Another Surplus Store Gone...

[Phil Hobbs]

On 2020-07-17 02:25, whit3rd wrote:

On Thursday, July 16, 2020 at 1:02:15 PM UTC-7, John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 20:43:45 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:


I once did a \"company lecture\" to a group that was building
a telecoms project. They were so deep in the shit[2] that most
of them hadn\'t even noticed they were implementing an FSM

Probably badly. It\'s possible to do a bad FSM in hardware, too.

Oh, yeah; one of my old lab-control function generators was set up
with a sequencer that relied on one monostable triggering another...
and every once in a while it\'d get into a forbidden state
with nothing happening.

A guru from down the hall advised me (too late; I\'d found and fixed the
problem) to read up on finite state machines... and synchronous logic,
too.

A lab neighbour of mine in grad school, John Fox (who later went on to
do great things in beam cooling for particle accelerators), built an
acoustic microscope that did its sequencing like that.(*)

One monostable to gate the TX pulse, one for the round-trip delay, one
for the RX gate.

A digital delay generator would be the right way to do it for a
temporary setup. (Plug for the Highland P400, which I use quite a
bit--back at IBM I had one of the older SRS ones, which wasn\'t as good.)

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

(*) It might have been the other guy that shared his lab--Larry
somebody, I forget.

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510

http://electrooptical.net
http://hobbs-eo.com

 

[Phil Hobbs]

On 2020-07-17 02:25, whit3rd wrote:

On Thursday, July 16, 2020 at 1:02:15 PM UTC-7, John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 20:43:45 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:


I once did a \"company lecture\" to a group that was building
a telecoms project. They were so deep in the shit[2] that most
of them hadn\'t even noticed they were implementing an FSM

Probably badly. It\'s possible to do a bad FSM in hardware, too.

Oh, yeah; one of my old lab-control function generators was set up
with a sequencer that relied on one monostable triggering another...
and every once in a while it\'d get into a forbidden state
with nothing happening.

A guru from down the hall advised me (too late; I\'d found and fixed the
problem) to read up on finite state machines... and synchronous logic,
too.

A lab neighbour of mine in grad school, John Fox (who later went on to
do great things in beam cooling for particle accelerators), built an
acoustic microscope that did its sequencing like that.(*)

One monostable to gate the TX pulse, one for the round-trip delay, one
for the RX gate.

A digital delay generator would be the right way to do it for a
temporary setup. (Plug for the Highland P400, which I use quite a
bit--back at IBM I had one of the older SRS ones, which wasn\'t as good.)

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

(*) It might have been the other guy that shared his lab--Larry
somebody, I forget.

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510

http://electrooptical.net
http://hobbs-eo.com

 

[server]

On Fri, 17 Jul 2020 02:41:41 -0700 (PDT), Michael Terrell
<terrell.michael.a@gmail.com> wrote:

>For many of us, surplus stores or mail order were the only source for parts. Dayton was full of distributors who didn\'t sell to individuals. Some would only sell to industrial accounts.

I was lucky as a kid. My uncle gave me dead TVs and radios, and Radio
Parts Corp (on Lee Circle, a streetcar ride from my house) would sell
to anyone, and usually gave me the parts for free. One day the owner
Irv Levy gave me a 10-turn pot and dial. Radio Parts is gone, and so
is Lee Circle.

It was not unusual in those days to see a dead tube TV out on the
street, or know a neighbor who wanted to get rid of one. So tv-type
parts were free.



--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

Science teaches us to doubt.

Claude Bernard

 

[server]

On Fri, 17 Jul 2020 02:41:41 -0700 (PDT), Michael Terrell
<terrell.michael.a@gmail.com> wrote:

>For many of us, surplus stores or mail order were the only source for parts. Dayton was full of distributors who didn\'t sell to individuals. Some would only sell to industrial accounts.

I was lucky as a kid. My uncle gave me dead TVs and radios, and Radio
Parts Corp (on Lee Circle, a streetcar ride from my house) would sell
to anyone, and usually gave me the parts for free. One day the owner
Irv Levy gave me a 10-turn pot and dial. Radio Parts is gone, and so
is Lee Circle.

