[Patrick Turner]

flipper wrote:

On Fri, 19 Sep 2008 03:21:21 GMT, Patrick Turner
wrote:



flipper wrote:

On Thu, 18 Sep 2008 17:14:43 GMT, Patrick Turner
wrote:



Andre Jute wrote:

On Sep 18, 10:03 am, Patrick Turner wrote:
Keithr wrote:

Patrick Turner wrote:

Maybe I need better than Mozilla Composer, something that does it
better.

snip vastly


I hope that helps.

Let's see if this line wrap setting works here. My Netscape wrap wasn't
turned on for outgoing messages but I just turned it on and a line is
over 72 things.

So just when I make a change to a wrap setting and click OK to stop
myself needing to hit enter at the end of a line, it ****ing don't
work as I type it and I still have to keep hitting enter.
I don't know how to adjust Netscape to give auto return and
line wrap while I type.

I checked mine (Seamonkey) and if you start the reply before you turn
word wrap on then it doesn't 'apply' to the message you've already
started. Same deal if you change the character count (the 72 things).
It doesn't 'change' anything you've already started.

Well before I clicked reply to your post, I made sure the wrapper was
set for ins and outs at 72. Now as I type it just runs right across the
screen and my guess is it will nicely wrapped when you see it at r.a.t.

I opend a copy of the MSW page template I have from Andre
and deleted all content so its a blank page but with
width settings intact.
Then I copied and pasted the index page content from a saved file
of last night's efforts and continued to work until it looked
just fine except the little photo I have at my index
showing a few of my things had to be put on a line of its own.
And I could not type between the picture and a margin.
If you put in an image, you shoud be able to put in anything else
in the empty page space each side of it including text without ****ing
around

Well, there are technical reasons why it doesn't work that easy.

with tables and BS. OK, there may have to be a prompt or two.
No prompts though in MSW.
How dumb is this for a web page maker? Real Dumb, I reckon.

Well, part of the problem is MSW is a word processor with a gazillion
'features', many of which that don't 'work', or have any direct
counterpart, with HTML. And they've made it so 'smart' (they think)
it's damn near impossible to use for plain old word processing as
well.

At any rate, it's excessively complex for what you're doing, unless
I've missed something.

After getting it looking right, I saved this version as
'index2' in the 'my documents' folder.

Then I opened it with IE and Firefox.

In both browsers it appeared all ****ed up with spacings
and lines and paragraphs way different to how I had it looking.

Are you saving with 'Save As' HTML or just putting an html extension
on it?


I tried doing a new index page all day in a table in Mozilla Composer
and sure, eventually I got it to sort of work.
Lotsa trouble though, and I just gave that idea up and went to plain
text, no tables,
and the revised index page browses just fine in IE and Firefox. And if I
reduce the window size its not too ****ed up.
Business as usual.

After the composing, I "save as", and it asks me for a title, in this
case 'index5'
and then wants where I want to save it,
then I choose the folder, click save, and then it goes
"do you want to replace the file with the same name" I click yes
and it overwrites the previous attempt. Maybe that happens 15 times
before
I have finished a page composition.



I just cannot handle anything else that
does not conform stricly to WYSIWYG.

If this rule is broken, the web page maker is useless to me.

So it looks like I will have to stay with Mozilla
but I don't quite know how to type to get automatically
returning text yet.

If you're using composer, just type. It'll be lines that extend from
end to end and wrap wherever the window ends.

But often I DON'T WANT lines to wrap where the program chooses. Looks
like ****.
I AM THE ONE who wants the text to begin and end where I want it.
And you can't set a variable starting or stopping wrapping place.
**** week if you ask me.



If you want to make line smaller, or put a block of text somewhere,
try this

Type your text in, then select it. Then push the "layer" button on the
tool bar (it looks like a dark sphere). That 'groups' the text and
when you put the cursor over it you'll see a faint 'box' around it
with small blocks on the corners and middle you can drag to change the
size of the block. And just to the right of the upper left corner of
the bock there's a 'move' (the whole thing) grab point so you can put
it anywhere on the page.

I just tried all that and it looks maybe useful but once you have
selected something and clicked layer
and moved that bit of text it around a bit you can't regain control of
it while your'e typing
so to me its more trouble than its worth. Another useless feature if the
text you are moving
needs to relate to typing nearby.
I never needed it before.

BUT, its not a bad feature to re-position an image slightly to suit
blank
spaces in text, so it you have typed a list on left that doesn't stretch
across the page,
then there is room for an image, and it can be moved into any position.
VERY useful, and the image don't have to relate to the text.

It can help to align things if you turn on snap to grid (but they
should have included a ruler bar too).

I just tried that, inserted a picture, then did a 'browser' (from the
tool bar) check and that works great. You can drag and drop any of
that text (as a block) to anywhere and it comes out just like it
shows.

I tried to move an image when nothing else would move it.

Works fine.

I even opened the new version of index page in my ancient old Netscape
4.7 Navigator Internet browser
and it opened just fine.


I have not got all year to become a ****ing expert on html.

I do get 500 hits a day at my site,
and from all of these over the last 3 years since
I began using Mozilla I have not had one email
about any site dysfunctional
when someone browses it.

The other thing I really don't like about inserting images
and MSW is that the images become blurred and ****ed up
when you paste them in.
You select the image after you have pasted it
and then adjust the image size.
But you never know how the size MS selected is the
quite the same as the original.

Yeah, it's 'smart'.

In Mozilla, if you copy and paste an image into a page you get
exactly that damn image, nothing is CHANGED without MY control.
MS changes the visual fidelity of the image.
I am interested in hi-fi, and like most ppl my eyes still work OK.

BTW, I looked at your two pages above, and the text looks fine,
even thought where text appears beside a schematic it is aligned
left beside the right side of the schema and sentences end
raggedly on the right hand side of the text body.

I decided to not use 'full' (left and right) justification because it
especially doesn't look good on short lines.

I played around with a lump of text with varying line lengths and
couldn't
get it better looking than "by hand" and I found the Mozilla alignment
didn't
work well to do what had in mind.

Looks OK to me.

And also BTW, if you have any tolerance of me,
allow me to say I like using terminal strips with
turrets or using hardwood 10mm x 8mm in section
with 4g brass screws placed each side of tube
sockets under the chassis. This allows many R&C components
to be better held in position and neater and wiring can be routed
more against the chassis bundled more and neater.
Then you find servicing is easier because less
gets in the way of a soldering iron.
And its easier to place components as you built the amp.
I'm just tiny bit against "rat's nest" wiring.

I understand. I'm not particularly fond of "rat's nest" wiring either
but these were 'cheap' projects and, more to the point, in very tight
enclosures with little room.

I quite like the smaller types of old tag strips they used to make
with brass terminals and phenolic strip. The best strips were fibreglass
reinforced.
Now you get cheap asian crap with thin unreinforced phenolic, usable,
but not as good as the 1955 stuff. 8 lugs 10mmm apart which gives you 6
points
not connected to the chassis. better than nothing though, and OK in a
preamp.
But often I find it awkward to find fixing points for the commercially
made tag strips
so I don't used them now and use hardwood strips and 4g x 15mm long CS
wood screws.
The timber strip is kept 4mm above the chassis with 4mm nuts used as
spacers for the 3 or 4
strip holding screws along a 300m length. The screw holes are all
drilled first so the screws are tight
but don't split the wood. Wanted screws along the line of holes are
gradually put in as you make
the circuit and the cs heads are cut off with end nippers leaving 5mm
proud of the wood and 7mm in the wood.
Soldering to these stubs heats the wood around the screw and the wood
yields a bit but don't burn.
The screw will remain for 80 years and cannot easily be pulled out.
For my crossover board in speakers I draw up the circuit on a piece of
marine plywood and
set out where things all go ( after making a rough protoboard on cheap
wood, )
and then pull all the screws straight in with a bit in a drill.
The heads can be left on, and the thing wired up with hook up
and parts siliconed down to the wood to prevent vibration.
The boards have leads to speaker driverand terminals long just enough to
allow the removal of the board
outside the box and do testing and tweakings.


Using some 8mm square section fibreglassed plastic rod would be very
good but is unobtanium around here and would cost a lot for say 20
metres which doesn't last long around here.


Compared to your site, I have much more text
and where to put the darn stuff is my bother.

Yeah. My site isn't for just 'anybody' nor a 'how to' or even full
descriptions. It's mainly to supplement the newsgroup (and other
friends of mine who like to look from time to time) since we can't
post binaries.

I keep on thinking of a million things others might like to know when
they are trying to make something.
It stops people sending me so many emails picking my brains; I wouldn't
know
what to do if I got 500 emails day asking questions. But I do get up to
5 a week.
And from unusual places around the globe; guys often are dirt poor, and
can't get the gear to make an amp
and have to make do with all second hand junk. One guy said he earned
$50 a month in Sri Lanka
working as a government clerk. It gave him access to a PC, Wowie!

He and I both knew about povety and frugality.

The good websites are frugal with words but have a wealth of meaning and
simplicity.





Patrick Turner.

[Patrick Turner]

Ian Thompson-Bell wrote:

Andre Jute wrote:
On Sep 18, 10:03 am, Patrick Turner wrote:
Keithr wrote:

Patrick Turner wrote:
Maybe I need better than Mozilla Composer, something that does it
better.
I hate paying for programs though, so what free page composer is there
that's better?
And it better deal with the issues we've raised.
Patrick Turner.
There is really nothing wrong with your web pages but if you do want to
do something more sophisticated, you could do worse than to go to
http://www.microsoft.com/express/vwd/
and download Visual Web Developer 2008 Express edition. It is a full
featured web page designer, and, strangely for Microsoft, it is entirely
free.
It may be more than you want or need, but it beats Word hands down (Word
had a very poor reputation for the quality of the HTML that it produces).
Keith
I'm so far so good with MS Word.

Ta for the tip though.

Patrick Turner.

I wouldn't touch any of the current dedicated HTML editors even with
Keith's dick. Why? After all, some are fabulously good and some are
even free. Simple: ask a more relevant question than how good or
inexpensive they are. How many *dedicated* HTML shells have been
dropped by Microsoft and others, leaving their users in the lurch,
with pages that have to be laboriously reedited -- if they are even
recoverable? Dozens. Hundreds. I always use the best, I'm vastly more
knowledgeable than most on the net, and I've still been screwed three
times in fifteen years.

Word may have its failings as an HTML editor, but you will never
discover them, Patrick. I made your template among other things to
steer you away from the lacunae in Word's adherence to the lowest
common denominator HMTL standard.

Ask yourself a simple question: Will Microsoft drop Word, its biggest-
selling application? Hardly. And those pages you're making in Word are
so simple, you'll always be able to get them back, whatever "standard"
eventually takes over. I think as a cyclist you'll live to be 90,
Patrick, and I don't see you needing anything except Word until then.

Keith should stick to his own last and butt out of what he knows
nothing about, like tubes and creating HTML pages.

***

Just for the record, for professional web design, I now recommend that
critical web materials be made in QuarkXPress (a professional page
layout programme for print that costs a couple of thousand and takes
years to learn fully,

snip

There are alternatives to expensive (Quark Express), limited (html
editors) and kludges (Word). I would recommend Serif Web Plus X2. It has
been around for many years, is well supported (you actually get two
printed manuals with it) and allows you to create great we sites without
using html (although you can if you want and use java too). It also has
flash support and various add-ons like counters, handles images, site
upload etc etc. A proper dedicated web design tool.

Cheers

Ian

With a frightfully frugal amount of complexity,
I am trying to convey a world full of meaning.

I want my site to be rather like reading RDH4.

Hardly a line of text in that book is wasted.

So like RDH4, I quite like creating something worth a read in plain
text.

Just about anyone anywhere can read a simple html doc without
any do-dahs and BS added in and often without our control in programs
that
are a bit too smart for me.

Andre tried so valiantly to convince me MS Word was great way to
make a Web page, and I guess maybe it would be if I'd found it worked
that well and easily.
But after a 3 days and nights teaching myself and seeing inexplicable
**** ups
occur when browsing an MSW prepared page in IE and Firefox and seeing
that Mozilla just didn't breed
these problems, I reluctantly returned to the far easier Mozilla with
very few
bells, and hardly any whistles, and not so much time wasted.

Patrick Turner.

[Ian Thompson-Bell]

Patrick Turner wrote:

Ian Thompson-Bell wrote:
Andre Jute wrote:
On Sep 18, 10:03 am, Patrick Turner wrote:
Keithr wrote:

Patrick Turner wrote:
Maybe I need better than Mozilla Composer, something that does it
better.
I hate paying for programs though, so what free page composer is there
that's better?
And it better deal with the issues we've raised.
Patrick Turner.
There is really nothing wrong with your web pages but if you do want to
do something more sophisticated, you could do worse than to go to
http://www.microsoft.com/express/vwd/
and download Visual Web Developer 2008 Express edition. It is a full
featured web page designer, and, strangely for Microsoft, it is entirely
free.
It may be more than you want or need, but it beats Word hands down (Word
had a very poor reputation for the quality of the HTML that it produces).
Keith
I'm so far so good with MS Word.

Ta for the tip though.

Patrick Turner.
I wouldn't touch any of the current dedicated HTML editors even with
Keith's dick. Why? After all, some are fabulously good and some are
even free. Simple: ask a more relevant question than how good or
inexpensive they are. How many *dedicated* HTML shells have been
dropped by Microsoft and others, leaving their users in the lurch,
with pages that have to be laboriously reedited -- if they are even
recoverable? Dozens. Hundreds. I always use the best, I'm vastly more
knowledgeable than most on the net, and I've still been screwed three
times in fifteen years.

Word may have its failings as an HTML editor, but you will never
discover them, Patrick. I made your template among other things to
steer you away from the lacunae in Word's adherence to the lowest
common denominator HMTL standard.

Ask yourself a simple question: Will Microsoft drop Word, its biggest-
selling application? Hardly. And those pages you're making in Word are
so simple, you'll always be able to get them back, whatever "standard"
eventually takes over. I think as a cyclist you'll live to be 90,
Patrick, and I don't see you needing anything except Word until then.

Keith should stick to his own last and butt out of what he knows
nothing about, like tubes and creating HTML pages.

***

Just for the record, for professional web design, I now recommend that
critical web materials be made in QuarkXPress (a professional page
layout programme for print that costs a couple of thousand and takes
years to learn fully,
snip

There are alternatives to expensive (Quark Express), limited (html
editors) and kludges (Word). I would recommend Serif Web Plus X2. It has
been around for many years, is well supported (you actually get two
printed manuals with it) and allows you to create great we sites without
using html (although you can if you want and use java too). It also has
flash support and various add-ons like counters, handles images, site
upload etc etc. A proper dedicated web design tool.

Cheers

Ian

With a frightfully frugal amount of complexity,
I am trying to convey a world full of meaning.

I want my site to be rather like reading RDH4.

Hardly a line of text in that book is wasted.

So like RDH4, I quite like creating something worth a read in plain
text.

Just about anyone anywhere can read a simple html doc without
any do-dahs and BS added in and often without our control in programs
that
are a bit too smart for me.


Except RDH4 is written in two columns IIRC. That's not easy to do in
HTML but quite trivial in Web Plus X2.

Andre tried so valiantly to convince me MS Word was great way to
make a Web page, and I guess maybe it would be if I'd found it worked
that well and easily.
But after a 3 days and nights teaching myself and seeing inexplicable
**** ups
occur when browsing an MSW prepared page in IE and Firefox and seeing
that Mozilla just didn't breed
these problems, I reluctantly returned to the far easier Mozilla with
very few
bells, and hardly any whistles, and not so much time wasted.

Patrick Turner.

To each his own Patrick. If it works for you then that's fine. If you do
ever fancy trying something else Serif Web Plus 8 is available free on
many CDs attached to PC mags. It does not have all the bells and
whistles of X2 but it most likely has plenty for your needs.

Cheers

Ian

[Patrick Turner]

Ian Thompson-Bell wrote:

snip

There are alternatives to expensive (Quark Express), limited (html
editors) and kludges (Word). I would recommend Serif Web Plus X2. It has
been around for many years, is well supported (you actually get two
printed manuals with it) and allows you to create great we sites without
using html (although you can if you want and use java too). It also has
flash support and various add-ons like counters, handles images, site
upload etc etc. A proper dedicated web design tool.

Cheers

Ian

With a frightfully frugal amount of complexity,
I am trying to convey a world full of meaning.

I want my site to be rather like reading RDH4.

Hardly a line of text in that book is wasted.

So like RDH4, I quite like creating something worth a read in plain
text.

Just about anyone anywhere can read a simple html doc without
any do-dahs and BS added in and often without our control in programs
that
are a bit too smart for me.


Except RDH4 is written in two columns IIRC. That's not easy to do in
HTML but quite trivial in Web Plus X2.

Andre tried so valiantly to convince me MS Word was great way to
make a Web page, and I guess maybe it would be if I'd found it worked
that well and easily.
But after a 3 days and nights teaching myself and seeing inexplicable
**** ups
occur when browsing an MSW prepared page in IE and Firefox and seeing
that Mozilla just didn't breed
these problems, I reluctantly returned to the far easier Mozilla with
very few
bells, and hardly any whistles, and not so much time wasted.

Patrick Turner.

To each his own Patrick. If it works for you then that's fine. If you do
ever fancy trying something else Serif Web Plus 8 is available free on
many CDs attached to PC mags. It does not have all the bells and
whistles of X2 but it most likely has plenty for your needs.

I'll keep everyone's input filed at the ready for use if I need to.
I might have expected that there'd be plenty of opinions forwarded when
I mentioned web site page production. Almost as many opinions as there
are combatants here at this little toobie forum of ours. In 1958, did
anyone think we'd be discussing this now with such cheap telegrams?

All is a marvel, eh.

Webplus x2 sounds like its OK for doing complex things incorporating
video streaming, discussion groups, you name it, it does it. But it
ain't free and about aud $100 for me. I'd never use or need its
potentials. Serif Web Plus 8 is more expensive at 51 BPounds.
so many bells and whistles.

I only need something that reads like a book, and has hyperlinks.

I just need to describe how ppl can understand the use of vacuum tubes
and if words and a few black and white line drawings and reader
imagination for models doesn't lead to understanding then nothing will.

And if I hade a really data heavy website that occupied far more MB and
if I got 500 hits a day like i do then the excessive download quanities
would give me excessive bills to pay, so maybe having huge sized
websites with plenty of traffic means that youse gotta be makin a dollar
or three before its worth the trouble of setting up such a site. I'm
trying to run a vehicle on the smell of an oily rag amoung folks who
hate payin a cent for anything. I reckon I'm getting many kilometres to
the litre with Mozilla.

Patrick Turner.




Cheers

Ian

[Andre Jute[_2_]]

On Sep 19, 2:49*pm, Patrick Turner wrote:

Andre tried so valiantly to convince me MS Word was great way to
make a Web page, and I guess maybe it would be if I'd found it worked
that well and easily.
But after a 3 days and nights teaching myself and seeing inexplicable
**** ups
occur when browsing an MSW prepared page in IE and Firefox and seeing
that Mozilla just didn't breed
these problems, I reluctantly returned to the far easier Mozilla with
very few
bells, and hardly any whistles, and not so much time wasted.

I know how you feel. Rather the devil you know than Bill Gates. Good
luck. -- Andre Jute

[keithr]

Patrick Turner wrote:

snip

And also BTW, if you have any tolerance of me,
allow me to say I like using terminal strips with
turrets or using hardwood 10mm x 8mm in section
with 4g brass screws placed each side of tube
sockets under the chassis. This allows many R&C components
to be better held in position and neater and wiring can be routed
more against the chassis bundled more and neater.
Then you find servicing is easier because less
gets in the way of a soldering iron.
And its easier to place components as you built the amp.
I'm just tiny bit against "rat's nest" wiring.
I understand. I'm not particularly fond of "rat's nest" wiring either
but these were 'cheap' projects and, more to the point, in very tight
enclosures with little room.

