.... Or so was that lot described in the Rock Island military auction
where they sold off contents of one of their buildings that they want
to remodel.

I bid on it for no good reason other than liking the Thern 1/2 HP winch.

It turned out to be bigger than I expected.

But what it turns out to be is an aluminum degasser. Which can be
described as a big pole with base to bolt to floor (about 8-10 ft), a
arm, and a motor to drive a special shaft through which argon is piped
into molten aluminum. The point of a degasser is to remove hydrogen
that is dissolved in molten aluminum. Aluminum is so prone ot
oxidation that it dissociates water molecules, turning into aluminum
oxide.

2Al + 3H20 = Al2O3 + 6H

The hydrogen gas remains dissolved in aluminum until it cools down and
begins to solidify. and then forms bubbles, which ruins the
casting. Here comes "degassing", which releases hydrogen by stirring
molten aluminum and adding inert gas through the degasser and its shaft.

I can post pictures if anyone is interested.

--
Due to extreme spam originating from Google Groups, and their inattention
to spammers, I and many others block all articles originating
from Google Groups. If you want your postings to be seen by
more readers you will need to find a different means of
posting on Usenet.
http://improve-usenet.org/

Ignoramus29895 wrote:
... Or so was that lot described in the Rock Island military auction
where they sold off contents of one of their buildings that they want
to remodel.

I bid on it for no good reason other than liking the Thern 1/2 HP winch.

It turned out to be bigger than I expected.

But what it turns out to be is an aluminum degasser.

That is one hell of an inaccurate description. Did it have a blower or
something on it which might reasonably have looked like a grinder? Glad
you were only wanting the winch. I'd certainly be interested to see some
pictures.

Best wishes,

Chris

On 2008-11-16, Christopher Tidy wrote:
Ignoramus29895 wrote:
... Or so was that lot described in the Rock Island military auction
where they sold off contents of one of their buildings that they want
to remodel.

I bid on it for no good reason other than liking the Thern 1/2 HP winch.

It turned out to be bigger than I expected.

But what it turns out to be is an aluminum degasser.

That is one hell of an inaccurate description. Did it have a blower or
something on it which might reasonably have looked like a grinder? Glad
you were only wanting the winch. I'd certainly be interested to see some
pictures.

Here are some pictures. I made them while unloading. They are not too
good and I can take some more if you want. I wish I could take one
looking at it form the side so that you can see the swing arm with the
belt drive from the DC motor near the pole. It does not look like a
grinder.

http://igor.chudov.com/tmp/Degasser/

--
Due to extreme spam originating from Google Groups, and their inattention
to spammers, I and many others block all articles originating
from Google Groups. If you want your postings to be seen by
more readers you will need to find a different means of
posting on Usenet.
http://improve-usenet.org/

Ignoramus4582 wrote:
On 2008-11-16, Christopher Tidy wrote:

Ignoramus29895 wrote:

... Or so was that lot described in the Rock Island military auction
where they sold off contents of one of their buildings that they want
to remodel.

I bid on it for no good reason other than liking the Thern 1/2 HP winch.

It turned out to be bigger than I expected.

But what it turns out to be is an aluminum degasser.

That is one hell of an inaccurate description. Did it have a blower or
something on it which might reasonably have looked like a grinder? Glad
you were only wanting the winch. I'd certainly be interested to see some
pictures.


Here are some pictures. I made them while unloading. They are not too
good and I can take some more if you want. I wish I could take one
looking at it form the side so that you can see the swing arm with the
belt drive from the DC motor near the pole. It does not look like a
grinder.

http://igor.chudov.com/tmp/Degasser/

Interesting piece of kit. Nice winch for sure. Where is the lance which
goes down into the molten aluminium, or was that not included?

I have a interesting project for this winter. I'll post some pictures at
r.c.m for people to see, but it will probably have to wait a few weeks.
I've gone back to using a film camera for most things as I got annoyed
with digital cameras breaking, losing my pictures and their batteries
going flat.

Best wishes,

Chris

"Ignoramus4582"

http://igor.chudov.com/tmp/Degasser/

You've got some really annoying flash-based ads on your site now, Iggy.
Damn things blinking so fast all I can do is close the page.

Jon

On 2008-11-16, Christopher Tidy wrote:
Ignoramus4582 wrote:
On 2008-11-16, Christopher Tidy wrote:

Ignoramus29895 wrote:

... Or so was that lot described in the Rock Island military auction
where they sold off contents of one of their buildings that they want
to remodel.

I bid on it for no good reason other than liking the Thern 1/2 HP winch.

It turned out to be bigger than I expected.

But what it turns out to be is an aluminum degasser.

That is one hell of an inaccurate description. Did it have a blower or
something on it which might reasonably have looked like a grinder? Glad
you were only wanting the winch. I'd certainly be interested to see some
pictures.


Here are some pictures. I made them while unloading. They are not too
good and I can take some more if you want. I wish I could take one
looking at it form the side so that you can see the swing arm with the
belt drive from the DC motor near the pole. It does not look like a
grinder.

http://igor.chudov.com/tmp/Degasser/

Interesting piece of kit. Nice winch for sure. Where is the lance which
goes down into the molten aluminium, or was that not included?

not included.

I have a interesting project for this winter. I'll post some pictures at
r.c.m for people to see, but it will probably have to wait a few weeks.
I've gone back to using a film camera for most things as I got annoyed
with digital cameras breaking, losing my pictures and their batteries
going flat.

I would say, buy a better digital camera.

--
Due to extreme spam originating from Google Groups, and their inattention
to spammers, I and many others block all articles originating
from Google Groups. If you want your postings to be seen by
more readers you will need to find a different means of
posting on Usenet.
http://improve-usenet.org/

Ignoramus5437 wrote:

I have a interesting project for this winter. I'll post some pictures at
r.c.m for people to see, but it will probably have to wait a few weeks.
I've gone back to using a film camera for most things as I got annoyed
with digital cameras breaking, losing my pictures and their batteries
going flat.


I would say, buy a better digital camera.

A better digital camera will mean that those things don't happen so
soon, but they'll still happen in a relevant period of time. You'd be
lucky if a good digital camera lasted you more than 5 years. But pick
the right film camera and it'll last you a lifetime.

It's a personal thing. I like the idea that I've got a camera that I can
always get fixed. Also, I find that because film isn't free, the quality
of the pictures I get is actually better.

Best wishes,

Chris

On 2008-11-16, Jon Danniken wrote:
"Ignoramus4582"

http://igor.chudov.com/tmp/Degasser/

You've got some really annoying flash-based ads on your site now, Iggy.
Damn things blinking so fast all I can do is close the page.

Hmm ... with flash and javascript enabled, I just see ads for a
CNC router. But I normally browse with both turned off.

Get opera as a browser, and you can turn both off by default,
and then in the site preferences (right mouse click brings up a menu
which includes that) on each site you can turn on javascript, "plugins"
(which include flash), or both. And with javascript, you can control
what things it is allowed to do and what not.

I never even knew that the had the ads until I went in with the
two turned on, because I normally browse without them except for sites
where I *really* need them to do something which *I* want to do. Lots
of sites which won't work without flash and javascript -- I just decide
that I don't need to visit them. :-)

Enjoy,
DoN.

--
Email: | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

On 2008-11-17, DoN. Nichols wrote:
On 2008-11-16, Jon Danniken wrote:
"Ignoramus4582"

http://igor.chudov.com/tmp/Degasser/

You've got some really annoying flash-based ads on your site now, Iggy.
Damn things blinking so fast all I can do is close the page.

Hmm ... with flash and javascript enabled, I just see ads for a
CNC router. But I normally browse with both turned off.

I use firefox and adblock, and never see any ads. I highly recommend
these two free products.

i

On 2008-11-17, Christopher Tidy wrote:
Ignoramus5437 wrote:

I have a interesting project for this winter. I'll post some pictures at
r.c.m for people to see, but it will probably have to wait a few weeks.
I've gone back to using a film camera for most things as I got annoyed
with digital cameras breaking, losing my pictures and their batteries
going flat.


I would say, buy a better digital camera.

A better digital camera will mean that those things don't happen so
soon, but they'll still happen in a relevant period of time. You'd be
lucky if a good digital camera lasted you more than 5 years. But pick
the right film camera and it'll last you a lifetime.

Hmm ... my Nikon D70 is probably around 5 years now, and it is
still working fine. And -- it uses lenses from the earlier film Nikon
cameras.

It's a personal thing. I like the idea that I've got a camera that I can
always get fixed.

Perhaps -- though the number of people capable of working on
them is slowly reducing.

Also, I find that because film isn't free, the quality
of the pictures I get is actually better.

Note that film is becoming less available and more expensive as
time goes on -- along with photographic paper. The reason is the silver
in the emulsion plus the reduction in the number of users over time.

Even back in my film days I probably shot a lot more exposures
in a given day than you do. (Typically three 36-exposure rolls between
two cameras in a given weekend day.)

Of course I processed my own at home, and could then select
which I wanted to print at that time -- and which might want printing at
some future time. This reduced the cost per exposure significantly.

Enjoy,
DoN.

--
Email: | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

On Sun, 16 Nov 2008 22:16:52 -0600, the infamous Ignoramus5437
scrawled the following:

On 2008-11-17, DoN. Nichols wrote:
On 2008-11-16, Jon Danniken wrote:
"Ignoramus4582"

http://igor.chudov.com/tmp/Degasser/

You've got some really annoying flash-based ads on your site now, Iggy.
Damn things blinking so fast all I can do is close the page.

Hmm ... with flash and javascript enabled, I just see ads for a
CNC router. But I normally browse with both turned off.

I use firefox and adblock, and never see any ads. I highly recommend
these two free products.

I went to the site and didn't see any ads, so I was wondering about
it. I, too, use FF and AdBlock. Do you make lots of money by running
ads, Ig?

--
When we are planning for posterity,
we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary.
-- Thomas Paine

On 2008-11-17, Larry Jaques novalidaddress@di wrote:
On Sun, 16 Nov 2008 22:16:52 -0600, the infamous Ignoramus5437
scrawled the following:

On 2008-11-17, DoN. Nichols wrote:
On 2008-11-16, Jon Danniken wrote:
"Ignoramus4582"

http://igor.chudov.com/tmp/Degasser/

You've got some really annoying flash-based ads on your site now, Iggy.
Damn things blinking so fast all I can do is close the page.

Hmm ... with flash and javascript enabled, I just see ads for a
CNC router. But I normally browse with both turned off.

I use firefox and adblock, and never see any ads. I highly recommend
these two free products.

I went to the site and didn't see any ads, so I was wondering about
it. I, too, use FF and AdBlock. Do you make lots of money by running
ads, Ig?


Not from my personal site, but from algebra.com, a very nice
supplementary income. Thank you Google.

--
Due to extreme spam originating from Google Groups, and their inattention
to spammers, I and many others block all articles originating
from Google Groups. If you want your postings to be seen by
more readers you will need to find a different means of
posting on Usenet.
http://improve-usenet.org/

DoN. Nichols wrote:
On 2008-11-17, Christopher Tidy wrote:

Ignoramus5437 wrote:


I have a interesting project for this winter. I'll post some pictures at
r.c.m for people to see, but it will probably have to wait a few weeks.
I've gone back to using a film camera for most things as I got annoyed
with digital cameras breaking, losing my pictures and their batteries
going flat.


I would say, buy a better digital camera.

A better digital camera will mean that those things don't happen so
soon, but they'll still happen in a relevant period of time. You'd be
lucky if a good digital camera lasted you more than 5 years. But pick
the right film camera and it'll last you a lifetime.


Hmm ... my Nikon D70 is probably around 5 years now, and it is
still working fine. And -- it uses lenses from the earlier film Nikon
cameras.

In my mind the 5 year figure was referring to compact digital cameras,
as opposed to digital SLRs. With a good digital SLR you may do better.

But any digital camera suffers from the problem that it is usually
impossible to repair and refurbish faulty parts, so when the supply of
spare parts dries up, you can no longer fix the camera. And the
repairman's task is not helped by the fact that a digital camera is so
complex that a single person cannot be familiar with the detail of how
each part functions.

It's a personal thing. I like the idea that I've got a camera that I can
always get fixed.


Perhaps -- though the number of people capable of working on
them is slowly reducing.

I know of two good repairers at present, and they weren't too difficult
to find. But I think it's easier to find repairers who specialise in the
higher quality film cameras.

Also, I find that because film isn't free, the quality
of the pictures I get is actually better.


Note that film is becoming less available and more expensive as
time goes on -- along with photographic paper. The reason is the silver
in the emulsion plus the reduction in the number of users over time.

Personally, I pay less for film today than I did 5 years ago, and the
film itself is better. Online shopping means that I can get better deals
on film than I could in the past. But I don't use the most unusual types
of film, and I have heard that some of those are being discontinued.

I get the film scanned by the laboratory, as the results are far better
than I could get scanning at home. Today's scanners are far superior to
the scanners of just a few years ago. Here's an example of a picture I
was particularly pleased with:
http://www.mythic-beasts.com/~cdt22/north_bridge.jpg

That's Edinburgh, Scotland.

Even back in my film days I probably shot a lot more exposures
in a given day than you do. (Typically three 36-exposure rolls between
two cameras in a given weekend day.)

It depends on whether you mean a typical day or a very productive day.
Once or twice I've been known to shoot 5 rolls in a day. But on average,
three rolls per month is more typical.

Best wishes,

Chris

On 2008-11-17, Christopher Tidy wrote:
DoN. Nichols wrote:
On 2008-11-17, Christopher Tidy wrote:

Ignoramus5437 wrote:


I have a interesting project for this winter. I'll post some pictures at
r.c.m for people to see, but it will probably have to wait a few weeks.
I've gone back to using a film camera for most things as I got annoyed
with digital cameras breaking, losing my pictures and their batteries
going flat.


