Hickeys

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

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

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.

What email, phony?

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

What email, pretender?

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.

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

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. :-)

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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.

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. :-)

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. :-)

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

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.

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. :-)

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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. :-)

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

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

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.

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

Enjoy, DoN.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Egad. I would have quit.

Was that one of the old green 3" CRTs?

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

--snippage throughout--

Yeah, hardcore Brit car fan. I can tell.

How did you know that? :-)

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

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. :-)

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'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.

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.

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.

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:-)

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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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

--jsw

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 doubt that today's kids do, either.

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.

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 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

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

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

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.

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.

Does anyone have an IEEE Xplore membership? Their paper likely has a bit more informed research.

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.

There is more information available, just not from me.