PandaBear

[PandaBear]

Bill Gates don’t call anything under 400 as “broadband”… and if you tell him about that 500MB BigPong cap you’ll hear him laughing all the way from Seattle. :p

Cable rollout has ceased in Melbourne about 5 yrs ago. Not everyone
has access to cable TV & cable modems. Then there’s silly Optus who
don’t provide cable to “multi-dwelling” sites ie units/flats.

Even if its only 2 units, built on the site of 1 demolished old house.
Which had Optus cable before it was pulled down. :shock::dead:

ADSL provisioning has a few caveats. Your local exchange has to be
digital (most are) but you also have to be close enough that your
line isn’t degraded (50:50 – it must be tested capable of 1500).

Plus your line has to be pure copper back to the exchange and not
pair-gained (quite common in new homes 5 yrs ago) or on a RIM
(again, another recent cost-cutting measure by installers).

Lots of hurdles there for broadband, not just cost alone. Think
Australia is sitting at only 5% penetration; it’ll be a long while
yet before we’re anywhere near the 60%+ of Korea.

[PandaBear]

Quote:

those bastards in hk are making a killing on my shipments if thats a store price. i feel so ripped off ill never order again…

Live with it. 🙂

If you look like a tourist gwailo and you don’t speak cantonese
you’ll be quoted “tourist” prices … which are about the
same as the HK online shopping prices anyway.

And if you’re hoping for them to pack & send free, you’re living
in la-la dreamworld my friend. With their level of turnover, getting
a shop staffmember to pack & go to the postoffice means they’ll
probably lose 10+ sales from off the street in that 15 mins.
Gotta make it worth their trouble & effort.

“Time is money” – if you think Sydney folk are ruthless in business,
HK is 10x worse. You ain’t witnessed real biz until you’ve seen how
the Hongkies do trade… but at least they do it ‘fair’ & both
parties usually end up happy with their side of the deal.

Other places they’ll mince you for every last cent like there’s no
tomorrow but good Hongkie sellers are smart enough to realise
a happy customer is a repeat customer.

[PandaBear]

Not sure if LRP Runner is suitable for 7-cell 20turn… when they do ratings it usually with 6-cells.

If you ask LRP they don’t really make any hard-n-fast motor recommendations, but instead they cryptically say if the temp protect cuts in your motor/car/battery combo is too ‘hot’.

Airflow definitely helps, that’s why 2WD buggies used to mount ESCs on the rear shock tower.

Fan will help but don’t bother cutting holes in body.

[PandaBear]

It was an interesting concept with Australian Big Brother started, but now (4 seasons down) its a real drag. Can’t stand watching it.

On the ratings its getting beaten by 60 Minutes.

Was glued to telly last night for Survivor All Stars though… great finale show!!

But they’re talking about making a 10th season. Bleh, if anyone had any smarts they’d chop it and end it on a high note instead of dragging it on. “Reality TV” is passe now.

[PandaBear]

If anyone’s planning on going broadband, or you just want to keep your finger on the pricing pulse for churning, can’t go past:

broadbandchoice.com.au

Its all there & industry is constantly changing.

[PandaBear]

Usually more on Sunday.

Sat most ppl are off doing errands or playing sport or hanging around the hobby shops. 🙂

[PandaBear]

Cool red line… makes a great landing strip for tree-lopping circular saw blades!!! 👿

[PandaBear]

Might have been cheaper to buy a whole new Ultima…

btw its not that easy to replace engine bearings. They don’t just push out, you might have to get familiar with mum’s oven at a very high temperature.

[PandaBear]

Nobody uses metal spurs, not even the gas/nitro guys.

Steel pinions are available though… Duratrax probably uses a 48 pitch pinion, easily available. (how many teeth?)

Biggest killer of gears is incorrect meshing. Can’t be too far apart, can’t be too close together either. You’ve gotta get it correct otherwise you’ll go through gears quickly.