I would say, buy a better digital camera.

A better digital camera will mean that those things don't happen so
soon, but they'll still happen in a relevant period of time. You'd be
lucky if a good digital camera lasted you more than 5 years. But pick
the right film camera and it'll last you a lifetime.


Hmm ... my Nikon D70 is probably around 5 years now, and it is
still working fine. And -- it uses lenses from the earlier film Nikon
cameras.

In my mind the 5 year figure was referring to compact digital cameras,
as opposed to digital SLRs. With a good digital SLR you may do better.

I would not want to keep a digital camera beyond 5 years. 5 years
means two generations of cameras.

i

On 2008-11-17, Christopher Tidy wrote:
DoN. Nichols wrote:

[ ... ]

Hmm ... my Nikon D70 is probably around 5 years now, and it is
still working fine. And -- it uses lenses from the earlier film Nikon
cameras.

In my mind the 5 year figure was referring to compact digital cameras,
as opposed to digital SLRs. With a good digital SLR you may do better.

But any digital camera suffers from the problem that it is usually
impossible to repair and refurbish faulty parts, so when the supply of
spare parts dries up, you can no longer fix the camera.

With a DSLR, by the time that point is reached, you will also be
very tempted to move to a newer one -- higher resolution, more features,
etc -- and keep your glass (lenses) and other accessories. When the
quality stabilizes at some physically-imposed limit (quantum mechanics
and such), you will probably find that the repair parts will remain
available for much longer.

And the
repairman's task is not helped by the fact that a digital camera is so
complex that a single person cannot be familiar with the detail of how
each part functions.

Granted -- but typically repairs are like those with computers
these days -- not component replacement, but sub-assembly replacement,
so as long as the ability to trace the problem down to a given
sub-assembly is present, the ability to repair will remain within the
capabilities of a single repairman.

It's a personal thing. I like the idea that I've got a camera that I can
always get fixed.


Perhaps -- though the number of people capable of working on
them is slowly reducing.

I know of two good repairers at present, and they weren't too difficult
to find. But I think it's easier to find repairers who specialise in the
higher quality film cameras.

O.K. Of course, certain parts are no longer available for my
Nikon F cameras and it's lenses.

Also, I find that because film isn't free, the quality
of the pictures I get is actually better.


Note that film is becoming less available and more expensive as
time goes on -- along with photographic paper. The reason is the silver
in the emulsion plus the reduction in the number of users over time.

Personally, I pay less for film today than I did 5 years ago, and the
film itself is better. Online shopping means that I can get better deals
on film than I could in the past. But I don't use the most unusual types
of film, and I have heard that some of those are being discontinued.

And the number of typed discontinued will increase as the number
of users decreases.

I get the film scanned by the laboratory, as the results are far better
than I could get scanning at home. Today's scanners are far superior to
the scanners of just a few years ago. Here's an example of a picture I
was particularly pleased with:
http://www.mythic-beasts.com/~cdt22/north_bridge.jpg

That's Edinburgh, Scotland.

A very nice shot -- and the scanning is at a level which makes
the grain typically a bit larger than the pixels -- though JPEG
artifacts do show up in places like the illuminated windows, and there they
are larger than the grain.

I've got an old Nikon LS-3500 scanner (35mm only, and very slow
and hot -- the reason that the later versions were called "coolscan"),
but it produces .BMP or .TIF images of about 71 MB (no compression of
course). On that, the grain of Ektrachrome 64 was much larger than the
pixels (and of course there were no JPEG artifacts in those formats,
since they don't use the lossy compression that JPEG uses.

Even back in my film days I probably shot a lot more exposures
in a given day than you do. (Typically three 36-exposure rolls between
two cameras in a given weekend day.)

It depends on whether you mean a typical day or a very productive day.
Once or twice I've been known to shoot 5 rolls in a day. But on average,
three rolls per month is more typical.

O.K. The 3 rolls per day was typical of when I was with
friends. When I was at home alone (pre marriage) I would only typically
take a few experiments with extension tubes and such. :-)

Enjoy,
DoN.

--
Email: | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

On 2008-11-17, Ignoramus6517 wrote:
On 2008-11-17, Christopher Tidy wrote:
DoN. Nichols wrote:

[ ... ]

Hmm ... my Nikon D70 is probably around 5 years now, and it is
still working fine. And -- it uses lenses from the earlier film Nikon
cameras.

In my mind the 5 year figure was referring to compact digital cameras,
as opposed to digital SLRs. With a good digital SLR you may do better.

I would not want to keep a digital camera beyond 5 years. 5 years
means two generations of cameras.

Well ... the D-300 which I want to replace it with is too
expensive to get at this particular time. The D-300 will allow auto
exposure to work with the older Nikon F lenses without a chip in them.
At present, I have to use either another lens to measure the light, or a
hand-held light meter like in the old days. :-)

Enjoy,
DoN.

--
Email: | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

On 2008-11-17, DoN. Nichols wrote:
On 2008-11-17, Ignoramus6517 wrote:
On 2008-11-17, Christopher Tidy wrote:
DoN. Nichols wrote:

[ ... ]

Hmm ... my Nikon D70 is probably around 5 years now, and it is
still working fine. And -- it uses lenses from the earlier film Nikon
cameras.

In my mind the 5 year figure was referring to compact digital cameras,
as opposed to digital SLRs. With a good digital SLR you may do better.

I would not want to keep a digital camera beyond 5 years. 5 years
means two generations of cameras.

Well ... the D-300 which I want to replace it with is too
expensive to get at this particular time. The D-300 will allow auto
exposure to work with the older Nikon F lenses without a chip in them.
At present, I have to use either another lens to measure the light, or a
hand-held light meter like in the old days. :-)

Thanks, you finally made me understand what light meters are for.

--
Due to extreme spam originating from Google Groups, and their inattention
to spammers, I and many others block all articles originating
from Google Groups. If you want your postings to be seen by
more readers you will need to find a different means of
posting on Usenet.
http://improve-usenet.org/

DoN. Nichols wrote:
On 2008-11-17, Christopher Tidy wrote:

DoN. Nichols wrote:


[ ... ]


Hmm ... my Nikon D70 is probably around 5 years now, and it is
still working fine. And -- it uses lenses from the earlier film Nikon
cameras.

In my mind the 5 year figure was referring to compact digital cameras,
as opposed to digital SLRs. With a good digital SLR you may do better.

But any digital camera suffers from the problem that it is usually
impossible to repair and refurbish faulty parts, so when the supply of
spare parts dries up, you can no longer fix the camera.


With a DSLR, by the time that point is reached, you will also be
very tempted to move to a newer one -- higher resolution, more features,
etc -- and keep your glass (lenses) and other accessories. When the
quality stabilizes at some physically-imposed limit (quantum mechanics
and such), you will probably find that the repair parts will remain
available for much longer.

But if you take two cameras for which spares are no longer readily
available, one a mechanical film camera and the other a digital camera,
the mechanical film camera will always be easier to repair when
something goes wrong.

For me, having the highest possible resolution is not my first priority.
If it was, I would shoot large format. But as I'm not the world's best
photographer, I want the chance to take more pictures than large format
allows. So I want good resolution (and 35 mm film resolution is pretty
good, despite many claims to the contrary) at a reasonable cost per
frame. But I also want a camera which lasts, so I choose film over digital.

And the
repairman's task is not helped by the fact that a digital camera is so
complex that a single person cannot be familiar with the detail of how
each part functions.


Granted -- but typically repairs are like those with computers
these days -- not component replacement, but sub-assembly replacement,
so as long as the ability to trace the problem down to a given
sub-assembly is present, the ability to repair will remain within the
capabilities of a single repairman.

I think computers are way ahead of cameras in terms of ease of repair,
because standardisation is so widespread.

It's a personal thing. I like the idea that I've got a camera that I can
always get fixed.


Perhaps -- though the number of people capable of working on
them is slowly reducing.

I know of two good repairers at present, and they weren't too difficult
to find. But I think it's easier to find repairers who specialise in the
higher quality film cameras.


O.K. Of course, certain parts are no longer available for my
Nikon F cameras and it's lenses.

I've got a Nikon F2 system. I think a Nikon F2 is easier to get repaired
than an F, although you can't get spares for either from Nikon.

Unless you drop a manual focus lens, they'll pretty much last forever.
Especially the early ones with the scalloped focusing ring. Those are
wonderful. I have just the 85 mm f/1.8 in that series, but I want to
acquire more (cash permitting). The 35 mm f/1.4 will be the first on my
list.

Also, I find that because film isn't free, the quality
of the pictures I get is actually better.


Note that film is becoming less available and more expensive as
time goes on -- along with photographic paper. The reason is the silver
in the emulsion plus the reduction in the number of users over time.

Personally, I pay less for film today than I did 5 years ago, and the
film itself is better. Online shopping means that I can get better deals
on film than I could in the past. But I don't use the most unusual types
of film, and I have heard that some of those are being discontinued.


And the number of typed discontinued will increase as the number
of users decreases.

I don't think film availability is going to decline a lot more. You'll
no doubt see it decline further in high street shops, but they're
overpriced sources anyway. I haven't bought any film on the high street
in a long time. I don't think there will be a day in the foreseeable
future when good quality colour negative film in 35 mm becomes
unavailable. After all, you can still buy 110 film, and who uses that?

I get the film scanned by the laboratory, as the results are far better
than I could get scanning at home. Today's scanners are far superior to
the scanners of just a few years ago. Here's an example of a picture I
was particularly pleased with:
http://www.mythic-beasts.com/~cdt22/north_bridge.jpg

That's Edinburgh, Scotland.


A very nice shot -- and the scanning is at a level which makes
the grain typically a bit larger than the pixels -- though JPEG
artifacts do show up in places like the illuminated windows, and there they
are larger than the grain.

Thanks. But I'm not sure that what you're seeing are JPEG artifacts.
With a scan of that resolution, you can see all kinds of detail which
you would never see in a regular print. I think some of the fine detail
around the edges is the result of diffraction, scattered light from the
film surface and noise due to variation in grain size. The only place
where I can see what look like JPEG artifacts is around the top of the
building in the centre of the picture. Even there, I'm not convinced as
there are edges elsewhere in the picture with higher contrast where I
can't see such artifacts. I don't suppose I'll know for sure without
looking at the negative under a microscope.

But that scan is nearly 17 megapixels. At a more usual 6 megapixel
resolution, the scan would be pretty much grainless. Here a different
picture I had scanned at 6 megapixels:
http://www.mythic-beasts.com/~cdt22/rust_large.jpg

I've got an old Nikon LS-3500 scanner (35mm only, and very slow
and hot -- the reason that the later versions were called "coolscan").

That's funny. I didn't know that. Where did the name "Coolpix" come
from, I wonder?

Best wishes,

Chris

On Mon, 17 Nov 2008 12:16:35 -0600, the infamous Ignoramus6517
scrawled the following:

On 2008-11-17, Larry Jaques novalidaddress@di wrote:
On Sun, 16 Nov 2008 22:16:52 -0600, the infamous Ignoramus5437
scrawled the following:

On 2008-11-17, DoN. Nichols wrote:
On 2008-11-16, Jon Danniken wrote:
"Ignoramus4582"

http://igor.chudov.com/tmp/Degasser/

You've got some really annoying flash-based ads on your site now, Iggy.
Damn things blinking so fast all I can do is close the page.

Hmm ... with flash and javascript enabled, I just see ads for a
CNC router. But I normally browse with both turned off.

I use firefox and adblock, and never see any ads. I highly recommend
these two free products.

I went to the site and didn't see any ads, so I was wondering about
it. I, too, use FF and AdBlock. Do you make lots of money by running
ads, Ig?


Not from my personal site, but from algebra.com, a very nice
supplementary income. Thank you Google.

Then why put ads on your name site?!?

--
Latin: It's not just for geniuses any more.

On 2008-11-17, Christopher Tidy wrote:
DoN. Nichols wrote:

[ ... ]

With a DSLR, by the time that point is reached, you will also be
very tempted to move to a newer one -- higher resolution, more features,
etc -- and keep your glass (lenses) and other accessories. When the
quality stabilizes at some physically-imposed limit (quantum mechanics
and such), you will probably find that the repair parts will remain
available for much longer.

But if you take two cameras for which spares are no longer readily
available, one a mechanical film camera and the other a digital camera,
the mechanical film camera will always be easier to repair when
something goes wrong.

That depends on the nature of the "something" which "went
wrong". Sometimes (in a DSLR), it is something as simple as oxidation
of the contacts which connect the battery to the camera -- or oxidation
in the connectors between subassemblies. In either case, the fix is
usually cleaning and reassembly.

A long used film camera can have problems like worn bearings in
the timing gearchain -- which requires the abilities of a watch repair
person to re-bush the mechanism.

Or -- as in one camera which I used to have -- a folding Zeiss
Ikonta 520 (620 or 120 roll film, 75mm f3.5 Tessar lens, Synchro Compur
shutter), which had a failure of a thin metal fork which transferred
operation of the shutter release lever to the actual release in the
shutter. I did not have the money at the time (about 1964 or 1965) to
get the camera repaired, and by now I strongly doubt that the parts are
available. I *might* be able to make one now -- but I could not at the
time.

For me, having the highest possible resolution is not my first priority.
If it was, I would shoot large format. But as I'm not the world's best
photographer, I want the chance to take more pictures than large format
allows. So I want good resolution (and 35 mm film resolution is pretty
good, despite many claims to the contrary) at a reasonable cost per
frame. But I also want a camera which lasts, so I choose film over digital.

O.K.

