Curious cat learning about electricity?
When I lived in Florida several of the public schools would supplement their budgets by offering classes to adults at night for a fee. Myself and a co-worker signed up for a wood shop class at a local high school just so we had access to some decent equipment. This went on one night a week for 5 or so years. I made speakers, tube amp chassis, and musical "devices."
One night my friend and I just happened to get our projects to the point of unamplified playability at the same time. This led to an impromptu jam session in the classroom after most of the other students had left. School security ran us out around midnight.
My 41 year engineering career at Motorola was ending, and I had about 3 weeks left when these pictures were taken. I was rushing to get the stuff done that needed the schools equipment, because I would not be there after the summer school closing.
The "guitar like device" was disassembled and the buttons for the beat box and chord player were added after that session happened. The electronics were nearly finished, but our orderly plan to sell the house and move north over several months was upended when we had 3 weeks to get out of our house and Florida. That guitar, and the parts to several other "musical devices" are still in an unmarked box somewhere in one of three possible locations.
My friend went on to make 3 very nice looking electric ukulele's before the school shut down the night classes.
When I lived in Florida several of the public schools would supplement their budgets by offering classes to adults at night for a fee. Myself and a co-worker signed up for a wood shop class at a local high school just so we had access to some decent equipment. This went on one night a week for 5 or so years. I made speakers, tube amp chassis, and musical "devices."
One night my friend and I just happened to get our projects to the point of unamplified playability at the same time. This led to an impromptu jam session in the classroom after most of the other students had left. School security ran us out around midnight.
My 41 year engineering career at Motorola was ending, and I had about 3 weeks left when these pictures were taken. I was rushing to get the stuff done that needed the schools equipment, because I would not be there after the summer school closing.
The "guitar like device" was disassembled and the buttons for the beat box and chord player were added after that session happened. The electronics were nearly finished, but our orderly plan to sell the house and move north over several months was upended when we had 3 weeks to get out of our house and Florida. That guitar, and the parts to several other "musical devices" are still in an unmarked box somewhere in one of three possible locations.
My friend went on to make 3 very nice looking electric ukulele's before the school shut down the night classes.
Attachments
When I got my first Lionel in 1953 my father realized a rheostat was a crap speed controller so he brought home a variac which I still have.
Mine was 1954! It is now bequeathed to #2 son who provided us with the first grand child! Here it is almost November, and how fondly I remember the arrival of the Lionel catalog before Thanksgiving.
Back to topic -- I have been buying refurb'd laptops at Microcenter in Cleveland. They go for about 20% the price of the new editions and work like a champ dealing with my VNA. I did splurge on a M$FT surface for domestic purpose.
Living just south of Atlantia Ga. I got some bad weather from huricane Zeta. My power went off around midnight so when I tried to fire my computer up the next morning I found the storm had killed it.
My brothers and I got my grandfathers pre WW-II Lionel train set around 1960. Like most young kids we had no idea what we had. We made trains jump over each other, wreck, run over Hot Wheels cars.....
I appropriated the bigger of the two Trainmaster transformers. It became my go-to device for "testing' stuff as a young kid. I do remember that it would light up almost any tube I connected it up to, and it did a good job melting paper clips and bobby pins. I had that thing well into my teenage years....until I got a real Variac from some military scrap.
As a kid, I looked forward to the Lafayette Radio Electronics catalog that arrived in November as well. It was the only time of the year I could get new parts for my projects. I had to choose carefully.
My latest "computer" project involves making music with a Teensy 4.1, some encoders, a touch screen display.....and a bit of wood.
PJRC Store
I took this setup to Florida on a recent vacation planning to make some "music by the water" videos, but Hurricane Sally sort of "dampened" my plans. We got 18 inches of rain overnight the third day we were there. I did one live video without the laptop (due to the constant rain threat) so no music was recorded. There were some other sessions done in the room, but power outages sort of messed most of them up. I am fixing some of the music tracks up and may use some of it with video we made playing games in a hurricane.
The calm before the hurricane - no music, just the surf, the wind and the birds - YouTube
Attachments
Just really want to share this but I don't know a lot of computer interested people, so you guys get to suffer instead.
Yesterday I got an email verifying that I managed to score a Radeon RX 6800 graphics card! Woho! Really looking forward to it! 😀
Yesterday I got an email verifying that I managed to score a Radeon RX 6800 graphics card! Woho! Really looking forward to it! 😀
That's very exciting, KaffiMann. While I am perfectly happy with my "old" RX480, I would love to have one of the new 6000 series. I just can't justify spending the money on one at this time. Maybe in a year or two when I can get a used one for a couple hundred bucks.
Too much!
Retail price here was 7599 for the NON XT version, will be steeper for the "proper" variants, but hoping for some flashing bios magic.
I looked at the watch and went OH $h1... dig out the cellphone go to the one supplier I knew would have some, refreshrefreshrefreshrefresh site went down, 10sek refresh intervals some times, oh yes I'm in! Beeline for the non-XT since I knew they'd be more likely to get.
Empty wallet, fairly certain I'll be getting the card tomorrow! 😀
😀
Sorry it's a bit blurry, I was more focused on gettin' it in when I got lucky! 😀
It's awesome!
Edit:
I also went from a RX480, it's a big upgrade.
From struggling a bit to break 60hz 1080, to get smooth 120hz on 1440p with just a few things notched down from ultra. Unable to spot the difference between the full ultra and the adjustments to get more framerate. Way smooth.
Edit2:
I'm going to get a new hdmi cable after breakfast, to see if I can get more than 60hz 4k. Just a cable but there's a big difference on the resolution and refresh rate I can select when trying different cables.
