I confess I had a HUGE noise problem in my mediacenter until I got one of these "premium" S-Video cables...And suddenly, all video became crispy and beautiful. I'm in love with my mediacenter (until when I get a plasma TV :D) --- Enviado do meu Motorola PT550 Meu site: http://www.tabalabs.com.br ----- Original Message ----- From: "David Riley" <fraveydank at gmail.com> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Sent: Tuesday, April 24, 2012 5:51 PM Subject: Re: MicroSD: one good ripoff deserves another / Iomega Zip's

On 2012 Apr 24, at 2:49 PM, David Riley wrote: I'd like to think this is a joke, but I suppose I'd be wrong: http://www.essentialsound.com/essence-power-cord/index.htm About 3 times the price from a few years ago when "premium power cables" were mentioned on the list. Of course, we don't actually know how many they have sold, if any.

On Apr 25, 2012, at 12:05 AM, Dave McGuire wrote: I'll say. The kind that can buy into a phrase like "Cryogenic processing renders the Reference-II absolutely grainless." I read that as "brainless" at first, and I still think that's what they meant. My favorite analyses of these folks tend to come from James Randi: (sorry, very long link) http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/1229-barnum-underestimated-t…

There were some classics sold (?) over here. Like 'carpet earthing clips', of which yuu must always use an odd number so that more charge runs away than comes back. Or electret foils. I have no problem with the existance of electret foil, or indeed of its use in audio (microphones). Butsticking an odd number of trianges cut from it on your record turntable, pointing in the direction of rotation would, IMHO, make no improvement tot the sound. Or cuttint the corner off your amplifier front panel (appearmetn and odd number of corners sounds better). And we all rememebr the green pen :-) -tony

I saw a beauty the other day. At a house of a friend of mine was a cable owned by one of his housemates... It was one of those massive 1" thick power cables with OCF copper etc, with a US plug on one end, and a IEC socket on the other. The build quality was amazing. The pretty braided cloth just looked like a million bucks. Sadly, it was pluged into one of those cheap $2 US / AU plug converters...... I didn't get the chance to ask its owner whether he felt that the sound kettle. :-) Doug On Thu, Apr 26, 2012 at 8:30 AM, Ethan Dicks <ethan.dicks at gmail.com> wrote: -- Doug Jackson VK1ZDJ http://www.dougswordclock.com/ -< My clocks http://www.vk1zdj.net -< My Amature Radio Activities

On Apr 24, 2012, at 8:35 PM, Brent Hilpert wrote: On the other hand, perhaps this is a product line secretly designed to accelerate natural selection: http://www.dedicatedaudio.com/power_outlets - Dave

On 25.04.2012 8:32, Sam Onella wrote: It's a question of esthetics: richmen want to have *everything* solid-looking without exceptions.

On 4/24/2012 11:35 PM, Sam Onella wrote: Do choclate right -- the LP http://newslite.tv/2011/06/30/band-release-edible-and-playab.html

On Wed, 25 Apr 2012 02:03:38 PM David Riley wrote: Getting off topic now, but this one is just plain stupid. It's a coating you apply to all the semiconductor devices in an amplifier to give it a tube sound. http://www.altmann.haan.de/tubeolator/default.htm Alexis.

On 2012 Apr 25, at 5:42 PM, David Riley wrote: Melts away fat, too. Every few years I see what's happening in the audiophool arena. It seems to be getting worse, not better. Another portent of the end of civilisation as we know it?

On 04/26/2012 02:40 PM, Tony Duell wrote: ...which nearly nobody cares about nowadays. I'm not saying this is a good thing, but it's a fact. There'd be no point in printing all that stuff for the 0.5% of their customer bases who would want it. Personally, I don't care, as long as the info is available in some other form. (which, annoyingly, it seldom is.. :-( ) -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA

On Apr 27, 2012, at 3:10 PM, Tony Duell wrote: Consumers, no, but if you brought it to an appliance repair shop, they'd probably like to have schematics. They probably wouldn't be shelling out for a service manual for every consumer tuner model under the sun. Of course nowadays, we just throw it away when it doesn't work. - Dave

Actually, I'm pretty sure it's made from rosewood. -- ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- You only live twice. -------------------------------------------------------

Todd Goodman wrote: Uhh... applicated? Peace... Sridhar

Now where can I get a coating to paint on a Pentium to turn it into a PDP8? -tony

On Thu, 26 Apr 2012 19:26:59 +0100 (BST) ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) wrote: http://simh.trailing-edge.com/ ftp://ftp.cs.uiowa.edu/pub/jones/pdp8/emulator.txt.Z http://www.sparetimegizmos.com/Software/WinEight.htm -- \end{Jochen} \ref{http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/}

On Apr 27, 2012, at 2:41 PM, Tony Duell wrote: If you want components you can replace individually, a heavy coating of muriatic acid should do the trick. The individual components will be very small and in aqueous solution, but with enough care, you should be able to replace them individually. - Dave

Tony Duell wrote: Modern PCs often give you millions of those. Modern PCs have a positive bus. Modern PCs do have components you can replace individually. There is some variation, but typically the replaceable components are: * system unit * monitor * power cable (typically two) * video cable * keyboard * mouse

