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Foxs Mercantile <jdangus@att.net>: Sep 28 04:10PM -0500 > or at least the critical caps and the power supply filter caps. But then > again, "if it works, dont fix it". Having it power up with no hum, was > what impressed me most, since the electrolytics are usually bad.   Are you stupid, or do you just try to appear to be stupid?   "It works." Yeah, right up until it doesn't and fries an IF transformer or something else like one of the vacuum tubes.   A couple of examples: 1. A late '40s vintage Artone AM/FM/Phono console my parents bought new. It was working when I left home in 1972. I pulled the chassis around 2001 and turned it on. I worked for about 10 minutes and paaaf! one of the paper caps self-destructed. I replaced that one and tried it again. This time it lasted 3 minutes and pafff! another paper cap went away. After I changed the 4th one, I just replaced the remaining ones.' After another 15 minutes the one of the filter caps self destructed. I replaced all of them. The radio sits in my living room and has been working fine for the past 16 years. 2. A Hallicrafters SX-110 general coverage receiver. It looked like new and had the matching speaker. I set it on the work bench at the shop in 2007. Turned it on, and it worked perfectly. After 20 minutes the audio slowly dropped to zero. I turned it off to checked what happened. The filter can was hot enough to fry eggs. I recapped the radio and gave it to a friend of mine. It's still working perfectly and is one of his favorite radios.   But, by all means, do whatever you want. Solid technical advice is wasted on you.       -- Jeff-1.0 wa6fwi http://www.foxsmercantile.com

Jim Mueller <wrongname@nospam.com>: Sep 28 10:09PM On Thu, 28 Sep 2017 16:10:58 -0500, Foxs Mercantile wrote:   > perfectly and is one of his favorite radios.   > But, by all means, do whatever you want. > Solid technical advice is wasted on you.   Jeff was lucky, his capacitors failed quickly while he still had the radio apart. My experience was different, each one lasted months, so I ended up taking the set apart numerous times to replace one capacitor each time. I learned from that, now I replace them all at one go. But if you like taking things apart repeatedly, that's up to you.   -- Jim Mueller wrongname@nospam.com   To get my real email address, replace wrongname with eggmen. Then replace nospam with expressmail. Lastly, replace com with dk.

Foxs Mercantile <jdangus@att.net>: Sep 28 05:29PM -0500 On 9/28/2017 5:09 PM, Jim Mueller wrote: > radio apart. My experience was different, each one lasted months, so I > ended up taking the set apart numerous times to replace one capacitor > each time. I learned from that, now I replace them all at one go. The Artone was the third set I worked once I decide I was going to play with old radios. The first was a Signatone code practice oscillator and every cap and resistor was bad in it. The second was a Columbia phono, AC/DC/Battery portable with a wind up clockwork mechanism.   After about ten years of playing with vintage tube gear, I opened a shop to do this for profit. This means when you fix a radio, it has to stay fixed once it goes out the door.   > But if you like taking things apart repeatedly, that's up to you.   "You can't fix stupid."   -- Jeff-1.0 wa6fwi http://www.foxsmercantile.com

oldschool@tubes.com: Sep 28 09:29PM -0400 >ended up taking the set apart numerous times to replace one capacitor >each time. I learned from that, now I replace them all at one go. But >if you like taking things apart repeatedly, that's up to you.   Considering my age, it probably dont matter, but I bet all the modern caps will fail in far less time than those old paper caps. Nothing these days is made as well as in the old days. Caps that are still working after 70 years were not poorly made. I think a lot of that was because in those days, people had respect for their customers, anad wanted the name of their company to stand out. That was before our "throw away society". That is no longer the case.   Add to that, the fact that most caps are now made in China, and I know they wont last. I try to get all NOS Orange Drop caps. They were made in the USA and were top of the line. They cost more, but are the only ones I consider worth buying.

tabbypurr@gmail.com: Sep 28 08:16PM -0700 > they wont last. I try to get all NOS Orange Drop caps. They were made in > the USA and were top of the line. They cost more, but are the only ones > I consider worth buying.   Capacior reliability is another topic to learn about. The 3 unreliable types are electrolytic, paper and multilayer ceramic. Other types are extremely reliable. Unfortunately most 1950s or earlier small caps are paper, and most are well & truly shot now. Replacing old papers with new plastic film is a big reliability & longevity upgrade.     NT

