[time-nuts] OT: Timer-counter wanted

[neon John]

Hey guys,

I'm looking for a counter/timer for my lab.  I don't need anything of
Time Nuts grade, just a general purpose counter.  I don't do sleazebay
plus I'd rather pass a few bux to a fellow time nutter.  So if you have
a spare one of fairly recent vintage, preferably not containing a
cooling fan, drop me a note.  Please reply off-list: j...@neon-john.com

Thanks
John
-- 
John DeArmond
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
http://www.neon-john.com<-- email from here
http://www.johndearmond.com <-- Best damned Blog on the net
PGP key: wwwkeys.pgp.net: BCB68D77

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Re: [time-nuts] Lady Heather's Leap Log

[Neon John]

On Thu, 1 Jan 2009 15:06:02 +1300, "Steve Rooke"  wrote:

>2009/1/1 Mark Sims :
>>
>> Note that there is an error in the first column heading in Lady Heather's 
>> Leap Log.  It says UTC...  should be GPS.  The three line hour timestamp 
>> comment is correct (UTC).  The distributed version of the program logged 
>> only time-of-week.  I added the HH:MM:SS yesterday but messed up the column 
>> header (boy is Lady Heather gonna be mad when She finds out).  The random 
>> spacing is due to Billy Gates Quality Control...  he still can't figure out 
>> where to put CRs and LFs in an email...
>
>Well, POSIX decided on LF, Mac on CR and Billy Boy decided to hedge
>his bets with both LF and CR. It's little wonder I always get a lot of
>double spacing here then :-)

But billy boy never did anything original.  He copied CP/M, Intel ISIS and
other early OSs.  I argue that THEY got it right, separating a carriage return
from a line feed.  In the good old days, there were lots of times when one
would want to advance a line feed without moving the carriage or vice versa.

I know the *nix argument that the line terminator ought to be a single
character and can't argue too loudly since I CAN put the port in raw mode.
Still, that requires programming, as opposed to just creating or editing files
and cat'ing them to the printer port.

John
--
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.johndearmond.com <-- best little blog on the net!
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
Risk: $20 hooker, year old condom.


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Re: [time-nuts] FreeBSD 7 ntp server

[Neon John]

On Wed, 31 Dec 2008 17:57:33 -0700 (MST), "M. Warner Losh" 
wrote:

>In message: 
>"Robert Darlington"  writes:
>: Okay, not very fun.  I was hoping to see ...58,59,60,00.  Instead my
>: system ticked :59 twice.Here's the output of my not so very
>: scientific logs (up arrow, enter, over and over):
>
>That's the correct output.  It isn't possible to tick 60 with a POSIX
>time_t, so second 59 is replayed so that we don't cross a day
>boundary.
>
>Warner
>

I wonder how application software handled that.  Say, a transaction processing
machine handling a few thousand transactions a second where the time stamp
matters.  What did the high res timer do?

I'm thinking about, for example, stock trading where the first bid wins.
Sub-second resolution is needed there, I think.

I wonder if this was a mini-Y2K and folks haven't realized it yet?

John
--
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.johndearmond.com <-- best little blog on the net!
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms should be a convenience store, not a government 
agency.


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[time-nuts] OT: Forum <--> email gateway/bridge

[Neon John]

this is completely off-topic (so please reply via direct email) but since this
is the greatest brain trust on the internet, I thought I'd risk asking the
question.

I can't stand web forums.  My loathing goes beyond hatred.  Even worse now
that I'm stuck back on dial-up again.  Unfortunately there are some areas of
my interest that simply aren't covered by mailing lists.  Fora only.  I've
tried, I really have, to adapt but I can't.

So.

What I'm looking for is a third party application that will gateway or bridge
selected fora to email.  I'd like to point it at a forum or sub-forum and have
it convert each new message into email and send it to me, and in turn take my
replies and convert them into forum posts.  In-line photos could be either
dropped or turned into URLs.  Ideally Linux-based (debian) so that I could
install it on my web host.

Anyone know of anything like this?  Surely I'm not the only forum-hater out
there.

Thanks,
John

And Merry Christmas to all.

--
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.johndearmond.com <-- best little blog on the net!
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
Okay, okay, I'll take it back ... UNfuck you!


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Re: [time-nuts] How are you going to spend your extra second?

[Neon John]

On Wed, 24 Dec 2008 18:17:07 +, Mark Sims  wrote:

>
>Well,  the lords of time have blessed us this year with a whole extra second 
>of existence.  How are you going to use yours?

Dunno.  Let me think about it for a sec.

ooops...

Merry Christmas all

John
--
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.johndearmond.com <-- best little blog on the net!
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
Better remain silent and be thought a fool than to cite Wikipedia and remove 
all doubt.


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Re: [time-nuts] He is a Time-Nut Troublemaker....

[Neon John]

On Tue, 23 Dec 2008 17:27:28 +0100, Magnus Danielson
 wrote:

>David M. Witten II skrev:
>> Points of pride, I'm sure.
>
>All this talk still does not make me feel like going out and get a 
>firearm of any sort, fashinating as they can be in their own right.
>
>If someone got me involved in elk-hunting maybe, but that's about it I 
>think.

I got the hunting thing out of my blood when I was still a teenager.  I'm now
a precision shooter and a shooting nerd.  Shooting can be very exciting to the
type that populate this list.  Internal ballistics, external ballistics,
statistics, precision mechanics, precision electronics, etc.

Ballistics timing is fast enough that you get to play with the things that
concern time-nuts.  I have, for example, drilled an old barrel and inserted
conductive probes every inch.  The bullet passing by makes up the circuit. The
probes were arranged in an R/2R D/A converter circuit so that I could digitize
them all with one fast A/D converter.  I wanted to watch the acceleration of
the bullet down the barrel and compare it to chamber pressure.

I learned that what I suspected was true, that with some powder loads, the
acceleration process is over before the bullet exits the muzzle and that
during the last few inches, the bullet was actually slowing from friction.

It also explained why I could get almost as much velocity out of my .308 bolt
action silhouette pistol with the 14" barrel as I could from my M-14,
optimized power and powder weight for the pistol, of course.

Finally, of course, there is the pride of accomplishment of achieving results
that few others in the world can do.  Similar to achieving the best amateurs
have done with time measurements.

There are lots and lots of things a nerd can do with a firearm other than just
shoot at things.

John
--
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.johndearmond.com <-- best little blog on the net!
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
Some people are like a Slinky .. not really good for anything
 but you still smile 
when you shove them down the stairs.


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Re: [time-nuts] He is a Time-Nut Troublemaker....

[Neon John]

On Tue, 23 Dec 2008 08:36:57 +1300, Bruce Griffiths
 wrote:

>Chuck
>
>It was a paper written around 1942 detailing the procedures used to
>align the sights of mass produced rifles for which it was impractical to
>have each rifle individually adjusted on a firing range.
>Unfortunately I dont think I have a copy of this any longer, however
>I'll keep an eye out for it.
>The alignment jig used a mirror attached to a cylindrical plug that was
>a close slip fit into the end of the bore.
>It wasn't perfect but far better than not adjusting the sights at all.

since we have so many shooting time nuts here, I thought that y'all would
enjoy this page:

http://www.neon-john.com/Misc/Antique_Chrono.htm

I bought this instrument new in the box at an estate sale.  The guy apparently
acquired it but never even cut the packing tape from the box.

It works perfectly, using the wire-break principle.  I made some screens by
gluing a few runs fine copper wire across the bull's eye to paper targets. The
display is transit time.  The velocity must be looked up on charts that
convert the time and the screen spacing into velocity.  I actually wrote a
little HP41 program to do that and dispense with the charts.

 Unlike my Oehler and its sky screens, it is not fooled by shock waves
(sub-sonic rounds) or debris (shotgun shells) and is very repeatable.  The
velocity results agree within reasonable statistics of my Oehler 33p.

One of these days when the round tuits become plentiful, I'm going to design a
little box to interface the Oehler skyscreens to this unit.

I also have one of Oehler's very first commercial chronos.  It's all analog
and uses the constant current/capacitor method of determining time-of-flight
and displays the results on an analog meter.  Again, it appears to use the
wire-break method (no manual).

John
--
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.johndearmond.com <-- best little blog on the net!
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
Democracy is three wolves and one sheep voting on what to have for supper.


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Re: [time-nuts] V standards

[Neon John]

On Sat, 29 Nov 2008 19:27:34 -0500, "Mike Monett" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:

>This discussion of voltage standards is very informative and useful, and my
>thanks to all who are contributing. 
>
>It is clear why precise frequency standards are needed - there are
>innumerable applications such as GPS, VLBI, secure spread spectrum radio,
>deep space navigation using doppler, and so on.
>
>But I wonder why extreme accuracy is needed in measuring voltage? Don't get
>me wrong - I have a HP 3456A, and I would love to have a 3458. But the
>prices on eBay can reach $6k, and I can't see spending that much money for
>two more digits. As Bill would say, six digits should be enough for
>everyone:)

Because it's still an analog world out there.  One instance that immediately
comes to mind are truck scales, especially the enforcement ones.  I recently
serviced one that had a 200,000 lb capability, a 5 lb resolution and nailed my
personal body weight to within the resolution with no last digit dithering.
That indicates to me better than 2.5 lb internal resolution.

Calibration of this particular scale is done in the digital world - roll a
50,000 lb calibrated trailer onto the scale, tell the scale processor that it
weighs 50,000.0 lbs and it figures out its own conversion factors.  HOWEVER.
Servicing the thing means working down in the kind of precision levels we're
talking about.

I have the 4 lightning-struck load cells and the matched summing box in my
shop ($10,000 from the scale company) so when I get time I can see how they do
it that precise with so few parts and with the load cells and summing box out
in the weather.  There are only 4 wires coming from each load cell so the
temperature compensation has to be built into the mechano-electrical design
and not externally compensated.

John
--
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.johndearmond.com <-- best little blog on the net!
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.  In practice, 
there is.


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Re: [time-nuts] Voltage Standards

[Neon John]

On Sat, 29 Nov 2008 03:32:23 -0600, Brian Kirby <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:


>Maybe we should consider coming up with a standard voltage reference as 
>a TAPR project.  We have a lot of good brainpower out here and it seems 
>a lot of experience available.

I think that this is a spectacular idea.  Actually, two standards would be
nice.  One low-ppm one for us "volt-nuts" (maybe this list ought to change
names to "standards-nuts" or "precision-nuts") and another good enough to
check 3.5 and 4.5 digit meters.  With all the cheap-spit Chicom DVMs on the
market, some of which don't even make a good SWAG, a cheap standard that any
ham or other nerd could afford would go a long way toward eliminating a LOT of
headaches for folks like us.

I answer numerous tech questions every day and one of the first questions I've
learned to ask when voltage measurements are involved is "what kind of DVM are
you using?"  If it's a sub $50 chicom special, I suggest that they buy a
better meter before we waste time working on the "problem".

Awhile back I bought several ChiCom DVMs from a flea market vendor for $5 a
pop, thinking I could toss one in each car for on-the-side-of-the-road
troubleshooting.  Problem is, the damned thing varies over half a volt on the
20 volt scale between a new 9 volt battery and one that just lights the low
battery indicator.  They're using a standard DVM chip so they had to actually
WORK at it to make it that bad!!!

One day when I have a few spare round tuits I'm going to open one up and see
what's going on.  Bet I find a simple resistor divider instead of the voltage
reference or something like that.

Anyway, here's my vote for a TAPR Volt!

John
--
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.johndearmond.com <-- best little blog on the net!
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
WARNING: Do not use this hair dryer in the shower!


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Re: [time-nuts] Voltage standards

[Neon John]

On Sun, 30 Nov 2008 17:27:54 -0700 (MST), "M. Warner Losh" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:

>The thing that got me was the word 'really' in Bruce's statement.  It
>read like someone who had tried it, had limited success, but in the
>end wound up believing that while possible, it wasn't really
>practical.  After thinking that, I couldn't imagine that somebody on
>the list hadn't tried it for some reason or another over the years.

Well, before my fire I had a gamma spectrometer based on an LN2 cooled HpGe
crystal in my basement lab.  Right beside it was a similarly cooled SiLi
detector for alpha and X-ray spectroscopy.  What can I say?  I'm a nuke.
that's what we do.  I managed to save the Canberra MCA, though it's grossly
obsolete now, there being little USB dongles that do the job these days.

I have been coveting one of the later model HpGe detectors with the Sterling
refrigeration pump.  No more LN2 deliveries.  Kinda pricey on a retiree's
budget.

One of those things that I've always wanted to do was to lash together a
liquid air plant from, say, refrigeration parts.  Never had the time and the
funds at the same time.

John
--
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.johndearmond.com <-- best little blog on the net!
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
You can't turn [MS] shovelware into reliable software by patching it a whole 
lot. -Marcus Ranum


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Re: [time-nuts] US Shipping Was huntron tracker advice

[Neon John]

On Thu, 27 Nov 2008 21:55:26 +1300, "Steve Rooke" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>Hmmm... International Traffic in Arms Regulations, well I don't like
>to poke holes in that excuse but unless the US customs are REALLY
>paranoid, I can't see how most of the items I have tried to purchase
>would be covered under this. But, I suppose you could poke someone in
>the eye with a ball-point pen therefore it could be labled an an arm
>but I'm sure there are other reasons for most of refusals to ship
>outside the 48 States. It's not just a couple of dealers who take this
>position, it seems to be the case with a number of sellers sadly.

It is more than just the ITAR hassles.  There are hassles all around.  either
you lie at the post office about the value or you pay customs there.  The
paperwork takes time.  There is no legal recourse in the case of fraud.  Just
not worth the effort for most folks when they can sell their stuff here.

>
>What I need is a magic wormhole that runs from a US address and ends
>up in my home. Anyone got a design for one of these, sort of like a
>stargate :-)

Don't know about wormholes but there are people who do that, take receipt of
something you purchased and ship it to you.  I used to do that when I lived
next door to the post office.  I charged a small fee to cover my labors and to
average out the PO fees other than postage.  Alas, the closest PO to me now is
about 40 miles.  Bet you could find other people to do that for you.

If you're dealing on sleazebay, why not put up a Wormhole for sale.  Describe
the services and let people make offers.  Sleazebay may pull it after a few
days but I bet you'd find someone.

John
--
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.johndearmond.com <-- best little blog on the net!
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
I'm going crazy. Wanna come along?


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Re: [time-nuts] 10 MHz over optical fiber?

[Neon John]

On Mon, 24 Nov 2008 17:33:25 -0800, "Tom Van Baak" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>> Yes. I know of several commecial systems. If you only need to do a short 
>> jump, then using fairly basic E/O-O/E equipment should work well 
>> enought. It all depends if you want/can to roll your own or need to buy 
>> a finished product (aka "buy this, and you will be fine!").
>
>Magnus, what's the typical noise floor, tempco or drift of cheap
>(i.e., non JPL-level) fiber distribution systems like this? Is it less
>than regular coax, or phase stabilized heliax? At 100 m lengths?

OK, tom, you got me with another one.  WTF is phase stabilized heliax?  Is
that a hunk of ordinary heliax that has been characterized or is it made
special in some way?

re: original problem

check out B&B Electronics

http://www.bandbelectronics.com/

sorry, I'm off-line right now and can't browse but they specialize in really
inexpensive implementations of stuff like this.

John
--
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.johndearmond.com <-- best little blog on the net!
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
Save the whales, collect the whole set!


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Re: [time-nuts] position determination over short distance

[Neon John]

On Sun, 23 Nov 2008 20:26:52 -0800, "Lux, James P" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:

>There's a fair amount of F/OSS software from JPL available to do this sort of 
>calibration. It's used to calibrate cameras used on Mars rovers, among other 
>things. The target pattern for calibration is a bunch of big circular dots on 
>a background.

URLs?

I recently found this freeware open source on the net.  

http://tim-jackson.co.uk/area/index.html

Caution: I've encountered this guy on Usenet where he has a bad tendency to
substitute abject BS in place of fact when it's too much trouble to dig up the
facts.  I'd inspect the sources closely before using, looking for shortcuts
that don't work and pure old logic errors.

It would do the job in this instance but I'm interested in a more generalized
solution (without having to write it myself or buy anything) to pulling
measurements from photos.

I'd like to be able to take a photograph in which an object of known
dimensions is included and pull other dimensions from the photo, including
areas.

Any suggestions?

John
--
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.johndearmond.com <-- best little blog on the net!
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
What do you call a blonde's cranial cavity?  Vacuum chamber?


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Re: [time-nuts] Oh the horror

[Neon John]

On Sun, 16 Nov 2008 15:01:23 -0800, Hal Murray <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:

>
>[EMAIL PROTECTED] said:
>> It looks like the entire shipping case has been dropped or turned over
>> from a reasonable height. The 7mm thick internal glass cylinder has
>> been shattered and inside that the glass bulb has been smashed to
>> bits.
>
>> The whole unit is completely destroyed and useless. 
>
>Sigh.  It hurts even from many thousand miles away...
>
>> My girlfriend just doesn't understand...
>
>There must be some way to explain it.  Does she have a garden?  How about a 
>cloth collection?

First off, I feel yer pain.  Second, there may be a problem in the
specification for the standard issue girlfriend.  One very important
specification for any time-nut-destined Mk1 girlfriend is the ability to feel
blue smoke and released vacuum pain.

My lovely ex of 27 years (and after a 5 year fling, maybe to be current again)
certainly conformed perfectly to that specification.  Of course, she worked
with both hot and cold glass so she had pain to feel too.  LIke lifting a
piece out of the annealing oven, now at room temperature, laying it on the
counter to prepare it for shipping and hearing that characteristic little
"tink" of a stress crack.  I'm reasonably sure that she created a hostile work
environment in our shared shop more than once due to the sound pressure level.

When the aroma of blue smoke wafted through the air, I'd usually get company
for some commiseration, a good back rub and sometimes other condolences.  A
properly spec'ced wife-mate is worth more than even a hydrogen maser.  


IMO of course.

John
--
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.johndearmond.com <-- best little blog on the net!
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
I'm so cool, I'm afraid to catch cold.


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Re: [time-nuts] Oh the horror

[Neon John]

On Sun, 16 Nov 2008 23:03:15 +0100, Björn Gabrielsson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:


>On a much smaller scale... but the "incident" shown in the attached
>picture was no fun either... two old BVAs came the standard (brutal)
>post service packed like in the picture.

Do y'all have UPS down there?  That sounds like a standard high priority extra
special treatment job - run over the package with BOTH the fork lift and the
semi truck.  This is what a UPS's X-ray tube looks like

http://www.neon-john.com/Nuke/xray_tube.jpg

JOhn
--
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.johndearmond.com <-- best little blog on the net!
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge. -Darwin


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Re: [time-nuts] What's all this about violins in the streets?

