Stuff and Things.

[rubber_jonnie]

@PaulJ I usually wake up thinking "I will not kill today", then I have to engage with people and I change my mind!

I have kept myself busy since finishing work @17:00 though.

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One of the advantages of working from home

2nd DRAM tester finished, and got a good start on my MegaST IDE interfaces.

[JezC]

Yes, hoping that we manage to resume some semblance of normality at some point this year.

Nothing seems certain anymore though.

[rubber_jonnie]

Nothing seems certain anymore though.

Quite, but I'm an optimist and I'm thinking we'll be sorted by October. My birthday is in October, so we have to be!

[PaulJ]

@PaulJ I usually wake up thinking "I will not kill today", then I have to engage with people and I change my mind!

One of the advantages of working from home

Must be hard rubber jonnie.. trained assassin and all. But if Captain Kirk can do it I'm sure you can too. Received my IDE 1.1 boards today and the parts I'm missing from Mouser. I also order a couple of Exxos's new video interfaces that allow one to use the floppy connector while on a Mega. So far its been good. The smart one with the push button would always go into mono if it had not been powered in a while.

A long time ago I had a business supporting TranAct ACT in Canberra AU supporting a VDSL STB called Streamaster they purchased from Motorola. I was part of the team that developed that STB while at Motorola. I believe it was the first deployed STB that supported on demand video streaming. Never the less they would start calling at 6:00 pm EST and sometimes we would work issues well into the wee hours of the morning. Get up at 8-9AM and research issues from the night previous.. and then do it all over that evening. So I loved working from home but work and a home life all merged in one confused life where it was difficult to separate them. It can become a curse depending on the circumstances.

[rubber_jonnie]

Must be hard rubber jonnie.. trained assassin and all. But if Captain Kirk can do it I'm sure you can too.

@PaulJ I can do it!! Much easier now I don't have to physically see anyone!

Good luck with the IDE boards, they are much the same to build as the originals. Hoping that some or all of my missing parts will arrive will arrive this week so I can finish both of mine. Typically for my Mega ST IDE boards I'm also missing a component, but my usual stockist has them and they usually arrive in a day or two. I don't like ordering from Mouser so much any more because shipping cost so much, and the parts never come from the UK, despite having a UK online store. Digikey is the same. So,I am trying to use more local suppliers such as RS, Farnell and Rapid who do have stocks here in the UK. My other source for things like resistors and the like is eBay, but I do have trusted sellers who send decent parts and don't charge the earth.

I was already allowed to WFH 4 days a week, so the change has not been massive for me, though it is hard since we are both at home at the same time. At least I have decent fibre broadband (300Mbps), so my at home experience is not that different to my office experience.

I know what you mean about the boundaries though. Sometimes my wife will come and use her PC which is in the same room as mine, and she likes to chat, and when I'm working I don't!!

It does save a truck load of time in travel though, and petrol costs.

Stay safe and healthy.

[PaulJ]

@PaulJ I can do it!! Much easier now I don't have to physically see anyone!

Good to hear rJ... I don't want to see a clip on sky news of @rubber_jonnie being dragged out of his flat for terminating dumb a#$$es he encounters during daily routine.

I believe I have all the parts for the IDE 1.1 board so I'll hopefully build one today. There are a number of patches I see on the PLCC so I'll put them under the socket with wire wrap wire. Also received a couple of the new video adaptors, tried one on the mega and it works well. Also when its plugged in you can still access the floppy connector which was hidden with the old adaptor. Also the old adaptor had a mind of its own and would power up in medium or high res based on chance.

Tried the usb->ethernet -> ethernet-> usb adaptors with a 3 meter ethernet cable and it worked flawlessly. Just need to order a 15 meter cable today. See picture... Note my cup directing all build operations.. I used to use coffee cups for coffee but my ability to keep the coffee in the cup going down the stairs needed improvement so the wife got be a insulated cup with a lid on it and told me I'd better be using it. So all my conventional cups have been promoted to supervisory positions.

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[rubber_jonnie]

@PaulJ I can do it!! Much easier now I don't have to physically see anyone!

Good to hear rJ... I don't want to see a clip on sky news of @rubber_jonnie being dragged out of his flat for terminating dumb a#$$es he encounters during daily routine.

@PaulJ And there are many dumb a#$$es in need of termination right now!!

Glad you got your bits, I had my missing resistors for the V1.1 IDE boards arrive, so can finish the soldering, but still waiting on the LS245s and large PLCC socket. Hopefully tomorrow. Interesting job with the USB/Ethernet adaptors, I'm lucky enough to have GB Ethernet throughout the house, so not a problem for me so much.

Still waiting to get my H4 mug, Icky sent it, but due to an address misunderstanding, it went to my old office. My boss now has it, but we can't meet up for him to give it to me!

Thankfully I am very good with a filled beverage conveyance, and rearely spill. I can't say the same for my wife, who is responsible for a number of beverage based updates to paintwork about the house. When I eventually get the H4 mug I will use it for all beverage operations in the man cave.

Hopefully the final part of the Mega IDE boards should be here tomorrow or Thursday and I can get those done too.

[PaulJ]

Interesting job with the USB/Ethernet adaptors, I'm lucky enough to have GB Ethernet throughout the house, so not a problem for me so much.

Its not a issue of having wired Ethernet everywhere but a issue of expanding the length of a USB connection. These adaptors don't do a real ethernet protocol so you can't put them on the network. Its why two years ago I purchased them and then couldn't use them. But in this case I can I can live with the dedicated run to extend a USB cable to 10 meters. I could use Simplify3D to put sliced file on a card but Simplify#D has a nice monitor and control feature so I wanted to play with it. Guess I'll start building the IDE card..

[rubber_jonnie]

Interesting job with the USB/Ethernet adaptors, I'm lucky enough to have GB Ethernet throughout the house, so not a problem for me so much.

Its not a issue of having wired Ethernet everywhere but a issue of expanding the length of a USB connection. These adaptors don't do a real ethernet protocol so you can't put them on the network. Its why two years ago I purchased them and then couldn't use them. But in this case I can I can live with the dedicated run to extend a USB cable to 10 meters. I could use Simplify3D to put sliced file on a card but Simplify#D has a nice monitor and control feature so I wanted to play with it. Guess I'll start building the IDE card..

@PaulJ Same reason really I used a spare laptop with Repetier server. The USB from the printer goes to that then I can either use RDP to connect over wifi or ethernet to the laptop, or just the Repetier web interface. Plus I can use the webcam on the laptop to monitor the print as well. It's a definite bonus to be able to have stuff remotely connected. My main PC isn't in the workshop so being remote really helps.

You'd better get on with that IDE interface, I think you're going to be ahead of me on that!! Looking forward to seeing peoples builds up and running.

[rubber_jonnie]

Quick roundup of projects!

1. Finish 2x IDE V1C boards. Test them.
2. Finish 2x PP Mega ST megabus IDE boards. Test them.
3. Install my H4 in a case
4. Finish the refurb of the ST that arrived last week. Just the KBD to fix and clean up now.
5. Get back to troubleshooting my main test board. Damn thing still has no floppy, though oddly it does now boot to a desktop and shows drive icons, which it didn't before with an FDD connected. I think it'll be getting the SILS replaced next, plus mandatory fixes.
6. Get my final spare ST PSU recapped.

Hopefully 1 & 2 will get done this week if all the parts actually arrive!

As for the rest, I'm thinking I need to spin them out for a bit or I'll be out of projects before lockdown is over!

I do have some KBD refurbs to do though, and they are quite time consuming, so hopefully that'll stretch things out a bit.