20 Oct
2005
20 Oct
'05
7:18 p.m.
With all of this ragging on audio nut who spend obscene amounts of money on
wire, I decided to at a look. I don't know why we call them crazy, they
don't have 1975 computer running in the basement.
The guy in the next office is in to high end audio. (Although he claims that
he is in the lower end of the people in his audio club.) I asked if he had
a power cord so I could take some pictures. He had a spare PS Audio xStream
Statement Power Cable, the 2 meter version lists for $550. This is 6 gauge
oxygen free copper with machined connectors. The cord has a ferrite
impregnated jacket.
Here is my short review of the power cord
http://www.swtpc.com/mholley/MP_F/PS_Audio.htm
I took it home and hooked it up to my new custom case computer which also
cost me about $550. It is a modern 3 GHz Pentium that looks like a 1975
SWTPC 6800.
http://www.swtpc.com/mholley/MP_F/MP_F.htm#NewCover
21 Oct
21 Oct
7:53 a.m.
Rumor has it that Michael Holley may have mentioned these words:
With all of this ragging on audio nut who spend obscene
amounts of money
on wire, I decided to at a look. I don't know why we call them crazy,
they don't have 1975 computer running in the basement.
See below.
The guy in the next office is in to high end audio.
(Although he claims
that he is in the lower end of the people in his audio club.) I asked if
he had a power cord so I could take some pictures. He had a spare PS Audio
xStream Statement Power Cable, the 2 meter version lists for $550.
$550 *spare* power cables? Where can I go to get *his* job... If I pissed
away a truck payment on a power cable, my wife would (rightfully so) kill
me. :-O
I took it home and hooked it up to my new custom case
computer which also
cost me about $550. It is a modern 3 GHz Pentium that looks like a 1975
SWTPC 6800.
http://www.swtpc.com/mholley/MP_F/MP_F.htm#NewCover
So how much faster did your computer go, and/or how much better did it
sound with that new power cable?
What would $550 *actually get you*??? Perspiring minds wanna know!
[[ It also begs the question: What good is a 6 gauge power cord gonna get
ya when it's fed by 12 gauge mains? ]]
BTW, *very* nice job on the computer. ;-) When my 60-80 hour weeks slow
down again, I'm finally hoping for a "CoCo into an AT case" conversion.
Laterz,
Roger "Merch" Merchberger
--
Roger "Merch" Merchberger -- SysAdmin, Iceberg Computers
_??_ zmerch at 30below.com
(?||?) If at first you don't succeed, nuclear warhead
_)(_ disarmament should *not* be your first career choice.
3:37 p.m.
Here is my short review of the power cord
http://www.swtpc.com/mholley/MP_F/PS_Audio.htm
I took it home and hooked it up to my new custom case computer which also
cost me about $550. It is a modern 3 GHz Pentium that looks like a 1975
SWTPC 6800.
Ah, but does it make the machine run any faster, or crash less often, or...
[ :-) in case you're humour-impaired ]
-tony
22 Oct
22 Oct
1:04 a.m.
Tony Duell wrote:
We have to get way more sophisticated about this:
"Use the SMIMS SX-5000 power cord with your computer monitor to improve the
display. Eliminated noise cleans up the high-frequency artifacts in the display
and so clarifies fine picture resolution. Computer gamers especially will
appreciate the smoother on-screen motion. The high-speed motion typical of
computer games - technically described as the dynamic characteristics of
frame-to-frame transfer - requires energy on demand to handle the screen
changes when drawing a new frame. The SMIMS SX-5000 power cord delivers that
energy with it's large-gauge conductors - conductors capable of 4 times the
energy transfer of ordinary power cords."
..could devise a whole marketing scam (whoops, I mean 'plan'), applying
audiophile hyperbole to the video end of things where theres lots of room for
subjective interpretation and there's even an analog aspect to play with.
Note that while taken as a whole it's a bunch of silly techno-babble irrelevant
to the product, each sentence taken in isolation can be argued to be
technically "true".
Lame attempt to make this on-topic: As far as silly marketing hyperbole goes, I
remember in the late 70s when "Turbo PASCAL" and "Turbo BASIC" were
released
and thinking "Oh, geez, the stupidity of macho car marketing comes to the world
of computing". Then there were those insipid "Turbo Mode" switches on
late-80-early-90s PCs. And the attached numeric LED clock rate displays, which
were nothing but numerals hard-wired to the switch.
