Zel's Fleet Blog - BX, Jag XJ-S, Sinclair C5, Mercedes 208D & 230TE, AC Model 70.

[Zelandeth]

Well I've got the fluid in stock now, along with oil and oil filter. Depending on what folks want to do at the weekend I might get it done on Saturday. If nobody else has plans though I'll probably run off to London for most of the day instead.

This evening I decided to dig out some of the stuff I picked up at the DDRC car boot sale a couple of weeks ago - given that I'm waiting on a HDMI-LVDS converter for the computer side of things, it was time for the little portable radio/cassette/TV units to see some attention. After a good clean (they were both filthy), it came as not the slightest surprise that being a bit of Japanese made technology from the 1980s that it "just worked" the moment electricity was applied.

The only signs of disuse are a slightly scratchy volume control and the fact that the tape deck needs a new drive belt. Otherwise it seems quite happy, and is otherwise oblivious that it's now well into the 21st century, and probably a decade or more older than the designers ever expected it to make it to! For those who might wonder, yes this does actually have an antenna in socket unlike a lot of portable TVs. However I couldn't lay my hands on the correct cable at short notice - so this is currently being fed by means of a bit of wire with alligator clips at each end - one attached to the centre pin on the VCR RF out (the VCR being fed from the SCART lead from the DVR), and the other end just clipped onto the internal aerial. It's a bodge, but it works! Especially handy for the likes of the Sony Watchman (yes, the one with the flat side-view CRT) which while it does have an RF in socket, it's on a 3.5mm jack rather than a normal socket...and I don't have an RF to 3.5mm lead just floating around...

(Ten points to anyone who can identify what's currently playing on screen)

Radio is actually really quite sensitive, and audio quality is more than adequate for a little portable unit like this. The real surprise for me is the picture quality on the TV though. I was expecting it to be a bit of a joke really, but it's actually (despite the horrible photo) really decent. Obviously the resolution is pretty low, but it's bright, pin sharp and with really well represented colours. Colour purity and convergeance are spot on as well, if I really had to be picky, there's a tiny bit of pincusion distortion...but the only place you can see that is in the system menus on the DVR...and let's face it, that sort of thing wasn't around when this thing was. You'd never notice it using this set as it was intended. I've seen a few units with decent monochrome displays this small, but it's the first time I've really seen a colour CRT this small display a decent looking image. Curious to see whose CRT they've used now. The covers will of course come off at a later date...both in the interests of curiousity and because the tape deck needs a new belt.

I always really wanted one of these when I was a kid but could never even come close to affording one, so wasn't in the slightest hesitant to grab the pair of these when I found them. The second one I've only given a very quick examination, but it seems to also be in good working order (save for the belt) but is in far worse cosmetic shape.

[ekjdm14]

Re the 10 points, blind guess really but something like the Professionals/Sweeney or perhaps Minder?

That's a good little portable, a bit before my time inasmuch as the set I really wanted as a kid was the Casio one in Argos at the time... Possibly TV470?

Just read an interesting little blog on the reimagining of one of these for the 21st century, not a perfect solution but more useful than a screenful of static I guess TV470

[demag]

Reference the computer thing, I have some old early Pentium motherboards if anyone wants them and a few old mechanical hard drives as well. They're all sitting in a cupboard doing nowt. I'm a terrible hoarder and stuff like that gets put to one side "just in case".

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[Zelandeth]

Reference the computer thing, I have some old early Pentium motherboards if anyone wants them and a few old mechanical hard drives as well. They're all sitting in a cupboard doing nowt. I'm a terrible hoarder and stuff like that gets put to one side "just in case".

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Definitely the sort of stuff that's useful to me!

[demag]

Ok Zel will have a look just now and let you know what's available being as wifey is watching Say Yes to the bloody Dress!

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[demag]

1st box. Two motherboards, one with a CPU and 128 meg of ram![emoji1] . I'll see what else is about. I just noticed some CD drives as well not sure what state they're in though.

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[demag]

A few more bits. I think the graphics card is 128meg.

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[Zelandeth]

Those motherboards are a big yes as they're ones with the holy trinity of AGP, PCI *and* ISA slots (for one, all my SCSI cards are ISA).

Could be a big upgrade for my old Win2000 tower there, think it's currently running a K6-2 300 if I remember rightly.

Optical drives are always handy - not least because they seem to be the most unreliable piece of PC hardware, so backups are useful. There's an old 8x CD-ROM drive in that tower that has been upgraded from then reverted back to at least four times now when the newer drive died.