And the
repairman's task is not helped by the fact that a digital camera is so
complex that a single person cannot be familiar with the detail of how
each part functions.


Granted -- but typically repairs are like those with computers
these days -- not component replacement, but sub-assembly replacement,
so as long as the ability to trace the problem down to a given
sub-assembly is present, the ability to repair will remain within the
capabilities of a single repairman.

I think computers are way ahead of cameras in terms of ease of repair,
because standardisation is so widespread.

That depends on whose computers. For the typical desktop PC,
yes. For some brands, such as Dell, they use custom parts which are not
interchangeable with other systems.

And for computers like my Sun Blade 2000 -- some things are
interchangeable with PCs -- the PCI bus cards. But other things -- as
simple as memory DIMMs -- are custom to The Sun Blade 1000, Sun Blade
2000, and the Sun Fire 280R (which all use the same system boards), and
they are not even usable in other Suns. Certainly things like the power
supplies are very different from what you would find in a typical
Desktop PC.

And back to the PC world -- laptops, which have to fit a lot in
a very small space, tend to use very custom sub-assemblies -- ones
designed (among other things) to minimize power consumption, since the
machine is expected to live on batteries.

[ ... ]

I know of two good repairers at present, and they weren't too difficult
to find. But I think it's easier to find repairers who specialise in the
higher quality film cameras.


O.K. Of course, certain parts are no longer available for my
Nikon F cameras and it's lenses.

I've got a Nikon F2 system. I think a Nikon F2 is easier to get repaired
than an F, although you can't get spares for either from Nikon.

Unless you drop a manual focus lens, they'll pretty much last forever.
Especially the early ones with the scalloped focusing ring. Those are
wonderful. I have just the 85 mm f/1.8 in that series, but I want to
acquire more (cash permitting). The 35 mm f/1.4 will be the first on my
list.

One of the things no longer available from Nikon (and the supply
from the people who bought the stock from Nikon is small and dwindling)
are the aperture rings for many of the lenses. The old Nikon F used the
half-moon clip on the aperture ring to couple to the Photomic
meter/pentaprism assembly. Newer cameras instead require special cuts
in the raised ridge at the back of the aperture ring to couple such
information into the newer cameras -- or to clear sensor levers on
cameras like the D70 which use it to check whether the aperture ring is
set to the smallest aperture (numerically largest), so the auto aperture
control can work properly with the chips in the later lenses. There are
a number of replacement aperture rings for older lenses -- but not for
the oldest, so you have to set up to machine the ridge in the proper
places to use the lenses on newer cameras -- including film cameras such
as the N-90 -- a rather nice film camera with lots of features. I have
two of them which were modified by Kodak to serve as digital cameras for
the AP (Associated Press). This is where I first learned about the
modified aperture rings.

Someday I plan to make a fixture to allow marking of aperture
rings so I can mill the rings in the proper places, so I can use my
older lenses -- including many of the fluted focus ring design.

[ ... ]

And the number of types discontinued will increase as the number
of users decreases.

I don't think film availability is going to decline a lot more. You'll
no doubt see it decline further in high street shops, but they're
overpriced sources anyway. I haven't bought any film on the high street
in a long time.

I presume that High Street is a location in London where there
are many camera stores -- as you can find in locations in New York City.

I don't think there will be a day in the foreseeable
future when good quality colour negative film in 35 mm becomes
unavailable. After all, you can still buy 110 film, and who uses that?

Perhaps you can still buy it *because* it is still there -- as
new-old-stock. Have you checked the expiration dates on the boxes of
film? :-)

[ ... ]

A very nice shot -- and the scanning is at a level which makes
the grain typically a bit larger than the pixels -- though JPEG
artifacts do show up in places like the illuminated windows, and there they
are larger than the grain.

Thanks. But I'm not sure that what you're seeing are JPEG artifacts.
With a scan of that resolution, you can see all kinds of detail which
you would never see in a regular print. I think some of the fine detail
around the edges is the result of diffraction, scattered light from the
film surface and noise due to variation in grain size. The only place
where I can see what look like JPEG artifacts is around the top of the
building in the centre of the picture. Even there, I'm not convinced as
there are edges elsewhere in the picture with higher contrast where I
can't see such artifacts. I don't suppose I'll know for sure without
looking at the negative under a microscope.

O.K. Can your computer zoom in to small areas of the image? In
a building to the right of the image there are seven illuminated windows
along the top floor which have a bluish tint. Select an area which
includes the central window, and the walls to either side, but stop
before the windows to either side. Now expand that selected area to
fill your screen. You will see pixelation of the illuminated center of
the window which appear to be larger than the surrounding grain. this
is because the JPEG algorithm is trying to minimize the number of zones
in which it needs to keep track of unique colors. Crop out a similar
area of the midway between lightest and darkest of the sky and I seem to
find smaller artifacts there -- perhaps because of more grain in that
area.

But that scan is nearly 17 megapixels. At a more usual 6 megapixel
resolution, the scan would be pretty much grainless. Here a different
picture I had scanned at 6 megapixels:
http://www.mythic-beasts.com/~cdt22/rust_large.jpg

The pixels seem to be a bit larger from a similar crop area from
that -- but nothing visible of the grain in there.

I've got an old Nikon LS-3500 scanner (35mm only, and very slow
and hot -- the reason that the later versions were called "coolscan").

That's funny. I didn't know that. Where did the name "Coolpix" come
from, I wonder?

It came from the CoolScan -- except not because of heat, but
rather because it sounded like a name to attract consumers.

Sort of like the Dodge trucks called "Ram Tough" with images of
two mountain rams crashing into each other. The original appearance of
the word "Ram" in the Dodge line of automobiles was in the days of
"muscle cars" (too large an engine with too much horsepower marketed to
people too young to have common sense). Many of these cars had a scoop
connected to the top of the air cleaner poking through the hood and
pointing towards the nose of the car. Dodge pointed it towards the
windshield, where a zone of higher pressure air builds up when the car
is in motion. This they called "ram air", and the system the
"Ramcharger" (not quite a turbocharger, but intended to sound like one).
It has been decades since Dodge made such a car, but they carried the
name over to their truck marketing division. :-)

Enjoy,
DoN.

--
Email: | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

"DoN. Nichols" wrote in message
...
snip----

Sort of like the Dodge trucks called "Ram Tough" with images of
two mountain rams crashing into each other. The original appearance of
the word "Ram" in the Dodge line of automobiles was in the days of
"muscle cars" (too large an engine with too much horsepower marketed to
people too young to have common sense).

It's entirely possible that Dodge capitalized on the words as you suggest,
but they used the ram as their logo long before then. My father owned a
'36 Dodge four door sedan that had the ram as a "radiator" ornament (which
really mounted between the two hood sections, not on the radiator. I have
no idea when they started using the ram, but it has been around for a long
time.

Harold.

On 2008-11-18, Harold and Susan Vordos wrote:

"DoN. Nichols" wrote in message
...
snip----

Sort of like the Dodge trucks called "Ram Tough" with images of
two mountain rams crashing into each other. The original appearance of
the word "Ram" in the Dodge line of automobiles was in the days of
"muscle cars" (too large an engine with too much horsepower marketed to
people too young to have common sense).

It's entirely possible that Dodge capitalized on the words as you suggest,
but they used the ram as their logo long before then. My father owned a
'36 Dodge four door sedan that had the ram as a "radiator" ornament (which
really mounted between the two hood sections, not on the radiator. I have
no idea when they started using the ram, but it has been around for a long
time.

Interesting. I had not realized that they went back that far.
But then, when that car was new, I was about minus five years old. :-)

Enjoy,
DoN.

--
Email: | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

DoN. Nichols wrote:

But if you take two cameras for which spares are no longer readily
available, one a mechanical film camera and the other a digital camera,
the mechanical film camera will always be easier to repair when
something goes wrong.


That depends on the nature of the "something" which "went
wrong". Sometimes (in a DSLR), it is something as simple as oxidation
of the contacts which connect the battery to the camera -- or oxidation
in the connectors between subassemblies. In either case, the fix is
usually cleaning and reassembly.

True, but dirty contacts could be a problem in either a digital or film
camera. And you can still take pictures with a mechanical film camera
when the electrical system is not working. You just lose the metering.

A long used film camera can have problems like worn bearings in
the timing gearchain -- which requires the abilities of a watch repair
person to re-bush the mechanism.

Which the right person can repair, without too much difficulty. The
point I'm making is that in general a digital camera with a major fault
and no spare parts is much more difficult to repair than a mechanical
film camera with a major fault and no spare parts. But as I say, that's
a generalisation, and many digital cameras haven't yet reached the point
at which spare parts are no longer available.

I think computers are way ahead of cameras in terms of ease of repair,
because standardisation is so widespread.


That depends on whose computers. For the typical desktop PC,
yes. For some brands, such as Dell, they use custom parts which are not
interchangeable with other systems.

And for computers like my Sun Blade 2000 -- some things are
interchangeable with PCs -- the PCI bus cards. But other things -- as
simple as memory DIMMs -- are custom to The Sun Blade 1000, Sun Blade
2000, and the Sun Fire 280R (which all use the same system boards), and
they are not even usable in other Suns. Certainly things like the power
supplies are very different from what you would find in a typical
Desktop PC.

I have never really seen the point in Dell computers. But Suns are a
different story. My Sun knowledge is probably a bit behind the times,
but I would say that with a Sun, they are still more readily repairable
than a digital camera. Some parts are very widely available (disks and
CD-Roms, perhaps with the exception of FC-AL disks). Others are specific
to Sun machines, such as RAM and graphics cards, but are not specific to
a single workstation. Only the system board is really specific to a
single machine. And there's quite a lot of documentation available
regarding spares, their part numbers and how to fit them. Personally I
would much rather try and fix a Sun workstation than a digital camera.

Actually, my Sun Ultra 2 (which I am using to type this) looks like it
needs a repair of some kind. The clock doesn't keep time when the
machine is switched off. I had this problem with another Ultra 2 and
thought it was the NVRAM battery. So I bought a new NVRAM and within a
week or so the machine died completely, presumably of a fault on the
system board. So this time I think I'll wait a week or two. Actually, I
might just buy a whole Ultra 2 for spares, as they're so cheap now.

One of the things no longer available from Nikon (and the supply
from the people who bought the stock from Nikon is small and dwindling)
are the aperture rings for many of the lenses. The old Nikon F used the
half-moon clip on the aperture ring to couple to the Photomic
meter/pentaprism assembly. Newer cameras instead require special cuts
in the raised ridge at the back of the aperture ring to couple such
information into the newer cameras -- or to clear sensor levers on
cameras like the D70 which use it to check whether the aperture ring is
set to the smallest aperture (numerically largest), so the auto aperture
control can work properly with the chips in the later lenses. There are
a number of replacement aperture rings for older lenses -- but not for
the oldest, so you have to set up to machine the ridge in the proper
places to use the lenses on newer cameras -- including film cameras such
as the N-90 -- a rather nice film camera with lots of features. I have
two of them which were modified by Kodak to serve as digital cameras for
the AP (Associated Press). This is where I first learned about the
modified aperture rings.

Someday I plan to make a fixture to allow marking of aperture
rings so I can mill the rings in the proper places, so I can use my
older lenses -- including many of the fluted focus ring design.

It sounds like you have owned your Nikon F system from new, or fairly
new. I got into Nikon manual focus cameras when they were already fairly
old, so I've chosen lenses that are AI or AI'd using the official Nikon
replacement aperture rings. AI conversions vary quite a bit in their
neatness, and I know that the Nikon conversion rings are perfect, so I
go for them. But maybe I'm just fussy :-).

I presume that High Street is a location in London where there
are many camera stores -- as you can find in locations in New York City.

In many English towns, the actual name of the main shopping street is
"High Street". So it has become a generic term for the main shopping
district of a town. I think your equivalent term is perhaps "downtown"?

I was referring to buying film from pharmacies, not camera stores. There
are very few camera stores near me. Some camera stores have good prices
for film, but pharmacies are always overpriced.

Perhaps you can still buy it *because* it is still there -- as
new-old-stock. Have you checked the expiration dates on the boxes of
film? :-)

I don't know. I've never used 110 film and probably never will. I just
read somewhere that Kodak are still making it, as of a few months ago.

A very nice shot -- and the scanning is at a level which makes
the grain typically a bit larger than the pixels -- though JPEG
artifacts do show up in places like the illuminated windows, and there they
are larger than the grain.

Thanks. But I'm not sure that what you're seeing are JPEG artifacts.
With a scan of that resolution, you can see all kinds of detail which
you would never see in a regular print. I think some of the fine detail
around the edges is the result of diffraction, scattered light from the
film surface and noise due to variation in grain size. The only place
where I can see what look like JPEG artifacts is around the top of the
building in the centre of the picture. Even there, I'm not convinced as
there are edges elsewhere in the picture with higher contrast where I
can't see such artifacts. I don't suppose I'll know for sure without
looking at the negative under a microscope.


O.K. Can your computer zoom in to small areas of the image? In
a building to the right of the image there are seven illuminated windows
along the top floor which have a bluish tint. Select an area which
includes the central window, and the walls to either side, but stop
before the windows to either side. Now expand that selected area to
fill your screen. You will see pixelation of the illuminated center of
the window which appear to be larger than the surrounding grain. this
is because the JPEG algorithm is trying to minimize the number of zones
in which it needs to keep track of unique colors. Crop out a similar
area of the midway between lightest and darkest of the sky and I seem to
find smaller artifacts there -- perhaps because of more grain in that
area.

Are you talking about a pattern of squares in which the squares are
larger than the pixels? I've seen this in highly compressed JPEGs
before, but despite looking several times cannot see it in the area you
mention in this image.

That's funny. I didn't know that. Where did the name "Coolpix" come
from, I wonder?


