Our 3+ hour interview with free_electron

[george graves]

Problem is that hydrogen is very, very small it can even escape through the metal crystalline structure

Really?  That's amazing!  So a hydrogen atom and wiggle it's little ass between the metal molecules?  Makes me wonder how the Hindenburg ever crosses the Atlantic.

[ddavidebor]

With periodical refill of hydrgen

[ResistorRob]

...probably my favorite AmpHour episode to date.  And now, Forrest Mims??

Thanks for the heads-up! Forrest Mims was a key element in what got me started in electronics. I have emailed him a few times over the years begging him to write another electronics book. He seems to have lost all interest in electronics and focuses solely on astronomy and earth based sciences now. It's kind of sad to think how many treasures he could have created in the past couple decades if he wouldn't have lost his passion for electronics.

I still have all my Forrest Mims books I got when I was around 13 years old, back in the mid-80's!! Radio Shack is capitalizing on the maker moverment and resurgance in the electronics hobby (mainly credited to Arduino) by restocking his books. In all these years nobody has created anything better. As much as I have dreamed of a new book by him, in reality it would probably suck if he no longer is interested in the subject. I'm very interested to see what he has to say about his current feeling about electronics in next weeks interview. I'm going to set something up to text me as soon as it's published!

[notsob]

back in the days, I was involved in the service side of ISDN, installs, fault diagnostics etc. Due to the cost of the equipment and the telco pricing and billing policies, we referred to it as

 [ ISDN]    - I Smell Dollars Now

[SeanB]

With periodical refill of hydrgen

Petrol engines that drove the propellors also drove a generator that had as one use driving an electrolytic water distillation system that used the condensed exhaust water ( condensed and stored as it was about equal to the fuel burned in mass so you did not need to dump valuable lift gas during a voyage) to generate oxygen ( burned in the engine as a safety measure) and the hydrogen was used as a make up gas for the bags.

[madires]

back in the days, I was involved in the service side of ISDN, installs, fault diagnostics etc. Due to the cost of the equipment and the telco pricing and billing policies, we referred to it as

 [ ISDN]    - I Smell Dollars Now

AFAIR ISDN in the US is/was also quite expensive. Over here ISDN is so common place that there's nearly no price difference. An ISDN BRI (2 channels) is just 4 Euros more than a POTS line. But it will be gone soon, obsoleted by VoIP.

[free_electron]

The germans have another name for ISDN : Ist sowass Denn notwendig ? translation : Do we really need this ?

[jahonen]

The germans have another name for ISDN : Ist sowass Denn notwendig ? translation : Do we really need this ?

I have heard "It Still Does Nothing" and "I Still Don't Need"-versions.

Regards,
Janne

[JoannaK]

Hello free_electron

I just listened the 3 hour show and enjoy a lot of that stuff. Really great stuff.

I'd like to point out that there indeed has been an Pic chip clone. It was closely resembling the old 16F84 but had a fast mode (1 instruction/clock with slower jumps) and a lot faster clock speeds so it was not a simple rebranding. Original company that made it was Scenix (laterly known as Ubicom or something) and last of those chips are nowdays available (have been EOL:ed some time ago) from Parallax Inc. Parallax used those in some of their Basic-stamp products.
( http://www.parallax.com/catalog/microcontrollers/sx )


And for 6502 code.. there are still people who do Demos for Commodore VIC-20 and C-64 computers. Not to mention things like CastAR form Technical Illusions (well, it's from Jeri, so of course it has 6502) 

[timb]

back in the days, I was involved in the service side of ISDN, installs, fault diagnostics etc. Due to the cost of the equipment and the telco pricing and billing policies, we referred to it as

 [ ISDN]    - I Smell Dollars Now

In 2000 we still had dialup with no sign of DSL coming anytime soon (small town with GTE as our phone company). I found out I could get a physical ISDN line fairly cheap ($60/mo vs $40 for a POTS line), but outbound usage was billed at least $0.25/min! I started interning with a guy who ran a small local ISP in a nearby city and we figured out it was possible to set his equipment up for something called ISDN Dial-Back.

Basically, my ISDN modem would call his and upon answer hangup immediately; his equipment would dial me back, my modem would answer and then go through the normal authentication procedures. This was great because I wasn't charged anything for inbound calls, only out!

That little ISDN line was blazing fast and the night I got it installed I was up until 6AM playing Quake 3. (18ms ping compared to the 240ms ping I was getting on dialup.) I always loved the fact I could use the phone at the same time as well (albeit dropping to a single 64k B channel for data during).

I really loved that ISDN line and it served me well for over 3 years. :3

[madires]

In 2000 we still had dialup with no sign of DSL coming anytime soon (small town with GTE as our phone company). I found out I could get a physical ISDN line fairly cheap ($60/mo vs $40 for a POTS line), but outbound usage was billed at least $0.25/min! I started interning with a guy who ran a small local ISP in a nearby city and we figured out it was possible to set his equipment up for something called ISDN Dial-Back.

That was set up in the RADIUS user profile, standard feature for RAS back then :-) At the beginning of ISDN Deutsche Telekom had a nice feature turned on for the signaling channel. It allowed to send short messages, similiar to SMS, to another one with an ISDN line free of charge. After the first commercial devices took advantage of that hidden treasure for establishing very low speed data communications Telekom made it a paid service and disabled it some time later.

[SeanB]

Our first internet connection was on ISDN, with a dedicated TA inside the building rented from the Post Office (later Telkom) and a plug in ISA card in one PC that was used as a gateway. We only used one channel, the other had a fax connected to it, as that gave very good connection speeds. Later on when we went to  a Diginet link the fax number went back to copper pair using the same line and regular POTS. Was fun for the techs coming into the building to find a 250VDC pair unmarked in the frame, a few got belted by it if not warned, and it took out a few of the test sets as well ( seems they do not like 250VDC fed in to the internals, they glow bright red internally then the set stops working and eventually the smoke comes out of the well sealed case) of the careless.

[BeanerSA]

I've just realised I can't read Vincent's posts without using his voice in my head. Like a Morgan Freeman!!

[tautech]

Years behind I know however is there a chance of a follow up interview on Vincent's escapades since 2013 and his current employment with Tesla ? 

[BravoV]

Years behind I know however is there a chance of a follow up interview on Vincent's escapades since 2013 and his current employment with Tesla ? 

+1 

And also a contest of winning the popular Tesla 21700 cell maybe ?    .... j/k ...

[thinkfat]

Wow. This post popping up here actually made me search back in the episode archive to find it. I had a blast listening!