I quite like the smaller types of old tag strips they used to make
with brass terminals and phenolic strip. The best strips were fibreglass
reinforced.
Now you get cheap asian crap with thin unreinforced phenolic, usable,
but not as good as the 1955 stuff. 8 lugs 10mmm apart which gives you 6
points
not connected to the chassis. better than nothing though, and OK in a
preamp.
But often I find it awkward to find fixing points for the commercially
made tag strips
so I don't used them now and use hardwood strips and 4g x 15mm long CS
wood screws.
The timber strip is kept 4mm above the chassis with 4mm nuts used as
spacers for the 3 or 4
strip holding screws along a 300m length. The screw holes are all
drilled first so the screws are tight
but don't split the wood. Wanted screws along the line of holes are
gradually put in as you make
the circuit and the cs heads are cut off with end nippers leaving 5mm
proud of the wood and 7mm in the wood.
Soldering to these stubs heats the wood around the screw and the wood
yields a bit but don't burn.
The screw will remain for 80 years and cannot easily be pulled out.
For my crossover board in speakers I draw up the circuit on a piece of
marine plywood and
set out where things all go ( after making a rough protoboard on cheap
wood, )
and then pull all the screws straight in with a bit in a drill.
The heads can be left on, and the thing wired up with hook up
and parts siliconed down to the wood to prevent vibration.
The boards have leads to speaker driverand terminals long just enough to
allow the removal of the board
outside the box and do testing and tweakings.


Using some 8mm square section fibreglassed plastic rod would be very
good but is unobtanium around here and would cost a lot for say 20
metres which doesn't last long around here.

Personally, my preference for making tagboards is to use turret lugs
rivetted into glass fibre board. They do the job very well, you can make
them very neat and they do look a bit more professional than woodscrews.
Their only drawback is that, as they go right through the board, the
board must be stood off the chassis or anonther piece of board inserted
underneath as an insulator. If you stand the board off on insulated
pillars, you can feed connecting wires from below, even neater.

Don't know whether any of the australian dealers stock them, but Mouser
do as do turretlugs.com.uk.

Keith

[Patrick Turner]

Andre Jute wrote:

On Sep 19, 2:49 pm, Patrick Turner wrote:

Andre tried so valiantly to convince me MS Word was great way to
make a Web page, and I guess maybe it would be if I'd found it worked
that well and easily.
But after a 3 days and nights teaching myself and seeing inexplicable
**** ups
occur when browsing an MSW prepared page in IE and Firefox and seeing
that Mozilla just didn't breed
these problems, I reluctantly returned to the far easier Mozilla with
very few
bells, and hardly any whistles, and not so much time wasted.

I know how you feel. Rather the devil you know than Bill Gates. Good
luck. -- Andre Jute

Thanks for forcing me to think and change my typing style a bit so that
it isn't like an irish reel played a fidler stumbling in the dark as he
treads homewards from a pub and three full of guiness.

The Internet is changing a bit though, and people are moving beyond the
dreams of Mr Gates.One wonders if it might end up like the tower of
Babilon, and fall down upon itself but just recently there were more ppl
talking mandarin than english online.
Don't ask me how they discuss triode circuits in chinese characters.

My luck is holding, am still alive and riding, and thus hoping to
frighten sickness which would find me rough travel when i get really
going.

Patrick Turner.

[Patrick Turner]

flipper wrote:

On Fri, 19 Sep 2008 13:34:00 GMT, Patrick Turner
wrote:



flipper wrote:

On Fri, 19 Sep 2008 03:21:21 GMT, Patrick Turner
wrote:



flipper wrote:

On Thu, 18 Sep 2008 17:14:43 GMT, Patrick Turner
wrote:



Andre Jute wrote:

On Sep 18, 10:03 am, Patrick Turner wrote:
Keithr wrote:

Patrick Turner wrote:

Maybe I need better than Mozilla Composer, something that does it
better.

snip vastly


I hope that helps.

Let's see if this line wrap setting works here. My Netscape wrap wasn't
turned on for outgoing messages but I just turned it on and a line is
over 72 things.

So just when I make a change to a wrap setting and click OK to stop
myself needing to hit enter at the end of a line, it ****ing don't
work as I type it and I still have to keep hitting enter.
I don't know how to adjust Netscape to give auto return and
line wrap while I type.

I checked mine (Seamonkey) and if you start the reply before you turn
word wrap on then it doesn't 'apply' to the message you've already
started. Same deal if you change the character count (the 72 things).
It doesn't 'change' anything you've already started.

Well before I clicked reply to your post, I made sure the wrapper was
set for ins and outs at 72. Now as I type it just runs right across the
screen and my guess is it will nicely wrapped when you see it at r.a.t.

It did look fine here, but I have line wrap on for incoming as well. I
then re retrieved with wrap off and it still looked ok. but it should
be wrapping on your end the same way. I.E. it should be showing you
what it's doing.

Well it ain't. I can just type the screen edge before getting a return.
So I just type away now without hitting enter all the time and seems
like that works OK because it gets wrapped on the way out.

So it seems something still isn't right if your lines are just going
'forever' as you type.

Only old Netscape. And i dunno how to dig deep into the guts of the
program to make it do things some bright nerd might do.



What size is your monitor and what screen resolution are you using?
What I mean, is the 'window' you're typing into more than 72
characters wide so you can *see* the 'end' of a 72 character line?

My screen is a standard 17" and text I read goes 1/2 across if its
wrapped at 72, so maybe when I type it goes about 140 before I get to
the rhs of the screen.


I opend a copy of the MSW page template I have from Andre
and deleted all content so its a blank page but with
width settings intact.
Then I copied and pasted the index page content from a saved file
of last night's efforts and continued to work until it looked
just fine except the little photo I have at my index
showing a few of my things had to be put on a line of its own.
And I could not type between the picture and a margin.
If you put in an image, you shoud be able to put in anything else
in the empty page space each side of it including text without ****ing
around

Well, there are technical reasons why it doesn't work that easy.

with tables and BS. OK, there may have to be a prompt or two.
No prompts though in MSW.
How dumb is this for a web page maker? Real Dumb, I reckon.

Well, part of the problem is MSW is a word processor with a gazillion
'features', many of which that don't 'work', or have any direct
counterpart, with HTML. And they've made it so 'smart' (they think)
it's damn near impossible to use for plain old word processing as
well.

At any rate, it's excessively complex for what you're doing, unless
I've missed something.

After getting it looking right, I saved this version as
'index2' in the 'my documents' folder.

Then I opened it with IE and Firefox.

In both browsers it appeared all ****ed up with spacings
and lines and paragraphs way different to how I had it looking.

Are you saving with 'Save As' HTML or just putting an html extension
on it?


I tried doing a new index page all day in a table in Mozilla Composer

Well, I was asking about how you were saving it with MSW but no need
to worry about that now since you've decided to not pursue MSW
further.

If I learnt a bit more, maybe I'd manage to make nice wrapping text and
it'd all work out regardless of what browser I used. but it does not
seem to operate as wysiwyg, and I have no way of knowing if I am
stuffing things up as it type. So there ought to be a program that says
to you as you type "don't that, it'll stuff it up so do this instead"
when you type some mucky thing that you shouldn't have.

My friends who have Deep Fritz, a chess analysis program find it amusing
when they play a game against Fritz.
Fritz comes out with "you gotta be joking man" when you make a move
which the program thinks is real dumb.
Fritz is about as strong as current the world chess champion, and
doesn't need a cup of coffee so often.
Basically, its utterly unbeatable by the man in the street.


and sure, eventually I got it to sort of work.
Lotsa trouble though, and I just gave that idea up and went to plain
text, no tables,
and the revised index page browses just fine in IE and Firefox. And if I
reduce the window size its not too ****ed up.
Business as usual.

I don't know why a table would give you any more troubles that plain
text since it's just plain text in the table.

The whole exercize was to get things to wrap properly if the window
width was small, or the browser wasn't good.


Is there some way you could 'show' me what you're trying to make the
page look like, and do? I could then try making one on my end.

I'll be uploading a new Index page tomorrow if I get time. Its almost
the same info and simple style, but slightly more brief and with less
repetition.


After the composing, I "save as", and it asks me for a title, in this
case 'index5'
and then wants where I want to save it,
then I choose the folder, click save, and then it goes
"do you want to replace the file with the same name" I click yes
and it overwrites the previous attempt. Maybe that happens 15 times
before
I have finished a page composition.

Well, once you're editing an existing page you shouldn't need to "Save
As." Just a "save" should work fine and it won't bother asking about
'overwriting'.

Indeed, but sometimes habits about "being sure its saved" die hard.



You'd use "Save As" if you were making a 'new' page. Like, I have a
'template' page I call up to 'start' a new one and then "Save As" with
the new name so the template is left intact. (and I keep a backup of
it in case I screw up)


I just cannot handle anything else that
does not conform stricly to WYSIWYG.

If this rule is broken, the web page maker is useless to me.

So it looks like I will have to stay with Mozilla
but I don't quite know how to type to get automatically
returning text yet.

If you're using composer, just type. It'll be lines that extend from
end to end and wrap wherever the window ends.

But often I DON'T WANT lines to wrap where the program chooses. Looks
like ****.
I AM THE ONE who wants the text to begin and end where I want it.

Yes, I know. And it 'sounds' logical but, as I mentioned earlier, what
you see is not necessarily what someone else sees.

The only way I can test it is to open a finished page from a saved file
with a few different programs and if they all look the same and when I
have uploaded the pages I can see how IE, Firefox and old Netscape
handle them. Other ppl open them and there's never been many complaints
about how my pages work.


And you can't set a variable starting or stopping wrapping place.
**** week if you ask me.

Well, that's where the tables and layers come in.

If you want to make line smaller, or put a block of text somewhere,
try this

Type your text in, then select it. Then push the "layer" button on the
tool bar (it looks like a dark sphere). That 'groups' the text and
when you put the cursor over it you'll see a faint 'box' around it
with small blocks on the corners and middle you can drag to change the
size of the block. And just to the right of the upper left corner of
the bock there's a 'move' (the whole thing) grab point so you can put
it anywhere on the page.

I just tried all that and it looks maybe useful but once you have
selected something and clicked layer
and moved that bit of text it around a bit you can't regain control of
it while your'e typing

I don't know what you mean about not being able to "regain control."

OK, once you've moved a bunch of text around to another position in a
page you are making in html, you cannot fit it back into a normal
editable line of text. You can't delete or edit it. Letters in a line of
text are linked to that line and know each other are there. But when you
have moved things the text flow connections seem to get broken, and its
as if the selected layer shifted text hase become an image and isn't
text any more. It seemed like that to me.

so to me its more trouble than its worth. Another useless feature if the
text you are moving
needs to relate to typing nearby.

'Relate' in what way?

Become part of the text and react to typing controls.


I never needed it before.

I thought the purpose here was to accomplish things you hadn't been
doing before.

Sure, and its how i do learn. I learn because I have to answer questions
I ask myself along the way. The layer tool has uses,
and I found at least one, but found other uses not worth very much.


BUT, its not a bad feature to re-position an image slightly to suit
blank
spaces in text, so it you have typed a list on left that doesn't stretch
across the page,
then there is room for an image, and it can be moved into any position.
VERY useful, and the image don't have to relate to the text.

It can help to align things if you turn on snap to grid (but they
should have included a ruler bar too).

I just tried that, inserted a picture, then did a 'browser' (from the
tool bar) check and that works great. You can drag and drop any of
that text (as a block) to anywhere and it comes out just like it
shows.

I tried to move an image when nothing else would move it.

Works fine.

I even opened the new version of index page in my ancient old Netscape
4.7 Navigator Internet browser
and it opened just fine.

Super. Well, it's 'some' progress.

I have not got all year to become a ****ing expert on html.

I do get 500 hits a day at my site,
and from all of these over the last 3 years since
I began using Mozilla I have not had one email
about any site dysfunctional
when someone browses it.

The other thing I really don't like about inserting images
and MSW is that the images become blurred and ****ed up
when you paste them in.
You select the image after you have pasted it
and then adjust the image size.
But you never know how the size MS selected is the
quite the same as the original.

Yeah, it's 'smart'.

In Mozilla, if you copy and paste an image into a page you get
exactly that damn image, nothing is CHANGED without MY control.
MS changes the visual fidelity of the image.
I am interested in hi-fi, and like most ppl my eyes still work OK.

BTW, I looked at your two pages above, and the text looks fine,
even thought where text appears beside a schematic it is aligned
left beside the right side of the schema and sentences end
raggedly on the right hand side of the text body.

I decided to not use 'full' (left and right) justification because it
especially doesn't look good on short lines.

I played around with a lump of text with varying line lengths and
couldn't
get it better looking than "by hand"

Well, in a 'fixed' space it won't. After all, a word is a word is a
word and you can see what 'fits' in the space just as well as the
program can. The 'problem' arises when the space is not 'fixed' in
size (like someone else having a different browser window) so what
'used' to fit when it was size A doesn't look right any more when it's
size B. That and it 'auto adjusting' when you type in new text or
edit/change what's there instead of you having to manually rearrange
the text removing/adding returns.

Probably the vast majority of surfers will cope with my pages even if
they have a 15" monitor. Most of my pages should fit onto a full width
15" screen.

and I found the Mozilla alignment
didn't
work well to do what had in mind.

Looks OK to me.

And also BTW, if you have any tolerance of me,
allow me to say I like using terminal strips with
turrets or using hardwood 10mm x 8mm in section
with 4g brass screws placed each side of tube
sockets under the chassis. This allows many R&C components
to be better held in position and neater and wiring can be routed
more against the chassis bundled more and neater.
Then you find servicing is easier because less
gets in the way of a soldering iron.
And its easier to place components as you built the amp.
I'm just tiny bit against "rat's nest" wiring.

I understand. I'm not particularly fond of "rat's nest" wiring either
but these were 'cheap' projects and, more to the point, in very tight
enclosures with little room.

I quite like the smaller types of old tag strips they used to make
with brass terminals and phenolic strip. The best strips were fibreglass
reinforced.
Now you get cheap asian crap with thin unreinforced phenolic, usable,
but not as good as the 1955 stuff. 8 lugs 10mmm apart which gives you 6
points
not connected to the chassis. better than nothing though, and OK in a
preamp.
But often I find it awkward to find fixing points for the commercially
made tag strips
so I don't used them now and use hardwood strips and 4g x 15mm long CS
wood screws.
The timber strip is kept 4mm above the chassis with 4mm nuts used as
spacers for the 3 or 4
strip holding screws along a 300m length. The screw holes are all
drilled first so the screws are tight
but don't split the wood. Wanted screws along the line of holes are
gradually put in as you make
the circuit and the cs heads are cut off with end nippers leaving 5mm
proud of the wood and 7mm in the wood.
Soldering to these stubs heats the wood around the screw and the wood
yields a bit but don't burn.
The screw will remain for 80 years and cannot easily be pulled out.
For my crossover board in speakers I draw up the circuit on a piece of
marine plywood and
set out where things all go ( after making a rough protoboard on cheap
wood, )
and then pull all the screws straight in with a bit in a drill.
The heads can be left on, and the thing wired up with hook up
and parts siliconed down to the wood to prevent vibration.
The boards have leads to speaker driverand terminals long just enough to
allow the removal of the board
outside the box and do testing and tweakings.


Using some 8mm square section fibreglassed plastic rod would be very
good but is unobtanium around here and would cost a lot for say 20
metres which doesn't last long around here.

Thanks for the tips and I look forward to, one of these days, doing
one with 'wide open spaces' where I can do something like that.

Next time you see an old Tektronix CRO, take a look inside and you'll
see terminal strips running each side
of the tube sockets. Wiring is bundled, although care is taken about
just what wires re bundled together. In fact an enormous amount of
thought was put into old oscilloscopes and although they seem very
complex compared to an amplifier you make they are quite easy to repair
if you have to. the circuitry is 3 dimensional with room to poke a
soldering iron anywhere you have to so replacements are easy to get in
there. No pcbs.


Patrick Turner.

Compared to your site, I have much more text
and where to put the darn stuff is my bother.

Yeah. My site isn't for just 'anybody' nor a 'how to' or even full
descriptions. It's mainly to supplement the newsgroup (and other
friends of mine who like to look from time to time) since we can't
post binaries.

I keep on thinking of a million things others might like to know when
they are trying to make something.
It stops people sending me so many emails picking my brains; I wouldn't
know
what to do if I got 500 emails day asking questions. But I do get up to
5 a week.
And from unusual places around the globe; guys often are dirt poor, and
can't get the gear to make an amp
and have to make do with all second hand junk. One guy said he earned
$50 a month in Sri Lanka
working as a government clerk. It gave him access to a PC, Wowie!

He and I both knew about povety and frugality.

The good websites are frugal with words but have a wealth of meaning and
simplicity.





Patrick Turner.

[Patrick Turner]

Keithr wrote:

Patrick Turner wrote:

snip

And also BTW, if you have any tolerance of me,
allow me to say I like using terminal strips with
turrets or using hardwood 10mm x 8mm in section
with 4g brass screws placed each side of tube
sockets under the chassis. This allows many R&C components
to be better held in position and neater and wiring can be routed
more against the chassis bundled more and neater.
Then you find servicing is easier because less
gets in the way of a soldering iron.
And its easier to place components as you built the amp.
I'm just tiny bit against "rat's nest" wiring.
I understand. I'm not particularly fond of "rat's nest" wiring either
but these were 'cheap' projects and, more to the point, in very tight
enclosures with little room.

I quite like the smaller types of old tag strips they used to make
with brass terminals and phenolic strip. The best strips were fibreglass
reinforced.
Now you get cheap asian crap with thin unreinforced phenolic, usable,
but not as good as the 1955 stuff. 8 lugs 10mmm apart which gives you 6
points
not connected to the chassis. better than nothing though, and OK in a
preamp.
But often I find it awkward to find fixing points for the commercially
made tag strips
so I don't used them now and use hardwood strips and 4g x 15mm long CS
wood screws.
The timber strip is kept 4mm above the chassis with 4mm nuts used as
spacers for the 3 or 4
strip holding screws along a 300m length. The screw holes are all
drilled first so the screws are tight
but don't split the wood. Wanted screws along the line of holes are
gradually put in as you make
the circuit and the cs heads are cut off with end nippers leaving 5mm
proud of the wood and 7mm in the wood.
Soldering to these stubs heats the wood around the screw and the wood
yields a bit but don't burn.
The screw will remain for 80 years and cannot easily be pulled out.
For my crossover board in speakers I draw up the circuit on a piece of
marine plywood and
set out where things all go ( after making a rough protoboard on cheap
wood, )
and then pull all the screws straight in with a bit in a drill.
The heads can be left on, and the thing wired up with hook up
and parts siliconed down to the wood to prevent vibration.
The boards have leads to speaker driverand terminals long just enough to
allow the removal of the board
outside the box and do testing and tweakings.


Using some 8mm square section fibreglassed plastic rod would be very
good but is unobtanium around here and would cost a lot for say 20
metres which doesn't last long around here.

Personally, my preference for making tagboards is to use turret lugs
rivetted into glass fibre board. They do the job very well, you can make
them very neat and they do look a bit more professional than woodscrews.

Indeed the turrent boards are better than much else but rhe board itself
takes up valuable space under a chassis.
screws are fine, and I know what you mean about them looking amateurish
and not professional but you really have to be sure where you are going
to put a turret before you put it into a board and before the board is
tied down and into place. In circuits i make the prototype is also the
finshed article and I need the circuitry to be flexible as possible to
allow me to make a chane to part positions as I perfect the amp I am
building. Sometimes I might change something up to 3 times before I
consider it "done!"

Their only drawback is that, as they go right through the board, the
board must be stood off the chassis or anonther piece of board inserted
underneath as an insulator. If you stand the board off on insulated
pillars, you can feed connecting wires from below, even neater.

That puts wires in inaccessible places and I forbid myself to do that.

Conrad johnson gets over this probem of accessiblity of both sides of a
pcb
with removeable top plates on a chassis so you can access anything on
the underside of a board.
Its the only really good way to use a board unless you settle for
everything placed only on ONE side
you see when you open up a chassis for service etc.



