SY said:
I was about 9 when Batman first hit TV (1966?) and I too still remember cps, mmfd, and the physical components themselves - the electrically leaky wax covered paper things that often passed for capacitors, and those terrible carbon composition resistors with a tolerance of 20%, which always seemed to be way off the mark..
This weeks pick of the junk box is this 120K 2W 10% resistor. Looks innocently cleanand not scarred. Barely used, the meter illustrates the value (155.8K) drifted with time.
And to cap it, I regulary come across old tube stuff with pretty well the same drift. And of course still work. It annoys me when tubies insist on 1% tolerance......what rubbish.
richj.-
And to cap it, I regulary come across old tube stuff with pretty well the same drift. And of course still work. It annoys me when tubies insist on 1% tolerance......what rubbish.
richj.-
Attachments
nhuwar said:You mean the caps covered with wax? When you would work on them and the room was warm and you touched them and it was like you sneezed on your hand.
Nick
I sort of like the idea of them though, that something made from paper, aluminum foil and wax actually functions.
Don't think I'd actually use them in an amp though.In my high school basic electricity class one of the required project had us make our own caps and resistors and build a circuit that made a 1 1/2 volt light bulb flash at intervals. It was interesting and informative. Of course one of my friends and I decided to see how big a capacitor we could make with waxed paper and aluminum foil. The answer was "big enough to hurt"!
kevinkr said:
I have a few samples from back in those days. One even proved useful: a funkey capacitor with a 0.01uF / 5.0KV rating with two metal end caps, a glass body filled with what looks like a light oil. Used it for a damper across the HV secondary. Still works great. I also have a couple of 10uF / 450V electrolytics in a silver, cardboard box.
They're Baaaaaack!
And obviously as leaky as ever. That's just plain nutz these days.
, and those terrible carbon composition resistors with a tolerance of 20%, which always seemed to be way off the mark..
Well, of course they were! After all, they already culled out all the ones that were within +/-5.0% (ultraprecision in those days) the +/-10% ones, leaving the +/- 20%-ers to be "way off". I suppose every once in a while something a lot closer to nominal would slip through to be marked as a +/- 20% dealie, but probably none too often. Still seems very odd to see something like that, and even have something use such tolerances and still work. But then my original experience was with solid state, where +/- 1.0% laser trimmed metal films are routine. Solid state just is not nearly as "forgiving" as hollow state.
I do insist on using 1.0% resistors as LTP plate loads. With an active tail load, I get CMRRs that are too high to measure, due to the routine noisiness of my QTH. Everything just disappears into the noise. 5.0% metal film everywhere else, except for C-comps in RF sensitive areas: grid and plate stoppers.
- Status
- This old topic is closed. If you want to reopen this topic, contact a moderator using the "Report Post" button.