T&L Publications

Enzo:<p>(Apropos of Chic's original relay multivibrator question)<p>Thanks for confirmation on the slug-on-the-end-of-the-coil which was used for a timing relay on the Rock Ola juke boxes. <p>The relays I used back then didn't have brass washers on the end of the pole pieces, just a copper slug. The...

Apropos of slow relay actuation:<p>Anybody know if wrapping a sheet of copper around the relay coil would slow it down? (Sort of a short-circuited low-z secondary.)<p>Back when dirt was new, I used to use delay relays that had a slug of copper on one end of the coil to delay the relay's operations. ...

By "tie up," I mean just that. I do not like to have my regular machine running all the time (350 W), especially with data lines running all over the place and fans humming, etc. <p>I've got a dead silent 286 with an LCD screen I want to use for this. In addition, I can put this machine wh...

I was serious. Compare spectral distibution of lamp versus the sun and with the spectral response of the CdS cell. <p>When you move away from the test lamp, you're changing the amount of illumination, but not the spectral distribution.<p>When you go from noon to dusk, you're changing both --and this...

Ah! Thank you.

You're using the wrong color of dark.

Well, it all works fine just as it is on my regular PC, but going back to my original question/problem, I did not want to tie up a full-bore modern machine (pocket or otherwise) for long periods of data logging and "real time" manipulation.<p>That's why I wanted to get the serial output as...

JKMADSCI: Good idea. I'd tried to use a PC supply as a battery charger once, and couldn't get it adjusted high enough to fully charge a lead-acid battery. But that was when I was poorer than now. Next time I'm more poor and I need a charger, I might try your suggestion.<p>(Howdy to Queens, Noo Yawk!...

Philba:<p>(1) "Did it catch your spike?"<p>Yes, I found spikes. I'm still not sure if these were what was shutting down my modem, even though the 'phone lines out here are pretty flaky. <p>The shutdwns were related to time of inactivity, but were not due to timeouts on the modem pool and n...

Many switching power supplies don't oscillate properly or even run without a load. (Some of them have a built-in load to ensure they will start up right.) IBM used to use a 5-ohm 50W resistor in place of the hard drive in systems shipped without hard drives to get the power supply to start up. I thi...

Great! I was about to dig out my old stuff on using the game port when I read your message. (At the time, I was using a microwave oven temp probe to measure and log temps --worked great.)<p>By the way, I goofed when I said 256-bit resolution on the game port A/D converter. Of course, I meant 8-bit r...

Radio Shack has (or had) a DVM which plugs into the PC serial port to yield data like you want for every range of the meter. This is a sample of the data log output for one second intervals of the phone line on-hook voltage. At the time I was monitoring for spikes on the line which were messing up m...

(TNX fer spellcheck and site.) <p>Oh, just 'cause I'm not sure the HV would actually kill germs, or even if it (HV) would precipitate them out. <p>If the HV would precipitate them but not kill them, I'd expect a concentration of germs on the electrodes at the time of cleaning the electrodes. Ick!<p>...

Yeah, I built one from tin cans, etc, once (I also used to build horizontal steam engines from scratch, too.) I couldn't get it to work at this altitude. Not enough density in the "working fluid," which is only about 630 Torr (apx 12 psi) of air up here --at least that was a good excuse. T...

Veeery good: "keep current." Ooog! Anyhow:<p>(1) Verbal shorthand for "four-way flashers." Obvious, but point-out-able again.<p>(2) Lots of companies kind of like the fact that their copyrighted and trademarked brand names have become generic to the language, without actually gra...