15 Mar
2010
15 Mar
'10
4:38 p.m.
Tony Duell wrote:
I don't know - having seen your place, I can imagine you having some kind of
launch vehicle in there somewhere. Possibly under a pile of other things, and
you've forgotten that you have it... ;-)
It was frustrating when my wife was doing an accounting job for an electrical
firm (who built stuff to order for folks such as GEC) - they often had wire
that just went in a pile out back because an order had been screwed up or
requirements had changed mid-job. I'm not sure if they recycled it somehow -
possibly, but they certainly wouldn't let mere mortals anywhere near it.
Yeah, I remember that too - I'd often take advantage of that and browse the
catalogue in the shop, order a pile of stuff, and have whatever they couldn't
do on the spot sent to my house.
I remember drooling over that nicam hardware back in the day. That and the Z80
based home weather station.
I built a couple of their 150W amplifiers, but I don't think I have them any
more (just the rather large transformer that I used for the PSU).
I wonder if anyone has a plan to scan them? It'd be nice to see. I don't think
I have any of mine any more.
At one point,
I had a copy of the NASA standards for PCB modifications,=20
which covered green-wire fixes. I think it's online somewhere... Anyway,=20
for SMD parts (SOICs etc.) you're supposed to run a piece of wire along=20
the pin, then solder it to the pin. The icing on the cake is that you're=20
supposed to solder along the entire length of the pin, not just the land=20
pad.
I wonder how necessary that is. The only time I've ever had problems just
soldering to the track was on a very poor quality SRBP board where the
tracks would lift if you looked at them wrong. Of course my application
is not as critical as NASA's ;-) Enamelled
copper wire is a pig to find in general. You are right though,=20
Maplin are usually one of the only places that stock it.
It's certainly difficult to get in small-ish qunatities. What annoys me
is the scrapping of the in-store-order scheme. Basically,=20
if the store was out of stock of something, you could place a=20
back-order, and when it arrived (they sent it direct to the store in the=20
weekly stock replenishment) you could go and pick it up. Worked pretty=20
well for me.
At one time, if you want to the shop and they were out of stock, you
could have it delieverd to any shop _or youe homw_ free of charge. Even
if it was just 1 resistor. Not any more. It's a
shame about the magazine, though -- they published some pretty=20
neat projects, all of which could be built from parts available from=20
Indeed. I built many of them over the years. I rememebr watching
commetical for NICAM televisions using the Maplin NICAM tuner/decoder kit
and a greenscreen monitor :-) Maplins (with
the occasional special-order), and the articles usually=20
did a pretty good job of explaining not just how the thing worked, but=20
also why it was designed in that specific way.
I also have a virstually complete set of the magazines... I gave up Circuit Cellar and then Elektor when they
both became 'yet
another microcontroller project' magazines. As you well know, I have
nothing against microcontrollers, but I don't think they're the _only_
solution.
There's just something... boring about them, somehow. And I know I shouldn't
think like that, because they're not so different to a lot of the 8-bit stuff
that I grew up with.
cheers
Jules