Foxs Mercantile <jdangus@att.net>: Sep 28 10:18PM -0500 > in those days, people had respect for their customers, anad wanted the > name of their company to stand out. That was before our "throw away > society". That is no longer the case.   Of for fuck's sake. You are one ignorant son of a bitch.   Caps made "back then" were made with non-archival, i.e. acid bearing paper. They were sealed with bee's way which was hygroscopic. Moisture reacted with the acid in the paper and that was the end of that.   Modern capacitors are made with a metalized mylar film and have a service life measured in hundreds if not thousands of years.   Modern electrolytic capacitors have improved 10 fold over the years.   > they wont last. I try to get all NOS Orange Drop caps. They were made in > the USA and were top of the line. They cost more, but are the only ones > I consider worth buying.   "A fool and his money are soon parted."   While you're at it, why not buy NOS Black Beauty capacitors.     -- Jeff-1.0 wa6fwi http://www.foxsmercantile.com

John-Del <ohger1s@gmail.com>: Sep 29 04:56AM -0700 > Add to that, the fact that most caps are now made in China, and I know > they wont last.       LOL! You *are* one stupid son of a bitch. There, I said it.   Even the worse plastic caps will outlast any paper and wax cap (one exception for another thread). I've been using these Chinese caps to restore old radios for 20 years and not one has failed. But by all means, keep using those paper caps and destroy tubes and transformers that are no longer in production - in *any* country...   And even if you were to believe your own bullshit, do you really think caps that are already 70 years old have any reliability left in them, more than a brand new Chinese plastic cap?   Jeff says you can't fix stupid. My older brother says you can fix stupid but you can't fix *really* stupid. I think you qualify as the latter.

"pfjw@aol.com" <pfjw@aol.com>: Sep 29 05:23AM -0700 A bit of history might help you understand things. Once upon a time, light switches and receptacles were designed to be able to handle AC and DC. What happens when switching DC? Arcing. So, switches and receptacles, and switches in everything from lamps to toaster had to be arc-resistant. In addition, manufacturers did not have 100 years of historical data to design from. So, things were over-designed (by modern standards), heavy (by modern standards) and many have withstood the test of time and survive to this day. Today, switches are either AC or DC, designed to very specific standards, and as long as they are used within those standards, will also last indefinitely.   Capacitors started as foil-and-glass devices, evolving to foil-and-paper (cheap) sealed with paraffin wax + some bees wax for workability (cheap), and some were potted in tar (even then, manufacturers understood that the materials had self-decay problems) and various other methods were tried - and discarded over time. BUT, remember, EVERYTHING WAS NEW back in those days. Nobody had 100+ years of data to use, and what we understand today as being very short blind alleys were enticing options. So, there is a LOT of crap out there that was perfectly functional when made. Electrolytics evolved similarly and improved similarly. As did resistors, even tubes. Nuvistors, developed about the same times as reliable transistors, were thought then, and perhaps still, to have a pretty-much indefinite service-life as compared to a standard tube.   So, now the evolution of consumer-grade electronic components, caps, resistors, transistors, and so forth, has made them into commodities based on unprotected (no patent protection) technology using cheap-as-hell materials and largely automated manufacturing processes operating at a precision that was not possible back-then. Meaning that a Visay-Sprague has no competitive advantage over the Grace L. Furgeson storm-door and capacitor company, or the Wa-Chen capacitor company operating out of a garage in Shanghai. But that Wa-Chen capacitor is superior in every way to the Sprague wax-paper cap produced in 1947. Or that plastic-encapsulated cap produced by Philco in 1961.   You really need to step back and take a 20,000 view of this hobby. Don't plant your feet 'back in the day' as you *DO* have 100 years of data to pull from, and you *DO* have the opportunity to bypass the mistakes of others and go directly to the proper solution. There is not one person in 20 that understands the sequence of events necessary for the lamp in their ceiling fixture to light up at the flick of a switch. They take it for granted. Back in the day, that simple result was the nearest thing to magic the world had ever experienced. If you understand how we got here, you need not repeat the mistakes, or duplicate the errors, or repeat the learning process as experienced over the last 100 years. Save yourself the pain.   Otherwise the appearance of idiocy you seem to cultivate so carefully may, in fact, be your reality. That would be sad.   Peter Wieck Melrose Park, PA

"Jonathan N. Little" <lws4art@gmail.com>: Sep 25 04:44PM -0400 Dusty wrote: > so getting this one going would be better.   > What brand is the most reliable pen drive ? > Need 32 G.     Usually no. When flash drives usually fail suddenly, without warning, and catastrophically.   One thought, are you sure that you do not have a counterfeit drive. A lot are out there especially large capacity ones.   <https://www.raymond.cc/blog/test-and-detect-fake-or-counterfeit-usb-flash-drives-bought-from-ebay-with-h2testw/>   Also look at this one, there a tons of examples online. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaHokQ5EWv0> Some other vids will run the previous link utils to expose the deception without disassembling it.   -- Take care,   Jonathan ------------------- LITTLE WORKS STUDIO http://www.LittleWorksStudio.com

