On Sat, 28 Oct 2006 Fred Cisin <cisin at xenosoft.com> Wrote:
> On Sat, 28 Oct 2006, Jim Isbell, W5JAI wrote:
> > My wife sais, "you havent used it in 5 years junk it." I agreed.
> My ex used to say that (except "SIX MONTHS"!)
> I handed her the fire extinguisher.
If you want to compete with someone who wants to dispose of your "Stuff" (there
is a George Carlin goodie about this), just go to the female clothes closet and
do a dated inventory. Those that are clothes conscious want to believe that
things eventually will come back in fashion. Typically it takes MORE than five
years (by my estimates). Then there are things that don't fit (NEVER respond
to "Do I look fat in this?", you will lose!).
Just about the only thing that goes obsolete as quickly as computers is high fashion.
--
Tom Watson
tsw at johana.com
____________________________________________________________________________________
Everyone is raving about the all-new Yahoo! Mail
(http://advision.webevents.yahoo.com/mailbeta/)
Any interest in a Compaq SLT286 'laptop'? We've been offered one, but as we
have enough PC machines of this class I don't think there's any need for us to
have it.
The current owner's located in Chalfont St. Peter, although it sounds like he
may be prepared to deliver within a reasonable distance.
(A machine like this was my first exposure to the PC world - IDE disk, mono
VGA display, 10MHz CPU I think, floppy drive, detachable keyboard; it was a
pretty nice system I seem to recall)
cheers
Jules
--
If you've ever wondered how you get triangles from a cow
You need buttermilk and cheese, and an equilateral chainsaw
Winter is coming fast and the donor in GA will not hold on too much longer.
The museum still needs the help of about 145 people to donate $10 each to
save the computer collection in GA from going to the scraper. You can learn
more about the items we are trying save on our website
www.houstoncomputermuseum.org. We are a 501 (c) (3) nonprofit and can send
you a tax receipt for your donation. If you do not have $10 send us whatever
you can be it one dollar or two, heck we will take your $2 winning lottery
ticket. Thanks again to everyone that has helped us in the past in our
effort to save classic computers and related items. If you would like to
donate hardware, manuals, pictures, or whatever contact us. Thanks John
--- Tony Duell <ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> > --- Tony Duell <ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> > > > The first one is what I have dubbed the "pow
er
> > > > towers" and they look like vertical batterie
s.
> > > > Usually come in groups of 5. Can anyone tell
> > > > me there name and/or what they do?
> > >
> > > Sound like electrolytic capacitors. They act a
s
> > > energy storage devices,
> >
> > ahhhh. I thought I felt a little electric charge
> > when I held my finger on the top of one for
> > a few seconds (power was off at the time,
> > but it had been on about 10 minutes earlier).
>
> You want to be careful here. A common tyoe of powe
r
> supply, called a
> switch-mode power supply starts out by rectifying
> (using diodes) and
> smoothing (using electrolytic capacitors) the main
s,
> producing about 350V
> DC. When the power supply is connected to the main
s,
> that voltage can
> easily kill you. Even when the machine is unplugge
d,
> the stored charge in
> those capacitors can be unpleasant, and may cause
> injury/damage.
>
> People who know mw know I have little time for daf
t
> safety rules, but I
> do treat the mains side of a switch-mode power
> supply with great respect.
>
> -tony
>
Yeah, after touching it the first time I thought
that that should be the last time. How would
you go about replacing them, if you needed to?
Would it be safe after a week of no power, or
would the risk of electricution be just as bad?
Regards,
Andrew B
aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk
--- Tony Duell <ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> > The first one is what I have dubbed the "power
> > towers" and they look like vertical batteries.
> > Usually come in groups of 5. Can anyone tell
> > me there name and/or what they do?
>
> Sound like electrolytic capacitors. They act as
> energy storage devices,
ahhhh. I thought I felt a little electric charge
when I held my finger on the top of one for
a few seconds (power was off at the time,
but it had been on about 10 minutes earlier).