Here is my short review of the power cord
http://www.swtpc.com/mholley/MP_F/PS_Audio.htm
I took it home and hooked it up to my new custom case computer which also
cost me about $550. It is a modern 3 GHz Pentium that looks like a 1975
SWTPC 6800.
Ah, but does it make the machine run any faster, or crash less often, or...
[ :-) in case you're humour-impaired ]
-tony 
12:12 p.m.
We have to get way more sophisticated about this:
"Use the SMIMS SX-5000 power cord with your computer monitor to improve the
Howzbout: also mention that viruses will not be transmitted through this
cord
Lame attempt to make this on-topic: As far as silly
marketing hyperbole goes, I
remember in the late 70s when "Turbo PASCAL" and "Turbo BASIC" were
released
and thinking "Oh, geez, the stupidity of macho car marketing comes to the world
of computing". Then there were those insipid "Turbo Mode" switches on
late-80-early-90s PCs. And the attached numeric LED clock rate displays, which
were nothing but numerals hard-wired to the switch.
Exam question: what is actually measured by those numeric displays?
For a while, Subaru had a model called "Turbo XT 16"!
12:39 p.m.
On 10/22/2005 at 2:25 PM John Foust wrote:
At 02:12 PM 10/22/2005, Fred Cisin wrote:
Well, in some cases, the presence or absence of a "turbo" signal from the
motherboard; in others, whether or not the "turbo" switch itself is
pressed. I've had several "turbo" systems with functioning
"turbo"
displays (i.e., the display changes with the switch setting) that run at
exactly the same clock regardless of the turbo switch.
Very akin to those cheap import "21 jewel" watches, where most of the
jewels are simply glued on somewhere on the movement. It isn't a lie, but
it's a bit of a whopper.
This whole business reminds me of an old scifi short story where a fellow
wakes up 100 years in the future and finds that car speedometers go to 350
mph--but start somewhere around 200 at a dead stop.
Cheers,
Chuck
Exam question: what is actually measured by those
numeric displays?
The absence or presence of jumpers on the little daughterboard,
encoded as digits?
2:06 p.m.
Very akin to those cheap import "21 jewel"
watches, where most of the
jewels are simply glued on somewhere on the movement. It isn't a lie, but
it's a bit of a whopper.
I read somewhere that when the originator of jewels for bearings in
watches tried to apply for a patent (or some other legal protection) for
his idea, an old (then) watch was exhibited which had a jewel in the
middle of the balance cock in appearently just the right postion, and
thus the patent was not granted.
Only later (?) was it 'discovered' that this jewel was purely for decoration.
And weren't there '12 transistor' radios in the 1960's where half of the
transistors had all 3 leads connected to the ground rail (and therefore
they did nothing other than enable that statement to be printed on the case).
-tony
3:52 p.m.
On 10/22/2005 at 10:06 PM ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk wrote:
And weren't there '12 transistor' radios in
the 1960's where half of the
transistors had all 3 leads connected to the ground rail (and therefore
they did nothing other than enable that statement to be printed on the
case).
I hadn't realized that the manufacturers had even bothered to ground the
things...
Sort of like CPU clock speeds today. Didn't one of the 6809 design team
say something to the effect of "if clock speeds really mattered, we'dve
designed the chip to accept waveguide".
Cheers,
Chuck
12:42 p.m.
Heh, yeah, that reminds me of some fun stuff I did back in the day...a
friend of mine's father was a real jerk toward me and thought he knew
everything there is to know about technology because he took a
correspondence course, so I decided to play a little trick on him. I took
those jumpers and arranged them so that the display read "8" instead of
"33"
and "n0" instead of "66" (it was a 486DX). Then I used a program to
merge
two executables into one, so I merged a program that slowed the computer
down to about 8mhz with his emm386 program.
Man, I remember when he found out, he was so angry and freaked out when his
computer ran that slow, and when he tried to hit the turbo switch it
displayed "n0"
Good times, good times *sigh*
-----Original Message-----
From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org]
On Behalf Of John Foust
Sent: Saturday, October 22, 2005 2:26 PM
To: cctalk at classiccmp.org
Subject: Re: Short review of $550 power cord plus a new SWTPC 6800
At 02:12 PM 10/22/2005, Fred Cisin wrote:
Exam question: what is actually measured by those
numeric displays?