Don't know whether any of the australian dealers stock them, but Mouser
do as do turretlugs.com.uk.

I got a few turrets, but have not used them yet.

Patrick Turner.

Keith

[Ian Thompson-Bell]

Keithr wrote:
Patrick Turner wrote:

snip

And also BTW, if you have any tolerance of me,
allow me to say I like using terminal strips with
turrets or using hardwood 10mm x 8mm in section
with 4g brass screws placed each side of tube
sockets under the chassis. This allows many R&C components
to be better held in position and neater and wiring can be routed
more against the chassis bundled more and neater.
Then you find servicing is easier because less
gets in the way of a soldering iron.
And its easier to place components as you built the amp.
I'm just tiny bit against "rat's nest" wiring.
I understand. I'm not particularly fond of "rat's nest" wiring either
but these were 'cheap' projects and, more to the point, in very tight
enclosures with little room.

I quite like the smaller types of old tag strips they used to make
with brass terminals and phenolic strip. The best strips were fibreglass
reinforced.
Now you get cheap asian crap with thin unreinforced phenolic, usable,
but not as good as the 1955 stuff. 8 lugs 10mmm apart which gives you 6
points
not connected to the chassis. better than nothing though, and OK in a
preamp.
But often I find it awkward to find fixing points for the commercially
made tag strips
so I don't used them now and use hardwood strips and 4g x 15mm long CS
wood screws.
The timber strip is kept 4mm above the chassis with 4mm nuts used as
spacers for the 3 or 4 strip holding screws along a 300m length. The
screw holes are all
drilled first so the screws are tight
but don't split the wood. Wanted screws along the line of holes are
gradually put in as you make the circuit and the cs heads are cut off
with end nippers leaving 5mm
proud of the wood and 7mm in the wood.
Soldering to these stubs heats the wood around the screw and the wood
yields a bit but don't burn.
The screw will remain for 80 years and cannot easily be pulled out.
For my crossover board in speakers I draw up the circuit on a piece of
marine plywood and set out where things all go ( after making a rough
protoboard on cheap
wood, ) and then pull all the screws straight in with a bit in a drill.
The heads can be left on, and the thing wired up with hook up
and parts siliconed down to the wood to prevent vibration.
The boards have leads to speaker driverand terminals long just enough to
allow the removal of the board
outside the box and do testing and tweakings.


Using some 8mm square section fibreglassed plastic rod would be very
good but is unobtanium around here and would cost a lot for say 20
metres which doesn't last long around here.

Personally, my preference for making tagboards is to use turret lugs
rivetted into glass fibre board. They do the job very well, you can make
them very neat and they do look a bit more professional than woodscrews.
Their only drawback is that, as they go right through the board, the
board must be stood off the chassis or anonther piece of board inserted
underneath as an insulator. If you stand the board off on insulated
pillars, you can feed connecting wires from below, even neater.

Don't know whether any of the australian dealers stock them, but Mouser
do as do turretlugs.com.uk.

Keith

So do you just drill the glass fibre then pop rivet them in?

Cheers

Ian

[keithr]

Ian Thompson-Bell wrote:
Keithr wrote:
Patrick Turner wrote:

snip

And also BTW, if you have any tolerance of me,
allow me to say I like using terminal strips with
turrets or using hardwood 10mm x 8mm in section
with 4g brass screws placed each side of tube
sockets under the chassis. This allows many R&C components
to be better held in position and neater and wiring can be routed
more against the chassis bundled more and neater.
Then you find servicing is easier because less
gets in the way of a soldering iron.
And its easier to place components as you built the amp.
I'm just tiny bit against "rat's nest" wiring.
I understand. I'm not particularly fond of "rat's nest" wiring either
but these were 'cheap' projects and, more to the point, in very tight
enclosures with little room.

I quite like the smaller types of old tag strips they used to make
with brass terminals and phenolic strip. The best strips were fibreglass
reinforced.
Now you get cheap asian crap with thin unreinforced phenolic, usable,
but not as good as the 1955 stuff. 8 lugs 10mmm apart which gives you 6
points
not connected to the chassis. better than nothing though, and OK in a
preamp.
But often I find it awkward to find fixing points for the commercially
made tag strips
so I don't used them now and use hardwood strips and 4g x 15mm long CS
wood screws.
The timber strip is kept 4mm above the chassis with 4mm nuts used as
spacers for the 3 or 4 strip holding screws along a 300m length. The
screw holes are all
drilled first so the screws are tight
but don't split the wood. Wanted screws along the line of holes are
gradually put in as you make the circuit and the cs heads are cut off
with end nippers leaving 5mm
proud of the wood and 7mm in the wood.
Soldering to these stubs heats the wood around the screw and the wood
yields a bit but don't burn.
The screw will remain for 80 years and cannot easily be pulled out.
For my crossover board in speakers I draw up the circuit on a piece of
marine plywood and set out where things all go ( after making a rough
protoboard on cheap
wood, ) and then pull all the screws straight in with a bit in a drill.
The heads can be left on, and the thing wired up with hook up
and parts siliconed down to the wood to prevent vibration.
The boards have leads to speaker driverand terminals long just enough to
allow the removal of the board
outside the box and do testing and tweakings.


Using some 8mm square section fibreglassed plastic rod would be very
good but is unobtanium around here and would cost a lot for say 20
metres which doesn't last long around here.

Personally, my preference for making tagboards is to use turret lugs
rivetted into glass fibre board. They do the job very well, you can
make them very neat and they do look a bit more professional than
woodscrews. Their only drawback is that, as they go right through the
board, the board must be stood off the chassis or anonther piece of
board inserted underneath as an insulator. If you stand the board off
on insulated pillars, you can feed connecting wires from below, even
neater.

Don't know whether any of the australian dealers stock them, but
Mouser do as do turretlugs.com.uk.

Keith

So do you just drill the glass fibre then pop rivet them in?

Cheers

Ian
You need a piece of metal with a hole the size of the main part of the
turret drilled in it as an anvil. You drill the fibre glass to the size
of the bottom part of the turret lug and preferably countersink both
sides of the hole (not completely essential but it makes a much nice
job. You drop the lug into the hole in the piece of metal so that it
sits on it's base, put the fibre glass board over it and tap the bottom
of the lug with a centre punch. Actually the best tool to use is a punch
with a pin on the end that fits into the hole up through the lug, and
which curves over to a flat. Hard to describe but it takes just a minute
to make one on a lathe. Sort of like this:-

| |
| |
- -
\ /
| |
| |
-

If you look at the picture here http://www.turretlugs.co.uk/stock.html
you can get the general idea.

Keith

[keithr]

Patrick Turner wrote:

Keithr wrote:
Patrick Turner wrote:
snip

And also BTW, if you have any tolerance of me,
allow me to say I like using terminal strips with
turrets or using hardwood 10mm x 8mm in section
with 4g brass screws placed each side of tube
sockets under the chassis. This allows many R&C components
to be better held in position and neater and wiring can be routed
more against the chassis bundled more and neater.
Then you find servicing is easier because less
gets in the way of a soldering iron.
And its easier to place components as you built the amp.
I'm just tiny bit against "rat's nest" wiring.
I understand. I'm not particularly fond of "rat's nest" wiring either
but these were 'cheap' projects and, more to the point, in very tight
enclosures with little room.
I quite like the smaller types of old tag strips they used to make
with brass terminals and phenolic strip. The best strips were fibreglass
reinforced.
Now you get cheap asian crap with thin unreinforced phenolic, usable,
but not as good as the 1955 stuff. 8 lugs 10mmm apart which gives you 6
points
not connected to the chassis. better than nothing though, and OK in a
preamp.
But often I find it awkward to find fixing points for the commercially
made tag strips
so I don't used them now and use hardwood strips and 4g x 15mm long CS
wood screws.
The timber strip is kept 4mm above the chassis with 4mm nuts used as
spacers for the 3 or 4
strip holding screws along a 300m length. The screw holes are all
drilled first so the screws are tight
but don't split the wood. Wanted screws along the line of holes are
gradually put in as you make
the circuit and the cs heads are cut off with end nippers leaving 5mm
proud of the wood and 7mm in the wood.
Soldering to these stubs heats the wood around the screw and the wood
yields a bit but don't burn.
The screw will remain for 80 years and cannot easily be pulled out.
For my crossover board in speakers I draw up the circuit on a piece of
marine plywood and
set out where things all go ( after making a rough protoboard on cheap
wood, )
and then pull all the screws straight in with a bit in a drill.
The heads can be left on, and the thing wired up with hook up
and parts siliconed down to the wood to prevent vibration.
The boards have leads to speaker driverand terminals long just enough to
allow the removal of the board
outside the box and do testing and tweakings.


Using some 8mm square section fibreglassed plastic rod would be very
good but is unobtanium around here and would cost a lot for say 20
metres which doesn't last long around here.
Personally, my preference for making tagboards is to use turret lugs
rivetted into glass fibre board. They do the job very well, you can make
them very neat and they do look a bit more professional than woodscrews.

Indeed the turrent boards are better than much else but rhe board itself
takes up valuable space under a chassis.
screws are fine, and I know what you mean about them looking amateurish
and not professional but you really have to be sure where you are going
to put a turret before you put it into a board and before the board is
tied down and into place.

It is called "Design" Patrick.

In circuits i make the prototype is also the
finshed article and I need the circuitry to be flexible as possible to
allow me to make a chane to part positions as I perfect the amp I am
building. Sometimes I might change something up to 3 times before I
consider it "done!"

You fiddle with the layout utill it is right with whatever type of
lashup you are happy with. Then you do the final production job with the
proper materials.

Their only drawback is that, as they go right through the board, the
board must be stood off the chassis or anonther piece of board inserted
underneath as an insulator. If you stand the board off on insulated
pillars, you can feed connecting wires from below, even neater.

That puts wires in inaccessible places and I forbid myself to do that.

The wires should never need be moved, the components are mounted up on
top where they can be replaced easily if needed without disturbing the
wiring.

Conrad johnson gets over this probem of accessiblity of both sides of a
pcb
with removeable top plates on a chassis so you can access anything on
the underside of a board.
Its the only really good way to use a board unless you settle for
everything placed only on ONE side
you see when you open up a chassis for service etc.


That is one way of doing it, but with tagboards properly implemented,
you can replace the components from the top, with a PCB, you need to
access both sides (unless you use surface mount components).

Don't know whether any of the australian dealers stock them, but Mouser
do as do turretlugs.com.uk.

I got a few turrets, but have not used them yet.

You should, they make a professional job, especially the classic ones
from turretlugs.co.uk, they have 2 grooves on the side allowing 2 wires
to be neatly attached and a third in from the bottom if needed.

Keith

[Ian Thompson-Bell]

Keithr wrote:
Ian Thompson-Bell wrote:
Keithr wrote:
Patrick Turner wrote:

snip

And also BTW, if you have any tolerance of me,
allow me to say I like using terminal strips with
turrets or using hardwood 10mm x 8mm in section
with 4g brass screws placed each side of tube
sockets under the chassis. This allows many R&C components
to be better held in position and neater and wiring can be routed
more against the chassis bundled more and neater.
Then you find servicing is easier because less
gets in the way of a soldering iron.
And its easier to place components as you built the amp.
I'm just tiny bit against "rat's nest" wiring.
I understand. I'm not particularly fond of "rat's nest" wiring either
but these were 'cheap' projects and, more to the point, in very tight
enclosures with little room.

I quite like the smaller types of old tag strips they used to make
with brass terminals and phenolic strip. The best strips were
fibreglass
reinforced.
Now you get cheap asian crap with thin unreinforced phenolic, usable,
but not as good as the 1955 stuff. 8 lugs 10mmm apart which gives you 6
points
not connected to the chassis. better than nothing though, and OK in a
preamp.
But often I find it awkward to find fixing points for the commercially
made tag strips
so I don't used them now and use hardwood strips and 4g x 15mm long CS
wood screws.
The timber strip is kept 4mm above the chassis with 4mm nuts used as
spacers for the 3 or 4 strip holding screws along a 300m length. The
screw holes are all
drilled first so the screws are tight
but don't split the wood. Wanted screws along the line of holes are
gradually put in as you make the circuit and the cs heads are cut
off with end nippers leaving 5mm
proud of the wood and 7mm in the wood.
Soldering to these stubs heats the wood around the screw and the wood
yields a bit but don't burn.
The screw will remain for 80 years and cannot easily be pulled out.
For my crossover board in speakers I draw up the circuit on a piece of
marine plywood and set out where things all go ( after making a
rough protoboard on cheap
wood, ) and then pull all the screws straight in with a bit in a drill.
The heads can be left on, and the thing wired up with hook up
and parts siliconed down to the wood to prevent vibration.
The boards have leads to speaker driverand terminals long just
enough to
allow the removal of the board
outside the box and do testing and tweakings.


Using some 8mm square section fibreglassed plastic rod would be very
good but is unobtanium around here and would cost a lot for say 20
metres which doesn't last long around here.

Personally, my preference for making tagboards is to use turret lugs
rivetted into glass fibre board. They do the job very well, you can
make them very neat and they do look a bit more professional than
woodscrews. Their only drawback is that, as they go right through the
board, the board must be stood off the chassis or anonther piece of
board inserted underneath as an insulator. If you stand the board off
on insulated pillars, you can feed connecting wires from below, even
neater.

Don't know whether any of the australian dealers stock them, but
Mouser do as do turretlugs.com.uk.

Keith

So do you just drill the glass fibre then pop rivet them in?

Cheers

Ian
You need a piece of metal with a hole the size of the main part of the
turret drilled in it as an anvil. You drill the fibre glass to the size
of the bottom part of the turret lug and preferably countersink both
sides of the hole (not completely essential but it makes a much nice
job. You drop the lug into the hole in the piece of metal so that it
sits on it's base, put the fibre glass board over it and tap the bottom
of the lug with a centre punch. Actually the best tool to use is a punch
with a pin on the end that fits into the hole up through the lug, and
which curves over to a flat. Hard to describe but it takes just a minute
to make one on a lathe. Sort of like this:-

| |
| |
- -
\ /
| |
| |
-

If you look at the picture here http://www.turretlugs.co.uk/stock.html
you can get the general idea.

Keith


Got it. Thanks Keith. I seem to remember doing something similar about
40 years ago! Amazing what jogs your memory.

Cheers

Ian

[Patrick Turner]

Ian Thompson-Bell wrote:

Keithr wrote:
Patrick Turner wrote:

snip

snip

Don't know whether any of the australian dealers stock them, but Mouser
do as do turretlugs.com.uk.

Keith

So do you just drill the glass fibre then pop rivet them in?

There is a little tool you use to flare the bottom and it holds in the
fibreglass very well.

You can't use more than about 2mm thick boards for the small shaft type
someone gave me. Not enough to do a big job and maybe I never use them.
If I use a board in any amp its only when I make a protection circuit
board with a few SS parts and small R&C. So I then just use a sheet of
two layers of kichen bench laminate scraps glued together for the board
and drill 1.5mm holes and hook some 1.2mm copper wire links and surface
mount all the parts. Its built as its drawn in the schematic and is neat
and tidy as tag/terminal strips are not good
for SS circuits.

Patrick Turner.



Cheers

Ian

[Patrick Turner]

Keithr wrote:

Patrick Turner wrote:

Keithr wrote:
Patrick Turner wrote:
snip


snip,

Indeed the turrent boards are better than much else but rhe board itself
takes up valuable space under a chassis.
screws are fine, and I know what you mean about them looking amateurish
and not professional but you really have to be sure where you are going
to put a turret before you put it into a board and before the board is
tied down and into place.

It is called "Design" Patrick.

In circuits i make the prototype is also the
finshed article and I need the circuitry to be flexible as possible to
allow me to make a chane to part positions as I perfect the amp I am
building. Sometimes I might change something up to 3 times before I
consider it "done!"

You fiddle with the layout utill it is right with whatever type of
lashup you are happy with. Then you do the final production job with the
proper materials.

Depends.

After building so many amps you minimise the protoyping and just build
it allowing more long strips near tube sockets than you think you might
need and then you start to flesh it out because it builds itself in your
mind first.
Sure I might change a few things, but its remaakble that it doesn't look
like I have.
You cannot think of every single detail.

Commercial designers sure don't think of everything and half my work is
cleaning up their mess.



Their only drawback is that, as they go right through the board, the
board must be stood off the chassis or anonther piece of board inserted
underneath as an insulator. If you stand the board off on insulated
pillars, you can feed connecting wires from below, even neater.

That puts wires in inaccessible places and I forbid myself to do that.

The wires should never need be moved, the components are mounted up on
top where they can be replaced easily if needed without disturbing the
wiring.

Should is a such a hopeful word. Just when you have put in a couple of
wires you might find you need to move them a bit.
I like *everything* to be accessable, and in most amp chassis space
without a board there is always room for
neat wires running close to the metal plate of the amp and thus give you
access to all other things without being in the way.

Even then it still looks messier than a pcb. So why do I have to rip out
so many pcbs in commercially designed amps employing monkeys? The board
so often looks nice, but the thought behind what's there is often Z
grade so out they come and into the bin, and in with decent point to
point and terminal strips. I've been know to remove all the tracks off a
pcb with a sharp carpenter's chisel and a light hammer. then start all
over again with hokked copper wire and a sensible schematic that does
not blow up so easily and which gives lower THD, noise, and uses half
the parts used by the hi-end or low end maker. Its called
re-enginnering.


Conrad johnson gets over this probem of accessiblity of both sides of a
pcb
with removeable top plates on a chassis so you can access anything on
the underside of a board.
Its the only really good way to use a board unless you settle for
everything placed only on ONE side
you see when you open up a chassis for service etc.


That is one way of doing it, but with tagboards properly implemented,
you can replace the components from the top, with a PCB, you need to
access both sides (unless you use surface mount components).

Don't know whether any of the australian dealers stock them, but Mouser
do as do turretlugs.com.uk.

I got a few turrets, but have not used them yet.

You should, they make a professional job, especially the classic ones
from turretlugs.co.uk, they have 2 grooves on the side allowing 2 wires
to be neatly attached and a third in from the bottom if needed.

The wood srews hold very well in hardwood; Its not hard to make a few
metres of 10mm x 8mm timber sectio as I have a full set of wood working
gear left over from the days when I was a builder. Sometimes I use
scraps of jarrah or forest oak. I have piles of scrap timber. Sealed in
varnish it has a very long life if the old radios made in the 1920s are
any guide and these were often timber boards with screw type connections
like house wiring.

And you can remove a screw easily even if the screw head has been cut
off using vice grip pliers and then just
trun them out. You can't do that with turrets and once they are in, they
are in.
And it so much cheaper than turrets and fiberglass sheet. And you don't
risk your lungs having to drill and saw fiberglass sheet.

Each unto his own.

Patrick Turner.


Keith

[Andre Jute[_2_]]

On Sep 20, 3:44*pm, Patrick Turner wrote:

The wood srews hold very well in hardwood; Its not hard to make a few
metres of 10mm x 8mm timber sectio as I have a full set of wood working
gear left over from the days when I was a builder. Sometimes I use
scraps of jarrah or forest oak. I have piles of scrap timber. Sealed in
varnish it has a very long life if the old radios made in the 1920s are
any guide and these were often timber boards with screw type connections
like house wiring.

And you can remove a screw easily even if the screw head has been cut
off using vice grip pliers and then just
trun them out. You can't do that with turrets and once they are in, they
are in.
And it so much cheaper than turrets and fiberglass sheet. And you don't
risk your lungs having to drill and saw fiberglass sheet.

Each unto his own.

Patrick Turner.

I like little self-isolating combined standoffs and turrets, as in the
QUAD 22. The ones I have are in hex metal, with teflon isolation, and
silver-tinned topside ridged post for attachment, and bolt in from
below. You can make a very tidy job by just laying out your turrets
according to the circuit schematic drawn to component size, and it is
extremely flexible. If you build on Tektro punched steel or ali
plates, the unused hole matrix can be ventilation. That way you can
proceed from proto to final item without rebuilding totally -- just
remove any eventually unwanted turret, or, more likely, add a few more
for "trimming" components. ("Oh, I just trimmed it a little," I say to
avoid admitting I did a complete redesign and rebuild because the
first version was a three-course dog's dinner.)

