How about a post that has nothing political in it?
How about a post that is instructional and interesting?
Think I can do it?
Me personally, sometimes I feel like someone is going to have to develop a twelve step program to break the addiction of collecting and repairing these things. Truth be known some of these are highly collectable and some are well, just not.
I am guessing that if one saves them long enough the radios that are not collectable today will be at some point in the future.
To that end, I collect those that are “collectible” today as well as radio’s that are unique or sought after for some reason ie the Owl Radio from Clash of the Titans.
More often than not I will purchase a collection of radio’s from different sources. I might purchase the entire collection because one of the radio’s in that collection is collectable or I might get them because I need parts that I know they will render.
The bottom line is the case must be intact. It must look good with no cracks etc. If it is busted all to hell it turns into a parts piece and devalued substantially.
Today I worked on a radio that was marketed to the US although it is typically marketed to the Russians.
Repaired, aligned and cleaned up….
Someone had worked on it sometime in the past as the slugs were all out of place. I guess it is terribly irresistible to resist putting a screwdriver in the transformers and trimmer caps, as I get more radio’s that have been tweaked, by someone with a screwdriver, instead of the proper alignment tool.
Having said that this radio defies common logic, in that the wire colors that we come to expect over here in the states is backwards. Red which normally denotes positive, was the negative lead and of course that made the black wire positive.
When I first apply power to one of these radios I do so with a variable supply. Turning the radio on first, then slowly increasing the voltage from 0 to whatever the voltage should be whether it be 3,6 or 9 volts or somewhere in between. The trick is to have a power supply with an amp meter.
Most transistor radios draw very little current. If you start to raise the voltage and the current starts to jump and maybe hold at 10 milliamps or so, check your polarity.
Bottom line is that after I figured out that the power leads are opposite of what one might expect the next thing needed was an alignment.
In most radio’s like this you start with injecting a signal at 455khz. After tuning the proper transformer and trimmer cap for this, than I move on to tweaking the rest of them for maximum sensitivity at 1600, 55 and finally around 800khz.
The process takes less than a five minutes and when finished the radio is as good as new.
Most of these vintage electronics need new caps “electrolytic capacitors.” Caps made in the day were expensive so the manufacturers used the minimums that they could get by with. Tracing and/or injecting a signal one can usually tell which if any caps are bad, and within moments, have the audio back to where it should be.
Radio needing new caps.
Some of the newer capacitors on the market are NP or non-polarized! Too often I pull out and old cap to find I did not remember which direction to install the new one as I need to keep the negative and positive leg in the correct holes. With NP caps simply install them and move on.
I suggest that you take pictures before taking too much apart as without a print if a wire pops off, you can have a devil of a time figuring out where it went.
Six transistor radio’s are the most common and really all you need to pull in strong station and actually differentiate between the different stations without too much overlap.
Eight Transistor Radios have much better sensitivity and are able to differentiate strong stations from weak ones thus, you can have much better selectivity. My favorite radio to actually keep batteries in are the 8 transistor variety.
Some manufacturer’s in the day found that they could use the PN junction as a diode but yet claim that they had 10, 12 or even 16 transistors! The unknowing public equated that to the “jewels in a watch.” The more the better and so they had a gimmick until some government agency clamped down on them. If the transistor is being used as a diode it cannot be counted as a transistor.
Ross to name just one of the brands was one of the manufacturers that became famous for this tactic.
Shortly after Bell labs came out with the transistor Raytheon and a company named Idea came out with the first transistor radio. It was know as the Regency TR-1.
These are highly collectible even today. Around $100 might get you one that the case is basically in tact.
This is a nice looking example of the TR-1
Before this portable radio’s were tube based and used two different batteries to play them. One of the I believe was a high voltage battery known as the “B” battery, and one drove the filaments and I think it was 1.5 volts.
I have a few of these but, with no availability of the B battery, I think that other than something to sit on a shelf; it is a waste of time and energy to collect. Your mileage may vary…
If I get enough interest I might post more radio stuff in the future as I work on many of these and it is a hobby.
See, no political rhetoric on this post, I can do it! 🙂
Premature failed LED bulbAs an electronics guy, when something fails I like to figure out what failed and then why.
When lights fail, well they just fail!
Not so much with the CFL or LED variety.
LED bulb with clear dome etched by some sort of out gassing from something.Today I want to examine this bulb, an LED bulb that did not last the advertised amount of time by any stretch of the imagination.
The first thing to notice that there was some sort of out-gassing during its use which adhered to the inside of the plastic dome and actually etched the plastic in such a way that it is no longer translucent but rather opaque even after I cleaned it with 409.
The reason I pulled it apart is that it became dim.
Here you can see the electronics of the LED bulb and possibly you can see the loose leg of the electrolytic capacitor.After disassembling it, I found that the electrolytic capacitor had become un-soldered on one of its legs.