Dusty <Dusty@DustyDustyDusty.com>: Sep 26 11:57AM -0700 Nothing on reliability ! As usual reviewers do not know how to review. What is most important to you ?   Their second top rated is the one that died.   Other parameter metrics are of little interest.   Buying a Sony 32G as the one I already have has been the best.   Why ? The Sony has worked at every USB port I have tried it on. The Sandisk only works on some USB ports. Why ? because the Sony connector is a better quality connector and can make up for the deficiencies of the USB PC connector. I have several SanDisk pen drives and with some I have to wiggle the pen drive for it to make a connection. Not so with the Sony. The SanDisk skimps on it connector length and area trying to save a penny and putting their fingers in my purse. Poor quality connector !   The Sony has more reliability and quality. So I pay a few bucks more but it is well worth it.     Bob_S wrote:

jaugustine@verizon.net: Sep 28 04:09PM Hi,   Does anyone know of a site where I can buy a schematic for a Sanyo model M2820 portable (mono) radio/cassette recorder?   Thank You in advance, John   PS, I searched the Web and tried www.samswebsite.com (Photofacts & technical publications).

dansabrservices@yahoo.com: Sep 28 02:38PM -0700 A different approach would be to mention the problem. Perhaps we can suggest a fix without the need for the manual.   Dan

John-Del <ohger1s@gmail.com>: Sep 28 10:35AM -0700 On Thursday, September 28, 2017 at 11:56:53 AM UTC-4, Robin Ingenthron wrote:   > backpane? backlight? backpanels? backplanes?   > fairtraderecycling.org > Robin at WR3A dot org         Yikes. Do you mean that you use discarded TVs, remove the LCD, and use the back light as a basis for a sign?   If that's what you're doing and don't want to use the existing power/LED drive board, take a current measurement of the existing LED array with the TV running. Build/buy a current regulated supply that will supply the LED array with about 30% less current than the TV did (those are overdriven and have a very short life as installed). The voltage required can be up to 300 volts depending on how many LEDs are used and if they're all arranged in series, so every application is different.   Using the original supply can be easier, but you will have to externally enable the back light on command line and most of these power supply boards won't turn on the LEDs unless they receive a PWM signal from the main for the brightness feature. You'll either need to keep the TV main board functioning or build a pwm signal generator.   If you get the run current wrong on the LEDs, they won't last.   Not sure what you're trying to say about OLEDs, but we refer to the screen assy sans LCD display as a light box, although there's no standard definition that I'm aware of.   I think a far easier plan would be discard the TV components entirely from inside the light box and buy LED strip lighting and a control box (Alibaba, ebay). This way you can be sure you won't over drive the LEDs.

