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Old 6th Sep 2017, 5:49 pm   #1
stevehertz
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Default What can't you throw away?

In 1972 I built a Texan stereo amplifier with parts courtesy of my employer Thorn Automation. Naughty I know, but everyone did it and I'm sure it was the same at other electronics companies. Still doesn't make it right, I know. Anyway, the guys in the metal shop even had a clandestine production line producing chassis! The only component I couldn't beg, steal or borrow was the mains transformer. This was available (as were complete Texan kits) from Henry's Radio of Edgware Road. It was duly ordered and received. I then used the box to keep coils of coloured interconnection wire in it. It stayed that way for decades. In more recent years, in my various clearouts and storage revamps I have often looked at it and for some reason, nostalgia guess, not been able to throw it out.

What radio/electronics item have you had for seemingly 'all your life', and is probably of little value - or even use - but you just can't let it go?
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Old 6th Sep 2017, 6:30 pm   #2
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Default Re: What can't you throw away?

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Originally Posted by stevehertz View Post
'Naughty I know, but everyone did it and I'm sure it was the same at other electronics companies. Still doesn't make it right...'
Comes under the guise of 'practical autodidacticism' and any far-sighted manager recognises it as of ultimate benefit to the company. Every day is a learning day...

Me? I can't throw anything away. I have a big shed.
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Old 6th Sep 2017, 6:49 pm   #3
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Default Re: What can't you throw away?

I remember as a rookie trainee engineer at my first job, I was "beavering away" after hours building an inverter to provide power for a fancy neon bulb I'd acquired from a safe 12V.

I became aware of someone looking over my shoulder, who transpired to be the owner of the group of companies - one of whom I was working for. I was ready for a lecture on misappropriation of company resources but what I got was some guidance on why my design wasn't working properly.

I think he quite liked the fact that I'd tried to design the thing myself.
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Old 6th Sep 2017, 7:49 pm   #4
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Default Re: What can't you throw away?

The first full power / multiple channel CB radio I ever used.

It started off as a non-working PCB advertised in a 'Factory Close-Out' in the American electronics magazine 'Popular Electronics' - (Anyone remember that? A curious mixture of very simple projects and very complex articles). My Aunt had emigrated to the USA many years before, so I got her to order a couple of these things and then ship them over to me.

Starting with no specific radio knowledge at all I had to work out what was missing from the PLL synthesiser circuit - and had to buy a Sinclair PFM200 frequency meter so I could 'see' what was going on, and eventually got it working. It went through various physical incarnations eventually ending up in a very crude hand-bent hand-drilled two section aluminium enclosure which embarrasses me even today.

The last thing I did with it was to add a PIC based channel selector / frequency readout and FM modulator and Demodulator and move it to the amateur 10 metre band, some time in the nineties, but it has rarely been powered up since.

And yet I've had it for so long, I just can't see myself ever letting it go.

Along with that, the first 'computer' I ever owned, my Science of Cambridge MK14... still in running order but like most, lacking its original terrible keypad which was replaced almost immediately. It's a shame I didn't make any effort to keep the original keypad parts because if I had it would probably be worth two or three times its current (modest) value now.

For a short period of time these two items were, perhaps surprisingly, used together.

The CB radio PCB didn't come with the necessary channel selector switch which would originally have generated the required sequence of parallel binary codes for channel selection. I therefore used the MK14 (with the optional INS8154 parallel I/O port / RAM IC fitted) to generate and check the required sequence of PLL channel select codes before building dedicated hardware to do that job. Remember, this was in the days before cheap single chip microcontrollers became available. The MK14 was the ONLY programmable device I had access to at the time.
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Old 6th Sep 2017, 8:05 pm   #5
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Default Re: What can't you throw away?

And I should have added: "Anything which I might need the day after I throw it away". Hanging onto (whatever it is) is the only way to ensure you'll never need it.
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Old 6th Sep 2017, 8:30 pm   #6
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Default Re: What can't you throw away?

My first pair of SG Brown headphones.
 
Old 6th Sep 2017, 9:00 pm   #7
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Default Re: What can't you throw away?

I've lost count how many times after a clearout I've needed something that was disposed of literally days or weeks later.

The one thing i'll never get rid of is my first digital multimeter that my parents bought me for Christmas many years ago. Not the best by today's standards but still 100% working and pretty accurate, it's in my field work toolkit (not that it sees much use now!)

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Old 6th Sep 2017, 9:13 pm   #8
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Default Re: What can't you throw away?

Quote:
Originally Posted by stevehertz View Post
In 1972 I built a Texan stereo amplifier with parts courtesy of my employer Thorn Automation. Naughty I know, but everyone did it and I'm sure it was the same at other electronics companies. Still doesn't make it right, I know.
A smart engineering manager will tolerate a certain level of "foreigners", as long as it does not result in excessive consumption or equipment damage and is not carried out on company time, on the basis that those involved are (a) good engineers and developing their skills, and (b) probably going to feel slightly guilty asking for a pay rise knowing they have been costing their employers extra on the side.

I really ought to scrap my 30-year-old homemade disco console that never did get upgraded to stereo. I can probably salvage some parts from it like the two SC12Hs. It's just taking up space now; but it was such a labour of love building it up, bit by bit as and when opportunity and finances allowed .....
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Old 6th Sep 2017, 10:17 pm   #9
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Default Re: What can't you throw away?

I still have the cabinet of the first record deck (no amplifier) made by Margolin without a Dansette label - bought secondhand about 1953 for 30/- That's £1.50 today. I re-purposed the BSR single play deck in a unit I made for a local drama group with a Collaro tape deck and power amp, but kept the case which is now used to store part of my valve collection.
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Old 6th Sep 2017, 10:54 pm   #10
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Default Re: What can't you throw away?