Re-soldering it and re-assembling it, the bulb became bright again for about a minute until it flickered and quit.
Bulb working after repair Same bulb flickering before second failureRemoving and testing the capacitors they were both in tolerance and I suspect OK.
Testing electrolytic cap,Checking the LED’s one by one, I found one that was dead. As I tested each with a DVM the good LEDS would slightly illuminate. 98% of these when biased correctly would illuminate properly. One of them was much dimmer than the rest, and one of them would not light at all.
Dead LED at the end of my thumbIf I were of the mind to, I could replace the dead LED and the dim LED and I would guess I would obtain more hours of life out of the collective bunch of LED’s
LED lights being in series to me says that when one fails, the light is dead and trashed. Much like that lousy string of Christmas lights that are a real bugger to keep going.
Dead bulb from another angle IF you look carefully you can see some brown substance near the end of the last LED, I think that is the chemical that is responsible for the out-gassing and subsequent pitting of the plastic dome.
Does it make financial sense to “repair” light bulbs?
Will dead LED bulbs fill the garbage dumps with the same frequency of regular light bulbs or CFL bulbs?
The good news about LED bulbs is that there is no lead in the solder as it is Tin.
I would be interested in knowing what actually out-gassed from the light during its use?
What actually pitted or etched the plastic?
Looking closely you will see what looks like flux, that suggest that there is heat generated with use.
Here is a closer look at the dead LED and the brown substance.I am thinking about holding on to this bulb and when another like it fails, making one out of two, just because. Is my time worth more than this, of course it is! Does this interest me enough to prove a point? Yes.
While LED bulbs will save you cost in operation, will that cost be offset by the cost and reliability of the bulb? Even though there is a warranty on these bulbs as well as CFL bulbs, do you know anyone that puts a date on them when installed and then keeps up with the sales slip in case they don’t last the warranty? I don’t think that you can prove much, and it would really be up to the benevolence of the store where you purchased them from to replace your product..
Big corporations really suck when they go the extra mile forcing one to buy expensive stuff.
Under the guise of “saving the planet” we have lost it!
First off let me just rant a little about the planet. The Earth has been around 4.5 billion years. Man has been around for about 6 million of those years but, we only have we been a “threat” to the planet the last 150 years or so.
When I say threat, not really. One lucky strike from a meteor and we are done! Toast,the next life form to take hold will hopefully be more evolved than some of our peers who think money is the answer to everything no matter who they screw!
Industrialization is claimed to be the largest threat to the planet along with the ever increasing population. I agree that millions of people all creating waste emissions from gasses to solids, probably are not doing the earth any good but, do you really for just one minute think that one Volcano, or large fire does not do as much if not more damage to the eco-system than man?
There is a super volcano that is due to erupt any moment in Yellow stone park. When that bad boy goes off it will be a life changer!
Then tell me about coal power plants or Gas guzzling SUv’s.
Despite High Emissions, New Coal Power Plants Planned in Germany…AACHEN, GERMANY – MAY 15: Behind the open-pit coal mine Gartzweiler exhaust rises from cooling towers at the lignit coal-fired power stations Frimmersdorf, Neurath and Niederaussem May 15, 2007 near Aachen, Germany. The four German major energy providers Vattenfall, RWE, E.on and EnBW plan to invest more than 30 billion euros in construction and infrastructure of cole conducted power plants in Germany. (Photo by Ralph Orlowski/Getty Images)
Yes, we are burning fossil fuels “dinosaurs” to heat and cool our homes and to drive our gas burning vehicles to and from the job and what have you.
If you really want to solve global warming first you really need to get truthful with the numbers, and facts, as what has been published thus far is to push a “carbon credit agenda” to make the rich richer and in the end is simply another tax!
Now, back to bulbs.
Edison through trial and error “brute force” came up with an incandescent light bulb.
The typical light in your home burns 60 watts of electricity.
It took me a few minutes to do the math for you, so here it is in a spreadsheet.
You can do any further multiplication you like, as in how many of these bulbs do you have and how long do you really leave them on.
The 100 and the 60 are representing incandescent “old school” bulbs.
The 12 is representing a CFL bulb and the 3 watt is representing the LED variety.
Basing the cost per kilowatt hour at 8.5 cents, this is what it would look like to run one bulb for a year never turning it off.
So, if you want to save the earth…or money, lets look at how and where you would put what kind of bulb.
Here is the bulb that failed prematurely. Notice the black around the inside of the plastic. This thing got hot before it stopped working and the important part of this is that the fuse did not blow!
I also think that we were pushed into using them by congress via some backroom dealwith GE or some other maker of these things through the good folks at AVE K,you know lobbyist. Like republicans or not, this was a GW Bush thing and I think it smells.
