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Years ago, my mom in her trailer would trickle the water in cold spells. Great idea, except for the time when the cold snap was prolonged and her main drain froze at ground level instead! The trickle of water was too slow to stay liquid in the drain till it exited and made an ice dam in the sewer pipe instead. Eventually it backfilled the drain and began finding other outlets. Meanwhile there was leakage due to ice swelling at the pipe junction at ground level, which created a nice little glacier of ice beneath the trailer. What fun I had getting the drain unthawed and back in order and mopping up the backflows inside. Yes, the toilet had been used too. Whee!

 

 

Edited by Ed in SoDak
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On 2/7/2021 at 8:42 AM, arcadeshopper said:

I have belts and cables and disks to use that with a trs80 model 100-200 in my store

Sent from my LM-V600 using Tapatalk
 

 

My drive arrived today, and I tried to play with it.  I can hear the drive motor engage when I instruct the knitting machine to format the diskette, but do not hear the media turning. Also, do not hear the head advance.

 

Since the belt is a known source of failure for these drives, I have ordered one from your store.  I will also pick up some white grease lubricant for the head sled.

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Crazy weather here ... a week ago, I nearly froze my fingers scratching ice off the windshield. Today, I was comfortably walking outside without a coat. Last week there were -20°C in parts of Germany (too cold for February), while now we have +20°C at some places (too warm for February). This is a delta of 40K, or 72°F.

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Yeah, we had a similar shift here.

 

Not quite shorts and tshirt weather yet, but getting close.

 

 

In other news, I decided to look inside my FB100, even though I have not gotten the replacement belt yet.  OH YEAH. that belt needs replacing.  It has lost all of its elasticity, and literally just FELL off the capstan. I tugged it with my fingers, and it stretched but did not recoil at all. It feels somewhat gummy too.

 

I am fairly confident that this is the source of my sorrows.  The order status says shipped, so I should probably get it by monday or tuesday.

 

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You might want to reinstall the cover, while you await delivery. The orientation of the capstan pin to the fly wheel is critical to speed fluctuation, relative to the flywheel's R.P.M.. I once managed to knock a Panasonic tape recorder off the table, the flywheel hit and unnoticeably, deviated from it's true alignment, ever so slightly. 

 

While the TI is very tolerant of faster/slower, overall tape speeds. Speed fluctuations that occur while a file is loading/saving are not well tolerated.

Despite seemingly endless attempts to straighten the pin, even music/speech had too much flutter. I finally gave up and disposed of the unit in frustration!

 

On an odd side note...

 

You might see this unit, on a street vendor's table in a NYC Lou Reed video(maybe '92-'93)... The manager had hired my mom and several others, to be on hand for shots in the video... ...also rented some consumer electronics, including this tape recorder, from the same Canal street store that sold me a couple JR-200 computers. They probably decided that they didn't want use the shots... decided to stiff us all... "There's nothing you can do about it":evil: ...You should have seen this pencil-necked geek's face, turn red,:mad: as I removed the unit from our table, and slowly sauntered away up Broadway.:grin: Later, I brought the unit back to the store, revealing(reveling:P) the experience ...the owner told of being stiffed as well... and let me keep the unit.:D


    -Karma Dharma.

Edited by HOME AUTOMATION
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I saw this today and thought it was interesting. I’m not sure it’s very accurate, but it’s still interesting.

 

b8f3297e3345b39a6a9f48ec6d65899c.jpg

 

I certainly fall into the group that think it’s a much better use of your time than watching TV.

 

It’s probably an even better use of your time than reading forums about video games[emoji38].

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Lets see how many here remember these:

los luchadores
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUmWwXws9z4

mann and machine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wtb-J89aUco

viper
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0gKYPxAw4o

action man
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0rPQkS34Ak

 

Bonus points if you remember this from CBS story break: Ratha's creature
https://youtu.be/div-aH50vzc?t=354

Edited by jrhodes
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Too much aggression\hostility for my tastes. I prefer violins over violence? ..."try on a new hat"? ...I'd enjoy some good company, whilst I ride on the trolley? ...partaking of a Doobie and some Twinkies!