----- Original Message ----- From: "Toby Thain" <toby at telegraphics.com.au> To: <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Sent: Friday, April 27, 2012 7:54 PM Subject: Throwaway electronics - Re: OT: Re: Audiophilia Why is that surprising? Lets say your OS is hosed, few people have a clue how to backup their data (or something to back it up to), they don't have an OS CD anymore (you need to burn an image when you get the new PC installed so the maker can save a few cents), and they probably pirated or downloaded the apps they use and don't have a clue where to find them again. If they want to pay somebody its either a kid who doesn't have a clue what he is doing or a local scammer who will snag parts from their machine and sell them off. Lets say the HD died. Where are they going to get another one outside of going to the Geek Sqaud and paying more for a HD install (with a bare OS if they are lucky) all for the cost of more then a new machine. The fact is most computers are so cheap it isn't worth it for the non geek to bother fixing anything they just buy a new one. The fact is with the shift to mobile devices like laptops it isn't economical to repair them when they won't physically last that long anyway. Another issue is people are more comfortable with a fixed monthly bill then a monthly payment PLUS extra cash for instant repairs (people are just living paycheck to paycheck sometimes). I recall a sales guy I worked with in the late 1990's who needed new tires on his 2 year old car that he financed for 4 or 5 years. What the guy did was trade in the "old" car for a new one (same model, the style didn't even change yet) and lost 2 years of payments just because he couldn't come up with the cash for 4 new tires but could live with a few extra years of payments.

On 28/04/2012 00:54, Toby Thain wrote: I think you can add CPU although many laptop/netbook CPUs are soldered in. I just replaced the motherboard in my IBM T41 (actually with a T42 mother board) and much to my surprise the CPU was socketed. Perhaps because IBM gave 3-year warranties with these beasts. Drive rot seems to be getting common. I have lost a few drives that way recently. No particular pattern, just failing to find files on boot. However I have had to throw out a couple of systems recently. Individually the systems seemed to work fine, but when I put an OS on them, after a while they start to corrupt disks. Where I work one symptoms is that the AV starts to complain about corruption to the signature files. You re-install but after a few days its back. Then some time later you start to get odd errors about missing DLLs and eventually the system won't boot. I have tried replacing RAM but it seems to make no difference. I get the feeling its the DMA controller but these days as every thing is in a couple of chips you can't do much at that stage and as they are older systems CPUs and Mother Boards aren't easily obtainable. There is some hope. A search on E-Bay reveals that many folks are selling capacitor kits for a wide range of gear. The trouble is we are lazy and if folks have enough money then its easier and nicer to bin the old one and get a new one. Perhaps the turn-down will change attitudes in Europe but I think not. I may be old fahsioned but I can't see how a country can exist on shopping and finance "industry" which is what it seems my (UK) government thinks. From what I can see any profit a bank makes is money that could have been spent on tangible assets .... I have had a new PSU in my 42" TV , I assume because of caps blowing but it was covered under warranty. I have an LCD computer display that has had the caps re-done. Some times it doesn't work. I lost an ADSL router that way, but something else must have been damaged. However replacing the caps on a motherboard isn't as straight forward as it sounds. Getting the old ones out and getting holes clean enough to get the new ones in is challenging. My usual trick of using propelling pencil lead didn't work and I eventually resorted to a drill bit in a pin vice. However one CPU board I did for a friend Dave G4UGM

On Fri, Apr 27, 2012 at 07:54:11PM -0400, Toby Thain wrote: I've had some of caps dying on an ABit BP6 motherboard a couple (7..8 or so) years back. Couldn't find the exact replacement caps so ended up doing it the dirty way: - snipped of the old caps, leaving about 5 mm of wire stub behind - soldered to caps in parallel to those stubs to achieve about the same capacitance The board worked fine for another 2 years (24x7 operation) until the machine got replaced with something faster. Kind regards, Alex. -- "Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." -- Thomas A. Edison

On 28/04/12 4:10 PM, Alexander Schreiber wrote: Yes, I just did six caps on an Intel mainboard. Seemed to resolve its issues. Had no trouble finding suitable parts online at Newark. http://canada.newark.com/ --T

I thought _modern_ PCs had one steady light with millions of blinkenfliters in front of it. No, those are subasseblies. I regard each one as being made up of many components. Yes, evel tne power cable. That's a length of cable, an IEC 20 socket and a BS1363 plgu. O and a BS1362 cartridge fuse. Heck, I even keep defective connnectors as sometimes you an make one good one from the bits of 2 defective ones. As for the other subassemblies, they split into many components of course. -tony

On 28 April 2012 20:52, Alexandre Souza - Listas <pu1bzz.listas at gmail.com> wrote: Yep.. Probably looks a bit like my dad's... I managed do the entire electrics for his new workshop some years back (two large rooms) using just fittings he'd salvaged or saved... We bought new cable, and a few patress boxes, but pretty much everything else, sockets, switches, lights, storage heaters etc, was re-used stuff; even the consumer unit was second hand... Rob

On 2012 Apr 28, at 1:40 PM, Alexandre Souza - Listas wrote: I was going to ask that too. Metering stuff? Or what we in North America call the breaker panel, perhaps? A distribution panel of some sort, as the fuse/breaker arrangement is different in the UK than NA? I've never been clear on all the in-house mains arrangements/ requirements in the UK.

cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org wrote: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_unit

