I saw that while scanning for something else. I figured I'd post it next time I saw someone raving about the sound of MV rectifiers. Beats "Kills kittens!!"
No worries about _you_ using it in instrumentation designed for MV. Still a hazard but, despite the bad judgement of having and losing a bottle of Merc in the house/shop, at least you understand the risks and have an actual "need".
I do think that 1N4007s and 14V 10W Zeners will be same-as for all practical purpose, when feeding tube-loads. But as you have no cross-check, I understand the concern.
My uncle was seriously poisoned by a Mercury spill in the carpet of his car, where the heater blew across it. Complete personality change and was sick too.
I have always wondered about a merc-spill in high school. I may have been smarter before that.
No worries about _you_ using it in instrumentation designed for MV. Still a hazard but, despite the bad judgement of having and losing a bottle of Merc in the house/shop, at least you understand the risks and have an actual "need".
I do think that 1N4007s and 14V 10W Zeners will be same-as for all practical purpose, when feeding tube-loads. But as you have no cross-check, I understand the concern.
My uncle was seriously poisoned by a Mercury spill in the carpet of his car, where the heater blew across it. Complete personality change and was sick too.
I have always wondered about a merc-spill in high school. I may have been smarter before that.
Hi PRR,
Yes. Thanks.
Mercury is no joke. It is very dangerous stuff, but it does have applications where it is the only answer. I have some power relays that are Mercury whetted. They go in my speaker switching load box. Of course there is the Mercury tilt switch and those really nice signal relays. It's too bad they won't allow the sale of this stuff with appropriate warnings.
I bought the vial of Mercury as a teenager. At that time, the chemical supply house wanted to know what use I had in mind, and one ounce was the smallest size. I was going to etch aluminum panels for face plates. Someone said it can be used in explosives. I doubt that without a lot of processing. The fact that I still have over 90% of that batch tells you I was at least responsible with it, treating it with some respect. It's either with my ammunition, or in the chemical box for the lab here. That box is for overstock chemicals, so I'm not into it that often. The Mercury is somewhere safe and always has been. I've seen it from time to time and merely acknowledge that it exists.
-Chris
Yes. Thanks.
Mercury is no joke. It is very dangerous stuff, but it does have applications where it is the only answer. I have some power relays that are Mercury whetted. They go in my speaker switching load box. Of course there is the Mercury tilt switch and those really nice signal relays. It's too bad they won't allow the sale of this stuff with appropriate warnings.
I bought the vial of Mercury as a teenager. At that time, the chemical supply house wanted to know what use I had in mind, and one ounce was the smallest size. I was going to etch aluminum panels for face plates. Someone said it can be used in explosives. I doubt that without a lot of processing. The fact that I still have over 90% of that batch tells you I was at least responsible with it, treating it with some respect. It's either with my ammunition, or in the chemical box for the lab here. That box is for overstock chemicals, so I'm not into it that often. The Mercury is somewhere safe and always has been. I've seen it from time to time and merely acknowledge that it exists.
-Chris
Hi TheGimp,
Anyway, don't even consider making a tame black powder. That stuff isn't always perfectly predictable when you mix it yourself. Just don't, that's all. Do not play with this stuff that will make a Darwin award winner out of you.
-Chris
Let's just say, "yes, something like that". If I researched this enough, I bet I could make the stuff, but no thanks! I've made explosives before, and that teaches you to have a great deal of care and awareness of your surroundings. I also have the CRC book on chemistry, circa 1979. It isn't shy about these things. The best legal book was Van Nostrands Scientific Encyclopedia. That book got me into a lot of trouble. An acquaintance of mine from long ago has the Anarchists Cookbook. Those were some severely bent individuals who tabulated that information. It is illegal for very good reason.
Anyway, don't even consider making a tame black powder. That stuff isn't always perfectly predictable when you mix it yourself. Just don't, that's all. Do not play with this stuff that will make a Darwin award winner out of you.
-Chris
A a mentally and physically abusive relationship with an alcoholic father led me to attempt suicide when I was in the 4th grade (age 10). I had collected a good deal of mercury by smashing ordinary light switches. I knew it was poisonous, so I ate it all. It made me very sick, for a few days, but I'm still here.
