Lightbulb police? (was RE: Anyone off to VCF-UK)

[Tony Duell]

> Although in a few cases the article makes it fairly easy to figure out 
> what the project needs to do. The 1974 thru ~1986 era is 

There were microprocessor (and even microcontroller) projects hack then. 
At least computers based round the SCMP, 6502 (Junior Computer), 2650 (TV 
Games Computer). 

> all-transistor-and-TTL (with few exceptions), whereas the 1990-1999 era 
> is mostly microcontroller systems with little TTL.
> 
> Very odd for them to publish the 1990-1999 PDFs in preference to (say) 
> 1974-1984 -- nearly all the transistors used in those circuits were 
> "TUN" or "TUP"s; that is, Transistor, Universal, NPN or PNP 
> respectively. Diodes similarly were "DUG" or "DUS" -- Diode, Universal, 
> Germanium or Silicon. TTL is similarly easily available, any electronics 
> hobbyist worth his salt will know that 74LS can usually be subbed in for 
> straight-74xx TTL.

Indeed. And somehow I find projects using a handful of simple components 
to be more appealing than just a single 40 pin microcontroller.

> > I stopped reading AP when the editor changed some years ago. Roger Hicks
> > no longer wrote an article every week, it almost totally dropped film
> > photography, and the answers to readers questions were misleading to say
> > the least (I seem to remember them perpetrating ythe myth that the focal
> > lenght of the lens affrcts perspective). Oh, and the 'classic camera'
> > articles became only 2 pages long., although even before that they were
> > somewhat lacking in accuracy.
> 
> It's both amusing and saddening to see them publish an answer to 
> someone's query one week, then publish a retraction-and-correction the 

I rememebr them saying it was better to store recharageble batteries in 
the discharged state (since they then couldn't self-discharge). There my 
be a battery technology where that's true, but most of the common ones 
are better stored charged.

> following week. Things like suggesting RAID arrays as an alternative to 
> offline backups (CD-R, DVD-R, tape, ...)
> Little hint -- what happens if there's a power spike?

Second little hint : None of my cameras has a hard disk, or a CD-ROM 
drive, or...

> 
> > What I do read is :
> >
> > Model Engineer, and Model Engineer's Workshop (the latter is more
> > interesting to me, being more on workshop techniques, the former being
> > mostly about making steam engines, but you do get useful information from
> > it, which is why I read it).
> 
> I'd really like to learn how to do some more advanced 
> plastic/metalworking (and get the tools to do it).

It is great fun. The problem is the startup cost. A good lathe is not 
cheap, but then again it will last all your life if you look after it.

 
> At high school we had a fair few wood/metalworking tools (most of which 
> were in pretty good nick), a teacher who knew his stuff (IIRC he used to 
> work for a metalworking company, retired, then started working as a 
> teacher). We also had a headteacher who was the sort of person who'd 
> make the kids run around in plastic bubbles for "health and safety" 
> reasons. Design-tech and science got cut almost entirely (the latter had 
> all the experiments and demonstrations cut and was turned into a lecture 
> / question-and-answer / exam session)...

Do the world a favour, and put that headmaster between centres :-). A 
light skimming cut should do the job...

Fortunately I managed to get away with all sorts of lethal things at 
school. As I mentioned once before, when the rest of the kids were 
booting spheres around areas of grass, I was making a CRT in a bell jar. 
Or fooling around with valves. Or...

I learnt nothing at school that I was _supposed_ to be learning, though. 
Certianly not from the so-called teachers.

-tony