My best friend from high school has a PDP in his basement. Anyone else remember the saga of "The Soul of a New Machine"?
This location -- from the location of acoustic couplers and phone-patches to help GI's communicate back w their folk in the States in the 1960's.
Connect 120V to the cable outlet and see how fast the come fix it...Just kidding. Don't do that.
I did that to my phone line back in 1973. The fire gods danced all over those long round fuses in the box on the side of the house. This got the phone company to replace my 1950's vintage stuff with some 1960's vintage stuff that actually worked on a rainy day (almost every day in the summer in Florida).
I did the same thing to my Cramcast cable in Florida around 2010......they were wise to my tricks, nothing happened. It didn't make it work any better, or any worse. My year was almost up, so I did my yearly flip from Cramcast, to AT&T. When the promotional rate ran out I would call them and threaten to switch. This usually got another year of cheap TV, internet and phone. If not, I switched. The promotional rate was usually $79 to $99 per month for TV, internet and phone. More money for just internet and phone.
I don't watch much TV, but I got 42 channels with an antenna in Florida. Most were a single 1080 stream per RF channel. Here with an antenna and an RF amp I can get one RF channel. They squash a 1080 stream, a 720 stream, and a 525 line stream through that single RF channel, so it's compressed pretty bad.
No such luck here. Cramcast is the only game in town and they know it. $270 per month for TV, phone and internet. They still don't fix anything.
The pole in the pictures rotted off at the ground line. Someone simply hacked up the tree behind it and hung the pole in a "V" in the tree. The first picture was taken in May of 2020. Now nearly a year later the pole is still hanging in the tree. The second picture was taken last week.
There is also a ground block from the cable to the same ground rod that grounds the electrical service drop. It doesn't seem to affect anything though. My internet speed varies with the time of day, the weather, and anything that puts more people in front of their PC or TV. On a Sunday morning I usually get FAST speed. I have never seen a gigabit, but I have seen 950 Mbps several times. Friday evenings at 6PM, 250 Mbps is more like it. Maybe a bit less if it's raining or real cold.
The TV is a different story. There are several more poles that are standing because the cable is holding them up. They sway in the wind, and the TV picture pixelizes often. This confuses the DVR, so it gives up. Cramcast just swaps the DVR.....doesn't fix the problem, but causes Sherri to lose all her saved TV, so as they expected we don't call them. Maybe the DVR needs to meet the wall outlet.........
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I replaced the spark plugs in my 2002 Dodge 1500 4.7L pickup truck. Took two hours due to some small balck plastic plug dropping down in the well for the plug and coil-pack on the right rear cylinder (least accessible).
I expect this to be the last set of plugs I change in the truck.It has 173K miles on it and I expect these will outlast my possession of it.
I expect this to be the last set of plugs I change in the truck.It has 173K miles on it and I expect these will outlast my possession of it.
Same for me, so my one "vintage" phone, a Bell touchtone "princess" with a real bell, I had to lighten up the spring action so it could still ring on the lower voltage.
Same here!
that's another reason why I refused Verizon's TV service, and ignore cable too.
I remember my parents ditched cable when I was about six. I was massively unhappy at the time, though looking back on it, I can't imagine why anyone would pay for that service. Now the only time I have to watch anything on cable is when I'm troublshooting someone else's cable box, which is a whole lot more often than I like.
I got rid of my home phone a few months back, and that was the best decision I made all year. Really doesn't save much money at all, but all of the sudden I was a much happier person. No more getting interrupted every couple hours by spam.
I got rid of my home phone a few months back, and that was the best decision I made all year. Really doesn't save much money at all, but all of the sudden I was a much happier person. No more getting interrupted every couple hours by spam.
Yes - it's great book! I still have it.. somewhere in the 1000s of books which one day I really must sort out...
Hi kodabmx,
That's a very familiar sight for me. The BIX field. I put my home wiring on BIX and am using an old Partner ACS. A system I love. I'm about to upgrade the system to an ACS R7 or 8. The 206 EC cards are being replaced by 308ECs and I'm installing a Partner VMS voicemail again. I think I have a 4 port license card for it.
My TV is fantastic on Bell. Better than it ever has been, and much better than cable. I was on satellite, then DSL, now Fiber optic cable. I would highly recommend it.
The 500 Meg service cost the same as my 100 Meg service - so I switched. I can go up to 1.5 gig, but I figured 500 Meg should be good enough. To go all the way I would have to forklift my network to something faster than gigabit. That means fiber to each computer. I don't need that.
-Chris
-Chris
That's a very familiar sight for me. The BIX field. I put my home wiring on BIX and am using an old Partner ACS. A system I love. I'm about to upgrade the system to an ACS R7 or 8. The 206 EC cards are being replaced by 308ECs and I'm installing a Partner VMS voicemail again. I think I have a 4 port license card for it.