[Neon John]

On Wed, 12 Nov 2008 21:27:10 -0600, "Bill Hawkins" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>My apologies, but I didn't think you'd want to hear about jumps.
>
>My good friend, and software genius, was late for a lunch appointment
>today. The "atomic" alarm clock that he has used for years was 3.3
>hours behind this morning, but not on any other morning. My WWVB clock
>was dead on at 4 PM (in MN, where we both are located).
>
>Anybody got a story about an "atomic" clock messing up like that?

Yup.  I have an "Atomix" brand wall mounted clock that picks up the wrong time
by a random amount about once a week.  I have "atomic" clocks all over the
place (would anyone on this list expect any less? :-) so I had to put a little
label on it that says "this clock is not accurate".  I keep it around mainly
for entertainment and because it reads one of my outdoor temperature sensors.

John
--
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.johndearmond.com <-- best little blog on the net!
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood. -Marie Curie


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Re: [time-nuts] Ancient OCXO in scope calibrator.

[Neon John]

On Tue, 9 Sep 2008 19:19:39 +0100, "David C. Partridge"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>Following the good advice I received about increasing the value of the
>trimmer capacitor, I replaced the trimmer which was originally 3-12pF, with
>another one which was 2-22pF.

I would leave the same trimmer in there and shunt it with a fixed 10pF cap.
That way the adjustment won't be so touchy.

>Still don't understand why probing with a 10Meg, 1pF load kills the
>oscillation stone dead until the next power cycle.

That says that the circuit had just enough gain and positive feed back to
oscillate but just barely.  I'd have to see the circuit to recommend changes.
The root cause is probably lost gain in the tube but that can be compensated
for.

I was just sitting here thinking about the oven problem.  If you replace the
thermostat with the proper power PTC thermister, you could make the oven
linearly regulate at a single temperature.

John
--
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.johndearmond.com <-- best little blog on the net!
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
Multitasking: Reading in the bathroom!


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Re: [time-nuts] VNG sound files

[Neon John]

Likewise, thanks.

Are you going to be able to post any of the other files?   I'd love to hear #7
and #8.

Thanks again,
John



On Tue, 09 Sep 2008 13:20:21 +1000, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

>Hi Jim,
>  Many thanks for making the recordings available, it brought back a 
> fond memory, I must be a time-nut!hey does anyone issue a time-nut 
> Certificate or an Award type of thing?that's an idea...;p)
>
>Cheers
>
>Clint - VK3CSJ
>
>
>
>> Jim Palfreyman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> 
>> Folks,
>> 
>> Didier has kindly given me some web space to hold these files. For those
>> that emailed me and others who are interested, please visit:
>> 
>> http://www.ko4bb.com/cgi-bin/manuals.pl?dir=5)_GPS_Timing/VNG_Time_Statio
>> n
>> 
>> BR_002 is the regular announcement that occurred every 15 minutes that 
>> you
>> will all know and love.
>> BR_006 is the final couple of minutes before the death of VNG. If it 
>> doesn't
>> send a shiver down your spine then I'm sorry you cannot call yourself a
>> "time-nut".
>> 
>> :-)
>> 
>> Regards,
>> 
>> Jim
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>
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--
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.johndearmond.com <-- best little blog on the net!
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
You can't turn [MS] shovelware into reliable software by patching it a whole 
lot. -Marcus Ranum


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Re: [time-nuts] Help with HP 8640B generator

[Neon John]

On Sun, 7 Sep 2008 17:40:42 GMT, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Michael Sokolov)
wrote:

>Neon John <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>> I'd have put a head in each cube
>> if that had been possible.  
>
>What kind of head?  Or whose head?

Navy-speak for "toilet".

John
--
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.johndearmond.com <-- best little blog on the net!
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
Some people are only alive because it is illegal to kill.


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Re: [time-nuts] Help with HP 8640B generator

[Neon John]

On Sat, 6 Sep 2008 07:09:33 -0400, "Bob Paddock" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:

>> The cubicle?
>
>Anti-Productivity Pods: Cubicles as Dilbert so astutely noted.
>
>"For my money the most important work on software productivity in the
>last 20 years
> is DeMarco and Lister's Peopleware (1987 Dorset House Publishing, NY
>NY). 

Peopleware became my management handbook.  I can't tell you how many copies
I've purchased and handed out to clients.


> Surprisingly, none of the factors you'd expect to matter correlated to the 
> best
> and worst performers. Even experience mattered little, as long as the
>programmers
> had been working for at least 6 months. They did find a very strong 
> correlation
> between the office environment and team performance. Needless
>interruptions yielded
> poor performance. The best teams had private (read "quiet") offices
>and phones with
> "off" switches. Their study suggests that quiet time saves vast
>amounts of money.

One of the most significant findings, one I took to heart in my shop, was that
it took about 30 minutes of recovery to get back to the state the person was
in when he was interrupted.  "Interrupted" is anything that interrupts the
train of thought, be it a phone, someone walking in or someone cutting up
elsewhere in the cube farm.

>
> Think about this. The almost minor tweak of getting some quiet time can,
> according to their data, multiply your productivity by 260%!
> That's an astonishing result. For the same salary your boss pays you now,
> he'd get essentially 2.6 of you." -- Jack Ganssle in The Embedded Muse #25.

I found that book right after I hired on with Dunn & Bradstreet to manage
their new sales automation software development group.  I implemented all the
recommendations and then some.  The door to our cube farm got a cipher lock
and no one outside our group had the combo.  That stopped the steady stream of
company salesmen and testing personnel who used to drift in any time they
wanted.

I had the PBX reprogrammed to give each person in my group an "off" button
that sent all calls either to reception or voice mail.  I equipped each
cubicle with a dorm room refrigerator and small Mr. Coffee.  I paid to have
them stocked out of my discretionary budget. I'd have put a head in each cube
if that had been possible.  

Walkmans and other headphone-based entertainment was encouraged but no devices
that made noise were allowed.  Not even speakers on the developers' PCs.  No
meetings were allowed in the cube farm and voices above a whisper were banned.
The cube farm was ringed with small conference rooms where teams could go to
meet and coordinate.  I had pink noise generators installed which masked the
normal noises such as chairs bumping into desks and file drawers opening and
closing.

It took a few weeks for my group to come on board but then they loved it. They
were self-policing.  Anyone who made noise or otherwise disturbed the
environment was quickly set upon by those disturbed.

My group's productivity soared by all measures.  My guys were happy campers.
Turnover was nil.  Yet for the 2 years that I stayed at the company, we were
under constant assault from whiners and malingerers elsewhere in the company
because we were getting "special treatment".  After two years of fending off
that crap, I'd had enough.  I took the best of my team and went back into
private practice.

John
--
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.johndearmond.com <-- best little blog on the net!
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
Some people are like a Slinky .. not really good for anything
 but you still smile 
when you shove them down the stairs.


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Re: [time-nuts] While we're discussing backups...

[Neon John]

On Tue, 26 Aug 2008 22:55:42 -0400, Mike Naruta AA8K <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>Wife:  Maybe he really IS your best friend.   :)

Probably so.  Actually I had a great marriage for 25 of the 27 years.  Then
menopause hit with a vengeance.  I sure am glad I'm an outie instead of an
innie.  I'd not wish that on anyone.  We split amicably and still chat
occasionally.

>Powerful lock:  We have a big, old house safe
>that has stopped opening to the combination
>(the original factory combination).  I'm guessing
>corrosion; debating whether to call a locksmith.

Either that or the combination setting mechanism has broken or come loose.  A
locksmith is probably your best bet unless you just want a project to play
with.  He'll probably have to drill the lock.  Drilling templates is one of
the things highly guarded by the high priests of the profession.  A good
'smith can install a new lock so that the hole is plugged suitably and all
signs of the drilling are hidden.

Of course, you DO need to make sure you're memory ADEV isn't too bad :-)  Bad
memory's the most common reason for locksmith calls for safe openings. You
might take a look at Matt Blaze's paper on safe cracking here:
http://www.crypto.com/papers/safelocks.pdf

His technique near the end of the paper should work well for you if you've
either slipped a few digits in your memory or a setting wheel has slipped a
little.

>Inaccessibility:  We're about a half mile from
>an interstate freeway to an international border.
>A hazardous material spill could make our backups
>unavailable forever.  Any farm chemicals nearby?

Nah.  My place is a private inholding smack in the middle of the Cherokee
National Forest.  Twenty five miles in any direction to any other
civilization. The ranger nazis write people tickets for washing their hands in
the river.  The worst chemical here is probably the bleach that some folks use
to chlorinate their water.  Basically heaven on earth!

>My good friend Cliff's wife got angry at him
>because he was spending too much time on his
>ham radio.  She poured a bottle of glue into
>his new transceiver.  It never worked again.

That's just cause for what is known in the legal profession as "commendable
homicide"!  I had a now-deceased ham friend whose wife would do stuff like
that.  I always stood in drop-jaw amazement when I heard of her latest
escapade.  I can't imagine getting mad enough at my wife to actually tear up
her stuff.  Takes all types, I guess.

John
--
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.johndearmond.com <-- best little blog on the net!
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
There is much pleasure in useless knowledge. ?Bertrand Russell


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Re: [time-nuts] While we're discussing backups...

[Neon John]

On Tue, 26 Aug 2008 11:17:06 -0700, "Chris Kuethe" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:


>Might wanna keep an eye on the DVD's. I hear the dyes aren't quite as
>stable and long-lived as the manufacturers claim. I've heard rumors of
>discs being stored undisturbed in safety-deposit boxes for 5yrs
>starting to break down. Some people I know with a rather small set of
>backup DVDs read the existing discs and burn a new set every 6-12mo.
>This serves the purposes of verifying that you can restore from your
>backup and that your media is fresh.

This is one of those areas that sink my confidence in predictive modeling and
accelerated aging - if it could go any lower.

My collection of data CDs, mostly digitized vinyl music and cassette-based
audio books plus various specialized backup, number in the thousands, many
over 10 years old.  I've yet to have that first one refuse to read, at least
not any that didn't have physical damage.

A couple of years ago I started moving to DVD data storage. No problems there
either.  One rather extreme experience makes me think that all this stuff
about aging is bunk.

During my move in up here, one of my data DVDs escaped from custody.  It
rolled down the edge of my yard where it lay for over 6 months including
summer.  It was exposed, read side up, to direct sunlight for several hours a
day.  When I found it, the thing had turned a gorgeous deep royal purple with
a pinkish tint around the edges.  It was also mud-spattered and had suffered a
few scratches on the read side.

I figured that it was toast but just for grins I washed off the dirt, stuck it
in my cheap Chicom no-name drive and fired off file manager.  The disc read
perfectly.  I copied its contents to my laptop and burned a copy just in case
but the original read just fine.  It read fast too, with none of the grinding
and shaking that the drive does when it's having problems.

I suspect that when failures that don't involve damage occur, the cause will
turn out to be the plastic sleeves that many people use.  perhaps the
plasticizer in the sleeve plastic doing something nasty to the discs.

I don't use sleeves.  I stack 'em back on spindles just like they came from
the factory.  I've made a number of wooden spindles from dowel (one size fits
perfectly in the disc hole) and squares of wood glued together.  I don't know
if that matters or not but I figure that the factory must think that stacking
'em on spindles is OK so why not?

I violate another conventional wisdom.  I buy cheap media, usually whatever
Sam's Club has on sale.  I HAVE had disc/drive compatibility problems but that
was a conflict between a specific drive and a specific brand and probably lot
of discs.  One CD drive I had simply would not digest HP discs even though
they were supposed to be high quality.

>Heard about how "high security" locks may not be as secure as the
>manufacturers claim? 

Yeah, but I don't take much of that stuff seriously.  When I worked for TVA,
they'd pay for any schooling that could be even remotely related to the job. I
got 'em to pay for me to attend locksmithing night school.  I don't have the
practical experience of an active full-time locksmith but I HAVE done a lot of
hacking and practicing.  I can pick a conventional key lock in seconds and
open a cheap school locker-style combo lock in minutes.  I can open office
supply store combination-type fire proof safes in a reasonable amount of time
with just manipulation - much faster with an electronic stethoscope.  

I can't make heads nor tails of this safe's lock.  The dial turns as if on
ball bearings (probably is).  There is no feel and no sound.  Most of the dial
is shielded so neither the Feynmann nor the Blaze methods can be used.  Plus
this lock uses 4 digits for the combination which expands the number space
hugely.

I DID seek the advice of a friend who is a career locksmith before selecting
my particular lock setup.  He knows his stuff.

I suspect that drilling would be the only method in.  Even then, a diamond
drill would have to be used to defeat the tungsten carbide plate in front of
the mechanism.  Someone drilling would have to know where my boobytraps are
located and only I have that info :-)

I put the claim that crypto-grade locks are insecure in the same category as I
do theoretical and special case crypto exploits.  The span between theory and
practice is large, too large for me to worry about.

John
--
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.johndearmond.com <-- best little blog on the net!
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
Okay, okay, I'll take it back ... UNfuck you!


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Re: [time-nuts] While we're discussing backups...

[Neon John]

On Tue, 26 Aug 2008 14:04:07 -0400, "phil" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:


>"tell me what risk I'm exposed to"
>An angry wife !

She and my (former) best friend ran away about 5 years ago.  Thankfully. :-)

John

--
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.johndearmond.com <-- best little blog on the net!
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge. -Darwin


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Re: [time-nuts] While we're discussing backups...

[Neon John]

On Tue, 26 Aug 2008 03:34:11 +, Mark Sims <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>
>Pointless overkill?  Ask those people in New Orleans what happens when 
>originals and backups are kept in the same city.  I know of several (ex) 
>businesses that wisely kept their backups in different buildings there...  all 
>were lost. 
>
>Ask my friends in Jarrell, Texas (or what's left of them after a tornado 
>leveled the city)...  one friend kept backups at his and his parent's house... 
> a lifetime's work lost...  not to mention a lot of friends and family.  
>
>All legitimate disaster plans specify that backups (and contingency operating 
>sites) are not to be kept in the same geographic area.  Failure to do so in a 
>corporate setting would expose you to major liability claims.

It's a big old world out there and if you look hard enough, you can find
something to justify most any plan, regardless of how outrageous, if a single
occurance is acceptable justification.  Of course, by that standard we all
should walk around wearing Kevlar helmets.  After all, there has been a single
instance of someone being hit by a meteorite in recorded history.

If I'd lived and operated a data center in NO even before Katrina, I'd have
considered flooding to be a high percentage risk and done something
appropriate about it.  If I lived in the high desert, I'd not worry too much
about flooding.

The silliness in your "advice" is that you offered up one of the most extreme
"solutions" as generic advice and said that anything less was no backup at all
or something to that effect even though you don't know my or any other list
member's circumstances.  Let's see how your advice and its associate expense
fits my situation since I'm the one you replied to.

I'm retired so total loss of my data would have no financial impact.  A huge
sentimental and legacy impact, in terms of both my writings, designs and
digital photos.  Interestingly enough, all those types of data are backed up
multiple ways including on a set of DVDs resting in a friend's safe who lives
a few miles away.  My past design work is completely static, my photos mostly
static and my writings a little less static so updates to that collection need
be done only a couple of times a year.  They'd only be needed if my cabin and
its contents suddenly and completely disappeared somehow.

I live in a cabin on gentle sloping ground about 200 feet above the Tellico
river.  Short of The Great Flood 2.0, water on the ground cannot reach my
place.  Period.  That takes NO-style flooding off the table.  The basement of
my cabin sits on bedrock.  The combination of the gradual slope and the mere
skim of topsoil takes land slides off the table.

In my basement there is one of the largest gun safes made, one that I can
stand up in.  It is set through the concrete block wall, back into the soil
bank behind my cabin so that the door is flush with the wall.  In other words,
like a vault.  The safe itself weighs about 2 tons.  The bottom few inches are
filled with another ton of concrete and the foot of the safe is embedded in
about 3 yards of steel-reinforced concrete, some of the steel welded to the
safe's body.  

The lockworks are US government crypto-certified.  I paid a bunch extra for
that quality of lockwork. The combination lock is a Sergent and Green
crypto-grade unit and the key lock is a Medico high security one.  Both locks
must be manipulated to open the safe.  Inside the safe is another smaller
"valuables" safe, also secured with a S&G crypto-grade combo lock.  It was
intended for jewelry but I use it for backup media storage.  

Even sitting in the open it has the highest UL fire rating available.  Set
back in the dirt bank, it is impervious to fire.  The safe is both alarmed and
booby-trapped.

(certain immaterial-to-this-discussion have been changed for obvious reasons.)

I installed this safe years ago when I traveled a lot to protect my gun
collection.  It makes a damned fine data safe.  So let's evaluate the risks

Risk Covered?
Fire check
Earthquake   check
general floodNA
local flood  check*
explosioncheck
land slide   NA
B&E  check**
Tornado  check
Riot check
Nuclear attack   check***
Nosey neighbors  check

* broken water pipe, etc.  The basement is drained by gravity plus my alarm
system has a leak detection facility that kills power to my well pump.
** adding to my protection against breaking and entering are all my heavily
armed and dangerous neighbors.  We put teeth in the term "Neighborhood Watch".
*** of any nearby strategic target such as Oak Ridge.  Can't imagine anyone
nuking Tellico Plains :-)  Even if they did, I'm still 25 miles and a mountain
range away.

My lights-out server sits inside the safe with the power and ethernet cables
brought out through suitable secure penetrations.  I put the server in the
safe after the experience of a previous fire.  My backups were good but the
hassle

Re: [time-nuts] While we're discussing backups...

[Neon John]

On Mon, 25 Aug 2008 22:30:33 +, Mark Sims <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>
>Any backup that is stored in the same city as the original (some would say 
>within 100 miles of the city) is NOT a backup.  It is just a disk waiting for 
>a (real) disaster.  No fire proof safe,  baggie,  etc is a substitute for 
>physical distance.

That has to be the silliest thing I've ever seen posted to this list.  Even by
time-nut standards of pointless overkill.

John
--
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.johndearmond.com <-- best little blog on the net!
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.  In practice, 
there is.


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Re: [time-nuts] While we're discussing backups...

[Neon John]

On Mon, 25 Aug 2008 17:51:35 -0400, "Bruce Lanning" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:

>In regard to the below info, I downloaded xxclone and it does appear to be 
>the type of backup program that I have been looking for, BUT I can not get 
>my C: drive to come up in the source or the target window. I am running XP 
>on a COMPAQ Presario if that helps. Could anyone  tell me why I can not see 
>my C: drive. It has my start up info and WINDOWS on it.

