A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text Size: 1523 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://www.classiccmp.org/pipermail/cctalk/attachments/20020330/fab73885/at…

Quothe Chuck Dickman, from writings of Sun, Mar 31, 2002 at 08:12:16PM -0500: ...or the lead in the solder. You've heard of the saying "mad as a hatter"? ...not that there's anything wrong with madness, a rather good quality for a hacker to possess. :-) -- Copyright (C) 2001 R. D. Davis The difference between humans & other animals: All Rights Reserved an unnatural belief that we're above Nature & rdd(a)rddavis.org 410-744-4900 her other creatures, using dogma to justify such http://www.rddavis.org beliefs and to justify much human cruelty.

It's true. The mercury was used to stiffen the brims. Chronic hat wearers also had problems. --John

At 07:59 PM 3/30/02 +0000, you wrote: You seem to be a good subject for a lead poisoning risk study... :-) carlos. -------------------------------------------------------------- Carlos E. Murillo-Sanchez carlos_murillo(a)nospammers.ieee.org

"R. D. Davis" wrote: Now that's something I've never heard of -- what's a "Western Union" joint? Some kind of wire splice? I must have had my first soldering iron at the age of 11 or thereabouts. But my first kits were Philips non-soldering breadboards. -- John Honniball coredump(a)gifford.co.uk

Picture of a Western Union splice. http://www.sasked.gov.sk.ca/curr_content/paasurvey/elec/Lesson5/Lesson5.html

Quothe Tony Duell, from writings of Sun, Mar 31, 2002 at 07:01:23PM +0100: [Western Union joint] It's a way of joining multi-strand, or single-strand, wires so that they don't come apart easily. You've no doubt seen these, or made them, but perhaps they're also known by a different name. Did Philips also make kits similar to the P-box kits with the plastic pegboard and spring terminals? I remember building a metronome kit, AM radio, sound operated switch, "heads or tails" decision maker (this consisted of two neon bulbs with red and green lenses that fired alternately, although it appeared that they were both lit at the same time. IIRC, pressing a momentary SPST switch stopped an oscillator and then only one of the bulbs remained lit), etc. One might say this was a type of computer, so, this appears to be on-topic. :-) Those Philips kits sound interesting! Nice! Speaking of circuitry, I've got junk box that I haven't looked in for quite a while, containing various older components, transformers, etc. and it appears that mice have gotten into it. Some of this consists of difficult to find/replace bits, so, needless to say, I don't want to just toss it out; however, the thought of having to clean all of this up is not pleasant. I'm going to start by spraying it all with some Lysol; not sure if that will harm anything such as some plastic parts, however, it all needs to be disinfected. Don't suggest using a dishwasher, as I don't have one of those newfangled gizmos. :-) Any suggestions? Using water is out of the question. Very interesting! This discussion is making me regret leaning more towards computers and programming and away from other aspects of my electronics hobby such as radios and audio - thinking back, that was actually more fun, and perhaps less expensive. Has anyone else on the list begun to feel this way? Does anyone remember the LaFayette kits? I only recall building one, an amplifier using an odd-looking semi-DIP IC - IIRC, a 14-pin IC where pins 3,4 & 5 were a single wide metal tab and pins 10, 11 and 12 were also a single wide metal tab - not individual pins. It sounds as though Philips had a much wider range of kits than Radio Shack. Wow! Nice find!!! What have you built with this thus far? That kit sounds somewhat like the old Erector Sets that could be used to build anything from cranes to vehicles, although I don't recall any way to build a reasonably accurate clock with it. Back in elementary school, I used this to build a motorized vehicle for a science project, but the blasted moron-brained teacher rejected it as being too "advanced" (accused me of having help with building it, which I didn't!!!), and then looked the other way while some other students tried to destroy it - hence, I have little respect for most elementary school teachers. I may still have most of the components for the set - the one that came in what appeared to be a largish blue metal toolbox. The only problem was, I was always finding other uses for the components over the years, so I don't have all of the components (in one place, that is). To this day, I'm still finding bits and pieces of that where they don't belong, such as pulleys, nuts, bolts, etc. :-) Yes, I may have used some of these bits with computers. :-) -- Copyright (C) 2001 R. D. Davis The difference between humans & other animals: All Rights Reserved an unnatural belief that we're above Nature & rdd(a)rddavis.org 410-744-4900 her other creatures, using dogma to justify such http://www.rddavis.org beliefs and to justify much human cruelty.

Tony Duell wrote: The older, spring-terminal kind. There were transistors on little square PCB mounts, a front panel with controls and lots of ordinary components and wire. The most complex circuit was a simple AM radio -- on which I listened to Radio Caroline, the well-known pirate station of the time. Unfortunately, I no longer have my Philips kits. -- John Honniball coredump(a)gifford.co.uk