My TV is fantastic on Bell. Better than it ever has been, and much better than cable. I was on satellite, then DSL, now Fiber optic cable. I would highly recommend it.
The 500 Meg service cost the same as my 100 Meg service - so I switched. I can go up to 1.5 gig, but I figured 500 Meg should be good enough. To go all the way I would have to forklift my network to something faster than gigabit. That means fiber to each computer. I don't need that.
-Chris
-Chris
Harmon Kardon 142
I have this AVR on my bench, it is in protection mode. I found the emitter resistors were blown on one channel. The outputs are 2SB1559/2SD2389 darlingtons. When testing them they test OK between Base, emitter and collector. I replaced the emitter resistor and they got hot again. I then tested the outputs again and found they were short between collector and emitter. I will in future make sure to test trannies thoroughly. The trannies that test OK have a diode between emitter and collecter.This caught me out a bit !
I have this AVR on my bench, it is in protection mode. I found the emitter resistors were blown on one channel. The outputs are 2SB1559/2SD2389 darlingtons. When testing them they test OK between Base, emitter and collector. I replaced the emitter resistor and they got hot again. I then tested the outputs again and found they were short between collector and emitter. I will in future make sure to test trannies thoroughly. The trannies that test OK have a diode between emitter and collecter.This caught me out a bit !
There are now only three cellular carriers in the US. The others are "VMNO's" (buy air time from one of the big three and resell). None of them can provide reliable service where I live. Now that the trees are turning green again, it's no service time, especially on rainy days. Wet green leaves are good RF attenuators in the 700 MHz to 2.5 GHz range where cell signals live.
We need a home phone, but do not answer it unless we know the number. Even then we get at least one ID spoofed scam call from "Windows tech support" a week.
Ya I have their 1Gbit service and their "Best" TV package. It looks better than Rogers did, but the ATSC tuner looks better. Now the problem is the new TV has a virtually worthless tuner. This set picks up about 20 channels, my last one received 60. It might be too sensitive - I can get stations from Buffalo but some Toronto stations are missing!
Does your phone company offer "Call Screen"? That's where the person calling has to say their name and hope you accept the call.
Yesterday a Roland PA-120 landed on my workbench.
The customer saying that reverb fails. So I did a quick check.
Not only was there no reverb but the sound was heavily distorted.
Further investigations revealed cross-over distortion with a step of several 100mV - obviously a matter of the power stage.
With no schematics available I reverse-engineered the power module.
This is what I found.
The output stage is Si-npn-darlington quasi-complementary design with two identical halves stacked as a halfbridge supplied by +-50 approx. These are driven by an audio transformer to provide phase splitting. Bias is set in each half wave by a fixed voltage divider calculated for 50V voltage drop. In other words, each half wave acts like a 50V-power zener diode.
There is no Bias adjust trimpot and no feedback-loop at all.
Thus output DC-offset is a matter of part matching and bias current strongly depends on supply voltage: There is a sweet-spot, below bias drops to zero, above bias explodes and lets the magic smoke emanate. Obviously this a flawed early design (dated 1975) that may have contributed to the bad reputation of SS-designs. All in all this is a very well built power-mixer, mechanical robust and with a well thought layout - but beyond repair.
The customer saying that reverb fails. So I did a quick check.
Not only was there no reverb but the sound was heavily distorted.
Further investigations revealed cross-over distortion with a step of several 100mV - obviously a matter of the power stage.
With no schematics available I reverse-engineered the power module.
This is what I found.
The output stage is Si-npn-darlington quasi-complementary design with two identical halves stacked as a halfbridge supplied by +-50 approx. These are driven by an audio transformer to provide phase splitting. Bias is set in each half wave by a fixed voltage divider calculated for 50V voltage drop. In other words, each half wave acts like a 50V-power zener diode.
There is no Bias adjust trimpot and no feedback-loop at all.
Thus output DC-offset is a matter of part matching and bias current strongly depends on supply voltage: There is a sweet-spot, below bias drops to zero, above bias explodes and lets the magic smoke emanate. Obviously this a flawed early design (dated 1975) that may have contributed to the bad reputation of SS-designs. All in all this is a very well built power-mixer, mechanical robust and with a well thought layout - but beyond repair.
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They all got married, had children, and the virgin daughters are now weaving imported silk insulation on special oxygen-free and gold plated speaker wiring.
I always wanted to tour that factory! Hell, Milton WI is only about a 2-1/2 hr. drive from here.
Oh well. I hope all those beautiful girls are surrounded by happy grandkids these days.
(To be honest though, I never cared for those Folded Line reverb tanks - Accutronics sounded smoother to me.)
Oh well. I hope all those beautiful girls are surrounded by happy grandkids these days.
(To be honest though, I never cared for those Folded Line reverb tanks - Accutronics sounded smoother to me.)