I got those teflon thingies from a guy here on RAT a few years ago. I
wish I had the foresight to buy out his entire stock.

Don't tell the ultrafidelista. They want you to solder the entire
circuit to the tube pins (not the socket, the tube itself) to shorten
the paths for the dear little electrons. They'll blackball me if they
discover I use turrets, albeit very exclusive upmarket ones (with
excellent resonance qualities), just like guitar amp mechanics.

Another amp designer altogether, definitely not
Andre Jute

[Ian Iveson]

Patrick wrote:

So why, in simple explainable terms for complete idiots?

We don't line up what we write here on both sides of the
page,
we just have it all lined up on the left,
and then put returns after clicking enter wherever we feel
like it.

Maybe I'm too used to what I read here.

Right justification makes reading harder. A ragged right
margin helps the eye to move to the next line without
getting muxed ip.

If you want twee style at the expense of substance, right
justify. To remain true to your admirable utilitarian
philosophy, leave it ragged.

You can go too far with raggedness though. A simple primer
on HTML, and due diligence in the placement of returns,
should sort out any gremlins.

Don't bother too much though, coz the engineering is so
impressive that anyone with any sense won't be put off by
unfashionable text presentation.

Ian

[Andre Jute[_2_]]

On Sep 20, 8:59*pm, "Ian Iveson"
wrote:
Patrick wrote:
So why, in simple explainable terms for complete idiots?

We don't line up what we write here on both sides of the
page,
we just have it all lined up on the left,
and then put returns after clicking enter wherever we feel
like it.

Maybe I'm too used to what I read here.

Right justification makes reading harder. A ragged right
margin helps the eye to move to the next line without
getting muxed ip.

Occasionally I'm surprised to agree with something our resident
pinkocommfellowtraveller Ian Iveson says.

If you want twee style at the expense of substance, right
justify. To remain true to your admirable utilitarian
philosophy, leave it ragged.

But today it is probably as well that I'm in Iveson's killfile. His
bolshie nature could not possibly survive my enthusiastic public
approval of his sentiment above. Hear, hear!

You can go too far with raggedness though. A simple primer
on HTML, and due diligence in the placement of returns,
should sort out any gremlins.

Don't bother too much though, coz the engineering is so
impressive that anyone with any sense won't be put off by
unfashionable text presentation.

When you hear some ponce talk about cutting-edge design, run a mile.
What it means is that he's expressing his personality at the
customer's expensive. A proper graphic design expresses the
personality of the customer's product, and of the customer if
relevant. Beatrice Webb said that graphic design is like a glass of
fine crystal, which does not add or subtract anything from the fine
wine within, it merely carries the wine almost invisibly.

Ian

Yo, Iveson, don't cower like that. I want only to shake your hand, not
to smack you in the chops.

Andre Jute
Fair to a fault

[Patrick Turner]

Andre Jute wrote:

On Sep 20, 3:44 pm, Patrick Turner wrote:

The wood srews hold very well in hardwood; Its not hard to make a few
metres of 10mm x 8mm timber sectio as I have a full set of wood working
gear left over from the days when I was a builder. Sometimes I use
scraps of jarrah or forest oak. I have piles of scrap timber. Sealed in
varnish it has a very long life if the old radios made in the 1920s are
any guide and these were often timber boards with screw type connections
like house wiring.

And you can remove a screw easily even if the screw head has been cut
off using vice grip pliers and then just
trun them out. You can't do that with turrets and once they are in, they
are in.
And it so much cheaper than turrets and fiberglass sheet. And you don't
risk your lungs having to drill and saw fiberglass sheet.

Each unto his own.

Patrick Turner.

I like little self-isolating combined standoffs and turrets, as in the
QUAD 22. The ones I have are in hex metal, with teflon isolation, and
silver-tinned topside ridged post for attachment, and bolt in from
below. You can make a very tidy job by just laying out your turrets
according to the circuit schematic drawn to component size, and it is
extremely flexible. If you build on Tektro punched steel or ali
plates, the unused hole matrix can be ventilation. That way you can
proceed from proto to final item without rebuilding totally -- just
remove any eventually unwanted turret, or, more likely, add a few more
for "trimming" components. ("Oh, I just trimmed it a little," I say to
avoid admitting I did a complete redesign and rebuild because the
first version was a three-course dog's dinner.)

I got those teflon thingies from a guy here on RAT a few years ago. I
wish I had the foresight to buy out his entire stock.

Don't tell the ultrafidelista. They want you to solder the entire
circuit to the tube pins (not the socket, the tube itself) to shorten
the paths for the dear little electrons. They'll blackball me if they
discover I use turrets, albeit very exclusive upmarket ones (with
excellent resonance qualities), just like guitar amp mechanics.

Another amp designer altogether, definitely not
Andre Jute

Allan Wright didn't like pcbs much either, but in the 4VP that he
launched 20 years ago, there is a pcb, and floating LM317 regulators for
B+. So amoung the well known names of designers in audio you don't have
to look to far to see samples of inconsistency. The pcb is of course the
only way circuit boards can be produced very cheaply, and most makers
know that old fashioned point to point is the one true way but stop well
short of being loyal to the old fashioned traditions. Even in the VAC
amp I nearly completely rewired earlier this year there are boards, and
you'd think they were a marvel, nice 3mm thick fibre glass reinforced
and wuth turrets only fitted. When you look more deeeply at the actual
way the circuit is built, you begin to see how little and poorly the
original designer ever thought it. Performance is grossly compromised
while the maker crows to the assmbled cognesenti about how wonderful he
is because of the board quality, silver plated hook up wire, and brands
of capacitors. Nothing is admitted about the negative aspects. The VAC
fell into my customers hands from e-bay very cheaply and after he'd had
it 8 weeks all sorts of **** began to happen. When it came to me I found
some bodgied repairs and a part of the heavy thick board had burnt away
in what must have been a small fire under the chassis due to an
overheated cathode bias resistor on one of the 8
for the 8 x 300B tubes all idling at 37W of Pda, and with an anode to
anode load far too low so they'd get 70W from a quad of 300B to thus
generate sales. The use of a board at all under a metal chassis for any
tube amp is utter bull**** design practice afaiac. One major trouble is
the prevention of adequate ventilation.

I also totally re-engineered a pair of Audion Silver Knight with 2 x
300B pp, and these get my award for cheapskate awfulness. These horrors
were designed in England. They say made in England but you'd swear by
looking at them that they were made in the cheapest roughest sweat shop
factory in China. And maybe that's exactly where they were made. They
are fitted with the lowest and cheapest grade of Drake PT and OPT. The
PT hummed mechanically, and despite it being toroidal, radiated stray
field badly enough to the OPT too close by so that horn speakers could
never be used. The pcbs were of extraordinarilly low quality like the
kind of junk you buy in a kit from Radio Shack type of places; these had
burn marks all over them from the resistor heat. Holes around the tubes
to allow ventilation were utterly useless because the board is screwed
down only 10mm under the chassis top metal so flow of air was 90%
prevented. Wire tracks are also under the pcb as you look at it so
making circuit improvement using their board was awkward and difficult.
I dumped the audio pcb board and tiny stupid PSU boards into the bin
changed all the metal work, added a magnetic screen between OPT and PT,
made a new box over those, made new bottom covers, and toally rewired
the circuit to one of my schematics and added B+ CLC filtering, and the
amp have far less N&D and are quiet as the grave even when used with the
horn speakers that this customer has bought. The amps don't get too hot,
are well ventilated, and when you look into the sub chassis area, its
all there to easily see and replacing a part is dead easy because of the
terminal strips I have used. I found plenty of room to fit a protection
circuit to stop wayward tubes over heating. There is a 55mm x 70mm board
for that with all the tracks in copper wire and minor SS parts and R&C
for them surface solder to the wire tracks. To replace parts is dead
easy, and the boards that are small have been deigned so after removing
2 screws the board easily lifts and swings up with maybe a bundled 8
wires attached. Maybe they won't need a service for 10 years though, and
I se no reason why they shouldn't last 50 years, although I worry about
the OPT and PT. I'd have to say the OPT and PT quality isn't as anywhere
nearly as good as in Quad-II. Not potted for starters. Mind you, these
Audions were made in the 1990s and if you look attheir website the
latest models look slightly better made but I fear nothing inside them
has changed much and the same old junky techniques with pcbs is still
employed. Using old fashioned techniques of hand wiring like they did in
old Tectronix oscilloscopes would be ruinously expensive in England.
That's the usual claim makers cite, but the amps are not cheap, and they
could well afford to employ have some old codger who knows how to do it
properly. But they wouldn't be able to get quite so much profit, so they
penny pinch by using pcbs.

Patrick Turner.

[Patrick Turner]

Ian Iveson wrote:

Patrick wrote:

So why, in simple explainable terms for complete idiots?

We don't line up what we write here on both sides of the
page,
we just have it all lined up on the left,
and then put returns after clicking enter wherever we feel
like it.

Maybe I'm too used to what I read here.

Right justification makes reading harder. A ragged right
margin helps the eye to move to the next line without
getting muxed ip.

If you want twee style at the expense of substance, right
justify. To remain true to your admirable utilitarian
philosophy, leave it ragged.

Your post here is quite OK for me to read.

You can go too far with raggedness though. A simple primer
on HTML, and due diligence in the placement of returns,
should sort out any gremlins.

Don't bother too much though, coz the engineering is so
impressive that anyone with any sense won't be put off by
unfashionable text presentation.

The message should rise above the medium, no?

Today much of the world's focus is on the medium rather than the
message. Its most important to have an eyecatching cover on a book full
of BS. A woman must look just right before she can be credible, ie, like
that Palin shiela whose kids have names like pet animals.

I have to admit I find it very difficult to set auto returns where I
want them when typing up a html coded page for my website and if there
was an easy way I could remember and use in Mozilla without having to
use tables and layer mode i'd probably use it.

I can't stay simple and expect to please all the people all the time.

Patrick Turner.


Ian

[Patrick Turner]

flipper wrote:

On Sat, 20 Sep 2008 09:12:27 GMT, Patrick Turner
wrote:



flipper wrote:

On Fri, 19 Sep 2008 13:34:00 GMT, Patrick Turner
wrote:



flipper wrote:

On Fri, 19 Sep 2008 03:21:21 GMT, Patrick Turner
wrote:



flipper wrote:

On Thu, 18 Sep 2008 17:14:43 GMT, Patrick Turner
wrote:



Andre Jute wrote:

On Sep 18, 10:03 am, Patrick Turner wrote:
Keithr wrote:

Patrick Turner wrote:

trim a bit


Well it ain't. I can just type the screen edge before getting a return.
So I just type away now without hitting enter all the time and seems
like that works OK because it gets wrapped on the way out.

So it seems something still isn't right if your lines are just going
'forever' as you type.

Only old Netscape. And i dunno how to dig deep into the guts of the
program to make it do things some bright nerd might do.

Well, I used to use that version too and never had that experience so
it's a mystery to me what's 'different' with yours.

What size is your monitor and what screen resolution are you using?
What I mean, is the 'window' you're typing into more than 72
characters wide so you can *see* the 'end' of a 72 character line?

My screen is a standard 17" and text I read goes 1/2 across if its
wrapped at 72, so maybe when I type it goes about 140 before I get to
the rhs of the screen.

ok. Was just checking 'all possibilities'., although, it would seem
I've missed something.

more trims


I tried doing a new index page all day in a table in Mozilla Composer

Well, I was asking about how you were saving it with MSW but no need
to worry about that now since you've decided to not pursue MSW
further.

If I learnt a bit more, maybe I'd manage to make nice wrapping text and
it'd all work out regardless of what browser I used. but it does not
seem to operate as wysiwyg, and I have no way of knowing if I am
stuffing things up as it type. So there ought to be a program that says
to you as you type "don't that, it'll stuff it up so do this instead"
when you type some mucky thing that you shouldn't have.

That's what I mean about MSW having too many options and being 'too
smart' for your own good. Lords only knows what it's 'guessing' you
'really' want to accomplish.

My friends who have Deep Fritz, a chess analysis program find it amusing
when they play a game against Fritz.
Fritz comes out with "you gotta be joking man" when you make a move
which the program thinks is real dumb.
Fritz is about as strong as current the world chess champion, and
doesn't need a cup of coffee so often.
Basically, its utterly unbeatable by the man in the street.


and sure, eventually I got it to sort of work.
Lotsa trouble though, and I just gave that idea up and went to plain
text, no tables,
and the revised index page browses just fine in IE and Firefox. And if I
reduce the window size its not too ****ed up.
Business as usual.

I don't know why a table would give you any more troubles that plain
text since it's just plain text in the table.

The whole exercize was to get things to wrap properly if the window
width was small, or the browser wasn't good.

Well, as I explained, a table *won't* 'wrap' as the window changes.
It's a 'fixed size'.

Is there some way you could 'show' me what you're trying to make the
page look like, and do? I could then try making one on my end.

I'll be uploading a new Index page tomorrow if I get time. Its almost
the same info and simple style, but slightly more brief and with less
repetition.

ok


Well, once you're editing an existing page you shouldn't need to "Save
As." Just a "save" should work fine and it won't bother asking about
'overwriting'.

Indeed, but sometimes habits about "being sure its saved" die hard.

No problem. Just letting you know.


Yes, I know. And it 'sounds' logical but, as I mentioned earlier, what
you see is not necessarily what someone else sees.

The only way I can test it is to open a finished page from a saved file
with a few different programs and if they all look the same and when I
have uploaded the pages I can see how IE, Firefox and old Netscape
handle them. Other ppl open them and there's never been many complaints
about how my pages work.

People aren't likely to 'complain' about a web page. except in here of
course.


I don't know what you mean about not being able to "regain control."

OK, once you've moved a bunch of text around to another position in a
page you are making in html, you cannot fit it back into a normal
editable line of text. You can't delete or edit it. Letters in a line of
text are linked to that line and know each other are there. But when you
have moved things the text flow connections seem to get broken, and its
as if the selected layer shifted text hase become an image and isn't
text any more. It seemed like that to me.

Sounds to me like you haven't found the knack of re selecting the
'layer' because it's editable, re sizable, movable, or anything else
you want to do with it. And if you did the 'proper' no return thing
it'll auto re wrap the text as you're resizing it.

so to me its more trouble than its worth. Another useless feature if the
text you are moving
needs to relate to typing nearby.

'Relate' in what way?

Become part of the text and react to typing controls.

It's a separate layer. It will 'relate' to text typed in that layer
but not to text, or anything else, off the layer.

Think of a layer as a projector transparency you're typing on. You can
then move that transparency around on top of the bottom 'paper' you've
typed things on. And you can have multiple transparencies with
different things on them.

Of course, it's more flexible because you can resize them, change the
text without using an eraser, have it 'auto fit' the text, etc., but
the transparency analogy is useful.

I never needed it before.

I thought the purpose here was to accomplish things you hadn't been
doing before.

Sure, and its how i do learn. I learn because I have to answer questions
I ask myself along the way. The layer tool has uses,
and I found at least one, but found other uses not worth very much.

Well, I see why if you think it becomes 'locked' or 'fixed' once moved
but it shouldn't be. They're editable just like anything else.

Unless you've moved one layer completely over another one so you can't
'get to it' to 'select' the thing (the underneath one).

I note all your points and are well taken here.

Maybe some browsers have more trouble than others to decode the info on
layers. My old netscape seems to have trouble. So probably best for me
is that where I have an image its more reliable for the browser to have
the text to explain it below that image and not beside it to simply make
the page less tall. In many cases I like big images especially with
schematics because there is a shirt and trouserload of information in
every schematic I make for my site. My index page has only one little
image which downloads very fast.
I doubt i'll use the layer function to change text but it'd be handy for
adjusting image placement perhaps.

Patrick Turner.

trim

[Jon Yaeger]

Android Jute opined:


I wouldn't touch any of the current dedicated HTML editors even with
Keith's dick. Why? After all, some are fabulously good and some are
even free. Simple: ask a more relevant question than how good or
inexpensive they are. How many *dedicated* HTML shells have been
dropped by Microsoft and others, leaving their users in the lurch,
with pages that have to be laboriously reedited -- if they are even
recoverable? Dozens. Hundreds. I always use the best, I'm vastly more
knowledgeable than most on the net, and I've still been screwed three
times in fifteen years.

Word may have its failings as an HTML editor, but you will never
discover them, Patrick. I made your template among other things to
steer you away from the lacunae in Word's adherence to the lowest
common denominator HMTL standard.

Ask yourself a simple question: Will Microsoft drop Word, its biggest-
selling application? Hardly. And those pages you're making in Word are
so simple, you'll always be able to get them back, whatever "standard"
eventually takes over. I think as a cyclist you'll live to be 90,
Patrick, and I don't see you needing anything except Word until then.

Keith should stick to his own last and butt out of what he knows
nothing about, like tubes and creating HTML pages.

***

Just for the record, for professional web design, I now recommend that
critical web materials be made in QuarkXPress (a professional page
layout programme for print that costs a couple of thousand and takes
years to learn fully, the gold standard of the print trade) and
written out as a protected (more costly software) PDF before being let
into any hands but the designer's; a copy of the text must be saved in
the current lowest common denominator Word format and annually
updated, and a folder of edited illustrations must be kept in the
lowest common denominator JPEG format and updated annually for format
changes. The layout in QuarkXPress must be read in and the prefs
confirmed every six months, and a copy must be manually checked for
conformity with the original, and adjusted to match, every time a new
version of QuarkXPress appears; that includes x.xx changes. Paranoid
archivists may also wish to store a high-res laserproof of the
finished article as in QXP and in PDF (they should match in every
detail). That's as future-proof as we can make it, short of limiting
ourselves to plaintext and sending hardcopy of every electronic
communication. PDF, for those who don't know, is a portable document
format which (almost) guarantees that the document the designer signs
off on is reproduced faithfully on the customer's printer, without
being buggered around by the medium of transmisison, the net. (Patrick
and I in private mailings have just seen a triple example of the
medium of transmisison messing up the designer's intent.)

But all of that is a long way over the heads of 99% per cent of even
"professional" web designers, and usually unnecessary for the
fleetingly transient materials they produce. I can't see it being
necessary either for any tubie pages (except those with many tables)
-- by the time it becomes relevant, tubies and smokers will be hunted
in the streets by the PC police as enemies of the environment.

Andre Jute
A cautious man is never surprised



Andre,

I can't help but notice the disparity between your posturing as an "expert"
in web design and the appearance of your "fiultra" website.

Why is it that the cobbler's children have no shoes?

Jon

[keithr]

Patrick Turner wrote:

Keithr wrote:
Patrick Turner wrote:
Keithr wrote:
Patrick Turner wrote:
snip


snip,

Indeed the turrent boards are better than much else but rhe board itself
takes up valuable space under a chassis.
screws are fine, and I know what you mean about them looking amateurish
and not professional but you really have to be sure where you are going
to put a turret before you put it into a board and before the board is
tied down and into place.
It is called "Design" Patrick.

In circuits i make the prototype is also the
finshed article and I need the circuitry to be flexible as possible to
allow me to make a chane to part positions as I perfect the amp I am
building. Sometimes I might change something up to 3 times before I
consider it "done!"
You fiddle with the layout utill it is right with whatever type of
lashup you are happy with. Then you do the final production job with the
proper materials.

Depends.

After building so many amps you minimise the protoyping and just build
it allowing more long strips near tube sockets than you think you might
need and then you start to flesh it out because it builds itself in your
mind first.
Sure I might change a few things, but its remaakble that it doesn't look
like I have.
You cannot think of every single detail.

If you are building something for yourself, then design on the fly is a
reasonable thing, but, when you are building for others and charging for
it, then it really isn't. If, as you imply, you build to an already
developed theme, then a generic lashup would do the job. An MDF sheet
with tube bases screwed to it on standoffs and a pocketfull of your
favourite wood screws should do the job and be reusable time after time.
The actual product can then built clean.