At the time I was attending FAU for my masters degree there was a serious contamination panic. It seems that some mercury (several POUNDS) went missing from the chem lab, but it had been recovered......Then more mercury started turning up scattered, or spilled all over campus. The source was unknown. If the chem lab or physics lab was anything like the electronics lab......anything goes.
The 1994 newspaper article is linked here. The true source of the contamination that evacuated the dorms was not mentioned, but it was the dimwit that tried to suck up a spill in the house vacuum cleaner. That vacuum was used all over the women's dorm house, spewing mercury vapor everywhere it went......until the guys in the white bunny suits took it away in a hazmat bag.
4 POUNDS OF MERCURY FOUND AT FAU - Sun Sentinel
All the diffusion pumps at Motorola ran on expensive oil. I have seen a diffusion pump run on Mobil 1 automotive motor oil. It took a long bake out period and didn't pull as low as it should, but it was headed for the dumpster anyway, so we tried it.
Definitely not a DIY project, nor is DIY nitroglycerin. Either will blow up for no good reason, especially if cooked up a little wrong. One of my friends found this out the hard way, but he is still alive too.
At the time I was attending FAU for my masters degree there was a serious contamination panic. It seems that some mercury (several POUNDS) went missing from the chem lab, but it had been recovered......Then more mercury started turning up scattered, or spilled all over campus. The source was unknown. If the chem lab or physics lab was anything like the electronics lab......anything goes.
The 1994 newspaper article is linked here. The true source of the contamination that evacuated the dorms was not mentioned, but it was the dimwit that tried to suck up a spill in the house vacuum cleaner. That vacuum was used all over the women's dorm house, spewing mercury vapor everywhere it went......until the guys in the white bunny suits took it away in a hazmat bag.
4 POUNDS OF MERCURY FOUND AT FAU - Sun Sentinel
All the diffusion pumps at Motorola ran on expensive oil. I have seen a diffusion pump run on Mobil 1 automotive motor oil. It took a long bake out period and didn't pull as low as it should, but it was headed for the dumpster anyway, so we tried it.
Definitely not a DIY project, nor is DIY nitroglycerin. Either will blow up for no good reason, especially if cooked up a little wrong. One of my friends found this out the hard way, but he is still alive too.
It was deeply investigated but never illegal in the US. Someone was charged with possession and found not guilty. Canada allowed it in 2002. It does not preach hate or violence (only tools). It has twice been denied 'classification' in Australia and is apparently not allowed there.
Its author now calls for it to be "quickly and quietly taken out of print".
A 2016 edition is readily available on Amazon US. One reviewer claims it is 1/3rd the size of the original and he-heard the present publisher "sanitized it".
One PDF I found is clearly a modern re-take: no bombs, good recipes for food and social organization and action.
The book will never become unavailable. And the recipes are quite clear and mostly complete (even our FBI noted that). Which is why it is found after many incidents. Here's a snip from an old copy:
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Hi George,
Sorry to hear. I'm very glad you are still with us as you make the world a richer place.
Hi PRR,
Gee, I didn't know we allowed it again. Of course you're right, it didn't push hate or anything like that. It did talk about civil disobedience, then on to tools for disruption. It was, however, packed full of recipes that could easily ease you out of this mortal coil. Like we need help! A great section on traps ... and I could go on. Those are memories from 1978. I have never had the urge to reacquaint myself with this book.
-Chris
Sorry to hear. I'm very glad you are still with us as you make the world a richer place.
Hi PRR,
Gee, I didn't know we allowed it again. Of course you're right, it didn't push hate or anything like that. It did talk about civil disobedience, then on to tools for disruption. It was, however, packed full of recipes that could easily ease you out of this mortal coil. Like we need help! A great section on traps ... and I could go on. Those are memories from 1978. I have never had the urge to reacquaint myself with this book.
-Chris
Mr. Wizard
I made most of this stuff back as a kid. Used to make black powder with saltpeter purchased from the nearby pharmacist. he didn't have a clue. Rolled up the mix in wet newspaper into a big stogie, compressed in a vice, let dry, then... BOOM!!! Trees, old lawn mowers, etc. were no match (pun intended) for some of these bombs. Built an earth bunker for testing.
