Understanding and repairing the power supply from a 1969 analog computer

1 · Ken Shirriff · Nov. 25, 2019, 6:15 p.m.
Summary
We recently started restoring a vintage1 analog computer. Unlike a digital computer that represents numbers with discrete binary values, an analog computer performs computations using physical, continuously changeable values such as voltages. Since the accuracy of the results depends on the accuracy of these voltages, a precision power supply is critical in an analog computer. This blog post discusses how this computer's power supply works, and how we fixed a problem with it. This is the second ...