It was not unusual in those days to see a dead tube TV out on the
street, or know a neighbor who wanted to get rid of one. So tv-type
parts were free.



--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

Science teaches us to doubt.

Claude Bernard

 

[server]

On Fri, 17 Jul 2020 02:41:41 -0700 (PDT), Michael Terrell
<terrell.michael.a@gmail.com> wrote:

>For many of us, surplus stores or mail order were the only source for parts. Dayton was full of distributors who didn\'t sell to individuals. Some would only sell to industrial accounts.

I was lucky as a kid. My uncle gave me dead TVs and radios, and Radio
Parts Corp (on Lee Circle, a streetcar ride from my house) would sell
to anyone, and usually gave me the parts for free. One day the owner
Irv Levy gave me a 10-turn pot and dial. Radio Parts is gone, and so
is Lee Circle.

It was not unusual in those days to see a dead tube TV out on the
street, or know a neighbor who wanted to get rid of one. So tv-type
parts were free.



--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

Science teaches us to doubt.

Claude Bernard

 

[server]

On Fri, 17 Jul 2020 09:29:54 -0400, Phil Hobbs
<pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-07-17 02:25, whit3rd wrote:
On Thursday, July 16, 2020 at 1:02:15 PM UTC-7, John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 20:43:45 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:


I once did a \"company lecture\" to a group that was building
a telecoms project. They were so deep in the shit[2] that most
of them hadn\'t even noticed they were implementing an FSM

Probably badly. It\'s possible to do a bad FSM in hardware, too.

Oh, yeah; one of my old lab-control function generators was set up
with a sequencer that relied on one monostable triggering another...
and every once in a while it\'d get into a forbidden state
with nothing happening.

A guru from down the hall advised me (too late; I\'d found and fixed the
problem) to read up on finite state machines... and synchronous logic,
too.

A lab neighbour of mine in grad school, John Fox (who later went on to
do great things in beam cooling for particle accelerators), built an
acoustic microscope that did its sequencing like that.(*)

One monostable to gate the TX pulse, one for the round-trip delay, one
for the RX gate.

That\'s not going to be very accurate but doesn\'t really constitute a
proper hairball.

A guy we met designed some horrific stuff for detecting tin droplets.
Excepting present company, physicists should be forbidden by law from
ever designing electronics. Chemists, also; I have stories about that
too.

A digital delay generator would be the right way to do it for a
temporary setup. (Plug for the Highland P400, which I use quite a
bit--back at IBM I had one of the older SRS ones, which wasn\'t as good.)

The SRS boxes are, at the human interface level, all diabolical. Some
of the circuits are ghastly too.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

(*) It might have been the other guy that shared his lab--Larry
somebody, I forget.

When I was young and stupid, I designed sequential hairball logic,
with RCs and one-shots and things. Well, parts were expensive. Then a
vet of TI showed me state machines. At TI, they were not allowed to
use the presets or clears of flops, even at powerup. He designed
politically correct monsters.

I still design async hairball logic now and then, and still like
one-shots. Sometimes it works.

One big mistake that people make in state machines, hardware or
software, is not latching all the inputs broadside at entry time. In
software, one common mistake is not understanding, and accounting for,
all the possible states.


--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

Science teaches us to doubt.

Claude Bernard

 

[server]

On Fri, 17 Jul 2020 09:29:54 -0400, Phil Hobbs
<pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-07-17 02:25, whit3rd wrote:
On Thursday, July 16, 2020 at 1:02:15 PM UTC-7, John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 20:43:45 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:


I once did a \"company lecture\" to a group that was building
a telecoms project. They were so deep in the shit[2] that most
of them hadn\'t even noticed they were implementing an FSM

Probably badly. It\'s possible to do a bad FSM in hardware, too.

Oh, yeah; one of my old lab-control function generators was set up
with a sequencer that relied on one monostable triggering another...
and every once in a while it\'d get into a forbidden state
with nothing happening.

A guru from down the hall advised me (too late; I\'d found and fixed the
problem) to read up on finite state machines... and synchronous logic,
too.