Commercial designers sure don't think of everything and half my work is
cleaning up their mess.

Thats because the bean counters are in charge demanding short
development times by inexperienced (cheap) designers using cheap components.

Their only drawback is that, as they go right through the board, the
board must be stood off the chassis or anonther piece of board inserted
underneath as an insulator. If you stand the board off on insulated
pillars, you can feed connecting wires from below, even neater.
That puts wires in inaccessible places and I forbid myself to do that.
The wires should never need be moved, the components are mounted up on
top where they can be replaced easily if needed without disturbing the
wiring.

Should is a such a hopeful word. Just when you have put in a couple of
wires you might find you need to move them a bit.
I like *everything* to be accessable, and in most amp chassis space
without a board there is always room for
neat wires running close to the metal plate of the amp and thus give you
access to all other things without being in the way.

Once the final design is set, there should *NEVER* be occasion to move
the wiring, components fail, but, unless somthing goes spectacularly
wrong the wiring doesn't

Even then it still looks messier than a pcb. So why do I have to rip out
so many pcbs in commercially designed amps employing monkeys? The board
so often looks nice, but the thought behind what's there is often Z
grade so out they come and into the bin, and in with decent point to
point and terminal strips. I've been know to remove all the tracks off a
pcb with a sharp carpenter's chisel and a light hammer. then start all
over again with hokked copper wire and a sensible schematic that does
not blow up so easily and which gives lower THD, noise, and uses half
the parts used by the hi-end or low end maker. Its called
re-enginnering.

Once you make a PCB, especially in the commercial world, the design is
set in stone. The fact that the design is faulty is a reflection on the
designer not the fact that a PCB was used. The main disadvantage of a
PCB is that you need to access both sides to replace a component.

Conrad johnson gets over this probem of accessiblity of both sides of a
pcb
with removeable top plates on a chassis so you can access anything on
the underside of a board.
Its the only really good way to use a board unless you settle for
everything placed only on ONE side
you see when you open up a chassis for service etc.

That is one way of doing it, but with tagboards properly implemented,
you can replace the components from the top, with a PCB, you need to
access both sides (unless you use surface mount components).

Don't know whether any of the australian dealers stock them, but Mouser
do as do turretlugs.com.uk.
I got a few turrets, but have not used them yet.
You should, they make a professional job, especially the classic ones
from turretlugs.co.uk, they have 2 grooves on the side allowing 2 wires
to be neatly attached and a third in from the bottom if needed.

The wood srews hold very well in hardwood; Its not hard to make a few
metres of 10mm x 8mm timber sectio as I have a full set of wood working
gear left over from the days when I was a builder. Sometimes I use
scraps of jarrah or forest oak. I have piles of scrap timber. Sealed in
varnish it has a very long life if the old radios made in the 1920s are
any guide and these were often timber boards with screw type connections
like house wiring.

Thats fine if you like your products to look like they came out of the
1920s. I suppose that if the amp is a SET using directly heated bottles
then that may be quite appropriate. If I was using good wood like Jarrah
on an amp, I'd rather it was on the outside as a decorative part of the
case.

And you can remove a screw easily even if the screw head has been cut
off using vice grip pliers and then just
trun them out. You can't do that with turrets and once they are in, they
are in.

You can drill them out, but it would be a little more difficult.

And it so much cheaper than turrets and fiberglass sheet. And you don't

If you are charging in the thousands for an amp, a few dollars extra to
do a proper job, doesn't seem terribly significant.

risk your lungs having to drill and saw fiberglass sheet.

Thats why Bunnings sell those little disposable face masks for about a
dollar each

Each unto his own.

As you say.

[keithr]

Andre Jute wrote:
On Sep 20, 3:44 pm, Patrick Turner wrote:

The wood srews hold very well in hardwood; Its not hard to make a few
metres of 10mm x 8mm timber sectio as I have a full set of wood working
gear left over from the days when I was a builder. Sometimes I use
scraps of jarrah or forest oak. I have piles of scrap timber. Sealed in
varnish it has a very long life if the old radios made in the 1920s are
any guide and these were often timber boards with screw type connections
like house wiring.

And you can remove a screw easily even if the screw head has been cut
off using vice grip pliers and then just
trun them out. You can't do that with turrets and once they are in, they
are in.
And it so much cheaper than turrets and fiberglass sheet. And you don't
risk your lungs having to drill and saw fiberglass sheet.

Each unto his own.

Patrick Turner.

I like little self-isolating combined standoffs and turrets, as in the
QUAD 22. The ones I have are in hex metal, with teflon isolation, and
silver-tinned topside ridged post for attachment, and bolt in from
below. You can make a very tidy job by just laying out your turrets
according to the circuit schematic drawn to component size, and it is
extremely flexible. If you build on Tektro punched steel or ali
plates, the unused hole matrix can be ventilation. That way you can
proceed from proto to final item without rebuilding totally -- just
remove any eventually unwanted turret, or, more likely, add a few more
for "trimming" components. ("Oh, I just trimmed it a little," I say to
avoid admitting I did a complete redesign and rebuild because the
first version was a three-course dog's dinner.)

I got those teflon thingies from a guy here on RAT a few years ago. I
wish I had the foresight to buy out his entire stock.

I have a few screw in standoffs from a previous life. These however have
a ceramic insulator, we used them where high voltages were involved and
for UHF circuits. Their drawback is that you have a nut on the other
side of the chassis and that can look pretty awful if you are using a
lot of them, and if you dont locktite the nuts, they can come loose with
use.

Don't tell the ultrafidelista. They want you to solder the entire
circuit to the tube pins (not the socket, the tube itself) to shorten
the paths for the dear little electrons. They'll blackball me if they
discover I use turrets, albeit very exclusive upmarket ones (with
excellent resonance qualities), just like guitar amp mechanics.

Direct wiring has it's place, but it isn't usually required in power
amps. In high gain circuits such as MM phono amps, thats another thing
altogether.

Just what are the resonance qualities of turrets? Electrical, acoustical
or what?

Keith

[Patrick Turner]

Keithr wrote:

Patrick Turner wrote:

Keithr wrote:
Patrick Turner wrote:
Keithr wrote:
Patrick Turner wrote:
snip


snip,

Indeed the turrent boards are better than much else but rhe board itself
takes up valuable space under a chassis.
screws are fine, and I know what you mean about them looking amateurish
and not professional but you really have to be sure where you are going
to put a turret before you put it into a board and before the board is
tied down and into place.
It is called "Design" Patrick.

In circuits i make the prototype is also the
finshed article and I need the circuitry to be flexible as possible to
allow me to make a chane to part positions as I perfect the amp I am
building. Sometimes I might change something up to 3 times before I
consider it "done!"
You fiddle with the layout utill it is right with whatever type of
lashup you are happy with. Then you do the final production job with the
proper materials.

Depends.

After building so many amps you minimise the protoyping and just build
it allowing more long strips near tube sockets than you think you might
need and then you start to flesh it out because it builds itself in your
mind first.
Sure I might change a few things, but its remaakble that it doesn't look
like I have.
You cannot think of every single detail.

If you are building something for yourself, then design on the fly is a
reasonable thing, but, when you are building for others and charging for
it, then it really isn't. If, as you imply, you build to an already
developed theme, then a generic lashup would do the job. An MDF sheet
with tube bases screwed to it on standoffs and a pocketfull of your
favourite wood screws should do the job and be reusable time after time.
The actual product can then built clean.

The actual product I sell is clean. Breadboarding a complete 845 SE amp
is unecessary. I made one on a chassis I knew at the outset would be
useful, then discovered all about how much heat had to be got rid of
during summertime, so I changed the design to having separate PSU and
applied the same result for one channel to the other channel. No
breadboards. I'd be nice to get an order for 100 amps, then all that R&D
I did for just two amps would have been more "efficient", but when I
make something I still do a lot of R&D armed with many generic ideas,
ie, apply a lot of basic knowledge and much experience.


Commercial designers sure don't think of everything and half my work is
cleaning up their mess.

Thats because the bean counters are in charge demanding short
development times by inexperienced (cheap) designers using cheap components.

Agreed.

snip,


Once you make a PCB, especially in the commercial world, the design is
set in stone. The fact that the design is faulty is a reflection on the
designer not the fact that a PCB was used. The main disadvantage of a
PCB is that you need to access both sides to replace a component.

Indeed, nothing wrong with a pcb, except its WRONG to ever use one in
tube gear. Their presence in a given amp indicates mediocrity in
designer thinking, and the presence of poor minds.

snip,

The wood srews hold very well in hardwood; Its not hard to make a few
metres of 10mm x 8mm timber sectio as I have a full set of wood working
gear left over from the days when I was a builder. Sometimes I use
scraps of jarrah or forest oak. I have piles of scrap timber. Sealed in
varnish it has a very long life if the old radios made in the 1920s are
any guide and these were often timber boards with screw type connections
like house wiring.

Thats fine if you like your products to look like they came out of the
1920s.

None of what I make looks like it has come out of some bygone age. Its
just ageless, and what I do NOW, in 2008, and whatever anyone says about
the circuit styling and how it looks doesn't worry me because the ideas
work well and last so long it satisfys all the criteria I think are
important.

I suppose that if the amp is a SET using directly heated bottles
then that may be quite appropriate. If I was using good wood like Jarrah
on an amp, I'd rather it was on the outside as a decorative part of the
case.

Decoratative wood panelling on amps weighing 30Kg don't belong because
they get damaged so easily.
Its possible to use timber for chassis though, but for a 30Kg amp it
needs to be 30mm hardwood with a thick Alumnium toplate and be as strong
as a steel chassis. Then you have troubles when you want to have
terminals, and the best i found is plain steel at least 1.6mm thick

And you can remove a screw easily even if the screw head has been cut
off using vice grip pliers and then just
trun them out. You can't do that with turrets and once they are in, they
are in.

You can drill them out, but it would be a little more difficult.

And it so much cheaper than turrets and fiberglass sheet. And you don't

If you are charging in the thousands for an amp, a few dollars extra to
do a proper job, doesn't seem terribly significant.

When I charge so much less than most hi-end makers, my methods are quite
justified, and will stand the test of time.



risk your lungs having to drill and saw fiberglass sheet.

Thats why Bunnings sell those little disposable face masks for about a
dollar each

I am always using masks against dust...

Lung cancer still might get me though.

Patrick Turner



Each unto his own.

As you say.

[Patrick Turner]

flipper wrote:

On Mon, 22 Sep 2008 12:27:08 GMT, Patrick Turner
wrote:



Keithr wrote:

Patrick Turner wrote:

Keithr wrote:
Patrick Turner wrote:
Keithr wrote:
Patrick Turner wrote:
snip


snip


Indeed, nothing wrong with a pcb, except its WRONG to ever use one in
tube gear. Their presence in a given amp indicates mediocrity in
designer thinking, and the presence of poor minds.

What a load of crap.

It worries me not one bit to know someone disagrees with me.

Patrick Turner.

[Patrick Turner]

flipper wrote:

On Tue, 23 Sep 2008 02:26:15 GMT, Patrick Turner
wrote:



flipper wrote:

On Mon, 22 Sep 2008 12:27:08 GMT, Patrick Turner
wrote:



Keithr wrote:

Patrick Turner wrote:

Keithr wrote:
Patrick Turner wrote:
Keithr wrote:
Patrick Turner wrote:
snip


snip


Indeed, nothing wrong with a pcb, except its WRONG to ever use one in
tube gear. Their presence in a given amp indicates mediocrity in
designer thinking, and the presence of poor minds.

What a load of crap.

It worries me not one bit to know someone disagrees with me.

Doesn't worry me either, not even with your pompous assertion that
holding a different view "indicates mediocrity" and "poor minds."

I've heard it all before Flipper, about being pompous, and about being
wrong because I strongly assert that that many commercial mass market
amp makers seem to employ cowboys, fuctards, idiots, and accountants to
desugn their amps rather than engineers with real training and able to
make their amps a dream to service easily.

Mainstream industry making audio gear for the consumer masses does not
earn the income that say fullfilling a military contract for the
Pentagon might bring, or for say Nasa. There is no quality control
except the self control in the company to make sure the product gets
past the warranty period. Beyond that there is little concern about
longevity of audio gear or the the serviceing costs borne by the mug
consumer.
All service issues and build quality issues are paired right back to a
minimum of effort and costs. Everyone competes, and something has to
give. So hence no real point to point construction any more of anything
at all. There used to be lines of girls at benches in huge barns where
they all soldered stuff furiously, and judging by the rat's nest wiring
they often did, you can tell they were ina rush. Radio wiring in 1950
was pretty hard to follow in many radios even with real point to point,
and the european Grundigs and so on of 1955 were amoung the worst for
set out. Quad-II is an example of "not too bad" in my book. Leak wasn't
too bad either, with a central board with lugs and everything nicely set
out but with wires damnwell concealed. Someone with energy and patience
could build a real nice job of a Dynaco kit if they tried a bit harder
than just attempt the minimum effort. A maximum of thought about
everything would yield better build quality of amp circuit. So please
forgive my arrogance, and pompousness, for I am on the side of the
little people in their millions who have to live with creations of those
who make things long after they have been made. I might be willing to
put 700 hours of work into one pair of amps and It'd be inconsiderate
and unfair of me to expect everyone to do likewise, but I could expect
makers who make 40dB more profit than I do to lift their game and
improve, but often we see the opposite, and the more companies make, the
lower the quality gets. Sometimes its impossible for them to do
otherwise because of declining sales and rising expenses and increased
competition. But if only they'd stay clear of using printed circuit
boards and spend the extra 4 hours per amp for real tube circuitry,
designed carefully by who knows how to draw the the circuit up properly,
and space everything just so nicley, and so on, like how they made
Tectronics CROs and much other high priced gear. Nobody expects a cheap
amp to be other than a mess inside. But when I see expensive amps which
are a mess, and which I have to re-engineer, then I cannot remain silent
about the quality and lack of thought that went into their design right
from step number one to the finishing point. There are really high end
amps by major makers in the US and elsewhere which look nice, but ain't.
They should be entirely beyond my ability to criticize, but yet they
land on my bench with smoke stains, have been difficult to bias, and
have far too much N&D, and far too many parts, completely lacking any
protection measures against tube malfunctions, and obviously just have
not been thought about ENOUGH,
and have disobeyed the "Enoughness Rule", a rule of design which allows
for the article to operate slightly beyond its call of duty indefinately
without smoke, with maybe better bandwidth than minimum, slightly more
PO than measured, etc, etc. This rule costs money to implement, and if
you fail then eventually your competitors will hunt you from the market
like the japanese hunted British motorcycle makers into near oblivion.
In the UK there was not enough investment and innovation which worked
well enough; the brits just got bad at making motorcycles because they
wanted to perpetuate ancient designs for a changing world. Unlike making
motorcycles, making amps can be undetaken by just one craftsman if he
wants, and it don't matter who does what around him, if its good stuff
it will sell to the very few who do recognise the effort.

I am so very glad I chucked out the terrible quality pcbs in a pair of
Audion amps last month. Gee it felt good to put these horror boards full
of burn marks into a rubbish bin. The chassis design and metalwork is
attrocious, trannies ain't potted, and overall, these "Made in the UK"
amps are a poor copy of chinese crap. The PT toroidals hum too much.
They look pretty, but only to the suckers out there who wouldn't know
how a decent amp was made even if one jumped off a bench and bit them on
their arse.

Silk amps made in Thailand are another tragedy with tubes, terrible
boards, transformers, circuit design, and I have worked re-engineering
them as well.

There are a whole bunch of things made with a litany of errors and
shortcomings.

When I got serious about hand-crafting amps in about 1994, I trawled
around for someone to wind my OPT and PT for me. I got knowhere, because
everyone I went to for a quote wanted to sell me absolute junk that was
a poor copy of what was made in 1955 such as OPT for a pair of EL34 with
only P-S-P-S-P interleaving, insulation that was too thin, random
winding instead of layer winding, and far too few turns per volt and
with a small stack of the worst quality iron core. None of them
displayed any ability to understand audio frequency transformer
behaviour and when I spelled out how i wanted things, they all couldn't
cope. To avoid the mediocrity and poor minds I made myself a lathe and
got what i wanted from my own hands. Mediocrity and poor thinking is
rife right across all industries, and i'll always point it out when I
encounter it, or walk away to an alternative. But I will give enough
information to everyone for free so they may redeem themselves if they
want to. I've devoted 18MB to the world supply of knowhow. But its not
very profitable increasing quality if nobody takes any notice and pays
the extra, or if many see a heavier better made tube amp as being
stupidly heavy and a clunker.

Patrick Turner.

[Peter Wieck]

On Sep 23, 11:11*am, Patrick Turner wrote:
To avoid the mediocrity and poor minds I made myself a lathe and
got what i wanted from my own hands. Mediocrity and poor thinking is
rife right across all industries, and i'll always point it out when I
encounter it, or walk away to an alternative. But I will give enough
information to everyone for free so they may redeem themselves if they
want to.

Patrick:

Don't get your knickers in a twist. I have come to the (somewhat
humorous) conclusion that you build amps for yourself more-or-less as
a work of engineering art, and only by accident do you allow others to
purchase them. Put another way, you would build them that way whether
you had buyers or not. From the what you have written here, you could
likely make more peddling fries at the local McDonalds if mindless
drone-work was all you wanted.

Kinda-sorta tails into my 'discussion' with one of the Ians mentioning
"art without requiring an audience".

But, you are entitled to a certain amount of pride in your work, and
you are entitled to some strong opinions supported by your history and
observations.

Most commercial amps, tube or otherwise, Chinese or otherwise, are a
compromise of many forces joined together to make a profit (and even
you must admit that you have to eat). Back when certain things were
*new*, the "limits of cheapness" or the "parameters of shoddiness"
were pretty much unknown. So, a simple wall-switch was assembled by
hand from solid drawn and stamped parts that soon were understood to
be vastly over-specified, put inside fired ceramic cases and held
together with mostly machine screws. They also cost a buck-or-two in
1919. Today such a switch cost $0.79, is entirely machine-assembled
and weighs about 1/5th of its older counterpart. I doubt it will still
be working in 90 years, however.

So, let the Flippers of the world go their own way and do what you
enjoy best.

Further to this, your web-pages are fine. If someone goes there for
actual information it is easily found in a cogent way. If they go
there to be critics, they will also find much to criticize - but it
won't be the technology. Some individuals simply have a short
attention-span.

Peter Wieck
Melrose Park, PA

[Patrick Turner]

Peter Wieck wrote:

On Sep 23, 11:11 am, Patrick Turner wrote:
To avoid the mediocrity and poor minds I made myself a lathe and
got what i wanted from my own hands. Mediocrity and poor thinking is
rife right across all industries, and i'll always point it out when I
encounter it, or walk away to an alternative. But I will give enough
information to everyone for free so they may redeem themselves if they
want to.

Patrick:

Don't get your knickers in a twist. I have come to the (somewhat
humorous) conclusion that you build amps for yourself more-or-less as
a work of engineering art, and only by accident do you allow others to
purchase them. Put another way, you would build them that way whether
you had buyers or not. From the what you have written here, you could
likely make more peddling fries at the local McDonalds if mindless
drone-work was all you wanted.

Indeed, you are right on all counts. But the amps I make are better
nutrition for the ears than the belly fattening junk sold by McDonalds
though.

Nobody has rocked up to me with a million of venture capital funds to
change the world of tube amps. I'm lucky that i don't get depressed
about it all.



Kinda-sorta tails into my 'discussion' with one of the Ians mentioning
"art without requiring an audience".

But, you are entitled to a certain amount of pride in your work, and
you are entitled to some strong opinions supported by your history and
observations.

Most commercial amps, tube or otherwise, Chinese or otherwise, are a
compromise of many forces joined together to make a profit (and even
you must admit that you have to eat).

Indeed I have to eat, but never at McDonalds though, and I have a great
lot of discouragment to offer the purveyors of fast foods and processed
foods where "value adding" usually means disecting a good wholesome farm
product into 20 others, adding tonnes of corn sugar salt to each along
with colouring chemicals, pacakging the **** brightly, and flogging it
to the suckers who line up for it. Financial products are flogged in
much the same way and now the US has an appalling problem of obesity,
and the sub-prime mortgage crisis.