Also made some nitroglycerin, but managed to etch my kneecap with boiling nitric / sulfuric when a flask cracked and leaked. Not a good thing. But I was successful in producing enough to make a significant report.
Nitrogen tri-iodide was always fun to take to school and scatter wet on the floor.
Acetone peroxide is another quicky, but I don't recommend making any of these w/o a death wish. I was young and dumb wrt consequences of mis-handling, but managed not to die.
Stayed away from fulminates, tho. Too unstable.
My goal (@14) was to somehow make something spectacular with my 4' Tesla coil and one (or more) of these concoctions, to see what happened. Didn't get a Nobel prize for anything spectacular, but it was fun when things didn't go wrong
I made most of this stuff back as a kid. Used to make black powder with saltpeter purchased from the nearby pharmacist. he didn't have a clue. Rolled up the mix in wet newspaper into a big stogie, compressed in a vice, let dry, then... BOOM!!! Trees, old lawn mowers, etc. were no match (pun intended) for some of these bombs. Built an earth bunker for testing.
Also made some nitroglycerin, but managed to etch my kneecap with boiling nitric / sulfuric when a flask cracked and leaked. Not a good thing. But I was successful in producing enough to make a significant report.
Nitrogen tri-iodide was always fun to take to school and scatter wet on the floor.
Acetone peroxide is another quicky, but I don't recommend making any of these w/o a death wish. I was young and dumb wrt consequences of mis-handling, but managed not to die.
Stayed away from fulminates, tho. Too unstable.
My goal (@14) was to somehow make something spectacular with my 4' Tesla coil and one (or more) of these concoctions, to see what happened. Didn't get a Nobel prize for anything spectacular, but it was fun when things didn't go wrong
I had one of those. I purchased it at a gun show in the 70's for cheap. I might have tried some of the "formulas." I gave the book to a coworker who often left in on his desk to intimidate people. He had a big attitude, but was basically harmless.
I have made DIY fireworks from childhood up until the WTC attack in 2001. Every 4th of July and New Years Eve I would "test" my creations in the yard and street in front of my house while the neighbors and often the police watched. As with all avenues of display, the show got bigger and crazier every year, with several others joining in. New Years Eve 1999->2000 was the biggest, when we vowed to "blow up the new millennium."
After the 911-WTC act of terrorism a local police officer quietly informed me that they knew who I was, and what I did. They had been issued orders to no longer ignore those flagrant violations if the law.....no more DIY "firecrackers".
We also made some purple stains on the floor at work.
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On re-reading... it is an *excellent* example of writing technical procedures for non-technical readers. Some of the clearest instructions I have ever read. Beats pi$$ out of most tutorials.
Even so, with this stuff the least mis-reading makes it more dangerous to the reader than to the "them". I wonder if, aside from Free Speech issues, it was decided to pass on banning it here because maybe the freaks would blow themselves up. (As has happened.)
It does point out that some Fulminates will explode from a fly walking on them. He says don't mess with this, buy or steal the stuff.
Back to the subject of buying stuff....
Early last year the motherboard in my high end PC that is used for video editing and amateur music making, died. I dug through my collection of old computer stuff, found a motherboard that would accept the CPU, swapped boards and went on with life.
Early this year the mid range computer that I'm typing this on started screaming the dying fan scream. I opened the case and found two of the case fans dead, and the third dying. I did the usual low budget repair, rip out all three fans, and rig a new one in place of the front case fan. This machine does not see hard use and the warmest things in the box are the hard drives, so I replaced the fan that blows directly on them.
More recently the "E" drive in this PC started doing the disappearing act, so I copied its contents over to another drive. A couple weeks ago "E" died completely.
I rip the PC apart and came to the realization that "E" was the NEWEST drive in the computer and it was nearly 5 years old. The CPU, MB and all other components in that box are over 5 years old.
I have 5 PC's here in the basement lab that see casual (audio tester/Labview, or music player), or daily use. I rip them ALL apart. Some of the hard drives are over 10 years old! I had repurposed an old PC that was a DVR in Florida to be my workbench PC. I found TV shows on the hard drive that were recorded in 2010.
