and that's an awful lot. I I Suspect there's not 27 M of wire in this thing. There are some surface mount caps sort of solded between those individual pins there.

and yep, there you go. I'm getting about 170 odd Pea farads on that one there. And yeah, they're all about 170 odd pea farad. So we've got ourselves a uh, little LC delay line here.

So this one is clearly not as simple as just a, uh, resistive uh wire delay line that we U assumed at first glance. So what we have here is in effect: your traditional, uh, multi-stage LC delay line. Uh, usually they're multi- tapped. You can actually get them as multi- tapped chips and things like that, but this is obviously not a uh semiconductor base one.

This is a, you know, it's got real 170 peer capacitors in there. It's got real inductors, but um, usually they of course will have an input and output and a ground pin and this one does actually have three pins on it. So I trace this sucker out here and this is what we have. We have uh, four inductors there.

you can see them wound on there like that and we have one common pin with 370 Paa Farad uh caps. these um, inner ones are about 33 to 37 microen each, the two outter 1es 24 micro henries each and that is pretty much all she wrote. And if we hook up our delay line here, what I've got is the uh uh, all of the ground leads connected to the uh ground point of of the delay line. I'm feeding in a 10 khz square wave uh which is the yellow waveform here and the green waveform is the output and you can see the delay there.

You know it's got lots of ringing on it. you know I haven't terminated it properly so forget about that. We just want you know we're not going for super Fidelity here. So let's just put this here and let's measure that difference there.

We've got uh 20 NS per division 20 40, 60, 80, 100, 120, 140, 160 So we're you know, near about the 180 the claimed 180 nond delay time on this thing. so you know if we if we measured this properly I'm sure we'd might get a bit more accurate but there you go. that is your delay right there with your LC filter. So that is a good example of a classic passive LC uh, multi-stage filter.

Let's go and check out the uh, other one. The I think it's going to be like a glass substrate. You won't find any wires and capacitors inside this other one. Let's go have a peak.

Now here's the delay line. I've desoldered from the circuit. It's going to be a glass based one sort of. It looks like it's a sealed package.

so um, but it it I Don't think it will actually be potted inside because these have to work on. um, you know physical properties. um, the physical vibrational wave properties. So um, if you these things, um, they may not work as intended.

So I'm hoping that we can crack this thing open and uh, see inside of it. You won't find any circuitry inside here folks. it'll be just some basic physics. and I've managed to cut off one side of it there and you can see what looks like the glass substrate inside of that thing.

So I'll keep uh, hacking around this and see if I can get that top cover to pop off and and uh, we'll be able to see the whole thing. And here you go folks. this is what is inside one of these glass delay lines and we're going to have a bunch of interesting physics in here. As I said, there's no components, there's just the four wires going over there under the bottom side of this plate, which this one would have been specifically tweak for that.

65 64 micros seconds for that one line of the Pal signal. So I'm going to see if I can lift this out and pop it over and see what's on the other side. Nothing on the other side except another one of these, uh, just one of these um, little uh isolation pads I Don't know what they're actually doing? probably? uh, isolating the thing vibrational wise. but the back of the plate here has these marks on them.

Found that this material here is almost certainly a quartz uh glass. and we've got two transducers and this basically is a very common, very typical uh, or sometimes called an ultrasonic or a peo el electric or glass delay line. Now, what's happened here is we've got two transducers here. one here, and one here, and presumably you can drive them either direction.

I'm not entirely sure about that, but basically we've got a Piso El electric transducer and these little pads in here. These are dampeners which effectively guide the signal around. It's rather fascinating. I I Really like it.

So these these dampeners on the bottom? here? they've they're clear. like I'm not, you know. looks like they've just dobbed on some, uh, you know, some sort of um, epoxy type stuff. But maybe that's all that's needed to effectively change the uh surface or the acoustic wave, the acoustic wave.

properties of the material at that point, and the waves actually travel around them in some convoluted pattern and back out again. And that's what causes the delay. because it takes time for these uh, acoustic waves to travel through those materials. I Oh man, it's really quite neat.

I Love physics like this, but to get into it? I'm sure it is actually very, very advanced stuff. The person who came up with this in the first place. Genius. Now, if we have a close look at this, we can actually follow the path.

You'll note: note the two transducers here separated by a dampening pad in there and either side. So that means the signal comes in and out of that little Gap in there between those damping pads. Now, if we have a look at it, let's assume that we put our signal into these two wires over here. then it's going to to emit out of here.

The acoustic signal is then going to travel straight down here, bounce off the end, because you're going to get, you know, some sort of end effect on that. It's going to reflect just like, um, a similar effect to say, a light inside a fiber optic uh tube for example. And then it's going to bounce off there. bounce off this wall, off that one all the way through here.

Bounce off here here. all the way back across here. off that one down there bounce bounce. and Bam out that transducer there.

Neat. And there's a close-up shot of the two transducers there now. uh, unfortunately. I don't know, uh, anything more about the physics and the operation of this, even though I do have a background in uh, peoc ceramic transducers.

This is obviously not a ceramic, uh base one. this is a quartz glass base one. But um, if anyone has any interest in uh, papers or uh, you know, uh, stuff on how these things actually work, then uh, please. Um, either link them in the uh comments or um, jump on over to the Eev blog forum and uh, uh, link them over there and discuss it because this is a real interesting topic and these are fairly rare these days because we don't have analog systems or too many analog systems left that require these s sorts of things they used to be used in, you know, power video, which we basically, um, don't have much of anymore.

Everything's gone digital. We used to have delay lines in uh audio systems, but they've gone the way of the dodo since pretty much um, since the Advent of, uh, every you know audio's all gone digital and uh, these are you know, um, getting rarer and rarer, but these used to be very common components back in the pre-digital days. Love it! So I hope you enjoyed that quick look at delay lines. And if you like the video, please give it a big thumbs up cuz that helps a lot.

Catch you next time.