EEVblog #913 - Mailbag

More Mailbag

SPOILERS:
Elektor Magazine

Elektor Uno R4:

4D System uLCD Gen4 modules

Adler 805 1970's Calculator
5 1/4" floppy drive Apple II teardown
SolderDoodle USB Rechargeable soldering iron

Open Source Gossen Multimeter USB serial interface

Sony Vaio VGN-UX280P Pocket computer

Epipahn AVIO 4V USB 3.0 video capture teardown

NBN fibre optic modem and UPS teardown

300baud modem teardown

Tektronix 500 series plugin tab replacements:

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EEVblog Amazon Store (Dave gets a cut):

[kenwolfe]

The tip wasn't all the way inserted into the soldering iron! That's why it wasn't getting hot and why it was flexing.

[josjong]

Elektor (then called Elektuur, in The Netherlands) got me into electronics in the eighties. Good memories.

[nameistunbekannt]

Everytime I thought I misheard it but he really says "Bob's your uncle". Greetings from Germany.

[Streamtronics]

I don't know, it looked like the tip of that soldering iron wasn't properly pushed on?

[jody]

"And you know that you have too many multimeters when they are under the mailbag thingies" Yes Dave we all have mailbag shelves that overflow

[RoyHess]

Thanks for the extra long (55 minutes!) Mailbag video Dave!
Greetings from germany!

[heathwellsNZ]

My first modem was a 300 buad jobbie in 1985... it cost me $1, 700 at the time. It never detected the carrier so the process was... you dialed the BBS phone number and when it answered you whistled the carrier frequency yourself down the phone (actually pretty easy to achieve) yourself and once the other end changed to a data noise you pushed the button on the modem and you were away. I used that modem until 1987 when it was replaced by a 1200 buad hayes compatible one... Such fond memories. This modem in your mailbag is very reminiscent of the one I had...

[Ardren]

I'm still dealing with AT codes on a GSM modem...

[sgoat]

Wow, Sendata 300 modem, I designed that thing about 100 years ago... The Reticon part is a filter

[Rizon]

Why would you send Dave your soldering iron. That's just sadistic for him and you.

[rownadoherty]

Just heard your anger at ground pin not being on the end! I share this annoyance!
I've had a lot of people tell me over the years that Pin 1 should always be the positive supply, but I've never really understood why.
You're more likely to have multiple supply rails than grounds (well at least at the power inputs in simple products without multiple supplies and complex analog setups).
I'd much rather see ground on Pin 1, and and power and supplies and signals on the remaining pins.
Surely the reference (i.e. GND) should always be front-and-centre!

[adriansrealm]

I loved on the disk drive how they tried to mate a plug and pin with different pin pitches by bending the pins to fit

[stevehawley]

One thing missing from the Bulgarian floppy drive is the strobe disc. This was a sticker put in place on top of the white plastic piece on the drive motor. You would run the drive under a fluorescent light and adjust the multiturn pot on the back board until the pattern held steady. A great example of practical engineering - spend a penny to make the device easily field maintainable!

[Graham_Langley]

Re. Adler calculator: Looks to me like the board wasn't even roller tinned and the untinned areas are where a tape solder mask was put on it to leave the holes for the display wires clear.

[Bob]

I got home from work and I have the next two days off. I was wondering if I should hide away in my lab for a day and tinker with my electronics.... Or do responsible adult things like be social or something. After watching this mailbag oh baby its tinker time! Thanks Dave! You always get my creative mind flowing! Keep up the good work.

Love, A canadian who can't wait for winter. ( Winter is the best tinker time coz nobody expects you to leave the house ;)

[stonent]

Piece of trivia about the Apple II drives. The reason they made that machine gun sound when starting up was they had no head position sensor. The computer would just send it step back commands to get the head to the zero point and then the computer would keep track of the had position based upon where it had told the head to go from that point forward.

[funcatvids]

At 21:43 you notice that they removed the solder mask to make a contact with the case. The problem, in my opinion, is that the case is aluminium, which does not behaves very well when in contact to gold (it creates over time the so-called purple plague, which has a low conductivity and induces also other mechanical problems).

[galileo_rs]

3½-inch SS 280kb and 5¼-inch HD 1200kb were introduced in 1982 so these were used in '87 quite extensivly. Even in the early '90 people used 5¼ because those were more reliable.

[andrewbaker]

The Sony "Motion eye" AKA Sony Vaio UX180P was a decent machine for field work/dispatch. I sold a ton of these to a field service company with a custom XP app to keep track of dispatches, inventory, record keeping, invoicing. At the time 2005ish there was not much around hand hold wise. These had cell modems cameras, touch screen and were fairly responsive. This single unit allowed the field agent to document images of everything before starting work, scan parts, get authorization signatures, document images after work, and then everything was automaticaly updated at dispatch. Nice units in all, but I agree the keyboards were dog snot.

[JennyEverywhere]

MAILBAG!!!!

That NBN UPS thinger looks like the service point Verizon FIOS (one of our fiber providers in the US) installed in our basement. Then they ran coax upstairs to their set-top box which is probably the equivalent of that modem plus a TV connection. Then there's a wifi router connected with 10-base-T.