No idea other than the brand name.  Compaqs have a rep for stuff like that.
Are you running XP?  All bets are off if Vista is involved.

 I've installed xxclone on a number of client and friends' computers and never
had a problem.  It just came up and ran.

Did you try pressing the disk management button to the right of the source and
target slots?  That brings up windows disk drive management package.  What
does it show?  Is your C drive an NTFS volume that is showing healthy?

Have you turned off any services, particularly windows shadow volume copy
service?  Some "optimization" websites recommend turning that service off but
doing so disables just about every backup or clone package that runs in
multi-user mode.

Do you have any virus bloat-ware like Norton running?  If so, it might be
interfering with disk detection.  I have the freebie Avast package on my
machine and before that AVG (release 8 turned into bloatware so I had to
change) running with no problems but given the amount of problems I've had in
the past with Norton and MaCaffee, I'd be looking there.

Have you tried since rebooting the machine?  Kind of an obvious question but I
had to ask.

As a last resort, you might drop them a support note and ask if they've had
any reported problems with your model computer.  Maybe they'll have a patch or
a work-around.

John
--
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.johndearmond.com <-- best little blog on the net!
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
Multitasking: Reading in the bathroom!


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Re: [time-nuts] I now have a clock accurate to 10E-6!!!

[Neon John]

On Mon, 25 Aug 2008 17:40:14 +1000, "Jim Palfreyman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:

>Hi Folks,
>
>Well I've had the best weekend since I've just acquired a pendulum clock
>that used to be a telecommunication time standard in the 50s. 

Nice.

I'd love to have a photo of that with both the clock and the rack of HP
goodies both showing.  Move to the right a little, maybe use a tripod and turn
off the flash to get more uniform lighting and the result would be a wonderful
contrast between old and new.

John
--
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.johndearmond.com <-- best little blog on the net!
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN

*fas-cism* (fash'iz'em) n. A system of government that exercises a 
dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the 
merging of state and business leadership, together 
with belligerent nationalism.  -- The American Heritage Dictionary, 1983 


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Re: [time-nuts] While we're discussing backups...

[Neon John]

On Fri, 22 Aug 2008 22:47:12 -0500, Robert Vassar <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:


>I backup to a USB hard disk.  I plug it in, backup, unplug it, de- 
>cable and park it in a filing cabinet.  The disk spends 99.99% of  
>it's life powered off.  It should last a decade or more like this,  
>but I buy a new disk to replace it every 5 years, regardless if it  
>needs it or not.  Really critical stuff goes on a CD-R, stored flat  
>in a jewel case, and goes in the safe deposit box.

My laptop is may main computer.  My "backup" procedure consists of cloning the
C: drive using a freebie utility called "xxclone" (http://www.xxclone.com).
This one is one of the best cloning programs that I've tried and being free is
a double bonus.

The target drives are the same brand and size as what is installed in my
laptop.  The bare target drive is connected via a USB-to-EDIE interface cable
that I picked up somewhere on the net for about $20.  I use 3 drives in
rotation so that I have 3 generations of drive snapshots at any given time.
That has saved my cookies more than once when I realized after the last clone
that I'd deleted something vital.  The three "backup" drives stay in my
fireproof safe inside zip-lock bags.  The zip-lock bags are vital.  I learned
the hard way during a house fire that even though the fireproof safe protects
the media from heat, it doesn't protect it from the acidic smoke and steam
that are drawn into the cool interior.

If the drive in my laptop fails, I don't have to do a restore.  I simply get
the latest clone drive out of the safe and install it in my computer and I'm
instantly back up and running with the machine state being that of the last
snapshot.

I do a weekly clone and a daily differential backup to my linux file server
running SAMBA using another freebie utility called SyncBack. A flash drive is
another option for those non-networked computer users.
http://www.2brightsparks.com/.  Even when I've been very active, a week's
worth of changes easily fits on a 4 gig flash drive.

I still have the occasional nightmare when I think about tape backup.  More
accurately, the time wasted verifying each tape and even then, having the tape
not read about half the time when it was needed.  Never again!

John
--
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.johndearmond.com <-- best little blog on the net!
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
What do you call a blonde's cranial cavity?  Vacuum chamber?


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Re: [time-nuts] How to get 32.768KHz from 10MHz.

[Neon John]

On Mon, 28 Jul 2008 16:35:53 -0700, Jim Lux <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:


>>Seems to me that all the solutions proposed so far are a bit complex, trying
>>to go for the 32khz frequency when that's not necessary.  The quartz analog
>>clockworks has a one or two winding stepper motor.  The SIMPLEST solution is
>>to drive those coils directly with the PIC output and scrap the rest of the
>>circuitry.
>
>Actually, it's not even that complex... it's often an 
>electromagnet/solenoid driving a conventional escapement type clock 
>mechanism. Why use 2 coils when you don't ever need to go backwards?

The clockworks that I've taken apart almost all have 2 coils.  One brand has
one. They all drive a permanent magnet rotor that turns 90 degrees on each
tick.  I'm not sure what the single coil design does to make sure the rotor
always turns the right direction.  Or maybe it doesn't matter if the rotor
turns a cam and ratchet mechanism.  I've never taken one apart far enough to
know.

>
>One advantage of generating 32kHz (averaged over 1 second) is that 
>you don't have to build the power driver stage to actuate that 
>electromagnet.. (since it's built into the single dirt-cheap chip in 
>the clock in the first place)

No driver needed.  Each coil has about a bazillion (bazillion.00 for time
nuts) turns of wire so fine I can't see it without my 7x OptiVisor.  I've
never bothered to measure but the resistance has to be in the hundreds of ohms
or more.  It has to be that high to get over a year's operation from an AA
battery.  Duck soup for a PIC output pin driver.

Funny how this works.  I've been thinking about this same type problem for a
few days independent of reading this list.  I'm old-fashioned and like analog
clocks much better than digital.  I also like the precision of
radio-controlled clocks.  I've bought several different WWVB analog clocks,
all of which seem to use the same cheap ChiCom movement.  They uniformly suck
(to use a technical term) at receiving WWVB where I live.  The digital
versions have no problem receiving but I don't like the looks.

What I've been thinking about is a modern version of the Simplex master/slave
clock system.  A GPS disciplined master clock sending out operating pulses to
slave clocks around my house and shop.

I thought about wireless, including synthesizing my own WWVB signal but I know
that I'll not get enough round tuits to do that.  What I'm working toward is
just about what I described above, except that the master clock will drive 4
conductor telephone station wire and the slave clocks will contain no
electronics.  Only the clockwork and the coils.  All the clocks will be wired
in parallel.

This is an open-loop system that assumes all the clocks are in the same
mechanical position when the master is activated.  Perfectly acceptable, given
the relatively few number of clocks and the small area involved.

This architecture should give me what I want - REALLY simple, no electronics
in the individual clocks, "atomic" accuracy, automatic DST correction and
perfect synchronism.

Comments?

John
--
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.johndearmond.com <-- best little blog on the net!
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
No one can be right all of the time, but it helps to be right most of the time. 
-Robert Half


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Re: [time-nuts] How to get 32.768KHz from 10MHz.

[Neon John]

On Wed, 23 Jul 2008 15:22:08 -0700, Jim Lux <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>At 03:01 PM 7/23/2008, Mike S wrote:

>>You're missing the point. The application is to drive a common, readily
>>available consumer clock. Simple and cheap. It can be done with a
>>single $1 PIC. You could spend $20 or $100 and not get better results
>>for the application. If you can describe a way of doing it for $0.50,
>>please do.
>
>
>But this is time-nuts... Any approach that doesn't have the 
>performance of a hydrogen maser or cryogenic sapphire resonator just 
>isn't good enough.  Why, we haven't even started on how to build a 
>radial ruling engine to make sure the clock face is precisely divided 
>into 60 segments to ppb accuracy.

Yep.  There's turd polishing and then there is time nuts turd polishing. Going
for the angstrom finish on the turd.  The latter sometimes makes me grit my
teeth

>
>Based on the clocks I've taken apart, dividing the 10MHz down to 1 Hz 
>is probably your best bet, rather than trying to hit 32768. However, 
>I don't know of a non-programmable single chip solution that will do 
>a divide by 1E7. If you want programmable chips, there's countless 
>ways, some more elegant than others.

Seems to me that all the solutions proposed so far are a bit complex, trying
to go for the 32khz frequency when that's not necessary.  The quartz analog
clockworks has a one or two winding stepper motor.  The SIMPLEST solution is
to drive those coils directly with the PIC output and scrap the rest of the
circuitry.

With some clever fiddling, one could use one of the 8 pin PICs and that WOULD
get the solution cost down to around 50 cents :-)

John
--
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.johndearmond.com <-- best little blog on the net!
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
Save the whales, collect the whole set!


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[time-nuts] soldering (was cesium clock)

[Neon John]

On Sat, 28 Jun 2008 20:57:51 +1000, Neville Michie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>
>On 28/06/2008, at 1:14 PM, Bruce Griffiths wrote:
>>
>>
>> Stainless is trickier to solder than constantan.
>> Welding may be preferable.
>>
>>
>>
>A hint for soft soldering stainless steel, iron, nickel, chromium,  
>copper, brass, nichrome etc. but not aluminium.

Another method the works even for aluminum.  Using activated liquid rosin
flux, immerse the object to be soldered in the flux and while immersed, use a
knife or file or something similar to scrape off the oxide coating.  Lift the
object from the flux and IMMEDIATELY apply heat and solder.

The flux excludes air and prevents a new protective oxide layer from forming.
Solder wets unoxidized aluminum as well as it does copper.

When I need to solder a wire to aluminum sheet, a chassis, for example, I
apply a thick drop of liquid flux and use an exacto blade to scrape the
surface under the drop clean.  Add more flux so that the scrapped area remains
covered as the alcohol evaporates, then apply a large, high powered iron and
tin the area.  I frequently use an old fashioned soldering copper heated in a
gas flame to almost red heat.  Once the area is tinned, it can be soldered
normally.

This is the flux that I use

http://www.neon-john.com/EV/motor_repair/Kester_1594.jpg

No idea if it is optimum for the task but it does work.

John
--
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.johndearmond.com <-- best little blog on the net!
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I like you ... you remind me of me when I was young and stupid.


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Re: [time-nuts] Thoughts on IR thermometers?

[Neon John]

On Tue, 27 May 2008 23:31:49 -0400, Patrick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>Hey Everybody
>
>I tried to use a cheap IR thermometer to do some quick, pre-circuit 
>analysis tests, a couple of years ago on a particular job.
>
>It went bad, the laser did not even line up with the area being 
>measured, I missed a burning hot capacitor and wasted a lot of time.

Since the response profile of those cheap lens-less thermometers is a broad
cone, the laser is at best a joke and at worst an outright fraud.

>
>I was thinking about buying a better one this time. Does anyone have any 
>suggestions? Do you think they are useless for PCB tests? Caps should 
>not be hot and power resistors and transistors should not be cold right? 
>but the spot size to laser ratio on most of these are not good, are they 
>still useful?

You might want to take a look at Wahl's (recently gobbled up by palmer
instruments) line of instruments.  They're a very old name in the business.
I've been using their stuff since the 70s.  They used to and probably still do
make a unit especially for inspecting PCB components.  It has a tiny focal
spot.

http://www.palmerwahl.com/heat-spy-hand-held-infrared-thermometers.php

I have an older DHS-24 series and a fairly new DHS-215 series private labeled
for Omega Engineering.  Example:

http://www.omega.com/ppt/pptsc.asp?ref=OS532E_OS533E_OS534E&Nav=temj04

The major feature of the Omega version is their patented circular laser
pattern that fairly sharply defines the sensitive area at any distance.  I've
tested my unit with a heated up power resistor.  The laser quite accurately
delineates the sensitive area.

Mine also has a Type T thermocouple input which is very handy because I can
apply the thermocouple to an object of similar emissivity to what I'm going to
inspect and then adjust the emissivity control to make the infrared part read
the same as the thermocouple.  That removes all guesswork with emissivity
coefficients.

Mine is the 50:1 cone size.  With that fairly sharp cone I can, for instance,
stand back at a reasonable distance and survey an air conditioner condenser to
figure out where the liquid line is.

IR thermometers that actually work aren't cheap but then few things are.  I'm
well pleased with the value I received in my unit.

John

--
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.johndearmond.com <-- best little blog on the net!
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
So you're a feminist... Isn't that cute!


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Re: [time-nuts] Administrivia: Please don't use the "Spam" button to unsubscribe

[Neon John]

Well, I did leave room for at least a couple of AOHellers with above room
temperature IQs :-)

Though my post was tongue-in-cheek, I'm not at all open-minded about AOHell,
considering how many hair-tearing hours I spent purging perfectly innocent
computers of the plague.  Nowadays if someone asks me to work on his computer,
my first screening question is "Is there AOL software on your machine?"  I'd
rather exorcize a root kit/virus/trojan/bot combo than deal with that.

One thing nice I can say about AOHell.  Their CDs look spectacular in the
microwave!

BTW, John, what other lists do you run?

Jack:  I registered a domain name initially for the specific purpose of having
a permanent email address that I have total control over.  I've used several
since my return to the net after a hiatus to let everyone else get rich during
the dot.bomb thing :-) but all the old ones still forward to my current one
which isn't the one that I use on this list.

John


On Wed, 14 May 2008 08:22:57 -0400, John Ackermann N8UR <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 
wrote:

>Neon John wrote:
>
>> Wouldn't that be kind of a good thing?  I mean, can the intersection of the
>> set of AOL members and the set of folks who can understand what we discuss
>> here contain more than a couple of people?  And wouldn't it be a GOOD thing 
>> to
>> give those folks a good reason to get a REAL ISP and bid AOHell goodbye?
>
>Except that it stops *any* mail from febo.com going to *any* AOL 
>address.  So I can't email my (hypothetical) great-grandmother, and AOL 
>subscribers on the other dozen or so lists I run (ham radio, not T&F 
>related) are out of luck.
>
>And I don't think it's fair to paint all AOL users with that kind of 
>brush, anyway...
>
>John
>
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--
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
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http://www.johndearmond.com <-- best little blog on the net!
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
I don't speak Stupid so do speak slowly.


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Re: [time-nuts] Administrivia: Please don't use the "Spam" button to unsubscribe

[Neon John]

On Mon, 12 May 2008 16:43:06 -0400, John Ackermann N8UR <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 
wrote:


>If this happens too often, AOL will think I'm a bad guy and ban my 
>domain from sending email to *anyone* at AOL.  Getting them to back off 
>from this is a major pain in the *** (I know, I've been through it).

Wouldn't that be kind of a good thing?  I mean, can the intersection of the
set of AOL members and the set of folks who can understand what we discuss
here contain more than a couple of people?  And wouldn't it be a GOOD thing to
give those folks a good reason to get a REAL ISP and bid AOHell goodbye?

John
--
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.johndearmond.com <-- best little blog on the net!
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
I don't speak Stupid so do speak slowly.


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Re: [time-nuts] Favorite DC power Supply?

[Neon John]

On Sat, 03 May 2008 08:58:58 +0930, Matthew Smith <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>I am building two GPS-driven devices, an NTP server based on an ancient 
>single board computer and a Nixie clock.  Our power here is not what one 
>might call reliable - we are stuck on a spur of a very long 19kV, single 
>wire, earth return supply which plays up a) when there is a thunderstorm 
>within 200 miles and b) when it feels like it.

Does your power system STILL use ground return?  Are you sure there isn't a
neutral return on the primary feed?  If not then WOW.  I bet it's interesting
walking around the earth ground in dry weather.  A shocking experience.

>My thought was to integrate a UPS component into the design by 
>connecting these to 12V 7Ah sealed lead acid batteries, which I can get 
>for just over $20 AUD a piece.  If I were to do this, would it be 
>sufficient to power the units from a 13.8V supply?  I believe this to be 
>within the voltage range for float-charging the batteries so was 
>guessing that this may be a simple way to provide uninterrupted power to 
>my gear.

Change that voltage to whatever float voltage your batteries want and it'll
work peachy.  That is effectively the way I had my homemade UPS connected -
the two big honkin' 100 amp supplies connected to a pair of trolling
batteries.  Also connected to the trolling batteries was a non-switch-mode,
pure square wave inverter, a Tripplite 1kw unit.  Yep, with about 2 dozen
2N3055 TO-3 transistors bolted down each side and about 60 lbs of iron and
copper in the transformer.  A simple power blocking oscillator design with the
*deluxe* frequency control board, a 555 timer running at 60hz
injection-locking the power oscillator.  It had no concept of overload
shutdown so it was good for much more than 1kw short term until the whole unit
got hot enough to boil eggs!  Seems like that sucker cost around $600.

Everything that everybody said wouldn't work on a square wave inverter did.
Second generation HP laserjet, 386 vintage computer power supplies, CRTs,
smart terminals, TrailBlazer modems (remember those?), etc.

I started one of the very first for-pay ISPs (dixie.com).  It was hosted on a
33mhz 386 PC with 12mb of RAM ($$$) and an actual gig of full height 5.25"
hard drives ($$) running Interactive Unix ($2k just for the OS).  That
machine supported 2 developers plus 16 2400 bps dial-up modems and a couple of
Trailblazers for news feeds.  Demonstrates just what a pig winders is!  Had a
hell of a time getting that Bell B*tch to drag a T-1 line to my basement where
all this stuff was operated from.

I later added a second machine and modem rack and another homemade UPS. Same
architecture except that I couldn't find any more 100 amp supplies on a
moment's notice.  I instead used a 150 amp unregulated supply that came out of
a Univac mainframe.  A motor-operated variac ahead of the transformer
"regulated" the voltage.  At the operator's console was a voltmeter and a
momentary on-off-on toggle switch.  Whomever was sysop at the time had the
duty to watch the voltage and run the variac up and down as needed.  We always
intended to build an automatic regulator but never got a round tuit.

At $20 a month per subscriber I just couldn't make the numbers work for the
long term so just about the time Mosaic hit the scene, I shut everything down,
sold most of the hardware, let the registration on dixie.com expire and left
the computer field to open a restaurant.  *sigh*.

Back to the present.  Here in the US, inverters are so cheap that one could be
applied to each load.  No idea what conditions are there but here I can get a
750 watt inverter for under $50 and a 2000 watt unit from Harbor Freight for
$149.

John
--
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.johndearmond.com <-- best little blog on the net!
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
It isn't Global Warming It's Jerry Falwell arriving in hell.


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Re: [time-nuts] Favorite DC power Supply?

[Neon John]

On Fri, 02 May 2008 22:24:11 +, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:


>What would one use 5Vdc @ 100A supplies for these days?  I found 2 HP units in 
>the garage last weekend.