And BTW, they recko the Feds are to spend 1 trillion on the problem of
bad loans. People say what a waste, but per head of US worker it works
out as not very much for each one to pay.


Back when certain things were
*new*, the "limits of cheapness" or the "parameters of shoddiness"
were pretty much unknown. So, a simple wall-switch was assembled by
hand from solid drawn and stamped parts that soon were understood to
be vastly over-specified, put inside fired ceramic cases and held
together with mostly machine screws. They also cost a buck-or-two in
1919. Today such a switch cost $0.79, is entirely machine-assembled
and weighs about 1/5th of its older counterpart. I doubt it will still
be working in 90 years, however.

Electricity for the poor became possible with plastics.

Some wall sockets in my house are 40 years old, and what stops the
quality nose diving to scandalous levels are safety requirements and
goverments with a big stick. Fragile plasic household gear has 240V
inside it around here and pity help anyone making gear that kills.
Without regulations, gear quality falls to abysmal in a competive market
unless a maker can illustrate and promote a genuinely better article.
Sometimes I remind everyone how makers might go about bettering their
quality, but mostly they ain't gonna listen.

So, let the Flippers of the world go their own way and do what you
enjoy best.

Further to this, your web-pages are fine. If someone goes there for
actual information it is easily found in a cogent way. If they go
there to be critics, they will also find much to criticize - but it
won't be the technology. Some individuals simply have a short
attention-span.

Concerning my new pages, I have managed to use MSW to make the text on a
page OK with nicer line wrapping than Mozilla, and after saving the MSW
prepared page text in Mozilla I have inserted the images so they don't
lose clarity as they sure do with MSW. Firefox and IE browse such pages
with no problems and I will be posting up a revised page on the 845
today, and a simplified index page.

I have run way out of time to make a few more pages and must do my last
two year's of tax returns or else the ATO might get cranky.

****ing time. If only there was +20dB more of it!

Patrick Turner.


Peter Wieck
Melrose Park, PA

[bigwig]

On 24 Sep, 01:02, Patrick Turner wrote:
Peter Wieck wrote:

On Sep 23, 11:11 am, Patrick Turner wrote:
To avoid the mediocrity and poor minds I made myself a lathe and
got what i wanted from my own hands. Mediocrity and poor thinking is
rife right across all industries, and i'll always point it out when I
encounter it, or walk away to an alternative. But I will give enough
information to everyone for free so they may redeem themselves if they
want to.

Patrick:

Don't get your knickers in a twist. I have come to the (somewhat
humorous) conclusion that you build amps for yourself more-or-less as
a work of engineering art, and only by accident do you allow others to
purchase them. Put another way, you would build them that way whether
you had buyers or not. From the what you have written here, you could
likely make more peddling fries at the local McDonalds if mindless
drone-work was all you wanted.

Indeed, you are right on all counts. But the amps I make are better
nutrition for the ears than the belly fattening junk sold by McDonalds
though.

Nobody has rocked up to me with a million of venture capital funds to
change the world of tube amps. I'm lucky that i don't get depressed
about it all.



Kinda-sorta tails into my 'discussion' with one of the Ians mentioning
"art without requiring an audience".

But, you are entitled to a certain amount of pride in your work, and
you are entitled to some strong opinions supported by your history and
observations.

Most commercial amps, tube or otherwise, Chinese or otherwise, are a
compromise of many forces joined together to make a profit (and even
you must admit that you have to eat).

Indeed I have to eat, but never at McDonalds though, and I have a great
lot of discouragment to offer the purveyors of fast foods and processed
foods where "value adding" usually means disecting a good wholesome farm
product into 20 others, adding tonnes of corn sugar salt to each along
with colouring chemicals, pacakging the **** brightly, and flogging it
to the suckers who line up for it. Financial products are flogged in
much the same way and now the US has an appalling problem of obesity,
and the sub-prime mortgage crisis.

And BTW, they recko the Feds are to spend 1 trillion on the problem of
bad loans. People say what a waste, but per head of US worker it works
out as not very much for each one to pay.

Back when certain things were
*new*, the "limits of cheapness" or the "parameters of shoddiness"
were pretty much unknown. So, a simple wall-switch was assembled by
hand from solid drawn and stamped parts that soon were understood to
be vastly over-specified, put inside fired ceramic cases and held
together with mostly machine screws. They also cost a buck-or-two in
1919. Today such a switch cost $0.79, is entirely machine-assembled
and weighs about 1/5th of its older counterpart. I doubt it will still
be working in 90 years, however.

Electricity for the poor became possible with plastics.

Some wall sockets in my house are 40 years old, and what stops the
quality nose diving to scandalous levels are safety requirements and
goverments with a big stick. Fragile plasic household gear has 240V
inside it around here and pity help anyone making gear that kills.
Without regulations, gear quality falls to abysmal in a competive market
unless a maker can illustrate and promote a genuinely better article.
Sometimes I remind everyone how makers might go about bettering their
quality, but mostly they ain't gonna listen. *



So, let the Flippers of the world go their own way and do what you
enjoy best.

Further to this, your web-pages are fine. If someone goes there for
actual information it is easily found in a cogent way. If they go
there to be critics, they will also find much to criticize - but it
won't be the technology. Some individuals simply have a short
attention-span.

Concerning my new pages, I have managed to use MSW to make the text on a
page OK with nicer line wrapping than Mozilla, and after saving the MSW
prepared page text in Mozilla I have inserted the images so they don't
lose clarity as they sure do with MSW. Firefox and IE browse such pages
with no problems and I will be posting up a revised page on the 845
today, and a simplified index page.

I have run way out of time to make a few more pages and must do my last
two year's of tax returns or else the ATO might get cranky.

****ing time. If only there was +20dB more of it!

Patrick Turner.





Peter Wieck
Melrose Park, PA- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Ok great,
Patrick,
You use hardwood for posts? why?. You say you seal it with varnish.
Do you think varnish lasts 50+ years? I dont. 1000 odd volts across a
bit of ****e wood does not last long. No offence I have learnt alot
from your site.Any way, Brittish bikes, hey we still make some real
jems. I dont know of any Ausy bikes that last the Brittish weather.
Dont forget all the Formula 1 cars are built in England.

[Patrick Turner]

bigwig wrote:

On 24 Sep, 01:02, Patrick Turner wrote:


snip,


I have run way out of time to make a few more pages and must do my last
two year's of tax returns or else the ATO might get cranky.

****ing time. If only there was +20dB more of it!

Patrick Turner.





Peter Wieck
Melrose Park, PA- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Ok great,
Patrick,
You use hardwood for posts? why?. You say you seal it with varnish.
Do you think varnish lasts 50+ years? I dont. 1000 odd volts across a
bit of ****e wood does not last long. No offence I have learnt alot
from your site.Any way, Brittish bikes, hey we still make some real
jems. I dont know of any Ausy bikes that last the Brittish weather.
Dont forget all the Formula 1 cars are built in England.

I don't have 1,000V across any two close terminals. The wood isn't ****e
wood such as soft pine etc which may well deteriate, but do remember
that wood in ancient Italian violins is still structurally OK despite
their 300 year age. Plastics might last 300years, but finding cheap rods
of temperature resistant fibre re-inforced plastic rod for use with
turrets or screws is not easy unless I made my own or pay huge prices.

The varnish is polyurethane. The product I have used has lasted for 32
years without any visible deteriation on furniture I made 30 years ago.
The timber resistance remains so high for so long that the life is
extremely long, and far longer than the expected future use of the amp
will be, because in 50 years the change in the world of consumer habits
will change much more than during the past 50 years. If someone finds an
amp of mine they wish to upgrade in 50 years, then it may be worth using
strips that are better but probably won't make much difference to the
sound or reliability.

I don't have any reason to criticize current productions british
motorcycles or the F1 cars right now.
I don't know enough about them, and have not owned recently made UK made
things.

No doubt many else outside the UK would have some constructive criticsms
to make.

I once owned a procession of 4 different British bikes, 250cc XC10L,
side valve POS.Ditto but 250CC OHV, POS, and a Matchless G80 500cc, also
POS, then another matchless 650cc twin, much faster, but another
shorlived POS that was always breaking down and seizing up. I moved to
building a DIY Harley 1.2L with Norton ES2 barrels and G80 heads, and
many other bits of other bikes and it went OK for a couple of years
and of course in Oz we were riding far longer distances than on the UK
when 50km was a long ride. 500km is a long ride here. Roads out west in
the old days were horrible, so things like a Triumph "Blunderbird"
rattled to bits as you rode along, and guys would have stop to pick the
mufflers and footrests etc, so poor was the british ****ing engineering.

My mother drove a Morris Oxford which rusted to bits quickly, had lousy
performance, poor fuel economy and needing service often, despite its
simplicity. My father had a Willys Jeep station wagaon based around the
US made jeep parts used in WW2, and that was a better made thing.

Many people drove australian made Fords and Holdens which gave
surprising milages. I had a Holden panel van that went OK for well over
twice around the clock. Then I had a Holden 1 tonner utility truck, far
more useful than better from anything made in the UK at the price. Of
course the local car making in Oz has always been owned by parent
companies eslewhere, and mainly based in the US then later in Japan
because the low cost of vehicles can only be achieved if thousands can
be made profitably.

AFAIK, there have never been any Oz owned brand of motorcycle made
because of the competion and dominance of OS brands and the fact that
the demand for motorcycles in Oz is way too low to ever allow profitable
mass manufacturing unless we exported vast numbers. But cheap labour
rates in asia make manufacturing anything in Oz increasingly impossible.
I thought you might know this.

In 1971, worked and saved up and I bought a BMW R75/5 for $1,650, second
hand, 9,000 miles. Better tyhan paying the new price of over $2,500 at
that time. I rode another 100,000 miles before selling it in 1981 for
$1,800. Nothing major went wrong during that time and oil use wasn't
much, noise was tolerable, and the next guy probably rode if for another
100k. The Germans made things better than the Poms.


If somebody wants to walk into a Australian hi-fi shop to buy an SET amp
which is at least of passable quality, then they get a bit of a Shock.
Firstly, there is no available british made amps in the shops except
extremely poorly designed and made amps such as Audion, or CR
Developments both of which have entirely cheap nasty Chinese metalwork
and styling, and reliablity way below what I'd provide routinely,
because they are aimed at a gullible sucker market. The Drake
transformers in the Audion Silver Night with 2 x 300B are BLEEDIN
AWFUL!!!
People might find a shop stocking Quad tube gear, and the quality is
better, but the price is horrifying. Quad is made in China, but no
discount is given for the employment of Chinese slave labour willing to
work for a tiny fraction of British wages. Old Quad-II power amps and 22
preamps are non long lasting unless serviced regularly, and are ****ful
standard gear, just like the BSA motorcycles and Morris cars of
yesterday, and they all need re-engineering like Leak etc....

Secondly, if you still want something passably decent in the SET
variety, then you'll maybe find a shop or two stocking something hi-end
which has a decent tube and transformer line up within. One example is
the KR Audio integrated VA350 stereo amp which makes 20W per channel
using a KT T100 tube in each channel. The people in Prague seem to know
more about making vacuum tubes than the poms do. The T100 has Ra about
1.2k, and has similar looks to an 845 and same 100W Pda rating. But it
has cathode heating requirement of 5V x 2.5A, and there are not many if
any other asian made tubes which could be used instead of the KR made
tube. The T100 costs about aud $600 if you can ever find one available
because CZ production is in such low numbers. So the solidly made KR
VA350 with solid state drive amp instead of tubes could be a real
problem if an owner were to blow or break a T100 tube; maybe KR go broke
in 5 years and the amp then needs replacement power trannies custom made
to allow the use of 845 from KR, if you can ever buy them, or 845 from
China at 1/4 of the price. The VA350 is being offered for sale at a
retail price of aud $18,000 from Duratone Hi-Fi in Canberra, my home
town. They have offered me a price on the tubes from KR but were not
able to say if they'd ever stock any, or be able to get them within
several months after ordering them. So the supply of KR made tubes is
not either plentiful or reliable. KR themselves have told me that 845
are not due to be made again until next october, perhaps, and I'd say
all their production will be devoted to dealers in the US who won't sell
outside the US and who have not replied to my emails. So ppl wanting
amps with 845 in Oz need to think of using Chinese 845 which to me are
probably just as good sounding as any 845 ever made, and If I use a
**pair** with easy Ia Ea ratings, they'll make much more power than one
lousy tube, much less THD/IMD, and if that does not translate to
something better than the one tube 20W wonder, I'll eat a darn 845. Now
I have offered 55 Watt SET amps which can be used with a pair of 845
made by KR Audio, as shown in the pictures at my website, but the price
is half the local hi-fi shop price despite having twice the power, and
an all tube line up without solid state drive amps. But the catch to
what I offer is that you wait 9 months before you get it. People with
attention span disorder who expect an instant fix should always never
deal with me. I don't have ASD, and have always saved up to buy
something worth waiting for. There are other brands of SE amps with 845
within but none that sell for prices like mine and all have no active
protection and all have printed circuit boards of frightful complexity
and ther usual BS found when you take a real hard look inside the amp.
They look so pretty and tidy, but shame about the thought put into the
amp!!! None of these brand names openly display all their details within
and I an alone amoung makers and can claim to offer a perfectly
transparent deal about the amps I make. Take it or ****ing leave it. I
am not in the business of making pretentiously priced crap. The few
buyers who buy my products often have had me build them a preamp, or
re-engineer and an old pair of Quads, or re-engineer a terrible ****ing
british CR Audio Developments amp, and they learn that I really know my
stuff but I don't offer the same glitzy bling of BS found in hi-fi
shops. Its a real challenge to teach buyers of amps that the shops
mostly provide expensive junk, and that more than 1/2 what they pay is
shop markups which don't make the amp quality of sound quality one tiny
bit better.
The Shops look for "fast" amplifiers. One salesman said I should hear
some terrible crummy SE amp with 3 x 6L6; "its fast!" he brayed at me
within a week of telling me my amps sounded better than anything they'd
had in the shop for years. Novelty wears off. I replied to the salesman
with "Fast, eh? does that mean it sells quick?" It was the cheapest most
awful SE POS that could be bought in 1996. The shop used mine to
demonstrate what a great amp should sound like, but led folks over to
the cheap Jolidas etc, and they'd buy. When the Internet became
mainstream in about 2000, I waved the damn shops goodbye because they
never ever helped me, and only sold stuff at high prices which had cost
them peanuts to import, exploiting the average customers complete
ignorance about prices OS or about any matters regarding quality
assessment.

Patrick Turner.

[bigwig]

On 29 Sep, 08:18, Patrick Turner wrote:
bigwig wrote:

On 24 Sep, 01:02, Patrick Turner wrote:

snip,



I have run way out of time to make a few more pages and must do my last
two year's of tax returns or else the ATO might get cranky.

****ing time. If only there was +20dB more of it!

Patrick Turner.

Peter Wieck
Melrose Park, PA- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Ok great,
* Patrick,
*You use hardwood for posts? why?. You say you seal it with varnish.
Do you think varnish lasts 50+ years? I dont. 1000 odd volts across a
bit of ****e wood does not last long. No offence I have learnt alot
from your site.Any way, Brittish bikes, hey we still make some real
jems. I dont know of any Ausy bikes that last the Brittish weather.
Dont forget all the Formula 1 cars are built in England.

I don't have 1,000V across any two close terminals. The wood isn't ****e
wood such as soft pine etc which may well deteriate, but do remember
that wood in ancient Italian violins is still structurally OK despite
their 300 year age. Plastics might last 300years, but finding cheap rods
of temperature resistant fibre re-inforced plastic rod for use with
turrets or screws is not easy unless I made my own or pay huge prices.

The varnish is polyurethane. The product I have used has lasted for 32
years without any visible deteriation on furniture I made 30 years ago.
The timber resistance remains so high for so long that the life is
extremely long, and far longer than the expected future use of the amp
will be, because in 50 years the change in the world of consumer habits
will change much more than during the past 50 years. If someone finds an
amp of mine they wish to upgrade in 50 years, then it may be worth using
strips that are better but probably won't make much difference to the
sound or reliability.

I don't have any reason to criticize current productions british
motorcycles or the F1 cars right now.
I don't know enough about them, and have not owned recently made UK made
things.

No doubt many else outside the UK would have some constructive criticsms
to make.

I once owned a procession of 4 different British bikes, 250cc XC10L,
side valve POS.Ditto but 250CC OHV, POS, and a Matchless G80 500cc, also
POS, then another matchless 650cc twin, much faster, but another
shorlived POS that was always breaking down and seizing up. I moved to
building a DIY Harley 1.2L with Norton ES2 barrels and G80 heads, and
many other bits of other bikes and it went OK for a couple of years
and of course in Oz we were riding far longer distances than on the UK
when 50km was a long ride. 500km is a long ride here. Roads out west in
the old days were horrible, so things like a Triumph "Blunderbird"
rattled to bits as you rode along, and guys would have stop to pick the
mufflers and footrests etc, so poor was the british ****ing engineering.

My mother drove a Morris Oxford which rusted to bits quickly, had lousy
performance, poor fuel economy and needing service often, despite its
simplicity. My father had a Willys Jeep station wagaon based around the
US made jeep parts used in WW2, and that was a better made thing.

Many people drove australian made Fords and Holdens which gave
surprising milages. I had a Holden panel van that went OK for well over
twice around the clock. Then I had a Holden 1 tonner utility truck, far
more useful than better from anything made in the UK at the price. Of
course the local car making in Oz has always been owned by parent
companies eslewhere, and mainly based in the US then later in Japan
because the low cost of vehicles can only be achieved if thousands can
be made profitably.

AFAIK, there have never been any Oz owned brand of motorcycle made
because of the competion and dominance of OS brands and the fact that
the demand for motorcycles in Oz is way too low to ever allow profitable
mass manufacturing unless we exported vast numbers. But cheap labour
rates in asia make manufacturing anything in Oz increasingly impossible.
I thought you might know this.

In 1971, worked and saved up and I bought a BMW R75/5 for $1,650, second
hand, 9,000 miles. Better tyhan paying the new price of over $2,500 at
that time. I rode another 100,000 miles before selling it in 1981 for
$1,800. Nothing major went wrong during that time and oil use wasn't
much, noise was tolerable, and the next guy probably rode if for another
100k. The Germans made things better than the Poms.

If somebody wants to walk into a Australian hi-fi shop to buy an SET amp
which is at least of passable quality, then they get a bit of a Shock.
Firstly, there is no available british made amps in the shops except
extremely poorly designed and made amps such as Audion, or CR
Developments both of which have entirely cheap nasty Chinese metalwork
and styling, and reliablity way below what I'd provide routinely,
because they are aimed at a gullible sucker market. The Drake
transformers in the Audion Silver Night with 2 x 300B are BLEEDIN
AWFUL!!! * * *
People might find a shop stocking Quad tube gear, and the quality is
better, but the price is horrifying. Quad is made in China, but no
discount is given for the employment of Chinese slave labour willing to
work for a tiny fraction of British wages. Old Quad-II power amps and 22
preamps are non long lasting unless serviced regularly, and are ****ful
standard gear, just like the BSA motorcycles and Morris cars of
yesterday, and they all need re-engineering like Leak etc....

