The coffee maker was allowed to cool completely between runs, and fresh cold water of the same temperature was used in each run. We didn’t want to waste coffee, so we re-used the same grounds over and over. We did drink the first pot made

The background music for the fiery finale consists of 2 tracks converted from tracked music files, entitled in sequence:

unismaek fra tasken (uniseks.xm)
B i o S (bios.s3m)

Here’s our data (CSV format):

Voltage,Current,Watts,Amps @ 120,Watt Hours,Minutes,Seconds,Hours,Energy Cost,Annual Cost,Annual Savings,TS Per Day (Min),TS Per Year (Hours)
120,5.30,636.00,5.30,77.73,7,20,0.1222222222,$0.00777,$2.83727,$0.00000,0.00,0.0­0
150,6.63,993.75,8.28,71.77,4,20,0.0722222222,$0.00718,$2.61964,$0.21763,3.00,18.­25
170,7.51,1276.42,10.64,65.24,3,4,0.0511111111,$0.00652,$2.38123,$0.45604,4.27,25­.96
185,8.17,1511.60,12.60,61.30,2,26,0.0405555556,$0.00613,$2.23759,$0.59967,4.90,2­9.81
200,8.83,1766.67,14.72,58.89,2,0,0.0333333333,$0.00589,$2.14944,$0.68782,5.33,32­.44
220,9.72,2137.67,17.81,58.79,1,39,0.0275,$0.00588,$2.14568,$0.69158,5.68,34.57
240,10.60,2544.00,21.20,0.00,0,0,0,$0.00000,$0.00000,$2.83727,7.33,44.61

I’d say don’t try this at home, but, well, that’s exactly what we did. So instead of saying that, I’ll suggest you don’t try this unless you have knowledge of electricity and its dangers.

I am building a robot tank with my kids based off your r/c tank. We are having trouble coupling the drive wheel with the shaft. We drilled the wheel out of wood with a hole saw and the hole it created for the shaft to go through is slightly too large for the drive shaft. Under load, the drive wheel slips on the shaft. Do you have any suggestions for coupling the wheel and shaft? Right now I just have a nut on the back tightened really hard, but it still slips. I thought about glue or epoxy, but I am afraid that will just break loose too.

thank you for your time.

Ray

Those were the days I first got started with computers, and I was always at the command prompt, despite having Windows 3.1 floating around. I have a deep love for DOS, much like some LINUX folk do for their OS.

I’ve finally built the perfect DOS machine, with all the greatest hardware of the era that I could only dream of affording back in the early to mid 90s. But now, with Craigslist and eBay, I was able to put together this dream machine, and enjoy the authenticity of a real DOS machine once again, and better than ever! DOSBOX is nice, but it doesn’t work, feel or sound the same

The specs of my DOS machine are:

Pentium II @ 333MHz on a 440BX mobo
256MB memory
40gb IDE HDD
SB16 ISA
SBPro Clone ISA w/Yamaha DB50XG daughterboard
PCI Network card
3DFX VooDoo 2
Trident PCI Video card w/4mb memory
FreeDOS

Why two sound cards? Simple – compatibility. Some early games and demos don’t like the SB16, mainly because it requires a driver to be loaded to work. My SBClone does not, it even works in realmode. Additionally, the clone has a genuine Yamaha YMF-262 FM chip. The SB16 does not, so again, authenticity of sound comes into play. On the other hand, some later programs do not play nice with the clone, so the SB16 rounds out the deal.

Here is an HD video showing the box, presented in B&W because, well, it’s vintage!

Here are some videos of Cubic Player in action:

Want to see any demos from the era? Shoot me a message, and include the original filename if possible. I believe I have just about all of ‘em in my collection.

4.77MHz CPU w/FPU Chip
10mb MFM Full Height Hard Drive
360k 5-1/4 Full Height Floppy
640k RAM
256k VGA graphics
130watt PSU

The internals of the beast.  Cards from left to right are video, serial, floppy and hard drive controller.  I’ve since added a clock card so the system can keep time when powered off.