Set each one to 6 volts, hook 'em in series and use 'em to run big 12 volt
loads.  I ran a homemade true uninterruptible power supply for years using
that lashup.

Remember when those things were a dime a dozen at swap meets?  Scarce as hen's
teeth now.

John
--
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.johndearmond.com <-- best little blog on the net!
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
Ever stop to think, and forget to start again?


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Re: [time-nuts] sub cables

[Neon John]

On Thu, 1 May 2008 11:13:48 +0100, "Alan Melia" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:


>At least with the optical cables it is only the powerfeed circuit that gets
>the surge not the amplifier front end as it was in the FDM systems.
>
>I always thought the terminal equipment was a slighly lower reliability
>requirement than the submerged parts but these days the loss of revenue even
>with an easily accessed terminal is very high.

Now I'm curious how power is tapped off at each repeater point.  I understand
the daisychain architecture but I'm wondering about the details, what
components can withstand the intial high voltage surge as the cable is
charging and how the voltage drop at each repeater is maintained relatively
constant, even if the repeater fails and quits consuming power.

Also, is it true that an optical cable will keep working with a single
repeater failure, that the laser light will pass through unamplified?  Seems
like I read that somewhere but I'm not sure.

John

--
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.johndearmond.com <-- best little blog on the net!
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The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources -Albert Einstein


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[time-nuts] Match Stick Clock

[Neon John]

One of the coolest art clocks I've seen in awhile

http://www.christiaanpostma.nl/

Flash animation of it working here:

http://technabob.com/blog/2008/04/19/word-clock-slowly-reveals-the-time-with-text/

John

--
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
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http://www.johndearmond.com <-- best little blog on the net!
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Re: [time-nuts] GOES time service

[Neon John]

On Thu, 10 Apr 2008 02:57:17 -0700, Hal Murray <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:


>Are there any legitimate concerns?  Or even semi-legitimate?
>

Back in the mid-80s I managed a software development group for a Fortune 500 
company.
We were located in a high rise in Atlanta.  The development lab was on one 
floor and
the server farm was two floors below.  We had one laser printer for the whole 
floor
when I took over the group.  I wanted to add another.  The quote from the 
building
manager-approved contractor (the only one kicking back, er "approved") to run 
one
serial cable about 50 feet was a tick under $12,000.  

I don't recall what all was involved because I looked at the bottom line, 
cursed and
tossed it in the garbage.  We, being hackers all, had already made master keys 
so we
"midnight engineered" the job one weekend.  That same technique would be my
inclination for getting a patch antenna on the roof.

John

--
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.johndearmond.com <-- best little blog on the net!
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Democracy is three wolves and one sheep voting on what to have for supper.


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[time-nuts] Trinity Timing - How far we've come

[Neon John]

In this paper

http://www.sciencemadness.org/lanl1_a/lib-www/la-pubs/00350316.pdf

you can read the detailed description (including schematics) of the high 
accuracy
timing system built to control the Manhattan Project's Trinity test - the first
nuclear device explosion.

This is an absolutely fascinating read.  It is stunning what they did with the
materials at hand and especially in the short time frame between when the 
Gadget was
fairly certain to work and the test explosion.

The site time reference standard was, for example, a 1khz tuning fork!  Yet they
managed to time certain critical events to better than 0.1 microsecond and do so
despite having to drive miles of transmission line.  Remarkable.

Incidentally, pretty much the entire non-classified Las Alamos online library is
available here.

http://www.sciencemadness.org/lanldocs.html

Plan on spending a few weeks  This is the status of the library as of 
shortly
before 9/11.  The cowards of 9/11 within the government yanked all this down
post-9/11 but fortunately many of us were busily hoovering the site so not much 
was
lost.

John
--
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.johndearmond.com <-- best little blog on the net!
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
There are only 10 types of people in this world
Those who understand


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Re: [time-nuts] Stuff I bought

[Neon John]

On Wed, 26 Dec 2007 20:55:27 + (GMT), Robert Atkinson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:

>Hi,
>  my holiday gift this year was a Sony PRS-505 Reader.
>  
> http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CategoryDisplay?catalogId=10551&storeId=10151&langId=-1&categoryId=16184
>  This is not as off-topic as it seems, as well as books these work well with 
> PDF's and the ePaper display uses no power except when it changes. No more 
> printing a couple of pages of a datasheet to use at the bench, only to bin 
> them later.
>  Unfortunatly they don't sell then outside North America (copyright issues 
> with the books apparently)  but they do work in Europe , contary to what the 
> store attendants tried to tell me! It will play MP3's while you read too!
>

Oh crap, there goes February's food budget.

Being a card-carrying Sony hater (We give you le$$ for more, lock you into
proprietary formats and then sue your balls off), I did some quick looking and 
found
this page:

http://www.eink.com/products/customers_app.html

This is a list of products that use the eInk electronic paper display.  I'm just
going goo-goo for that iRex iLiad.  Reads and writes, large screen, WiFi and 
Ethernet
and compatible with MobiPocket formatted eBooks.  MobiPocket books for the Palm 
have
become somewhat of a standard.

I'm also enchanted with the Bookeen open source reader with embedded Linux.  If 
it
only had WiFi.

If you're unfortunate enough to live in a large city, you might want to take a 
look
at the Amazon Kindle.  Its most interesting feature is built-in free EVDO
connectivity.

---

Robert,  How does that gadget handle graphics and photos?  The eInk site says 
that
the display only does 4 levels of greyscale.  My main interest in a reader is 
to be
able to carry around my reference library so the ability to display both line 
art and
greyscale is important.

John
--
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.johndearmond.com <-- best little blog on the net!
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
Save a tree, kill a beaver


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Re: [time-nuts] Stuff I bought

[Neon John]

On Wed, 26 Dec 2007 11:30:05 -0800, Jeff Mock <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:


>Smart Tweezers
>http://www.advancedevices.com/
>
>It's an RLC meter packaged in a pair of tweezers.  It's accurate and 
>fast, feels good to use on the bench.  When working with SMT parts, 
>particularly capacitors that typically aren't marked with values, this 
>tool makes it easy to deal with tiny parts on the bench.
>
>Truth be told, this product is probably the version before the one you 
>really want to own.  I've found a couple of bugs in the software and the 
>industrial design should be nicer, but it's still a good product.

Oh crap!  There goes the food budget for next month. :-)

Jeff, did you buy yours directly from them or did you locate a dealer with a 
better
price?

Cool gadgets...  I was trolling the local Sam's Club yesterday and saw a nifty
LaCrosse weather station on sale.  It's the Model WS-1515-IT and includes
indoor/outdoor temp and humidity, outdoor dew point, wind speed and direction 
plus
rainfall.  Being somewhat of a weather nut too (too many -nuts in my life!), I 
had to
have one.  Even after a half hour of carefully carving away at the hideous Sam's
packaging, I managed to break off one of the anemometer cups.  Damn.  Epoxy to 
the
rescue.

The temperature agrees with my precision TC bridge to within half a degree.  The
humidity indicator agrees with my HVAC-grade sling psychrometer (sp?) within 5%.
Sticking the anemometer out the window of the car, it agrees exactly with my 
GPS,
plus or minus my ability to hold a steady speed to within 1 mph.  I haven't 
tried
calibrating the rain gauge yet.

Not bad for under $50.

John
--
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.johndearmond.com <-- best little blog on the net!
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
I'm so cool, I'm afraid to catch a cold.


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Re: [time-nuts] AC reference voltage

[Neon John]

Generating the AC isn't a problem.  For 60 hz, a variac is fine.  For higher
frequencies, an audio transformer, for example, a plate transformer, and a 
signal
generator will do the job.  You don't need any power since a DVM has a high 
input
impedance.  You only need the voltage with enough drive to handle the circuit
capacitance.  A plate transformer run backwards will do the job.

You still must have a standard to compare to.  It should be between 3x and 10x 
the
accuracy of the instrument you're testing.  One of my favorites for this role 
is the
Fluke 8800 5.5 digit DVM.  This is an oldie but a goodie.  It was one of the 
premiere
meters in its era and so there were a lot of 'em in use.  That means that there 
are a
lot of 'em surplus now.  I have several in my lab and I've never paid more than 
$50
for one, usually a lot less.  My experience over several decades is that the 
8800
holds its calibration as well as any non-microprocessor instrument I've ever 
worked
with.

John


On Tue, 25 Dec 2007 14:01:02 -0800 (PST), Randy Leifer
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>I don't need super accuracy, just within reason to
>ease my mind. I have some decent gear already:
>http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y177/Midiot/DSCN2695.jpg
>...and a few units, what I believe  to be close to
>"secondary references".
>Frequency intrigues me, but my main hobby is to test
>my DIY hi'end audio gear. So, I have: audio distortion
> meters, AC voltmeters, low distortion audio freq
>generatorsthat I'd like to check if they are close
>to their factory specs. And I have most of their
>manuals/cal instructions too.
>
>(btw, when I said "power amplifier" in my original
>post, I am refering to an audio power amplifier.)
>
>=Randy=
--
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
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Re: [time-nuts] OT: Hewlett Packard paint codes

[Neon John]

On Wed, 26 Dec 2007 18:35:26 -0500, Patrick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>I am missing the original post, hopefully I am on topic..
>
>I color match quite a bit. I refurbish lab instruments. I have a piece 
>of glass over top of my scanner platten. I mix the paint right on the 
>scanner and evaluate it with the GIMP. If you have not heard of it, it 
>is a free image manipulation program. You can click on a little dropper 
>icon inside the program and it will show you the RGB value for the small 
>region you clicked on.
>
>Hope this helps, If you need more details please feel free to ask-Patrick

I thought I was the only one to do that.  My method is easier than glass.  I 
use the
crystal-clear packing tape that is available from the office supply big box 
stores
and Rat Shack.  When carefully applied to the platen, it becomes totally 
transparent.
When the scan is finished, just rip it up and throw it away.

I bet Saran wrap would work equally well.  This does leave the problem of 
paints that
change colors when they dry.  The old "apply to substrate and dry with hair 
dryer"
method still applies.

Jack, back to your original problem, the trick to hitting the color spot-on 
after
only one or two tries is to use your scanner or even your digicam if you can 
keep the
lighting exactly the same, is to use it as a comparator.  Scan the original 
color and
save it.  Then generate output on your inkjet printer and scan that.  Look at 
the
difference in each color channel and modify your original artwork color 
accordingly.
Usually you can nail it after the second try.

This system doesn't rely on the accuracy of the monitor, printer or scanner, 
but only
its repeatability.  Repeatability is usually excellent, at least until you 
change
cartridges.

I haven't used this technique to duplicate colors on an instrument panel but I 
have
used it extensively for conventional graphics arts where I need to match the 
color on
a logo or whatnot.

RE: Gimp.  I wouldn't foist that crap off on my worst enemy.  Whomever 
conceived that
user interface had to be stoned.  Bad stoned.

John
--
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.johndearmond.com <-- best little blog on the net!
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
If we aren't supposed to eat animals, why are they made with meat?


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Re: [time-nuts] Ronald Held's main question

[Neon John]

On Tue, 18 Dec 2007 00:05:29 -0800, Hal Murray <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>It was probably in the late 70s that a friend showed me a small booklet from 
>NBS.
>
>It was describing how to use TV signals to calibrate your local clock.  I 
>think NBC and HP cooperated.
>
>I think the story was that NBC had their whole network of TV stations locked 
>to a master clock.  It was very stable except for jumps when the phone 
>company rewired some link.  I think they used to measure various sites 
>monthly and publish the differences between local tick and correct time.
>
>Does anybody remember that one?

yep, but the fly in the ointment was that even though the network color burst
frequency was very accurate, the signal that got broadcast frequently wasn't.
Ch11/atlanta where I used to moonlight some is an example.  The first thing that
happened to the network signal when it hit the facility was that it got 
digitized in
a frame store.  This allowed the network feed to be genlocked to the house clock
which was an ordinary quartz oscillator.  There went the NBS accuracy.

This frame store, which buffered two frames, consisted of a floor to ceiling 
19" rack
packed as tightly as possible with card containing either 8 or 16K RAM chips
(memory's fuzzy on the size).  That frame store was still in use in the mid 90s.

John
--
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
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Daddy, why doesn't this magnet pick up this floppy?


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Re: [time-nuts] Antennas in apartments

[Neon John]

On Mon, 17 Dec 2007 13:43:41 -0500, Chuck Harris <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>Neon John wrote:
>> Federal law says that landlords cannot prohibit satellite TV dishes. Another 
>> one of
>> those "best laws money can buy".  The implication for a solution to the GPS 
>> antenna
>> problem is fairly obvious.
>
>I think you need to read the law a little bit more carefully!

Should have figured you'd be the one to make that kind of pedantic reply.

>What the law says, as I read it, is that you can put up radio,
>TV, or satellite antennas on your own property, regardless of
>covenants, home owners association rules, or zoning ordinances.
>But, if the property isn't yours, or isn't available for your
>exclusive use, it is up to the owner (or controlling authority)
>to decide whether you may or may not.

I'm neither interested in parsing individual sentences in a regulation (I hire a
lawyer to do that for me) nor debating this guy's controlling status.  As a 
landlord,
I've been told that if I want to avoid a slew of legal fees and hassles, let the
tenants put up their dishes as they wish as long as the placement is 
reasonable.  As
an observer, I notice that most every apartment complex I've observed follows 
that
same guidance.

I'll rephrase.  "The implication for a solution to the GPS antenna problem is 
fairly
obvious 99.999% of the time.  Put the dish up, strap on a GPS receiver and 
see
what happens.  Sheesh.

John
--
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.johndearmond.com <-- best little blog on the net!
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I like you ... you remind me of me when I was young and stupid.


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Re: [time-nuts] Antennas in apartments

[Neon John]

On Sun, 16 Dec 2007 22:57:49 -0800, Hal Murray <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:


>Talk to your building superintendent.  Offer to provide NTP service to the 
>whole complex if he will help you setup a GPS antenna.

I can see it now. "Duh, how's this NTP stuff gonna help me unstop the 
toilet in
23?" :-)

>
>What do people who want satellite TV do?

Federal law says that landlords cannot prohibit satellite TV dishes. Another 
one of
those "best laws money can buy".  The implication for a solution to the GPS 
antenna
problem is fairly obvious.

John
--
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.johndearmond.com <-- best little blog on the net!
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
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Re: [time-nuts] John Vig tutorial

[Neon John]

> Dave Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: 
>> URL truncation messing things up, Didier- mainly as its 'new lining' 
>> (here, anyway) at the end of 'Jan', and its not obvious there's a 
>> space between 'Jan' and '2007'.
>> Took me a few tries to get that one right!
>> Tks for posting the file. There seems to be several versions of it out 
>> there in cyber space now. Lots of pictures in this one though!

Just go here

>> > http://www.ko4bb.com/Timing/

and click the Vig button.

John
--
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
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Re: [time-nuts] John Vig elected President of IEEE

[Neon John]

May be a dumb question but why don't you just export the slides to bitmap 
graphics or
to a PDF?  I rarely give presentations anymore but that's the approach I've 
always
taken, especially if I'm going to have to use other hardware.  A series of 
TIFFs or
JPGs and the free Irfanview which will run on a thumb drive or CD and you're 
set.

John

On Mon, 10 Dec 2007 17:04:15 -0500, "Daun Yeagley" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>Chuck:
>
>HOW TRUE your last sentence!!!   I've had to fight many battles with
>presentations used in training classes that were written using whatever font.
>Then when you try to present using a machine that doesn't have that particular
>font installed, you get a HUGE mess!  We've even tried going to embedding fonts
>in the presentations, but even that doesn't always work.
>I just did some training for the Air Force, so I had to use one of their
>computers, since it was part of a really nice classroom setup complete with 
>rear
>projection.  However, they had very few fonts on that machine, and it made some
>of this slides, especially ones with formulas on them, total gibberish.  Talk
>about throwing you off guard!  I'd review the material in my hotel room the
>night before, but when I put the questionable slides up, it would totally
>confuse me.  As a result, my student evaluations weren't so hot.  (one 
>commenter
>said "the instructor seemed like he was "winging it"").  I might as well have
>been!
--
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.johndearmond.com <-- best little blog on the net!
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms should be a convenience store, not a government 
agency.


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Re: [time-nuts] John Vig elected President of IEEE

[Neon John]

On Mon, 10 Dec 2007 14:36:19 -0500, Chuck Harris <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:
>> In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, "Tom Van Baak" writes:
>> 
>>> Right click and SaveAs this 7.4 MB PPT file to your PC:
>>>
>>> Quartz Resonator & Oscillator Tutorial
>>> http://www.ieee-uffc.org/freqcontrol/tutorials/vig3/vig3.ppt
>>>
>>> Then open the 298 page document with PowerPoint and
>>> print as "note pages".
>> 
>> I wish somebody could make a pdf of that, I don't have (and don't
>> want!) access to Powerpoint[1].
>
>Sure you do, it is called: "OpenOffice.org" ;-)

Just wasted a couple of hours trying to get that POS to generate a .doc file 
that my
fax software could recognize.  I finally had to load MS Turd.  Not quite ready 
for
prime time.

If someone will point me to the HTML, I'll convert it to pdf.

John
--
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.johndearmond.com <-- best little blog on the net!
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
Hell is truth seen too late. -Hobbs


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Re: [time-nuts] Watches - the china connection

[Neon John]

On Tue, 04 Dec 2007 16:01:29 -0500, Chuck Harris <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>Hi Bill,
>
>I guess it depends on what you think it is that the market is
>desiring.
>
>There is little or no apparent interest in a newly manufactured
>Bulova Accutron Spaceview watch.  Modern Quartz watches have
>long since eclipsed the Accutron's claim to fame (Accuracy,
>no wind, freedom from positional variations...).  The Spaceview
>was a very basic watch.  It had no calendar, no alarms, nothing
>but a second hand, minute hand and hour hand, and a window to
>peek through at the inner workings.

All that's what made it so wonderful.  It did one thing very well.  I STILL 
miss the
hum of that watch under my pillow  I'll just bet that there would be enough 
of a
market for SpaceViews to make a manufacturing run worthwhile.  I'd certainly 
buy one.

>So, when some Chinese company builds parts that allow one to make
>a non-Spaceview watch appear to be a Spaceview watch, with the
>apparent intent of facilitating fraud, I think there is little
>to admire.

Is that what they're doing or are they just satisfying the desire of a lot of 
us to
have another SpaceView-like watch?  I couldn't care less if one was made in 
1967 or
2007.  I'd just like to have another one.  If I could pick up some other 
Accutron at
an estate sale, then change out the dial and stuff to make it look like a 
SpaceView
then I'd be as happy as a clam in sauce.  To me, it would only be fraud if I 
tried to
pass it off as an authentic antique.