It came from the CoolScan -- except not because of heat, but
rather because it sounded like a name to attract consumers.

Sort of like the Dodge trucks called "Ram Tough" with images of
two mountain rams crashing into each other. The original appearance of
the word "Ram" in the Dodge line of automobiles was in the days of
"muscle cars" (too large an engine with too much horsepower marketed to
people too young to have common sense). Many of these cars had a scoop
connected to the top of the air cleaner poking through the hood and
pointing towards the nose of the car. Dodge pointed it towards the
windshield, where a zone of higher pressure air builds up when the car
is in motion. This they called "ram air", and the system the
"Ramcharger" (not quite a turbocharger, but intended to sound like one).
It has been decades since Dodge made such a car, but they carried the
name over to their truck marketing division. :-)

I knew a guy in high school whose dad had a Dodge Ram. It looked rather
out of place alongside the smaller English cars. But it had no air
intake on the bonnet. Probably a later truck I guess. I'd say 1970s.

Best wishes,

Chris

"DoN. Nichols" wrote in
:

On 2008-11-18, Harold and Susan Vordos wrote:

"DoN. Nichols" wrote in message
...
snip----

Sort of like the Dodge trucks called "Ram Tough" with images of
two mountain rams crashing into each other. The original appearance
of the word "Ram" in the Dodge line of automobiles was in the days
of "muscle cars" (too large an engine with too much horsepower
marketed to people too young to have common sense).

It's entirely possible that Dodge capitalized on the words as you
suggest, but they used the ram as their logo long before then. My
father owned a '36 Dodge four door sedan that had the ram as a
"radiator" ornament (which really mounted between the two hood
sections, not on the radiator. I have no idea when they started
using the ram, but it has been around for a long time.

Interesting. I had not realized that they went back that far.
But then, when that car was new, I was about minus five years old. :-)

Enjoy,
DoN.


The Ram logo may go nearly as far back as the Mack Bulldog - ie. to WW1
or shortly thereafter.

The Rolls Royce "Flying Lady" predates WW1 while the Benz "Mercedes" line
only dates to the mid-30s. (The line was named after the Daimler
Chairman's Daughter.)

Perhaps you're thinking of the pentagonal Chrysler Company logo that was
introduced in late 1955 when they announced "The Forward Look" as they
debuted their '57 model as a '56 and stole a march on the rest of the US
auto industry. [The '57s were to have been the last dual headlight models
with the '58s to be the first quad-light models. Chrysler built their
'58s as '57s and stole a march on Ford by being the first to offer a
push-button automatic tranny.]

On 2008-11-19, RAM³ wrote:
"DoN. Nichols" wrote in
:

On 2008-11-18, Harold and Susan Vordos wrote:

"DoN. Nichols" wrote in message
...
snip----

Sort of like the Dodge trucks called "Ram Tough" with images of

[ ... ]

Interesting. I had not realized that they went back that far.
But then, when that car was new, I was about minus five years old. :-)

[ ... ]

The Ram logo may go nearly as far back as the Mack Bulldog - ie. to WW1
or shortly thereafter.

O.K.

The Rolls Royce "Flying Lady" predates WW1 while the Benz "Mercedes" line
only dates to the mid-30s. (The line was named after the Daimler
Chairman's Daughter.)

Perhaps you're thinking of the pentagonal Chrysler Company logo that was
introduced in late 1955 when they announced "The Forward Look" as they
debuted their '57 model as a '56 and stole a march on the rest of the US
auto industry. [The '57s were to have been the last dual headlight models
with the '58s to be the first quad-light models. Chrysler built their
'58s as '57s and stole a march on Ford by being the first to offer a
push-button automatic tranny.]

Aha -- the ones used to make check-mark shaped skids by teens of
the time. :-) I believe that the Edsel (by Ford) was the first of their
push-button transmission cars. :-)

Enjoy,
DoN.

--
Email: | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

On 2008-11-18, Christopher Tidy wrote:
DoN. Nichols wrote:

But if you take two cameras for which spares are no longer readily
available, one a mechanical film camera and the other a digital camera,
the mechanical film camera will always be easier to repair when
something goes wrong.


That depends on the nature of the "something" which "went
wrong". Sometimes (in a DSLR), it is something as simple as oxidation
of the contacts which connect the battery to the camera -- or oxidation
in the connectors between subassemblies. In either case, the fix is
usually cleaning and reassembly.

True, but dirty contacts could be a problem in either a digital or film
camera. And you can still take pictures with a mechanical film camera
when the electrical system is not working. You just lose the metering.

Well ... with a Nikon F there *are* no contacts in the camera
body -- unless you count the flash sync contacts. The metering is in
the removable Photomic pentaprism, which can always be replaced with the
plain optical pentaprism, or the waist level finder, and a hand-held
meter can be used.

Later cameras (even Nikon) depended on the batteries for shutter
speed determination -- except for a very few speeds (perhaps only one)
which was purely mechanical, so bad contacts pretty much cripples the
camera.

A long used film camera can have problems like worn bearings in
the timing gearchain -- which requires the abilities of a watch repair
person to re-bush the mechanism.

Which the right person can repair, without too much difficulty.

For the moment. The skill is being lost, with both mechanical
watches and mechanical cameras becoming more rare.

The
point I'm making is that in general a digital camera with a major fault
and no spare parts is much more difficult to repair than a mechanical
film camera with a major fault and no spare parts. But as I say, that's
a generalisation, and many digital cameras haven't yet reached the point
at which spare parts are no longer available.

Right. And I suspect that cameras which have suffered major
trauma (such as one D70 which was dropped over cliff) might still serve
as a parts donor.

I think computers are way ahead of cameras in terms of ease of repair,
because standardisation is so widespread.


That depends on whose computers. For the typical desktop PC,
yes. For some brands, such as Dell, they use custom parts which are not
interchangeable with other systems.

And for computers like my Sun Blade 2000 -- some things are
interchangeable with PCs -- the PCI bus cards. But other things -- as
simple as memory DIMMs -- are custom to The Sun Blade 1000, Sun Blade
2000, and the Sun Fire 280R (which all use the same system boards), and
they are not even usable in other Suns. Certainly things like the power
supplies are very different from what you would find in a typical
Desktop PC.

I have never really seen the point in Dell computers.

Nor have I.

But Suns are a
different story. My Sun knowledge is probably a bit behind the times,
but I would say that with a Sun, they are still more readily repairable
than a digital camera. Some parts are very widely available (disks and
CD-Roms, perhaps with the exception of FC-AL disks).

I've gotten quite a few FC-AL disks -- the Sun Blade 1000/2000
and Sun Fire 280R use them (among other systems). Mine have come from
eBay, from hamfests, and from stores which deal with used computers
(better prices that for standard SCSI or IDE drives, because the market
is smaller. :-)

Others are specific
to Sun machines, such as RAM and graphics cards,

Actually -- later machines can use either PCI framebuffers
(Sun's term for graphics cards), or UPA ones (which are specific to Sun
machines). I've used both in the SB-[12]000 machines.

but are not specific to
a single workstation.

Sun has abandoned the sbus and the corresponding form of the UPA
bus which your Ultra-2 uses in favor of the PCI cards for most things,
and the UPA bus for the faster framebuffers.

Only the system board is really specific to a
single machine. And there's quite a lot of documentation available
regarding spares, their part numbers and how to fit them. Personally I
would much rather try and fix a Sun workstation than a digital camera.

But the Sun workstation is heavier to move -- especially if you
have a 19" CRT monitor on top of it. :-) (That was what really motivated
me to move to LCD monitors, since every time I wanted to change
something in the Ultra-2 I had to lift that heavy monitor from on top of
it and find someplace to put it. :-)

Actually, my Sun Ultra 2 (which I am using to type this) looks like it
needs a repair of some kind. The clock doesn't keep time when the
machine is switched off. I had this problem with another Ultra 2 and
thought it was the NVRAM battery. So I bought a new NVRAM and within a
week or so the machine died completely,

New from Sun -- or from an eBay or other used dealer?

Note that the company which actually makes the chips (CMOS
NVRAM, battery and clock all in a single package) have changed the chip
slightly, and it no longer works with the Suns. Sun was depending on a
behavior which was not in the specs, and the updated chip no longer
behaves that way. Newer systems now work. And the Sun Blade [12]000
machines now have a coin cell in a clip on the system board to run the
clock, and use a serial EEPROM instead of the CMOS.

Note that you can find information on the net on how to carve
into the clock/NVRAM chip and wire on a new battery. Before you reach
this point, however, you want to make a record of the hostid and the
ethernet MAC address, as they are stored in there as well. Then you
need to write a fcode program into the NVRAM and use that to update
those two values, because the system does not normally give you access
to them. All of this is documented on the net. The first three bytes
of the hostid *must* be right for the OS to know where to find various
devices in the system.

presumably of a fault on the
system board. So this time I think I'll wait a week or two. Actually, I
might just buy a whole Ultra 2 for spares, as they're so cheap now.

If you like the Ultra-2, you will probably like the Ultra-60 as
well. It will use the same disks, and will handle slightly faster CPUs
(450 MHz instead of 400 MHz). But it will no longer use sBus cards --
instead they are replaced with PCI cards for most things, and UPA cards
for up to two of the Creator-3D framebuffers. (Note that certain of the
Creator-3D framebuffers will not work with 300 MHz CPUs, but will work
with the faster ones.) It also uses the same DIMMs, up to the same 2GB
maximum RAM. The Ultra-60 is a tower style case instead of a thick
pizzabox style, and it can handle SCA disk drives which are 1" high or
1.6" high. Otherwise, you can probably move your existing drives into
the Ultra-60 and just boot them there. It is easier to remove the cover
(a side panel on the Ultra-60, instead of a large flat surface on the
Ultra-2), so you are unlikely to have a monitor blocking access when you
want to change other things.

Oh yes -- older DVD ROM drives in the Ultra-2 and the Ultra-60
won't boot from a DVD -- until you apply the firmware upgrade to move it
to the "1009" firmware version.

'TOSHIBA ' 'DVD-ROM SD-M1401' '1009' Removable CD-ROM

Of course -- the Sun Blade 2000 moves you to FC-AL drives, but
it also allows you to get up to two 1.2 GHz CPUs, and up to 8GB of DIMMs
in a single tower case.

eBay auction # 150309907711 looks pretty nice at $99.98 for:

Sun Ultra 60 2 x 360MHz, 1024 MB, 2 x 18.2 GB HD

other than the slower CPUs. Looks as though it is pre-loaded with
Solaris 9 -- though you might not be able to use it without reloading
it, if the root password has not been reset.

eBay auction # 390007912100 is a nicer system (max speed CPUs,
max RAM)

Sun Ultra 60 Workstation 2x 450MHz 2GB RAM 2x 36GB HD

Either system (or one found closer to you) will use the same keyboard
and mouse that your Ultra-2 uses.

If you go to a Sun Blade 2000, you have to change to USB
keyboard and mouse.

One of the things no longer available from Nikon (and the supply
from the people who bought the stock from Nikon is small and dwindling)
are the aperture rings for many of the lenses. The old Nikon F used the
half-moon clip on the aperture ring to couple to the Photomic
meter/pentaprism assembly. Newer cameras instead require special cuts
in the raised ridge at the back of the aperture ring to couple such
information into the newer cameras -- or to clear sensor levers on
cameras like the D70 which use it to check whether the aperture ring is
set to the smallest aperture (numerically largest), so the auto aperture
control can work properly with the chips in the later lenses. There are
a number of replacement aperture rings for older lenses -- but not for
the oldest, so you have to set up to machine the ridge in the proper
places to use the lenses on newer cameras -- including film cameras such
as the N-90 -- a rather nice film camera with lots of features. I have
two of them which were modified by Kodak to serve as digital cameras for
the AP (Associated Press). This is where I first learned about the
modified aperture rings.

Someday I plan to make a fixture to allow marking of aperture
rings so I can mill the rings in the proper places, so I can use my
older lenses -- including many of the fluted focus ring design.

It sounds like you have owned your Nikon F system from new, or fairly
new. I got into Nikon manual focus cameras when they were already fairly
old,

Got them when they were already fairly old -- but I could
*afford* them. :-)

so I've chosen lenses that are AI or AI'd using the official Nikon
replacement aperture rings. AI conversions vary quite a bit in their
neatness, and I know that the Nikon conversion rings are perfect, so I
go for them. But maybe I'm just fussy :-).

I would if I could. Here is where the rings are now -- no
longer at Nikon:

http://www.pacificrimcamera.com/

Click on "Catalog" on the left, then scroll down to Nikon, and click
there, then down to "AI Conversion Kits" and click there.

There are a lot fewer kits now than when I first found them, and
I discovered that of those which were for focal length and aperture which
I had, I was excluded by the serial number, so I could not usefully
order *any* of the kits. So -- it is something which I have to do
myself -- or to pay someone else to do in a way which might not satisfy
me. Note that even the best uses a stickon label to allow the F2 to
read the aperture into the viewfinder -- but since I don't need that
feature, I'll skip that part. Just mark where to cut, mount on an index
head, and mill away what I need to remove, then go for a flat black
paint which will grip the brass of the rings.

I presume that High Street is a location in London where there
are many camera stores -- as you can find in locations in New York City.

In many English towns, the actual name of the main shopping street is
"High Street". So it has become a generic term for the main shopping
district of a town. I think your equivalent term is perhaps "downtown"?

More often simply "Main Street", which is understood even when
there is no such named street. :-)

I was referring to buying film from pharmacies, not camera stores. There
are very few camera stores near me. Some camera stores have good prices
for film, but pharmacies are always overpriced.

Of course.

