On Tue, 2 Sep 2003 11:49:58 +0100, Tony Firshman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On Tue, 2 Dec 2003 at 01:19:13, =?utf-8?B?IlBob2VidXMgUi4gRG9rb3MgKM6mzr/Or86yzr/PgiDOoS4gzp3PhM+Mzro=?= =?utf-8?B?zr/Pgiki?= wrote: (ref: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>)
Hmmmm I don't know how that UTF-8 crept in there but sure as heck wasn't deliberately from my mailer which is set to send mail in 8859-7.
It was either using a faulty fall-back encoding if the mail I was commenting didn't have a "Charset" header or just a huge bug somewhere (M2 by default stores everything internally in UTF-8) as I am using v. 7.20beta of Opera.
Don't you think even a small mention of your name in ASCII would be useful, Phoebus (8-)# UTF-8 Greek looks more Greek than Greek (to mash up a metaphor).
Pah! Normally it does have Phoebus R. Dokos and then my name in Greek Characters inside parentheses.
I also see that you commenting a mail.adelphia.net server which means you are looking at an older email address (all adelphia.net servers have been phased out from use since last week). I now have DSL instead of cable which means that any mail should have outgoing.verizon.net :-)
I was having a nice time. Not only (via MSN) was getting some worldnews problem sorted out in Kuala Lumpur, but was 'chatting' to Ben at home, and failing to sort out ?B?IlBob2VidXMgUi4gRG9rb3MgKM6mzr/Or86yzr/PgiDOoS4gzp3PhM+Mzro (PD)
OKAY OKAY we got it! :-D
, but
also sorting out the http://stpetersberkhamsted.org.uk web site and getting these show pictures onto my QL web site. ..... all at the same time, phew.
BTW the Irish show page now has thumbnails linked to the larger picture.
Yes and terrible colour resolution. It's a good thing that opera supports on the fly magnification so I could zoom out to a more convenient form as well ;-)
I was using puTTY to get into my Linux system.
putty is great. I am using that for my aueb.gr account and it's "like being there" :-)
It's not everyday that you get 80% of the QL's hardware gurus in one place (Keith Mitchell, Stuart Honeyball and Tony Firshman...)Who is the other three quarter of a person? Nasta is two for starters (8-)#
Ha. In fairness I assigned 1 to 1 ; Okay the portions may not be right but the other two gurus are of course Nasta and Peter.
probably a little lightheaded due to Guinness (two Ns, two Ss) granted but nonetheless invaluable...
Stuart and I had none that day (so far) but about 9 the previous day (8-)#
That, we believe ONLY IF WE WANT ;-)
What I cannot understand however is the form of gene therapy you both are submitted too. I am now fairly convinced that the reason Stuart abandoned the mainstream QL world was to develop his top secret: "Super Ultra Gold Gene Manipulator"(TM).
It is uncanny how much you and him look alike nowadays ;-)
Still, cycling up (from sea level) to the highest village in Ireland got rid of most of the Guinness up to then. I had to take an emergency orange - my thigh muscles gave up with cramp!).
Pah! No way Jose! Tony Firshman and Cramp are not three words that can go in the same sentence together ;-)
Brilliant - well done. You did say on the day that the connector was bad.
Oh it was awful! It wobbled more than a 3 meter long QL (see Urs König's website for how one looks in case you have forgotten)
I have always used Antex. When I used the unregulated mains voltage ones, I used to change elements very regularly. Now I use 24 volt ones and temperature regulated (six years now) I have not had to change one element - well worth the extra cost.
Me too but in the USA, Antex are very difficult to find and although I would be able to get them, I really didn't know where I would end up in the world. A good soldering iron is like a marriage. If it works you don't change it.... and with a US Antex I wouldn't go very far. An unregulated one wouldn't be too much trouble as I could get a 220V element for it, but I always had my eyes on these stations they produce. I don't know why but there's something about the yellow colour that drives me crazy ;-)
Of course I could end up in Cable country (as in Bill Cable) where trivial things like frequency do not matter much (indeed they don't in a 12/24V world ;-) as Tony will verify) :-D
Have you tried a heat gun? I have one made specially for the job with a stand and 1 and 2kw output. I guess it can also be used as a paint stripper. You have to be very careful to avoid overheating - the pcb can pop breaking vias. However with practise, one can remove a whole component in one go. With 40 pin sockets I can remove and replace with a new one in one go (ie 68008 socket -> turned pin) without any soldering needed. Putting sockets in place of ram is a doddle - a very common QL repair (to replace faulty ram) - takes maybe 25 seconds, and no soldering. The final result almost looks flow-soldered.
Hehe I had trouble enough bringing my soldering skills up to par again... I hadn't done any major soldering work for over 10 years until last year and it took me a lot of popped vias (both my sHermes ;-) and a screwed up SGC plus a (finally working) ZX81 kit to bring everything up to par. I am too scared to mess with a heat gun yet. Unfortunately soldering/desoldering techniques is much a black art as it is science . Very few books exist on how to do the thing properly and sure as heck I wasn't going to experiment with an SGC ;-)
Maybe on the next show if you attend it, you could give me a few pointers?
This method is no good for the edge connector, but allows removal (undamaged) of the connector in less than a minute often. Solder sucking is then easy (braid is better - Chem Lite is the best braid) - especially while the board is hot. I often re-heat the empty hole.
I will be noting all this for reference of course. Indeed I have picked up more info regarding soldering/desoldering and rework from this list, you and Zeljko than anybody else. You and Nasta are the reason that my Aurora has now proper IDC connectors everywhere (plus extra power pins). My desoldering pump although powerful is really for the dogs and without proper info I would have never been able to pull it off ;-)
Bet you it is tying a line to gnd or 5v. (from where to where and value)
I will have to unplug it now and see ;-)
Phoebus
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