I decided that the first order of business was to back up every hard drive in this place, so I purchased a 10 TB "enterprise storage" drive, wire it into an unused PC, and start going through drives, copying their contents to the big one. I have gone through over 20 hard drives in the past month, first copying their contents, then running diagnostics and reformatting the "keepers." 4 drives were just dead. All of these drives were 4 to 10 years old, so that's probably about right.
Then, I spent about a week removing duplicate files and junk like old TV shows, and organizing my "digital footprint" into something useful. Over 8 TB of random mess is now under 4TB. This exercise confirmed something that I already knew, all the random pictures from my first two digital cameras are lost forever. The organized stuff shot purposefully for Tubelab and other events like car shows and races did survive. Every random image since then, even the blurry accidents, is now stored in two places.....
So to avoid another mishap like the dropped PC that contained the two copies of all my old pictures, I purchased an identical pair of 10 TB drives. They will be installed in a DIY NAS box for backup purposes. Exactly how I will do this is yet to be determined, but for now one of those drives is a clone of the "footprint" drive.
Since all my stuff is running on 5 year old, or older hardware, I decided to build an new PC. The video / music PC runs a 4th gen core i7-4790K CPU. It turns out to be a decent performer despite its age, but still takes all night to render a 10 minute 4K video. I would need a rather pricey setup to do better if I stayed with "team blue" (Intel).
I have not purchased an AMD product since the Hector Ruiz years. I lost a technical argument with him at Motorola in the 1990's that eventually cost the company a VERY large contract. This PC will be my first "team red" build EVER.
To do better than the 5 year old Intel part, I would need a high end core i7, or mid range core i9 chip ($450 to $850).....or an AMD Ryzen 7-3800X for $350. Motherboard and 32 GB of RAM brings the total to just under $600. The Ryzen part beats the Intel stuff easily in 4K video editing, mostly because of the higher core / thread count. Music making / recording needs strong single thread performance, and the Ryzen wins again, but only by 15% or so.
Video card, case, power supply....will be recycled from the old machine. It's MB and associated stuff will go in this machine, and this one's guts go in the workbench PC to replace the second gen core i5-2400. There is a stack of 10 tested hard drives on the bench which will be distributed according to need.
The new stuff should be here on Friday.
Early last year the motherboard in my high end PC that is used for video editing and amateur music making, died. I dug through my collection of old computer stuff, found a motherboard that would accept the CPU, swapped boards and went on with life.
Early this year the mid range computer that I'm typing this on started screaming the dying fan scream. I opened the case and found two of the case fans dead, and the third dying. I did the usual low budget repair, rip out all three fans, and rig a new one in place of the front case fan. This machine does not see hard use and the warmest things in the box are the hard drives, so I replaced the fan that blows directly on them.
More recently the "E" drive in this PC started doing the disappearing act, so I copied its contents over to another drive. A couple weeks ago "E" died completely.
I rip the PC apart and came to the realization that "E" was the NEWEST drive in the computer and it was nearly 5 years old. The CPU, MB and all other components in that box are over 5 years old.
I have 5 PC's here in the basement lab that see casual (audio tester/Labview, or music player), or daily use. I rip them ALL apart. Some of the hard drives are over 10 years old! I had repurposed an old PC that was a DVR in Florida to be my workbench PC. I found TV shows on the hard drive that were recorded in 2010.
I decided that the first order of business was to back up every hard drive in this place, so I purchased a 10 TB "enterprise storage" drive, wire it into an unused PC, and start going through drives, copying their contents to the big one. I have gone through over 20 hard drives in the past month, first copying their contents, then running diagnostics and reformatting the "keepers." 4 drives were just dead. All of these drives were 4 to 10 years old, so that's probably about right.
Then, I spent about a week removing duplicate files and junk like old TV shows, and organizing my "digital footprint" into something useful. Over 8 TB of random mess is now under 4TB. This exercise confirmed something that I already knew, all the random pictures from my first two digital cameras are lost forever. The organized stuff shot purposefully for Tubelab and other events like car shows and races did survive. Every random image since then, even the blurry accidents, is now stored in two places.....