Perhaps you can still buy it *because* it is still there -- as
new-old-stock. Have you checked the expiration dates on the boxes of
film? :-)

I don't know. I've never used 110 film and probably never will. I just
read somewhere that Kodak are still making it, as of a few months ago.

O.K. I'm trying to remember whether the 110 was the cartridge
used by the Instamatic cameras, or the much smaller one which was later.
Kodak made the Instamatic cameras in large quantities, so I guess that
they feel a need to support them. Hmm ... I wonder whether you can
still get the flash cubes which the cameras used. Two designs there.
The first had a pair of leads coming from each of four flashbulbs in the
cube, and whichever one was facing forward was the one which contacted
some ramp contacts on the camera. The later one (totally incompatible)
had each flash lamp with a single fairly stiff post going into the lamp,
and a fairly stiff spring wire hooked away from the post. When it was
time to fire, a finger from the camera pushed the wire clear of the
hook, and it slammed into the post, setting off that one lamp by shock
transferred up the post.

FWIW -- I still have a package of No. 5 bayonet base flashlamps. :-)

A very nice shot -- and the scanning is at a level which makes
the grain typically a bit larger than the pixels -- though JPEG
artifacts do show up in places like the illuminated windows, and there they
are larger than the grain.

Thanks. But I'm not sure that what you're seeing are JPEG artifacts.
With a scan of that resolution, you can see all kinds of detail which
you would never see in a regular print. I think some of the fine detail
around the edges is the result of diffraction, scattered light from the
film surface and noise due to variation in grain size. The only place
where I can see what look like JPEG artifacts is around the top of the
building in the centre of the picture. Even there, I'm not convinced as
there are edges elsewhere in the picture with higher contrast where I
can't see such artifacts. I don't suppose I'll know for sure without
looking at the negative under a microscope.

O.K. Can your computer zoom in to small areas of the image? In
a building to the right of the image there are seven illuminated windows
along the top floor which have a bluish tint. Select an area which
includes the central window, and the walls to either side, but stop
before the windows to either side. Now expand that selected area to
fill your screen. You will see pixelation of the illuminated center of
the window which appear to be larger than the surrounding grain. this
is because the JPEG algorithm is trying to minimize the number of zones
in which it needs to keep track of unique colors. Crop out a similar
area of the midway between lightest and darkest of the sky and I seem to
find smaller artifacts there -- perhaps because of more grain in that
area.

Are you talking about a pattern of squares in which the squares are
larger than the pixels?

Yes.

I've seen this in highly compressed JPEGs
before, but despite looking several times cannot see it in the area you
mention in this image.

Hmm ... I see them both with xv, and with "the GIMP".

[ ... ]

Sort of like the Dodge trucks called "Ram Tough" with images of
two mountain rams crashing into each other. The original appearance of

[ ... ]

I knew a guy in high school whose dad had a Dodge Ram. It looked rather
out of place alongside the smaller English cars. But it had no air
intake on the bonnet. Probably a later truck I guess. I'd say 1970s.

The air intake originally was in "normal" large automobiles, not
the trucks.

I've been doing some web searching to try to find images of the
cars with the original ram air hoods, and have not had much luck, but I
have found several places with retrofit ram air hoods for more recent
cars. Here is an example:

http://www.fiberglass-hoods.com/fiberglass-hoods.shtml

Note that the holes at the front of the hood are not open -- only the
ones facing towards the windshield. (Scroll down to the second image.)

I never was interested in such over-powered cars. I was quite
happy at the time with an MGA-1600 MK II retrofitted with the 1800 cc
MGB engine. :-)

Enjoy,
DoN.

--
Email: | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

RAM³ wrote:
Chrysler built their
'58s as '57s and stole a march on Ford by being the first to offer a
push-button automatic tranny.]

It seems to me my 53 Plymouth Belvedere had a push button select
transmission. It was up on the dash on the left side of the
steering wheel. Then the 55 had the lever on the dash sticking
straight out, moving up and down.
...lew... (or was it my 57????) Thats the trouble with OLDAGE

"DoN. Nichols" wrote in
:

Aha -- the ones used to make check-mark shaped skids by teens of
the time. :-) I believe that the Edsel (by Ford) was the first of their
push-button transmission cars. :-)

AFAIK, the Edsel was the only Ford to use one.

Located in the middle of the steering wheel.

Lew Hartswick wrote in
m:

RAM³ wrote:
Chrysler built their
'58s as '57s and stole a march on Ford by being the first to offer a
push-button automatic tranny.]

It seems to me my 53 Plymouth Belvedere had a push button select
transmission. It was up on the dash on the left side of the
steering wheel. Then the 55 had the lever on the dash sticking
straight out, moving up and down.
...lew... (or was it my 57????) Thats the trouble with OLDAGE


I think that you have the two reversed in sequence: the dash-mounted lever
preceded the push-button.

The dash lever had 1 major drawback in a "family car" in that a kid could
reach it while the car was in motion.

That's why the push-buttons were placed on the driver's left side - so that
kids/passengers couldn't reach it.

Don sez: Here's an example of a picture I
was particularly pleased with:
http://www.mythic-beasts.com/~cdt22/north_bridge.jpg

Musta been really dark when you took it. I got a totally black screen.

Bob Swinney

On 20 Nov 2008 14:11:20 GMT, "RAM³"
wrote:

Lew Hartswick wrote in
om:

RAM³ wrote:
Chrysler built their
'58s as '57s and stole a march on Ford by being the first to offer a
push-button automatic tranny.]

It seems to me my 53 Plymouth Belvedere had a push button select
transmission. It was up on the dash on the left side of the
steering wheel. Then the 55 had the lever on the dash sticking
straight out, moving up and down.
...lew... (or was it my 57????) Thats the trouble with OLDAGE


I think that you have the two reversed in sequence: the dash-mounted lever
preceded the push-button.

The dash lever had 1 major drawback in a "family car" in that a kid could
reach it while the car was in motion.

That's why the push-buttons were placed on the driver's left side - so that
kids/passengers couldn't reach it.
Remember the Chevy ign. sw. where you could remove the key once the
engine was running? On a visit to Montreal in 1964, cruising down
Dorchester Boulevard, the driver's 2yearold daughter pulled his key
ring and dropped it out the "no-draft" - remember that?
Gerry :-)}
London, Canada

Gerald Miller wrote in
:

On 20 Nov 2008 14:11:20 GMT, "RAM³"
wrote:

Lew Hartswick wrote in
news:2Kmdnb3GfOtbd7nUnZ2dnUVZ_gmdnZ2d@earthlink. com:

RAM³ wrote:
Chrysler built their
'58s as '57s and stole a march on Ford by being the first to offer
a push-button automatic tranny.]

It seems to me my 53 Plymouth Belvedere had a push button select
transmission. It was up on the dash on the left side of the
steering wheel. Then the 55 had the lever on the dash sticking
straight out, moving up and down.
...lew... (or was it my 57????) Thats the trouble with OLDAGE


I think that you have the two reversed in sequence: the dash-mounted
lever preceded the push-button.

The dash lever had 1 major drawback in a "family car" in that a kid
could reach it while the car was in motion.

That's why the push-buttons were placed on the driver's left side - so
that kids/passengers couldn't reach it.
Remember the Chevy ign. sw. where you could remove the key once the
engine was running? On a visit to Montreal in 1964, cruising down
Dorchester Boulevard, the driver's 2yearold daughter pulled his key
ring and dropped it out the "no-draft" - remember that?
Gerry :-)}
London, Canada


The engine didn't have to be running: if the switch wasn't in the "Lock"
position when it was removed, the vehicle could be started, run, stopped,
and ... without needing a key.

Many a parent never actually handed their offspring an ignition key -
just a door/trunk key - so that they could "ground" the kid with just a
quick twist of the wrist. g

Robert Swinney wrote:
Don sez: Here's an example of a picture I

was particularly pleased with:
http://www.mythic-beasts.com/~cdt22/north_bridge.jpg


Musta been really dark when you took it. I got a totally black screen.

Bob, in pixel terms it's a huge picture. I think you're just seeing the
top left corner of it.

Best wishes,

Chris

Hi Don,

Sorry for the slight delay in replying...

That depends on the nature of the "something" which "went
wrong". Sometimes (in a DSLR), it is something as simple as oxidation
of the contacts which connect the battery to the camera -- or oxidation
in the connectors between subassemblies. In either case, the fix is
usually cleaning and reassembly.

True, but dirty contacts could be a problem in either a digital or film
camera. And you can still take pictures with a mechanical film camera
when the electrical system is not working. You just lose the metering.


Well ... with a Nikon F there *are* no contacts in the camera
body -- unless you count the flash sync contacts. The metering is in
the removable Photomic pentaprism, which can always be replaced with the
plain optical pentaprism, or the waist level finder, and a hand-held
meter can be used.

True, but the F2 only keeps the battery in the body in order to make the
prism more compact. The metering is still in the prism. So I guess there
are four electrical contacts in an F2 body. Of the four Nikon cameras I
own (a Nikkormat FT3, a Nikon EM, a Nikon F2S and a Nikon F2A) I have
never had a problem with the battery contacts. The only time I've had a
problem with the battery contacts is with my SB-11 flash (which
incidentally I love).

Later cameras (even Nikon) depended on the batteries for shutter
speed determination -- except for a very few speeds (perhaps only one)
which was purely mechanical, so bad contacts pretty much cripples the
camera.

I believe the F3 was the first professional Nikon to have an
electronically timed shutter.

A long used film camera can have problems like worn bearings in
the timing gearchain -- which requires the abilities of a watch repair
person to re-bush the mechanism.

Which the right person can repair, without too much difficulty.


For the moment. The skill is being lost, with both mechanical
watches and mechanical cameras becoming more rare.

I get the impression that the repairers we're losing are usually the
ones who are less competent. So in a way, it's a good thing. There are
some great mechanical camera repairers out there today. The guy I send
my F2s to for servicing is a relatively new entrant in the business, but
his work and customer service are first rate. While they may become less
common, mechanical cameras and film are not going to disappear.

To give an example of another old technology which has not disappeared,
you can still buy gas lamps and mantles. In fact, the most endangered
items are likely older items of high technology. In a hundred years
time, I bet you'll still be able to buy gas mantles, but not SmartMedia
cards or Betamax tapes.

The
point I'm making is that in general a digital camera with a major fault
and no spare parts is much more difficult to repair than a mechanical
film camera with a major fault and no spare parts. But as I say, that's
a generalisation, and many digital cameras haven't yet reached the point
at which spare parts are no longer available.


Right. And I suspect that cameras which have suffered major
trauma (such as one D70 which was dropped over cliff) might still serve
as a parts donor.


I think computers are way ahead of cameras in terms of ease of repair,
because standardisation is so widespread.


That depends on whose computers. For the typical desktop PC,
yes. For some brands, such as Dell, they use custom parts which are not
interchangeable with other systems.

And for computers like my Sun Blade 2000 -- some things are
interchangeable with PCs -- the PCI bus cards. But other things -- as
simple as memory DIMMs -- are custom to The Sun Blade 1000, Sun Blade
2000, and the Sun Fire 280R (which all use the same system boards), and
they are not even usable in other Suns. Certainly things like the power
supplies are very different from what you would find in a typical
Desktop PC.

I have never really seen the point in Dell computers.


Nor have I.


But Suns are a
different story. My Sun knowledge is probably a bit behind the times,
but I would say that with a Sun, they are still more readily repairable
than a digital camera. Some parts are very widely available (disks and
CD-Roms, perhaps with the exception of FC-AL disks).


I've gotten quite a few FC-AL disks -- the Sun Blade 1000/2000
and Sun Fire 280R use them (among other systems). Mine have come from
eBay, from hamfests, and from stores which deal with used computers
(better prices that for standard SCSI or IDE drives, because the market
is smaller. :-)


Others are specific
to Sun machines, such as RAM and graphics cards,


Actually -- later machines can use either PCI framebuffers
(Sun's term for graphics cards), or UPA ones (which are specific to Sun
machines). I've used both in the SB-[12]000 machines.


but are not specific to
a single workstation.


Sun has abandoned the sbus and the corresponding form of the UPA
bus which your Ultra-2 uses in favor of the PCI cards for most things,
and the UPA bus for the faster framebuffers.

I have one of the PCI SCSI cards for an Ultra 60 lying around, waiting
to see if I ever get chance to use it.

Only the system board is really specific to a
single machine. And there's quite a lot of documentation available
regarding spares, their part numbers and how to fit them. Personally I
would much rather try and fix a Sun workstation than a digital camera.


But the Sun workstation is heavier to move -- especially if you
have a 19" CRT monitor on top of it. :-) (That was what really motivated
me to move to LCD monitors, since every time I wanted to change
something in the Ultra-2 I had to lift that heavy monitor from on top of
it and find someplace to put it. :-)

True enough. A few years back I was given one of those monitors and I
carried it about 1/4 mile home. It nearly killed me :-).

Actually, my Sun Ultra 2 (which I am using to type this) looks like it
needs a repair of some kind. The clock doesn't keep time when the
machine is switched off. I had this problem with another Ultra 2 and
thought it was the NVRAM battery. So I bought a new NVRAM and within a
week or so the machine died completely,


New from Sun -- or from an eBay or other used dealer?

I got it from an electronic component supplier in early 2006. I sent it
back for a refund when the workstation died.

Note that the company which actually makes the chips (CMOS
NVRAM, battery and clock all in a single package) have changed the chip
slightly, and it no longer works with the Suns. Sun was depending on a
behavior which was not in the specs, and the updated chip no longer
behaves that way. Newer systems now work. And the Sun Blade [12]000
machines now have a coin cell in a clip on the system board to run the
clock, and use a serial EEPROM instead of the CMOS.

