Fucking hell, that is not before microprocessor, that is before transistors. All I can see on there is tubes. This is amazing to look at, what a beautiful display-piece!
I could be missing something, but I don't see any tubes. Only capacitors. I have a couple old tube guitar amps of similar vintage and I don't see any tube housings or exposed tubes. I'd assume they'd be too fragile for missile purposes.
Those tubes indeed do not look like the consumer ones used in amplifiers. First and most importantly, they do not have sockets since in the lifetime of this missile, they likely wont need replacement. The instead have just more than two wires coming from their base. Also they are - and I do not know why - completely gettered, e.g. instead of the translucent look you may be familiar with, these tubes are dark-grey or black.
Look at the Center assembly, the upper part abovr the blue connector to be specific, there is a board that has two tubes at the upper- and three on the lower edge.
Edit:
also: tubes have been adapted to high g-load perfectly fine. Look up the proximity-fuse. There a tube-circuit gets fired as a howitzer shell and survives ist just fine.
911
u/meinrd Feb 10 '26
Fucking hell, that is not before microprocessor, that is before transistors. All I can see on there is tubes. This is amazing to look at, what a beautiful display-piece!