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A smart engineering manager will tolerate a certain level of "foreigners".
Absolutely. At Racal they were known as "Home Office" jobs or "homers". Quite apt in its way.

It's human nature to want to "get away" with something. Letting it happen does more for the company than anything it might cost them.

There's usually some sort of unwritten rules about what isn't acceptable, though. Anything that needs to be bought in specially is off limits in my book. General consumables and anything lying around that has managed to gather some dust is pretty fair game. The results also need to fit in whatever cabin baggage sized briefcase/backpack that you regularly use. Regularly appearing to take your laptop home with you can be handy, too- they travel in handy cases!
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Old 6th Sep 2017, 11:09 pm   #11
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Default Re: What can't you throw away?

Not a lot from my early days in the trade survived, but two things of great sentimental value are the mullard book of pal receiver servicing and a tiny screwdriver that once belonged to my first employer as a reminder of happy far gone days, and of course my faithful avo8 mk3, not used a great deal these days but kept in good working order in it's case.
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Old 7th Sep 2017, 12:00 am   #12
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Default Re: What can't you throw away?

Quote:
Originally Posted by evingar View Post
I became aware of someone looking over my shoulder, who transpired to be the owner of the group of companies - one of whom I was working for. I was ready for a lecture on misappropriation of company resources but what I got was some guidance on why my design wasn't working properly.I think he quite liked the fact that I'd tried to design the thing myself.
You definately did not work at Plessey. There were numerous stories there of Sir Allan Clarke sacking people, which he did frequently and with great relish. The best (apocryphal?) story was about the time he told someone to go diectly to accounts, collect a weeks wages and then leave the premises immediately, and the guy did exactly that. Turns out that he was a delivery driver from one of the suppliers!

Something I definately will not part with is my first ever screwdriver, bought in Woolworths when I was 6 or 7. I want to be burried with it...

B
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Old 7th Sep 2017, 12:23 am   #13
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Default Re: What can't you throw away?

The biggest thing that I haven't used for decades (but can't part with) is my first ever scope. It's a big old Tek 585 I bought when I was a student some time around 1981/2 and I've lugged this thing to every set of digs, every rented room and every house I've lived in since. I've lugged this thing up and down so many sets of stairs over the years and I must be mad to keep doing it because I stopped using it nearly 30 years ago when I bought another scope. It's now stored in a dry garage. I often used to use it to warm my student digs and I would go to sleep to the sound and smell of the valves cooling off once I switched it off.

I've also got a big pile of old CB radios from the early 1980s. Mostly Cobra 148 GTL-DX radios from around 1981 (still in the box!) but also some other types. I just have to look at the front of a 148 and I'm a student again. I'll never use them again but I can't part with them.
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Old 7th Sep 2017, 1:28 am   #14
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Default Re: What can't you throw away?

I can remember having to work over the three days between the Christmas holidays.
I was fixing an exhaust pipe bracket for my car while everyone else was just sitting at there benches doing nothing.
The works nosyparker came into the workshop...
He heard the sound of work going on in the corner where the mechanical bench lived (known as the vice-chairman's bench because it had a huge engineers vice on it).
He asked me what I was working on so I told him it was a bracket.
He asked me what for so I said a pipe.
Then he asked me what sort of pipe so I gave up and said that it was an exhaust pipe.

He said get it finished quickly and get on with some normal work
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Old 7th Sep 2017, 2:44 am   #15
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Default Re: What can't you throw away?

Other than retaining my Thornton slide rule, purchased 1969, I still have my first ever electronic calculator, a CBM Model MM3MW Minuteman and I purchased this in 1974. Just like others here I have still retained my first DVM, a Kane-May KM28 model of around 1969/70 and I still occasionally use it.

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Old 7th Sep 2017, 3:12 am   #16
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Default Re: What can't you throw away?

Something I'll never throw are away the remains of my first working radio. The parts are in a cardboard box awaiting the missing bits which may never turn up. I shouldn't have pulled it apart in the first place, but I had to save money by reusing parts. Fortunately the first device I designed myself is still in once piece and in working order, though I don't have much use for it; it makes pulsating semi-musical noises from TTL logic chips. I was fifteen at the time, and I'm quite proud of it. Another prized item is a Science Fair #201 Electronic Project Kit, which will only go if my brother ever decides he wants it back!
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Old 7th Sep 2017, 8:19 am   #17
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Default Re: What can't you throw away?

I still have my metal-cased Avo 8, which is still used and works perfectly.
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Old 7th Sep 2017, 9:02 am   #18
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Default Re: What can't you throw away?

I have a few things but the ones coming to mind at the moment are bits from my old Philips kit I had when I was young. I remember specifically the LDR which, in time, I broke one of the leads so had to cut back the plastic case and solder on a wire. I did that a couple of time, but it still works. Looking at a photo online of one of these kits I realise that I still have many parts dotted around here and there.
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Old 7th Sep 2017, 9:51 am   #19
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Default Re: What can't you throw away?

"Absolutely. At Racal they were known as "Home Office" jobs or "homers". Quite apt in its way."
Interesting - in the UKAEA they were also known as 'homers' and their production was benevolently tolerated. I recall a supervisor leaving one evening and asking if anyone required a '108' (stores requisition) for forthcoming homers over the weekend...
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Old 7th Sep 2017, 10:13 am   #20
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Default Re: What can't you throw away?

stevehertz, I have a couple of Henry's Radio postal boxes, just like yours plus quite a few others of the same construction somewhere, that are doing a sterling job of keeping components safe and tidy. They just don't make boxes like that any more, sturdy thick cardboard stapled together, they will last forever. That can't be said for the modern dual wall 'corrugated paper' efforts which often collapse and split open in the post, or if you try to store anything in them!
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