John
--
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.johndearmond.com <-- best little blog on the net!
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
Serenity: That feeling of knowing that your secretary will never tell either of 
your wives.


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Re: [time-nuts] Watches

[Neon John]

On Mon, 3 Dec 2007 20:06:01 -0500, "Daun Yeagley" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

  I've wanted to experiment with that, but I need to come
>up with another Accutron, as I don't want to ruin the Spaceview that I got from
>my wife on our first Christmas way back in '67!   Know any reasonable sources?

There's at least one SpaceView out there in the wild.  The one my "jeweler" 
stole
from me back in the early 80s.  I took it in to get a new crystal and told him 
I'd
pick it up when I returned from a trip.  Couple months later when I returned I 
got
that ole "What watch?" treatment.  Bastid!

>I've been looking on Ebay, but they always seem to get bid way up, even for one
>that doesn't run.

Sleazebay isn't a very good source for that kind of stuff.  Watch your area for
estate auctions.  I've seen a few Accutrons go through in the last few years.  
They
typically bring very little.  I've been holding out for another SpaceView so I
haven't bought anything.  

John
--
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.johndearmond.com <-- best little blog on the net!
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
Better remain silent and be thought a fool than to cite Wikipedia and remove 
all doubt.


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Re: [time-nuts] OT: AC voltage standard

[Neon John]

); SAEximRunCond expanded to false
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On Tue, 6 Nov 2007 17:41:21 -0500, Didier Juges <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:


>There was no reference to a 6 bit scope. 

First paragraph of the original post:

Joe McElvenney wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Excuse the topic but is does push the same buttons as it were.
> After calibrating my old HP54502A 6-bit digitizing scope I'm left
> with an error I can't quite believe and so am trying to determine
> which of my instruments is telling me lies.
--
John De Armond
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Re: [time-nuts] OT: AC voltage standard

[Neon John]

); SAEximRunCond expanded to false
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On Tue, 6 Nov 2007 13:52:13 -0500, Didier Juges <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>The problem with a mercury relay is that the switching delay is significant 
>and not well controlled, so the duty cycle of the resulting waveform is not 
>well controlled, and so would be the RMS value.

Not at all. The early edition of the Berkeley Nucleonics precision pulser, 
capable of
delivering a monotonic amplitude pulse to a 4096 multichannel analyzer, used a 
pair
of off-the-shelf Claire MWRs, one to switch the reference voltage to a 
capacitor and
another to switch the charge to the pulse forming network.  In later models they
changed to a complicated solid state circuitry that never was quite as stable.

None of that is particularly relevant here because he needs a simple circuit to 
check
the accuracy of a 6 bit ADC in a scope.  The RMS value doesn't matter, as the 
output
is a simple square wave that swings between 0 volts and precisely the value of 
the DC
source.  Neither does the frequency.

The advantage of the reed relay approach, in addition to precision, is that the
circuit can be thrown together on a bench using jumper clips in 5 minutes, 
assuming a
MWR is on hand.  A voltage source (battery even), a good DVM, the relay and a 6 
volt
filament transformer to drive the coil is all that is needed.  More than good 
enough
for a 6 bit application.
--
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.johndearmond.com <-- best little blog on the net!
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Democracy is three wolves and one sheep voting on what to have for supper.


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Re: [time-nuts] OT: AC voltage standard

[Neon John]

); SAEximRunCond expanded to false
Errors-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] RETRY

On Tue, 06 Nov 2007 11:57:27 +, Joe McElvenney <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>Anyone know of a simple way of producing an AC voltage standard
>suitable for general workshop use without reference to another
>one? About one percent would be good enough, wave shape and
>frequency accuracy not important (wash my mouth out). I have a
>Weston Cell for DC voltage calibration, a Rb one for frequency but
>nothing for AC volts. Perhaps there is a chip out there that
>clocks between accurate limits that I could use as a source?

If a simple square wave will do then one of the simplest and yet most accurate
sources is to switch a known DC reference using a mercury wetted reed relay. A 
dry
reed will work but will bounce a little.  The small reed relays as were 
ubiquitous in
data acquisition systems up into the 80s can switch at 150 hz or better.  
Driving the
coil of the relay with stepped-down line voltage is a good solution.

You probably know this already but I'll mention it anyway.  You can't draw any
appreciable current from that weston cell and it remain within specs.  Even a 1 
meg
scope probe is too much.  I'd use a DC power supply or battery and a quality DVM
(which is probably more accurate than the standard cell) instead.

I started in metrology in the time when the standard cell was the best there 
was.
Boy, am I glad that era is gone.  I still have one just to stimulate old 
memories but
my lab standard is a precision 10 volt reference IC.  I don't recall the part 
number
but both National and Burr-Brown make 'em.  Untrimmed accuracy is something like
0.01%.  That's better than my boat anchor Fluke meter calibrator!

John
--
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
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http://www.johndearmond.com <-- best little blog on the net!
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Save the whales, collect the whole set!


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Re: [time-nuts] EFC Input pin impedance for the HP 10544A and10811-6011

[Neon John]

); SAEximRunCond expanded to false
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On Mon, 29 Oct 2007 16:08:11 +1300, Bruce Griffiths <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:


>The opposite effect is sometimes desirable to force a browser to display
>an image (usually a JPEG) to display on whatever resolution screen is in
>use.
>Any suggestions?

In Firefox, one can install the Image Zoom extension and then just roll the 
mouse
wheel to enlarge or shrink images.

My more general solution for viewing and printing high res images is to right 
click
on the image, "copy image" to the clipboard and then past it into Irfanview,
http://www.irfanview.com/, the best darn image/multimedia viewing and minor 
editing
software available.  Especially for printing, IrfanView does a remarkable job.

A copied image can, of course, be pasted into Corel, PhotoShop, etc., and 
manipulated
but Irfanview is fast and complete.

John
--
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.johndearmond.com <-- best little blog on the net!
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
I didn't claw my way to the top of the food chain to eat vegetables!


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Re: [time-nuts] QCM

[Neon John]

); SAEximRunCond expanded to false
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On Thu, 25 Oct 2007 11:04:06 +0200, Jeroen Bastemeijer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:

>Dear Ulrich,
>
>You question is not as much off-topic as you might think. It is all 
>about frequency stability and resonators ;-)  In the past I used to work 
>with SAW-devices and micro-balances. We developed our own sensors and 
>electronics. Search for names like Jakoby, Vellekoop, Lubking and my 
>name and you will find the info.

A somewhat related question.  Can a quartz crystal be used as a pressure 
(actually
medium to high vacuum) sensor?  Specifically, over the range of perhaps 1 Torr 
to
1e-6 Torr.  IOW, over about the same range as a thermocouple gauge.

At first blush it would seem a natural application.  Not knowing what the second
blush is :-)

John
--
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.johndearmond.com <-- best little blog on the net!
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
Vegetarian - Indian word for "poor hunter".


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Re: [time-nuts] OT: Need HP 7475A Drivers for XP or Linux

[Neon John]

); SAEximRunCond expanded to false
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On Sun, 21 Oct 2007 18:41:16 -0600, "Joseph Gray" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>> Now I just need pens and paper...(I have one offer for this, more sources
>> are welcome)
>>
>> Thanks to all,
>>
>> Eric
>
>I know that HP stopped making pens several years ago. I don't know if any 
>other manufacturer still makes them. Maybe someone else knows? My local 
>surplus guy has some HP pens, but I would be afraid of them being dry after 
>all this time. Besides, he always wants too much :(

I couldn't recall the name of the outfit I bought my last set of pens from.  
This
outfit looks pretty good, though:

http://www.plotterpens.com/plotter.htm

Get ready for sticker shock!  I THINK that the ceramic tipped pens are 
disposable
liquid ink pens.  If so, then they can be refilled with standard drawing ink.  
I'll
be interested in hearing how these guys are, if you get pens from them.  I 
notice
that they offer X-Y plotter pens.  I just acquired a NICE HP X-Y plotter that 
works
perfectly.  I plan to hook it to my gamma spectrometer and make it useful 
again. Sure
would love to find a ramp generator for the plotter.
>
>As for paper, wouldn't coated, injet paper server as a good substitute if 
>you can't find real plotter paper? Maybe even the uncoated stuff would work.

The best paper that I found for my desktop flatbed plotter was about 15 or 20 lb
calendared paper.  This is the clay-filled shiny paper like magazines are 
printed on.
The paper that you want is heavier like the stuff that coffee table magazines 
and
books are printed on.  I got mine from a local print shop.

John
--
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.johndearmond.com <-- best little blog on the net!
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
What do you call 10 blondes standing in a row? Pneumatic air line.


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Re: [time-nuts] OT: Need HP 7475A Drivers for XP or Linux

[Neon John]

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On Sun, 21 Oct 2007 02:41:30 -0700, "Eric Fort" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

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>
>I really appreciate the Detailed reply, Thanks.  Your web page has an error
>though that prevents downloading the roland drivers.  the link to them is
>file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/neonjohn/My%20Documents/My%20Webs/Neon_John/Neon/Misc/Roland_RWD-
>028.zip
>
>since I'm not on your local machine I have no access to files on your C:
>drive, atleast referenced this way.  Could the link be updated or could you
>just email the drivers.

Well crapola, FrontPage didn't fix up the link when I published that page.  
Anyway,
the correct URL is

http://www.neon-john.com/Neon/Misc/Roland_RWD-028.zip

--
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.johndearmond.com <-- best little blog on the net!
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
Risk: $20 hooker, year old condom.


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Re: [time-nuts] OT: Need HP 7475A Drivers for XP or Linux

[Neon John]

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On Sat, 20 Oct 2007 18:57:27 -0700, "Eric Fort" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>There seems to be a wealth of knowlege here about keeping older HP hardware
>running.  Would anyone in this group have experience using a 7475A plotter
>under XP or Linux to plot test data or drawings.  I'd like to get mine
>running again.

No problem.  I use an E-size HP engineering plotter to make neon patterns and 
to plot
schematics.  I have it working quite well under XP.

These old plotters are HPGL or HPGL-1 - same thing.  They are NOT compatible 
with
HPGL-2.  An additional complication that arises with some software packages is 
that
there are two common implementations of HPGL.  The HP standard one has the 
origin at
the corner of the paper and all movement instructions are positive intergers.  
The
other one has the origin in the center of the page and movement instructions 
involve
positive and negative intergers.  They are not compatible.  If you get a plot 
but
it's only about a quarter of the drawing then the driver is outputting a 
center-zero
file to a corner-zero plotter.

Microsoft dropped HPGL support, what little there was, from XP.  No problem.  
Sign
vinyl cutters almost all use HPGL and are still in production.  Unfortunately 
many
use center-page-origin HPGL.  Fortunately Roland does not.  Therefore Roland 
drivers
will work with HP plotters.

Unfortunately, Roland apparently has taken down their windows plotter drivers.
Fortunately I haven't :-)  You can get the drivers from my site here:

http://www.neon-john.com/Neon/Misc/misc_home.htm

Bottom of the page.  ( a google click or two would be appreciated :-) You'll 
have to
experiment a bit to find out which Roland plotter most closely approximates your
plotter.

This is a universal solution that will let just about any program send vector 
images
to the plotter via windows printing.  Just for kicks sometime, print a text 
file from
WordPad and watch what happens.  The plotter carefully draws each and every 
letter.

If, for some reason, this doesn't work, there is another method that I use with
CorelDraw and any other package that can export the drawing in HPGL format.

Simply choose "export", select "HPGL" and select a place to store the file.  
Then use
Hyperterm or any other terminal package capable of sending out an ASCII file 
and copy
the HPGL file to the COM port that the plotter is connected to.  This will be 
generic
HPGL and won't have any plotter setup info in it.  OTOH, usually none is needed.

My HP plotter and/or Hyperterm (can't remember which is the culprit) does NOT 
use
Xon/Xoff handshaking.  Therefore hardware handshaking MUST be enabled and wired 
in
the interface.  Additionally, several pins must be jumpered together to make 
things
work.  When you get that far, drop me a note and I'll go dig out my adapter and 
give
you the wiring.  This handshaking requirement applies to the XP drivers too.

A few notes about using a pen plotter with Windows and Corel in particular.  
Set ALL
lines to "hairline".  Use the ^A key to "select all" and then set the line 
width to
"hairline".  The reason is that Corel and/or the driver is so dumb that instead 
of
making a wide line by making several long strokes with the pen offset a little 
each
time, it scribbles it in like a first grader coloring.  That is, if the line is 
to be
24 points wide, the pin is driven to scribble back and forth on 24 point 
strokes.  It
draws effectively about an inch a minute like that, if it doesn't wear a hole 
in the
paper.

Set your actual line widths by using various width pens.  Set, say, a 4 point 
wide
line to pen 1, an 8 point line to pen 2, etc.

Also, convert all the colors to black.  For some reason the translation from 
color to
pen number doesn't work too well.  If you need the output to be in color then 
move
each color in the drawing to a different layer and then assign the appropriate 
pen to
each layer.

Sometimes text comes out looking better if you "convert to curves" before 
plotting.

Rots o Ruck finding pens.  They're available but hard to find and very 
expensive. I'm
fortunate to have acquired several Rapidograph drafting pen to HP pen adapters 
so
that I can use india ink to draw with.  India ink on mylar is still THE 
kick-ass way
to make PCB masks if you don't have a photo-plotter handy.  I bought out the 
entire
remaining stock so there are no more anywhere in the country according to the
factory.

When I don't feel like messing with liquid ink, I use felt tip pens.  I've 
hacked up
an HP pen to accept a shortened ordinary writing felt tip.  I've also tried 
roller
ball and gel pens.  Both work but the plotting speed has to be kept down to 1" 
per
second.

BTW, I found this painful-to-retrieve programming manual for your plotter while
googling around.

http://www.luberth.com/help/HP_7475_Graphics_Plotter_interfacing_and_programming_manual/

BTW2, Several years ago I experime

Re: [time-nuts] Improving the stability of crystal oscillators

[Neon John]

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Nah, not for this application.  A Peltier module typically has a COP of 1.  
That is,
it moves a watt of energy for each watt consumed.   Thus, for each watt moved, 
two
watts have to be dissipated to air.

I can't imagine a well-insulated quartz oscillator needing more than a watt or 
two of
cooling at the most.  A heat sink capable of handling 4-5 watts should do the 
job
just fine.

Don:  I've seen peltier-controlled "ambient" ovens before but I can't recall the
details.  I'm fairly sure one was a Fluke precision voltage transfer standard in
which the zener reference diode was controlled to a constant temperature.

The advantage of using room temperature, e.g., 70 deg F, is that under most
conditions, the peltier module is doing little to nothing, perhaps just ridding 
the
ovenized unit of the few milliwatts dissipated in the circuit itself.

I've used multiple cascaded modules to cool a nuclear detector (Silicon surface
barrier diode) to reduce its noise. Not as good as LN2 but much cheaper to 
operate.

John 

On Sat, 13 Oct 2007 13:26:52 -0700, Brooke Clarke <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>Hi Don:
>
>They are very inefficient to the point that a system that's supposed to cool 
>something may heat it because of all the heat generated by the module.
>
>It takes a huge amount of heat sinking or liquid cooling to get them to work.

>Don Collie wrote:
>> ); SAEximRunCond expanded to false
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>> 
>> Has anyone concidered using a small Peltier pile to maintain the crystal`s 
>> temparature. I understand that these devices will heat or cool, so it would 
>> be possible to maintain the crystal temparature at , say, 25 degrees 
>> celcius, over a range of ambient temparatures
>> [perhaps 0 to 70  degrees]. There would be several advantages in this 
>> approach.
--
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.johndearmond.com <-- best little blog on the net!
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
I like you ... you remind me of me when I was young and stupid.


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Re: [time-nuts] HP 523B frequency counter & Sputnik

[Neon John]

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On Wed, 3 Oct 2007 22:27:40 -0700, "Tom Van Baak" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>A little known piece of Sputnik history...
>
> http://www.hparchive.com/Journals/HPJ-1957-09-Sputnik.pdf

Deja Vue.  Happened upon this not an hour ago

http://www.wired.com/science/space/news/2007/10/sputnik_anniversary

John
--
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.johndearmond.com <-- best little blog on the net!
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
Serenity: That feeling of knowing that your secretary will never tell either of 
your wives.


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Re: [time-nuts] Bush Accepts Pentagon Position on GPS

[Neon John]

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On Wed, 19 Sep 2007 20:48:51 -0500, "Bill Hawkins" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

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>
>Yes, this is way off topic, unless you consider the passage of time.
>
>While I do admire Cronkite, the only true reporting was done by
>Edward R. Murrow, cigarette and all. That's before color TV.

Cronkite was simply better at lying that the rest of 'em.  That was driven home 
to me
during the Three Mile Island thing.  I was working at the Island at the time.  
I'd go
home, turn on the TV and even recognize the TMI that he was talking about.  
Being
involved in a national media event really opens one's eyes to the degree of
fabrication involved.

>Those were the days when nobody could buy a newscaster, let alone a
>major politician.

Huey P. Long.  Tammany Hall.  Ward healers.  The Battle of Athens (TN).  The 
various
Chicago newspaper "print for hire" scandals. Ahem.  Those rose glasses might be 
a
l'il too pink :-)

John
--
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.johndearmond.com <-- best little blog on the net!
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
Remember, amateurs made the Ark, professionals made the Titanic.


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Re: [time-nuts] HP E1938 Web Page

[Neon John]

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On Wed, 29 Aug 2007 00:44:56 EDT, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:


>Hi John,
> 
>ok, I guess my comment about 600dpi PDF files being sufficient for the job  
>is not resonating here. Case in point:
> 
>At a previous employer, our boss insisted "vector is the only way to  go" for 
>schematics and other images. So when we did documentation in Framemaker  
>(under Linux I must add) we added DXF vector files for the schematics as  
>required.
>
>The result was a disaster: Framemaker 6 totally butchered our  schematics. 
>The DXF files themselves were not the issue.

The fault was using a whacky fringe program on a fringe operating system and 
not the
vector file.  Do the same thing with a mainline publishing package like 
PageMaker,
InDesign, Quark or even, God forbid, Microsoft turd and see how it comes out.  
I've
contract-published uncountable documents that used vector graphics without a 
burp.

>Since we don't plan to re-build the E1938A PCB's here (or do we?) I don't  
>think vector files for simple PCB silkscreen images that are probably ok in  
>150dpi are an absolute must and raster files are "junk".

Who knows?  What do you reckon these guys would have given for some Gerbers?

http://www.altairkit.com/

Actually he tells you how much he'd have given for Gerbers A lot.

The trend for people remaking old hardware is increasing

http://www.retrothing.com/2006/12/altair_8800_rep.html

> 
>Some folks commenting here about the absolute need for vector files don't  
>even seem to have an E1938A or a need for it's documentation.