Secondly, if you still want something passably decent in the SET
variety, then you'll maybe find a shop or two stocking something hi-end
which has a decent tube and transformer line up within. One example is
the KR Audio integrated VA350 stereo amp which makes 20W per channel
using a KT T100 tube in each channel. The people in Prague seem to know
more about making vacuum tubes than the poms do. The T100 has Ra about
1.2k, and has similar looks to an 845 and same 100W Pda rating. But it
has cathode heating requirement of 5V x 2.5A, and there are not many if
any other asian made tubes which could be used instead of the KR made
tube. The T100 costs about aud $600 if you can ever find one available
because CZ production is in such low numbers. So the solidly made KR
VA350 with solid state drive amp instead of tubes could be a real
problem if an owner were to blow or break a T100 tube; maybe KR go broke
in 5 years and the amp then needs replacement power trannies custom made
to allow the use of 845 from KR, if you can ever buy them, or 845 from
China at 1/4 of the price. The VA350 is being offered for sale at a
retail price of aud $18,000 from Duratone Hi-Fi in Canberra, my home
town. They have offered me a price on the tubes from KR but were not
able to say if they'd ever stock any, or be able to get them within
several months after ordering them. So the supply of KR made tubes is
not either plentiful or reliable. KR themselves have told me that 845
are not due to be made again until next october, perhaps, and I'd say
all their production will be devoted to dealers in the US who won't sell
outside the US and who have not replied to my emails. So ppl wanting
amps with 845 in Oz need to think of using Chinese 845 which to me are
probably just as good sounding as any 845 ever made, and If I use a
**pair** with easy Ia Ea ratings, they'll make much more power than one
lousy tube, much less THD/IMD, and if that does not translate to
something better than the one tube 20W wonder, I'll eat a darn 845. Now
I have offered 55 Watt SET amps which can be used with a pair of 845
made by KR Audio, as shown in the pictures at my website, but the price
is half the local hi-fi shop price despite having twice the power, and
an all tube line up without solid state drive amps. But the catch to
what I offer is that you wait 9 months before you get it. People with
attention span disorder who expect an instant fix should always never
deal with me. I don't have ASD, and have always saved up to buy
something worth waiting for. There are other brands of SE amps with 845
within but none that sell for prices like mine and all have no active
protection and all have printed circuit boards of frightful complexity
and ther usual BS found when you take a real hard look inside the amp.
They look so pretty and tidy, but shame about the thought put into the
amp!!! None of these brand names openly display all their details within
and I an alone amoung makers and can claim to offer a perfectly
transparent deal about the amps I make. Take it or ****ing leave it. I
am not in the business of making pretentiously priced crap. The few
buyers who buy my products often have had me build them a preamp, or
re-engineer and an old pair of Quads, or re-engineer a terrible ****ing
british CR Audio Developments amp, and they learn that I really know my
stuff but I don't offer the same glitzy bling of BS found in hi-fi
shops. Its a real challenge to teach buyers of amps that the shops
mostly provide expensive junk, and that more than 1/2 what they pay is
shop markups which don't make the amp quality of sound quality one tiny
bit better.
The Shops look for "fast" amplifiers. One salesman said I should hear
some terrible crummy SE amp with 3 x 6L6; "its fast!" he brayed at me
within a week of telling me my amps sounded better than anything they'd
had in the shop for years. Novelty wears off. I replied to the salesman
with "Fast, eh? does that mean it sells quick?" It was the cheapest most
awful SE POS that could be bought in 1996. The shop used mine to
demonstrate what a great amp should sound like, but led folks over to
the cheap Jolidas etc, and they'd buy. When the Internet became
mainstream in about 2000, I waved the damn shops goodbye because they
never ever helped me, and only sold stuff at high prices which had cost
them peanuts to import, exploiting the average customers complete
ignorance about prices OS or about any matters regarding quality
assessment.

Patrick Turner.

Hello Patrick,
Sorry about the last post, guess I was just ****ed and grumpy!!.
Hard wood is fine. I might check some out though for leakage, noise
etc. I know this is not an issue on a transformer, but hey worth an
experiment.
I agree about the old Brittish crap. A friend of mine owned a BSA
600 twin that was factory race spec. Nice you may think, and yes it
was. Back in 94-95 it would **** on a CBR900!!. Was it reliable? NO.
it leaked like a seive, had no battery, 6V electrics after a fassion,
basicaly halve wave rectified stick a lamp on the end to get an MOT.
Good fun though.
The BMWs are great my dad and his brothers have owned loads and
toured all of Europe on them. He currently has an 1150RT. His brother
built a GS before GSs came about. He used an R850 engine and built
the frame etc. It had two kwaker tanks welded together and held a vast
amount of fuel, used to get strange looks in the petrol station
filling up.
I quite like the Holden/Vauxhall thing we get here, Basically 30
grand for a car that ****s on most stuff and doesnt look like an iron
with an ironing board for a wing.
I think I can remember an Ausi guy that built his own bikes from
scratch ie. did all the castings-everything. This thing was a beast, a
V-Twin, won all the races. I dont know what happened to it or the guy
that built it?.

[Patrick Turner]

bigwig wrote:

On 29 Sep, 08:18, Patrick Turner wrote:
bigwig wrote:

On 24 Sep, 01:02, Patrick Turner wrote:

snip,



I have run way out of time to make a few more pages and must do my last
two year's of tax returns or else the ATO might get cranky.

****ing time. If only there was +20dB more of it!

Patrick Turner.

Peter Wieck
Melrose Park, PA- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Ok great,
Patrick,
You use hardwood for posts? why?. You say you seal it with varnish.
Do you think varnish lasts 50+ years? I dont. 1000 odd volts across a
bit of ****e wood does not last long. No offence I have learnt alot
from your site.Any way, Brittish bikes, hey we still make some real
jems. I dont know of any Ausy bikes that last the Brittish weather.
Dont forget all the Formula 1 cars are built in England.

I don't have 1,000V across any two close terminals. The wood isn't ****e
wood such as soft pine etc which may well deteriate, but do remember
that wood in ancient Italian violins is still structurally OK despite
their 300 year age. Plastics might last 300years, but finding cheap rods
of temperature resistant fibre re-inforced plastic rod for use with
turrets or screws is not easy unless I made my own or pay huge prices.

The varnish is polyurethane. The product I have used has lasted for 32
years without any visible deteriation on furniture I made 30 years ago.
The timber resistance remains so high for so long that the life is
extremely long, and far longer than the expected future use of the amp
will be, because in 50 years the change in the world of consumer habits
will change much more than during the past 50 years. If someone finds an
amp of mine they wish to upgrade in 50 years, then it may be worth using
strips that are better but probably won't make much difference to the
sound or reliability.

I don't have any reason to criticize current productions british
motorcycles or the F1 cars right now.
I don't know enough about them, and have not owned recently made UK made
things.

No doubt many else outside the UK would have some constructive criticsms
to make.

I once owned a procession of 4 different British bikes, 250cc XC10L,
side valve POS.Ditto but 250CC OHV, POS, and a Matchless G80 500cc, also
POS, then another matchless 650cc twin, much faster, but another
shorlived POS that was always breaking down and seizing up. I moved to
building a DIY Harley 1.2L with Norton ES2 barrels and G80 heads, and
many other bits of other bikes and it went OK for a couple of years
and of course in Oz we were riding far longer distances than on the UK
when 50km was a long ride. 500km is a long ride here. Roads out west in
the old days were horrible, so things like a Triumph "Blunderbird"
rattled to bits as you rode along, and guys would have stop to pick the
mufflers and footrests etc, so poor was the british ****ing engineering.

My mother drove a Morris Oxford which rusted to bits quickly, had lousy
performance, poor fuel economy and needing service often, despite its
simplicity. My father had a Willys Jeep station wagaon based around the
US made jeep parts used in WW2, and that was a better made thing.

Many people drove australian made Fords and Holdens which gave
surprising milages. I had a Holden panel van that went OK for well over
twice around the clock. Then I had a Holden 1 tonner utility truck, far
more useful than better from anything made in the UK at the price. Of
course the local car making in Oz has always been owned by parent
companies eslewhere, and mainly based in the US then later in Japan
because the low cost of vehicles can only be achieved if thousands can
be made profitably.

AFAIK, there have never been any Oz owned brand of motorcycle made
because of the competion and dominance of OS brands and the fact that
the demand for motorcycles in Oz is way too low to ever allow profitable
mass manufacturing unless we exported vast numbers. But cheap labour
rates in asia make manufacturing anything in Oz increasingly impossible.
I thought you might know this.

In 1971, worked and saved up and I bought a BMW R75/5 for $1,650, second
hand, 9,000 miles. Better tyhan paying the new price of over $2,500 at
that time. I rode another 100,000 miles before selling it in 1981 for
$1,800. Nothing major went wrong during that time and oil use wasn't
much, noise was tolerable, and the next guy probably rode if for another
100k. The Germans made things better than the Poms.

If somebody wants to walk into a Australian hi-fi shop to buy an SET amp
which is at least of passable quality, then they get a bit of a Shock.
Firstly, there is no available british made amps in the shops except
extremely poorly designed and made amps such as Audion, or CR
Developments both of which have entirely cheap nasty Chinese metalwork
and styling, and reliablity way below what I'd provide routinely,
because they are aimed at a gullible sucker market. The Drake
transformers in the Audion Silver Night with 2 x 300B are BLEEDIN
AWFUL!!!
People might find a shop stocking Quad tube gear, and the quality is
better, but the price is horrifying. Quad is made in China, but no
discount is given for the employment of Chinese slave labour willing to
work for a tiny fraction of British wages. Old Quad-II power amps and 22
preamps are non long lasting unless serviced regularly, and are ****ful
standard gear, just like the BSA motorcycles and Morris cars of
yesterday, and they all need re-engineering like Leak etc....

Secondly, if you still want something passably decent in the SET
variety, then you'll maybe find a shop or two stocking something hi-end
which has a decent tube and transformer line up within. One example is
the KR Audio integrated VA350 stereo amp which makes 20W per channel
using a KT T100 tube in each channel. The people in Prague seem to know
more about making vacuum tubes than the poms do. The T100 has Ra about
1.2k, and has similar looks to an 845 and same 100W Pda rating. But it
has cathode heating requirement of 5V x 2.5A, and there are not many if
any other asian made tubes which could be used instead of the KR made
tube. The T100 costs about aud $600 if you can ever find one available
because CZ production is in such low numbers. So the solidly made KR
VA350 with solid state drive amp instead of tubes could be a real
problem if an owner were to blow or break a T100 tube; maybe KR go broke
in 5 years and the amp then needs replacement power trannies custom made
to allow the use of 845 from KR, if you can ever buy them, or 845 from
China at 1/4 of the price. The VA350 is being offered for sale at a
retail price of aud $18,000 from Duratone Hi-Fi in Canberra, my home
town. They have offered me a price on the tubes from KR but were not
able to say if they'd ever stock any, or be able to get them within
several months after ordering them. So the supply of KR made tubes is
not either plentiful or reliable. KR themselves have told me that 845
are not due to be made again until next october, perhaps, and I'd say
all their production will be devoted to dealers in the US who won't sell
outside the US and who have not replied to my emails. So ppl wanting
amps with 845 in Oz need to think of using Chinese 845 which to me are
probably just as good sounding as any 845 ever made, and If I use a
**pair** with easy Ia Ea ratings, they'll make much more power than one
lousy tube, much less THD/IMD, and if that does not translate to
something better than the one tube 20W wonder, I'll eat a darn 845. Now
I have offered 55 Watt SET amps which can be used with a pair of 845
made by KR Audio, as shown in the pictures at my website, but the price
is half the local hi-fi shop price despite having twice the power, and
an all tube line up without solid state drive amps. But the catch to
what I offer is that you wait 9 months before you get it. People with
attention span disorder who expect an instant fix should always never
deal with me. I don't have ASD, and have always saved up to buy
something worth waiting for. There are other brands of SE amps with 845
within but none that sell for prices like mine and all have no active
protection and all have printed circuit boards of frightful complexity
and ther usual BS found when you take a real hard look inside the amp.
They look so pretty and tidy, but shame about the thought put into the
amp!!! None of these brand names openly display all their details within
and I an alone amoung makers and can claim to offer a perfectly
transparent deal about the amps I make. Take it or ****ing leave it. I
am not in the business of making pretentiously priced crap. The few
buyers who buy my products often have had me build them a preamp, or
re-engineer and an old pair of Quads, or re-engineer a terrible ****ing
british CR Audio Developments amp, and they learn that I really know my
stuff but I don't offer the same glitzy bling of BS found in hi-fi
shops. Its a real challenge to teach buyers of amps that the shops
mostly provide expensive junk, and that more than 1/2 what they pay is
shop markups which don't make the amp quality of sound quality one tiny
bit better.
The Shops look for "fast" amplifiers. One salesman said I should hear
some terrible crummy SE amp with 3 x 6L6; "its fast!" he brayed at me
within a week of telling me my amps sounded better than anything they'd
had in the shop for years. Novelty wears off. I replied to the salesman
with "Fast, eh? does that mean it sells quick?" It was the cheapest most
awful SE POS that could be bought in 1996. The shop used mine to
demonstrate what a great amp should sound like, but led folks over to
the cheap Jolidas etc, and they'd buy. When the Internet became
mainstream in about 2000, I waved the damn shops goodbye because they
never ever helped me, and only sold stuff at high prices which had cost
them peanuts to import, exploiting the average customers complete
ignorance about prices OS or about any matters regarding quality
assessment.

Patrick Turner.

Hello Patrick,
Sorry about the last post, guess I was just ****ed and grumpy!!.

No need to apologise for being a grumpy old man. I know all about that
:-)


Hard wood is fine. I might check some out though for leakage, noise
etc. I know this is not an issue on a transformer, but hey worth an
experiment.

Hardwoods like dry oak or rock maple, or eucalypts etc are fine for
terminal strips. If I drill two holes 1mm apart and press fit the prods
of my Fluke DMM into the holes on the ohms range it measures OL. If the
terminals are 10mm apart I don't see any concernes about current
leakage. Especially when the circuit resistance between a pair of
terminals is thousands of times less than the resistance across 10mm or
hard dry wood.


I agree about the old Brittish crap. A friend of mine owned a BSA
600 twin that was factory race spec. Nice you may think, and yes it
was. Back in 94-95 it would **** on a CBR900!!. Was it reliable? NO.
it leaked like a seive, had no battery, 6V electrics after a fassion,
basicaly halve wave rectified stick a lamp on the end to get an MOT.
Good fun though.

I never had the funds to buy a decent MC in my late teens or early
twenties, and because I was a carpenter's apprentice I had little access
to machine tools to fiddle around with engines seriously, something the
apprentice mechanics were able to do after hours, or at work when the
boss wasn't watching. But I did make mysellf a Harlnormatchbsa. It took
about a year after age 19. it ended up somwhat different to what I
originaly extexted to make, but had 1939 side valve Harley 1,200cc Vtwin
side valve bottom end, Altered ES2 Norton irn barrels, Matchless G80
heads, two carbs and siameased exhaust, BSA altered petrol tank, Honda
alternator, HD 750 ignition coil, 1958 Duo glide swing arm frame, 1935
vintage leading link forks, Mini Minor front shock absorber, Girling
rear shocks, very altered top half and rear of frame to
make it more ridgid, oil tank and plumbing and many other brackets and
parts and exhausts and intake manifolds made at home by bending sand
filled pipes then oxy-acet welding or brazing them. Norton front wheel,
Matchless back wheel with slightly heavier spokes. I had to ride in 3rd
gear everywhere around town at night because the low revving engine
didn't get the alternator to kick much charge into the battery and power
lights etc. I once took it up to about 95MPH when it started to get a
speed wobble and i realised there was more to stability than just
bundling old parts together. But at 95 it wasn't struggling, and it'd do
that in 3rd gear. Lord knows how fast it could have gone. I had a foot
clutch, the 1939 gearbox was four speed with a gated lever on the petrol
tank. It was OK for a long trip though, and shielas who liked a wild
ride in more ways than one were much delighted by the contraption I had
made. I got an ex NSW Police Dept side car which had a width to take two
slim adults side by side, or one big fat police sargeant. I got rid of
the actual side car anf built a plywood box
with pit for tools under a smaller seat that hinged down over it. I
could put 6 x 40Kg bags of cement in it. Once i crammed about 10 people
hanging on all over it to get them from a pub to a nearby house for
continued drinking. Pubs used to shut at 10pm in those days. It was
always breaking down though, and I took it back to plain side valve and
it lost its zing but was a goor side car machine. The SV barrels had
been bored to max size and I'd had a guy fit Ford Falcon flat top car
pistons with press fitted gudgoens. This arrangement was very reliabale
for about 18 mths, but finally the press-fit loosened, and a gudgeon
slip over and scored a large groove in one barrel.
I got busy with work and study, and got sick of the dirty hands each
fortnight. So I cut my losses and sold it to a bloke who rode up to
Queensland with his missus. It lurked up there for some time until he
went out on some hard sand flats in a tidal zone one day where it got
bogged. The tide came in. It sank into the wet sand and mud nearly out
of sight. He had a few more joints, and kinda forgot about it.
I'd say there's not much left of it after 40 years.

I rode a japanese tidler 100cc with drop bars and lowered seat to get
around while I saved to buy something decent after I broke up with an
expensive to run and unfaithful shiela I had had. Within another 15
months I bought a BMW with low miles. No more dirty hands each
fortnight,
and a better class of shiela was ready to ride with me. My pay went up
as the company promoted me, and I didn't have to struggle to stay
mobile. The BMWR75/5 was a far nicer bike to ride and own than anything
british or american that was available in 1972. I had nice long ride
once on a 650cc Norton Dominator, and yes, it did seem like it was on
rails and had the most impecable handling and road holding. But it made
you somewhat over confident on corners. I did also briefly owned Bultaco
Metralla which was a worn out POS with many faults but it also had the
fabulous handling style of the Norton. But the Bultaco pitched me off 3
times in 3 months because I would ride too fast around corners and it'd
just slide out front end first so i sold it because I knew I might die
on that. The BM gave you better handling than the Marchlesses I'd owned,
nearly as good as the Norton, but with some feedback so you knew when
you were at the bikes limits, so I never fell off in 100,000 miles, and
toured long miles without fatigue, vibration was low and the ride
comfortable. I fitted a white fairing and people in cars behaved because
it looked like a copper's bike which also had white fairings. I made a
fibreglass cast of some other guy's Dolfin fairing meant for R69S, and
then altered that to cast a better fairing for my R75/5 and a mate's
bike. I made a nice windshield with clear perspex with upturn curve so I
sit there and have a cigarette at 60MPH with the wind zipping up over
the top of my helmet.

I gave up MCs in 1981, and went to bicycles in 1986, raced on them for 6
years, then stopped riding for 13 years, and now have got back onto the
bicycle for the last 2.5 years and riding 8,000 km since last Xmas. Cars
are no fun, just a necessary alternative form of transport so have a
Ford Laser, 1986 model, POS, but it works OK.

I am happier on a bicycle now, and all the old girls who rode on MC 40
years ago are rather haggard now and have no atraction to me. The few
shielas i see on bicycles all look much more attractive, and they are
very fit.



The BMWs are great my dad and his brothers have owned loads and
toured all of Europe on them. He currently has an 1150RT. His brother
built a GS before GSs came about. He used an R850 engine and built
the frame etc. It had two kwaker tanks welded together and held a vast
amount of fuel, used to get strange looks in the petrol station
filling up.
I quite like the Holden/Vauxhall thing we get here, Basically 30
grand for a car that ****s on most stuff and doesnt look like an iron
with an ironing board for a wing.
I think I can remember an Ausi guy that built his own bikes from
scratch ie. did all the castings-everything. This thing was a beast, a
V-Twin, won all the races. I dont know what happened to it or the guy
that built it?.

I have entirely lost the urge to muck about with MC or derivatives any
more. I probably am far less likely to kill myself at 35kph on a
bicycle than doing 160kph on some speedy motorcycle. I think I am very
lucky to still be here and not in a wheel chair or plain dead, and I am
very fit and healthy. If anything gets me it'll probably be something
boring like prostate cancer, but meanwhile I enjoy the motley crew of
ordinary mortals who ride in the bunch on sunday mornings. A few are
faster than I am and most are slower, but its always nice to dice with
the faster ones and hang back a bit for the slowies and enjoy the cafe
stops.

I have noticed over the last 20 years along with global warming, hills
have become steeper, and winds are blowing harder. And the young bucks
are riding faster. And that the older I get, the better I was.

Patrick Turner.