Edit3:
Just checked online if there was any 48gbps hdmi cables within driving distance and there's nothing, ordered online for a pittance...
Sorry it's a bit blurry, I was more focused on gettin' it in when I got lucky! 😀
It's awesome!
Edit:
I also went from a RX480, it's a big upgrade.
From struggling a bit to break 60hz 1080, to get smooth 120hz on 1440p with just a few things notched down from ultra. Unable to spot the difference between the full ultra and the adjustments to get more framerate. Way smooth.
Edit2:
I'm going to get a new hdmi cable after breakfast, to see if I can get more than 60hz 4k. Just a cable but there's a big difference on the resolution and refresh rate I can select when trying different cables.
Edit3:
Just checked online if there was any 48gbps hdmi cables within driving distance and there's nothing, ordered online for a pittance...
Attachments
Last edited:
Often it isn't just the cable, but the monitor and/or monitor interface.
For example, my wife uses a 28" 4K Samsung that will only do max 60Hz at 4K, and it will not do that with any HDMI cable as far as I know - drops down to 30Hz. Display Port, no problem.
I am sure you have done this, but just in case maybe double-check your monitor specs to see if it is actually capable of 120Hz at 4K. Also, if it has Display Port, I would recommend using that. Although you've just said you ordered a new HDMI cable...
Either way, enjoy that new card!
For example, my wife uses a 28" 4K Samsung that will only do max 60Hz at 4K, and it will not do that with any HDMI cable as far as I know - drops down to 30Hz. Display Port, no problem.
I am sure you have done this, but just in case maybe double-check your monitor specs to see if it is actually capable of 120Hz at 4K. Also, if it has Display Port, I would recommend using that. Although you've just said you ordered a new HDMI cable...
Either way, enjoy that new card!
The video card is interesting, but what's more interesting is the wood-frame contraption in front of the speaker!
;')
;')
I was also trying to guess what that was. The black plastic thing in the middle looks like an old (30 pin) iPhone dock.
I use a cheap 4K TV as a display on two of my PC's. The machine I'm typing on currently has a $220 Hisense 4K TV from a Walmart black Friday sale 3 or 4 years ago. I does 4K @ 30 Hz over HDMI, but will not eat anything faster.
I sprung for a $279 4K Samsung TV two years ago for my video editing TV. Despite saying 120 Hz all over the box and literature, it will not go past 4K @ 60 Hz. Some info round on the internet reveals that the TV does actually refresh its screen at a 120 Hz rate, but it's a sort of interlaced format. The actual frame rate is 60 Hz over HDMI or DP.
I upgraded the video card in the PC to a GTX 1660 at the same time that I bought the TV. It was a relatively new PC build with a Ryzen 7 3800X CPU and 32 GB of memory. With that TV / card combination it will take from 3 to 8 hours to render a 10 minute 4K @ 30 Hz video with Blender and a bit longer in Resolve depending on what I did, and what the original images came from. The previous video card was a GTX 1050. It took 1.5 to 2 X the time to render the same video files.
I set it up late at night and it's done the next morning. The spend needed to improve that to something that would change my "overnight" workflow would be more than the whole PC cost.
I use a cheap 4K TV as a display on two of my PC's. The machine I'm typing on currently has a $220 Hisense 4K TV from a Walmart black Friday sale 3 or 4 years ago. I does 4K @ 30 Hz over HDMI, but will not eat anything faster.
I sprung for a $279 4K Samsung TV two years ago for my video editing TV. Despite saying 120 Hz all over the box and literature, it will not go past 4K @ 60 Hz. Some info round on the internet reveals that the TV does actually refresh its screen at a 120 Hz rate, but it's a sort of interlaced format. The actual frame rate is 60 Hz over HDMI or DP.
I upgraded the video card in the PC to a GTX 1660 at the same time that I bought the TV. It was a relatively new PC build with a Ryzen 7 3800X CPU and 32 GB of memory. With that TV / card combination it will take from 3 to 8 hours to render a 10 minute 4K @ 30 Hz video with Blender and a bit longer in Resolve depending on what I did, and what the original images came from. The previous video card was a GTX 1050. It took 1.5 to 2 X the time to render the same video files.
I set it up late at night and it's done the next morning. The spend needed to improve that to something that would change my "overnight" workflow would be more than the whole PC cost.
To me it looks like steering wheel for computer... 😀 Since he got new AMD graphic card I guess he did not buy it for audio 😀
Last edited:
I think Displayport is a fantastic interface and hdmi sucks bigtime!
But displayport is not an option, since I thought a 32" 144hz monitor was much too small, I've tried projectors but found it was not worth it. Purchased a 55" true 120hz Samsung Qled on discount, finding a tv with displayport is not easy. A proper monitor the same size would cost me 5-8 times as much money, not an option.
Yesterday I went around testing the various hdmi cables laying around the house, and I can confirm that the certification of the cable really must make a difference. On some cables I got just a handful of resolution and refresh rate options, on other cables I got several pages worth. So after finding a cable that gets me to 1440p at 120hz (the one I was using before the cable suspicion-hunt worked at 1080p 120hz but at 1440p gave 75hz, could still give 4k at 60hz) I'm just calling it good enough until I get the new cable.
It really does make a difference.
On another note:
It's indeed a steering wheel contraption!
Weighed down by 24kg in the front, and 12kg in the back.
Attachments
Last edited:
There are DP to HDMI adapters and converters that can be mounted right at the TV. I tried two different ones, and both sucked. One wouldn't do 4K @60. The other did with no issues, but had to be unplugged from the PC at boot and then plugged in after W10 was running in order to be recognized at all.
I haven't played games since Space Quest II, so I didn't even consider that possibility.