In my - admittedly rather limited - experience, water heaters tend to be wired in, with no explicit connector, whereas stoves[%] tend to be plugged in with a rather heavy and distinctive four-conductor plug. (Two mains phases, neutral, and ground.) Clothes dryers - which you didn't mention unless UK English is even stranger to my eyes than I thought - are like stoves in this regard. I'm not sure what a "shower heater" is; if it's for warming up the room before/during showering, I'd expect that to be wired in unless it's a portable room heater which just happens to get used for that room. Of course, not all stoves, nor clothes dryers nor water heaters, are electric. I'm talking about just the electric ones here, the ones where the principal energy source is electric mains. [%] Are these "cooker"s? I'm talking about the thing that produces heat for preparing food in a kitchen. Often bundled into the same appliance as an oven; indeed, without an oven there's a tendency to call them something other than stoves - `hotplate' is the word that comes to mind, though IMO that usage is a bit of a misnomer. /~\ The ASCII Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse at rodents-montreal.org / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B

I think you're probably right. I don't know whether your dryers are more energy-efficient than ours or what, but over here, that isn't enough power. A typical mains outlet circuit is rated 15A 115V, whereas a dryer is four times that: double the current and double the voltage (I just checked mine and the breaker is rated 30A, and it's fed both phases and thus is what we call a 230V circuit - sometimes called 220V or 240V, depending on whether you think of single-phase voltage as 110, 115, or 120 volts). My stove has 40A breakers and it too uses both mains phases. I don't know to what extent the breakers are typically rated higher than they need to be; in my case, they are not overestimates at all. I just now tried each one, putting an ammeter on the wire and then turning the thing on, and in each case max draw was, within measurement error, equal to the rating of the breaker. Ah. Over here I would expect that to be wired in. I don't know whether the electrical code requires it or not (indeed, it might depend on jurisdiction; there's a lot of commonality aomng electrical codes, but there are differences, sometimes surprising differences). Yes, that does appear to be what West Pondian calls a `stove'. One of the things, rather, since the same word is sometimes used for a wood-burning device whose primary purpose is heating rooms, not food. (I suspect this is a historical artifact, a holdover from the days when room heat and cooking typically used the same thing.) /~\ The ASCII Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse at rodents-montreal.org / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B

On 30/04/2012 00:11, Mouse wrote: Well we get 13 amps at 230 volts so almost twice the power. And if my experiences of visiting Canada reflect West Pondia in general, then our tumble dryers (like much else including the clothes washing machines) are much smaller. In the condo I had for skiing at Tremblant the utilitiy/laundry room was about as big as the whole apartment in Andora.

On 29 Apr 2012 at 18:23, Mouse wrote: Both my wall oven and countertop range (Jenn-Air if it matters) are permanently wired in.--a bit of BX (armored flexible cable) connecting the appliance to the wall box. My water heater is the same way, as is the heat pump, although the compressor unit has its own fused outdoor disconnect in addition to the breaker in the distribution panel. Something about "code"... A bigger issue for me is that the wiring from the panel for these heavy-current-draw appliances is aluminum (copper for the general lighting and receptacles). Among the electricians here, there's no consenus about what it takes to connect it to the copper leads of the appliance. The old timers insist that ordinary wire nuts are fine-- some others insist on the grease-filled (gray) wire nuts. Nobody advocates anything fancier (such as a copper pigtail with compression fitting). I remain puzzled. Obviously the right thing to do would be to replace the wiring from the panel with copper, but I'm not about to go through that agony. --Chuck

On 29 Apr 2012 at 16:34, Fred Cisin wrote: Is your range a drop-in (burners and oven) or built-in (burners only mounted in a countertop)? Oven is a double wall oven, built-in again. Maybe that has something to do with it. How about your dishwasher? --Chuck

On 29 Apr 2012 at 17:12, Fred Cisin wrote: I'd kill to have natural gas, but the only option here is propane-- and I don't want that stuff anywhere near my house (heavier than air, so a leak will tend to collect in pockets in the basement. Wonder if I could collect the methane from the septic tank... --Chuck

On Apr 29, 2012, at 9:12 PM, Cameron Kaiser wrote: I'd prefer that, actually. There are high-end ovens where you pay extra for that. Some of the difference is highly subjective (i.e. the debate over whether electric ovens produce "dry" heat that gas ovens don't sounds like the exact same debate for which I lambaste audiophiles), but I find that the thermostat control on an electric oven is more exact. I couldn't tell you why. Cheap models of all kinds are atrocious in any case. To add to the previous discussion, our clothes dryer plugs into a standard 110v GFI (GFCI, if you'd prefer) outlet. Of course, it's a gas clothes dryer because we live in the city and have cheap natural gas, so we pay half as much to dry our clothes (line drying is just a step too far for us, except for the baby's cloth diaper shells, which are supposed to be). - Dave

On 30 Apr 2012 at 21:42, Tony Duell wrote: Do electric ovens in the UK use the "Gas Mark" convention? It took me a little research on how to translate GM/Regulo settings to degrees F--basically it's 250F+GM*25. Fractional GMs are still a little confusing. --Chuck

On 1 May 2012 at 8:42, Dave Wade wrote: It can get pretty confusing. Some measurements are volumentric (e.g. a cup of flour) where the other party uses measurement by mass (e.g. grams). How much does a cup of flour weigh? (Sifted, unsifted, whole wheat, rice flour....?). If you're a "cook by the book" type, you're in for much head- scratching. Fortunately, I'm not. --Chuck

On May 1, 2012, at 5:08 PM, Alexander Schreiber wrote: The simple answer is because it's cheaper to have a volume measurement than a weight measurement. Lots of cooks over here don't have food scales (setting aside the fact that most people can't cook here unless it can be dumped out of a can or a box and microwaved). Obviously, this leads to wild variation in consistency. One solution is to specify sifted flour, which a lot of old recipes did, because that gets you a lot closer to a similar mass. People stopped sifting much here a long time ago because they thought it was primarily to get rid of leftover chaff in the flour (which we don't have anymore), but it got rid of the ancillary benefits, too. Either way, it's not specified in cookbooks anymore, but when my wife or I cook from Euro recipes, we break out the food scale. - Dave