The absence or presence of jumpers on the little daughterboard, encoded as
digits?
- John
5:24 p.m.
Exam question: what is actually measured by those
numeric displays?
Back when those were current technology, I used that wording with a cow-
orker. He spent a few hours speculating about circuits to measure
clock speed. He was really pissed when he opened the machine
We set one to read "97". One of the more stupid fellows there insisted
that it was almost three times as fast as the "33"s. 'course he was the
same one who wanted to know whether we could add a turbo-charger to a
stock 5150 PC.
7:30 p.m.
John Foust wrote:
At 02:12 PM 10/22/2005, Fred Cisin wrote:
One of my machines has a "Turbo" button that changes from "HI" to
"LO".
It does make a noticeable difference in speed. Probably inserts a
bunch of NOPs in or something. Comes in handy when I'm trying to play
older games.
Peace... Sridhar
Exam question: what is actually measured by those
numeric displays?
The absence or presence of jumpers on the little daughterboard,
encoded as digits? 
23 Oct
23 Oct
5:37 a.m.
John Foust wrote:
On older machines it did actually change the clock speed.
Gordon.
At 02:12 PM 10/22/2005, Fred Cisin wrote:
One of my machines has a "Turbo" button that changes from "HI" to
"LO".
It does make a noticeable difference in speed. Probably inserts a
bunch of NOPs in or something. Comes in handy when I'm trying to play
older games. Exam question: what is actually measured by those
numeric displays?
The absence or presence of jumpers on the little daughterboard,
encoded as digits? 
7:08 a.m.
One of my machines has a "Turbo" button that changes from "HI" to
"LO".
It does make a noticeable difference in speed. Probably inserts a
bunch of NOPs in or something. Comes in handy when I'm trying to play
older games.
On older machines it did actually change the clock speed.
Gordon. 
6 Nov
6 Nov
11:45 a.m.
2005-10-23 (?) ? 13:37 +0100 ? gordonjcp at gjcp.net ????????:
One of the memories I have from my first school in Norway were being
thrown out from the computer room for (unknowingly) violating the rule,
and I quote:
"The Turbo switch must be turned OFF to preserve the hardware."
The computer teacher really did believe that using the Turbo button
would cause the computers to wear down faster. And yes, there was a
(very!) noticeable slowdown when the Turbo button was off. This was a
486 running Windows 95.
-toresbe
John Foust
wrote:
One of my machines has a "Turbo" button that changes from "HI" to
"LO".
It does make a noticeable difference in speed. Probably inserts a
bunch of NOPs in or something. Comes in handy when I'm trying to play
older games.
On older machines it did actually change the clock speed. 
7 Nov
7 Nov
7:55 a.m.
"The Turbo switch must be turned OFF to preserve
the hardware."
The computer teacher really did believe that using the Turbo button
would cause the computers to wear down faster.
This is not *totally* wrong. Running faster generally means running
hotter, which shortens lifespan. (Now, whether this effect was
significant compared to all the other things also affecting lifespan,
that's another story. :-)
/~\ The ASCII der Mouse
\ / Ribbon Campaign
X Against HTML mouse at rodents.montreal.qc.ca
/ \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B
1:43 p.m.
New subject: Short review of $550 power cord
On Sun, 6 Nov 2005, Tore S Bekkedal wrote:
"The Turbo switch must be turned OFF to preserve
the hardware."
The computer teacher really did believe that using the Turbo button
would cause the computers to wear down faster. And yes, there was a
(very!) noticeable slowdown when the Turbo button was off. This was a
486 running Windows 95.
Does it run out of computrons quicker?
Or does the higher speed create more thermal problems resulting in a
higher probability of getting a leak and losing the compressed smoke
that it runs on?
Rejumpering to reverse the switch action is a handy way to deal with such
regulations.
22 Oct
22 Oct
12:41 p.m.
Upon the date 03:12 PM 10/22/2005, Fred Cisin said something like:
The only thing measurable is the observer's ability to see and interpret
the two digits shown and perhaps the ability of that same observer to
tinker with the jumpering of that display board to configure different numbers.
$550.00. Indeed. Hmmph!