CFL or any fluorescent bulb must stay on for a minimum of 15 minutes or you shorten the life of the bulb. That means, don’t put them in places that you turn the light on for a few moments and then off again. CFL or fluorescent tubes should go into places that you energize them, and then leave them on for hours, like a kitchen, family room or porch light.
This bulb died because the capacitor died. If you look at it you will see that it has bubbled up on the top. Checking the capacitor it is non functional.
GE must have purchased a plethora of bad capacitors from China!
If you look at the actual glass you will notice that there is no black around the base, this bulb died way too young…
LED bulbs don’t just quit “usually” unlike an incandescent of fluorescent. They grow dim over time as they age and one day you will notice that it is not very bright, and replace it. I like them in bathrooms and closets, desk lights and lights in areas where I don’t want a lot of heat generated.
LED bulb replacing CFL bulb which replaced an incandescent bulb.
The average cost of a CFL or LED bulb however is much higher than its incandescent counterpart.
While they have come down in price, they are still no where as inexpensive as an incandescent.
A box of 4 or even 6 on sale, was around $1. The CFL is around $2 each but that is now. When they first came out they were about $4 each. As other manufacturers entered into the arena the price came down.
The same is true of LED bulbs. These bulbs can get downright pricey!
As far as function goes we have the incandescent with fewest complications. A filament across the two electrodes sealed into a vacuum. Apply the right voltage and suitable current that the filament will light and there will be light, and heat!
Fluorescent is much more complex in that there is two filaments and high voltage applied which ionizes the gas inside. This gas reacts to the phosphorescent coating inside the bulb making light, And oh yes, they have mercury in them.
The CFL takes in 110 or 220 depending upon your location and converts it into the voltages and currents needed to start the process as well as maintain the process while voltage is applied. If you look inside the base of a CFL bulb you will see a host of associated circuitry to accomplish this task.
LED Bulbs are less complex in that they use minimal components to convert the voltages into the needed voltages to run the LED’s.
There is not much heat and the circuitry is not complex. LED bulbs should really be less expensive than CFL and I look for that to be the case as time marches on. Currently you are still paying for the novelty much like the early adopters of flat screen TV’s.
Pay attention to these bulbs when you buy them as they must be set up for “dimmable” circuits if you intend to use them in a legacy lighting system that had incandescent lighting in it.
It has been said that necessity is the mother of invention. Having been down that road so many times in my life, I would have to say that is one of the truest statements ever said.
The problem with this is that the system is rigged against you (the inventor.)
Back during the days of VCR’s I was one of those that went to school to learn how they worked, and how to repair them. Back in the day they were $1,200 for the cheapest, and it went up from there.
End of tape sensors back in the early day were accomplished with visible light. Tape makers would have some clear leader spliced on to the tape so when light was visible the machine would know to stop, “whatever function it was doing.”
Later in the years infrared light was used instead of visible, which made troubleshooting much more difficult. As the light was 950nm instead of the 850nm currently used in night vision cameras, there was not even the slight red glow.
As seen through a CCD camera sensitive to 950nm light 850nm infrared LED visible glow to naked eye Infrared light as soon through camera with no IR CUT functionI devised a portable infrared detector. When the test button was pushed with the sensor in the path of the infrared light a green LED would illuminate thus telling me that the emitter was not the issue. If no light was visible a red LED would illuminate thus telling me to check the voltages on the emitter “which was a job” and if present, replace the emitter, which was also a job as it was soldered in unlike the bulb which was plugged in.
This was also handy for testing remote controls as they too were using, and still do use 950nm infrared LED’s so you would get a pulsing green LED if the batteries and or remote was functioning.
In short, this was the “cat’s ass” and it was my invention.
So, now that it was built I needed to downsize it into a more portable device, like a pen.
I started the process of downsizing the electronics and was trying to figure out how to get a “housing” created for it when a family member came to visit who is “was” handy and knew certain things that I did not.
Long story short I called it the B.I.R.D. Battery operated Infrared Detector.
Before my “family member came for a visit” I wrote a letter to Sencor, which was a test instrument maker in the day. I did not divulge anything of my idea other than I had one and a working prototype that I would like to discuss with them.
The response went something like this:
Dear Mr. Taylor,
I work in the mail room and it is my job to look for and intercept letters like this and send them back to the sender.
We hire the brightest and best here at Sencor and therefor do not need input from the public as we have the best. If it is a new device that is needed, our engineers will think of it and create it and we will market it. If we don’t create it, it is not needed. “Damn what hubris!”
Thank you for your time, good day!
It was about this time my “family member came” and I shared my frustration with him. He was very interested and sympathetic. Looked over my invention as well as the schematics etc. and told me he knew some folks and would get back with me.
Of course you know the rest of the story without me typing it but….