A lab neighbour of mine in grad school, John Fox (who later went on to
do great things in beam cooling for particle accelerators), built an
acoustic microscope that did its sequencing like that.(*)

One monostable to gate the TX pulse, one for the round-trip delay, one
for the RX gate.

That\'s not going to be very accurate but doesn\'t really constitute a
proper hairball.

A guy we met designed some horrific stuff for detecting tin droplets.
Excepting present company, physicists should be forbidden by law from
ever designing electronics. Chemists, also; I have stories about that
too.

A digital delay generator would be the right way to do it for a
temporary setup. (Plug for the Highland P400, which I use quite a
bit--back at IBM I had one of the older SRS ones, which wasn\'t as good.)

The SRS boxes are, at the human interface level, all diabolical. Some
of the circuits are ghastly too.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

(*) It might have been the other guy that shared his lab--Larry
somebody, I forget.

When I was young and stupid, I designed sequential hairball logic,
with RCs and one-shots and things. Well, parts were expensive. Then a
vet of TI showed me state machines. At TI, they were not allowed to
use the presets or clears of flops, even at powerup. He designed
politically correct monsters.

I still design async hairball logic now and then, and still like
one-shots. Sometimes it works.

One big mistake that people make in state machines, hardware or
software, is not latching all the inputs broadside at entry time. In
software, one common mistake is not understanding, and accounting for,
all the possible states.


--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

Science teaches us to doubt.

Claude Bernard

 

[server]

On Fri, 17 Jul 2020 09:29:54 -0400, Phil Hobbs
<pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-07-17 02:25, whit3rd wrote:
On Thursday, July 16, 2020 at 1:02:15 PM UTC-7, John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 20:43:45 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:


I once did a \"company lecture\" to a group that was building
a telecoms project. They were so deep in the shit[2] that most
of them hadn\'t even noticed they were implementing an FSM

Probably badly. It\'s possible to do a bad FSM in hardware, too.

Oh, yeah; one of my old lab-control function generators was set up
with a sequencer that relied on one monostable triggering another...
and every once in a while it\'d get into a forbidden state
with nothing happening.

A guru from down the hall advised me (too late; I\'d found and fixed the
problem) to read up on finite state machines... and synchronous logic,
too.

A lab neighbour of mine in grad school, John Fox (who later went on to
do great things in beam cooling for particle accelerators), built an
acoustic microscope that did its sequencing like that.(*)

One monostable to gate the TX pulse, one for the round-trip delay, one
for the RX gate.

That\'s not going to be very accurate but doesn\'t really constitute a
proper hairball.

A guy we met designed some horrific stuff for detecting tin droplets.
Excepting present company, physicists should be forbidden by law from
ever designing electronics. Chemists, also; I have stories about that
too.

A digital delay generator would be the right way to do it for a
temporary setup. (Plug for the Highland P400, which I use quite a
bit--back at IBM I had one of the older SRS ones, which wasn\'t as good.)

The SRS boxes are, at the human interface level, all diabolical. Some
of the circuits are ghastly too.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

(*) It might have been the other guy that shared his lab--Larry
somebody, I forget.

When I was young and stupid, I designed sequential hairball logic,
with RCs and one-shots and things. Well, parts were expensive. Then a
vet of TI showed me state machines. At TI, they were not allowed to
use the presets or clears of flops, even at powerup. He designed
politically correct monsters.

I still design async hairball logic now and then, and still like
one-shots. Sometimes it works.

One big mistake that people make in state machines, hardware or
software, is not latching all the inputs broadside at entry time. In
software, one common mistake is not understanding, and accounting for,
all the possible states.


--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

Science teaches us to doubt.

Claude Bernard

 

[server]

Well, MECI made it to the Grand Daughter, and she did the best she could.
Now my only excuse to ever go to Dayton will be the National Museum of the US Airforce and a really good sub shop down town. The problem was their parts stock was stuck in the 40\'s, 70s and 80s.. But still have many fond memories. Whomever got the \"vacuum tube\" room at auction is now wealthy.

