What about a VVCF = Virtual Vintage Computer
Festival?
Via a Website to webcams at list members locations.
If around they can show off their collection to one or more visitors.
Lectures no problem.
Demo's Yup.
No need to drag equipment around the country.
Precious/heavy kit does not get damaged.
Fully International
Zero cost.
The only downside is the loss of the social aspect.
the social aspect. Having some virtual on-line thing pretty
much
completely negates the point of having one.
Pat
-----Original Message-----
From: cctech-bounces at
classiccmp.org
[mailto:cctech-bounces at
classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Tim Walls
Sent: 06 August 2007 15:04
To: cctalk at
classiccmp.org
Subject: Re: UK VCF?
Pete Turnbull said:
On 05/08/2007 21:10, Tony Duell wrote:
Hire a
genny.
How stable is the frequency of such a unit? Remember many larger
disk
drives have their spindle speed set by mains freqeucy.
To say nothing of the fact that the output is often nothing like a
sine wave, and many devices don't take kindly to that.
Thanks to Yorkshire Electricity Distribution Ltd. being bloody
useless, I am considerably more intimate with my building's generator
than I was a few short weeks ago, so this is a subject close to my
heart!
Anyway, the long and the short is that gennys certainly can produce
reliable power - more reliable than YEDL, anyway. Our unit is an
Iveco 6l 4-stroke diseasel driving a MarelliMotori genset, generating
150Kva of 440v 3phase. Output voltage and frequency are
programmable, and frequency stability calibration is documented in
the manual. Modern gennies would be more than capable of doing the
job, and should be readily available for short-term lease. You'd be
surprised how quiet and clean-running they are as well.
Fuel isn't cheap though; IIRC running it at ~75% load it uses
something in the order of 200 litres/day of diesel; it should be OK
to use red diesel in a genny I think (for non-UKers - red diesel is
diesel on which fuel tax hasn't been paid,) but you're still looking
at a fair old cost.
Oh, and to answer the original question - I'm up noorf in Yorkshire,
although I'd actually prefer such an event to be in London. I'd be
interested in going if it does happen, anyway.
Cheers,
Tim.
PS. Word of advice - check the fuel controller pump relay. Nothing
more annoying than being woken up at 3am because a poxy 5 quid relay
has stuck and caused the header tank to run dry. Voice of bitter
experience there ;-). (On the bright side, if that does happen I can
now show you how to hand-prime a dry diesel engine :^).)