A separate cell is a great idea. I guess at the time the Ultra 2 was
announced, no one cared about the cost of a new NVRAM in a £25,000
workstation.

Note that you can find information on the net on how to carve
into the clock/NVRAM chip and wire on a new battery. Before you reach
this point, however, you want to make a record of the hostid and the
ethernet MAC address, as they are stored in there as well. Then you
need to write a fcode program into the NVRAM and use that to update
those two values, because the system does not normally give you access
to them. All of this is documented on the net. The first three bytes
of the hostid *must* be right for the OS to know where to find various
devices in the system.


presumably of a fault on the
system board. So this time I think I'll wait a week or two. Actually, I
might just buy a whole Ultra 2 for spares, as they're so cheap now.


If you like the Ultra-2, you will probably like the Ultra-60 as
well. It will use the same disks, and will handle slightly faster CPUs
(450 MHz instead of 400 MHz). But it will no longer use sBus cards --
instead they are replaced with PCI cards for most things, and UPA cards
for up to two of the Creator-3D framebuffers. (Note that certain of the
Creator-3D framebuffers will not work with 300 MHz CPUs, but will work
with the faster ones.) It also uses the same DIMMs, up to the same 2GB
maximum RAM. The Ultra-60 is a tower style case instead of a thick
pizzabox style, and it can handle SCA disk drives which are 1" high or
1.6" high. Otherwise, you can probably move your existing drives into
the Ultra-60 and just boot them there. It is easier to remove the cover
(a side panel on the Ultra-60, instead of a large flat surface on the
Ultra-2), so you are unlikely to have a monitor blocking access when you
want to change other things.

I like the Ultra 2 a lot. I also need to economise at the moment, so
sticking with the Ultra 2 is a good idea. Also, it means I still have a
use for my Ultra 2 spares. Thinking about it, I have the NVRAM from my
last Ultra 2 that died. I thought the NVRAM was the problem, but perhaps
it wasn't. I might swap the chips and see what happens.

Also, as the Ultra 2 is a fairly slow machine by modern standards, it's
good for programming. If my code runs fast enough on the Ultra 2, it
should be fine on modern machines.

Oh yes -- older DVD ROM drives in the Ultra-2 and the Ultra-60
won't boot from a DVD -- until you apply the firmware upgrade to move it
to the "1009" firmware version.

'TOSHIBA ' 'DVD-ROM SD-M1401' '1009' Removable CD-ROM

Of course -- the Sun Blade 2000 moves you to FC-AL drives, but
it also allows you to get up to two 1.2 GHz CPUs, and up to 8GB of DIMMs
in a single tower case.

eBay auction # 150309907711 looks pretty nice at $99.98 for:

Sun Ultra 60 2 x 360MHz, 1024 MB, 2 x 18.2 GB HD

Ultra 60s seem to be about twice that price here. I think you get better
deals in the US simply because you have access to more sellers.

other than the slower CPUs. Looks as though it is pre-loaded with
Solaris 9 -- though you might not be able to use it without reloading
it, if the root password has not been reset.

eBay auction # 390007912100 is a nicer system (max speed CPUs,
max RAM)

Sun Ultra 60 Workstation 2x 450MHz 2GB RAM 2x 36GB HD

Either system (or one found closer to you) will use the same keyboard
and mouse that your Ultra-2 uses.

If you go to a Sun Blade 2000, you have to change to USB
keyboard and mouse.

The Sun Type 5 keyboard is the best I have ever seen. I have heard that
the later keyboards are less solid. I don't want to lose that great
keyboard.

One of the things no longer available from Nikon (and the supply
from the people who bought the stock from Nikon is small and dwindling)
are the aperture rings for many of the lenses. The old Nikon F used the
half-moon clip on the aperture ring to couple to the Photomic
meter/pentaprism assembly. Newer cameras instead require special cuts
in the raised ridge at the back of the aperture ring to couple such
information into the newer cameras -- or to clear sensor levers on
cameras like the D70 which use it to check whether the aperture ring is
set to the smallest aperture (numerically largest), so the auto aperture
control can work properly with the chips in the later lenses. There are
a number of replacement aperture rings for older lenses -- but not for
the oldest, so you have to set up to machine the ridge in the proper
places to use the lenses on newer cameras -- including film cameras such
as the N-90 -- a rather nice film camera with lots of features. I have
two of them which were modified by Kodak to serve as digital cameras for
the AP (Associated Press). This is where I first learned about the
modified aperture rings.

Someday I plan to make a fixture to allow marking of aperture
rings so I can mill the rings in the proper places, so I can use my
older lenses -- including many of the fluted focus ring design.

It sounds like you have owned your Nikon F system from new, or fairly
new. I got into Nikon manual focus cameras when they were already fairly
old,


Got them when they were already fairly old -- but I could
*afford* them. :-)


so I've chosen lenses that are AI or AI'd using the official Nikon
replacement aperture rings. AI conversions vary quite a bit in their
neatness, and I know that the Nikon conversion rings are perfect, so I
go for them. But maybe I'm just fussy :-).


I would if I could. Here is where the rings are now -- no
longer at Nikon:

http://www.pacificrimcamera.com/

Click on "Catalog" on the left, then scroll down to Nikon, and click
there, then down to "AI Conversion Kits" and click there.

I wait for lenses which have already been converted using the official
Nikon part. They do come up for sale occasionally. But as I've always
owned an AI system, I fortunately don't have a collection of non-AI lenses.

As you say, the most popular replacement aperture rings are in short supply.

There are a lot fewer kits now than when I first found them, and
I discovered that of those which were for focal length and aperture which
I had, I was excluded by the serial number, so I could not usefully
order *any* of the kits. So -- it is something which I have to do
myself -- or to pay someone else to do in a way which might not satisfy
me. Note that even the best uses a stickon label to allow the F2 to
read the aperture into the viewfinder -- but since I don't need that
feature, I'll skip that part. Just mark where to cut, mount on an index
head, and mill away what I need to remove, then go for a flat black
paint which will grip the brass of the rings.

I know. The stick-on label is one of the things which bugs me about the
conversions.

I presume that High Street is a location in London where there
are many camera stores -- as you can find in locations in New York City.

In many English towns, the actual name of the main shopping street is
"High Street". So it has become a generic term for the main shopping
district of a town. I think your equivalent term is perhaps "downtown"?


More often simply "Main Street", which is understood even when
there is no such named street. :-)


I was referring to buying film from pharmacies, not camera stores. There
are very few camera stores near me. Some camera stores have good prices
for film, but pharmacies are always overpriced.


Of course.


Perhaps you can still buy it *because* it is still there -- as
new-old-stock. Have you checked the expiration dates on the boxes of
film? :-)

I don't know. I've never used 110 film and probably never will. I just
read somewhere that Kodak are still making it, as of a few months ago.


O.K. I'm trying to remember whether the 110 was the cartridge
used by the Instamatic cameras, or the much smaller one which was later.
Kodak made the Instamatic cameras in large quantities, so I guess that
they feel a need to support them.

I think Instamatic cameras used 126 film. 110 film comes in a small
cartridge which looks like a pair of spectacles from above. It was
popular in the '80s and possibly earlier.

O.K. Can your computer zoom in to small areas of the image? In
a building to the right of the image there are seven illuminated windows
along the top floor which have a bluish tint. Select an area which
includes the central window, and the walls to either side, but stop
before the windows to either side. Now expand that selected area to
fill your screen. You will see pixelation of the illuminated center of
the window which appear to be larger than the surrounding grain. this
is because the JPEG algorithm is trying to minimize the number of zones
in which it needs to keep track of unique colors. Crop out a similar
area of the midway between lightest and darkest of the sky and I seem to
find smaller artifacts there -- perhaps because of more grain in that
area.

Are you talking about a pattern of squares in which the squares are
larger than the pixels?


Yes.


I've seen this in highly compressed JPEGs
before, but despite looking several times cannot see it in the area you
mention in this image.


Hmm ... I see them both with xv, and with "the GIMP".

I honestly still can't see a pronounced pattern. I can see one or two of
the smallest fragments of patterns, but they look like they might well
have occurred by chance.

Best wishes,

Chris

On 2008-11-23, Christopher Tidy wrote:
Hi Don,

Sorry for the slight delay in replying...

That's O.K.

[ ... ]


True, but dirty contacts could be a problem in either a digital or film
camera. And you can still take pictures with a mechanical film camera
when the electrical system is not working. You just lose the metering.


Well ... with a Nikon F there *are* no contacts in the camera
body -- unless you count the flash sync contacts. The metering is in
the removable Photomic pentaprism, which can always be replaced with the
plain optical pentaprism, or the waist level finder, and a hand-held
meter can be used.

True, but the F2 only keeps the battery in the body in order to make the
prism more compact. The metering is still in the prism. So I guess there
are four electrical contacts in an F2 body. Of the four Nikon cameras I
own (a Nikkormat FT3, a Nikon EM, a Nikon F2S and a Nikon F2A) I have
never had a problem with the battery contacts. The only time I've had a
problem with the battery contacts is with my SB-11 flash (which
incidentally I love).

O.K. The primary problem with the Photomic and Photomic-TN
finders for the Nikon F is that they use two PX-13 cells -- mercury
cells which are no longer made. (Same for a rather nice digital caliper
from Brown & Sharpe.) At least I didn't pay list price for any of them. :-)

Later cameras (even Nikon) depended on the batteries for shutter
speed determination -- except for a very few speeds (perhaps only one)
which was purely mechanical, so bad contacts pretty much cripples the
camera.

I believe the F3 was the first professional Nikon to have an
electronically timed shutter.

O.K. IIRC, the first ones used electric timing for the slower
speeds -- no gear and escapement train to gum up in the lubricant -- and
I think that anything 1/60th or faster was mechanically timed then.

[ ... ]

Which the right person can repair, without too much difficulty.


For the moment. The skill is being lost, with both mechanical
watches and mechanical cameras becoming more rare.

I get the impression that the repairers we're losing are usually the
ones who are less competent. So in a way, it's a good thing. There are
some great mechanical camera repairers out there today. The guy I send
my F2s to for servicing is a relatively new entrant in the business, but
his work and customer service are first rate. While they may become less
common, mechanical cameras and film are not going to disappear.

O.K. It will be interesting to see what the next ten years or
so brings. That young fellow may die of overwork as the others pass on.

To give an example of another old technology which has not disappeared,
you can still buy gas lamps and mantles. In fact, the most endangered
items are likely older items of high technology. In a hundred years
time, I bet you'll still be able to buy gas mantles, but not SmartMedia
cards or Betamax tapes.

The mantles are becoming controlled -- because they are mildly
radioactive, IIRC -- thorium-232. Some manufacturer's sites have become
"Superfund" sites, so the availability of mantles may not be assured.

As for why they have survived so long -- look at the camping
crowd, which likes the ability to use gasoline fired lanterns instead of
having to carry heavy batteries for a weekend (or longer) camping trip.

[ ... ]

Actually -- later machines can use either PCI framebuffers
(Sun's term for graphics cards), or UPA ones (which are specific to Sun
machines). I've used both in the SB-[12]000 machines.


but are not specific to
a single workstation.


Sun has abandoned the sbus and the corresponding form of the UPA
bus which your Ultra-2 uses in favor of the PCI cards for most things,
and the UPA bus for the faster framebuffers.

I have one of the PCI SCSI cards for an Ultra 60 lying around, waiting
to see if I ever get chance to use it.

Not just for an Ultra-60. It will work with the Ultra-30 (half
of an Ulra-60 -- only one CPU), Sun Fire 280R (my current file server),
Sun Blade 1000 and 2000 (my current workstations) the cheap Sun Ultra 5,
Ultra-10, and Sun Blade 100 (all three of these last machines use IDE
drives, not SCSI or FC-AL drives.

[ ... ]

But the Sun workstation is heavier to move -- especially if you
have a 19" CRT monitor on top of it. :-) (That was what really motivated
me to move to LCD monitors, since every time I wanted to change
something in the Ultra-2 I had to lift that heavy monitor from on top of
it and find someplace to put it. :-)

True enough. A few years back I was given one of those monitors and I
carried it about 1/4 mile home. It nearly killed me :-).

It *would* have killed me -- to carry it that far. I'm an old
phart these days. :-)

Actually, my Sun Ultra 2 (which I am using to type this) looks like it
needs a repair of some kind. The clock doesn't keep time when the
machine is switched off. I had this problem with another Ultra 2 and
thought it was the NVRAM battery. So I bought a new NVRAM and within a
week or so the machine died completely,


New from Sun -- or from an eBay or other used dealer?

I got it from an electronic component supplier in early 2006. I sent it
back for a refund when the workstation died.

O.K.

Note that the company which actually makes the chips (CMOS
NVRAM, battery and clock all in a single package) have changed the chip
slightly, and it no longer works with the Suns. Sun was depending on a
behavior which was not in the specs, and the updated chip no longer
behaves that way. Newer systems now work. And the Sun Blade [12]000
machines now have a coin cell in a clip on the system board to run the
clock, and use a serial EEPROM instead of the CMOS.

A separate cell is a great idea. I guess at the time the Ultra 2 was
announced, no one cared about the cost of a new NVRAM in a £25,000
workstation.

The interesting thing is that one of the SPARCstation clones,
the Solbourne S4000 and S4000dx (I have one of each) used a bipolar ROM
for the HOSTID and the MAC address, and the CMOS RAM and clock were
powered by a coin cell in a clip -- way back in the SS-2 days. Why it
took Sun so long to do this still puzzles me.