No. Gas ovens do, but electric ovens are calibtated in a temperature scale. Degrees Fahrenheit on older units, celsius (centigrade) on more recent ones. For the sort of tempeatures involved, and the accuracy/repeatability of the thermostats, a simple multiplication or divsion by 2 is good enough to covert one to the other :-) -tony

On Sun, 29 Apr 2012, Steven Hirsch wrote: There also was a corrosion issue when aluminum wire was used with copper terminal outlets and switches. g. -- Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007 http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind. http://www.diy-cockpits.org/coll - Go Collimated or Go Home. Some people collect things for a hobby. Geeks collect hobbies. ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes. http://www.scarletdme.org - Get it _today_! Buying desktop hardware and installing a server OS doesn't make a server-class system any more than sitting in a puddle makes you a duck. [Cipher in a.s.r]

On 29 Apr 2012 at 21:02, Steven Hirsch wrote: Outlawed for lighting and receptacle use. The problem is that aluminum not only oxidizes almost immediately, but that it deforms (cold-flows) easily. When used in normal lighting and utility fixtures (i.e. outlets), the aluminum eventually forms a resistive connection under the binding screw of a switch or outlet. The heat of such a contact further deforms the aluminum and you get a fire. Most of the wiring used in that manner was 12-14 AWG, solid strand. While there were specialty switches and receptacles for use with aluminum wire, they didn't work very well. A method used to ameliorate existing situations where aluminum is employed is to use a special hydraulic tool that crimps a copper pigtail onto the aluminum wire. Aluminum is still code for high-current appliance wiring, where multi- strand cable is used. Indeed, it's still used for power drops in some locales as well as high-tension power distribution. FWIW, my house was built in the 1980s. The feed from the transformer sitting in the front yard going to the distribution panel is aluminum and it was replaced about 8 years ago. I'd be surprised if there weren't a fair amount of use of aluminum throughout the world for high-current distribution. See for example, IEC 61089. --Chuck

What hewaters are nearly always hardwired over here too Sotves (what we call cookers) are normally hardwired. Obviously you can't conenct one with a 13A plug. But AFAIK there is no reason why you can't use a higher current connector if you want to. CLothes driers are what we call 'Tumble driers' They just plug in on a normal 13A plug. Typvically the heater elemets is rated a little under 3kW, allowing enough current to also run the drum motor and control unit. Now, a shower heater is an instantaneous water heater used to heat the water for a shower bath. They would almost always be hard wired, the regualtions prohibit any socket outlets in a 'room containing a fixed bath or shower'. Oer here, gas tuimble driers are _very_ uncommon. Over here a 'cooker' tends to mean a device with an oven and some hotplates (often 4). You can also get seprate ovens and hotplate units (often called 'hobs' [1]). In general the separate units are designed to be fixed into kitchen furniture ,the complte 'cookers' are free-standing appliances. All are normally hardwired to the mains, but IMHO don't have to be. [1] A term which has a rather different menaing to me. -tony

s/What hewaters/Water heaters/. tony's typing is not always everything it could be. On that point I have been cutting him slack; typos like his don't bother me nearly as much as word-choice sloppiness (cf the pernicious "lo(o)se"). In this particular case, it was even more confusing than usual; I found it helpful to note that he was replying to a line of mine with a list of devices that included water heaters. As in "not portable", I would hazard to guess. Support for portable bathing borders on nonexistent in my (North American) experience, short of camping equipment and the like, but it would not surprise me if Europe (in the geological sense) had far more remnants of the days when a bath was often, even usually, taken in a portable tub which got carried around as needed. _So_ true. /~\ The ASCII Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse at rodents-montreal.org / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B

On 4/30/2012 8:23 PM, Kirn Gill wrote: Why even bother saying fixed? I have yet to see bathroom items that say roll and still be connected to water and drain? Ben.

On Apr 30, 2012, at 22:23, Kirn Gill <segin2005 at gmail.com> wrote: Yes. Some of us aren't perfect typists, but it's not really important. You can still read it, no? - Dave

Probably What he wants are or What he wants is Regards ? Rod Smallwood ? ? -----Original Message----- From: cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Fred Cisin Sent: 01 May 2012 17:30 To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: OT: Re: Audiophilia As opposed to what? British?? On Mon, 30 Apr 2012, David Riley wrote: Usually. I may point out ones that are truly FUNNY, but I don't ridicule typos, for fear that somebody will notice how many I make. But, I needed help deciphering

On Wed, May 02, 2012 at 12:20:25AM -0700, David Griffith wrote: It is used in the military to confuse the enemy. Lables and signs in the swedish army is often shortened in a way that is clear to a swede in the given context. E.g. ksp = kulsprutepistol (machine gun) strv = stridsvagn (tank) StriBy = Strid i Bebyggelse (urban combat) And my favourite: Grdman = Grodman (scuba diver) There, I hope I haven't broken any laws :) Cheers, Pontus.

On Wed, 2 May 2012, Tony Duell wrote: what a L33T idea.

--- On Wed, 5/2/12, Fred Cisin <cisin at xenosoft.com> wrote: I assumed he was talking about amps.