So to avoid another mishap like the dropped PC that contained the two copies of all my old pictures, I purchased an identical pair of 10 TB drives. They will be installed in a DIY NAS box for backup purposes. Exactly how I will do this is yet to be determined, but for now one of those drives is a clone of the "footprint" drive.
Since all my stuff is running on 5 year old, or older hardware, I decided to build an new PC. The video / music PC runs a 4th gen core i7-4790K CPU. It turns out to be a decent performer despite its age, but still takes all night to render a 10 minute 4K video. I would need a rather pricey setup to do better if I stayed with "team blue" (Intel).
I have not purchased an AMD product since the Hector Ruiz years. I lost a technical argument with him at Motorola in the 1990's that eventually cost the company a VERY large contract. This PC will be my first "team red" build EVER.
To do better than the 5 year old Intel part, I would need a high end core i7, or mid range core i9 chip ($450 to $850).....or an AMD Ryzen 7-3800X for $350. Motherboard and 32 GB of RAM brings the total to just under $600. The Ryzen part beats the Intel stuff easily in 4K video editing, mostly because of the higher core / thread count. Music making / recording needs strong single thread performance, and the Ryzen wins again, but only by 15% or so.
Video card, case, power supply....will be recycled from the old machine. It's MB and associated stuff will go in this machine, and this one's guts go in the workbench PC to replace the second gen core i5-2400. There is a stack of 10 tested hard drives on the bench which will be distributed according to need.
The new stuff should be here on Friday.
It's all about AMD again.
The CPU wars continue.
Remember the Celeron 300 that would easily overclock to 450?
Then came the Duron and Athlon which kicked Intel in the butt. I had an AMD Athlon "Barton" chip. It was a laptop chip rated at 1866MHz, but I ran it in a desktop rig at 2500MHz using a 226W Peltier cooler LOL
Then the i3i/5i/7 from Intel kicked AMDs butt for years. I had a Sandy Bridge i7-2700k (3.5GHz OC'd to 4.5GHz) that ran for 8 years. The caps in the CPU power supply are shot and I can't be bothered to fix them so...
No more. Now it's AMD's turn to shine again. I now have the 2700X, and after some research, the 260mm water cooler I was using has been replaced with the STOCK cooler that came with the chip as the difference is only about 1%. The AMD CBS system does a great job. Enough that manually overclocking the CPU is a waste of time.
That coupled with AMD supporting Linux (The driver for my new AMD 5700 XT video card is open source directly from AMD!). If you're cheap like me, you can save some money by going with the Ryzen 2700X. It's a fast chip and it's on clearance now because the 3700X replaced it which is about 15% faster for ~200$ more... I built my other half and my father Ryzen5 2600 systems. Both are running well and the CPU, MB, and 16 gigs of memory were 500$ tax in! The last time I saw a system for 500$ it was garbage!
Thankfully, I don't have a lot of computers, and almost all of them use solid state storage now. My data collection is backed up. two 4TB drives in raid 0, and an 8TB "archive" drive, I have 14% left.
Which enterprise drives did you buy? I've seen great numbers on the Ultrastar drives (low failure rates) and a 5 year warranty.
The CPU wars continue.
Remember the Celeron 300 that would easily overclock to 450?
Then came the Duron and Athlon which kicked Intel in the butt. I had an AMD Athlon "Barton" chip. It was a laptop chip rated at 1866MHz, but I ran it in a desktop rig at 2500MHz using a 226W Peltier cooler LOL
Then the i3i/5i/7 from Intel kicked AMDs butt for years. I had a Sandy Bridge i7-2700k (3.5GHz OC'd to 4.5GHz) that ran for 8 years. The caps in the CPU power supply are shot and I can't be bothered to fix them so...
No more. Now it's AMD's turn to shine again. I now have the 2700X, and after some research, the 260mm water cooler I was using has been replaced with the STOCK cooler that came with the chip as the difference is only about 1%. The AMD CBS system does a great job. Enough that manually overclocking the CPU is a waste of time.