Two months to the date of his visit in the back of one of my electronic magazines that I took, was the BIRD complete in a pen enclosure with my wording verbatim!
This family member came into copious amounts of money, and never spoke to me about the invention. Because I could not prove what happened, I did nothing but learned, never share any more inventions with even family as when money is concerned; blood means nothing.
Some of my ideas over the years were too grandiose for me to create a prototype of, and some are as simple as the following:
I am a technician by trade, but an engineer at heart. While working at many companies in my life, I have re-engineered their inventions. Many of those modifications have been incorporated into their products making them better. Working for them however; you get your paycheck, and maybe a pat on the back, and maybe a $200 American ExpressCheck thank you check! Don’t spend it all at one place….
Dyson Vacuums’ is another company that I contacted because their product lacks in certain design areas, and I really thought that they could benefit from my ideas. I am a nice guy, had they treated me with any respect I might have given them the damned ideas.
I wrote them a letter regarding some ideas I had for their product and not unlike the letter from Sencor, they too were rather insulting with their response. They too hire the brightest and best and they certainly don’t need the input from someone who actually bought one and uses it! Yes, they were about that truculent.
While I will not give the ideas for free, if at all, I would tell them that they should have their engineers and or technicians actually use their vacuums, and pay attention to all of the ways that it works. I don’t mean throw some dust on the floor and suck it up, they all do that, actually take the damned thing home and use it! I think I know the secret to why their product “sucks so well,” It starts with management…
The simple fact is that I have several ideas which some I can create myself, and some like the BIRD, I need others to add to the collective, to make it the best.
The problems with inventing are many and they start with “protecting your idea.” You can see that if a family member that you trust will screw you and then pretend that they don’t know you when the money comes in, what would others do?
A couple of years ago I wrote Apple because they needed to re-design their app so one could re-design the app layout on your phone through the Itunes app on your computer. I wrote them a nice long letter telling them what I needed, why, how it would benefit their customers and ask them to do it. Three months to the date it was done. Do you think I even got a thank you from them? Some employee at apple I am certain read the letter and said, wow, what a great idea and submitted it from him or herself.
I needed it done so it was the most expedient way to get it done. I have written them since on this blog with ideas because let’s face it, they hire the brightest and best and don’t need you or I telling them anything….. Did I mention that I actually met Steve Jobs years ago when I was working on NEXT computers, I wonder if he was British at heart?
Now, let’s revisit the BIRD and let’s say, I wanted to protect the idea.
You go downtown wherever and find a patent attorney, have them sign a non-disclosure so you can talk with him or her and then basically tell them what you are up to.
They either listen intently or they pretend to listen waiting to see if you can fork over a check to retain them. Back when I first checked on this for an idea I had for a security device for all of the world’s airports and government buildings, this is the way it went down.
“I will need a check for $10,000 to start the process.” For any country that you want it protected in other than the US; that is another $3,000. For arguments sake that is 196 countries. So for another $588,000 we stand a pretty good chance of protecting your idea but, we have to catch them stealing your idea and then we have to take them to court and with luck before they saturate the place with a knock off of your idea, maybe we can get the courts to get an injunction and stop them from creating any more widgets (in that country) while they drag it through the courts for years all the while selling the widgets that they have already created or are having created in other countries that you have not caught them doing so yet. You might be able to do your own patent search these days but I would suspect that the attorney will have to do it officially via some flunky intern and charge you as if they personally did it.
Now, maybe you have some appreciation why I have been known to give ideas away, just to get the damned thing out there as the world needs it. I have actually tweeted ideas to the whole Effing world just to get the thing done!
Much like the artist that creates a masterpiece does not get the accolades or the dollars that it is worth, I think the same is true of the inventors. Someone somewhere at some time in the future may benefit from it, but not you, so the question that has to be asked, why?
Farnsworth was screwed by RCA on the Television / video camera and while he had an ok life, RCA got the patent and profited through licensing such inventions. Tesla was a genius but had no business acumen; he too was screwed by the greedy bastards of the world including Edison, and died poor and somewhat nuts!
Farnsworth the guy who invented TV This out of the box thinker is a personal hero of mine…I hesitate to even mention the vultures that want you to buy their easy patent guide. The simple facts are that a lot of inventions go nowhere. Some might end up on those late night commercials with “but wait” as the tag line but, some people just need to be told the truth. The folks that will take your money to “help you” are in business to “take your money.” Much like the companies that are in business for those that want to write a book. No publisher will touch them “because they suck, or are too much of a risk, or an unknown,” so people spend thousands to self-publish! Some actually promote their books through enough different outlets to break even; but not really. They have failed to include their time and efforts into selling the 500 copies that they had to buy in the first place. The simple facts are inventors, artist and authors are seldom objective when it comes to their project. Much like a mother with the ugliest hair covered baby you ever saw.. She will think how great the baby looks, and the husband and family will cringe and say oh yes, that is the best looking one around. (PS one of the few times it is OK to lie, not only OK but advised! another is “does this dress make me look fat!? Oh Hell No! )
Am I telling you all this to quash your dreams? Hell no! I am telling you this to give you the reader, a dose of reality,the naked truth!