There is still HGR Industrial in Cleveland with some serious test instruments and machine tools, Electronic Surplus Inc, in Cleveland is now web only but the semiconductor stock is amazing, Midwest Electronics on the other side of Dayton by the AF base, and JDM Surplus in Crestline which does both walk in and Ebay...

Steve

 

[server]

Well, MECI made it to the Grand Daughter, and she did the best she could.
Now my only excuse to ever go to Dayton will be the National Museum of the US Airforce and a really good sub shop down town. The problem was their parts stock was stuck in the 40\'s, 70s and 80s.. But still have many fond memories. Whomever got the \"vacuum tube\" room at auction is now wealthy.

There is still HGR Industrial in Cleveland with some serious test instruments and machine tools, Electronic Surplus Inc, in Cleveland is now web only but the semiconductor stock is amazing, Midwest Electronics on the other side of Dayton by the AF base, and JDM Surplus in Crestline which does both walk in and Ebay...

Steve

 

[server]

Well, MECI made it to the Grand Daughter, and she did the best she could.
Now my only excuse to ever go to Dayton will be the National Museum of the US Airforce and a really good sub shop down town. The problem was their parts stock was stuck in the 40\'s, 70s and 80s.. But still have many fond memories. Whomever got the \"vacuum tube\" room at auction is now wealthy.

There is still HGR Industrial in Cleveland with some serious test instruments and machine tools, Electronic Surplus Inc, in Cleveland is now web only but the semiconductor stock is amazing, Midwest Electronics on the other side of Dayton by the AF base, and JDM Surplus in Crestline which does both walk in and Ebay...

Steve

 

[server]

If this trend continues indefinitely, all the big box stores will be taken over by a single big box store, either Costco or Walmart. Who will it be?

--

Rick C.

There will not be a Big Box left other then for food and lumber. Amazon around here is taking over EVERYTHING.

Steve

 

[server]

If this trend continues indefinitely, all the big box stores will be taken over by a single big box store, either Costco or Walmart. Who will it be?

--

Rick C.

There will not be a Big Box left other then for food and lumber. Amazon around here is taking over EVERYTHING.

Steve

 

[server]

If this trend continues indefinitely, all the big box stores will be taken over by a single big box store, either Costco or Walmart. Who will it be?

--

Rick C.

There will not be a Big Box left other then for food and lumber. Amazon around here is taking over EVERYTHING.

Steve

 

[amdx]

On 7/16/2020 10:30 AM, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 10:27:51 -0400, Ingvald44 <noone@nowhere.com
wrote:

On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 02:15:56 -0700 (PDT), Michael Terrell
terrell.michael.a@gmail.com> wrote:

They had a website and the sold on Ebay. The website was meci.com. they weren\'t overpriced, or they wouldn\'t have lasted 75years.
I think Fair Radio Sales in Lima OH is still aliive. Maybe not for
long though. I have bought lots of Mil surplus stuff from them.
I bought a 4FP7 CRT from them when I was a kid, a WWII radar display
tube. I recently emailed them, and they still have some! I got one
just for fun. It glows in the dark.

 20 + years ago I visited Caltech, while exploring the city (Pasadena),
I ran across a surplus seller that we had bought from using their
catalog back in Florida.

It was a surprise to see the store and I enjoyed the visit. I don\'t know
if they are still in business.

I found it, it was C & H Sales. The store is now closed, they moved, but
the have an online presence.

Mikek


--
This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
https://www.avast.com/antivirus

 

[Michael Terrell]

WPAFB. It was about 50 years ago, the last time that I was there. The same for the Army museum a g Ft. Rucker, Alabama.

 

[Michael Terrell]

WPAFB. It was about 50 years ago, the last time that I was there. The same for the Army museum a g Ft. Rucker, Alabama.

