Heck, I remenber Eddie Fisher.

Post #31,088 by a6l6e6x 3/6/02 4:11:20 PM Reply	Heck, I remenber Eddie Fisher. That will draw some blanks from the crew here. [link\|http://www.cdmo.com/cgi-bin/cdmo/83785-10312-\|This one.] Father of [link\|http://www.starwars.com/bio/carriefisher.html\|Carrie Fisher] - Princess Leia in the first Star Wars movie. Alex "People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid." -- Soren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
Post #31,139 by Ashton 3/6/02 10:44:37 PM Reply	See that and raise you.. The Kingfish ... :-\ufffd Not to mention Avery Fisher.. hi-fi with vacuum tubes; now immortalized in NY, by Avery Fisher Hall (for the Performing Arts?) Ashton PS - lookin for the post on Mozilla .98! to thank you - got it. So far so Good -
Post #31,143 by a6l6e6x 3/6/02 11:21:27 PM Reply	Ah, the Kingfish! I must fold. Man, we are old! :) You know I never connected Avery Fisher Hall with the Fisher hi-fi. So thanks for that tidbit. In the tube days, Fisher stuff was superb but too pricey for me. I drooled and then built a Heathkit. Now how many of our folks here, know about Heathkits. OT: Glad Moz the Lizard is working for you so far. I have purged all signs of Netscape from my system. Alex "People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid." -- Soren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
Post #31,145 by Ashton 3/7/02 12:43:43 AM Reply	Heathkit.. Note that its demise.. also signals the demise of lots of kids finding out how 'lectronics Really works - not to mention 'housewives' who assembled their own color Tee Vee. They may not have gotten even much into Ohm's law but, imagine the satisfaction.. The new Tee Vee? I built it! Fisher stuff - that was about the time I started doing 'audio consulting'. FM-200 with real Nuvistors! in the front-end. Capture ratios nearing 1 dB. (Recently acquired one of the RF, stereo generators, way too expensive then: Sound Technology ST-1000A. It's still perfectly calibrated w/ vanishing distortion, etc.) The last of the Heaths was as brilliant as the first - I have (two of!) their 'scope calibrators' = better specs than the HP, Teks (of a few years earlier). A nice risetime pulser with claimed 1 nS T_r, nearer 0.6 nS. Dunno who will use, fix the electronics of the present and future, as most kids take the EZ MBA basketweaving courses and eschew science. Innumeracy grows. Musta been that way in Atlantis too? :( Mozilla nicely converted my several mail folders, huge bookmarks. Maybe sometime I'll turn on jscript - just for the hell of it. Gotta explore the other featurez soon. Let it be STABLE (!!) Cheers, Ashton
Post #31,228 by a6l6e6x 3/7/02 2:07:34 PM Reply	Glad to hear Moz did OK with mail. I use Eudora so that's an uknown area for me. Alex "People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid." -- Soren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
Post #31,218 by admin 3/7/02 1:16:25 PM Reply	Heathkit... I built their TV, doorbell, motion sensor... lots of things. I used to get up on Saturday morning and solder circuit boards down in the basement while wearing my bathrobe. I actually lived 25 miles north of Heathkit's location. Was fun to go down there and look at everything. It was a sad day for me when they closed down. :-( Regards, -scott anderson "Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
Post #31,227 by a6l6e6x 3/7/02 1:58:23 PM Reply	Re: Heathkit... Yes, it was sad when they closed shop. I'm still using their garage door opener, metronome, and the basic oscilloscope. My daughter has the "handed down" Heathkit walnut hi-fi cabinet. Alex "People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid." -- Soren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
Post #31,230 by Ashton 3/7/02 2:30:40 PM Reply	Especially sad: it wasn't due to lack of "quality" of their designs. They seemed to be about to incorporate the ideas of (the scope-cal example) into other basic test equipment, equalling the quality of HP et al -- not so much in fancy boxes, though they were also nice-enough: but in bang/buck with no apologies for the specs. Lack of demand killed them :( I see that as akin to the MBA love for the M$ onesizefitsall mindset, a morphing of nobody ever got fired by choosing IBM.. Companies as well as individuals could have profited from using their products, had bizness not entirely forgotten what, "cost effective" might mean. (Most were available assembled, too) So I saw their demise as We Lost and also.. an early symptom of the dumbing-down of all things. Fewer and fewer care to learn ~ how anything "works". Just... Consume. Can't set your VCR clock? - we'll have that difficult info transmitted to you! Can't figure out Why you might want to put certain 'files' into certain 'directories' ? Hah: we gots Windoze and automatic updates (and lock-in and data collecting about You) for ya.. Heath: another canary, dead in the mineshaft.. {sigh} Ashton