[bigwig]

On 4 Oct, 14:55, Patrick Turner wrote:
bigwig wrote:

On 29 Sep, 08:18, Patrick Turner wrote:
bigwig wrote:

On 24 Sep, 01:02, Patrick Turner wrote:

snip,

I have run way out of time to make a few more pages and must do my last
two year's of tax returns or else the ATO might get cranky.

****ing time. If only there was +20dB more of it!

Patrick Turner.

Peter Wieck
Melrose Park, PA- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Ok great,
* Patrick,
*You use hardwood for posts? why?. You say you seal it with varnish.
Do you think varnish lasts 50+ years? I dont. 1000 odd volts across a
bit of ****e wood does not last long. No offence I have learnt alot
from your site.Any way, Brittish bikes, hey we still make some real
jems. I dont know of any Ausy bikes that last the Brittish weather.
Dont forget all the Formula 1 cars are built in England.

I don't have 1,000V across any two close terminals. The wood isn't ****e
wood such as soft pine etc which may well deteriate, but do remember
that wood in ancient Italian violins is still structurally OK despite
their 300 year age. Plastics might last 300years, but finding cheap rods
of temperature resistant fibre re-inforced plastic rod for use with
turrets or screws is not easy unless I made my own or pay huge prices..

The varnish is polyurethane. The product I have used has lasted for 32
years without any visible deteriation on furniture I made 30 years ago.
The timber resistance remains so high for so long that the life is
extremely long, and far longer than the expected future use of the amp
will be, because in 50 years the change in the world of consumer habits
will change much more than during the past 50 years. If someone finds an
amp of mine they wish to upgrade in 50 years, then it may be worth using
strips that are better but probably won't make much difference to the
sound or reliability.

I don't have any reason to criticize current productions british
motorcycles or the F1 cars right now.
I don't know enough about them, and have not owned recently made UK made
things.

No doubt many else outside the UK would have some constructive criticsms
to make.

I once owned a procession of 4 different British bikes, 250cc XC10L,
side valve POS.Ditto but 250CC OHV, POS, and a Matchless G80 500cc, also
POS, then another matchless 650cc twin, much faster, but another
shorlived POS that was always breaking down and seizing up. I moved to
building a DIY Harley 1.2L with Norton ES2 barrels and G80 heads, and
many other bits of other bikes and it went OK for a couple of years
and of course in Oz we were riding far longer distances than on the UK
when 50km was a long ride. 500km is a long ride here. Roads out west in
the old days were horrible, so things like a Triumph "Blunderbird"
rattled to bits as you rode along, and guys would have stop to pick the
mufflers and footrests etc, so poor was the british ****ing engineering.

My mother drove a Morris Oxford which rusted to bits quickly, had lousy
performance, poor fuel economy and needing service often, despite its
simplicity. My father had a Willys Jeep station wagaon based around the
US made jeep parts used in WW2, and that was a better made thing.

Many people drove australian made Fords and Holdens which gave
surprising milages. I had a Holden panel van that went OK for well over
twice around the clock. Then I had a Holden 1 tonner utility truck, far
more useful than better from anything made in the UK at the price. Of
course the local car making in Oz has always been owned by parent
companies eslewhere, and mainly based in the US then later in Japan
because the low cost of vehicles can only be achieved if thousands can
be made profitably.

AFAIK, there have never been any Oz owned brand of motorcycle made
because of the competion and dominance of OS brands and the fact that
the demand for motorcycles in Oz is way too low to ever allow profitable
mass manufacturing unless we exported vast numbers. But cheap labour
rates in asia make manufacturing anything in Oz increasingly impossible.
I thought you might know this.

In 1971, worked and saved up and I bought a BMW R75/5 for $1,650, second
hand, 9,000 miles. Better tyhan paying the new price of over $2,500 at
that time. I rode another 100,000 miles before selling it in 1981 for
$1,800. Nothing major went wrong during that time and oil use wasn't
much, noise was tolerable, and the next guy probably rode if for another
100k. The Germans made things better than the Poms.

If somebody wants to walk into a Australian hi-fi shop to buy an SET amp
which is at least of passable quality, then they get a bit of a Shock..
Firstly, there is no available british made amps in the shops except
extremely poorly designed and made amps such as Audion, or CR
Developments both of which have entirely cheap nasty Chinese metalwork
and styling, and reliablity way below what I'd provide routinely,
because they are aimed at a gullible sucker market. The Drake
transformers in the Audion Silver Night with 2 x 300B are BLEEDIN
AWFUL!!!
People might find a shop stocking Quad tube gear, and the quality is
better, but the price is horrifying. Quad is made in China, but no
discount is given for the employment of Chinese slave labour willing to
work for a tiny fraction of British wages. Old Quad-II power amps and 22
preamps are non long lasting unless serviced regularly, and are ****ful
standard gear, just like the BSA motorcycles and Morris cars of
yesterday, and they all need re-engineering like Leak etc....

Secondly, if you still want something passably decent in the SET
variety, then you'll maybe find a shop or two stocking something hi-end
which has a decent tube and transformer line up within. One example is
the KR Audio integrated VA350 stereo amp which makes 20W per channel
using a KT T100 tube in each channel. The people in Prague seem to know
more about making vacuum tubes than the poms do. The T100 has Ra about
1.2k, and has similar looks to an 845 and same 100W Pda rating. But it
has cathode heating requirement of 5V x 2.5A, and there are not many if
any other asian made tubes which could be used instead of the KR made
tube. The T100 costs about aud $600 if you can ever find one available
because CZ production is in such low numbers. So the solidly made KR
VA350 with solid state drive amp instead of tubes could be a real
problem if an owner were to blow or break a T100 tube; maybe KR go broke
in 5 years and the amp then needs replacement power trannies custom made
to allow the use of 845 from KR, if you can ever buy them, or 845 from
China at 1/4 of the price. The VA350 is being offered for sale at a
retail price of aud $18,000 from Duratone Hi-Fi in Canberra, my home
town. They have offered me a price on the tubes from KR but were not
able to say if they'd ever stock any, or be able to get them within
several months after ordering them. So the supply of KR made tubes is
not either plentiful or reliable. KR themselves have told me that 845
are not due to be made again until next october, perhaps, and I'd say
all their production will be devoted to dealers in the US who won't sell
outside the US and who have not replied to my emails. So ppl wanting
amps with 845 in Oz need to think of using Chinese 845 which to me are
probably just as good sounding as any 845 ever made, and If I use a
**pair** with easy Ia Ea ratings, they'll make much more power than one
lousy tube, much less THD/IMD, and if that does not translate to
something better than the one tube 20W wonder, I'll eat a darn 845. Now
I have offered 55 Watt SET amps which can be used with a pair of 845
made by KR Audio, as shown in the pictures at my website, but the price
is half the local hi-fi shop price despite having twice the power, and
an all tube line up without solid state drive amps. But the catch to
what I offer is that you wait 9 months before you get it. People with
attention span disorder who expect an instant fix should always never
deal with me. I don't have ASD, and have always saved up to buy
something worth waiting for. There are other brands of SE amps with 845
within but none that sell for prices like mine and all have no active
protection and all have printed circuit boards of frightful complexity
and ther usual BS found when you take a real hard look inside the amp..
They look so pretty and tidy, but shame about the thought put into the
amp!!! None of these brand names openly display all their details within
and I an alone amoung makers and can claim to offer a perfectly
transparent deal about the amps I make. Take it or ****ing leave it. I
am not in the business of making pretentiously priced crap. The few
buyers who buy my products often have had me build them a preamp, or
re-engineer and an old pair of Quads, or re-engineer a terrible ****ing
british CR Audio Developments amp, and they learn that I really know my
stuff but I don't offer the same glitzy bling of BS found in hi-fi
shops. Its a real challenge to teach buyers of amps that the shops
mostly provide expensive junk, and that more than 1/2 what they pay is
shop markups which don't make the amp quality of sound quality one tiny
bit better.
The Shops look for "fast" amplifiers. One salesman said I should hear
some terrible crummy SE amp with 3 x 6L6; "its fast!" he brayed at me
within a week of telling me my amps sounded better than anything they'd
had in the shop for years. Novelty wears off. I replied to the salesman
with "Fast, eh? does that mean it sells quick?" It was the cheapest most
awful SE POS that could be bought in 1996. The shop used mine to
demonstrate what a great amp should sound like, but led folks over to
the cheap Jolidas etc, and they'd buy. When the Internet became
mainstream in about 2000, I waved the damn shops goodbye because they
never ever helped me, and only sold stuff at high prices which had cost
them peanuts to import, exploiting the average customers complete
ignorance about prices OS or about any matters regarding quality
assessment.

Patrick Turner.

Hello Patrick,
* Sorry about the last post, guess I was just ****ed and grumpy!!.

No need to apologise for being a grumpy old man. I know all about that
:-)

Hard wood is fine. I might check some out though for leakage, noise
etc. I know this is not an issue on a transformer, but hey worth an
experiment.

Hardwoods like dry oak or rock maple, or eucalypts etc are fine for
terminal strips. If I drill two holes 1mm apart and press fit the prods
of my Fluke DMM into the holes on the ohms range it measures OL. If the
terminals are 10mm apart I don't see any concernes about current
leakage. Especially when the circuit resistance between a pair of
terminals is thousands of times less than the resistance across 10mm or
hard dry wood.

* *I agree about the old Brittish crap. A friend of mine owned a BSA
600 twin that was factory race spec. Nice you may think, and yes it
was. Back in 94-95 it would **** on a CBR900!!. Was it reliable? NO.
it leaked like a seive, had no battery, 6V electrics after a fassion,
basicaly halve wave rectified stick a lamp on the end to get an MOT.
Good fun though.

I never had the funds to buy a decent MC in my late teens or early
twenties, and because I was a carpenter's apprentice I had little access
to machine tools to fiddle around with engines seriously, something the
apprentice mechanics were able to do after hours, or at work when the
boss wasn't watching. But I did make mysellf a Harlnormatchbsa. It took
about a year after age 19. it ended up somwhat different to what I
originaly extexted to make, but had 1939 side valve Harley 1,200cc Vtwin
side valve bottom end, Altered ES2 Norton irn barrels, Matchless G80
heads, two carbs and siameased exhaust, BSA altered petrol tank, Honda
alternator, HD 750 ignition coil, 1958 Duo glide swing arm frame, 1935
vintage leading link forks, Mini Minor front shock absorber, Girling
rear shocks, very altered top half and rear of frame to
make it more ridgid, oil tank and plumbing and many other brackets and
parts and exhausts and intake manifolds made at home by bending sand
filled pipes then oxy-acet welding or brazing them. Norton front wheel,
Matchless back wheel with slightly heavier spokes. I had to ride in 3rd
gear everywhere around town at night because the low revving engine
didn't get the alternator to kick much charge into the battery and power
lights etc. I once took it up to about 95MPH when it started to get a
speed wobble and i realised there was more to stability than just
bundling old parts together. But at 95 it wasn't struggling, and it'd do
that in 3rd gear. Lord knows how fast it could have gone. I had a foot
clutch, the 1939 gearbox was four speed with a gated lever on the petrol
tank. It was OK for a long trip though, and shielas who liked a wild
ride in more ways than one were much delighted by the contraption I had
made. I got an ex NSW Police Dept side car which had a width to take two
slim adults side by side, or one big fat police sargeant. I got rid of
the actual side car anf built a plywood box
with pit for tools under a smaller seat that hinged down over it. I
could put 6 x 40Kg bags of cement in it. Once i crammed about 10 people
hanging on all over it to get them from a pub to a nearby house for
continued drinking. Pubs used to shut at 10pm in those days. It was
always breaking down though, and I took it back to plain side valve and
it lost its zing but was a goor side car machine. The SV barrels had
been bored to max size and I'd had a guy fit Ford Falcon flat top car
pistons with press fitted gudgoens. This arrangement was very reliabale
for about 18 mths, but finally the press-fit loosened, and a gudgeon
slip over and scored a large groove in one barrel.
I got busy with work and study, and got sick of the dirty hands each
fortnight. So I cut my losses and sold it to a bloke who rode up to
Queensland with his missus. It lurked up there for some time until he
went out on some hard sand flats in a tidal zone one day where it got
bogged. The tide came in. It sank into the wet sand and mud nearly out
of sight. He had a few more joints, and kinda forgot about it.
I'd say there's not much left of it after 40 years.

I rode a japanese tidler 100cc with drop bars and lowered seat to get
around while I saved to buy something decent after I broke up with an
expensive to run and unfaithful shiela I had had. Within another 15
months I bought a BMW with low miles. No more dirty hands each
fortnight,
and a better class of shiela was ready to ride with me. My pay went up
as the company promoted me, and I didn't have to struggle to stay
mobile. The BMWR75/5 was a far nicer bike to ride and own than anything
british or american that was available in 1972. I had nice long ride
once on a 650cc Norton Dominator, and yes, it did seem like it was on
rails and had the most impecable handling and road holding. But it made
you somewhat over confident on corners. I did also briefly owned Bultaco
Metralla which was a worn out POS with many faults but it also had the
fabulous handling style of the Norton. But the Bultaco pitched me off 3
times in 3 months because I would ride too fast around corners and it'd
just slide out front end first so i sold it because I knew I might die
on that. The BM gave you better handling than the Marchlesses I'd owned,
nearly as good as the Norton, but with some feedback so you knew when
you were at the bikes limits, so I never fell off in 100,000 miles, and
toured long miles without fatigue, vibration was low and the ride
comfortable. I fitted a white fairing and people in cars behaved because
it looked like a copper's bike which also had white fairings. I made a
fibreglass cast of some other guy's Dolfin fairing meant for R69S, and
then altered that to cast a better fairing for my R75/5 and a mate's
bike. I made a nice windshield with clear perspex with upturn curve so I
sit there and have a cigarette at 60MPH with the wind zipping up over
the top of my helmet.

I gave up MCs in 1981, and went to bicycles in 1986, raced on them for 6
years, then stopped riding for 13 years, and now have got back onto the
bicycle for the last 2.5 years and riding 8,000 km since last Xmas. Cars
are no fun, just a necessary alternative form of transport so *have a
Ford Laser, 1986 model, POS, but it works OK.

I am happier on a bicycle now, and all the old girls who rode on MC 40
years ago are rather haggard now and have no atraction to me. The few
shielas i see on bicycles all look much more attractive, and they are
very fit.

* The BMWs are great my dad and his brothers have owned loads and
toured all of Europe on them. He currently has an 1150RT. His brother
built a GS before GSs came about. *He used an R850 engine and built
the frame etc. It had two kwaker tanks welded together and held a vast
amount of fuel, used to get strange looks in the petrol station
filling up.
* I quite like the Holden/Vauxhall thing we get here, Basically 30
grand for a car that ****s on most stuff and doesnt look like an iron
with an ironing board for a wing.
I think I can remember an Ausi guy that built his own bikes from
scratch ie. did all the castings-everything. This thing was a beast, a
V-Twin, won all the races. I dont know what happened to it or the guy
that built it?.

I have entirely lost the urge to muck about with MC or derivatives any
more. I probably am far less likely to kill myself at 35kph on *a
bicycle than doing 160kph on some speedy motorcycle. I think I am very
lucky to still be here and not in a wheel chair or plain dead, and I am
very fit and healthy. If anything gets me it'll probably be something
boring like prostate cancer, but meanwhile I enjoy the motley crew of
ordinary mortals who ride in the bunch on sunday mornings. A few are
faster than I am and most are slower, but its always nice to dice with
the faster ones and hang back a bit for the slowies and enjoy the cafe
stops.

I have noticed over the last 20 years along with global warming, hills
have become steeper, and winds are blowing harder. And the young bucks
are riding faster. And that the older I get, the better I was.

Patrick Turner.

Excellent, I ride downhill MTBs for a laugh and Crossers in the w-end.
My dad and his brothers still ride trials(my dads 60 this year). I
agree on the wheel chair, I was almost in one back in 97 because my
mate decided driving a car at 90mph and swerving from one side of the
road to the other was fun!!. He bust 3 of my vertibrey and fractured
my scull, plus ribs etc. He wasnt so lucky, in a coma for 6 weeks
blood clot on the brain. You live and learn. He now teaches
parragliding in the Alps in summer and swings on rope from oil rigs in
winter. Guess he will never slow down!!.
Prostate-broccally my friend eat loads. Matt.

[Patrick Turner]

I have entirely lost the urge to muck about with MC or derivatives any
more. I probably am far less likely to kill myself at 35kph on a
bicycle than doing 160kph on some speedy motorcycle. I think I am very
lucky to still be here and not in a wheel chair or plain dead, and I am
very fit and healthy. If anything gets me it'll probably be something
boring like prostate cancer, but meanwhile I enjoy the motley crew of
ordinary mortals who ride in the bunch on sunday mornings. A few are
faster than I am and most are slower, but its always nice to dice with
the faster ones and hang back a bit for the slowies and enjoy the cafe
stops.

I have noticed over the last 20 years along with global warming, hills
have become steeper, and winds are blowing harder. And the young bucks
are riding faster. And that the older I get, the better I was.

Patrick Turner.

Excellent, I ride downhill MTBs for a laugh and Crossers in the w-end.
My dad and his brothers still ride trials(my dads 60 this year). I
agree on the wheel chair, I was almost in one back in 97 because my
mate decided driving a car at 90mph and swerving from one side of the
road to the other was fun!!. He bust 3 of my vertibrey and fractured
my scull, plus ribs etc. He wasnt so lucky, in a coma for 6 weeks
blood clot on the brain. You live and learn. He now teaches
parragliding in the Alps in summer and swings on rope from oil rigs in
winter. Guess he will never slow down!!.
Prostate-broccally my friend eat loads. Matt.

Brocoli for prostate health?

Maybe you are right, but red vegies like tomatoes are good.

Keep on ridin'

Patrick Turner.

[RickH]

On Oct 6, 8:40*pm, Patrick Turner wrote:
I have entirely lost the urge to muck about with MC or derivatives any
more. I probably am far less likely to kill myself at 35kph on *a
bicycle than doing 160kph on some speedy motorcycle. I think I am very
lucky to still be here and not in a wheel chair or plain dead, and I am
very fit and healthy. If anything gets me it'll probably be something
boring like prostate cancer, but meanwhile I enjoy the motley crew of
ordinary mortals who ride in the bunch on sunday mornings. A few are
faster than I am and most are slower, but its always nice to dice with
the faster ones and hang back a bit for the slowies and enjoy the cafe
stops.

I have noticed over the last 20 years along with global warming, hills
have become steeper, and winds are blowing harder. And the young bucks
are riding faster. And that the older I get, the better I was.

Patrick Turner.

Excellent, I ride downhill MTBs for a laugh and Crossers in the w-end.
My dad and his brothers still ride trials(my dads 60 this year). I
agree on the wheel chair, I was almost in one back in 97 because my
mate decided driving a car at 90mph and swerving from one side of the
road to the other was fun!!. He bust 3 of my vertibrey and fractured
my scull, plus ribs etc. He wasnt so lucky, in a coma for 6 weeks
blood clot on the brain. You live and learn. He now teaches
parragliding in the Alps in summer and swings on rope from oil rigs in
winter. Guess he will never slow down!!.
* Prostate-broccally my friend eat loads. * * Matt.

Brocoli for prostate health?

Maybe you are right, but red vegies like tomatoes are good.

Keep on ridin'

Patrick Turner.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -


Tomatoes are a fruit. "My favorite fruit to have on my pasta and
pizza is tomato sauce." This statement drives my kids nuts, but
technically it's correct.

[Patrick Turner]

Brocoli for prostate health?

Maybe you are right, but red vegies like tomatoes are good.

Keep on ridin'

Patrick Turner.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Tomatoes are a fruit. "My favorite fruit to have on my pasta and
pizza is tomato sauce." This statement drives my kids nuts, but
technically it's correct.

When I ride about 50km somewhere to a nice eatery with a few people and
there is a good feed of pasta available, I buy a dish of it.
Maybe I have a few potatoes piled on as well.

And after eatin de pasta, I go fasta and fasta, and the poor people de
can't keep uppa with me, de pasta issa roctarto fueli,
and I am uncatchable.

Patrick Turner.