 

[server]

On Fri, 17 Jul 2020 12:35:18 -0500, amdx <amdx@knology.net> wrote:

On 7/16/2020 10:30 AM, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 10:27:51 -0400, Ingvald44 <noone@nowhere.com
wrote:

On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 02:15:56 -0700 (PDT), Michael Terrell
terrell.michael.a@gmail.com> wrote:

They had a website and the sold on Ebay. The website was meci.com. they weren\'t overpriced, or they wouldn\'t have lasted 75years.
I think Fair Radio Sales in Lima OH is still aliive. Maybe not for
long though. I have bought lots of Mil surplus stuff from them.
I bought a 4FP7 CRT from them when I was a kid, a WWII radar display
tube. I recently emailed them, and they still have some! I got one
just for fun. It glows in the dark.



 20 + years ago I visited Caltech, while exploring the city (Pasadena),
I ran across a surplus seller that we had bought from using their
catalog back in Florida.

It was a surprise to see the store and I enjoyed the visit. I don\'t know
if they are still in business.

I found it, it was C & H Sales. The store is now closed, they moved, but
the have an online presence.

Mikek

There was a surplus store in Los Alamos that sold stuff from LANL, the
original bomb lab. I got a Krytron there. They had all sorts of stuff,
some sold by the lab by mistake.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/7vkdemdk48k3myd/Kry_Danger.jpg?raw=1

It was fun to poke through the surplus stores.





--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

Science teaches us to doubt.

Claude Bernard

 

[server]

On Fri, 17 Jul 2020 12:35:18 -0500, amdx <amdx@knology.net> wrote:

On 7/16/2020 10:30 AM, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 10:27:51 -0400, Ingvald44 <noone@nowhere.com
wrote:

On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 02:15:56 -0700 (PDT), Michael Terrell
terrell.michael.a@gmail.com> wrote:

They had a website and the sold on Ebay. The website was meci.com. they weren\'t overpriced, or they wouldn\'t have lasted 75years.
I think Fair Radio Sales in Lima OH is still aliive. Maybe not for
long though. I have bought lots of Mil surplus stuff from them.
I bought a 4FP7 CRT from them when I was a kid, a WWII radar display
tube. I recently emailed them, and they still have some! I got one
just for fun. It glows in the dark.



 20 + years ago I visited Caltech, while exploring the city (Pasadena),
I ran across a surplus seller that we had bought from using their
catalog back in Florida.

It was a surprise to see the store and I enjoyed the visit. I don\'t know
if they are still in business.

I found it, it was C & H Sales. The store is now closed, they moved, but
the have an online presence.

Mikek

There was a surplus store in Los Alamos that sold stuff from LANL, the
original bomb lab. I got a Krytron there. They had all sorts of stuff,
some sold by the lab by mistake.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/7vkdemdk48k3myd/Kry_Danger.jpg?raw=1

It was fun to poke through the surplus stores.





--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

Science teaches us to doubt.

Claude Bernard

 

[server]

On Fri, 17 Jul 2020 12:35:18 -0500, amdx <amdx@knology.net> wrote:

On 7/16/2020 10:30 AM, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 10:27:51 -0400, Ingvald44 <noone@nowhere.com
wrote:

On Thu, 16 Jul 2020 02:15:56 -0700 (PDT), Michael Terrell
terrell.michael.a@gmail.com> wrote:

They had a website and the sold on Ebay. The website was meci.com. they weren\'t overpriced, or they wouldn\'t have lasted 75years.
I think Fair Radio Sales in Lima OH is still aliive. Maybe not for
long though. I have bought lots of Mil surplus stuff from them.
I bought a 4FP7 CRT from them when I was a kid, a WWII radar display
tube. I recently emailed them, and they still have some! I got one
just for fun. It glows in the dark.



 20 + years ago I visited Caltech, while exploring the city (Pasadena),
I ran across a surplus seller that we had bought from using their
catalog back in Florida.

It was a surprise to see the store and I enjoyed the visit. I don\'t know
if they are still in business.

I found it, it was C & H Sales. The store is now closed, they moved, but
the have an online presence.

Mikek

There was a surplus store in Los Alamos that sold stuff from LANL, the
original bomb lab. I got a Krytron there. They had all sorts of stuff,
some sold by the lab by mistake.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/7vkdemdk48k3myd/Kry_Danger.jpg?raw=1

It was fun to poke through the surplus stores.





--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

Science teaches us to doubt.

Claude Bernard