[PandaBear]

Well… the camera chip is exactly the same as
their other model, the one with IR LEDs all around
the camera for nighttime illumination… 🙂

Grab a TV remotecontrol, check out its output. 😀

Supposedly the “new” ones (like the one I used
at TFTR on meet day) are down to 1lux, the older
ones are 3lux. But I compared the 2 side by side
and darned if I can tell the difference. :blush:

[PandaBear]

This one’s the Arlec AC/DC brick, 3A and nicad only:

but this Ansmann AC/DC one does NiMH too for for ~$60:

Novak’s NiMH2 charging routine is still the best imho. Used in Millennium Pro & Ionic, leaves the battery nicely warm everytime.

Some other chargers have been reporting unreliable, some can overcharge your packs every now and again. (If a charger did that even just once, I’d not trust it ever again.)

[PandaBear]

It’ll be useful if you wanna beam your 802.11b signal a few hundred yards or even 1000+ (line of sight), but its hugely *directional* so the receiver best has to be stationary.

Otherwise the average 11b antenna is designed for “broadcast” – wide-beam vs spotlight data transmission.

Looks like a sound conventional design… wish I could tell you more but I fell asleep in “Communications 101” class. blackeye:

[PandaBear]

Yes, you can use a bench powersupply like the ones
you’ve used in the school sciencelab. You can buy
them from Dick Smiths and electronics shops… ppl
use them also for powering their CB Radios at home
when its out of the car/bus/truck. These will
supply 13.8V DC which is fine for chargers.

You must use one with enough current capacity.
eg If your charger can charge 5A, your PSU must
be rated to pump out 6A or better (@ 50% duty).

More headroom the better… but of course they get
dearer and heavier as they get bigger. A good PSU
is never cheap but lasts forever.

Or you can buy a RC charger that runs off 240V.
CDC makes a good one ($500), I use a Novak Ionic
off 240V and there’s other cheap ones under $100 too.

[PandaBear]

Any takers still for the 15th?

[PandaBear]

There are several different ways of balancing your armature,
all of the above suggestions involve “static” balancing.

Best way of static balance is to set up 2 razor blades
with the knife edges up and let the arm sit balanced on them.
Heavy pole falls to the bottom.

However your armature may also have lateral imbalance, which can
only be diagnosed on a “dynamic” balancer which spins the arm
and works out exactly where to lighten or add weight.
Better balancers will also tell you how far along the arm
to add/remove weight.

Same exists with car tyres I guess. The cheapo shops only do a
static balance; the better shops have the spinning machine thingy
which can tell you whether to put the weight on the inside or
outside of the rim too.

For minor imbalance, drilling the stack should be enough – but
big craters can cause magnetic field to change.

You can also add weight on via “epoxy”; RC motors usually have
blobs of green putty on them if they’re not drill-balanced.
Its dried rock hard like ceramic, but they can fall off if
whacked hard enough.

Quote:

Excellent man, as usual your knowledge kicks ass!

You just have an impeccable good sense of timing, my friend.

Just so happened my latest project has been catching up on motor
tuning and optimising for our hobby 3-pole DC motors… been doing
quite a bit of time & $$ investment on the subject lately. 😀

[PandaBear]

ph2t:- suggest you take all that promotional hoo-haa as an overdose of the marketing hubris.

There are only 2 ways of winding a comm – its either crossover (aka Mabuchi wrap) or the hemi style.

Both are wound as you’d expect – wires going round the stack X number of times = turns… the difference is at the ending.

Crossover means the tail crosses over the start of the wire, where it solders to the comm. (think of it like you hanging off a treebranch, both hands holding on to the same spot above your head)

Hemi don’t “cross” as the tail connects instead to the adjacent comm segment… (like hanging off monkey bars in a ‘Y’, your arms holding on to different bars either side)

Some say hemi is really (X-1) & a half turns, as technically the last loop isn’t completed.

A custom wound motor can be built up in many different ways, depending on what your desired end result is. A human hand-winder can place the most-appropriate amount of wire at the right places, and hopefully use the same amt of wire at each of the 3 segments – thus reducing the need for heavy balancing afterwards.