Christian Fandt, Electronic/Electrical Historian
Jamestown, NY USA cfandt at netsync.net
Member of Antique Wireless Association
URL: http://www.antiquewireless.org/
We have to get
way more sophisticated about this:
"Use the SMIMS SX-5000 power cord with your computer monitor to improve the
Howzbout: also mention that viruses will not be transmitted through this
cord
Lame attempt to make this on-topic: As far as
silly marketing hyperbole
goes, I
remember in the late 70s when "Turbo
PASCAL" and "Turbo BASIC" were
released
and thinking "Oh, geez, the stupidity of
macho car marketing comes to
the world
of computing". Then there were those insipid
"Turbo Mode" switches on
late-80-early-90s PCs. And the attached numeric LED clock rate
displays, which
were nothing but numerals hard-wired to the
switch.
Exam question: what is actually measured by those numeric displays?
2 p.m.
of
computing". Then there were those insipid "Turbo Mode" switches on
late-80-early-90s PCs. And the attached numeric LED clock rate displays, which
were nothing but numerals hard-wired to the switch.
Exam question: what is actually measured by those numeric displays?
2:52 p.m.
New subject: OT: ebay seller Montana4Me?
Reply by private email please;
Anybody dealt with this guy called Montana4Me?
This guy sells reasonable prices for older materials such as Pentium
Pros, Xeons and other items.
I have a machine that takes P Pros to play with. This guy is selling
single and two 200 1M organic packages with heatsinks and straps.
Cheers, Wizard
24 Oct
24 Oct
8:27 a.m.
Rumor has it that Brent Hilpert may have mentioned these words:
Fred Cisin wrote:
Yup. The numeric ones that I'd seen were just a bank of jumpers [shunts]
individually programming each segment of the 7-segment LEDs.
This is (roughly) ontopic, as this was around 10 years ago when I did this
- I was working as PC Technician (translation for Tony: boardswapper ;-)
for the local injun tribe here and one of my cow-orkers[1] needed a new
hard drive installed in her machine, a 80486SX 25, complete with the LED
number
As the Pentium 90's were just coming out at the time, she asked if she
could get a "speed upgrade" as well - I told her that I'd talk to the boss
and see[2].
I installed the new hard drive and also switched the jumpers/shunts around
for the display to show '90' when the turbo button was on or off, and
removed the turbo jumper from the motherboard (It didn't seem to do
anything anyway) and once she got her computer back, she was *amazed* at
how much faster her computer had become!
My boss cornered me later about not approving the (obviously costly - P90
kit then cost around $1000USD) upgrade she'd been bragging to everyone
about in the department, and I asked him if I really *had* to requisition
the 4 or 5 spare jumpers it took for the 'upgrade'... He about fell on the
floor laughing. :-)
She never caught on when people would snicker at her having the "fastest
machine in the department"... ;-)
Laterz,
Roger "Merch" Merchberger
[1] She was a 'systems analyst' and made 2x-3x more than me... :-O They
call them thar peapul "ekspurts." Pffft.
[2] Which was a lie... I didn't bother, as I knew he wouldn't approve it;
especially for someone who used her computer twice a week to type a couple
reports.
--
Roger "Merch" Merchberger -- SysAdmin, Iceberg Computers
_??_ zmerch at 30below.com
(?||?) If at first you don't succeed, nuclear warhead
_)(_ disarmament should *not* be your first career choice.
Exam question: what is actually measured by those numeric displays?
The sucker index.
2:03 p.m.
On Mon, 24 Oct 2005, Roger Merchberger wrote:
anything anyway) and once she got her computer back,
she was *amazed* at
how much faster her computer had become!
It's also fun to REVERSE the numbers, so that slow says "66", and full
speed says "33", and see how often people slow down their computers to get
the higher number.
... or set the jumpers to show upside down, or left to right reversed
numbers
6768
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23 comments
15 participants
participants (15)
-
ard＠p850ug1.demon.co.uk -
boblafleur＠comcast.net -
cclist＠sydex.com -
cfandt＠netsync.net -
cisin＠xenosoft.com -
fireflyst＠earthlink.net -
gordonjcp＠gjcp.net -
hilpert＠cs.ubc.ca -
jfoust＠threedee.com -
jpero＠sympatico.ca -
mouse＠Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA -
ploopster＠gmail.com -
swtpc6800＠comcast.net -
toresbe＠ifi.uio.no -
zmerch＠30below.com