On 1 May 2012 at 9:23, Fred Cisin wrote: We always called it RMS for "rotating mass storage" (to differentiate it from tape). I suppose IBM called the same thing "DASD". That name never stuck. --Chuck

On Tue, 1 May 2012, Sridhar Ayengar wrote: Yup. As a member of the Big Blue tribe, "planar" is the term I'm used to. --

I don't understand your response! Am I missing something? On Mon, 30 Apr 2012, David Riley wrote:

Ouch!. I meant 'Water heaters are nearly always hardwired'.... I could claim a cosmic ray hit my brain. Actually, it probably _was_ a muon, but not that sort. The furry ginger sort that catches mice [1]... [1] One of my cats is named 'Muon'. Explanation on request. Fixed as in 'fixed disk' ;-). The means is a bath or shower that's fixed ot the house, conencted to pipes, etc. As opposed to a metal tub that you keep hanging o nthe back of the door and put on the floor and fill with water. No, we don't still use that sort of bath over here, but the regulations had to be woreded to give an unambiguous defintuion of a 'bathroom'. RDCs are requried for a lot of new installations over here too (I would have to check the exact requirements). I did forget something last night. There is a socket outlet that's allowed in a bathroom. That is a shaver socket (for electric razors) with a double-wound isolating transformer. I think i read somewhere that some hair dryers in the states have a RCD (GIF) in an oversized mains plug. There was a recent incident over here that springs to mind... There was/is a threatended strick by petrol delivery tanker drivers, so the government suggested people should keep a can of petrol i nthe garage. Somebody was burned when pouring petrol from such a can into a jug in a kitech with a lighted gas cooker in it. And certain people then statted blaming the governemtn for giving fangerous advice. Firstly, the government did not jsugest pouring said fuel into jug in a kitchen. And secondly (and more inmportantly IMHO) anyone who doesn't realises that pourign petorl (gasoline) in a room containing a naked flame is a very bad idea deserves all they get. Petrol is flammable. That's why it's used as a car fuel. If you don;t know that, well... One thing I bought that did not come with stupid warnings was the Myford lathe. OK, it does tell you to read and understnad the manual before usign the machine, but that's reasoanble. They don;t tell you not to stick you fingers i nthe running drive belts, or not to try using it underwater, or anything like that. The most ocmmon meaning of 'hotplate' to me is a piece of laboratory equiment, an electric heater for heating a beaker or flask of chemicals. I t is the common term for an infdvidual heating thingy on a cooker hob, although I suspect many people wouldn't use the term, 'Cooker ring' is another common term. 'Burner' is only used for gas cookers. I am not sure what we'd call the single or twin hotplate units of the type you decribe. Probably 'hotplates' :-). They certainly exist over here (and for reference, they just plug into a normal 13A socket outlet). -tony

tis 2012-05-01 klockan 20:20 +0100 skrev Tony Duell: I don't think people really understands how flamable petrol is compared to diesel,crude oil or kerosene for that matter. IN my 'hot works safety course' the teacher explained very carefully what can happen if you pour petrol carelessly (no stream of petrol thru air which is longer than i think he said 10 cm.) Beyond that means a risk for ignition due to static electricity. Personally it is entirely possible that i wouldnt catch the implications of the fact that the heater inside the kitchen which i currently is in always has a flame inside if travelling abroad to for example England. Regarding petrol storage at homes: Sweden have rather stringent laws regarding how much petrol someone is allow to store at home (a jeep type can can be said to be the maximum allowed amount.) Which is still a very nice BOMB.

Chuck Guzis wrote: What about George Goble and his "lighting a barbecue with LOX trick"? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sab2Ltm1WcM Peace... Sridhar

Ours don't go that far. We frequently have shaver outlets in ours. Historically they were two-prong outlets with 1:1 ("isolation") transformers between them and the mains feed, the idea being that it's impossible to get a jolt between either pole and ground. These days such outlets usually use GFIs instead - I don't quite understand why, but electric code has often made little sense to me. (Replacing a comparatively simple (and thus reliable) and certain device with a complex device which doesn't even do the whole job strikes me as a net lose. Perhaps it was kickbacks from - er, lobbying by - GFI makers.) But then, I also have a vague feeling that much of Europe takes the various conveniences the USA and Canada generally lump together into the "bathroom" and splits them up among multiple rooms in various ways. This might be related because would mean that your side of the pond has less desire for a shaver outlet in the same room as a shower or bath than ours does. Come to think of it, I can't recall seeing one here either. I've also seen small hotplates - usually two-burner ones - as portable units, set up (and presumably designed) for plugging into an ordinary mains outlet, here meaning the 15V 110-120V sort that are usual here. /~\ The ASCII Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse at rodents-montreal.org / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B

As I said in another message, thost are permitted in bathrooms over here too. Typically, the transformer we use is a 1:1 isolator with a central tap on the secodnary. There are 2 socket on the wall plate, one for 230V, the otehr for 115V (quite why I do not know, all electric shavers sold over here are designed for 230V mains). I bought a load of these units when local 'pound shop' (=='dolalr store') was selling them. What i wanted were the transformers, of course. They're nice little 20VA (or so) units, ideal for powering small valve circuits, etc. And the price was certainly right! I don;t think RCD (GFI) prtoection is enoguh for bathrooms over here, but it might be now. But personally, I'd stick with a double-wound transformer. I do not trust RVDs not to fail (in fact I have had one do so, fortuantely I detected it using the test facility, rather than having a dangerous shock). Yes, single and twin untis like tht exsit over here. And they just plug in. -tony

On Sun, 29 Apr 2012, Tony Duell wrote: Called a GFI (Ground Fault Interrupter) here. Now often GCFI or GFCI ("circuit" needed to be mentioned)

