02-27-15 15:28 Damon A. Getsman wrote to Ed Vance about Re: Using AX.25 w/older
h

 DAG> @MSGID: 
 DAG>   Re: Re: Using AX.25 w/older h
 DAG>   By: Ed Vance to Damon A. Getsman on Thu Feb 26 2015 00:23:00

Howdy! Damon,
-snip-
 EV> I got the C=64, Floppy Drive and 300 baud Modem to start out with.
 EV> I've seen how slow Tape transfers were and didn't want that, I wanted
 EV> the FDD even though it was very costly back in 1984.

 DAG>   Yeah.  :)  I was donated my first Atari, a 600XL (with a
 DAG> WHOPPING 16K of memory), and all it had was the analog tape
 DAG> drive.  God I even had 3 backups of some of my programs.  That
 DAG> medium was actually volatile enough that I had times when I
 DAG> still couldn't recover despite 3 backups.  That was horrifying.

That was a very bad experience, I've had my share of them too.

"Computers alway win because they have inside information" is a phrase
I made up.

 DAG>  Writing one hundred lines of code back then (which would come
 DAG> close to filling up the memory) really blew my mind; losing it
 DAG> was a horror.  This was very early 90s, maybe a little bit in
 DAG> the late 80s, also.  Whenever it was, 180-360k floppies were

I remember those times well.
Still have a working C=64 in this room, but I don't use it much.

 DAG> the norm, and 1.2m floppies weren't far behind, either.  Most
 DAG> people were working with 640k of memory by that time, not 16k.
 DAG> Eight-bit was definitely quickly becoming a thing of the past,
 DAG> though many still used it.

Until 1994 I only had the C=64 with 38K of BASIC memory.

 EV> I just know pieces and bits, and had help learning what I learned from
 EV> some other Hams who took their time explaining what's what to me.

 DAG>   Well I certainly do appreciate any of y'all that are taking
 DAG> the time to share bits of this all with me now.  :)

Here on FIDO there a lot of folks to get help from.
-snip-
 EV> When You get back into doing that High Voltage stuff be very very
 EV> careful and don't let it 'talk' to You.

 DAG>   Okay, I've got to ask.  I'm having mad scientist visions here
 DAG> with people falling into trances looking at tesla coil
 DAG> discharges and deciding that the truth to everything lies
 DAG> within them, thus getting fried by the human bug zapper.  I'm
 DAG> pretty sure that's not what you mean...  Can you elaborate?  :)

As I mentioned in my in my last line I was thinking of 2000 volts on
Plate circuit of a RF Final Amplifier.

 EV> Those two 10 Turn POTS came with a calibrated dial that could be locked
 EV> to keep it from moving.

 DAG>   Those 'helipots' sound pretty useful for some stuff that I'm
 DAG> trying to work on right now, I might have to see if digikey or
 DAG> some other retailer has them for a decent price.

Hope You can find them.

 EV> The VEC Test Question Pool can be downloaded from http://www.ncvec.org
 EV> if You want to study them.

 DAG>   I do very much so; synchronet has a door for it, too, but
 DAG> it'd be great to have something I could put on hardcopy, also.
 DAG> Thank you for the info!
-snip-
 EV> Yes, as long as the difference in the Mark and Space frequencies were
 EV> 170 Cycles apart, my configuration worked like "Duck Soup".

 DAG>   I am floundering to know what this means.

Amateur Radio RTTY uses a frequency shift of 170 cycles.
The old time RTTY standard was 850 cycles between Mark and Space, but 170
cycles was found to work very well.
I don't know if Commercial RTTY uses 170 cycle shift or not.
-snip-
 EV> There are many things that Hams are interested in, I've only done a
 EV> tiny bit if what Hams do.
 EV> But what I do I enjoy, You will enjoy it too, just only put one hand
 EV> in the final amplifier, keep the other one in your pocket.  
 EV> 73

 DAG>   Gotcha.  Thank you so much for the info dump.  I greatly
 DAG> appreciate it.  :) I've got lots of tabs open for things to
 DAG> look at now.  :)
 DAG>   Best wishes.

That's 73 in Ham Radio lingo.
73 to You too.
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