[ ... ]

If you like the Ultra-2, you will probably like the Ultra-60 as
well. It will use the same disks, and will handle slightly faster CPUs
(450 MHz instead of 400 MHz). But it will no longer use sBus cards --
instead they are replaced with PCI cards for most things, and UPA cards
for up to two of the Creator-3D framebuffers. (Note that certain of the
Creator-3D framebuffers will not work with 300 MHz CPUs, but will work
with the faster ones.) It also uses the same DIMMs, up to the same 2GB
maximum RAM. The Ultra-60 is a tower style case instead of a thick
pizzabox style, and it can handle SCA disk drives which are 1" high or
1.6" high. Otherwise, you can probably move your existing drives into
the Ultra-60 and just boot them there. It is easier to remove the cover
(a side panel on the Ultra-60, instead of a large flat surface on the
Ultra-2), so you are unlikely to have a monitor blocking access when you
want to change other things.

I like the Ultra 2 a lot. I also need to economise at the moment, so
sticking with the Ultra 2 is a good idea. Also, it means I still have a
use for my Ultra 2 spares. Thinking about it, I have the NVRAM from my
last Ultra 2 that died. I thought the NVRAM was the problem, but perhaps
it wasn't. I might swap the chips and see what happens.

There is a program somewhere which will shut down the clock in
the chip -- which is what you want to do if it is going to be sitting
there out of a machine for a long time. This is how they are shipped,
and when the system does its POST it kicks the clock into operation.

Back in the old days of SunOs 4.1.x the time/date was stored in
the superblock, and checked against the clock chip on boot. If they
differed by more than a certain amount, you got a warning to check and
reset the clock. It *really* complains when I boot from a SunOs 4.1.2
CDROM (which of course *can't* have its superblock updated) to install
on an old system -- complaints about being over ten years out of sync. :-)

Also, as the Ultra 2 is a fairly slow machine by modern standards, it's
good for programming. If my code runs fast enough on the Ultra 2, it
should be fine on modern machines.

The Ultra-60 is at most 450 MHz per CPU, and the Ultra-2 tops
out at 400 MHz per CPU, so the speed is pretty much the same. It is the
Sun Blade 2000, with a possible pair of 1200 MHz CPUs (such as I am
currently running) where things get a bit hasty. :-)

Oh yes -- older DVD ROM drives in the Ultra-2 and the Ultra-60
won't boot from a DVD -- until you apply the firmware upgrade to move it
to the "1009" firmware version.

'TOSHIBA ' 'DVD-ROM SD-M1401' '1009' Removable CD-ROM

You might check the firmware version in yours (assuming that
you have the DVD-ROM drive instead of just a CD-ROM. I think that some
of my Ultra-2 machines came with DVDs, and others with CDs. Solaris 9
and 10 were a serious motivation to move to a DVD drive, because it was
one DVD (in place of 5 CDs, and you need to be there to keep changing
them), plus one CD or DVD for the Software Companion. Interestingly
enough, Sol-10u5 had a DVD for the Software Companion (1.4 GB total for
source, and binaries for both the UltraSPARC and the x86 lines), while
the latest Sol-10u6) has dropped the size of the Software Companion to
under 700 MB -- so it fits on a CD-ROM. I haven't yet installed
Sol-10u6 in the experimental machine, but I suspect that they have moved
more of the open source software from /opt/sfw (optional from the
Software Companion) to /usr/sfw (also open source softwre, but part of
the standard install). Until I get that installed, I won't know. I
just recently downloaded it -- an overnight run of about five hours with
a T1 line, FWIW.

[ ... ]

eBay auction # 150309907711 looks pretty nice at $99.98 for:

Sun Ultra 60 2 x 360MHz, 1024 MB, 2 x 18.2 GB HD

Ultra 60s seem to be about twice that price here. I think you get better
deals in the US simply because you have access to more sellers.

Probably so. I've gotten an Ultra-2 (back when I was using
them) from a local used computer vendor for something like $50.00 US.

And the access to the less expensive units falls victim to the
costs of shipping across the pond.

What speed CPUs are you running on your Ultra-2? You can move
them into the Ultra-60 if you want to.

[ ... ]

Sun Ultra 60 Workstation 2x 450MHz 2GB RAM 2x 36GB HD

Either system (or one found closer to you) will use the same keyboard
and mouse that your Ultra-2 uses.

If you go to a Sun Blade 2000, you have to change to USB
keyboard and mouse.

The Sun Type 5 keyboard is the best I have ever seen. I have heard that
the later keyboards are less solid. I don't want to lose that great
keyboard.

I like the Type-6 keyboard, which has a clip-on shelf on the
near side of the spacebar which serves nicely as a wrist rest when
typing in my reclining chair with the keyboard in my lap (which is how I
normally type.)

[ ... ]

Someday I plan to make a fixture to allow marking of aperture
rings so I can mill the rings in the proper places, so I can use my
older lenses -- including many of the fluted focus ring design.

It sounds like you have owned your Nikon F system from new, or fairly
new. I got into Nikon manual focus cameras when they were already fairly
old,


Got them when they were already fairly old -- but I could
*afford* them. :-)

And a friend was in the habit of picking up interesting lenses
and offering to trade them for something else which he wanted. :-) This
is the same friend who collected VAX computers. :-)

The final batch (lenses and spare bodies) was in exchange for a
50mm f0.95 for the Cannon-7 rangefinder. He found the camera to fit the
lens before I found one. I got the lens at a hamfest for about $15.00
many years ago. I did make a mount for the lens, and tried it on a
videcon at work for a project -- and it was quite soft and prone to
flare -- but it was *still* fast. :-)

[ ... ]

I would if I could. Here is where the rings are now -- no
longer at Nikon:

http://www.pacificrimcamera.com/

Click on "Catalog" on the left, then scroll down to Nikon, and click
there, then down to "AI Conversion Kits" and click there.

I wait for lenses which have already been converted using the official
Nikon part. They do come up for sale occasionally. But as I've always
owned an AI system, I fortunately don't have a collection of non-AI lenses.

As you say, the most popular replacement aperture rings are in short supply.

There were *never* any there to fit any lenses I had except
those which already came with the proper rings. :-(

This became a mater of importance to me when I got a Nikon N90s
which had been modified by Kodak to become digital. All of a sudden,
many lenses would not work -- or even mount.

[ ... AI conversions ... ]

Note that even the best uses a stickon label to allow the F2 to
read the aperture into the viewfinder -- but since I don't need that
feature, I'll skip that part. Just mark where to cut, mount on an index
head, and mill away what I need to remove, then go for a flat black
paint which will grip the brass of the rings.

I know. The stick-on label is one of the things which bugs me about the
conversions.

I would like to have a CNC machine to engrave the markings, then
paint the machined area black and fill with appropriate colored paints.
Lacking that ability -- I'll just do without the markings, since no
camera which I have uses them.

[ ... ]

Perhaps you can still buy it *because* it is still there -- as
new-old-stock. Have you checked the expiration dates on the boxes of
film? :-)

I don't know. I've never used 110 film and probably never will. I just
read somewhere that Kodak are still making it, as of a few months ago.


O.K. I'm trying to remember whether the 110 was the cartridge
used by the Instamatic cameras, or the much smaller one which was later.
Kodak made the Instamatic cameras in large quantities, so I guess that
they feel a need to support them.

I think Instamatic cameras used 126 film. 110 film comes in a small
cartridge which looks like a pair of spectacles from above. It was
popular in the '80s and possibly earlier.

Aha -- you are right. I don't have an Instamatic, but I do have
a cute little tiny camera with a nice fast zoom lens which uses the 110.
I hadn't tried to get any film for it in a long time. IIRC -- it also
required PX-13 mercury cells.

Enjoy,
DoN.

--
Email: | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

On Mon, 24 Nov 2008 03:39:10 +0000, DoN. Nichols wrote:
On 2008-11-23, Christopher Tidy ... wrote:
True, but the F2 only keeps the battery in the body in order to make
the prism more compact. The metering is still in the prism. So I guess
there are four electrical contacts in an F2 body. Of the four Nikon
cameras I own (a Nikkormat FT3, a Nikon EM, a Nikon F2S and a Nikon
F2A) I have never had a problem with the battery contacts. The only
time I've had a problem with the battery contacts is with my SB-11
flash (which incidentally I love).

O.K. The primary problem with the Photomic and Photomic-TN
finders for the Nikon F is that they use two PX-13 cells -- mercury
cells which are no longer made. (Same for a rather nice digital caliper
from Brown & Sharpe.)
....
I think Instamatic cameras used 126 film. 110 film comes in a small
cartridge which looks like a pair of spectacles from above. It was
popular in the '80s and possibly earlier.

Aha -- you are right. I don't have an Instamatic, but I do have
a cute little tiny camera with a nice fast zoom lens which uses the 110.
I hadn't tried to get any film for it in a long time. IIRC -- it also
required PX-13 mercury cells.

A substitute can be made with an OA91 germanium diode in series
with a silver oxide cell. See Joerg's post, about 3rd one in
http://groups.google.com/group/sci.e...browse_thread/
thread/bf4fc0f2beb4e26c and also some posts and circuits in
http://groups.google.com/group/sci.e...browse_thread/
thread/9e2f2d5e9ff9c9ac. A UK company sells expensive adapters:
http://www.smallbattery.company.org.uk/sbc_px625.htm

--
jiw

On Sun, 23 Nov 2008 23:37:16 -0600, James Waldby wrote:

On Mon, 24 Nov 2008 03:39:10 +0000, DoN. Nichols wrote:
On 2008-11-23, Christopher Tidy ... wrote:
True, but the F2 only keeps the battery in the body in order to make
the prism more compact. The metering is still in the prism. So I guess
there are four electrical contacts in an F2 body. Of the four Nikon
cameras I own (a Nikkormat FT3, a Nikon EM, a Nikon F2S and a Nikon
F2A) I have never had a problem with the battery contacts. The only
time I've had a problem with the battery contacts is with my SB-11
flash (which incidentally I love).

O.K. The primary problem with the Photomic and Photomic-TN
finders for the Nikon F is that they use two PX-13 cells -- mercury
cells which are no longer made. (Same for a rather nice digital caliper
from Brown & Sharpe.)
...
I think Instamatic cameras used 126 film. 110 film comes in a small
cartridge which looks like a pair of spectacles from above. It was
popular in the '80s and possibly earlier.

I just gave a key chain camera to a collector friend. A plastic cube
about 1" on a side that clipped around the 110 cartridge, complete
with shutter release and view finder. Got it in a box of misc. items
while yard saleing. I never tried it but it looked like it would take
pictures, my friend was impressed.

Aha -- you are right. I don't have an Instamatic, but I do have
a cute little tiny camera with a nice fast zoom lens which uses the 110.
I hadn't tried to get any film for it in a long time. IIRC -- it also
required PX-13 mercury cells.

A substitute can be made with an OA91 germanium diode in series
with a silver oxide cell. See Joerg's post, about 3rd one in
http://groups.google.com/group/sci.e...browse_thread/
thread/bf4fc0f2beb4e26c and also some posts and circuits in
http://groups.google.com/group/sci.e...browse_thread/
thread/9e2f2d5e9ff9c9ac. A UK company sells expensive adapters:
http://www.smallbattery.company.org.uk/sbc_px625.htm
Gerry :-)}
London, Canada

On 2008-11-24, Gerald Miller wrote:
On Sun, 23 Nov 2008 23:37:16 -0600, James Waldby wrote:

On Mon, 24 Nov 2008 03:39:10 +0000, DoN. Nichols wrote:
On 2008-11-23, Christopher Tidy ... wrote:

[ ... ]

I think Instamatic cameras used 126 film. 110 film comes in a small
cartridge which looks like a pair of spectacles from above. It was
popular in the '80s and possibly earlier.

I just gave a key chain camera to a collector friend. A plastic cube
about 1" on a side that clipped around the 110 cartridge, complete
with shutter release and view finder. Got it in a box of misc. items
while yard saleing. I never tried it but it looked like it would take
pictures, my friend was impressed.

Hmm ... I've still got a couple of Mamaya 16 cameras -- use 16mm
movie film in little cartridges -- either two cartridges joined by a
strap, or two individual ones to wind from one through the camera to the
other. Somewhere, I even have Nikkor reels to handle developing them.
The trick, these days, is to find 16mm roll film to reload into the
cartridges. I used film from a 100' reel until it got too old.

Of course -- my first rolls were developed the old fashiond way
-- hold both ends, and see-saw it through the developer, stop bath, and
fixer. The problem was that the first time that timer went off in the
full dark, I tossed one strip over some overhead pipes. :-)

Enjoy,
DoN.

--
Email: | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

DoN. Nichols wrote:

To give an example of another old technology which has not disappeared,
you can still buy gas lamps and mantles. In fact, the most endangered
items are likely older items of high technology. In a hundred years
time, I bet you'll still be able to buy gas mantles, but not SmartMedia
cards or Betamax tapes.


The mantles are becoming controlled -- because they are mildly
radioactive, IIRC -- thorium-232. Some manufacturer's sites have become
"Superfund" sites, so the availability of mantles may not be assured.

As for why they have survived so long -- look at the camping
crowd, which likes the ability to use gasoline fired lanterns instead of
having to carry heavy batteries for a weekend (or longer) camping trip.

Similarly, there are some pretty good reasons for preferring film. While
it may not be the most common method of making pictures in the future, I
have no doubt that it'll remain available.

snip

I have one of the PCI SCSI cards for an Ultra 60 lying around, waiting
to see if I ever get chance to use it.


Not just for an Ultra-60. It will work with the Ultra-30 (half
of an Ulra-60 -- only one CPU), Sun Fire 280R (my current file server),
Sun Blade 1000 and 2000 (my current workstations) the cheap Sun Ultra 5,
Ultra-10, and Sun Blade 100 (all three of these last machines use IDE
drives, not SCSI or FC-AL drives.