The IBM WD12 hard drive made by Western Digital.  It holds 10mb.

A Seagate ST412 hard drive.  It also holds 10mb and is my second drive for additional experimentation.

The Seagate ST11 MFM hard drive controller.

The original IBM floppy controller.

A VGA and monochrome combo video adapter!!

The DIP switch settings on the motherboard.

Hard drive benchmark results.  Video of Hard Drive Benchmark

System information.

IBM PCJr – NEC V20

8MHz CPU
360k Half Height Floppy
640k RAM (Internal)
96KB CGA Plus graphics
SN76489 3-Voice Sound

Video Overview – Watch my PCjr in action!!

The internals of the Jr.  From left to right you find the power supply, memory expansion, and floppy controller.

Jr’s floppy controller.

Jr’s 64kb memory card.

How do you get 640k in a PCjr without a sidecar?  Simple – a seriously crazy hack card!!  This card has a clock, V20 and 2 banks of memory…

…and it all fits right into the 8088 socket right under the floppy drive!!

Other Hardware

These are additional vintage components in my collection.  The fantastic folks at The Vintage Computer Forums have helped me in identifying some of this stuff.

Tandon TM 501 hard drive.  It holds 5mb!!

Reverse side of the Tandon drive.

XT Expansion chassis boards.

Davong hard disk controller.

Original IBM CGA video card.

EGA video card.

My first serious computer.  I wrote my first ever program on this.  It was a 10MHz 286, made by the Korean Hyosung Computer company.

Seagate ST225 – 20mb MFM drive.  It was in my 286.

MiniScribe!!!  IIRC, it holds 40mb and is MFM.

Reverse side of the MiniScibe.  A 3.5" drive with a stepper…I haven’t seen many of these.  It’s like a baby ST-412.

All are free and sampled by FastMHz.com, feel free to share this page but DO NOT direct link the files. Thank you!!

Classic Dialup Modem
High Voltage
PCjr Floppy Poll and Post Beep
100psi Handheld Air Cannon Fires
20kv Cap Charge Detonates CD
Coilgun Fires
Induction Launcher Fires Hard Boiled Egg
20kv Crawls Up Jacob’s Ladder
Vacuum Motor Over-Revs, Commutator Explodes
Pickle Electrocution
Potato Detonates with 16kj Cap Pulse
Subwoofer Explodes with 16kj Cap Pulse

The first victim is an old vacuum motor from the 80s, the second is an old Sear’s rotary tool from the 80s, the third is a Rockwell power drill from the 70s, the fourth is an old Black&Decker jigsaw motor from the same era and last is a modern Bissel upright vacuum motor – the one that sounds like a jet engine.

The contraption on the wood block was a working motor bodged together from leftovers from others. We ran it under water and for some reason it stopped spinning. So we finished it off by blowing the windings out one at a time, and then cooked the field winding with 480v.

Most failed due to brushes falling apart, and so carbon welding rod was used to take the armature to the end manually. At this point, the commutators generally detonate.

Power was supplied from a 5kw inverter on car batteries, run through a large variac, and then fed into a 120v — 240v or 120v — 480v step up transformer.

A common argument in favor of defragmenting a thumb drive is that it makes data recovery easier, since files are contiguous. If you *really* want to “defrag” your flash drive, do so by copying all the files to a temporary location, format the flash drive, and then copy them back. This way, the files are written consecutively, without fragmentation, and only costs your flash device one write per used block. Using a program like Windows defrag would cause thousands upon thousands of writes, reducing the device’s lifespan, and worse, wouldn’t do nearly as good a job as a copy/format/recopy procedure would.

This also applies to so called SSDs, or Solid State Disks. These are also flash memory, and defragmenting them is destructive. Windows XP and on up tend to defragment automatically by default. Windows Vista and 7 do a full defrag on a schedule. THIS IS BAD!! If you are running Windows on an SSD, disable automatic defragmentation via the control panel on these OSes.

And second to charge the caps do you use a variac?If so wont do you
limit the current,big resistor?
thanks
Sebastien
ps:Where are you from?