Post #31,149 by wharris2 3/7/02 4:21:44 AM Reply	Oh nutz, vacuum tubes Remember when every Radio Shack (hell, half a dozen other places, too) had a tube testing center? Hell, my memory is a bit hazy on the details there, I just remember the things, not the details. We had a black and white television, and if my mind serves me correctly, my parents woke me up to watch either the Moon landing or the first step on the moon or both on it. (I was really too young at the time to remember much, but I do remember grainy black-and-white images.) That's another thing for the class of 2002. The Apollo program is ancient history to them, as much as the American Civil War and World War 1. They stare blankly when you talk about Voyager. They never heard anything about the controversy about what is on the encoded disk on Voyager, which I doubt anyone on Earth could themselves read anymore. Where each demon is slain, more hate is raised, yet hate unchecked also multiplies. - L. E. Modesitt
Post #31,152 by Ashton 3/7/02 4:56:21 AM Reply	Even in '02 - they possess one huge advantage: Impervious to EMP. I don't know what strides have been made in fast, active devices as can stand the humongous peak amplitude (if any such exist by now). But US used to laugh at early MIGS with vac. tube electronics, before we realized why they were there. (Natch we didn't laugh at their also outflying our stuff). Anyway, as transistorization proceeds even unto the toaster - one blast quite a few miles above say, Omaha - can ruin a few trillion transistor junctions = the vast majority of those as are not 'hardened'. (While leaving Omaha pretty much as boring as it was prior) Remember too: M.A.D. is precisely and still, the current 2002 formula for launch. We are <2 minutes away from such a possible Final Solution to the folly-seeking gene in homo-sap. This is not mentioned by pols, natch - but it is true. Sleep tight, Ashton
Post #31,263 by static 3/7/02 6:44:18 PM Reply	Voyager. Actually, to many people "Voyager" means the fourth Star Trek series, not the space-probes. Incidentally, whilst the moon walk was before my time, I do remember the news reports about Challenger exploding. Dad turned the TV during the morning to see the pictures - something he very rarely did. Wade. "All around me are nothing but fakes Come with me on the biggest fake of all!"
Post #31,303 by nking 3/7/02 10:54:30 PM Reply	Voyager Actually to Trekkies you must use "V'Ger" and not "Voyager" and then they are understanding what you are talking about. You must have seen the first Star Trek Motion Picture to understand that one. Heh! "Will code Visual BASIC for cash."
Post #31,312 by wharris2 3/8/02 12:35:43 AM Reply	Re: Voyager. Tears are running down my cheeks even now at the Challenger. The class of 2002 hasn't any clue how powerful and/or depressing that is/was. Where each demon is slain, more hate is raised, yet hate unchecked also multiplies. - L. E. Modesitt
Post #31,410 by nking 3/8/02 6:01:51 PM Reply	Challenger I recall it, I was in High School when it happened. An English teacher of mine that liked to joke around told me that Challenge blew up, I thought we was joking until someone turned on a TV set on a cart to show me that it was true. No words could describe that momment when I learned that it was destroyed. All over an O-Ring and ignoring a computer's warning that it was unsafe. "Will code Visual BASIC for cash."
Post #31,408 by SpiceWare 3/8/02 5:50:30 PM Reply	Recall testing them at Jewel/Osco When I was in grade school we had a 25" color TV in a really nice wooden console. Whenever the set acted funny we'd get a shoe box, put all the tubes in it, drive down to the store and test all the tubes. There were a bunch of sockets on the tester to accommodate the various tubes(I believe # of pins and space between pins differed). Then you'd set a dial to test the correct socket and get a pass/fail response. The new tubes were stored in the bottom of the tester unit. Darrell Spice, Jr. [link\|http://home.houston.rr.com/spiceware/\|SpiceWare] - We don't do Windows, it's too much of a chore
Post #31,439 by Steve Lowe 3/8/02 11:38:43 PM Reply	Still use em. I've got 2 guitar amps that run 12AX7 preamp tubes. For the power section the Peavey uses 6L6 and the Boogie uses EL34 or 6L6. There's only one store in the Denver area I've found to test them. For music use, though, I generally buy 5-6 sets online and compare them in the amp and select on sound. It's amazing how different same-brand tubes sound. Source for tubes? Russia. Company called Sovtek. ----- Steve
Post #31,448 by static 3/9/02 1:41:14 AM Reply	Valve guitar amps... I remember reading somewhere some stories about guitar enthusiasts younger than me getting a valve guitar amp for the first time. One of the things that doesn't always occur to them is that, yes, there are actually different types of valves. One story was about one such guy who found his amp stopped working one day, so he pulled out one valve and went into his guitar shop and asked for "six of these". The store clerk was not being observant that day and sold him precisely that. Not surprisingly, his amp didn't work with the 6 new valves. Wade. "All around me are nothing but fakes Come with me on the biggest fake of all!"

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