B&S Engine starts but won't run

Verily.

IIRC the crucial ANSI escape code sequence returned the screen character at a designated position to the sender, which allowed them to write a space to that position and resend the character one row down, making the text appear to droop. I believe it was meant to be used to save and restore the previous screen after sending a warning message in a box.

The programmers pulled those stunts only on each other, usually when they needed to compile and the recipient was playing a game that bogged down the VAX. The player could change the name of the game process but not hide its size from other users. I happened to be watching when one hit.

I've used the same method to write a Matrix Waterfall screen saver and a graphic display of a shift register's contents in an experimental IC.

--jsw

Erm, no. Not if the engine is old enough:

Here: no compression, no spark, working internal combustion engine:

An engineer at Segway had a model engine he'd built that drew in and condensed the hot gases from an external flame to operate the piston.

--jsw

It looks like a really inefficient reinvention of the Newton steam engine.

Newcomen. Yes, it's a hot-gas version of a similar idea from Newcomen, the earliest practical steam engines.

A lot of the early engines were vacuum engines -- the earliest hot-air Stirlings and steam Newomen engines were vacuum types.

It was a while before they could use pressure beyond atmospheric without blowing their heads off. d8-)

I was forced to take "keyboarding" as well as one quarter of "home economics" Barely passed keyboarding but had no problems in home ec. My Mom was one of the "Men should be able to cook and sew" people. She taught me both long before that class.

Both were taught by a Mrs. Davidson, 60ish, short, and loved to use a wooden ruler.....

The 1698 steam pump of Thomas Savery used both vacuum to pull water into its chamber and pressure to force it up out of the mine, since it had to be placed within about 25 feet of the water table.

"The boiler would have needed to hold 35 psig pressure to raise water

80 feet- similar to the pressure in an automobile tire. It is likely that this use of such pressure was a reason that the Savery pump had a reputation for boiler explosions. Zealous operators undoubtedly increased the boiler pressure to pump water upwards further, and thus created some of the accidents by overpressurization."

The wrought iron of the time was forge-welded from small pieces and was riddled with questionable seams, like a Damascus shotgun barrel.

Steam engineers including Watt avoided pressure for the next 100 years, until metalworking advances of the Industrial Revolution finally permitted strong enough boiler construction.

Despite the tea kettle tale, "James Watt avoided the use of high pressure steam because of safety concerns."

" Later in life Evans turned his attention to steam power, and built the first high-pressure steam engine in the United States in 1801, developing his design independently of Richard Trevithick, who built the first in the world a year earlier."

--jsw

idoubt anyone will run across one of them "in the wild" - or a "flame eater" either

"Flame licker" models used to be built by some home-shop machinists. You can still find plans and maybe kits to make them. I never heard of a Lenoir model but I'll bet some people have made them.

I never saw the attraction to flame-lickers, but some people just like to make models of historical engines. One of my first scratch-built lathe projects was an oscillating steam engine (which I ran on compressed air), so I recognize the general appeal.

When I retire, I'd like to get involved in high-performance Stirlings. I used to correspond with James Senfft, trying to get up to speed on lubricating Stirlings, which is a challenge, but I lost touch with him around 15 years ago.

"Michael A. Terrell" on Wed, 31 Aug 2016

05:36:35 -0400 typed >>

I took typing - and did badly.

I learned touch typing from using a keyboard. Just as I learned

10-key from playing computer games.

-- pyotr filipivich "With Age comes Wisdom. Although more often, Age travels alone."

[ ... ]

O.K. A program, then, not just a simple escape sequence. The VT100 made it possible, by having that character return, but not a single code to drop everything in a column down one line at a time. :-)

A great use.

Someone at work a few decades ago went to a user's group meeting for the CDC Cyber-6600, and came back with a tape. He loaded it and set it up for delayed execution.

You need to know that the 6600's console consisted of two large round CRTs to either side of above the keyboard. Typically, one CRT would display the status of the whole system, while the other was used to check on and interact with a specific job. The phosphor on both was green.

Anyway -- he hung around when the night operator came on, and waited. Then he heard a scream.

What happened was:

1) Both screens blanked.

2) A pair of green eyes slowly rose from the bottom of the CRTs.

3) They looked at the operator.

4) They looked down at the keyboard.

5) They looked at where the wall clock would likely be.

6) They looked back at the keyboard.

7) They looked back at the operator.

8) They slowly sunk off the bottom of the CRTs.

9) Normal operation returned. :-)

Sort of like the other -- but taking advantage of the particular design of the CDC 6600's console. :-)

Sounds like fun.

Enjoy, DoN.

Home Economics was another course that boys didn't take in my school system, in the '60s. My mother insisted that I learn to cook, as well.

That was taught in Jr. High, and I had a class across the hall from that classroom. Quite often you would see and hear a girl run screaming from the classroom, and down the hall to the restroom to throw up when they tried their cooking. The boys watched to see who kept doing it, and stayed away from those girls to keep from being poisoned. ;-)

My schedule was interesting in Jr and Senior high school. I took every math and science class that was available, except second year Algebra. There was no way to fit it in. I took Latin, Metal Shop, Wood shop, Drafting, and Electronics 1 and 2. I was the teacher's assistant while taking Electronics 2. I was already working in a TV shop before I took the two Electronics courses.

I also taught a night adult education course in small appliance repair, before I was old enough to drive.

These accumulated while repairing old computers to give away. Sometimes I got three computers, and a dozen good keyboards at a time.

I have a month's supply of canned food on hand.

.....

I guess that really would creep out someone too serious to consider writing pranks themselves, like those who believe faked UFOs (mine may have inspired the Exeter NH affairs). We had one very good female programmer whom the manager carefully shielded from human contact, especially with us rather rowdy hardware types.

We were too busy for anything that complicated. One of the engineers wrote a screen saver that was normally blank and occasionally flashed in large letters: REPENT THE END IS NEAR! It seemed to appear as a personal warning to anyone walking by.

I was writing test code directly on the machine we were developing, which had extremely sensitive microvolt and picoamp meters. If I removed the shielding their noise level rose when anyone approached, so I made the machine come alive and greet the visitor.

--jsw

TFF! I laughed so hard at that one, I'm in tears. Too bad he didn't catch it all on video, from both angles. I'm sure it would have gone viral on YouTube.

Wow.

That likely won't be enough...when the whip comes down. Got enough bottled water for a month, too? And some for the toilet?

I would have spewed coffee on the keyboard and laughed myself silly, but I backed off from such pranks when I found out that a fragile neurotic could believe that they had snapped and were hallucinating.

For homework my wife programmed the Cylon red eye on the data register display of a PDP-8.