Roy Tremblay <rmblayrrroy@nlnet.nl>: Sep 28 04:58PM > This happens to be a 5GHz 30 decibel rocket, but the procedure is exactly > the same no matter what Ubiquiti radio Rod Speed chooses to make his access > point that paints the neighbor's home (as per the calculations from Jeff).   As a more easily digested top-level summary, for Rod and the others: a. Station mode (the default) b. Access Point mode   1. Station mode means the access point locks on to any given SSID/passphrase, acting as a "station". For example, you can stand on the nearest hilltop and point the radio down into the city miles below, select the best signal strength open access point, and connect to the Internet (if you're lucky with signal strength both ways).   2. Access Point mode means the radio acts as an access point of your Internet to anyone (who can be miles away) who wants to connect to your access point. You can stick the radio on a hilltop, pointing at the city miles below, and everyone in the city can "see" your access point (if you're lucky with signal strength both ways).   More details for setup on Ubiquiti radios such as these in my basement: <https://s26.postimg.org/62350hckp/00aradio.jpg>   1. The Ubiquiti radios, out of the box, default to "station" mode, where you can temporarily connect them by wire or WiFi to a mobile computing device to log in (192.168.1.20, ubnt/ubnt) and point them at any access point (even those that are miles away) and then lock on to either the SSID or the MAC address. That's it.   After that one-step setup of choosing the SSID to lock onto, you can plug *anything* you want into the radio (e.g., a router, a camera, a computer, a mobile device, etc.) and it will be using the Internet of the SSID you're locked on to.   2. The Ubiquiti radios can easily be set up in Access Point mode, where you plug them into your router and then you can put this access point up to 300 feet away from the router, connected by that Ethernet cable.   This allows you to paint any part of your property, e.g., your pool or your barn or your front gate, etc., or even to paint an entire city miles away, with your access point.   In this photo below, you see that I have one powerful Rocket M2 (2.4GHz) which is set up in "station" mode, while the other powerful Rocket M5 (5GHz) is set up in "access point" mode. <https://s26.postimg.org/kzbm1hpt5/00bradio.jpg>   Bear in mind that these radios can go for a dozen miles line of sight when connected to a similar radio, but the distance will be far less if the other radio is a cell phone, a router, or a less powerful access point.   The advantage, however, of these powerful Ubiquiti Rocket M2/M5 radios is that they have 24dBi and 30dBi antennas respectively, which, if you know how decibels work, is a huge increase in a weak noisy received signal strength.   However, even these two relatively weak 14dBi and 18dBi antennas can still go for miles line of sight under the right conditions on the other side. <https://s26.postimg.org/jbamhcg6h/00eradio.jpg>   None of those figures even count in the added power of at least 25 or so decibels (dbM) of power input into the antenna, so that gives you just an idea of how much more powerful, overall, these radios are compared to your typical SOHO router (which would be hard pressed to garner even 20dBm of EIRP overall).   All at just about the same price (so, IMHO, if you need an additional access point or a station that connects to an access point, then a typical consumer SOHO router is one of the worst ways to accomplish that task from a price-to-performance standpoint).

Roy Tremblay <rmblayrrroy@nlnet.nl>: Sep 28 04:56PM > This happens to be a 5GHz 30 decibel rocket, but the procedure is exactly > the same no matter what Ubiquiti radio Rod Speed chooses to make his access > point that paints the neighbor's home (as per the calculations from Jeff).   As a more easily digested top-level summary, for Rod and the others: a. Station mode (the default) b. Access Point mode   1. Station mode means the access point locks on to any given SSID/passphrase, acting as a "station". For example, you can stand on the nearest hilltop and point the radio down into the city miles below, select the best signal strength open access point, and connect to the Internet (if you're lucky with signal strength both ways).   2. Access Point mode means the radio acts as an access point of your Internet to anyone (who can be miles away) who wants to connect to your access point. You can stick the radio on a hilltop, pointing at the city miles below, and everyone in the city can "see" your access point (if you're lucky with signal strength both ways).   More details for setup on Ubiquiti radios such as these in my basement: <https://s26.postimg.org/62350hckp/00aradio.jpg>   1. The Ubiquiti radios, out of the box, default to "station" mode, where you can temporarily connect them by wire or WiFi to a mobile computing device to log in (192.168.1.20, ubnt/ubnt) and point them at any access point (even those that are miles away) and then lock on to either the SSID or the MAC address. That's it.   After that one-step setup of choosing the SSID to lock onto, you can plug *anything* you want into the radio (e.g., a router, a camera, a computer, a mobile device, etc.) and it will be using the Internet of the SSID you're locked on to.   2. The Ubiquiti radios can easily be set up in Access Point mode, where you plug them into your router and then you can put this access point up to 300 feet away from the router, connected by that Ethernet cable.   This allows you to paint any part of your property, e.g., your pool or your barn or your front gate, etc., or even to paint an entire city miles away, with your access point.   In this photo below, you see that I have one powerful Rocket M2 (2.4GHz) which is set up in "station" mode, while the other powerful Rocket M5 (5GHz) is set up in "access point" mode. <https://s26.postimg.org/kzbm1hpt5/00bradio.jpg>   Bear in mind that these radios can go for a dozen miles line of sight when connected to a similar radio, but the distance will be far less if the other radio is a cell phone, a router, or a less powerful access point.   The advantage, however, of these powerful Ubiquiti Rocket M2/M5 radios is that they have 24dBi and 30dBi antennas respectively, which, if you know how decibels work, is a huge increase in a weak noisy received signal strength.   However, even these two relatively weak 14dBi and 18dBi antennas can still go for miles line of sight under the right conditions on the other side. <https://s26.postimg.org/jbamhcg6h/00eradio.jpg>   None of those figures even counts the added power of at least 25 or so decibels (dbM) of power input into the antenna, so that gives you just an idea of how much more powerful, overall, these radios are compared to your typical SOHO router (which would be hard pressed to garner even 20dBm of EIRP overall).

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