Guess what, this is at no charge!
If you truly want to write there are some great books at Barns and Nobles that walk you through the process. Bottom line, start with short stories and submit them to magazines. After you get paid your $500 per story, and get published a dozen times or so; on your cover page of your manuscript you simply say published in …….
If you get that far by all means purchase the book and follow all of the guidelines including how the manuscript should look. Different publishers have different ideas of how the manuscript should look and how it should be submitted so do your research and edit edit edit…..
Does that guarantee you will get published, shit no. What it does; if the person who opens your manuscript sees “published in and the format looks acceptable…. they might read more than the cover page. Much like writing a good resume or CV, you got about 15 seconds to grab their attention and that includes the time it takes to get it out of the envelope!
By the title you can guess where I am going with this post.
I am a big boy and smart enough to know when a deal is too good to be true… Having said that some folks are just over the top dishonest.
I collect and with some luck restore, vintage electronics. I don’t do it for money; I do it because it gives me pleasure. I enjoy repairing something that someone else could not for one reason or another and… Sometimes I simply enjoy the challenge.
This is NOT the lot that I am writing about…
Small transistor radios from the 50’s and 60’s are a specialty of mine in that when I was a kid I thought that it was magic. How someone in one place could have their voice come out over a speaker in a small battery powered device well, was magic.
Thinking back on those days I wonder what I would have thought about smart phones?!
Selling and buying on eBay has its challenges and I think its opportunities for people to be a little better. With the feedback scenario it somewhat forces us to play nice; and that is a good thing.
While we should not need such a thing to play nice, that is simply the way of man. I wish it were different.
I often will purchase a “lot” of radio’s or a lot of some electronic thing that maybe I am looking for one or more of a certain kind in the lot and then sell the rest or repair them and sell them or what have you.
One such purchase was a purchase of a handful of RCA Radio’s from the 60’s.
When they arrived I opened the box and noticed straight away that they all rattled which meant that they had been taken apart. “That was not noted in the description.”
Upon taking the backs off not only had they been taken apart but they had obviously been in some sort of flood situation as they were covered on the inside with mud. “Also not noted.”
To further the “insult” some of them had parts missing from them, also not noted.
I paid a fair price for these as if they were simply “not tested.”
When someone says something like, “I don’t know how to test this.” Translated, “I did everything that I know how to do and this thing does not work!” I get that and I understand that people do this but… to sell something that has been taken apart, things removed from and oh by the way, had been under water! Folks, that is wrong on so many levels. This type of activity gives eBay itself a black eye and I think messes with the whole concept of eBay in that it is a self-policing community.
This blog is about one of those radios and how I managed to bring it back to life in-spite of the fact that it was pretty much ready for the re-cycle bin.
Taking the back off of the radio it pretty much just came apart looking as you see it.
The mud and rust are all one needs to conclude that this was under water and most probably in a flood situation as this is also the way the rest of them appeared.
Normally when water gets on electronics there is an acidic effect that actually eats the traces and I did not see that here.
Removing the circuit board and cleaning both controls with contact cleaner as well as washing the board I could then dry it and apply power to see what needed to be replaced if anything.
One small capacitor by the volume control was the only part that needed replacing. The rest was simply cleaning the mud out of the controls and doing a simple alignment.
Miraculously, the speaker just needed the dust blown out of it and while it is certainly not perfect it plays about as loud and with the fidelity that a radio of this age will have.
Here is the radio after cleaning and repairing with a new battery shield installed.
Radio after repair and cleaning.
People ask me when I am looking, what am I looking for in old electronics….
First and foremost, the case must be in tact.
The more damaged the case, the less of a collectible it is. The problem with transistor radio’s is that they are portable! Portable means that they get dropped, knocked about etc.
One of the radio’s I purchased was a Walkie talkie which I paid top dollar for. When I got it I found that it too had been under water but the board was green with corrosion and since it was surface mount technology with corrosion it was trash.
Folks, I will ding you if you knowingly sell crap. I have not had too many that I have dinged but, I expect some modicum of honesty. I sell as well as I am overly honest about what I sell as I would rather not get top dollar and have a satisfied customer than someone like me who feels the need to blog about it!
If it has been under water, tell the folks, it has been under water or under the chicken coop or what have you. the simple truth is that not everything that you own is worth anything on eBay or Craig’s list or the local junk shop. Somethings just need to be thrown away!
Had the fellow with the handful of radio’s been honest about them I might still have bid on them as the cases looked ok but at least I would have known that I was buying plastic cases that had been under water and, had parts missing!