My recollection is that the Ultra 5, Ultra 10 and Blade 100 are all
slower that a maximum specification Ultra 2. I think many people thought
that the machines with higher model numbers would be faster, when
actually they were not. For its time, the Ultra 2 was a very fast machine.

But the Sun workstation is heavier to move -- especially if you
have a 19" CRT monitor on top of it. :-) (That was what really motivated
me to move to LCD monitors, since every time I wanted to change
something in the Ultra-2 I had to lift that heavy monitor from on top of
it and find someplace to put it. :-)

True enough. A few years back I was given one of those monitors and I
carried it about 1/4 mile home. It nearly killed me :-).


It *would* have killed me -- to carry it that far. I'm an old
phart these days. :-)

Fortunately I've got space to put my monitor next to the Ultra 2, rather
than on top of it. Instead, I end up piling CD-Roms and books on top :-).

snip

eBay auction # 150309907711 looks pretty nice at $99.98 for:

Sun Ultra 60 2 x 360MHz, 1024 MB, 2 x 18.2 GB HD

Ultra 60s seem to be about twice that price here. I think you get better
deals in the US simply because you have access to more sellers.


Probably so. I've gotten an Ultra-2 (back when I was using
them) from a local used computer vendor for something like $50.00 US.

Well, I think I scored a good deal:
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.d...m=260318379668

Even with the shipping (which is a bit overpriced, but given the low
opening bid I wasn't worried) it's less than $50.

It hasn't arrived yet, so there are still ways in which the deal could
turn bad, but I'm hopeful that this will be an economical solution.

And the access to the less expensive units falls victim to the
costs of shipping across the pond.

What speed CPUs are you running on your Ultra-2? You can move
them into the Ultra-60 if you want to.

At the moment I've got the following in my Ultra 2:

* 2 x 400 MHz processors
* 1280 MB RAM
* 2 x 36 GB hard disks
* 32x CD-Rom

One of the good things about the Ultra 2 I've bought on eBay is that it
has 2 GB of RAM. Not that I'm convinced that this will speed the machine
up a lot, but it's something I've yet to acquire.

As for moving the Ultra 2 processors into an Ultra 60, I have been
variously told that:

* You can.
* You can't.
* Sun says you can't, but actually it works.

I have not looked at an Ultra 60 closely enough to know if it uses the
same processor slot, as I don't know anyone who owns one. But I don't
think I've ever heard of an Ultra 60 with 400 MHz processors. They all
seem to be 360 or 450 MHz. I'm pretty sure that the hard disks can be
interchanged, though.

Incidentally, I have more 300 MHz Ultra 2 processors than I know what to
do with, if you know of anyone who wants some.

I am not sure whether to pull the NVRAM chip from this new machine and
plug it into my existing machine, or whether to take my disks and SBus
cards from the existing machine and put them into the new machine. The
former is much less work, but the latter seems a safer bet. Any thoughts?

Sun Ultra 60 Workstation 2x 450MHz 2GB RAM 2x 36GB HD

Either system (or one found closer to you) will use the same keyboard
and mouse that your Ultra-2 uses.

If you go to a Sun Blade 2000, you have to change to USB
keyboard and mouse.

The Sun Type 5 keyboard is the best I have ever seen. I have heard that
the later keyboards are less solid. I don't want to lose that great
keyboard.


I like the Type-6 keyboard, which has a clip-on shelf on the
near side of the spacebar which serves nicely as a wrist rest when
typing in my reclining chair with the keyboard in my lap (which is how I
normally type.)

They were still grey/cream keyboards, weren't they? I don't think I've
tried the later grey/cream keyboard. But I tried a blue one and hated it.

Someday I plan to make a fixture to allow marking of aperture
rings so I can mill the rings in the proper places, so I can use my
older lenses -- including many of the fluted focus ring design.

It sounds like you have owned your Nikon F system from new, or fairly
new. I got into Nikon manual focus cameras when they were already fairly
old,


Got them when they were already fairly old -- but I could
*afford* them. :-)


And a friend was in the habit of picking up interesting lenses
and offering to trade them for something else which he wanted. :-) This
is the same friend who collected VAX computers. :-)

The final batch (lenses and spare bodies) was in exchange for a
50mm f0.95 for the Cannon-7 rangefinder. He found the camera to fit the
lens before I found one. I got the lens at a hamfest for about $15.00
many years ago. I did make a mount for the lens, and tried it on a
videcon at work for a project -- and it was quite soft and prone to
flare -- but it was *still* fast. :-)

Sounds like an interesting lens. However, I get the impression that many
purchases of the fastest lenses were influenced to some degree by their
poser value. I don't imagine that too many people regularly used those
lenses wide open :-).

Best wishes,

Chris

On 2008-11-27, Christopher Tidy wrote:
DoN. Nichols wrote:

[ ... ]

I have one of the PCI SCSI cards for an Ultra 60 lying around, waiting
to see if I ever get chance to use it.


Not just for an Ultra-60. It will work with the Ultra-30 (half
of an Ultra-60 -- only one CPU), Sun Fire 280R (my current file server),
Sun Blade 1000 and 2000 (my current workstations) the cheap Sun Ultra 5,
Ultra-10, and Sun Blade 100 (all three of these last machines use IDE
drives, not SCSI or FC-AL drives.

My recollection is that the Ultra 5, Ultra 10 and Blade 100 are all
slower that a maximum specification Ultra 2. I think many people thought
that the machines with higher model numbers would be faster, when
actually they were not. For its time, the Ultra 2 was a very fast machine.

O.K. Ultra-2 CPUs available:

167 MHz
200 MHz
250 MHz
300 MHz
360 MHz (Ultra 60 only)
400 MHz
450 MHz (Ultra 60 only)

Ultra-5, Ultra-10 CPUs available:
270 MHz (Ultra 5)
300 MHz (Ultra 10)
333 MHz (Ultra-5, 10)
360 MHz (Ultra-5, 10)
400 MHz (Ultra-5)
440 MHz (Ultra-10)

So a single threaded process can run faster on the Ultra-10 than
on the Ultra-2, and equally fast on the Ultra-5 -- assuming that CPU
speed is the only limiting factor. Ultra 60 can go a bit faster than
the fastest Ultra-10.

But The Sun Blade 1000 and 2000 series started at 600 MHz, then
750, 900, then the switch to Cu (copper conductors in the chip instead
of aluminum) 900, 1050, and 1200 MHz.

Of course -- the Ultra-5 and Ultra-10 have the slower IDE bus
instead of a nice fast SCSI bus.

[ ... ]

True enough. A few years back I was given one of those monitors and I
carried it about 1/4 mile home. It nearly killed me :-).


It *would* have killed me -- to carry it that far. I'm an old
phart these days. :-)

Fortunately I've got space to put my monitor next to the Ultra 2, rather
than on top of it. Instead, I end up piling CD-Roms and books on top :-).

That helps. The CD-ROMs and books can be moved one or two at
a time, so the total weight is a lot less. :-)

[ ... ]

Probably so. I've gotten an Ultra-2 (back when I was using
them) from a local used computer vendor for something like $50.00 US.

Well, I think I scored a good deal:
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.d...m=260318379668

O.K. Looks nice -- as long as the description given is the
actual configuration, rather than a listing of the manufacturer's
maximum which I have seen in some auctions.

Disks are small -- but no problem if you have others to swap in.

However -- I don't see a mention of the framebuffer, which may
mean that it is an "Enterprise" version -- no framebuffer, intended to
be a server, and the console is a serial terminal connected to TTYA.

Even with the shipping (which is a bit overpriced, but given the low
opening bid I wasn't worried) it's less than $50.

:-) (Of course, several years after my $50.00 Ultra-2. :-)

It hasn't arrived yet, so there are still ways in which the deal could
turn bad, but I'm hopeful that this will be an economical solution.

The lack of a framebuffer means that you will have to swap in
one from your current system.

And the access to the less expensive units falls victim to the
costs of shipping across the pond.

What speed CPUs are you running on your Ultra-2? You can move
them into the Ultra-60 if you want to.

At the moment I've got the following in my Ultra 2:

* 2 x 400 MHz processors

O.K. The max.

* 1280 MB RAM

Can be expanded -- with the replacement system.

* 2 x 36 GB hard disks

Better than the drives in the auction system.

* 32x CD-Rom

O.K. Not a DVD ROM then. I can't be sure what is in your
auction machine. The DVD-ROM would be nicer -- especially when
installing the latest Solaris 10 U6

One of the good things about the Ultra 2 I've bought on eBay is that it
has 2 GB of RAM. Not that I'm convinced that this will speed the machine
up a lot, but it's something I've yet to acquire.

If you do memory intensive things -- like image processing, the
more RAM the better.

As for moving the Ultra 2 processors into an Ultra 60, I have been
variously told that:

* You can.
* You can't.
* Sun says you can't, but actually it works.

I believe that the third one is correct, based on past postings
in comp.sys.sun.hardare.

I have not looked at an Ultra 60 closely enough to know if it uses the
same processor slot, as I don't know anyone who owns one.

I do own both machines, and they do use the same slot. Since
both of my Ultra-60 machines came with two 450 MHz CPUs, I did not have
any reason to move the 400 MHz ones from the Ultra-2 into the Ultra-60.

But I don't
think I've ever heard of an Ultra 60 with 400 MHz processors.

My Sun FEH (Field Engineer's Handbook) says that there were 400
MHz CPUs for the Ultra-60. (501-5446 and 501-5500), while the ones for
the Ultra-2 were 501-5445 (one lower than the first of the Ultra-60
ones). The Ultra-2 ones had 2MB Cache, and the Ultra-60 ones had 4MB
Cache.

The 300 MHz CPUs (in both systems) had problems co-existing with
one version of the Creator-3D framebuffers.

They all
seem to be 360 or 450 MHz. I'm pretty sure that the hard disks can be
interchanged, though.

Yes, no, and maybe. :-) It depends on the direction. All use
the SCA 80-pin interface. The Ultra-2 has clearance only for 1" high
drives, while the drive bay in the Ultra-60 can handle 1.6" drives with
no problems.

Incidentally, I have more 300 MHz Ultra 2 processors than I know what to
do with, if you know of anyone who wants some.

Given the poor cooperation with the Creator-3D, I don't think
that I do. :-)

I am not sure whether to pull the NVRAM chip from this new machine and
plug it into my existing machine, or whether to take my disks and SBus
cards from the existing machine and put them into the new machine. The
former is much less work, but the latter seems a safer bet. Any thoughts?

First -- just try bringing the system up as it is shipped. It
appears to have some version of Solaris pre-loaded, though it is not
clear which version. I have my doubts about a fill load of Solaris 10
with only two 9GB drives. :-) But this will tell you whether the
computer *as shipped* works, before you change anything. If it does not
have a framebuffer, you'll want a null modem cable between the new
machine's TTYA and one of the two TTY ports on your old machine, just so
you can see what it says during boot -- including total memory
installed. If your old machine won't work well enough -- you can use a
PC or a stand-alone terminal for seeing what it does.

I hope that you don't have any licensed software installed, as
that is keyed to the hostid (and possibly the MAC address) in the NVRAM,
and IIRC you were having problems with your current NVRAM.

Once it passes that test, then you can see what else to move.
CPUs (move in pairs), framebuffer (if the new one does not have one),
disks, and any sBus cards which may be of utility.

It is a pity that the vendor in the auction did not feel it worth
while to put up a bigger image -- and one of the back as well.

What does RTB stand for in

"The unit comes with 30 days RTB warranty."? I hope
that it is saying that you can return it if it does not work. (Though
at that prince -- it is worth it for parts. :-)

Anyway -- first time you boot it -- write down the hostid and
the MAC address -- to put into the other NVRAM after surgery to give it
a fresh battery.

[ ... ]

The Sun Type 5 keyboard is the best I have ever seen. I have heard that
the later keyboards are less solid. I don't want to lose that great
keyboard.


I like the Type-6 keyboard, which has a clip-on shelf on the
near side of the spacebar which serves nicely as a wrist rest when
typing in my reclining chair with the keyboard in my lap (which is how I
normally type.)

They were still grey/cream keyboards, weren't they?

Yes. I don't use the Sun USB mouse, however. this finally
allows me to use the Logitech "Trackman Wheel" trackball -- much easier
to use on the arm of my chair. Anything which needs a mouse pad does
not work well on the chair arm. :-)

I don't think I've
tried the later grey/cream keyboard. But I tried a blue one and hated it.

I've never had a blue one to try. Is that the Type-7?

[ ... ]

The final batch (lenses and spare bodies) was in exchange for a
50mm f0.95 for the Cannon-7 rangefinder. He found the camera to fit the
lens before I found one. I got the lens at a hamfest for about $15.00
many years ago. I did make a mount for the lens, and tried it on a
vidicon at work for a project -- and it was quite soft and prone to
flare -- but it was *still* fast. :-)

Sounds like an interesting lens. However, I get the impression that many
purchases of the fastest lenses were influenced to some degree by their
poser value. I don't imagine that too many people regularly used those
lenses wide open :-).

Well ... if I had the camera body to fit it, I would have used
it. I tended to do a lot of low-light shots without flash to avoid
calling attention to myself.

The D70 (digital Nikon) has the advantage that it will start at
200 ISO (ASA), and work its way up to 1600 ISO if needed to keep the
shutter speed reasonable. And while the image is a bit noisier at 1600
ISO, it is not as bad as the grain in a color slide or negative film
pushed to 1600 ASA. :-) Most of the time, I don't need faster than the
f:3.5 on the zoom lenses which I use -- though I have the 50mm f:1.4
autofocus, and a 180mm f2.8 which has been coverted to add a chip so it
will handle auto-exposure properly, even though it does not have
autofocus.

Enjoy,
DoN.

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