Doesn't matter.  None of us have crystal balls but with the benefit of 
hindsight we
know (most of us at least) know that it's bad karma to throw information away,
especially for no good reason.  I can easily convert from vector to raster.  
Not so
easy going the other way.
 
>I personally would prefer some "low tech" JPEG pictures of the E1983A  hookup 
>rather than "infinite" resolution HPGL files of silkscreens etc that are  not 
>very helpful in using the unit.

So convert 'em yourself to your own needs.  Meanwhile leave the originals alone 
so
that other people with other needs (such as myself who needs to blow the 
drawings up
to be able to see them without a magnifying glass) can take care of those.  
There are
zillions of programs out there, free and commercial, that can do the 
vector/raster
conversion.  Just not a big deal if that's what you want.

John
--
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.johndearmond.com <-- best little blog on the net!
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
What do you call a blonde's dildo?  Pneumatic tool.


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Re: [time-nuts] HP E1938 Web Page

[Neon John]

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On Tue, 28 Aug 2007 23:45:11 EDT, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

>
>respectfully disagree: that would mean we should get out our  good-old 
>pen-plotters and vector-graphics displays as well? 

My E-size HP pen plotter is still working just fine, thank you.

>But even those  rasterize in 
>their DAC and Stepper-Motor resolutions...

The key there is that the rasterization is done IN THE DEVICE where the 
conversion is
done optimally for that device.
> 
>High-resolution raster-files can guarantee that all traces in a schematic  
>line up, the text has the correct size and type etc, and no one in Asia is  
>modifying the files.
> 
>File-size is not an issue, our 5-page schematics in 600 dpi turn into a  
>beautiful and tiny 105 KByte PDF file that prints perfectly  even on D-Size 
>paper. 
>105KB is probably less space than an  embedded font would take. 
> 
>Especially for schematics run-length coding works wonders on raster  files.

I don't see very well so when I work on an electronic project I like to plot the
schematics out D or E size and plaster the walls of my shop with 'em.  When 
someone
gratuitously converts a vector format to a raster format, that option is taken 
away
from me.  The best that I can hope to do is take the largest printout from my 
printer
to a copy shop and have it blown up into a crude enlargement, jaggies and all.  
That
costs time and money.

It's even dumber to convert mechanical drawings such as Brooke's example.  
Someone
may want to make a replacement panel for the instrument someday.  Sure is nice 
to
spit that HPGL or dXF or PDF file at a CNC machine.  Can't do that with rasters.

If you want raster images then by all means convert to them for your own use but
please, leave 'em alone for the rest of us.

John
--
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.johndearmond.com <-- best little blog on the net!
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
Nuke the Whales!


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Re: [time-nuts] HP E1938 Web Page

[Neon John]

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On Tue, 28 Aug 2007 18:28:01 EDT, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

> 
>In a message dated 8/28/2007 15:06:22 Pacific Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
> 
>writes:
>
>>PDF  is ok, but hard to modify without spending money (like to split  a
>>schematic between multiple 8.5 x 11 pages for  printing.)
>
>
>
>Orcad generates great schematics in PDF with Acrobat when set to 300 or  
>better 600dpi. Best printed out on 11x17 on an HP 8500 in color which are  
>available for around $300 used here...

Whythahell would anyone convert a nice compact and effectively infinite 
resolution
vector file into raster?  The file size blows up to something huge and the 
resolution
is then fixed at whatever DPI was chosen.  If the file needs to be rasterized 
for
printing then the proper place for that to be done is in the printer driver.
Presumably the printer driver writer knew how to optimize the conversion for his
hardware.

> 
>I hear there is a public-domain PDF writer for windows that's even better  
>than Acrobat.

Not even close, at least for the several that I've tried.  Ditto a couple of
commercial ones.  I despise Adobe the company and dislike the clunky and 
overpriced
Acrobat software but to generate nice compact 100% compliant pdfs, it's the 
only way
to go.

Please keep these files in vector format, if for not other reason that it bad 
karma
to throw away information needlessly, which is what vector/raster conversion 
does.

John
--
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.johndearmond.com <-- best little blog on the net!
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
I'm so cool, I'm afraid to catch a cold.


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Re: [time-nuts] HP E1938 Web Page

[Neon John]

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On Tue, 28 Aug 2007 21:02:59 -, "Jean-Louis Oneto" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:

>); SAEximRunCond expanded to false
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>
>Hello all,
>I succeeded to read it with Corel PaintShopPro XI and then converted it to 
>PDF with PDF Creator. The PDF file is 113kB but zip down to 96kB. Let me kow 
>if you're interested, and where I can put it (I don't have a server 
>available here).

I read that file into CorelDraw, keeping it as a vector file.  I used Acrobat to
create a PDF, still in vector format.  42kb.

Brooke, AutoCAD should be able to read in an HPGL.  Look at your file suffix 
options.
sometimes an HPGL file is a .plt (plot) file.  That's what Corel wants to see, 
though
it handled .hpg OK.

In any event, you'll want to keep them in vector format for all the obvious 
reasons.
If AutoCAD can't do it, send 'em to me or put them up for download and I'll 
convert
them for you.

I recommend putting the HPG files up too, as they can be directly squirted to a
plotter without having to go through any intermediate process.

John
--
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.johndearmond.com <-- best little blog on the net!
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
Why the US is losing its competitivve edge:"It used to be that the USA was 
pretty good at 
producing stuff teenaged boys could lose a finger or two playing with."-James 
Niccol 


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Re: [time-nuts] EMI from florescent lights

[Neon John]

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I've converted my entire house to CFLs.  I have probably half a dozen
radio-controlled clocks.  No problem with them.  No problem with operating my 
GPS
receiver indoors either.

The only thing that bothers my radio-controlled clocks is this Dell Inspiron 
4150
laptop.  If I don't remember to turn it off at night then none of the clocks 
nor my
watch set themselves.

John


On Thu, 09 Aug 2007 22:11:19 -0700, Hal Murray <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>
>A bulb in a ceiling fixture just burned out.  Time to get out the ladder...
>
>Does anybody know how much garbage comes from the standard CFL "60 watt" 
>replacements for incandescent lamps?  I'm interested in both WWVB and GPS.
>
>WWVB is 60 KHz which is the 500th harmonic of 120 Hz.   500 is a big number, 
>so maybe that's not a serious problem.  I don't have any WWVB gear right now 
>so this part is just academic curiosity.
>
>On the other hand, that fixture is only 6-8 ft from a couple of GPS antennas.
--
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.johndearmond.com <-- best little blog on the net!
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
WARNING: Do not use this hair dryer in the shower!


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Re: [time-nuts] R: Info on HP 10514A and 10534A mixers?

[Neon John]

); SAEximRunCond expanded to false
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I almost don't know how to respond to this broadside.  I suppose that the only 
civil
thing to say is that I'm sorry that my response time in doing a volunteer task
doesn't meet your criteria.  If you'd wanted this done faster then perhaps you 
should
have purchased your own scanner or paid some commercial outfit to do it.  Given 
that
you didn't, you'll just have to be satisfied with MY time schedule.

If someone on this list is in immediate need of this old data then I'll bubble 
it to
the top of my priority heap.  Otherwise I'll do it when I get a round tuit.

John

On Sun, 29 Jul 2007 22:13:11 -0500, Brian Kirby <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>We'll, I regret that I have sent some technical information to a person 
>on the time nuts list.  I was suppose to be made available to this group.
>
>Brian - N4FMN
>
>Neon John wrote:
>> On Thu, 31 May 2007 21:25:56 -0500, Brian Kirby <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> 
>>> I have an eight page manual dated 15 June 1969 for these mixers.  It 
>>> shows applications and specifications.  I have no way to presently scan 
>>> it.  If somebody is willing to scan it into a PDF file and make it 
>>> available, I will be happy to send it via snail mail.
>> 
>> Sure, I'll do it.  I have half a terabyte to fill up with my new web host
>> (http://www.dreamhosting.com) account.  Send it to:
>> 
>> John DeArmond
>> C/O Jerry's Electric Motor Service
>> 433 Broad St
>> Cleveland, TN 37311
>> 
>> Or if you're going to use UPS/Fedex, You can send it to me here in the 
>> gorgeous
>> Tellico mountains (no mail service, thank God!)
>> 
>> John DeArmond
>> C/O Green Cove Motel
>> 2870 River Rd
>> Tellico Plains, TN 37385
>> (423) 253-2069
>> 
>> I'd have you send it to my address but I doubt the UPS dude can find my 
>> cabin home.
>> If you want it back, send an SASE and don't be in a hurry.  I only go out of 
>> the
>> mountains about once a month to get food and other supplies.  That's the 
>> only time I
>> get to the PO.
>> 
>> John
>> ---
>> John De Armond
>> See my website for my current email address
>> http://www.neon-john.com
>> Cleveland, Occupied TN
>> Democracy is three wolves and one sheep voting on what to have for supper.
>> 
>> 
--
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.johndearmond.com <-- best little blog on the net!
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
What do you call a blonde's dildo?  Pneumatic tool.


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[time-nuts] Slick Flash clock

[Neon John]

Very slick.

http://blog.pixelbreaker.com/upload/polarclockv2/RingClock.swf

--
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.johndearmond.com <-- best little blog on the net!
Cleveland, Occupied TN

*fas-cism* (fash'iz'em) n. A system of government that exercises a 
dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the 
merging of state and business leadership, together 
with belligerent nationalism.  -- The American Heritage Dictionary, 1983 


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Re: [time-nuts] My Casio G-Shock watch and other fun stuff

[Neon John]

On Thu, 21 Jun 2007 05:57:37 -0400, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Tim Shoppa) wrote:

>Neon John <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> I don't quite understand why they'd all run so close during the day after a
>> sync but drift so fast if a sync was missed.
>
>In a typical disciplined oscillator timeclock, the predicted error goes
>like the square of the time since the last lock. "Next day" is probably
>6 to 12 hours after the 2AM time sync. Two days later is 30 to 36 hours.
>36 squared is 9 times bigger than 12 squared, so the predicted error
>would be 9 times bigger for the day after a night where sync was missed.

That probably explains it.  I suspect that Cassio does discipline the 
oscillator.
When it's getting a sync every night it stays so close that it almost has to.

John
--
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.johndearmond.com <-- best little blog on the net!
Cleveland, Occupied TN
Serenity: That feeling of knowing that your secretary will never tell either of 
your wives.


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Re: [time-nuts] My Casio G-Shock watch and other fun stuff

[Neon John]

On Thu, 21 Jun 2007 14:04:49 +1000, "Palfreyman, Jim L"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>John,
>
>My watch is one of these:
>
>http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=120108656745
>
>(Casio module 3050)
>
>I was wondering whether it was good design on Casios part - i.e.
>discipline the oscillator based on the radio signal, but if yours is off
>then that throws that idea out the window. Is it the same watch?
>
>I really need another unit as a control.

My dial is a little different and AFIK, isn't multi-band but otherwise the 
same.  In
my circle of friends there are 4 identical watches including mine.  When we'd 
get
together for lunch or something, the first thing we'd usually do is hold our 
watches
together to see how close they were.  When all 4 had received a sync signal the
previous night, they'd all agree within a fraction of a second.  One could see a
slight difference between digit changes but they'd all be on the same second.

If one had missed a sync then it would be significantly off. Mine seemed to 
drift the
worst - figures, as I'm the only time nut in the group - but the others would 
drift
too.  I don't quite understand why they'd all run so close during the day after 
a
sync but drift so fast if a sync was missed.

I don't wear mine that much anymore, as my Luminox tritium-illuminated watch has
caught my attention.  It's the one with the quartz analog movement and a digital
chrono in a little window.  Apparently the two circuits are separate, as the 
analog
movement is keeping time in the same class as your G-shock but the digital 
clock part
of the chrono is drifting significantly.

Anyone know where I can get a tritium lit, analog face, digital chrono and WWVB 
radio
watch?  I've found all that except the tritium in a Casio. My Luminox has 
everything
except the radio receiver.  If I could only mash 'em together

John
--
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.johndearmond.com <-- best little blog on the net!
Cleveland, Occupied TN
Serenity: That feeling of knowing that your secretary will never tell either of 
your wives.


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Re: [time-nuts] My Casio G-Shock watch and other fun stuff

[Neon John]

On Wed, 20 Jun 2007 15:00:02 +1000, "Palfreyman, Jim L"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>I reported the unusual accuracy of my Casio G-Schock radio controlled
>watch (with the radio controlled feature turned off) a month or so back.
>
>Well to back up my rough observations I decided to measure it properly.

I'm just impressed with your watch.  My G-Shock stumbles all over itself when 
the
radio signal is missed, varying over a second a day.  Sounds like you got a good
manufacturing "outlier".

My watch is grand next to the Accu-Rite radio clock-thermometer sitting on my 
desk.
I've seen it off as much as a half hour after missing sync for a couple days.  
It
also sometimes synchronizes to the wrong time.  Not just hours error but 
apparently
random displays.  I have a bunch of radio clocks and I've never seen THAT 
before.

John
--
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.johndearmond.com <-- best little blog on the net!
Cleveland, Occupied TN
Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms should be a convenience store, not a government 
agency.


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Re: [time-nuts] IEEE papers

[Neon John]

On Thu, 14 Jun 2007 16:14:34 -0700 (PDT), Colin Bradley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:

>I have also experienced the frustration of trying to download IEEE papers.  I 
>am a member of IEEE along with two of their affiliated societies and still get 
>the same run-around. There are two techniques that I have found helpful. 1) 
>Try searching for the paper, by name, and you can frequently find it on 
>another site. 2) Develop a relationship with a librarian at a local College or 
>University. I frequently find that they have access to these databases and can 
>download and forward them to me by email.

That's a useful technique.  I use that and some faculty friends and friends in 
large
companies.

If you want to REALLY experience a professional "society", try the Society of
Automotive Engineers.  Membership gets one a couple of bux off publication 
prices.
That's bad.  Horrible is their latest stunt of shacking their PDF downloads 
with copy
protection that allows ONE (1) printing!  If you're a Ford or GM, this doesn't 
apply,
of course.  This is designed to keep out the riff-raff (non formerly-big-three
employees).

I've found myself having to buy only a couple of papers since they started this 
crap.
I used my one (1) print event to print postscript to a serial port to which was
attached another computer to capture said postscript.  A little voodoo with 
Acrobat
and I have the pdf back sans copy protection.

The lunacy of this escapes me.

One thing it is emphasizing, I think, is how anachronistic bricks and mortar
professional societies are.  Pretty much everything positive that societies do
including organizing conferences is easily done via the net with little of the
overhead of maintaining offices or in the case of IEEE and SAE, empires.

Perhaps universities could fully take over the other role - providing parking 
places
for old, semi-inert but highly credentialed people.  I know that they need 
places to
be but I sure hate paying their salaries as part of each paper I want to see.

John
---
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.johndearmond.com <-- best little blog on the net!
Cleveland, Occupied TN
Daddy, why doesn't this magnet pick up this floppy?


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Re: [time-nuts] H-Maser, but not on ebait...

[Neon John]

On Sun, 10 Jun 2007 11:18:44 -0600, Scott Lacy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>> I see it comes with manuals; does it also include the physicist?
>> (I've heard that, in the early days at least, that each maser
>> required one full-time physicist to keep it running ;-)

Hi Scott,

Just dropping a note to thank you for putting those manuals up.  I've learned a 
LOT
by studying particularly the service manual.

This may be a dumb question but I'm going to ask anyway.  With so many factors
affecting the hydrogen's masing (is that the correct term) frequency - 
temperature,
pressure, magnetic field, etc), how can a maser be a primary standard?  I 
understand
that it can be an incredibly stable transfer standard but how can it be 
considered a
constant?

One more question.  I noted in the service manual where it states that the 
quartz
resonator is coated with teflon to prevent "hydrogen interaction" or some such 
term.
Does that mean that the monatomic hydrogen in the resonator would react with the
quartz and be consumed or is there more a concern for sputtering of the quartz
surface?

John
---
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.johndearmond.com <-- best little blog on the net!
Cleveland, Occupied TN
If stupidity hurt then they'd be putting morphine in the water supply.


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Re: [time-nuts] another Ebay mixup

[Neon John]

On Sat, 9 Jun 2007 15:27:29 -0400, "Norman J McSweyn" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>Apropos the conversation:
>Techrecovery sold me a 5370a that was toast. The customer service guy gave 
>me a runaround for six weeks trying to first get another instrument and 
>after I gave that up as a lost cause, then a refund.
>I had to threaten to get MasterCard involved.
>My MO is to give the feedback that is deserved. Screw my feedback rating. It 
>hurts the seller more than the buyer.
>Happy ebaying!
>Norm n3ykf 

Something else you might consider doing is having two sleazebay accounts, one 
for
selling and one for buying.  I did that before I got fed up with the whole 
sleazebay
culture and blew 'em off.  I had absolutely no problem giving the sellers the
feedback they deserved.

John
---
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.johndearmond.com <-- best little blog on the net!
Cleveland, Occupied TN
Okay, okay, I'll take it back ... UNfuck you!


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Re: [time-nuts] FW: Pendulums & Atomic Clocks & Gravity

[Neon John]

On Wed, 30 May 2007 01:10:02 -0800, Bill Beam <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:


>Gentlemen:  Those of you who have never taken a university physics course
>are excused for confusion over centripital/centrifugal/psudo forces.  Some of
>you who did take a university physics class spent too much time asleep in
>class.

I did and I paid attention and I didn't smoke anything I wasn't supposed to but 
I
don't remember this aspect.  This is a learning experience.

John
---
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
Cleveland, Occupied TN

*fas-cism* (fash'iz'em) n. A system of government that exercises a 
dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the 
merging of state and business leadership, together 
with belligerent nationalism.  -- The American Heritage Dictionary, 1983 


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Re: [time-nuts] FW: Pendulums & Atomic Clocks & Gravity

[Neon John]

On Tue, 29 May 2007 20:35:21 -0400, Didier Juges <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>
>Thanks a lot again.
>
>I had no idea time-nuts would drive me to brush-up on physics :-)

yeah.  Only problem is, I think my brain exploded a few messages back in this 
thread!
I think I liked pre-Einstein physics a lot better :-)

John
---
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
Cleveland, Occupied TN
I'm going crazy. Wanna come along?


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[time-nuts] HP manual alert

[Neon John]

This is for those of you who don't follow the Usenet binary groups.  On
alt.binaries.e-book.technical, someone has just dumped a large collection of
HP/Agilent manuals, several GenRad ones and a few Flukes.  Below is the list of 
HP
manuals that I've snagged.