Yes, now you mention it, I haev heard that term, and it is the same thing. We used to call them 'ELCB's (Earth Leakaga Circuit Breaker), I have no idea why the name was changed. -tony

On Apr 29, 2012, at 3:47 PM, Tony Duell wrote: I think that's what we call a GFCI (Ground Fault Circuit Interruptor), which we usually use to keep ourselves safe when we're trying to vacuum water out of the basement (or using toasters near a sink, or all other manner of inadvisable things). Our electric code requires GFCI outlets pretty much anywhere there could be water, such as outside, near sinks and hot water heaters, etc. We don't *usually* have GFCI breakers in our boxes, but they do exist; in residential installations, it's almost always up to the outlet to provide it unless it's for something purpose-built to get wet (like pool pumps). The 2008 National Electric Code requires Arc Fault Circuit Interruptor breakers on pretty much every circuit in the house, but retrofitting older boxes to use them is usually a non-starter because a lot of the house wiring done in the '80s and later by contractors cutting corners uses the "backstab" method where the wires are inserted straight into a hole in the back of the outlet; a single spring clip maintains contact with the wire, so they tend to arc like crazy once they've seen enough use to loosen the spring. Your AFCI breakers would be shutting off the power to half the house all the time. - Dave

'Portable' electrical power tools used industrially (like electric drilsl on building sites, etc) in the UK have to be 110V devices run from an isolating transformer with the centre tap of the secondary conencted to earth gorudn .The idea is that the maximum shock that the user can receive from any point to earth is 55V which is unlikely to be fatal. FWIW, the transofrmers used for this are quite useful for testing US equipment over here, provided that device doesn't assume that one side fo the mains input is groudned (nothing should do, but...). -tony

I suspect it's much like the houses of most people here. There are classic computers, spares for classic computers, tools, test instruments, etc everywhere. And books of course. I really don't see why it's so odd to keep bits of broken connector. I don;t know if you know the UK mains plug, but the pins are quite substantial pieces of brass, which are useful for making mounting blocks, etc. And I can't beleive you've never needed a spare contact for some type of connector which you could take from a broken one. Quite apart from not having moneu to waste, it's not easy to jsut go out and buy such thigns any more. Having the right bit in the junk box saves a lot of time. -tony

That depends o nthe US plug... I have rebuilt damaged Hubble ones (made a good one from 2 broaken ones), but that's mainly because such things are very hard to get over here ,and when you do find them they are very expensive -- about \pounds 25.00 for _one_ plug. My DEC power controlelrs have the 15V 230V socekts on them, so the 110V plugs don;t fit. Those you can get over here, but the 230V ones are linke gold dust. Hence it's well worth me saving all I can. Over here, wall-wart PSUs tend not to be fused. The transformer is supposed to burn out safely in the event of a serious overlaod, but often doesn't. I am not at all happy protecting soemthing like that with the 32A breaker in the consumer unit... -tony

On 29/04/2012 23:12, Alexandre Souza - Listas wrote: At least that's lossless. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York

That's what I'm doing now...There are SO MANY individual parts that I'm going bananas :P

Maybe a pair of blue-eyed blondies... --- Enviado do meu Motorola PT550 Meu site: http://www.tabalabs.com.br ----- Original Message ----- From: "ben" <bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca> To: <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Sent: Sunday, April 29, 2012 8:26 PM Subject: Re: OT: Re: Audiophilia

Err, yes... As somedy siad a few days ago, for a lot of people, the whole conmputer is the FRU. They don;t bother to even swap out a defective hard drive. Then there are people who do repalce what the manufacturers class as FRUs -- the drives, PSU, motherboard, etc. And then there are peole who would repair those -- replace capacitors, individual ICs, etc. And then there are people (well, at least one personm...) who wil leven have a go at repairign some components -- rewinding transformers and motors, replacing indivdiauly contacts in connectors, etc. I don;t repair ICs though... A lot. I've got sall soets of obscure spares, NOS and ex-equipment. Probably goign back to the 1920s (I vertainly have some wonderful brass tuning capacitors, low-loss B4 valveholders, etc). More on-topic, I've got several boxes of DEC spares that were given to me -- RK05 heads, motors, contacctors, PCBs, conenctor blocks, etc. And a lot of other odd bits. And of coruse new components (R's and C's. transitors, ICs, connectors, etc) for construcitonal projects and repairs. Now that;s an idea. At least it's a lossless compression... -tony

On 4/27/2012 5:50 PM, Toby Thain wrote: Ointment you watch for Flies. PDP paint you watch for BUGS. :)

On 27/04/12 8:10 PM, Fred Cisin wrote: Of course: The first thing I did was replace the standard generic item with a supercooled monocrystalline radium PowerThrobbing? rod that was extruded on Mars. No effect. --T

On Fri, 27 Apr 2012, Cameron Kaiser wrote: This is starting to sound like an obscene space opera. -- David Griffith dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

On Fri, 27 Apr 2012 19:41:37 +0100 (BST) ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) wrote: Yes. And you have been trolled. Sorry, couldn't resist. ;-) -- \end{Jochen} \ref{http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/}

On 26/04/12 2:26 PM, Tony Duell wrote: Em-u-lator, i.e. Simh Snake oil, my friends. Pure snake oil... --T

Sallem is always available and he has the gear for just such an endeavor... oh Sellam, come out, come out where ever you are...... Chuck Guzis wrote:

