At 05:19 PM 10/20/03 -0500, you wrote:
>
>Greetings;
>I am faced with picking up a sizeable IBM some hours from where I live in
>the next few weeks.
>What I had originally planned to do has fallen through, and now I am left
>trying to work out how best to lift what has been estimated as 800+lbs of
>1978 IBM.
>
>I have a decent half-ton pickup truck, its more than plenty for carrying
>this machine home. The magic trick is - how do I get the heavy sucker into
>the deck?
>I was planning on "borrowing" another truck with a lift-gate on it, to
>lift the IBM up to the pickup deck height, and then waffling it into the
>pickup. That has fallen through, and actually renting one is, as far as
>I'm concerned, cost prohibitive ($78 + 29c/mile + $150 deposit).
You should be aware that a lot of the lift gates are junk! They're
actually worse than that, they're downright dangerous! Many of them have a
steep ramp about 2 to 3" high before they reach the top. That makes it very
difficult to get heavy objects onto the lift gate. In addition, the tops
are sloped away from the truck and when you raise the lift gate the slope
increases. That makes things tend to slide completely off the ramp right at
the worst time! Just as you're lifting it up and have nowhere to go.
Finally, they have a hinge in them that makes it difficult to get heavy
loads off and on the ramp. Take a close look at any lift gate that you're
considering using, BEFORE you rent the truck. And if you don't have a fork
lift or other machinery to load the cargo, think THREE TIMES about using
one of them for heavy objects. Last year, I narrowly missing being crushed
under a 1800+ lb UPS that I was trying to load on one using those POS!
Something you might consider is the use of one of the off-road type fork
lifts. A LOT of companies in this area (central Florida) use them to
unloading and moving pallets of sod (squares of grass used for landscaping)
and they can be rented quite reasonably and the rental companies have
trailors for them.
I have moved a couple of big heavy computers by renting a low trailer and
then using 2 x 10" boards as ramps to load the puter. If it's real heavy
and you're short of man power then you can use a come-a-long to pull it
into the trailer. Loading is generally pretty easy but unloading is tricky!
A lot of times the load will run away from you and it will try to stop and
tip over when it gets to the ground. Also it will sometimes try to push the
boards out off the trailer. If that happens one side will drop to the
ground and the thing will tip over. Take your time and be careful
unloading. Use plenty of man power if you can get it.
Joe
>
>If you were to move this IBM, how would you have done it?
>Keep in mind while I can cover $100 worth of gas for my pickup - more than
>that is a pinch.
>
>JP
>
>
I have a number of old DECUS U.S. Symposium audio tapes that I would
like to archive before they completely disintegrate. I have a way to
digitize these and store them in a variety of formats. I'm not sure
what format is best for archive and distribution, though I assume
something like WAV or AIFF for archive and MP3 for distribution. I
have no prior experience at this and would appreciate any suggestions
on the best approach.
Also suggestions on who to contact to make these archives legally
available on the web would be welcome.
Is anyone else archiving these?
As a teaser, here's what I have:
1987 Fall:
N008 Understanding Ethernet
N037 Cryptographic Security for Ethernet
DA054 Optimizing VMS device Drivers for Realtime I/O
V104 Tape 1 VAX Magic, War Stories, and Horror Tales
V104 Tape 2
1988 Fall:
PC031 Internal Enhancements to AppleTalk for VMS
NE050 An Introduction to the Digital's Distributed Name Service (DNS)
GR054 Renderman: A 3D Scene Description Interface for Computer
Graphics System
GR033F Computer Graphic and Visualization
Thanks,
John
Hi, my name is Tobias and i own a TI-52 calculator. As it was given to me, i'd really like
to program it(thoug it's as old as me).
But this model is too old, and i can't get a manual for it.
So i'd like to enquire whether you know how to get a manual for the TI-52.
Thanks in advance!
best regards
Tobias Petschke
On Oct 20, 8:10, John A. Dundas III wrote:
> I have a number of old DECUS U.S. Symposium audio tapes that I would
> like to archive before they completely disintegrate. I have a way to
> digitize these and store them in a variety of formats. I'm not sure
> what format is best for archive and distribution, though I assume
> something like WAV or AIFF for archive and MP3 for distribution.
That sounds reasonable, but beware of WAV -- although originally it was
effectively a byte-swapped AIFF format, it's been added to in so many
ways that a WAV file could contain just about anything. If you use
AIFF at 44100Hz you can write the tracks to a CD-R using just about any
writer software.
MP3 is pretty good for distribution. It's reasonably compact, better
supported than just about any other compressed format, and not likely
to go away any time soon. Of course, it's lossy so don't use it for
archives (I'm sure you weren't planning to).
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Network Manager
University of York
In a message dated 10/20/2003 7:42:21 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
jplist(a)kiwigeek.com writes:
> Perhaps you can rent a car towing trailer? Those are very low to the
> ground generally and you may be able to push it onto the tracks. Renting
> one may well be much cheaper than a truck with a lift gate.
Tempted. For reasons I won't go into, I've been told that I cannot use a
trailor by the person who actually owns the vehicle - I only drive it.
Transmissions and various reasons like that. Asides from whether or not I
agree or believe this - I'm just trying to make do with what I have.
I believe I'll probably put together a pair of sturdy oak ramps, maybe
12" wide, that hook to the bumper of the truck. Then I'll use a winch to
pull the IBM up the incline - although I'm not sure yet what to use under
the lower end to stop it grating on the ground once its picked up off its
casters... Perhaps a skateboard? :)
I've moved some heavy things before including an extremely heavy player piano
and might be able to off some suggestions.
Being able to use a tilt bed trailer is a big help. You can find some low
cost tiltbed trailer kits pretty cheaply if you know the capacity of what you're
carrying is less or equal to the trailer's.
Carpeted furniture dollies are cheap and can take a lot of weight and abuse.
get a few of those. As someone said, a come-along is handy for loading or
moving up a ramp.
There's a thing called a Johnson bar that works great for moving heavy
things. it's basically a 6 foot long wooden pry bar with a metal angled end and
wheels on one end, so you can lever up something extremely heavy and then move it
around because of the wheels. Any rental place should have those.
Pallet jacks are nice too. too bad they don't go up higher though. I've seen
some companies sell a small motorized lift to raise something like a
motorcycle for service. can something like that be rented?
If you plan to unload from a pickup's bed, see if there's a ditch or a low
spot you can back into to make it lower. barring that, it might be helpful to
use whatever you can to make a platform at a height halfway between the truck
and the ground so you can manouver onto that first. trying to lower something
heavy 2 feet at once is not easy to do.