That graphics card looks to have composite video out too...that immediately sounds like it has great potential to be useful... especially as I can throw that at the VCR and then have it provide an RF output I can feed to analogue video kit.

[demag]

I just found another cd rom drive, a Magico not sure if it's dead or alive.
As for the mb's that looks to be it unfortunately apart from a couple or three recent high end (ish) ones that I'll hang on to. I seem to remember contacting a charity that was shipping pc's to Africa for use in villages out in the bush and I thought they might be interested in some bits and bobs.
"Ah" said they, they were only interested in complete working computers and I would have to deliver it in person to Southampton because they might get damaged in the post! And they hadn't got time to mess about building computers from parts and testing them. In a fit of pique I dumped quite a lot of old parts at the local tip. I don't mind helping people out for a good cause but when they started calling so many shots I thought up yours your'e not having anything.
So yes they've got your name on them Zel.

[demag]

Another motherboard, an MSI, this was in my sons computer and was extremely over clocked running at stupid speeds at that time. We never had a spot of bother from it either.
Also an 80gig Barracuda hdd from my daughter's old PC.

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[Zelandeth]

The newer board I can't immediately think of a use for - yet. Though if it's got a proper two channel floppy drive controller it may find itself stuffed into a random case for occasional media image creation/restoration as my main PC only supports a single drive - and only 3.5" at that. Only reason my tower doesn't currently get used for that is that USB is the one thing I've never got working reliably on it...and the wired networking hasn't been installed yet, so it involves dragging cables all the way across the floor.

3.5" or 5.25" floppy discs and their associated drives are also somewhat precious commodities in this house *especially* 3.5" double density (720K) discs as the Amiga uses those and almost my entire stock got wiped out by mould when stored at my parent's house. Eventually I'll actually move into the 21st century and get an SD-floppy converter for it...but I'm holding off to see if the rumoured A1200 version of the Vampire accelerator board comes to anything first.

...yes you understood me, companies are still making hardware for the Amiga today. Despite the platform being dead now for what, fifteen years?

[van ordinaire]

If it's floppies you want, I won't throw mine out (even though I do actually have a PC with a floppy disc drive, I can't now imagine me using them).

[Zelandeth]

Really appreciate it! This is the sort of stuff that's rapidly vanishing now, and in a few years time will be a real pig to find. I know there are flash memory based replacements for floppy drives on many systems, but this is a hobby for me rather than something practical where reliability and speed are massively important...and in that respect I prefer using real media a lot of the time.

Today almost immediately after joining the motorway (in the torrential rain) the Lada developed a miss. Dropping back to 55mph or so and all seemed well though. I diverted back home at the next junction, jumped in the 107 and continued on my trip out to retrieve a big box of SCSI goodies from a friend down in North London.

My guess is there were three main possibilities.

1. The ancient HT leads protesting at the weather.
2. CPS has worked loose. This car does tend to vibrate a lot compared to a modern one!
3. Can a TBi unit ice up like a carb? There's no warm air feed on just now, and it was really wet/humid, so prime conditions for it if that can happen.

I'll look into that more tomorrow, hopefully should be simple enough to figure out.

Will get some new HT leads ordered from Tom anyway as I reckon they were the originals on the donor vehicle...

Was going to go out with a spray bottle this evening and check for water sensitivity...but got sidetracked when I stumbled across my first generation netbook PC in a box. Hadn't seen the poor thing in years, Asus' first netbook, the EeePC 704G, essentially the first machine to use the term netbook I believe. Blew the dust off it, found the power supply, and have brought it back to life. It's 600MHz Celeron, 1Gb of RAM and 4Gb SSD seem to be quite happy running Windows Embedded POSReady 2009. Always forget how fast SSD equipped machines boot.

Shame I didn't have access to that software a few years back, as finding the right OS for it was always the thing I struggled most with, it's actually a nice little bit of hardware - even if technology has rather moved on. I still really like the design, it's just really nicely proportioned somehow - and I even learned to use the tiny keyboard after a couple of months. Only cost £120 new, and even with the multitude of OS changes I went through trying to find the right one, I definitely got my money's worth out of it.

Hoping to get a bit more now too...reckon EFiLive should run just fine on there for one...

[van ordinaire]

I'll gather all the floppies together & then, as it's not pressing, it can wait 'til, inevitably, we actually meet.

Also seem to have a load of leads i have no use for, if you're interested.

[CitroJim]

Zel, I reckon a TBi can ice up like a carb but not in this weather - even earlier in the week it was too hot for that even if it did feel like winter had returned!