On Thu, 26 Apr 2012, Chuck Guzis wrote: Oh. My. God. Someone PLEASE tell me this is being looked into seriously. g. -- Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007 http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind. http://www.diy-cockpits.org/coll - Go Collimated or Go Home. Some people collect things for a hobby. Geeks collect hobbies. ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes. http://www.scarletdme.org - Get it _today_! Buying desktop hardware and installing a server OS doesn't make a server-class system any more than sitting in a puddle makes you a duck. [Cipher in a.s.r]

On 26 Apr 2012 at 21:47, Al Kossow wrote: 40 MB wouldn't even begin to cover what Don had in his archive, if what I remember is correct. (We used to trade images quite a bit) Perhaps this is worth a note before the stuff evaporates for good (if it hasn't already). --Chuck

I heard back from the niece. Doesn't sound like she was very happy with Sellam . Seems to be a trend recently. She also said she received a few replies and someone had already said they were taking it all. Hopefully it is someone that will image them. On 4/27/2012 8:24 AM, Al Kossow wrote:

I was told that the archive was here in the northeast, so I replied to Gaby and said we in MARCH would be honored to curate it. Gaby said she passed the message on. But, then I found out the archive is out west. So I think someone (like you, Al) should be its caretaker. I'll explain that to the family if they write back to me.

I told Gaby that MARCH is essentially bowing out, because we support Al as the best choice in this expedition.

On Thu, 26 Apr 2012, Chuck Guzis wrote: Such as "All of those boxes of "boot disks" don't even go with any of the machines there, so they're discardable" ?

Great news... I wish. SPc. 2012/4/27 Chuck Guzis <cclist at sydex.com>

On Thu, 26 Apr 2012, Dave McGuire wrote: The sort of "front panel" that would be most useful on a modern machine would be some sort of dot-matrix display showing stuff like various kinds of load metrics. -- David Griffith dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

Brent Hilpert wrote: Now you can even get "cryogenically treated" USB cables: http://www.oregondv.com/VooDoo_Magic_Bus_USB.htm They brag about the silver positive conductor, but to get any real benefit from it, doesn't it also need the negative conductor to be made I think I chose the wrong career.

Its like the BS with the HDMI cables when they came out 5-6 years back, Monster was getting $129.99 for a 6' HDMI cable when they were first released. All this talk about transmission grade quality, the ability to support true 1080p and blah blah blah... now you can buy them for $9.99 for a 12' cable.... funny how all of the important transmission grade quality debates went right out the window, along with the 1000x mark up. Alexandre Souza - Listas wrote:

On 10 May 2012 at 12:10, David Riley wrote: That builds to a point where people simply go out an buy Monster without evaluating it. I can't even begin to count the number of times I've heard someone say that they use Monster speaker cables. When I ask them if they'd considered 16 AWG zip cord instead, they think I'm kidding. The last time I ran into solid-silver wire being used on something was, oddly enough, the connection between a reset switch and a motherboard. I figure that someone just grabbed whatever they had on hand. Maybe I'm missing out on an important marketing opportunity... --Chuck

On Thu, May 10, 2012 at 7:47 AM, Eric Smith <eric at brouhaha.com> wrote: If those are the best USB cables you can afford you might as well not bother listening to audio through USB. You really need to step up to these cables to fully enjoy your USB audio experience: http://locus-design.com/index.php/cynosure-usb-cable Starting at $3549 for 3FT.

On Thu, 10 May 2012, Joachim Thiemann wrote: You mean that wasn't a joke? Holy Sh*t. I would ask the rhetorical question as to whether there are really folks stupid enough to buy $3k USB cables. But, after being on this earth for 60 years I think I already know the answer. Steve --

On 10 May 2012 21:38, Chuck Guzis <cclist at sydex.com> wrote: I'd laugh if it wasn't so damned tragic. And /this/ is why the worlds needs sound science education in schools. (Yes, including evolution, before ChrisM sends me another email about how I need to be Saved by Jesus or whatever.) -- Liam Proven ? Profile: http://lproven.livejournal.com/profile Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/G+/Twitter/Flickr/Facebook: lproven MSN: lproven at hotmail.com ? Skype/AIM/Yahoo/LinkedIn: liamproven Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884

[Crackpot schemes] But if you never try anything new, you'll never dsicover anything ;-) Hmm.... I can't understnad what 'sducation' has to do with 'schools' Perhaps I was unlucky, but in all my time at school I never had one mathematics or physcis teach who I considered to be clueful. And I never had a teacher in any subject who inspried me. I don't want to start The Great God Debate here (and for the record, I am agnostic, which is not the same as an atheist). My take on this is that science attempts to answer oen set of questions, religon attempts to answer a different set of queastions. Only when one is used to answer questions that should be covered by the other do problems arise. -tony

No, you were not. (Well, my opinion.) We wouldn't be so confident of conservation of energy if it weren't for an extremely large number of experiments that could have falsified it but didn't, like yours. (And some of the most interesting discoveries in physics have arisen from experiments that at first blush appeared to falsify it but on deeper investigation revealed something formerly unsuspected that made it all work out. Neutrinos were first invented, er, theorized to preserve conservation of energy.) What's more, the mindset of "investgate!" is what drives most human advancement. Investigations that don't end up where the investigator was initially trying to go aren't worthless - I daresay you developed some electrical and mechanical expertise while playing with that stuff! /~\ The ASCII Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse at rodents-montreal.org / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B