 

Romper Room with Miss Lois - color, St.Louis,Mo. - YouTube

 

Mister Rogers Neighborhood - 27x08 Be Yourself: That’s The Best! - YouTube

 

Marlo and the Magic Movie Machine (pt 1)

 

Patchwork Family Video and Theme Song

 

Carole and Paula - The Magic Garden

 

   ...doobie anyone?;-)

Edited by HOME AUTOMATION
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Well, after a LENGTHLY delay in shipping, I finally got my belt yesterday.

 

Installed it. Greased up the head-sled assembly. All that jazz.

 

 

I am suspecting that the data cable has connectivity issues; While the command to format the diskette is handled completely by the diskette drive itself, it acts like the drive is not transmitting data back to the knitting machine.  The machine itself gives very little in the way of diagnostic info, so I am curious.  I believe I have an RS323c USB cable (for accessing the serial console on embedded devices) that I could attach to the pins on the back of the FB100, and then issue some commands to it to ensure it is healthy.

 

The knitting machine is able to initiate the format, and the drive does the process, but the knitting machine computer never reaches "ready" status after working with the drive.  It is possible that my travel power adapter is not quite giving appropriate power, (Knitting machine is a UK version that wants 220v) despite it clearly saying on it that it outputs 220v. It could be that the cable is bad. Could be that the computer in the knitting machine is a bit daft, who knows.  But, the drive spins and the head sled moves. Internally, the format command completes, so clearly it is able to read and make use of the medium. (it could not complete its format routine if there was a problem with reading or writing.)

 

It will go on the back burner. 

 

(But it sure would be fun to make use of the knitting machine to make some 2-color dust covers for people that want them. It's a full length bed, so I could easily knit a fancy image-bearing piece with it pretty quickly, ASSUMING I can get data into the silly thing!  I guess I will test out the mylar pattern reader.  I have a thermal laminator that I can abuse for this purpose, by using a sharpie marker INSIDE an empty lamination pouch, then running it through. That should let me make suitable mylar patterns, but that is not nearly as convenient as having them on a diskette.)

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I dug out my ftdi serial cable and attempted to connect to the floppy drive.

 

No dice.  Apparently my cable is 3.3v TTL levels, and the drive uses 5v levels.  The cable is 5v tolerant, but does not output levels high enough to drive the floppy drive's electronics.

 

 

I will wait for march 6th or so.  I ordered a US power cord for the knitting machine, that is manufactured by OEM on Ebay.  I will eliminate one bit of potential mishap with that, and see if diskette operation improves.

 

 

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On 2/14/2021 at 2:39 AM, Ed in SoDak said:

Years ago, my mom in her trailer would trickle the water in cold spells. Great idea, except for the time when the cold snap was prolonged and her main drain froze at ground level instead! The trickle of water was too slow to stay liquid in the drain till it exited and made an ice dam in the sewer pipe instead. Eventually it backfilled the drain and began finding other outlets. Meanwhile there was leakage due to ice swelling at the pipe junction at ground level, which created a nice little glacier of ice beneath the trailer. What fun I had getting the drain unthawed and back in order and mopping up the backflows inside. Yes, the toilet had been used too. Whee!

 

 

Just saw your note.  We had a double-wide when I was growing up and we had lines freeze multiple times.  Had a sewer line freeze as well, and it separated at a flange dropping to the slab below.  The only good thing, it was still frozen solid when we had people go back in to replace it, so they did not have sewage to crawl through.

 

We used a kerosene heater that blew heat underneath that warmed things up enough to thaw when things started freezing.

 

I appreciate the house I live in now as freezing will be a very RARE occurrence should it ever happen, maybe one of those 1 in 500 year type instances.

 

Now, I have a buddy in Houston that has water pipes frozen and burst under the crawlspace of his house.  Apparently, the crawl space is so tight, he has had one plumber give up up on trying to sweat in a fix in one spot, and two other plumbers have been out and turned down the job completely.  There is almost no room underneath his house to fix the lines.

 

Beery

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