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From: David Sankey on 19 Feb 2010 05:28 In article <1je5n1g.ywxlti1r2kkcgN%real-address-in-sig(a)flur.bltigibbet.invalid>, real-address-in-sig(a)flur.bltigibbet.invalid (Rowland McDonnell) wrote: > 2ns is `accurate to 2 feet'. Ish. (1' is 1ns at lightspeed, ish) Yip. > Are you really getting `time on the ground' or `time where the > satellites are', or what? Time on the ground (why you need 4 satellites rather than 3).
From: Woody on 19 Feb 2010 05:37 On 19/02/2010 09:26, Rowland McDonnell wrote: > Woody<usenet(a)alienrat.co.uk> wrote: > >> Rowland McDonnell<real-address-in-sig(a)flur.bltigibbet.invalid> wrote: >> >>> Those watches were reliable if you'd made them carefully enough. What I >>> recall reading, the dodgy ones were dodgy due to dodgy construction, not >>> dodgy design. >> >> These were the ones already built, and they were anything but reliable. > > But how does that preclude the accuracy of my `dodgy build' memory? Well, I guess it doesn't, but if the factory where they were made can't make them well, that doesn't make them very reliable. As was quoted, the return rate was enormous, so it can hardly have been that reliable. -- Woody
From: Woody on 19 Feb 2010 05:42 On 19/02/2010 09:26, Rowland McDonnell wrote: > Woody<usenet(a)alienrat.co.uk> wrote: > >> Rowland McDonnell<real-address-in-sig(a)flur.bltigibbet.invalid> wrote: >> >>> Jim<jim(a)magrathea.plus.com> wrote: > [snip] > >>> I never heard that Sinclair shipped faulty /computers/[1]. Okay, so the >>> shipping dates were always a nonsense. >>> >>> [1] The QL microdrives were trouble for some. But aside from that? >>> All the computers were competently designed and worked properly and if >>> they didn't, it was just some re-soldering work that needed doing and >>> Sinclair would sort that out promptly and with a smile if you asked 'em. >> >> Spectrums weren't. I used to have a nice sideline in one job fixing >> spectrums. I would do about 10 a month. > > What broke them? > >> i just needed to keep a stack of >> two transistors (it was actually just one that would originally go, but >> sometimes it would take the other one out. > > So what made 'em die? I never met a Speccy that died that way, and I > knew a lot of people who owned 'em. Normally it was vibration of the unit from typing when there was a ram (or other) pack fitted to the back. The internal PSU componants had no protection on them and one of the transistors would just pop. One diode or a couple of resistors would have prevented it happening but it stayed the same all the time sinclair had them (I think it was fixed in one of the plus 128 models, but by then the world had moved to 16bit machines and the spectrum didn't have the quantities it did). On the plus side, it was possible to fix them in a matter of minutes as there wasn't much holding them together! >> The microdrives were pretty well trouble for all. > > Based on tried and tested technology, though. The LEO had tape drives > like that back in the 1950s. Tried and trusted technology doesn't help if the item itself doesn't work. The technology was not flawed in itself, as I picked up some third party drives that worked in a similar way that were actually ok, but the sinclair units didn't. -- Woody
From: Jim on 19 Feb 2010 05:53 On 2010-02-19, Woody <usenet(a)alienrat.co.uk> wrote: >>> The microdrives were pretty well trouble for all. >> >> Based on tried and tested technology, though. The LEO had tape drives >> like that back in the 1950s. > > Tried and trusted technology doesn't help if the item itself doesn't > work. The technology was not flawed in itself, as I picked up some third > party drives that worked in a similar way that were actually ok, but the > sinclair units didn't. That matches my experience. The idea was sound but the implementation was...less so. Jim -- http://www.ursaMinorBeta.co.uk http://twitter.com/GreyAreaUK "Get over here. Now. Might be advisable to wear brown trousers and a shirt the colour of blood." Malcolm Tucker, "The Thick of It"
From: Jaimie Vandenbergh on 19 Feb 2010 06:16
On Fri, 19 Feb 2010 10:53:28 +0000, Jim <jim(a)magrathea.plus.com> wrote: >On 2010-02-19, Woody <usenet(a)alienrat.co.uk> wrote: > >>>> The microdrives were pretty well trouble for all. >>> >>> Based on tried and tested technology, though. The LEO had tape drives >>> like that back in the 1950s. >> >> Tried and trusted technology doesn't help if the item itself doesn't >> work. The technology was not flawed in itself, as I picked up some third >> party drives that worked in a similar way that were actually ok, but the >> sinclair units didn't. > >That matches my experience. The idea was sound but the implementation >was...less so. I don't know what you're talking about. Who couldn't love a storage media that gets more capacious as you use it? Cheers - Jaimie (*snap*) -- "The more wrong a guy gets, the louder he yells at the person trying to help him. Which, inevitably, makes him even wronger. But less helped." -- Merlin Mann |