I can make these available to anyone, albeit at a very slow rate, as I'm stuck 
on
dial-up here in my mountain retreat.

There has also recently been a HUGE dump of technical and mathematical text- and
reference books.  I'm talking about thousands of books, several tens of 
gigabytes.
Also, all issues of MAKE magazine (what a disappointment!) and several others.

John

Agilent - 10 hints for making Successful Noise Figure Measurements (App Note 
57-3)
WW.pdf
Agilent - Fundamentals of the Electronic Counters (App Note 200) WW.pdf
Agilent - Fundamentals of Time Interval Measurement (App Note 200-3) WW.pdf
Agilent - Logic Analyzer Probing Tech. for High-Speed Digital Systems (App Note 
1450)
WW.pdf
Agilent - Probing Solutions for Logic Analyzers (overview) WW.pdf
Agilent - Standard Data Format Utilities (users guide) (1994) WW.pdf
Agilent - Understanding Frequency Counter Specifications (App Note 200-4) WW.pdf
Agilent 16517A, 16518A Synchronous State Logic Analyzer (service) (2000) WW.pdf
Agilent 16517A, 16518A Synchronous State Logic Analyzer (users) (2000) WW.pdf
Agilent 16522A Pattern Generator (service) (2000) WW.pdf
Agilent 16522A Pattern Generator (users) (2000) WW.pdf
Agilent 16533A, 16534A Digitizing Oscilloscope (help volume) (2002) WW.pdf
Agilent 16700 - Series Logic Analyzer Systems (product overview) WW.pdf
Agilent 35670A Analyzer (operators) (2000) WW.pdf
Agilent 35670A Analyzer (service) (2001) WW.pdf
Agilent 4339B High Resistance Meter (operators) (2003) WW.pdf
Agilent 54600 - Series Oscilloscopes (programming guide) (1992) WW.pdf
Agilent 54657A, 54658A, 54659B Measurement-Storage Modules (users) (2000) WW.pdf
Agilent 89410A Analyzer (installation and verification) (2000) WW.pdf
Agilent NFA Noise Figure Analyzer Progamming Examples (product note) WW.pdf
Agilent VEE Advanced Techniques (2004) WW.pdf
HP-3400A RMS Voltmeter (Mil TM) (1967) WW.pdf
HP 10004B-5B-6B-12B 10-to-1 Voltage Divider Oscilloscope Probe WW.pdf
HP 10282A Synchronous Data Link Controller Manual Supplement (1979) WW.pdf
HP 11690A Frequency Doubler (1973) WW.pdf
HP 120 Oscilloscope Calibration (UA Army manual) (1974) WW.pdf
HP 120B Oscilloscope (1966) WW.pdf
HP 130 Oscilloscope Calibration (Military AN-USM-254, OS-185-U mods.) (1978) 
WW.pdf
HP 140T Display Section (1970) WW.pdf
HP 141A Oscilloscope and 1402A Dual-Trace amp (MIL TM for AN-USM-320) (1973) 
WW.pdf
HP 141T Display Section (1976) WW.pdf
HP 141T Display Section (1981 manual changes) WW.pdf
HP 141T Display Section (Mil. TM) (1977) WW.pdf
HP 1630A,D,G Logic Analyzer (operators, programming) (1985) WW.pdf
HP 16500A Logic Analysis System (programming reference) (1988) WW.pdf
HP 16500A, 16501A  Logic Analysis System (reference manual) (1990) WW.pdf
HP 16500A, 16501A  Logic Analysis System (service) (1990) WW.pdf
HP 16500B - 16501A Logic Analysis System (programmers guide) (1994) WW.pdf
HP 16500B - 16501A Logic Analysis System (service) (1994) WW.pdf
HP 16500B - 16501A Logic Analysis System (users guide) (1994) WW.pdf
HP 16500B - 16501A Logic Analysis System (users reference) (1994) WW.pdf
HP 16500B Logic Analysis System (setting up the system) (1993) WW.pdf
HP 16500B, 16501A  Logic Analysis System (programmers guide) (1994) WW.pdf
HP 16500B, 16501A  Logic Analysis System (service) (1994) WW.pdf
HP 16500B, 16501A  Logic Analysis System (users guide) (1994) WW.pdf
HP 16500C, 16501A  Logic Analysis System (programmers guide) (1996) WW.pdf
HP 16500C, 16501A  Logic Analysis System (users guide) (1997) WW.pdf
HP 16500H Interface Module - (LAN Administrators and Services Guide) (1995) 
WW.pdf
HP 16500H Interface Module - (LAN Users Guide) (1995) WW.pdf
HP 16500L Interface Module (installation and service) (1994) WW.pdf
HP 16500L Lan Interface Module (administrators service guide)  (1993) WW.pdf
HP 16510 B 35 MHz State - 100 MHz Timing Card (service) (1989) WW.pdf
HP 16510A Logic Analysis Module (front panel operators reference) (1988) WW.pdf
HP 16510A Logic Analyzer Module (front-panel operators reference) (1988) WW.pdf
HP 16510B 35 MHz State - 100 MHz Timing Card (service) (1989) WW.pdf
HP 16510B Logic Analysis Module (front panel operators reference) (1989) WW.pdf
HP 16515A, 16516A 1 GHz Timing Analyzer Module (front-panel operators ref.) 
(1988)
WW.pdf
HP 16515A, 16516A 1 GHz Timing Analyzer Module (programming ref.) (1988) WW.pdf
HP 16520A, 16521A Pattern Generator Module (programming reference) (1988) WW.pdf
HP 16520A, 16521A Pattern Generator Module (service) (1988) WW.pdf
HP 16522A 200M Vectors-s Pattern Generator (users guide) (2000) WW.pdf
HP 16530A, 16531A Oscilloscope Module (programming reference) (1988) WW.pdf
HP 16532A 1 GSa-s Digitizing Oscilloscope (service) (1993) WW.pdf
HP 16532A Digitizing Oscilloscope (s

Re: [time-nuts] HP glass 1 MHz crystal

[Neon John]

On Wed, 9 May 2007 09:29:58 -0400, "Daun Yeagley" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>I took some pictures of my 1 MHz HP glass crystal.
>You can see them here:
>
>http://www.yeagley.net/Time-Nuts/

I just tossed up a new page on my site showing another jewel - a Western 
Electric AM
transmitter and the jewel of a crystal oscillator it used.

http://www.neon-john.com/Misc/WE_Trans/WE_Index.htm

John
---
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
Cleveland, Occupied TN
Remember, Amateurs built the Ark.  Professionals built the Titanic.

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Re: [time-nuts] Ignore My Test

[Neon John]

On Fri, 04 May 2007 17:12:31 -0700, Had <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dogs back, and all that RY RY 
>RY mumbo-jumbo.
>

Roger, ignore-o-tron set to "stun with boredom".

John
---
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
Cleveland, Occupied TN
All great things are simple and many can be expressed in single words:
Freedom, Justice, Honor, Duty, Mercy, Hope.  -Churchill

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Re: [time-nuts] Gentlemen, unlimber your Broadband Connections

[Neon John]

On Sun, 29 Apr 2007 12:22:56 -0700, Brooke Clarke <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:

>Hi John:
>
>Prior to discovering the Bookmark part of Adobe .pdf documents I used a hard 
>copy whenever possible.  But after working with good bookmarks, a .pdf is my 
>preferred way to read.
>
>As a practical matter there are few places to get .pdf docs with the required 
>TOC, LOF and LOT indented bookmarks so I usually make my own.  I have gotten 
>Microchip to change from chapter titles that were meaningless to their now 
>fine 
>bookmarks.  But so far my attempts to get the Army to change have not 
>succeeded.  More at:  http://www.pacificsites.com/~brooke/Mpdf.shtml#Nav

Yeah, "bookmark" is Adobe-ese for what I was referring to as a PDF
index.  Even better would be the ultimate tool for finding stuff in
doc files - the permuted index.  Unfortunately that would mean a LOT
of OCR work.

John
---
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
Cleveland, Occupied TN
All great things are simple and many can be expressed in single words:
Freedom, Justice, Honor, Duty, Mercy, Hope.  -Churchill

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Re: [time-nuts] Gentlemen, unlimber your Broadband Connections

[Neon John]

On Sun, 29 Apr 2007 08:32:51 -0500, Didier Juges <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:

>John,
>
>Thanks a lot for that great reference. It's a good thing that basic 
>principles of physics have not changed much in the last 50 years :-)
>

Yes, and the main reason I like these old texts so well is that they
tend to explain things in simpler mathematical terms.  When I open a
modern textbook and see calculus on the intro page  A lot of
things require only a really good working knowledge, at the super tech
level, and not at the theoretical or blank paper design level.  These
old books tend to give that in spades.

John
---
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
Cleveland, Occupied TN
All great things are simple and many can be expressed in single words:
Freedom, Justice, Honor, Duty, Mercy, Hope.  -Churchill

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Re: [time-nuts] Gentlemen, unlimber your Broadband Connections

[Neon John]

On Sun, 29 Apr 2007 11:33:51 +0100, "Dr. David Kirkby"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>Neon John wrote:
>> For here is the treasure-trove for those of us who like old machines,
>> fire bottles and big hunking things that glow and make noise.
>> 
>> http://www.pmillett.com/

>Nice site.

Indeed!  I have to make one correction.  The Coyne book on his site
isn't the 3 volume encyclopedia I have.  I think I'll send him one of
my sets to cut'n'scan.

>
>I've just downloaded a copy of "Antennas" by Krauss. I own a copy 
>(paper) but it is useful to have it on a laptop. That said, I'd much 
>rather read from paper, but its not too practical to carry these things 
>around in paper format.

I like to have all my reference books on my laptop if possible.  Of
late I've been keeping many on a pocket multimedia device.  I need to
spend a LOT more time in Acrobat building really good indices for it
to be completely useful but when done, a gadget that will fit in my
shirt pocket and hold all my reference material will be very useful.

John
---
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
Cleveland, Occupied TN
All great things are simple and many can be expressed in single words:
Freedom, Justice, Honor, Duty, Mercy, Hope.  -Churchill

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Re: [time-nuts] History of Quartz radio crystals

[Neon John]

On Sat, 28 Apr 2007 17:59:10 -0700 (PDT), Colin Bradley
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>In my wanderings, I ran across this interesting history of the quartz crystal 
>industry.
>http://www.ieee-uffc.org/fc_history/bottom.html

Very interesting.  Another little tidbit not in that article.  There
was a radio quartz mine only a few miles from my home in Tellico
Plains, TN.  A photo of what's left is here, bottom of the page:

http://www.neon-john.com/RV/Tellico/State_Line/State_line_home.htm

The vertical shaft has been filled in but the horz part remains. There
is some beautiful quartz on the walls.  I've never bothered to try to
learn any of the history of this mine.  Mostly what is know is that it
was an excellent place to take yer girlfriend from some private time
:-)

John
---
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
Cleveland, Occupied TN
All great things are simple and many can be expressed in single words:
Freedom, Justice, Honor, Duty, Mercy, Hope.  -Churchill

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[time-nuts] Gentlemen, unlimber your Broadband Connections

[Neon John]

For here is the treasure-trove for those of us who like old machines,
fire bottles and big hunking things that glow and make noise.

http://www.pmillett.com/

In particular, 
http://www.pmillett.com/technical_books_online.htm
Over a gig of scanned tube manuals, textbooks, reference books, etc.

Among the goodies, note the Coyne Electrical School encyclopedia,
perhaps THE best all-in-one summary of industrial electricity
pre-solid state.  Much is still applicable.  I was gifted a set of
these when I was about 7 and commenced to memorize them :-)

Also note one of the Radio Handbooks that has design information on
designing diathermy machines.  Induction heating, anyone?

John
---
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
Cleveland, Occupied TN
All great things are simple and many can be expressed in single words:
Freedom, Justice, Honor, Duty, Mercy, Hope.  -Churchill

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Re: [time-nuts] OT: eBay bidding question

[Neon John]

On Thu, 26 Apr 2007 10:35:48 -0500, "Jason Rabel"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>Some people put the maximum amount they are willing to pay and let it ride.
>Others like to bid in smaller amounts (and maybe more impulse bidders).

And then there are people like me who either manually snipe or use
automatic snipping agents.  Sniping is the process of bidding at
literally the last second, timed so that no one else can come back and
out-bid you.  Snipping agents, third parties who do the snipping for
you either for free or for a small fee, are generally the best way to
go.  You don't have to remember to monitor the end of auction and they
usually have a fatter pipe to the net than you do,  though 10MB
dsl/cable pipes have mostly wiped out that advantage.

I use an agent that gets my bid in from 1 to 5 seconds before the
auction closes and only charges the modest fee if the snipe wins.  I
very seldom do sleazebay anymore but my overall history shows about an
80% win rate.

For the kind of stuff I'm interested in (couldn't imagine putting 4
Large on an as-is instrument), bidding ahead of the end time simply
runs up the ultimate price.  I would frequently get things for the
starting bid.  I've observed that many time, nothing happens until
someone finally puts in that starting bid.  It's like a red flag in
front of the bull.  If that flag manages to not get waved early then
the price usually stays reasonable.

John
---
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
Cleveland, Occupied TN
All great things are simple and many can be expressed in single words:
Freedom, Justice, Honor, Duty, Mercy, Hope.  -Churchill

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Re: [time-nuts] HP10544A defective? Looking fro 10811

[Neon John]

Howard W. Ashcraft wrote:
>> I have been building a GPSDO around an HP10544A that I purchased on
>> eBay.  After some teeth-gnashing, I have concluded that the 10544A is
>> defective.  When attached to a load (it is supposed to be rated into 50
>> ohms) the frequency drops radically, and in fact, the frequency is
>> dependent upon load, never a good thing.  In addition, the output into a
>> high impedance load has strong collateral/noise signals that are
>> confusing downstream circuitry.  You can get a somewhat dirty sine wave
>> if you use a high-pass filter setting on an oscilloscope.  I took a look
>> on an SA and saw a fair amount of energy bouncing around 1.9 Mhz.

I didn't know what a 10544a was so I googled.  Lo and behold!  Our own
leapsecond dude has a schematic.

http://www.leapsecond.com/museum/10544/

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Re: [time-nuts] OT: Knifephoolery

[Neon John]

I love this list!  What we find to talk about.

Until about this time last year when I closed the last one, for 11
years I owned and operated a pair of BBQ & steak restaurants and a
catering service.  For much of that time I was the chief cook and
bottle washer :-)

Believe it or not I like to cook as a hobby too.  The catering service
which provided cuisines other than BBQ, let me try out my recipes,
usually some variation of Italian.

Some input on knives.  How to say this delicately...  There's a good
deal of knifephoolery out there and IMO, Henkel is part of it.  About
10% of the price is knife and the other 90% brand name.

When I first opened the restaurant a friend bought me a 10" Henkel
butcher (oops, chef's) knife as a gift.  I quickly began to loathe
that knife!  Far too heavy for serious work.  (when chopping 300 lbs
of Boston Butt BBQ, every ounce matters!) Hard to sharpen.  Much too
thick, requiring too much force to push through food.  And the health
department nazi had a cow over the wooden handle. (TN's health
department goes with whatever fad flies past and one of those about 10
years ago was banning food contact with wood.  Yep, no wood chopping
blocks.  The insanity quickly passed but they cost some folks a lot of
money.)

It only took me a little while to find out what is the most popular
style of knife among area cooks (and probably nationally).  Any of the
many brands of pedestrian high carbon stainless bladed, plastic
handled knives.  For example, these:

http://preview.tinyurl.com/37f9qg

These prices are about double what my wholesaler charged.  A 12"
butcher knife was about $15.  Thin metal to slide easily through food.
Flat ground which is preferred for food work.  Easily sharpened and
fairly good at holding an edge.  And when one is worn out (as mine
were about every year), no major tragedy to toss it in the garbage. 

Sam's Club carries a good line of commercial knives, though they tend
to toss too many different ones into their huge packages.

Other than these knives, I have two others that I really like.  One is
a chinese style cleaver.  Much thinner blade than an American style.
Great for a variety of tasks other than heavy meat chopping.  

The other is a Japanese Hibachi-style grill knife.  There's a fancy
name for this type of knife but I can't recall it.  This is a VERY
thin carbon steel blade with a fairly high handle offset to keep the
knuckles off the hot grill when slicing at a low angle.  Being very
thin and of carbon steel, it easily sharpens to a hair-shaving edge.
The edge isn't all that durable but it doesn't have to be for Hibachi
style cooking.

John
On Sat, 21 Apr 2007 20:34:36 -0700 (PDT), Rasputin Novgorod
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>Hi Jack:
>
>I love cooking, as a hobby (and surprisingly, it's
>a chick magnet). I've always wanted a good set of knives
>but didn't know what to buy, so didn't.
>
>This summer I've signed up for a professional French chef class
>and we are required to own and bring a good set of four
>knives: Chef, Boning, Paring and Scalloped Slicer.
>
>They recommended several different makes and models,
>in different price ranges. mine came with a Knife carrying
>Case: 16 Slot, fake leather. My knives (“S” series Henkels): 
>
>
>• 9” Chef Knife  
>• 6” Boning Knife
>• 3.5” Paring Knife
>• 10” Scalloped Slicer
>• 10” Sharpening Steel 
>• vegetable peeler
>• 7" Carving Fork
>
>We will spend three days on knives:
>1) care, sharpening and then cutting vegetables.
>2) cutting up and de-boning chickens.
>3) cutting up fish.
>
>I've refrained from sharpening until the class, even
>though I'm a cabinetmaker and trained in sharpening 
>chisels and plane blades, so know how to use a water stone.
>I've been using them for a few days, and what a joy they
>are to use. If you cook, get yourself a good set of knives;
>at least, spend $100 and get a good 9" chef's (french) knife.
>You'll have and use it for the rest of your life.
>
>/b
>
>
>__
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>Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
>http://mail.yahoo.com 
>
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Re: [time-nuts] How good are mechanical watches

[Neon John]

On Sat, 21 Apr 2007 08:37:10 -0700, "Tom Van Baak"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:


>That's how I measured the performance of a WWVB radio
>controlled watch:
>
>http://www.leapsecond.com/pages/Junghans/
>
>This is a great example of "sawtooth" that you probably
>haven't seen before.

Hey, that's a nice looking watch.  It almost looks like it has tritium
hands.  Can't really tell from the low res photo.  Does it?  Hmmm, bet
I could get a watchsmith to transfer some vials from an old tritium
watch I have.

Is the LCD only for date?  I don't see any buttons.  Perfect for me.
I've never needed any of the chrono stuff and the buttons on my watch
are more of an irritation than anything.