Many people will not take returns on electronics and do you know why? People will buy them, take whatever parts off of them they were looking for and then return them as not working! So, they have screwed it up for everyone as I will certainly not take returns on electronics!
This is where it works really well if you take the time to “ding” a dishonest seller or buyer. If they do not make it right, than you know what to do.
If you have some old electronics that you would like to sell, drop me a line. I have purchased radios from all over the globe and while I am not trying for a number that would have me move out of the house to store them, I am interested in finding some that I don’t currently have. It does not have to work, it just needs to look good and have all of the parts.
How many time have you yourself searched and searched online to find the best deal?
We are all guilty of looking for the best deal and if we can save a few dollars, we are all for it. How could you not be?
The truth of the matter is, the best deal is not always the best deal.
I submit to you “Radio Shack.”
Why has Radio Shack become the latest victim to go by the wayside?
What is its competition?
As far as small components are involved they have little competition, most probably a small percentage of folks order direct from China however there are very few specialty electronic stores who specialize in small electronic components.
Fry’s electronics being one of the largest.
Small hand held or other consumer grade electronics would also be Fry’s, Best Buy, and to some extent Wall-mart to name a few.
Cell Phones have way too much competition including the carriers themselves.
Radio Shack indeed has survived past its time with all of the competition and one has to wonder how much of it actually comes from China direct.
On-line sources such as Amazon and eBay are probably responsible for more than just a few dollars going away from the retail giants here in the states and I would imagine that we will soon see legislation introduced by someone in the pocket of the large retail chains to levy heavy taxes on imports from China by way of eBay and other online partners.
eBay Logo
While the “Walmart Effect” took out the mom and pop shops all across America other big box stores will put the nail in the coffin of the smaller stores who try and sell consumer electronics.
WalMart Electronics Department
As a business Owner; I sell and service a device that is made lock stock and barrel here in the USA. Because these two companies that I represent have not farmed their stuff out overseas the prices are higher than what you would expect. The interesting thing though is that these devices last for over 10 years and even with abuse can usually be resurrected and sent back into to the office for another 10 years.
Full Rapidprint line of file mark machines.Widmer T-LED 3 Time Stamp File Mark machineWidmer Check Signing Machine 300 checks in about a minute.
One interesting aspect of this is there are Internet companies that sell a plethora of equipment including my two lines and they depend upon volume to make ends meet. Doing so, they sell with little markup and make it tough on the little guys to compete as we don’t do volume. Basically what WalMart does.
While my prices are competitive, I am not the cheapest. I provide something that most internet companies do not however, I provide service. That is service after the sale!
Many companies find me after they have had an unpleasant experience with one of my competitors and I earn their business as well. While I may not have made the original sale I get their subsequent business because I stepped up and actually lost money doing a warrantee repair for their customer!
Electrical tape has no place in these machines.
My point to all of this is simply don’t look for the cheapest, look for the best.
I build relationships with all of my clients and work hard to keep them. I must however turn a profit to stay in business.
There are times I feel like one of the last American business hold outs as I have managed to stay in business while many of my competitors are going or have gone by the wayside.
The technology involved is over 30 years old. Very few know how to repair these things as there are so many variables that must be taken into account when they are disassembled and re-assembled after the cleaning process that one missed step will cause the machine to not perform accurately.
There are no shortcuts. They might use a Band-Aid of sorts, but it is a shortcut and will not last.
There is an air-conditioning advertisement on the radio here in North Texas. They de-bunk the outrageous prices the other guys offer and then tell you to call the other guy first, check out their prices and then call them. Honesty above reproach.
I don’t know if that commercial is gaining traction, but it caught my attention as that is the way I do business.
Do business with the mom and pop companies, if you want them to stick around. Small towns all across America have vacant store fronts because of retail giants and I would submit, online direct from China.
While a huge fan of Olivia Newton John am I; that is not what this is about.
Today I want to visit with you about networking stuff, in short the physical layer of the OSI model.
Network cable is not wire!
Well technically it is wire, you cannot simply have “Jake the handyman install it!”
More than a few of my many network installations that I have troubleshot for people involved such installations.
Example one:
Company A calls me out because they have many computers simply dropping off the internet, dropping off the file servers, losing files, e-mails not downloading and the list goes on and on.
The OSI model (open system interconnect) is a hierarchical model representing the sum of how data gets from one point to another.
Layer one or the lowest layer is what I am addressing today because let’s face it, without this, ain’t nothing happening!
Bringing up a protocol analyzer it is obvious that there is trouble in river city!
Not only were there many dropped packets, tons of broadcast packets using the most basic of routing protocols looking for this or that but, there also appeared to be 5250 traffic getting into the data stream! No 5250 emulators in the day, there were separate terminals.