> to smooth out fluctuations in voltage (for example
> the output of a
> rectifier cricuit is pulsating DC, a capacitor wil
l
> smooth that out). An
> electrolytic capacitor has a high value of
> capacitance for its size, but
> it also has other characteristics (for esample, it
's
> 'polarised', one
> side must be positive wrt the other or the capacit
or
> will be damaged. And
> a eelatively high self-inductance) that make it le
ss
> suitable for some
> other applications.
>
> >
> > The second thing is the erm... plastic(?) "polo
>
> I owuld think that's actually ferrite (a magnetic
> material)
>
> > mint" that has what appears to be copper
> > wire wrapped around it. Can anyone give me
> > (or send me in the right direction to find)
> > any information on it.
>
> Sounds like a torroidal inductor. Used for filteri
ng
> DC power lines, as
> the energy storage device in switching regulators,
> etc.
>
> I recomend you read a book called 'The Art of
> Electronics' by Horrowitz
> and Hill. While it won't specifically answer these
> questions, it's a
> very good introduction to electronics. The only
> downside is that it's not
> cheap.
>
> -tony
>
Thanks for that Tony.
I have been making a list of books (and
recommended bookselling websites) that people
have mentioned on here. I'll try and track
some of them down soon ;)
Regards,
Andrew B
aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk
On Sun, 29 Oct 2006 12:01:01 -0600 (CST), you wrote:
>Well, I had similar experience with a doctor that I consulted for, not
>about RS vs
>CPM, but just in general in that doctors will not take direction.
>They have been trained that they are Gods and therefore must make all
>their own decisions.
Just in general you're full of crap. It's nice to see that you
conclude that all 570,000 of us won't take direction from programmers
or anyone else, based on your large, well-designed trial with 1
physician.
Admittedly there are indeed some doctors who think that because they
can make life and death decisions that they are good at making other
decisions too. Unfortunately I must have missed the class where they
taught us how to be "Gods".
Incidentally that attitude is not, of course, limited to doctors.
Maybe some programmers think they're the only ones who know how to
write code that works, too.
Charles Morris, MD
WB3JOK
>
>Subject: Re: Collections of (physically) large computers
> From: Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk>
> Date: Sun, 29 Oct 2006 05:46:33 -0600
> To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
>The question of who has the smallest computer might be an interesting one.
>Whilst in later years the technology allowed machines to pack a lot more
>electronics into the case, the physical size didn't really decrease much - and
>in a lot of cases got bigger (quite often due to built-ins like disk drives
>that didn't *need* to be part of the main system).
>
>I suppose my Acorn System One is probably my smallest system - two Eurocards,
>about 100 x 160 x 30mm in size, complete with built-in keypad, display, tape,
>and expansion interfaces.
>
>My Sinclair ZX81 is probably next - but of course lacks a display so needs a
>TV in order to really be useful...
>
>cheers
>
>Jules
Embedded ELF with serial/RTC/disk(128mb CF), Video(80x24), GPIO (PS2keyboard
and 8255) in a stack filling a cube less than 5x5x4". Biggest comment is
there is NO surface mount parts. The 5" crt monitor is fully three times
the volume!!
Second to that is my Z80 minimax. Z80, 64k ram, 128k romdisk, 128k ramdisk
2 serial ports running CP/M. All CMOS and very low power use.
Both are way smaller than the PDP-11/73 with RL02, RX02 and 3 RD53in a 50"
rack.
Allison
>> I've been pondering the fact there is so little communications with the UK
>> old iron folks recently.
>
> By and large they're a quiet bunch :) I'm keeping tabs on quite a few big
> systems in private hands at the moment - they're out there and being looked
> after, but the owners aren't interested in the publicity.
--
The same appears to be true over here. I know of very few big iron
collectors here. I thought I'd here about more working at CHM, but if
they're out there, they don't have any contacts with the Museum either.
I keep hoping someone has some private stash of mainframe software, but it
hasn't surfaced yet.
It was interesting to talk to Doron while he was here about the relationship
between the Science Museum and CCS.