Stock motors are mandated by ROAR rules to be wound only with the crossover style; Mabuchi & Johnson make the sealed-can 540 motors.

Modified motors would usually be wound hemi, even the machine-wound ones.

As for “latest technology”, both winding styles have been around since slot car days.

Not exactly what I’d call too new. 😀

[PandaBear]

Sorry no, ‘Corning’ don’t mean anything to me in
the PC sense… just the name of the silicones
company and the guys who make my glass frypans.

Another impressive PC “back then” was the
Commodore Amiga. It had most of the required
‘modern’ features even PC compatibility, had
adequate software and specialty amongst the
muso crowd too (good synth machine!).

Guess it was marketing & lousy company that killed it. blackeye:

[PandaBear]

What to do when run out of space? :clown:

Hung my zip drive up too the other day (2 ports
on the back + short cable = perfect hanging loop).
Regained some desk real estate.

[PandaBear]

Quote:

Almost forgot about the PCjr.

PCjr (with the mini Charlie Chaplin ads) came out
with a Cordless Keyboard!! 😯 Yeah, infrared!!

And today’s kiddies still think they’re so
‘modern’, haha… little do they know.

And when the 4 AAs in the keyboard died, IBM gave
you a curly cord you could plug in and keep working
too – jeez Big Blue thought about everything.

[PandaBear]

Apple ]I[ was just a fancy tarted up ][e with
a separate keyboard and twin 5.25″s in a console.
It ran ProDOS which was later rehased into the
GSOS for the //gs (another great machine).

Lisa was the forerunner to Macintosh; had WIMP
and all that but no applications.

Apple learnt its lesson there and when they built
the Mac 128k they also issued MacWrite and MacPaint.
People could plug it in and actually do something.

But Apple’s fortunes really only took off when
they hooked up a Mac 512k to… the Laserwriter!!

[PandaBear]

Apple copied the WIMP off Xerox PARC anyway,
so not as if they solely invented it. 👿

Anyone used a “Lisa” before?? I have… 🙂

Have even shared a room with an Apple III before.
Yeah, ‘3’. Apple’s answer to the IBM PC.
(then IBM brought out their “PCjr”)

btw not everyone paid full RRP for the IIfx.
Apple had an upgrade program for them, you could
go II -> IIx -> IIfx. If you didn’t mind reusing
the old case you could have a IIfx for half price
by just paying approx $4k for the mobo.

[PandaBear]

Quote:

ill trade yo a bb gun.

You paying postage, btw. :p

[PandaBear]

IIc was cute and another Apple 1st… although I
never quite got the ‘portability’ idea. Really,
like its useless without the monitor unless you
had 2 monitors at both locations I guess..

One of my geek pals built himself an Apple “Desktop”.
As in standalone with real wood & nails!! :p
Then he installed a IIfx (68030 40MHz!!) mobo &
heavy duty PSU with about a dozen SCSI devices.
He had 1GB magneto-optical devices too… back
when we thought 300MB HDD “ya’ll never fill that”. :clown:

btw my Newton MessagePad still works great!! :smiley16:

(the nicad battery’s had it though… maybe I
should one day go re-cell it with NiMH AAAs)

[PandaBear]

oh yeah…

Anyone have a use for a Mac IIsi??

Complete with Apple keyboard, Apple Trinitron
monitor, mouse, all manuals, all *boxes* (!!),
all cables, even a HP Deskwriter printer with
a brandnew sealed $70 cartridge…

It’ll even run PhotoShop! 🙂

Works perfectly but don’t have need to use it
anymore these days so it just sits there blatantly
reminding me I paid $9k for the bundle when new. blackeye:

Best offer secures! :clown::D

[PandaBear]

Quote:

if you provided the option “don’t care” that’s the box i’d tick:8ball:

Isn’t that #3?? 🙂

I think WAP usage is stupidly expensive… :dead:

[Author]

Posts