As the company grew the “cheap information officer” did not want to spend money on silly things like “hiring someone that did this for a living so…” he got one or two of his employees to improvise.
They did indeed. In the computer room the cable went up into the ceiling as cat5. At the wall socket to the desktop it was cat 5. Somewhere in the ceiling during the time of expansion someone spliced cat 5 onto cat 3 “electrical tape glob” and then back to cat 5 going to the wall.
I forgot to mention that they also shared a pair for the phone, even after they went to a digital phone system.
It is important to also keep in mind that unless you are using STP or “Shielded Twisted Pair” the cable has to be elevated away from sources of RF, EMI or other types of noise hence, the signal will be effected. It is a good idea to use J hooks anyway, just to keep the cable from getting in the way of future work.
The CIO was still not convinced that he should spend thousands of dollars to replace the mess so he allowed a one off repair for the most affected users. His reasoning was that in the next few years they were going to expand and at this point they would “do it right.” Never mind that screwed up packets from other workstations effected the network as a whole.
Soft dollars meant nothing to him as he was not the one experiencing the pain and if the President of the company complained he just simply blamed the people under him.
To be fair, some of the fault was theirs as they, did make the mess in order to gain favor with this idiotic boss and secondly they did stupid things like used silver satin cables as patch cables right next to each other. Yep the terminal for the AS400 and the computer.
Layer one is the bedrock. Everything must be solid or you are wasting your time.
Company B:
“I have this huge internet pipe and it is slow to the desktop, look at this!”
Indeed surfing the web was a nightmare.
Another Jake the handyman installed cable along the same paths as the electrical lines, zip tied to fluorescent lights and put switches everywhere at the end points as they got tired of running cable as the company grew.
If that were not bad enough the switches in the computer room were all daisy chained together in the back with fiber and then, someone had patched the switches together up front as well.
A quick look with the protocol analyzer showed routing loops, lost packets and the list of networking nightmares went on and on.
This was an RF technology company so there were live RF transmissions in the building around the UTP or unshielded cable. When expansions were needed the cables were tied together in the wall in much the same fashion as the previously mentioned company.
This company would have been better served to simply go all Wi-Fi with one of the many solution provided by different providers. If you don’t know what you are doing, humble yourself enough to seek help! Mistakes are costly; one of the largest dangers to company’s data today is arrogant, uninformed IT people who think that they know it all and refuse to seek help from a VAR.
In my business of disaster recovery, most of the disasters are self-imposed by “No Toes MgGrew.” Ready-Fire-Aim!
Company C is pretty much indicative of a company that does not want to pay to hire it done so they hire “Jake.” Good ole Jake has a ladder and truck and some tools to fish cables down the wall.
Jake simply bundles the cable up and pulls it from point A to B and wherever it lies it lies. Again using the cheaper UTP he simply pulls it to the final destination and then leaves it where he is told so someone else can come in and terminate it.
The owner “has a friend” who has done this before, somewhere.
Cable plants are the bedrock of your data center and the highway with which all of your data will traverse. Do you want multi-lane highways or alleys?
A word about soft dollars.
In the business world there is such a thing as soft dollars. If your employees are not able to function because of impediments of any kind it cost you money. If there are time deadlines and they are not met because of impediments of any kind, it could cost you customers.
Business today in order to stay competitive must do as much as they can with as little as they can and that means staff, product, and infrastructure and so on.
That means that everything must perform like a Swiss watch.
Not only do policies and procedure need to be in place and proper management of your IT assets but for the rest of the business as well.
The company that waste the least in time and material will be the one that survives over the competition and if publicly traded, the one that has the highest earnings for their stock holders.
Inefficiencies in organizations like, let’s say our government cannot exist in business. Unlike the government who simply prints more money to pay their bills; business cannot.
Whoever your CIO is should not only possess a high degree of technical savvy but, also a high degree of business acumen.
I will spare you the conversation about the differences between cat5 and cat 6 and cat6a and so forth, I am certain that a google search will give you more than you could ever want.
The bottom line is use STP or shielded and use the higher speed rated cable as we have no idea what the future will hold as far as data. This cable must be terminated properly, and that is an art all of its own.
Doing it right the first time may be a little more costly than hiring Jake and ordering cable off of Amazon and switches from New Egg but, the results will be far more satisfactory.
VARS do this every day so they know what to get, and why?
Some idiot in Washington DC flies a Drone or UAV or Quad copter, take your pick, in super-restricted-airspace, and crash lands on the white house lawn!
The president and staff are calling on the FAA….!?
There already is a no fly zone in Washington DC proper. That goes for anything short of a paper airplane! You cannot go into the nearest DC Radio Shack and buy one of their smallest little UAV’s and fly it outside the store without breaking the law!