John
---
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Re: [time-nuts] OT: Audiophoolery

[Neon John]

On Fri, 20 Apr 2007 16:55:16 -0400, John Day
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:


>The day I told him I played a trick on him. I invited him around to 
>hear my system. In those days a pair of home-brewed Klipsch 
>look-alikes. He raved, until he saw that the amp wasn't the big 
>glowing thing on the bench, I was using a simple National 
>Semiconductor LM2875 amp and some standard 3 core mains cable top 
>connect it to the speakers. We still talk, but he is a little less 
>boastful now. Sadly the Corner horns didn't survive a divorce and a 
>move to smaller digs.

I feel yer pain buddy!  My real Klipsches didn't survive a fire.  Gawd
I miss those horns.  Those proved that excellent speakers make
everything else in the system relatively unimportant.

John, did you copy the folded horn design or just the looks.  I've
pondered trying to build another set but I think that degree of
woodworking skill is just beyond my capabilities.

John
---
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See my website for my current email address
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Re: [time-nuts] OT: Audiophoolery

[Neon John]

On Fri, 20 Apr 2007 14:48:54 -0400, "Daun Yeagley" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:


>This is as crazy as it gets.  I have seen the high end power cables
>before and consider this the ultimate in audiophoolishness ... I'm not
>sure this is the most expensive example, but it surely establishes that
>there is no connection between reality and audiophoolery.
>
>Check it out:  http://www.audioconnect.com/html/pk10_palladian.html 
>
>SWR enhanced  God, it's so simple, why didn't I think of it?

Check out the banner ad at the top

http://www.audioconnect.com/html/cable_tower.html

To elevate your speaker cables and protect them from the harmful
effects of carpeting and hardwood.  $100 each.

And another:

http://www.audioconnect.com/html/tube_dampers.html

Teflon vacuum tube dampers to make the music more clear and precise,
less fuzzy. Tonal qualities are rendered more true and natural, subtle
passages more distinguishable. Three-dimensional qualities are better
focused. Improvements occur evenly throughout the entire audio
spectrum, from the deepest bass through the highest frequencies .
These damping instruments outperform ordinary tube dampers by leaps
and bounds. Recommended by Audio Research for use on world-class Audio
Research amps.

This whole site reads like The Onion.  If it weren't audio I'd bet
money it is a spoof site.  Given that it IS audio, it's as serious as
a heart attack

John
---
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Cleveland, Occupied TN
All great things are simple and many can be expressed in single words:
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Re: [time-nuts] OT: Audiophoolery

[Neon John]

On Thu, 19 Apr 2007 18:21:28 -0700, "Bruce Lane"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:


>   http://www.monstercable.com/productDisplay.asp?pin=195
>
>   I invite all to have a good chuckle over this one. ;-)

That's absurd but if you want to delve into the tin-foil hat areas,
google for "speaker cable ager."  I just can't bring myself to do so.

In short, some of the tin-foil hat types claim that a speaker cable
has to be aged with pink noise (the spectrum of which is vigorously
debated) before connecting to the system.  A few companies sell aging
boxes and several others offer the 'service'.  There also seems to be
some debate on whether the pink noise has to actually pass a current
through the cable or if its just being there is enough to do the
aging.

At that same altitude of looniness - waay out there - is the $50K
turntable where the works float on a pool of mercury contained in a
hollowed out lake on the top of about 2 tons of solid marble block.  I
used to have the URL to this thing but I can't seem to find it.

Oh, and while we're at it, there's a company manufacturing (for about
$80 each) beeswax paper capacitors like we grew to know and hate in
old tube-type stuff.  When I do a period-correct restoration of an old
radio I hollow out these damnable caps and put something modern
inside.  The loonies claim these old paper caps are more "colorful"
even if it's only used as a screen bypass cap.

John
---
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
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Cleveland, Occupied TN
All great things are simple and many can be expressed in single words:
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Re: [time-nuts] Most accurate clock on your wrist

[Neon John]

On Thu, 19 Apr 2007 10:58:06 -0700, David Forbes
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>The Casio watch is rechargeable, since the GPS function drains the 
>battery in two hours. Amusingly, it takes three hours to charge it, so 
>the GPS drain current is higher than the charger's output!
>
>Recharging a wristwatch is not my idea of a good time. It needs to be 
>very easy to do. A USB-powered charger may be ideal.

Mine neither.  Maybe someone will use inductive charging or solar
power like my G-shock WWVB watch.  That one just has solar cell around
the edges since it's opaque brown.  I read somewhere of the
development of an organic solar material that is semi-transparent.
Perhaps they could coat the whole crystal with the stuff.

>
>I expect a practical GPS wrist-mounted timepiece would use the GPS only 
>every couple of days to resync, giving time accurate to perhaps a few 
>tenths of a second. You could always request a resync if you needed to 
>know precisely what time it was.

Yep, much more reasonable.

John
---
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See my website for my current email address
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Re: [time-nuts] Most accurate clock on your wrist

[Neon John]

On Thu, 19 Apr 2007 09:53:42 -0700, "Tom Van Baak"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>> I've been waiting with baited breath for a GPS watch.  NOT a NAVAID on
>> the wrist but a simple GPS-synced watch.  It would seem to me that
>> making a miniature GPS receiver would be much easier than making a
>> WWVB receiver.
>> 
>> Unfortunately that watch ain't it.  Gad, they need a good industrial
>> designer!  
>> 
>> Maybe they'll put the same electronics in a table/travel clock.  If it
>> had a 1PPS connector on the back, so much the better :-)
>> 
>> John
>
>Have you looked at the various Casio GPS watches?

Too big and ugly.  I don't want to look like a poseur SEAL or marathon
runner :-)  This Luminox I wear now is about as far as I want to go
down that road and even then I had to wait for 'em to offer one
without the "Navy SEALS" moniker on the face.

My absolute perfect watch would be one merging a Casio, tritium
backlight and GPS receiver.  The Casio I'm referring to has an analog
dial with the LCD display as part of the crystal.  You look through
the LCD to see the dial.  Put tritium vials on the analog part and add
a GPS timing receiver and perfection.

The watch that I liked most of any I've ever had is the old Sensor,
sold by JS&A wholesale back in the 70s.  One of the very first LCD
watches, it has a flat tritium capsule under the display.  Bright
enough back then to use as a flashlight for finding keyholes and the
like.  I still have it but the tritium has decayed so that the glow is
just barely perceptible with night-adjusted eyes.

I worked at TVA's Sequoyah Nuclear Plant back then.  Several of us in
the office bought Sensors at the same time.  Naturally a contest
developed to see who could produce the most accurate watch.  The
sensor had a trimmer cap under the back which was good to a few
seconds a month.  After that temperature compensation was required.  I
made surface mount NPO caps before there were surface mount components
by removing the outer coating from a disc cap, nipping off little
chunks and soldering them to the tiny PCB.

We all achieved better than a few seconds a year so no one was ever
named the winner.  That's probably where my time-nuttiness got started
:-)

John
---
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Re: [time-nuts] Most accurate clock on your wrist

[Neon John]

I've been waiting with baited breath for a GPS watch.  NOT a NAVAID on
the wrist but a simple GPS-synced watch.  It would seem to me that
making a miniature GPS receiver would be much easier than making a
WWVB receiver.

Unfortunately that watch ain't it.  Gad, they need a good industrial
designer!  

Maybe they'll put the same electronics in a table/travel clock.  If it
had a 1PPS connector on the back, so much the better :-)

John

On Thu, 19 Apr 2007 15:09:46 +0100, "Robert Atkinson"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>One problem with "atomic" timecode receiving clocks is the availability
>of a usable signal. Most only receive the signal for the geographic area
>where they were sold. Interference (SMPSU's etc) is also a problem.
>Thus my vote goes to the sub $100 Garmin Forerunner 101.
>https://buy.garmin.com/shop/shop.do?cID=142&pID=231
>Yes it's a GPS referenced wrist watch! They sell it as a training
>(running aid) but it has a nice big time display. In terms of long time
>accuracy, the availability of a time up-date any where in the world and
>price it's got to be the winner. It's not much of a fashion statement
>though!
> 
>Robert.
>
>-Original Message-
>From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
>Behalf Of Peter Vince
>Sent: 17 April 2007 11:30
>To: Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement
>Subject: Re: [time-nuts] Most accurate clock on your wrist
>
>Jim Palfreyman wrote:
>
>> Also, on the NIST website they talk about a new development - the
>atomic
>> clock the size of a grain of rice. I see this as having huge future
>> potential. Does anyone have any news on this development?
>
>Development continues - they are trying to reduce the power 
>consumption by an order of magnitude to about 30mW so it can work in 
>battery-powered equipment.
>
>
>> Oh and yes I want one!
>
>Join the queue!
>
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Re: [time-nuts] Watts Up (was Re: Prologix GPIB/USB converter help...)

[Neon John]

On Tue, 17 Apr 2007 15:44:31 -0700, "Tom Van Baak"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>>...
>> If you have the capability of testing your WUPs, I'd certainly be
>> interested in what you find.  I'd like to think that maybe the problem
>> is in just this one revision of firmware.  But I suspect not.
>> 
>> John
>
>Thanks much for your thoughts about the WUP. I might have
>guessed there were power-nuts out there! Very interesting.

I'm sure there are -nuts for just about everything.  Me, I collect
generators and inverters and utility equipment like you do cesium beam
clocks :-)  My only problem is that I have too many nut-isms for the
available funds

>
>I guess I haven't worried about the power factor. What I do
>very much like about the WUP is the well-designed (and even
>documented) serial interface, the choice of command/response
>or periodic talk-only modes, and the clean design inside.

yes, that's what prompted me to buy one in the first place.  I was
doubly dismayed when I found the measurements to be junk.

>
>You can see some of my WUP power plots here:
>http://www.leapsecond.com/lab/lab.htm

Ya know, ever time I go to your site I get frustrated.  You seem to
get so much done and I have so much trouble getting anything done.
Age-related, I think, as I used to get things done too.

Anyway, for your electrical data, what are the red and black plots?
I'm guessing actual data and curve fitted respectively.

Also, are the utilities you list at the bottom of the page available
anywhere?

>
>I have not done much accuracy testing. For my lab, at
>this point at least, I'm much more concerned with power
>stability than accuracy. One of my big surprises was that
>none of my fancy UPS's give good power stability, so I'm
>migrating to "online" or "double conversion" UPS's which
>solve this problem.

I've been running my computers and some of the more sensitive
instruments like that for years.  Mine's homemade, a high current 12
volt supply, some AGM batteries and cheap inverters.  I really like
these converters:

http://www.progressivedyn.com/hotdeals.html

I just bought another PD9280R for a project.  I like most all the
ChiCom inverters I've tested.  Power to Go is a good one.  So is the
2kw one that Harbor Freight has on sale right now.  All are "modified
sine" inverters but nothing I power minds the distortion.

>
>BTW, one digital power meter that I gave up on is:
>http://www.brandelectronics.com/meters.html
>Would appreciate any comments you have on this.

I don't have any experience with that one.  My initial impression is
that they sure are expensive.

>
>The other power meters I'm using are by DMMetering.
>See eBay item 170102236411 and others by the same
>seller. These are 800 pulses per kWh and I log their
>data using a Newport/Omega iFPX internet counter:
>http://www.newportus.com/i/ifpx.htm

That DMMetering unit looks slick.  I'm fighting off the urge to "buy
it now".  probably would have if it were anywhere other than
Sleazebay.  The Newport thing is also slick, though it seems a bit
expensive for the low count rate you're dealing with.  For low rates
like that I'm fond of banging the *ack line of a PC parallel port and
letting a bit of custom code I wrote service the interrupt and
accumulate counts.

Another company I'm fond of doing business with is this one:

http://www.bb-elec.com/products.asp

I haven't tried their logging/control products yet but everything else
I've bought over the years has been very high quality for the money.

>
>I've monitored DC power with these two:
>
>RC Electronics, Watts UP WU100
>http://www.rc-electronics-usa.com/
>http://www.powerwerx.com/category.asp?CtgID=3587

I have a couple of these.  Nice little instruments.  I haven't done a
complete calibration check yet but the readings I've observed seem
reasonable.  I sure wish they'd quit infringing on the other Watts UP
trademark.  Very confusing when I try to recommend these instruments
to people.


>
>Medusa Power Analyzer II
>(yet another vendor that dropped RS232 for USB)
>http://www.medusaproducts.com/
>http://www.westmountainradio.com/PWRmetersRC.htm

Looks like a DC Watts Up knockoff.  I'm like you, I REALLY dislike USB
on test instruments.  I recently bought one of these OXSL-689
instruments:

http://www.omega.com/pptst/OSXL680.html

I didn't think much of the USB interface.  I just figured they'd have
implemented it similar to an RS-232 interface.  Noo.  A crappy
windoze GUI program, no API and no command line utility.  I am greatly
annoyed, as I planned on using it with a pocket-PC.  I am not a happy
camper!

John
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[time-nuts] Watts Up (was Re: Prologix GPIB/USB converter help...)

[Neon John]

On Tue, 17 Apr 2007 10:25:35 -0700, "Tom Van Baak"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:


>I'll give you a recent example. I have a bunch of AC power
>meters in my lab (model: Watts Up PRO) that have RS232
>output and I wrote software that logs and plots the data. 

Ohhh, you hit on a sore spot, Tom.  That POS Watts Up Pro.  I'm what
you might call a "power nut".  The exact equivalent of a tine nut but
with utility metrology equipment.  I spent much of my career in the
utility biz and have a nicely equipped personal meter shop.  I do
energy and power quality audits as one of my sideline businesses.

Last year I bought a Watts Up Pro to evaluate for use as a cheap power
logging tool.  One of the first things I did when I got it was plug a
400 watt mercury vapor fixture into it, a fixture I knew to have a PF
of about 0.5.  It registered a noisy 0.15 on the WUP!  That really got
my attention since the very inexpensive (~$20) Kill-A-Watt gets it
right.

I put the WUP on my bench and become much more dismayed.  I found that
the measured values (volts and amps) were pretty good but the computed
values (PF, KWH, KW, etc) were pretty much garbage when the PF went
below about 0.8.  I didn't waste a lot of time evaluating this thing
so I don't have a lot of specifics - it just wasn't worth my time.

I tried to have a conversation with the company but it ended up being
pretty 1-way.  I don't think my unit is defective since the volts and
amps indications are within specs.  It looks like whatever he's doing
to compute the other values blows up when the PF deviates much from
unity.

The interesting thing is just how accurate the KAW is.  Unfortunately
it doesn't have a data port nor battery backup so line transients tend
to erase its memory.  I've worked out a mod involving installing a Li
battery to maintain memory that I'm going to post to my web site
shortly.  Still no data port but at least it can be used to log
accurate cumulative data.

I recently came across another nice and cheap instrument.  The Itron
(formerly Schlumberger) Centron line of electronic revenue watt-hour
meters.  A client utility that just started using them pays about $40
ea in quantity.  Even this very basic watt-hour-only meter has an
infrared LED that pulses once for every watt-hour, making data logging
trivial.

If you have the capability of testing your WUPs, I'd certainly be
interested in what you find.  I'd like to think that maybe the problem
is in just this one revision of firmware.  But I suspect not.

John
---
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
Cleveland, Occupied TN
All great things are simple and many can be expressed in single words:
Freedom, Justice, Honor, Duty, Mercy, Hope.  -Churchill

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Re: [time-nuts] Most accurate clock on your wrist

[Neon John]

Hey y'all,

Interesting site but he's kinda behind the times, so to speak :-)
about what modern, more pedestrian watches can do.

Back around Christmas I bought a Luminox dive chronometer, model
3HMBM.  This is the one with the chrono functions in the form of a
little LCD screen under 12 o'clock.  I got this one for two reasons.
First and foremost, it has tritium-illuminated hands and dial. Second,
it's waterproof which means it's also mostly "me-proof"

The analog and digital sections are separate and get set separately,
strangely enough.  Even more strangely, the analog part keeps better
time.

When I got the watch I spent a bit of time getting it exactly synced
with the NTP-controlled system clock on my computer.  I observed it
for deviation daily for awhile but it became evident that this
frequency wasn't necessary.  This is an amazingly accurate watch.  I
just checked it and it's almost 4 second fast.  That works out to
about a second a month.

This is by far the most accurate watch I own, including my WWVB synced
watches.  I have two, a G-shock and a combo analog/digital chrono
similar to the Luminox.  Both drift worse than a second a day if they
don't receive a signal.

I don't know if there is anything out there any better than the
Luminox but I kinda doubt it.  A second a month is superb performance
for a wristwatch.

John

On Tue, 17 Apr 2007 01:20:12 +0200, Sebastian Stolp
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>hi jim, here's the thing you were asking for:
>
>http://home.xnet.com/~cmaddox/omega_megaquartz_2400.html
>
>as for myself - i do rely on a seiko 7548 reference quartz watch with  
>a 'drift' of +/- 15 sec. per month.
>noz bad for a unit used for boiling eggs on a sunday morning ;-)
>
>best regards, sebastian
>
>
>
>Am 17.04.2007 um 01:11 schrieb Palfreyman, Jim L:
>
>> Hi Folks,
>>
>> What is the most accurate wrist watch you can purchase? Obviously the
>> radio controlled ones are the best, but I'm curious as to the fully  
>> self
>> controlled units.
>>
>> Oh and yes I have seen the photo of the caesium clock attached to
>> someone's wrist!
>>
>> Also, on the NIST website they talk about a new development - the  
>> atomic
>> clock the size of a grain of rice. I see this as having huge future
>> potential. Does anyone have any news on this development?
>>
>> Oh and yes I want one!
>>
>>
>> Jim Palfreyman
>>
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http://www.neon-john.com
Cleveland, Occupied TN
All great things are simple and many can be expressed in single words:
Freedom, Justice, Honor, Duty, Mercy, Hope.  -Churchill

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Re: [time-nuts] Sensing pendulum position, speed, or height

[Neon John]

On Thu, 29 Mar 2007 15:45:25 -0700, Hal Murray
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>
>How do modern pendulum clock geeks measure what their pendulum is doing?  I'm 
>picturing a magnet on the bottom of the pendulum and a coil or hall effect 
>sensor.

Prowl around here

http://www.hsn161.com/links.html

Particularly 

http://www.precisionclocks.com/

This guy's work is jaw-dropping.  Fused quartz pendulum and arm, hall
effect position sensing, running the whole affair in a vacuum, having
a custom glass vacuum chamber fabricated by a scientific glass shop.  

Not pendulum related but look at this guy's work.

http://www.angelfire.com/sd/rronnie/

My jaw dropped again.

John
---
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
Cleveland, Occupied TN
All great things are simple and many can be expressed in single words:
Freedom, Justice, Honor, Duty, Mercy, Hope.  -Churchill

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