That coupled with AMD supporting Linux (The driver for my new AMD 5700 XT video card is open source directly from AMD!). If you're cheap like me, you can save some money by going with the Ryzen 2700X. It's a fast chip and it's on clearance now because the 3700X replaced it which is about 15% faster for ~200$ more... I built my other half and my father Ryzen5 2600 systems. Both are running well and the CPU, MB, and 16 gigs of memory were 500$ tax in! The last time I saw a system for 500$ it was garbage!
Thankfully, I don't have a lot of computers, and almost all of them use solid state storage now. My data collection is backed up. two 4TB drives in raid 0, and an 8TB "archive" drive, I have 14% left.
Which enterprise drives did you buy? I've seen great numbers on the Ultrastar drives (low failure rates) and a 5 year warranty.
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I started "overclocking" computers with my MC6800 system that ran at 921 KHz (yes, that's KiloHertz) which with some selected chips would make 1.843 MHz (jumper the divider on the baud rate generator)
I go back to the days of overclocking 8088's. All genuine IBM PC's ran at 4.77 MHz. This was derived from the same 14.318 MHz crystal that ran the CGA (Color Graphics Adapter) board, and is 4 X the NTSC color subcarrier frequency.
In both cases the baud rate, or CGA rate was simply divided down to make the processor clock to save the cost of a crystal.
The early IBM clones actually used two canned crystal oscillator packages to make the board layout easier, so I borrowed a HP3325 frequency generator from work, wired it into the motherboard in place of the oscillator that drove the processor, cranked it up until the machine quit, then backed up a bit. Heat was not an issue in these old machines.
We overclocked lots of computers, but my best "overclock" was an early Intel 80386 chip rated at 16 MHz. It would run as fast as 50 MHz but got so hot the paint peeled, so we settled at 40 MHz. After about a year all the white "Intel" paint had peeled and the purplish ceramic package had turned grey with a noticeable dark spot in the center. I stuck a small heat sink to the chip with epoxy and put it all back together. That machine lived on for nearly 5 more years.
All of the machines that I have with "K" chips in them have been overclocked in the 5 to 10% range. Basically I turned them up in 5% steps until they misbehaved or got too hot when running a full blast "stress everything" test with Prime 95. I then backed up 5 or 10% because I need a stable machine more than I need a fast machine.
There was a lot of noise when Intel released the "Anniversary Edition" Pentuim chip with an unlocked multiplier in 2016. They were cheap, so I got one and threw it into a small machine used mostly for playing music. The chip was rated at 3.2 GHz but some enthusiasts were reporting 5 GHz with water cooling.....Why you would run a $100 (in 2016) water cooling rig on a $70 chip, I don't know, but.... I stuck an Intel fan from a bigger chip on the little Pentium and turned it up. Mine got amnesia at 4.4 GHz and wouldn't make it through POST at 4.5 GHz, so I set it at 4.0 GHz and left it. It still runs fine today, but I found a core i5-4690K in a dead motherboard, so it looks like the Pentium will get evicted from its socket.
So, the Amazon delivery girl (USPS) showed up today with some goodies. The AMD CPU showed up. It comes with a rather large stock cooler that I will actually use, unlike most factory Intel coolers which are marginal at best.
Those little spring breadboarding connectors like found in 1960's experimenters kits showed up too. They are also exactly wbat I have been looking for, so a new Tubelab breadboard will be in the works.
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It's funny that you guys are all over AMD, and I just recently declared that I am done with them. My most recent laptop, AMD by Dell, has had an insane amount of failures over the last couple of years. My xmas gift list has a new processor and SSD on it so I can go back to using my previous laptop as my main machine again. It has been a tank: i3 by Dell.
Not so much anymore... Especially if you consider the APU offerings...
Also there's a real test which shows Intel is still a power hog over AMD in the extreme level processor market. https://www.gamersnexus.net/images/media/2019/CPUs/r5-3600/games/power-blender_r5-3600-review.png
Also there's a real test which shows Intel is still a power hog over AMD in the extreme level processor market. https://www.gamersnexus.net/images/media/2019/CPUs/r5-3600/games/power-blender_r5-3600-review.png