I for one am glad that this low-information person did it however, as now someone might do something about regulating where these things can fly; at a federal level.
This UAV could just as easily been controlled by a bad person wishing harm to the first family. They did it at 3 AM which is already a no-no as these things are not supposed to be flown at night, even though they are equipped with night vision. Go Figure!
Since nobody asked me about this; here are some free consulting ideas for you.
As we know these are too small to be detected by radar and they literally fly under the radar so, how do we detect them?
These devices should-be-made to identify themselves in their video stream. By law, this video stream must not be encrypted in any way. I wonder if a miniature transponder could be incorporated into the design and if so, what on earth would you use to detect and identify them?
I have ideas on ways to detect these things, and disable them, or at least track them down but of course, nothing is free, and development time has a cost. I even have thought of a way to design countermeasures for these things but again, need funding to make it happen.
So, is this a kick-starter, crowd funding idea, or is this a government grant idea?
Do you realize how many tens of thousands of dollars it takes to get a patent? If you want to protect your ideas in other countries you have to spend thousands for each and every country that somebody might put a plant and build your device. This process needs to be fixed so the little guy can invent and keep his or her idea instead of some large corporation stealing it, which they do!
The media really needs to run with this story, as the people need an education!
While it is not unheard of, they are rare. Today we learned that a virus has been unleashed to attack Apple products including Iphones, Ipads and of course anything running the MAC OS.
The Virus effects MAcs and Smartphones and I suspect was written for the Chinese as they have Jailbroken their phones and are downloading apps from other sources besides ITunes.
While one could speculate that such a virus that only affects those devices that are Jailbroken might be written to punish those that do this type of thing; or to discourage those who might want to do this, you would really have to be a conspiracy nut to think this way.
That would be like thinking that most viruses are written by the folks that make the antivirus programs. Totally nuts…. right…nuts… why would they do that?….Crazy talk….! Have you purchased antivirus software lately. $50 and up for one year! With millions of computers and millions more smartphones and tablets, those that write anti-virus software have a goldmine and a half!
To write viruses one must necessarily have intimate knowledge of the code that makes up the OS. Likewise, if one wants to foil and antivirus program, one would need intimate knowledge of that code.
While I have no doubt that groups like the Russian Mob who made more money on hacking and getting information from people’s computers then selling drugs might find this work easier, some of these hacks are just crazy.
Who does this kind of thing?
I have Trend Micro for my phone and iPad and I update the OS after a short period of time that the new release has been tested by those a little more eager than I, you can still not be too careful. While I would like apps on my phone that Apple will not host, I have not even thought about jailbreaking it.
If your secret family recipe for chocolate cake is on your phone, and you want it secure; you might want to look at Trend or some other anti virus software for your MAC products. It is more than simple recipes however; people store all sorts of information on there including banking, health, credit card info, passwords for your online accounts, text messages, e-mails; all of which is vulnerable.
If you want to talk conspiracy, what if the bad guy wanted to listen in on your conversations; could the microphone be turned on, or worse yet, the camera?
How often do you find your smartphone warm to the touch and the battery almost exhausted and you have done nothing to get it that way?
There was a case not too long ago where some school sent kids home with laptops. Someone was turning on the built in cameras remotely and watching them in their home, bedrooms etc. This was most probably and immature geek that lived in his mothers basement, or was it.
Folks, smart devices have tons of information including your coordinates down to a few feet! If Apple does not make this thing where I can pull the battery; I am seriously thinking about going away from Apple to another type of smart phone that will let me A) pull the battery if I want to make certain that the thing is dead and B) change the battery “easily” when it no longer holds a charge!
The same is true of the tablet devices. These toys are for my amusement, not for some “hacker” or twisted peeping tom to use for their entertainment or source of revenue.
I have decided that the cell phone needs to be redesigned. Apple and others need to make the phone in such a way that the battery can be replaced by the end user.
These things cost hundreds of dollars and the “normal” person is ill equipped to replace their battery. Secondly and most importantly, if I want to make sure the damned thing is off when I turn it off! If I can remove the battery, I know it is indeed off. Currently these phones, tablets, and other smart devices could be hijacked by who knows who and used for nefarious purposes.
Apple, Samsung and the rest need to make this happen!
While I would truly love to have an app that would tell me what my phone is doing or has done, I am not certain that the app (log) could not be circumvented by the hijacker. The only way to know for sure is to ” kill” it!
Without electrons it cannot be hacked. Maybe people will think I am being paranoid but , I am a security guy so paranoia to some extent is a good thing. Trust no one or nothing that you don’t have 100% control over.
These devices accompany us everywhere. They live in our bedrooms, bathrooms or wherever and if hijacked , video and or audio could be transmitted to who knows where!
Give me a replaceable battery Apple! I don’t need a new $400 phone and a new contract every 2 years, I need a $10 battery!
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