On May 11, 2012, at 8:33 PM, Alexander Schreiber wrote: That, or "Oops!". - Dave

I am please that at least one other person knows how to pronounce that correctly ;-) Indeed. You are most likely not going to discover anything new if you keep on getting the expected results. Investigating the oddities is what leads to really new discovereies. As regardfs my 'perpetual motion#' device, as I said I was quite young when I treid it. At the time I probalby didn't ahv a clear concept of 'energy', let alone know the conservation laws. So I don't think I was foolish to try. And having failed, I had a commonsense idea of the conservation of energy when I came acorss the concept formally. And no, I didn't try to get investors :-) IMHO it is never wrong to invsestigate thigns like this. In fact if more people tried making things, had ideas and did experiemtns, etc then the world would be a better place. -tony

On Fri, 11 May 2012 19:43:45 +0100 (BST) ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) wrote: How hot runs a Farnsworth?Hirsch fusor? No, you wherent. To try and fail can be very enlightening when you realize _why_ you faild. -- \end{Jochen} \ref{http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/}

On 5/11/2012 2:31 PM, Jochen Kunz wrote: Build one and find out... Still HOT fusion. Ben.

On 5/11/2012 6:44 PM, Alexander Schreiber wrote: Don't know about that. Has any work been done, in fission/fusion reactions. The Farnsworth fusior, producing reaction products that catalyst a fission reaction. I wonder if we need a better computer model. Here is nice animation - The secret life of the cell http://www.studiodaily.com/2006/07/cellular-visions-the-inner-life-of-a-cel… Now if one could go deeper, perhaps nucular reactions may be better under stood. Ben.

----- Original Message ----- From: "Steven Hirsch" <snhirsch at gmail.com> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Sent: Thursday, May 10, 2012 3:45 PM Subject: Re: USB cables for audophools Why not some people spend $5M+ on engagement rings.

You're over a month late for April Fool's Day :-) I guess so. As I understand it, a USB calbe consists of a balanced (differntial) data pair and a balanced power pair. Messing about with one wire of a pair nad not the other could make matters worse... However, I would think that anything that's hadron-frer is unlikeyl to be solid ;-) -tony

On Apr 25, 2012, at 2:35 PM, Tony Duell wrote: I should clarify. When I say "premium", I mean "costing more than a dollar". I've had lots of easily verifiably nasty results from using cables the width of shoestring, but it's not because of lack of "cryogenically-treated, oxygen-free copper", it's just from a lack of copper; they might as well have threaded a strand of magnet wire through a rubber tube for all that's in there. No effective EMI shielding to speak of, either. That does make a difference. One of my friends, who is a professional recording engineer, always points out to me that the audiophiles would just die if they saw the types of cables that were actually used to *record* a lot of their vaunted classics. Lots of consumer equipment has crappy power supplies that won't filter out e.g. conducted emissions from other crappy power supplies on the mains line. Audiophile equipment is probably no exception, largely because they don't often know what they're doing and instead rely on their mythical "non-microphonic capacitors" to clean things up. Unsurprisingly, that doesn't work. - Dave

Tony Duell wrote: [..] Hmm, since most Valve Amps that permit Power in the 20 Watts range and upwards are PP Amps, there must not much complexity added to have differential inputs, there are Phase Splitters that can use both variants. Only for SE and preamps some Input- and Output transformers must be added, and that are the expensive things this days... ...finally t simplifies to: who want's to pay a little more to get a better result? Look at that RCA Jack alone, it is really cheap and it is the source of many many Problems ... There are really better things out here. Regards, Holm -- Technik Service u. Handel Tiffe, www.tsht.de, Holm Tiffe, Freiberger Stra?e 42, 09600 Obersch?na, USt-Id: DE253710583 www.tsht.de, info at tsht.de, Fax +49 3731 74200, Mobil: 0172 8790 741

Yes... Well, I'd rather pay more for some good enegineering, like differential inputs and outputs (which will reduce common-mode noise signals for good engieerign reasons that I can understand) that pay for good-lated fuses, carpet groudnign clips, special mains cables, etc that have no science or engineering behind them. XLRs spring to mind... Mind you, I find the audio DIN plug to be worse than the RCA phono.... To be fair, both are sueable if you get decent-quality ones (gold plated constacts, metal bodies, etc) Both are horrible if you get cheap ones. And you can guess what most manufacturers use. -tony

On 05/01/2012 07:52 AM, David Riley wrote: Have you looked at the current waveform of a GSM modem while it's transmitting? Oh MAN...it's a wonder that problem isn't worse than it is! -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA

On Apr 24, 2012, at 5:14 PM, Cameron Kaiser wrote: How do they charge the fractional cents? - Dave

If you buy 100 of them, do you get to pau $99.99? If not, I would class it as false advertising. Some of the electronic component suppliers I deal with do list compooents with prices involving fractional pennies, but they also have an 'order multiple' so you have to buy a mutliple of 5 (say). At which point the total price is an integer (and it's what you are charged). -tony

On 25 Apr 2012 at 13:16, Cameron Kaiser wrote: If you were to buy a hundred, I suspect that they'd lower the price to 49.99 cents each. --Chuck

On Wed, Apr 25, 2012 at 04:41:38PM -0700, Fred Cisin wrote: I bet they _do_ negotiate, and do it pretty well - with their suppliers, not with their customers. But surely their cash registers are able to do math? Kind regards, Alex. -- "Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." -- Thomas A. Edison

They round up, and charge 1.00 for stuff that is clearly advertised as being 0.99 (PRICE GOUGING!) They don't even try to claim that you would save 0.01 if you bought 100 items!

On 04/24/2012 04:20 PM, Chuck Guzis wrote: Are you sure it's a SanDisk? -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA