"Larry Jaques" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 15 Nov 2016 22:23:30 -0500, "Jim Wilkins"
wrote:

I had the job of designing the fonts for an ink jet printer so I've
..
Thankless job, wot? (more recently, anyway) I used to make web
advertising banners and sorted through the hundreds of different
fonts
available through Corel Draw 3 (my first graphical purchase) to
match
the font to the product and company it represented.

I toyed with a font editor a couple times but didn't have the
mindset
for it. You probably did it more from an electronics perspective, so
I
can't really compare. Were you gifted with naming the font you
inspired, or did the company graciously call it "default inkjet font
1"?

The dot pitch was 240 per inch, with the option of horizontally
shifting by 1/2 the pitch after a blank space, which helped to fake
Bezier curves and draw italics. The lawyers said we could copy
laserjet output as long as we renamed the font, since the alphabet
can't be copyrighted, so each was prefixed with the company name.

However laserjet printing is at 300DPI and is fuzzy with toner dust
around the edges, so the engineer had custom-built a digitizing and
editing system based on an HP1000 minicomputer that only he and I
could operate. I had to completely redraw each letter to resemble the
blobby size and outline of each digitized character image in the full
IBM sets of Courier, Bodoni, Times Roman etc, in several point sizes
of normal, bold and italic, plus fine-tune the character widths for
the proportional pitch fonts, then make test printouts and re-edit to
account for the unique quirks of this ink-jet printer. I spent nearly
a full year on that task before they were happy with the results.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Em_(typography)

--jsw

On Wed, 16 Nov 2016 13:08:31 -0500, "Jim Wilkins"
wrote:

"Larry Jaques" wrote in message
.. .
On Tue, 15 Nov 2016 22:23:30 -0500, "Jim Wilkins"
wrote:

I had the job of designing the fonts for an ink jet printer so I've
..
Thankless job, wot? (more recently, anyway) I used to make web
advertising banners and sorted through the hundreds of different
fonts
available through Corel Draw 3 (my first graphical purchase) to
match
the font to the product and company it represented.

I toyed with a font editor a couple times but didn't have the
mindset
for it. You probably did it more from an electronics perspective, so
I
can't really compare. Were you gifted with naming the font you
inspired, or did the company graciously call it "default inkjet font
1"?

The dot pitch was 240 per inch, with the option of horizontally
shifting by 1/2 the pitch after a blank space, which helped to fake
Bezier curves and draw italics. The lawyers said we could copy
laserjet output as long as we renamed the font, since the alphabet
can't be copyrighted, so each was prefixed with the company name.

However laserjet printing is at 300DPI and is fuzzy with toner dust
around the edges,

They still have a lot of that fuzz today, but it's better.


so the engineer had custom-built a digitizing and
editing system based on an HP1000 minicomputer that only he and I
could operate.

Widely embraced, I see.


I had to completely redraw each letter to resemble the
blobby size and outline of each digitized character image in the full
IBM sets of Courier, Bodoni, Times Roman etc, in several point sizes
of normal, bold and italic, plus fine-tune the character widths for
the proportional pitch fonts, then make test printouts and re-edit to
account for the unique quirks of this ink-jet printer. I spent nearly
a full year on that task before they were happy with the results.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Em_(typography)

I would have gone absolutely bonkers after even a week of that...
Congrats on surviving it.

--
I have never understood why it is "greed" to want to keep the money you
have earned, but it is not greed to want take someone else's money.
--Thomas Sowell

"Larry Jaques" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 16 Nov 2016 13:08:31 -0500, "Jim Wilkins"
wrote:

"Larry Jaques" wrote in message
. ..
On Tue, 15 Nov 2016 22:23:30 -0500, "Jim Wilkins"
wrote:

I had the job of designing the fonts for an ink jet printer so
I've
..
Thankless job, wot? (more recently, anyway) I used to make web
advertising banners and sorted through the hundreds of different
fonts
available through Corel Draw 3 (my first graphical purchase) to
match
the font to the product and company it represented.

I toyed with a font editor a couple times but didn't have the
mindset
for it. You probably did it more from an electronics perspective,
so
I
can't really compare. Were you gifted with naming the font you
inspired, or did the company graciously call it "default inkjet
font
1"?

The dot pitch was 240 per inch, with the option of horizontally
shifting by 1/2 the pitch after a blank space, which helped to fake
Bezier curves and draw italics. The lawyers said we could copy
laserjet output as long as we renamed the font, since the alphabet
can't be copyrighted, so each was prefixed with the company name.

However laserjet printing is at 300DPI and is fuzzy with toner dust
around the edges,

They still have a lot of that fuzz today, but it's better.


so the engineer had custom-built a digitizing and
editing system based on an HP1000 minicomputer that only he and I
could operate.

Widely embraced, I see.


I had to completely redraw each letter to resemble the
blobby size and outline of each digitized character image in the
full
IBM sets of Courier, Bodoni, Times Roman etc, in several point sizes
of normal, bold and italic, plus fine-tune the character widths for
the proportional pitch fonts, then make test printouts and re-edit
to
account for the unique quirks of this ink-jet printer. I spent
nearly
a full year on that task before they were happy with the results.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Em_(typography)

I would have gone absolutely bonkers after even a week of that...
Congrats on surviving it.

Actually I fell back on the hand lettering guideline rules I learned
in Drafting and created my own grids, since I couldn't imitate the
300DPI dot placement and they used a different set of tricks like a
tiny dot outside the curve to change its appearance. I had to account
for the molten ink dots wicking larger or running together before they
solidified.

On Wed, 16 Nov 2016 07:43:02 -0800, Larry Jaques
wrote:

The MGA was the first of the swoopy body designs for the sports
cars, and I always thought looked nicer than the MGB line.

(googling to refresh memory) My dad ran an Austin Healey 100/4 in
gymkhanas and autocrosses in me yout. I grew up/teethed on tuning his
spoked wheels. They were quite similar to the MGA, wot?

My dad drove Jag XK-Es in those rallys. His beer buddy and partner
was a Wolfsburg trained German by the name of Hans the Kraut.

They spent a bit more than 300% tinkering with them, than driving
them.

Really effiecent cars to own.

I know where there are two of them, lovely cars...have zip interest in
aquiring either of them


---
This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
https://www.avast.com/antivirus

On 2016-11-16, Larry Jaques wrote:
On 16 Nov 2016 05:39:30 GMT, "DoN. Nichols"
wrote:

On 2016-11-15, Larry Jaques wrote:
On 15 Nov 2016 03:01:39 GMT, "DoN. Nichols"
wrote:

On 2016-11-14, Larry Jaques wrote:
On 14 Nov 2016 03:11:36 GMT, "DoN. Nichols"
wrote:

[ ... ]

Yep -- 80=90 VAC 20 Hz (or 20 CPS in the old days. :-)

Yeah, I grew up with Cycles Per Second, too.

Or -- for short, '~' on some data plates. :-)

Right. I had forgotten those. That's probably how it ended up on the
QWERTY keyboard in the first place. I use it now to approximate.

Maybe -- but it also belongs above certain letters in Spanish
and Portuguese to modify the pronunciation. Spanish it is 'n' and 'ñ'
(pronounced "ennye".

I had to learn those (Alt-0139 originally, it changed with different
fonts) early on since I tossed French, Spanish, and German words in my
BBS posts very early on.

And any idea what they looked like on other systems reading
from your BBS? I tended to avoid anything outside the 7-bit ASCII
character set just so everyone would see the same thing. (I also stick
with fixed-pitch fonts for the same reason -- very helpful when posting
ASCII graphics. You can never bet what the proportional pitch fonts
will do to graphcs -- even if you post in a proportional pitch font.
The character width play games between systems and fonts. :-)

I would probably have been reading BBS postings with either an
ASR-33 Teletype, or a Lear Seigler ADM-3A CRT -- both very fixed pitch
fonts, and no choices to change fonts. :-)

I'm not quite sure what the effect of it being
over an 'a' is in Portuguese. :-)

Maybe it's pronounced with a Suthuhn accent "ayund" The-yus a-yund
tha-yat. :-/

"São" as in "São Paulo" in Brazil. I sort of guess at something
like "saaao" (sort of a stretched "sow") but I am probably way off.
I'll have to ask my neighbor -- she is from Brazil.

[ ... ]

I didn't have wheels back then -- or a MGA, which really did not
have the creature comforts for properly enjoying a drive-in. :-)

A friend drove us to work in a floor-holey MGTD one winter. Granted,
SoCal ain't frozen tundra, but it was a mite chilly. I wouldn't have
considered it a model car for the drive-in, either, despite the vast
advances and upgrades from your MGA.

Huh? The TC and TD (as well as the TF) all preceded the MGA.
Only the MGB and MGC (MGB with a 6 cylinder engine instead of the
traditional 4 cylinder one.

Oh, I didn't know that. So, did the Brits start with an MGZ?

The sports cars were not all of their line. I think the sedans
at the time of the MGA were the "PB", but I'm not sure.

They were all evil, sporting that Prince of Darkness symbol on their
electrical systems, so I didn't follow them. (Yes, "Lucas")

Actually -- things were pretty good for the MGA -- other than
the electric fuel pump, which was *not* Lucas, but rather "SU" -- same
people who made the carbs. :-)

The T series cars were all rather boxy, with the MG-TF the least
so (the headlights were faired in the the fenders (wings) in the TF,
while they were in bullets above the fenders in the earlier ones.

The MGA was the first of the swoopy body designs for the sports
cars, and I always thought looked nicer than the MGB line.

(googling to refresh memory) My dad ran an Austin Healey 100/4 in
gymkhanas and autocrosses in me yout. I grew up/teethed on tuning his
spoked wheels. They were quite similar to the MGA, wot?

The Healy (at least the one which I knew) was a six-cylinder one
otherwise similar to the MGA. More HP, but also a much heavier engine,
and the weight of the engine was a big part of the overall weight of the
car. On the MGA, the floorboards were plywood.

I think I prefer the look of the MGB, and the performance of a Sunbeam
Tiger, a Shelby Cobra, or the lines and performance of a McLaren P1
GTR, TYVM. vbg

I started with a 1500 CC MGA (my father's car left when he moved
with a job up to New York City, where car ownership was prohibitive
anyway). From that (after an accident) to a Hudson Hornet, and from
that to a MGA 1600 Mk II (1622 CC). Later in its life, I swapped in an
1800 CC engine from a MGB, and I think that was peppier than the Austin
Healy.


It was certainly fun to drive, anyway. :-)

My sister had a 1973 BLMC MGB GT. (say that 3 times real fast)

O.K. IIRC, the GT models were ones with a hardtop, but I may be
wrong.

Yes, as was my first car, a '57 Chebby BelAir 4-dr Hardtop.

O.K. I really liked the convertible nature of the MGA, though
there was a model which was hardtop -- I never had that. I also once
saw at an autocross a MGA Twin Cam (original 1500 CC engine, but with a
different head -- dual overhead cams, and higher compression. That was
impressive -- except that it was hard to keep con rods in it. :-(

Enjoy,
DoN.

--
Remove oil spill source from e-mail
Email: | (KV4PH) 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 Wed, 16 Nov 2016 13:48:32 -0500, "Jim Wilkins"
wrote:

"Larry Jaques" wrote in message
.. .
On Wed, 16 Nov 2016 13:08:31 -0500, "Jim Wilkins"
wrote:

"Larry Jaques" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 15 Nov 2016 22:23:30 -0500, "Jim Wilkins"
wrote:

I had the job of designing the fonts for an ink jet printer so
I've
..
Thankless job, wot? (more recently, anyway) I used to make web
advertising banners and sorted through the hundreds of different
fonts
available through Corel Draw 3 (my first graphical purchase) to
match
the font to the product and company it represented.

I toyed with a font editor a couple times but didn't have the
mindset
for it. You probably did it more from an electronics perspective,
so
I
can't really compare. Were you gifted with naming the font you
inspired, or did the company graciously call it "default inkjet
font
1"?

The dot pitch was 240 per inch, with the option of horizontally
shifting by 1/2 the pitch after a blank space, which helped to fake
Bezier curves and draw italics. The lawyers said we could copy
laserjet output as long as we renamed the font, since the alphabet
can't be copyrighted, so each was prefixed with the company name.

However laserjet printing is at 300DPI and is fuzzy with toner dust
around the edges,

They still have a lot of that fuzz today, but it's better.


so the engineer had custom-built a digitizing and
editing system based on an HP1000 minicomputer that only he and I
could operate.

Widely embraced, I see.


I had to completely redraw each letter to resemble the
blobby size and outline of each digitized character image in the
full
IBM sets of Courier, Bodoni, Times Roman etc, in several point sizes
of normal, bold and italic, plus fine-tune the character widths for
the proportional pitch fonts, then make test printouts and re-edit
to
account for the unique quirks of this ink-jet printer. I spent
nearly
a full year on that task before they were happy with the results.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Em_(typography)

I would have gone absolutely bonkers after even a week of that...
Congrats on surviving it.

Actually I fell back on the hand lettering guideline rules I learned
in Drafting and created my own grids, since I couldn't imitate the
300DPI dot placement and they used a different set of tricks like a
tiny dot outside the curve to change its appearance. I had to account
for the molten ink dots wicking larger or running together before they
solidified.

And then you had to tell the driver whether or not it was a glossy
(clay-coated) paper, regular copy paper, or newsprint, etc.

--
I have never understood why it is "greed" to want to keep the money you
have earned, but it is not greed to want take someone else's money.
--Thomas Sowell

On Wed, 16 Nov 2016 14:23:02 -0800, Gunner Asch
wrote:

On Wed, 16 Nov 2016 07:43:02 -0800, Larry Jaques
wrote:

The MGA was the first of the swoopy body designs for the sports
cars, and I always thought looked nicer than the MGB line.

(googling to refresh memory) My dad ran an Austin Healey 100/4 in
gymkhanas and autocrosses in me yout. I grew up/teethed on tuning his
spoked wheels. They were quite similar to the MGA, wot?

My dad drove Jag XK-Es in those rallys. His beer buddy and partner
was a Wolfsburg trained German by the name of Hans the Kraut.

That must have been a bear. Those things are close to 40' long.
g


They spent a bit more than 300% tinkering with them, than driving
them.

Really effiecent cars to own.

Yeah, pass.


I know where there are two of them, lovely cars...have zip interest in
aquiring either of them

You couldn't pay me to own a Lucas-infected vehicle.

--
I have never understood why it is "greed" to want to keep the money you
have earned, but it is not greed to want take someone else's money.
--Thomas Sowell

"Larry Jaques" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 16 Nov 2016 13:48:32 -0500, "Jim Wilkins"
wrote:

............
Actually I fell back on the hand lettering guideline rules I learned
in Drafting and created my own grids, since I couldn't imitate the
300DPI dot placement and they used a different set of tricks like a
tiny dot outside the curve to change its appearance. I had to
account
for the molten ink dots wicking larger or running together before
they
solidified.

And then you had to tell the driver whether or not it was a glossy
(clay-coated) paper, regular copy paper, or newsprint, etc.

That machine would print its molten plastic ink sharply on a textured
paper towel; we tried a lot of strange things to impress the
investors. We also hand-fed it clear acetate and sheet metal, in fact
it could color-separate aluminum offset printing plates. Braille was
possible though not very satisfactory. That led directly to 3D
printing with a more suitable mechanism and less brittle ink.

On Wed, 16 Nov 2016 19:47:00 -0800, Larry Jaques
wrote:

On Wed, 16 Nov 2016 14:23:02 -0800, Gunner Asch
wrote:

On Wed, 16 Nov 2016 07:43:02 -0800, Larry Jaques
wrote:

The MGA was the first of the swoopy body designs for the sports
cars, and I always thought looked nicer than the MGB line.

(googling to refresh memory) My dad ran an Austin Healey 100/4 in
gymkhanas and autocrosses in me yout. I grew up/teethed on tuning his
spoked wheels. They were quite similar to the MGA, wot?

My dad drove Jag XK-Es in those rallys. His beer buddy and partner
was a Wolfsburg trained German by the name of Hans the Kraut.

That must have been a bear. Those things are close to 40' long.
g


They spent a bit more than 300% tinkering with them, than driving
them.

Really effiecent cars to own.

Yeah, pass.


I know where there are two of them, lovely cars...have zip interest in
aquiring either of them

You couldn't pay me to own a Lucas-infected vehicle.

My Royal Enfield "Super Meteor" motorcycle currently has all the Lucas
removed and Jap installed. It was easy to do and now I can trust it.


---
This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
https://www.avast.com/antivirus

On Wed, 16 Nov 2016 23:38:07 -0500, "Jim Wilkins"
wrote:

"Larry Jaques" wrote in message
.. .
On Wed, 16 Nov 2016 13:48:32 -0500, "Jim Wilkins"
wrote:

............
Actually I fell back on the hand lettering guideline rules I learned
in Drafting and created my own grids, since I couldn't imitate the
300DPI dot placement and they used a different set of tricks like a
tiny dot outside the curve to change its appearance. I had to
account
for the molten ink dots wicking larger or running together before
they
solidified.

And then you had to tell the driver whether or not it was a glossy
(clay-coated) paper, regular copy paper, or newsprint, etc.

That machine would print its molten plastic ink sharply on a textured
paper towel; we tried a lot of strange things to impress the
investors. We also hand-fed it clear acetate and sheet metal, in fact
it could color-separate aluminum offset printing plates. Braille was
possible though not very satisfactory. That led directly to 3D
printing with a more suitable mechanism and less brittle ink.

That's really good for an ink spitter. I was doing polyester plates
on an HP5P for the old Multilith 1250 of Terry's.

--
I have never understood why it is "greed" to want to keep the money you
have earned, but it is not greed to want take someone else's money.
--Thomas Sowell

On Wed, 16 Nov 2016 21:20:02 -0800, Gunner Asch
wrote:

On Wed, 16 Nov 2016 19:47:00 -0800, Larry Jaques
wrote:

On Wed, 16 Nov 2016 14:23:02 -0800, Gunner Asch
wrote:

On Wed, 16 Nov 2016 07:43:02 -0800, Larry Jaques
wrote:

The MGA was the first of the swoopy body designs for the sports
cars, and I always thought looked nicer than the MGB line.

(googling to refresh memory) My dad ran an Austin Healey 100/4 in
gymkhanas and autocrosses in me yout. I grew up/teethed on tuning his
spoked wheels. They were quite similar to the MGA, wot?

My dad drove Jag XK-Es in those rallys. His beer buddy and partner
was a Wolfsburg trained German by the name of Hans the Kraut.

That must have been a bear. Those things are close to 40' long.
g


They spent a bit more than 300% tinkering with them, than driving
them.

Really effiecent cars to own.

Yeah, pass.


I know where there are two of them, lovely cars...have zip interest in
aquiring either of them

You couldn't pay me to own a Lucas-infected vehicle.

My Royal Enfield "Super Meteor" motorcycle currently has all the Lucas
removed and Jap installed. It was easy to do and now I can trust it.

Smart! g I hope you went old-school. Less trouble from EMPs.

Though rumor is, we'll be seeing our Brothers from Space here RSN, so
any EMP event may never happen after all.

--
I have never understood why it is "greed" to want to keep the money you
have earned, but it is not greed to want take someone else's money.
--Thomas Sowell

On 17 Nov 2016 03:44:01 GMT, "DoN. Nichols"
wrote:

On 2016-11-16, Larry Jaques wrote:
On 16 Nov 2016 05:39:30 GMT, "DoN. Nichols"
wrote:

On 2016-11-15, Larry Jaques wrote:
On 15 Nov 2016 03:01:39 GMT, "DoN. Nichols"
wrote:

On 2016-11-14, Larry Jaques wrote:
On 14 Nov 2016 03:11:36 GMT, "DoN. Nichols"
wrote:

[ ... ]

Yep -- 80=90 VAC 20 Hz (or 20 CPS in the old days. :-)

Yeah, I grew up with Cycles Per Second, too.

Or -- for short, '~' on some data plates. :-)

Right. I had forgotten those. That's probably how it ended up on the
QWERTY keyboard in the first place. I use it now to approximate.

Maybe -- but it also belongs above certain letters in Spanish
and Portuguese to modify the pronunciation. Spanish it is 'n' and 'ñ'
(pronounced "ennye".

I had to learn those (Alt-0139 originally, it changed with different
fonts) early on since I tossed French, Spanish, and German words in my
BBS posts very early on.

And any idea what they looked like on other systems reading
from your BBS?

I don't recall in detail, but I know some people had to reset their
character sets to get the Euro fonts and higher ascii to show up. Most
happily did at the behest of the BBS owner, The Electric Shock Therapy
BBS in Fallbrook, CA. That name took a while to drag out of the
archive dungeons of my mind.


I tended to avoid anything outside the 7-bit ASCII
character set just so everyone would see the same thing. (I also stick
with fixed-pitch fonts for the same reason -- very helpful when posting
ASCII graphics. You can never bet what the proportional pitch fonts
will do to graphcs -- even if you post in a proportional pitch font.
The character width play games between systems and fonts. :-)

Yes, fixed pitch was the only usable font back then. I started on a
very fast modem, a 1200bps! A couple friends had 300s. You could
literally type a character and have to wait 2 seconds to see it on
your screen as being sent to the BBS. We've come a long way, baby.



I would probably have been reading BBS postings with either an
ASR-33 Teletype, or a Lear Seigler ADM-3A CRT -- both very fixed pitch
fonts, and no choices to change fonts. :-)

I'm not quite sure what the effect of it being
over an 'a' is in Portuguese. :-)

Maybe it's pronounced with a Suthuhn accent "ayund" The-yus a-yund
tha-yat. :-/

"São" as in "São Paulo" in Brazil. I sort of guess at something
like "saaao" (sort of a stretched "sow") but I am probably way off.
I'll have to ask my neighbor -- she is from Brazil.

Yes, in theory, it is, but they tend to talk so fast, that little
nuance is totally missed by anyone but a natural Brazilian speaker.
Ditto the differences between Spanish and Mexican, though folks from
Spain ended their words with a "th" sound rather than an "s". Wind one
up and you can't understand a word. It sounds like a 33 album played
at 78 (reference to a very old-school machine called a "phonograph"
which preceded MP3 players, to our younger crowd).


They were all evil, sporting that Prince of Darkness symbol on their
electrical systems, so I didn't follow them. (Yes, "Lucas")

Actually -- things were pretty good for the MGA -- other than
the electric fuel pump, which was *not* Lucas, but rather "SU" -- same
people who made the carbs. :-)

It was hell keeping twin or triple SUs synced. I had a guy in a Jag
v-12 come into the shop in Fallbrook once, asking if I could give it a
tune-up. I told him that if he bought me an airflow-meter, I'd give
it a shot. I'm glad he didn't take me up on it. He ended up taking
it down to Sandy Eggo for everything but oil changes and special
ordered wiper blades.


The T series cars were all rather boxy, with the MG-TF the least
so (the headlights were faired in the the fenders (wings) in the TF,
while they were in bullets above the fenders in the earlier ones.

The MGA was the first of the swoopy body designs for the sports
cars, and I always thought looked nicer than the MGB line.

(googling to refresh memory) My dad ran an Austin Healey 100/4 in
gymkhanas and autocrosses in me yout. I grew up/teethed on tuning his
spoked wheels. They were quite similar to the MGA, wot?

The Healy (at least the one which I knew) was a six-cylinder one
otherwise similar to the MGA. More HP, but also a much heavier engine,
and the weight of the engine was a big part of the overall weight of the
car. On the MGA, the floorboards were plywood.

Dad's Healey was the 100/4, a little 4-cylinder. Then there were the
100/6 and 3000 models, both sixes.


I think I prefer the look of the MGB, and the performance of a Sunbeam
Tiger, a Shelby Cobra, or the lines and performance of a McLaren P1
GTR, TYVM. vbg

I started with a 1500 CC MGA (my father's car left when he moved
with a job up to New York City, where car ownership was prohibitive
anyway). From that (after an accident) to a Hudson Hornet, and from
that to a MGA 1600 Mk II (1622 CC). Later in its life, I swapped in an
1800 CC engine from a MGB, and I think that was peppier than the Austin
Healy.

A true British Leyland buff, eh? Condo^H^Hgratulations.


It was certainly fun to drive, anyway. :-)

My sister had a 1973 BLMC MGB GT. (say that 3 times real fast)

O.K. IIRC, the GT models were ones with a hardtop, but I may be
wrong.

Yes, as was my first car, a '57 Chebby BelAir 4-dr Hardtop.

O.K. I really liked the convertible nature of the MGA, though
there was a model which was hardtop -- I never had that. I also once
saw at an autocross a MGA Twin Cam (original 1500 CC engine, but with a
different head -- dual overhead cams, and higher compression. That was
impressive -- except that it was hard to keep con rods in it. :-(

Yeah, the 3-second 1-hand top drop was outstanding tech! Chicks dug
it. I had an old '72 2WD International Scout with a roll bar in the
back. I could pop the top and drive it as a convertible in SoCal.
After looking into the price of bikini tops, I designed my own out of
waterproofed denim (powder blue body paint on the truck) and Mom sewed
it up for me. Chicks dug that, too. The second time I took some
girls "flying", I heard a really loud metallic rattle in the left
front suspension. Scared the crap out of me, but it was only the tab
for the shock mount. It took an hour to R&R from the leaf spring and
one of the body shop guys welded it up for me. (I couldn't weld worth
a hoot back then, except with oxy, and the shop tips were all
sheetmetal sized.) I was back flying the next week. g My old
Corvair convertibles were fun to fly, too. I'd follow my friends'
Combat Wombats (2-stroke 100cc Hodaka bikes) over the little motocross
course in it. Ahhh, the good old days.

--
I have never understood why it is "greed" to want to keep the money you
have earned, but it is not greed to want take someone else's money.
--Thomas Sowell

On Wed, 16 Nov 2016 21:20:02 -0800, Gunner Asch
wrote:


My Royal Enfield "Super Meteor" motorcycle

Hahaha! You mean "Super Paperweight" scrap iron.

currently has all the Lucas
removed and Jap installed. It was easy to do and now I can trust it.

Trust it to do what? Remain in the yard? I think the lack of a license
plate is doing the bulk of that job.

You should graft a weed burner nozzle and a seat onto a propane tank.
Then you can post some fabulous fables about all your jet pack
adventures. Fifteen minutes of "shop" time would get you tons of hours
of keyboard exercise.

This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
https://www.avast.com/antivirus

What email, idjit?

On Thu, 17 Nov 2016 05:44:32 -0800, Larry Jaques
wrote:

On Wed, 16 Nov 2016 21:20:02 -0800, Gunner Asch
wrote:

On Wed, 16 Nov 2016 19:47:00 -0800, Larry Jaques
wrote:

On Wed, 16 Nov 2016 14:23:02 -0800, Gunner Asch
wrote:

On Wed, 16 Nov 2016 07:43:02 -0800, Larry Jaques
wrote:

The MGA was the first of the swoopy body designs for the sports
cars, and I always thought looked nicer than the MGB line.

(googling to refresh memory) My dad ran an Austin Healey 100/4 in
gymkhanas and autocrosses in me yout. I grew up/teethed on tuning his
spoked wheels. They were quite similar to the MGA, wot?

My dad drove Jag XK-Es in those rallys. His beer buddy and partner
was a Wolfsburg trained German by the name of Hans the Kraut.

That must have been a bear. Those things are close to 40' long.
g


They spent a bit more than 300% tinkering with them, than driving
them.

Really effiecent cars to own.

Yeah, pass.


I know where there are two of them, lovely cars...have zip interest in
aquiring either of them

You couldn't pay me to own a Lucas-infected vehicle.

My Royal Enfield "Super Meteor" motorcycle currently has all the Lucas
removed and Jap installed. It was easy to do and now I can trust it.

Smart!

Yup, it makes perfect sense to waste time on worthless stuff that will
never be used for any useful purpose.

g I hope you went old-school. Less trouble from EMPs.

Though rumor is, we'll be seeing our Brothers from Space here RSN, so
any EMP event may never happen after all.

Sheesh! Now he'll have to add more layers to his foil hat.

On Thu, 17 Nov 2016 05:44:32 -0800, Larry Jaques
wrote:

On Wed, 16 Nov 2016 21:20:02 -0800, Gunner Asch
wrote:

On Wed, 16 Nov 2016 19:47:00 -0800, Larry Jaques
wrote:

On Wed, 16 Nov 2016 14:23:02 -0800, Gunner Asch
wrote:

On Wed, 16 Nov 2016 07:43:02 -0800, Larry Jaques
wrote:

The MGA was the first of the swoopy body designs for the sports
cars, and I always thought looked nicer than the MGB line.

(googling to refresh memory) My dad ran an Austin Healey 100/4 in
gymkhanas and autocrosses in me yout. I grew up/teethed on tuning his
spoked wheels. They were quite similar to the MGA, wot?

My dad drove Jag XK-Es in those rallys. His beer buddy and partner
was a Wolfsburg trained German by the name of Hans the Kraut.

That must have been a bear. Those things are close to 40' long.
g


They spent a bit more than 300% tinkering with them, than driving
them.

Really effiecent cars to own.

Yeah, pass.


I know where there are two of them, lovely cars...have zip interest in
aquiring either of them

You couldn't pay me to own a Lucas-infected vehicle.

My Royal Enfield "Super Meteor" motorcycle currently has all the Lucas
removed and Jap installed. It was easy to do and now I can trust it.

Smart! g I hope you went old-school. Less trouble from EMPs.

Unless they can screw up a magneto and points..Im good to go. (Grin)

Though rumor is, we'll be seeing our Brothers from Space here RSN, so
any EMP event may never happen after all.

It will be an interesting year when that happens. I wonder how long
it will take for the furor to die down. Until the next Major League
or basketball season?


---
This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
https://www.avast.com/antivirus

On Thu, 17 Nov 2016 07:07:12 -0800, Heard It On The X
wrote:

aquiring either of them

You couldn't pay me to own a Lucas-infected vehicle.

My Royal Enfield "Super Meteor" motorcycle currently has all the Lucas
removed and Jap installed. It was easy to do and now I can trust it.

Smart!

Yup, it makes perfect sense to waste time on worthless stuff that will
never be used for any useful purpose.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4p2_tQLhHY

(Grin)


---
This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
https://www.avast.com/antivirus

On Thu, 17 Nov 2016 12:05:02 -0800, Gunner Asch
wrote:

On Thu, 17 Nov 2016 07:07:12 -0800, Heard It On The X
wrote:

aquiring either of them

You couldn't pay me to own a Lucas-infected vehicle.

My Royal Enfield "Super Meteor" motorcycle currently has all the Lucas
removed and Jap installed. It was easy to do and now I can trust it.

Smart!

Yup, it makes perfect sense to waste time on worthless stuff that will
never be used for any useful purpose.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4p2_tQLhHY

(Grin)

Huh? What does any roadworthy machine have to do with you? All you
have is scrap iron that's only good for pretending you're a
motorcyclist. A kid with playing cards making noise on his bicycle
spokes is ahead of you. And he may someday ride a motorcycle, while
you will not.

This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
https://www.avast.com/antivirus

What email, phony?

On Thu, 17 Nov 2016 12:01:10 -0800, Gunner Asch
wrote:

On Thu, 17 Nov 2016 05:44:32 -0800, Larry Jaques
wrote:

On Wed, 16 Nov 2016 21:20:02 -0800, Gunner Asch
wrote:

On Wed, 16 Nov 2016 19:47:00 -0800, Larry Jaques
wrote:

On Wed, 16 Nov 2016 14:23:02 -0800, Gunner Asch
wrote:

On Wed, 16 Nov 2016 07:43:02 -0800, Larry Jaques
wrote:

The MGA was the first of the swoopy body designs for the sports
cars, and I always thought looked nicer than the MGB line.

(googling to refresh memory) My dad ran an Austin Healey 100/4 in
gymkhanas and autocrosses in me yout. I grew up/teethed on tuning his
spoked wheels. They were quite similar to the MGA, wot?

My dad drove Jag XK-Es in those rallys. His beer buddy and partner
was a Wolfsburg trained German by the name of Hans the Kraut.

That must have been a bear. Those things are close to 40' long.
g


They spent a bit more than 300% tinkering with them, than driving
them.

Really effiecent cars to own.

Yeah, pass.


I know where there are two of them, lovely cars...have zip interest in
aquiring either of them

You couldn't pay me to own a Lucas-infected vehicle.

My Royal Enfield "Super Meteor" motorcycle currently has all the Lucas
removed and Jap installed. It was easy to do and now I can trust it.

Smart! g I hope you went old-school. Less trouble from EMPs.

Unless they can screw up a magneto and points..Im good to go. (Grin)

Go?! Where? LOL You're the human equivalent of a tar pit dinosaur.

This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
https://www.avast.com/antivirus

What email, pretender?

On 2016-11-17, Larry Jaques wrote:
On 17 Nov 2016 03:44:01 GMT, "DoN. Nichols"
wrote:

On 2016-11-16, Larry Jaques wrote:

[ ... ]

I had to learn those (Alt-0139 originally, it changed with different
fonts) early on since I tossed French, Spanish, and German words in my
BBS posts very early on.

And any idea what they looked like on other systems reading
from your BBS?

I don't recall in detail, but I know some people had to reset their
character sets to get the Euro fonts and higher ascii to show up. Most
happily did at the behest of the BBS owner, The Electric Shock Therapy
BBS in Fallbrook, CA. That name took a while to drag out of the
archive dungeons of my mind.

Fine for those who had the choice. This was before the PC and
the fancier graphics cards for it, so you were stuck with what you had.
An Apple-][ or a PET came with a single pitch. My computer back then
was the Altair 680b (Motorola 6800-based, not the 8080-based Altair
8800.) My later computers were also terminal based, until my first Sun
(a 2/140), and the AT&T 3B1/7300/unix-pc. Before that, I had a MC-68000
based v7 unix system -- also terminal based.

And -- in general, even now, I tend to stick with fixed-pitch
fonts -- and avoid Windows. :-) (That lets me have some fun with the
scammers who keep calling to tell me that my Windows system is sending
error messages to the Windows service system, and offering to fix it.
I'll let them try to talk me through the process of "confirming" it.
The first hitch is when they try to direct me to the "Windows" key
(which of course is on *all* keyboards -- right? :-)

If I don't feel that I have the time, I simply ask them to tell
me the IP address of the system sending the error messages so I can
identify it from all the computers which I am running. For some funny
reason, they usually hang up then. :-)

They almost never think to ask whether I *am* running Windows,
the just ask "Are you in front of your computer right now?" Only very
occasionally -- after what they want me to do fails -- do they
*sometimes* ask.

I tended to avoid anything outside the 7-bit ASCII
character set just so everyone would see the same thing. (I also stick
with fixed-pitch fonts for the same reason -- very helpful when posting
ASCII graphics. You can never bet what the proportional pitch fonts
will do to graphcs -- even if you post in a proportional pitch font.
The character width play games between systems and fonts. :-)

Yes, fixed pitch was the only usable font back then. I started on a
very fast modem, a 1200bps!

Too fast for the ASR-33. For that matter, even 300 baud was too
fast. It was 100 baud. :-)

A couple friends had 300s. You could
literally type a character and have to wait 2 seconds to see it on
your screen as being sent to the BBS. We've come a long way, baby.

You want weird delays? Try using a Tektronix 4010 graphics
terminal dialed into a time-sharing mainframe. It actually *drew* each
letter. Most program and command lines were short, so it would draw
them down the left margin, then hop up to the top center and draw
another column. Only after that would it "scroll". (It really sent a
sequence to clear the storage screen, then about a two second delay, and
only then could it send a new prompt.) Very kludgy for text, but
beautiful and rapid graphics for the time. :-)

I would probably have been reading BBS postings with either an
ASR-33 Teletype, or a Lear Seigler ADM-3A CRT -- both very fixed pitch
fonts, and no choices to change fonts. :-)

[ ... ]

"São" as in "São Paulo" in Brazil. I sort of guess at something
like "saaao" (sort of a stretched "sow") but I am probably way off.
I'll have to ask my neighbor -- she is from Brazil.

Yes, in theory, it is, but they tend to talk so fast, that little
nuance is totally missed by anyone but a natural Brazilian speaker.
Ditto the differences between Spanish and Mexican, though folks from
Spain ended their words with a "th" sound rather than an "s".

Sounds like Castilian Spanish -- with a built-in lisp, acquired
from royalty way back when.

However, the vocabulary would change, too. If you want to say
"peanut butter" -- in most of Latin America, you say:

"Pasta de mani" (Peanut paste, which is more accurate, really).

In Mexico, however, it becomes:

"Matiquilla de Cacahuate" ("butter of peanut", but with a
different word for peanut.

Wind one
up and you can't understand a word. It sounds like a 33 album played
at 78 (reference to a very old-school machine called a "phonograph"
which preceded MP3 players, to our younger crowd).

For that matter -- go even farther back to the "wind one up"
phrase. Spring driven turntables, governor to adjust the speed, and
an acoustic amplifier.

You want English fast -- try someone from India who has a level
of paranoia. Normally he would talk quite rapidly, and the more upset
he got, the faster he talked. We has someone else, also from India at
the lab, and he talked at reasonable speeds and never got excited, so it
was this one individual. :-)

They were all evil, sporting that Prince of Darkness symbol on their
electrical systems, so I didn't follow them. (Yes, "Lucas")

Actually -- things were pretty good for the MGA -- other than
the electric fuel pump, which was *not* Lucas, but rather "SU" -- same
people who made the carbs. :-)

It was hell keeping twin or triple SUs synced. I had a guy in a Jag
v-12 come into the shop in Fallbrook once, asking if I could give it a
tune-up. I told him that if he bought me an airflow-meter, I'd give
it a shot. I'm glad he didn't take me up on it. He ended up taking
it down to Sandy Eggo for everything but oil changes and special
ordered wiper blades.

Hmm ... for the MGA and MGB, dual SUs, it was not at all
difficult. Unscrew the dashpots from the top and slip in aluminum tubes
slit to spring grip in the dashpot. Add two spring wire pointers and
point them to each other, then pull the throttle cable and watch them
both move up in sync. If they don't, adjust until they do.

And there is a little spring-loaded button under the dashpots on
each, near the OD. You push it up until you feel it touch the OD of the
dashpot, then lift it just a little. IF the idle slows down, it is too
rich. If it keeps the same speed or very slightly speeds up, it is just
right. If it speeds up more significantly, it is too lean.

I used this when a friend at work was buying a Datsun 240Z. It
had SUs as well, and after feeling the behavior to the throttle, I tried
that, and found that one of the two was too rich. This was before he
would sign for it from the dealer, so they fixed it. :-)

[ ... ]

The Healy (at least the one which I knew) was a six-cylinder one
otherwise similar to the MGA. More HP, but also a much heavier engine,
and the weight of the engine was a big part of the overall weight of the
car. On the MGA, the floorboards were plywood.

Dad's Healey was the 100/4, a little 4-cylinder. Then there were the
100/6 and 3000 models, both sixes.

O.K. Which was the "Sprite" -- was that the 100/4 by any
chance, or yet another model?

I think I prefer the look of the MGB, and the performance of a Sunbeam
Tiger, a Shelby Cobra, or the lines and performance of a McLaren P1
GTR, TYVM. vbg

The Tiger required removing an access panel in each side of the
firewall -- to reach through to change the rearmost spark plugs in each
bank. Both it and the Cobra wore out tires too rapidly. The MGA was
nicely balanced for holding to the road at speed, even when it was very
twisty. I'll bet the Tiger was nose heavy. IIRC. the Cobra was built
on the AC Greyhound chassis, though I never had a chance to drive
either.

I started with a 1500 CC MGA (my father's car left when he moved
with a job up to New York City, where car ownership was prohibitive
anyway). From that (after an accident) to a Hudson Hornet, and from
that to a MGA 1600 Mk II (1622 CC). Later in its life, I swapped in an
1800 CC engine from a MGB, and I think that was peppier than the Austin
Healy.

A true British Leyland buff, eh? Condo^H^Hgratulations.

They worked well for me. Even in deep snow, the MGA 1500 (with
chains) would skate on the plywood floorboards, using the chains like
paddlewheels, and the front tires like rudders. :-)

[ ... ]

O.K. I really liked the convertible nature of the MGA, though
there was a model which was hardtop -- I never had that. I also once
saw at an autocross a MGA Twin Cam (original 1500 CC engine, but with a
different head -- dual overhead cams, and higher compression. That was
impressive -- except that it was hard to keep con rods in it. :-(

Yeah, the 3-second 1-hand top drop was outstanding tech!

That, I never tried. The top was down most of the time, until
snow came around. I've even driven home in a hard rain with the top
down. Steering with one hand, using a spare windshield wiper
(screen snake) to take spray off the back of the windshield. As long as
the speed was above a certain magic one, the only thing which got wet
was my hair. :-)

Chicks dug
it. I had an old '72 2WD International Scout with a roll bar in the
back. I could pop the top and drive it as a convertible in SoCal.

Aha! -- more convertible weather for you. :-)

After looking into the price of bikini tops, I designed my own out of
waterproofed denim (powder blue body paint on the truck) and Mom sewed
it up for me.

Never heard of a "bikini top" before -- at least on a car. :-)

girls "flying", I heard a really loud metallic rattle in the left
front suspension. Scared the crap out of me, but it was only the tab
for the shock mount.

Not like the MGA. The shocks were lever shocks, and took the
place of upper A-arms. I did have to replace the ones in the
MGA-1600 MK II. Whoever owned it before had driven it hard in bumpy
areas. The four bolts holding the shocks down were lose and the
steering would shift until Iocked them down, and the shocks leaked
around the bearings for the lever arms. I went to the local junkyard
(Banks Auto Parts) and found a car which looked like it had just had the
shocks replaced, and been taken for too hard a drive, and spun out and
crashed, damaging the back. So I got the shocks for about half price
and swapped them in, and the car was then very happy.

It took an hour to R&R from the leaf spring and
one of the body shop guys welded it up for me. (I couldn't weld worth
a hoot back then, except with oxy, and the shop tips were all
sheetmetal sized.) I was back flying the next week. g My old
Corvair convertibles were fun to fly, too. I'd follow my friends'
Combat Wombats (2-stroke 100cc Hodaka bikes) over the little motocross
course in it. Ahhh, the good old days.

I took the MGA through a similar course. The main trick was to
not turn the wheel until back on the ground. :-)

Enjoy,
DoN.

--
Remove oil spill source from e-mail
Email: | (KV4PH) 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:
On 2016-11-14, Michael A. Terrell wrote:
DoN. Nichols wrote:

Well ... 25-pair cables *are* 50 wires, and the dots on solid
uniquely marked each wire in that count. (Aside from that, the two wires
in a pair were also twisted -- to minimize crosstalk to adjacent pairs.)
The twisting helps keep them together so you don't have to search
through 49 other wires to find the other half of a pair. :-)


Not only re he pairs twisted, but the twist rate varies from pair to
pair to reduce the crosstalk even further.

Certainly in the 4-pair cables (Cat-5 and better) used for
10Base-T/100Base-T/1000BaseT ethernet jumpers. :-)

One thing which is rather weird -- as they are crimped into
RJ-45 connectors, at least -- is that for some reason or other, the
primary and secondary wire colors are interchanged for the first pair
only (pins 4 & 5 -- in the center of the connector). I can't even
figure out how it could make a difference -- as long as both ends are
done the same. :-)


Not only that,, but there were 'A and 'B' versions of the wiring
pattern.


--
Never **** off an Engineer!

They don't get mad.

They don't get even.

They go for over unity! ;-)

On 18 Nov 2016 04:09:34 GMT, "DoN. Nichols"
wrote:

On 2016-11-17, Larry Jaques wrote:
On 17 Nov 2016 03:44:01 GMT, "DoN. Nichols"
wrote:

On 2016-11-16, Larry Jaques wrote:

[ ... ]

I had to learn those (Alt-0139 originally, it changed with different
fonts) early on since I tossed French, Spanish, and German words in my
BBS posts very early on.

And any idea what they looked like on other systems reading
from your BBS?

I don't recall in detail, but I know some people had to reset their
character sets to get the Euro fonts and higher ascii to show up. Most
happily did at the behest of the BBS owner, The Electric Shock Therapy
BBS in Fallbrook, CA. That name took a while to drag out of the
archive dungeons of my mind.

Fine for those who had the choice. This was before the PC and
the fancier graphics cards for it, so you were stuck with what you had.
An Apple-][ or a PET came with a single pitch. My computer back then
was the Altair 680b (Motorola 6800-based, not the 8080-based Altair
8800.) My later computers were also terminal based, until my first Sun
(a 2/140), and the AT&T 3B1/7300/unix-pc. Before that, I had a MC-68000
based v7 unix system -- also terminal based.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, and you carved your fonts in stone. I've heard it.


And -- in general, even now, I tend to stick with fixed-pitch
fonts -- and avoid Windows. :-) (That lets me have some fun with the
scammers who keep calling to tell me that my Windows system is sending
error messages to the Windows service system, and offering to fix it.
I'll let them try to talk me through the process of "confirming" it.
The first hitch is when they try to direct me to the "Windows" key
(which of course is on *all* keyboards -- right? :-)

I've done that a few times, too. After saying something about "the
command key", they finally get it (I feigned using an Apple) and hang
up on me. It's bad people like that which make me wish I could send a
right snappy voltage back through the system and fry their ear, so
they could no longer scam people.


If I don't feel that I have the time, I simply ask them to tell
me the IP address of the system sending the error messages so I can
identify it from all the computers which I am running. For some funny
reason, they usually hang up then. :-)

They do when I immediately come back with "What? I use a Mac."


They almost never think to ask whether I *am* running Windows,
the just ask "Are you in front of your computer right now?" Only very
occasionally -- after what they want me to do fails -- do they
*sometimes* ask.

I usually note the scammer phone number and no longer answer them
unless I'm in a mean mood. Then I let them lead me on for about 5
minutes before saying "Now it's back to the Apple logo screen." when
they hang up on me.


I tended to avoid anything outside the 7-bit ASCII
character set just so everyone would see the same thing. (I also stick
with fixed-pitch fonts for the same reason -- very helpful when posting
ASCII graphics. You can never bet what the proportional pitch fonts
will do to graphcs -- even if you post in a proportional pitch font.
The character width play games between systems and fonts. :-)

Yes, fixed pitch was the only usable font back then. I started on a
very fast modem, a 1200bps!

Too fast for the ASR-33. For that matter, even 300 baud was too
fast. It was 100 baud. :-)

Hell, I could out-type a 1200 baud modem way back then. It was a real
community back then. We had pickinicks and everything, BooBoo.


A couple friends had 300s. You could
literally type a character and have to wait 2 seconds to see it on
your screen as being sent to the BBS. We've come a long way, baby.

You want weird delays? Try using a Tektronix 4010 graphics
terminal dialed into a time-sharing mainframe. It actually *drew* each
letter. Most program and command lines were short, so it would draw
them down the left margin, then hop up to the top center and draw
another column. Only after that would it "scroll". (It really sent a
sequence to clear the storage screen, then about a two second delay, and
only then could it send a new prompt.) Very kludgy for text, but
beautiful and rapid graphics for the time. :-)

Egad. I would have quit.


I would probably have been reading BBS postings with either an
ASR-33 Teletype, or a Lear Seigler ADM-3A CRT -- both very fixed pitch
fonts, and no choices to change fonts. :-)

Was that one of the old green 3" CRTs? g


Wind one
up and you can't understand a word. It sounds like a 33 album played
at 78 (reference to a very old-school machine called a "phonograph"
which preceded MP3 players, to our younger crowd).

For that matter -- go even farther back to the "wind one up"
phrase. Spring driven turntables, governor to adjust the speed, and
an acoustic amplifier.

You want English fast -- try someone from India who has a level
of paranoia. Normally he would talk quite rapidly, and the more upset
he got, the faster he talked.

Yeah, yeah! That's the guy Bank of America hired for their customer
service rep.

--snippage throughout--

Yeah, the 3-second 1-hand top drop was outstanding tech!

That, I never tried. The top was down most of the time, until
snow came around. I've even driven home in a hard rain with the top
down. Steering with one hand, using a spare windshield wiper
(screen snake) to take spray off the back of the windshield. As long as
the speed was above a certain magic one, the only thing which got wet
was my hair. :-)

Yeah, hardcore Brit car fan. I can tell.


Chicks dug
it. I had an old '72 2WD International Scout with a roll bar in the
back. I could pop the top and drive it as a convertible in SoCal.

Aha! -- more convertible weather for you. :-)

After looking into the price of bikini tops, I designed my own out of
waterproofed denim (powder blue body paint on the truck) and Mom sewed
it up for me.

Never heard of a "bikini top" before -- at least on a car. :-)

http://tinyurl.com/hbwgkfc


It took an hour to R&R from the leaf spring and
one of the body shop guys welded it up for me. (I couldn't weld worth
a hoot back then, except with oxy, and the shop tips were all
sheetmetal sized.) I was back flying the next week. g My old
Corvair convertibles were fun to fly, too. I'd follow my friends'
Combat Wombats (2-stroke 100cc Hodaka bikes) over the little motocross
course in it. Ahhh, the good old days.

I took the MGA through a similar course. The main trick was to
not turn the wheel until back on the ground. :-)

g

--
I have never understood why it is "greed" to want to keep the money you
have earned, but it is not greed to want take someone else's money.
--Thomas Sowell

On 2016-11-18, Larry Jaques wrote:
On 18 Nov 2016 04:09:34 GMT, "DoN. Nichols"
wrote:

[ ... ]

Fine for those who had the choice. This was before the PC and
the fancier graphics cards for it, so you were stuck with what you had.
An Apple-][ or a PET came with a single pitch. My computer back then
was the Altair 680b (Motorola 6800-based, not the 8080-based Altair
8800.) My later computers were also terminal based, until my first Sun
(a 2/140), and the AT&T 3B1/7300/unix-pc. Before that, I had a MC-68000
based v7 unix system -- also terminal based.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, and you carved your fonts in stone. I've heard it.


How did you know that? :-)

[ ... ]

I'll let them try to talk me through the process of "confirming" it.
The first hitch is when they try to direct me to the "Windows" key
(which of course is on *all* keyboards -- right? :-)

I've done that a few times, too. After saying something about "the
command key", they finally get it (I feigned using an Apple) and hang
up on me. It's bad people like that which make me wish I could send a
right snappy voltage back through the system and fry their ear, so
they could no longer scam people.

Yes, that would be nice to have. :-)

If I don't feel that I have the time, I simply ask them to tell
me the IP address of the system sending the error messages so I can
identify it from all the computers which I am running. For some funny
reason, they usually hang up then. :-)

They do when I immediately come back with "What? I use a Mac."

I don't even tell them that I have a Mac. Mostly, I tell them
the OS of what I am normally sitting at -- Solaris 10 -- on a Sun Blade
2000. :-)

If I want to really confuse them -- OpenBSD is the choice. :-)


They almost never think to ask whether I *am* running Windows,
the just ask "Are you in front of your computer right now?" Only very
occasionally -- after what they want me to do fails -- do they
*sometimes* ask.

I usually note the scammer phone number and no longer answer them
unless I'm in a mean mood. Then I let them lead me on for about 5
minutes before saying "Now it's back to the Apple logo screen." when
they hang up on me.

My wife has the caller-ID for the land line, so I can't see it.
And (so far) I've not gotten one of these calls on the cell phone.

But -- my wife does check out the phone numbers -- and it is
almost always something different -- not repeats of a previous one.

I tended to avoid anything outside the 7-bit ASCII
character set just so everyone would see the same thing. (I also stick
with fixed-pitch fonts for the same reason -- very helpful when posting
ASCII graphics. You can never bet what the proportional pitch fonts
will do to graphics -- even if you post in a proportional pitch font.
The character width play games between systems and fonts. :-)

Yes, fixed pitch was the only usable font back then. I started on a
very fast modem, a 1200bps!

Too fast for the ASR-33. For that matter, even 300 baud was too
fast. It was 100 baud. :-)

Hell, I could out-type a 1200 baud modem way back then. It was a real
community back then. We had pickinicks and everything, BooBoo.

I'm not sure that you could out-type even 110 Baud on an ASR-33.
That keyboard was so stiff that I could balance a broom -- handle end
down -- on a keytop without pressing hard enough to send a character.

A couple friends had 300s. You could
literally type a character and have to wait 2 seconds to see it on
your screen as being sent to the BBS. We've come a long way, baby.

You want weird delays? Try using a Tektronix 4010 graphics
terminal dialed into a time-sharing mainframe. It actually *drew* each
letter. Most program and command lines were short, so it would draw
them down the left margin, then hop up to the top center and draw
another column. Only after that would it "scroll". (It really sent a
sequence to clear the storage screen, then about a two second delay, and
only then could it send a new prompt.) Very kludgy for text, but
beautiful and rapid graphics for the time. :-)

Egad. I would have quit.

Hey -- it gave me access to a computer which ran timesharing.
Later, I was able to use 1200 Baud on a CDC 6600, and later a CDC-7000,
but not with the on-line graphics (and not with the storage-screen
graphics terminal). For graphics, the batch job fed to a weird bit of
hardware in the computer center. I forget the name now -- but think of
it as a continuous strip laser printer.

I would probably have been reading BBS postings with either an
ASR-33 Teletype, or a Lear Seigler ADM-3A CRT -- both very fixed pitch
fonts, and no choices to change fonts. :-)

Was that one of the old green 3" CRTs? g

Nope! a B&W CRT about 12" diagonal. 80x24 characters.
(Actually, as built from a kit it was 80x12 characters, and needed extra
ram to get to the 24 line capability. It was also all upper case, until
an extra character generator ROM was installed, and an extra RAM to
store the case-selection bit from the ASCII set.

[ ... ]

You want English fast -- try someone from India who has a level
of paranoia. Normally he would talk quite rapidly, and the more upset
he got, the faster he talked.

Yeah, yeah! That's the guy Bank of America hired for their customer
service rep.

:-)

--snippage throughout--

Yeah, the 3-second 1-hand top drop was outstanding tech!

[ ... ]

Chicks dug
it. I had an old '72 2WD International Scout with a roll bar in the
back. I could pop the top and drive it as a convertible in SoCal.

Aha! -- more convertible weather for you. :-)

After looking into the price of bikini tops, I designed my own out of
waterproofed denim (powder blue body paint on the truck) and Mom sewed
it up for me.

Never heard of a "bikini top" before -- at least on a car. :-)

http://tinyurl.com/hbwgkfc


O.K. I never Saw one of those before, either. Maybe if I were
to go to Norfolk, I would have seen some, but certainly not in the
Washington DC vicinity. Too much snow and freezing rain for that.


Enjoy,
DoN.

--
Remove oil spill source from e-mail
Email: | (KV4PH) 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:

On 2016-11-18, Larry Jaques wrote:

On 18 Nov 2016 04:09:34 GMT, "DoN. Nichols"

I would probably have been reading BBS postings with either an
ASR-33 Teletype, or a Lear Seigler ADM-3A CRT -- both very fixed pitch
fonts, and no choices to change fonts. :-)

Was that one of the old green 3" CRTs? g

Nope! a B&W CRT about 12" diagonal. 80x24 characters.
(Actually, as built from a kit it was 80x12 characters, and needed extra
ram to get to the 24 line capability. It was also all upper case, until
an extra character generator ROM was installed, and an extra RAM to
store the case-selection bit from the ASCII set.


I still have an ADM-3 terminal, along with some color Tektronix
terminals. None have been used in over 15 years.


--
Never **** off an Engineer!

They don't get mad.

They don't get even.

They go for over unity! ;-)

"Michael A. Terrell" wrote in message
...
DoN. Nichols wrote:

On 2016-11-18, Larry Jaques
wrote:

On 18 Nov 2016 04:09:34 GMT, "DoN. Nichols"


I would probably have been reading BBS postings with either an
ASR-33 Teletype, or a Lear Seigler ADM-3A CRT -- both very fixed
pitch
fonts, and no choices to change fonts. :-)

Was that one of the old green 3" CRTs? g

Nope! a B&W CRT about 12" diagonal. 80x24 characters.
(Actually, as built from a kit it was 80x12 characters, and needed
extra
ram to get to the 24 line capability. It was also all upper case,
until
an extra character generator ROM was installed, and an extra RAM to
store the case-selection bit from the ASCII set.


I still have an ADM-3 terminal, along with some color Tektronix
terminals. None have been used in over 15 years.

I still have my ASR-33 for the post-EMP Internet.

On Sat, 19 Nov 2016 06:47:01 -0500, "Jim Wilkins"
wrote:

"Michael A. Terrell" wrote in message
...
DoN. Nichols wrote:

On 2016-11-18, Larry Jaques
wrote:

On 18 Nov 2016 04:09:34 GMT, "DoN. Nichols"


I would probably have been reading BBS postings with either an
ASR-33 Teletype, or a Lear Seigler ADM-3A CRT -- both very fixed
pitch
fonts, and no choices to change fonts. :-)

Was that one of the old green 3" CRTs? g

Nope! a B&W CRT about 12" diagonal. 80x24 characters.
(Actually, as built from a kit it was 80x12 characters, and needed
extra
ram to get to the 24 line capability. It was also all upper case,
until
an extra character generator ROM was installed, and an extra RAM to
store the case-selection bit from the ASCII set.


I still have an ADM-3 terminal, along with some color Tektronix
terminals. None have been used in over 15 years.

I still have my ASR-33 for the post-EMP Internet.

Do you think they'll survive it? I guess the ASR-33 may, because they
are purely mechanical with NO switches. Not so, the ADM-3.

I bought extra dozens of 5x8 and 8.5x11 lined note pads for post-EMP
times. Those and extra mechanical pencils. They could double as
gifts from the primitive race to the aliens in exchange for an AutoDoc
and a ton of medical nannites, whenever that happens.

--
I have never understood why it is "greed" to want to keep the money you
have earned, but it is not greed to want take someone else's money.
--Thomas Sowell

"Larry Jaques" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 19 Nov 2016 06:47:01 -0500, "Jim Wilkins"
wrote:

"Michael A. Terrell" wrote in message
...
DoN. Nichols wrote:

On 2016-11-18, Larry Jaques
wrote:

On 18 Nov 2016 04:09:34 GMT, "DoN. Nichols"


I would probably have been reading BBS postings with either an
ASR-33 Teletype, or a Lear Seigler ADM-3A CRT -- both very
fixed
pitch
fonts, and no choices to change fonts. :-)

Was that one of the old green 3" CRTs? g

Nope! a B&W CRT about 12" diagonal. 80x24 characters.
(Actually, as built from a kit it was 80x12 characters, and
needed
extra
ram to get to the 24 line capability. It was also all upper
case,
until
an extra character generator ROM was installed, and an extra RAM
to
store the case-selection bit from the ASCII set.


I still have an ADM-3 terminal, along with some color Tektronix
terminals. None have been used in over 15 years.

I still have my ASR-33 for the post-EMP Internet.

Do you think they'll survive it? I guess the ASR-33 may, because
they
are purely mechanical with NO switches. Not so, the ADM-3.

The button on the print hammer softens from homebrew ink so I made a
mold to hot-press replacements from scrap rubber. When a drop of 60/40
solder on the outside melts the mold is hot enough.

I bought extra dozens of 5x8 and 8.5x11 lined note pads for post-EMP
times. Those and extra mechanical pencils. They could double as
gifts from the primitive race to the aliens in exchange for an
AutoDoc
and a ton of medical nannites, whenever that happens.

Tomorrow's kids won't know how to use them.

I'm hoarding butane lighters. While hiking I found a rusted one in the
water at the edge of a pond, plucked it out and it LIT!

Jim Wilkins wrote:
"Michael A. Terrell" wrote in message
...
DoN. Nichols wrote:

On 2016-11-18, Larry Jaques
wrote:

On 18 Nov 2016 04:09:34 GMT, "DoN. Nichols"


I would probably have been reading BBS postings with either an
ASR-33 Teletype, or a Lear Seigler ADM-3A CRT -- both very fixed
pitch
fonts, and no choices to change fonts. :-)

Was that one of the old green 3" CRTs? g

Nope! a B&W CRT about 12" diagonal. 80x24 characters.
(Actually, as built from a kit it was 80x12 characters, and needed
extra
ram to get to the 24 line capability. It was also all upper case,
until
an extra character generator ROM was installed, and an extra RAM to
store the case-selection bit from the ASCII set.


I still have an ADM-3 terminal, along with some color Tektronix
terminals. None have been used in over 15 years.

I still have my ASR-33 for the post-EMP Internet.


All that will be left is dead fiber optic cable.


--
Never **** off an Engineer!

They don't get mad.

They don't get even.

They go for over unity! ;-)

"Michael A. Terrell" wrote in message
...
Jim Wilkins wrote:
"Michael A. Terrell" wrote in message
...
DoN. Nichols wrote:

On 2016-11-18, Larry Jaques
wrote:

On 18 Nov 2016 04:09:34 GMT, "DoN. Nichols"


I would probably have been reading BBS postings with either an
ASR-33 Teletype, or a Lear Seigler ADM-3A CRT -- both very
fixed
pitch
fonts, and no choices to change fonts. :-)

Was that one of the old green 3" CRTs? g

Nope! a B&W CRT about 12" diagonal. 80x24 characters.
(Actually, as built from a kit it was 80x12 characters, and
needed
extra
ram to get to the 24 line capability. It was also all upper
case,
until
an extra character generator ROM was installed, and an extra RAM
to
store the case-selection bit from the ASCII set.


I still have an ADM-3 terminal, along with some color
Tektronix
terminals. None have been used in over 15 years.

I still have my ASR-33 for the post-EMP Internet.


All that will be left is dead fiber optic cable.

I'm clinging to my guns, religion and copper pair. The telco business
office wants me to switch to fiber but the repairmen understand why I
don't.

When I built my homebrew computer I used the 2125 / 2975 RTTY standard
for my casette modem.
http://www.wia.org.au/members/digital/rtty/

--jsw

On Sat, 19 Nov 2016 12:58:41 -0500, "Jim Wilkins"
wrote:

"Larry Jaques" wrote in message
.. .
On Sat, 19 Nov 2016 06:47:01 -0500, "Jim Wilkins"
wrote:

"Michael A. Terrell" wrote in message
...
DoN. Nichols wrote:

On 2016-11-18, Larry Jaques
wrote:

On 18 Nov 2016 04:09:34 GMT, "DoN. Nichols"


I would probably have been reading BBS postings with either an
ASR-33 Teletype, or a Lear Seigler ADM-3A CRT -- both very
fixed
pitch
fonts, and no choices to change fonts. :-)

Was that one of the old green 3" CRTs? g

Nope! a B&W CRT about 12" diagonal. 80x24 characters.
(Actually, as built from a kit it was 80x12 characters, and
needed
extra
ram to get to the 24 line capability. It was also all upper
case,
until
an extra character generator ROM was installed, and an extra RAM
to
store the case-selection bit from the ASCII set.


I still have an ADM-3 terminal, along with some color Tektronix
terminals. None have been used in over 15 years.

I still have my ASR-33 for the post-EMP Internet.

Do you think they'll survive it? I guess the ASR-33 may, because
they
are purely mechanical with NO switches. Not so, the ADM-3.

The button on the print hammer softens from homebrew ink so I made a
mold to hot-press replacements from scrap rubber. When a drop of 60/40
solder on the outside melts the mold is hot enough.

Does rubber remelt OK? Thinking back, I don't recall ever even trying
it. It wasn't a preferred maker material as I was growing up, IIRC.


I bought extra dozens of 5x8 and 8.5x11 lined note pads for post-EMP
times. Those and extra mechanical pencils. They could double as
gifts from the primitive race to the aliens in exchange for an
AutoDoc
and a ton of medical nannites, whenever that happens.

Tomorrow's kids won't know how to use them.

I doubt that today's kids do, either. sigh


I'm hoarding butane lighters. While hiking I found a rusted one in the
water at the edge of a pond, plucked it out and it LIT!

That's amazing. Usually, a wet flint/striker combo won't work at all.
I couldn't believe it when I was reading the survival group info so I
tried it to prove it to myself. I couldn't get a wet one to work
until it was quite dry.

--
I have never understood why it is "greed" to want to keep the money you
have earned, but it is not greed to want take someone else's money.
--Thomas Sowell

On Sat, 19 Nov 2016 18:03:36 -0500, "Jim Wilkins"
wrote:

"Michael A. Terrell" wrote in message
...
Jim Wilkins wrote:
"Michael A. Terrell" wrote in message
...
DoN. Nichols wrote:

On 2016-11-18, Larry Jaques
wrote:

On 18 Nov 2016 04:09:34 GMT, "DoN. Nichols"


I would probably have been reading BBS postings with either an
ASR-33 Teletype, or a Lear Seigler ADM-3A CRT -- both very
fixed
pitch
fonts, and no choices to change fonts. :-)

Was that one of the old green 3" CRTs? g

Nope! a B&W CRT about 12" diagonal. 80x24 characters.
(Actually, as built from a kit it was 80x12 characters, and
needed
extra
ram to get to the 24 line capability. It was also all upper
case,
until
an extra character generator ROM was installed, and an extra RAM
to
store the case-selection bit from the ASCII set.


I still have an ADM-3 terminal, along with some color
Tektronix
terminals. None have been used in over 15 years.

I still have my ASR-33 for the post-EMP Internet.


All that will be left is dead fiber optic cable.

I'm clinging to my guns, religion and copper pair. The telco business
office wants me to switch to fiber but the repairmen understand why I
don't.

Fat lot of good it will do you if an EMP nukes the rest of the
electronics which make our telephone system work now. But I grok the
sentiment.


--
I have never understood why it is "greed" to want to keep the money you
have earned, but it is not greed to want take someone else's money.
--Thomas Sowell

I have a KSR-33 with tape punch and reader (e.g. keyboard send/receive)
I have the manual set as well. :-)

I have Electronics in metal boxes and lots of tubes. Paper is easy to
be had here and so is graph paper from grid to QA to log to Log-Log.....
I have table books so I can do trig without a box and design books on
phone systems - lots of books.

Martin


On 11/19/2016 9:50 AM, Larry Jaques wrote:
On Sat, 19 Nov 2016 06:47:01 -0500, "Jim Wilkins"
wrote:

"Michael A. Terrell" wrote in message
...
DoN. Nichols wrote:

On 2016-11-18, Larry Jaques
wrote:

On 18 Nov 2016 04:09:34 GMT, "DoN. Nichols"


I would probably have been reading BBS postings with either an
ASR-33 Teletype, or a Lear Seigler ADM-3A CRT -- both very fixed
pitch
fonts, and no choices to change fonts. :-)

Was that one of the old green 3" CRTs? g

Nope! a B&W CRT about 12" diagonal. 80x24 characters.
(Actually, as built from a kit it was 80x12 characters, and needed
extra
ram to get to the 24 line capability. It was also all upper case,
until
an extra character generator ROM was installed, and an extra RAM to
store the case-selection bit from the ASCII set.


I still have an ADM-3 terminal, along with some color Tektronix
terminals. None have been used in over 15 years.

I still have my ASR-33 for the post-EMP Internet.

Do you think they'll survive it? I guess the ASR-33 may, because they
are purely mechanical with NO switches. Not so, the ADM-3.

I bought extra dozens of 5x8 and 8.5x11 lined note pads for post-EMP
times. Those and extra mechanical pencils. They could double as
gifts from the primitive race to the aliens in exchange for an AutoDoc
and a ton of medical nannites, whenever that happens.

--
I have never understood why it is "greed" to want to keep the money you
have earned, but it is not greed to want take someone else's money.
--Thomas Sowell

"Larry Jaques" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 19 Nov 2016 18:03:36 -0500, "Jim Wilkins"
wrote:

"Michael A. Terrell" wrote in message
...
Jim Wilkins wrote:
"Michael A. Terrell" wrote in
message
...
DoN. Nichols wrote:

On 2016-11-18, Larry Jaques

wrote:

On 18 Nov 2016 04:09:34 GMT, "DoN. Nichols"


I would probably have been reading BBS postings with either
an
ASR-33 Teletype, or a Lear Seigler ADM-3A CRT -- both very
fixed
pitch
fonts, and no choices to change fonts. :-)

Was that one of the old green 3" CRTs? g

Nope! a B&W CRT about 12" diagonal. 80x24 characters.
(Actually, as built from a kit it was 80x12 characters, and
needed
extra
ram to get to the 24 line capability. It was also all upper
case,
until
an extra character generator ROM was installed, and an extra
RAM
to
store the case-selection bit from the ASCII set.


I still have an ADM-3 terminal, along with some color
Tektronix
terminals. None have been used in over 15 years.

I still have my ASR-33 for the post-EMP Internet.


All that will be left is dead fiber optic cable.

I'm clinging to my guns, religion and copper pair. The telco
business
office wants me to switch to fiber but the repairmen understand why
I
don't.

Fat lot of good it will do you if an EMP nukes the rest of the
electronics which make our telephone system work now. But I grok
the
sentiment.

Do you really believe an EMP would be worse than the direct lightning
strikes modern systems survive daily?
http://aviation.stackexchange.com/qu...k-by-lightning

https://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/doe...1/00322994.pdf

Lightning struck the pole across from my house in the 1990's and the
phone company had to replace the old carbon surge suppressor at the
service entrance but my cheap electronic phone was undamaged.

--jsw

On Sun, 20 Nov 2016 07:39:43 -0500, "Jim Wilkins"
wrote:

"Larry Jaques" wrote in message
.. .
On Sat, 19 Nov 2016 18:03:36 -0500, "Jim Wilkins"
wrote:

I'm clinging to my guns, religion and copper pair. The telco
business
office wants me to switch to fiber but the repairmen understand why
I
don't.

Fat lot of good it will do you if an EMP nukes the rest of the
electronics which make our telephone system work now. But I grok
the
sentiment.

Do you really believe an EMP would be worse than the direct lightning
strikes modern systems survive daily?
http://aviation.stackexchange.com/qu...k-by-lightning

It leaves many questions unasked, like: How many miles of wire are
tied into an airplane? What's the difference in effect between a
lightning strike on a flying, ungrounded aircraft and a ground-based
electronics system with Earth ground connected?

I was in an MD-80 in 2003 over Seattle when it was struck by
lightning. It jumped a bit, there was a flash of light, the sound of
the engines and cabin air exchange changed for a second, and we
continued on our merry way with no ill-effects. It was sobering. That
Alaska Air plane was the noisiest damned thing I've ever ridden in and
I hope to avoid them for the rest of my life. I had ear plugs with me
and immediately used them, with much relief.


https://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/doe...1/00322994.pdf

I will definitely read that. Question: Aren't -some- new nukes
designed to produce considerably more EMP? I know electronics can be
"hardened", but to what extent? What are the differences between a
nuclear EMP and a lightning strike? I guess it's time for me to find
more depth regarding E1-E3. http://tinyurl.com/jbu98yd Does anyone
have an IEEE Xplore membership? Their paper likely has a bit more
informed research.


Lightning struck the pole across from my house in the 1990's and the
phone company had to replace the old carbon surge suppressor at the
service entrance but my cheap electronic phone was undamaged.

THAT's cool! Ahh, the noisy old carbon block, which gave us hell when
wet and we were trying to use our old 1200-9600baud modems... I lost
my DSL last night after a 1-second power outage. It didn't come back
after resetting the modem and power-cycling the computer, so I called
it in. They were aware of it and gave me a 24 hour repair time, but
it was back on about 4 hours later, thankfully.

--
I have never understood why it is "greed" to want to keep the money you
have earned, but it is not greed to want take someone else's money.
--Thomas Sowell

"Larry Jaques" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 20 Nov 2016 07:39:43 -0500, "Jim Wilkins"
wrote:

https://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/doe...1/00322994.pdf

I will definitely read that. Question: Aren't -some- new nukes
designed to produce considerably more EMP? I know electronics can
be
"hardened", but to what extent? What are the differences between a
nuclear EMP and a lightning strike? I guess it's time for me to
find
more depth regarding E1-E3. http://tinyurl.com/jbu98yd Does anyone
have an IEEE Xplore membership? Their paper likely has a bit more
informed research.

There is more information available, just not from me.

On 2016-11-19, Michael A. Terrell wrote:
DoN. Nichols wrote:

Was that one of the old green 3" CRTs? g

Nope! a B&W CRT about 12" diagonal. 80x24 characters.
(Actually, as built from a kit it was 80x12 characters, and needed extra
ram to get to the 24 line capability. It was also all upper case, until
an extra character generator ROM was installed, and an extra RAM to
store the case-selection bit from the ASCII set.


I still have an ADM-3 terminal, along with some color Tektronix
terminals. None have been used in over 15 years.

O.K. I would use it occasionally, if I still had it. As it is,
I use DEC VT-240 and the like as serial consoles for systems which I am
installing. Some, such as the Sun T-5220, made as a server don't have a
video interface, and need a serial terminal to install and configure
them. And laptops are now hard to find with serial ports, so ... :-)

Actually -- the DEC VT-??? ones are better anyway, as the
default terminal type for the serial console is vt-100 -- and what I
have is a superset of that.

I had one of the Tektronix color graphics terminals at work, and
was tempted by one at a hamfest, except that it came without the rather
specialized keyboard -- including the tilting poker-chip for cursor
motion in the pre-mouse days. :-)

They did have one possible problem. A limit to tne number of
times you could reset the parameters before the NVRAM started getting
flakey. (No, I never got to that point because I believed the warnings
in the manual. :-)

Enjoy,
DoN.

--
Remove oil spill source from e-mail
Email: | (KV4PH) 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 2016-11-19, Larry Jaques wrote:
On Sat, 19 Nov 2016 06:47:01 -0500, "Jim Wilkins"
wrote:

"Michael A. Terrell" wrote in message
...
DoN. Nichols wrote:

[ ... ]

Nope! a B&W CRT about 12" diagonal. 80x24 characters.

[ ... ]

I still have an ADM-3 terminal, along with some color Tektronix
terminals. None have been used in over 15 years.

I still have my ASR-33 for the post-EMP Internet.

Do you think they'll survive it? I guess the ASR-33 may, because they
are purely mechanical with NO switches. Not so, the ADM-3.

The ASR-33 *does* have switches -- *lots* of them, in the
keyboard, and various cam-operated ones. But -- they are all purely
mechanical/electrical switches. No logic chips or transistors. (Unless
perhaps you have the RS-232 interface in place of the current=loop one,
or have one with a built-in acoustic modem. :-)

And the ADM-3a had plain TTL except for the RAM chips, so
somewhat more immune than CMOS logic. But if you have one sitting
disconnected, I don't think that EMP is likely to hurt an ADM-3a. Same
for the acoustic modem in some ASR-33 TTYs.

I bought extra dozens of 5x8 and 8.5x11 lined note pads for post-EMP
times. Those and extra mechanical pencils. They could double as
gifts from the primitive race to the aliens in exchange for an AutoDoc
and a ton of medical nannites, whenever that happens.

:-)

What are the odds that the aliens would have nannites tailored
for the human race? :-)

Enjoy,
DoN.

--
Remove oil spill source from e-mail
Email: | (KV4PH) 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 2016-11-20, Jim Wilkins wrote:
"Larry Jaques" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 19 Nov 2016 18:03:36 -0500, "Jim Wilkins"
wrote:

"Michael A. Terrell" wrote in message
...
Jim Wilkins wrote:

[ ... ]

I still have my ASR-33 for the post-EMP Internet.


All that will be left is dead fiber optic cable.

I'm clinging to my guns, religion and copper pair. The telco
business
office wants me to switch to fiber but the repairmen understand why
I
don't.

Fat lot of good it will do you if an EMP nukes the rest of the
electronics which make our telephone system work now. But I grok
the
sentiment.

Do you really believe an EMP would be worse than the direct lightning
strikes modern systems survive daily?

http://aviation.stackexchange.com/qu...k-by-lightning

Well ... most aircraft these days are metal skinned, thus
shielded.

And EMP tends to do things like accumulate over long power line
runs, so what would be a fairly small pulse for say a mile of wire
becomes really nasty spikes for long power-distribution cables.

https://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/doe...1/00322994.pdf

Lightning struck the pole across from my house in the 1990's and the
phone company had to replace the old carbon surge suppressor at the
service entrance but my cheap electronic phone was undamaged.

O.K. In contrast, I had a Frame Relay net feed and about once
every couple of years, a nearby lighting strike would zap more pairs in
the buried cable (in lead sheathing, but punched through by the high
voltage spikes. I always kept a spare frame relay modem on hand, and
the original went back to the maker for repair or replacement. I got
the original back before the next strike.

And, sometimes after that, I also had to pull out the
carbon/spark gap protectors, blow off any frayed dust and reinstall to
get noise out of the voice phone line.

About the time that the buried cable was replaced with newer
cable (vinyl around metal shielding, and dielectric grease in the wires)
and a forgotten stub going off several miles to another nearby city was
removed, I switched from Frame Relay to T1, and the modem was split into
two sets of electronics -- one where the old modem had been, and the
other a phone company owned set of electronics on the side of the house
at the service entrance. Since then, no lightning damage has been
observed. (Otherwise, I might be tempted by the FIOS (Fiber Optics)
service which they keep pushing. :-)

The phones themselves were (and still are) old Ma Bell sets,
which just keep working.

Enjoy,
DoN.

--
Remove oil spill source from e-mail
Email: | (KV4PH) 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 ---

EMP takes out a region - e.g. Dallas Texas or New York.

Lighting is normally limited to a local Transformer yard and the
customers tied to it. Often just a single house. Depends on strike spot.

Martin Degree in Physics, Mathematics and 20+ active EE.


On 11/20/2016 6:39 AM, Jim Wilkins wrote:
"Larry Jaques" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 19 Nov 2016 18:03:36 -0500, "Jim Wilkins"
wrote:

"Michael A. Terrell" wrote in message
...
Jim Wilkins wrote:
"Michael A. Terrell" wrote in
message
...
DoN. Nichols wrote:

On 2016-11-18, Larry Jaques

wrote:

On 18 Nov 2016 04:09:34 GMT, "DoN. Nichols"


I would probably have been reading BBS postings with either
an
ASR-33 Teletype, or a Lear Seigler ADM-3A CRT -- both very
fixed
pitch
fonts, and no choices to change fonts. :-)

Was that one of the old green 3" CRTs? g

Nope! a B&W CRT about 12" diagonal. 80x24 characters.
(Actually, as built from a kit it was 80x12 characters, and
needed
extra
ram to get to the 24 line capability. It was also all upper
case,
until
an extra character generator ROM was installed, and an extra
RAM
to
store the case-selection bit from the ASCII set.


I still have an ADM-3 terminal, along with some color
Tektronix
terminals. None have been used in over 15 years.

I still have my ASR-33 for the post-EMP Internet.


All that will be left is dead fiber optic cable.

I'm clinging to my guns, religion and copper pair. The telco
business
office wants me to switch to fiber but the repairmen understand why
I
don't.

Fat lot of good it will do you if an EMP nukes the rest of the
electronics which make our telephone system work now. But I grok
the
sentiment.

Do you really believe an EMP would be worse than the direct lightning
strikes modern systems survive daily?
http://aviation.stackexchange.com/qu...k-by-lightning

https://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/doe...1/00322994.pdf

Lightning struck the pole across from my house in the 1990's and the
phone company had to replace the old carbon surge suppressor at the
service entrance but my cheap electronic phone was undamaged.

--jsw

On 20 Nov 2016 22:55:43 GMT, "DoN. Nichols"
wrote:

On 2016-11-19, Larry Jaques wrote:
On Sat, 19 Nov 2016 06:47:01 -0500, "Jim Wilkins"
wrote:

"Michael A. Terrell" wrote in message
...
DoN. Nichols wrote:

[ ... ]

Nope! a B&W CRT about 12" diagonal. 80x24 characters.

[ ... ]

I still have an ADM-3 terminal, along with some color Tektronix
terminals. None have been used in over 15 years.

I still have my ASR-33 for the post-EMP Internet.

Do you think they'll survive it? I guess the ASR-33 may, because they
are purely mechanical with NO switches. Not so, the ADM-3.

The ASR-33 *does* have switches -- *lots* of them, in the

Newp, just "contacts". vbg


I bought extra dozens of 5x8 and 8.5x11 lined note pads for post-EMP
times. Those and extra mechanical pencils. They could double as
gifts from the primitive race to the aliens in exchange for an AutoDoc
and a ton of medical nannites, whenever that happens.

:-)

What are the odds that the aliens would have nannites tailored
for the human race? :-)

When they see our cute and primitive writing tools, they'll make them
specially for us. Remember, THEY are the advanced race.

--
I have never understood why it is "greed" to want to keep the money you
have earned, but it is not greed to want take someone else's money.
--Thomas Sowell

"Larry Jaques" wrote in message
news
On 20 Nov 2016 22:55:43 GMT, "DoN. Nichols"

wrote:

On 2016-11-19, Larry Jaques
wrote:
On Sat, 19 Nov 2016 06:47:01 -0500, "Jim Wilkins"
wrote:

"Michael A. Terrell" wrote in message
...
DoN. Nichols wrote:

[ ... ]

Nope! a B&W CRT about 12" diagonal. 80x24 characters.

[ ... ]

I still have an ADM-3 terminal, along with some color
Tektronix
terminals. None have been used in over 15 years.

I still have my ASR-33 for the post-EMP Internet.

Do you think they'll survive it? I guess the ASR-33 may, because
they
are purely mechanical with NO switches. Not so, the ADM-3.

The ASR-33 *does* have switches -- *lots* of them, in the

Newp, just "contacts". vbg


I bought extra dozens of 5x8 and 8.5x11 lined note pads for
post-EMP
times. Those and extra mechanical pencils. They could double as
gifts from the primitive race to the aliens in exchange for an
AutoDoc
and a ton of medical nannites, whenever that happens.

:-)

What are the odds that the aliens would have nannites tailored
for the human race? :-)

When they see our cute and primitive writing tools, they'll make
them
specially for us. Remember, THEY are the advanced race.

IT'S A COOKBOOK!!!