04-14-2005 06:14 AM

XCJP

Re: pic: The warranty, voided

We had the same problem. When we were "testing" the base that was given to us by FIRST we accidentally ran our robot brain into a filing cabinet and nearly busted the radio connector off. We have people on our team with the know-how to fix it but our Leader made us send it in so we didn't void the warranty or something. So for the time being we took the brain off of last year's robot and used it.

04-14-2005 06:18 AM

Al Skierkiewicz

Re: pic: The warranty, voided

A great shot of some high quality parts. Thanks, most people don't get a chance to see under the hood. Note all the surface mount electronics, that is how they pack all that stuff in the little box. Imagine if we were still running vacuum tubes.

04-14-2005 06:51 AM

GeorgeTheEng

Re: pic: The warranty, voided

Our team looked at them "naked" a few years ago. I think it was the first season they used them. In our zeal to see it work, we neglected to use a fuse. The wires were connected directly from the battery. The ground and power briefly touched. And it seems that the magic smoke escaped.

Remember, the magic smoke it what keeps all electronics working. If you don't beleive me, let it out and see what happens...

Unfortunately I think IFI made us buy a new one. Something about 200amps across the power connector not being a warranty item.

But it is a lesson we never forgot.

04-14-2005 09:53 AM

Dave Scheck

Re: pic: The warranty, voided

Al...what's a vacuum tube

04-14-2005 09:54 AM

Al Skierkiewicz

Re: pic: The warranty, voided

It's this glass envelope thingy, that glows in the dark and emits electrons...Oh never mind!

04-14-2005 09:58 AM

IMDWalrus

Re: pic: The warranty, voided

So...it's like a giant record player?

04-14-2005 10:02 AM

Al Skierkiewicz

Re: pic: The warranty, voided

No, they are much smaller, and chronologically earlier than record players although they did coexist for many years. They were the electronic equivalent to tank treads on carpet, functional but not very efficient and probably produce about the same amount of heat.

04-14-2005 10:18 AM

xzvrw2

Re: pic: The warranty, voided

wen i first looked at the pic i thought it was a city from star wars. lol and i thought a vacuum tube was something that you clean your floors with.

04-14-2005 10:27 AM

IMDWalrus

Re: pic: The warranty, voided

That was meant to be a joke. I don't think you picked up on that.

I might be young, but I know what records are. Heck, my family still has one somewhere...

04-14-2005 12:10 PM

Amanda Morrison

Re: pic: The warranty, voided

Next, WFA winner Al Skierkiewicz will share with us the technological miracle of computer punchcards...

04-14-2005 12:23 PM

jdhawg

Re: pic: The warranty, voided

These young whipper-snappers these days don't know how good they have it. Why back in my day you walked five miles from the card punch room to drop the card deck off, then waited 45 minutes for the job to get run, then checked your listing to see if you could find the card that was mispunched so you could do it all over again. UNLESS the operators dropped your deck (know as "floor sorting") then you were is real trouble.

Oh... My... Gosh..... I'm starting to sound like my Grandfather!!!!!!

04-14-2005 01:27 PM

Conor Ryan

Re: pic: The warranty, voided

so is this still legal for competition?

04-14-2005 01:44 PM

dlavery

Re: pic: The warranty, voided

At the risk of dating myself, I remember when I wrote my first compiler for an IBM-360 as my junior-year project. I worked on it for a full semester, and carefully crafted it down to about 5000 lines of code - 2-1/2 cases of cards. I did the final edits, certified that it worked, and took the cases of cards back to the apartment to write the final paper on the project. Unfortunately, my apartment-mate was VERY ticked off at me (he kept yelling something about "you haven't paid your share of rent in 5 months!!!" or some such minor annoyance) and decided to get my attention. By shuffling all the cards in the cases.

What happened next was not pretty. Let's just say that it is a good thing that the statute of limitations has expired for most of the infractions...

-dave

04-14-2005 02:09 PM

Al Skierkiewicz

Re: pic: The warranty, voided

I was thinking of expounding on the nature of entering an eight bit binary bootstrap program manually using toggle switches on a DEC PDP-11 to get a paper tape reader going. Have any idea how hard it is to convert decimal to binary in your head and then load it using switches? BTW that was after a memory upgrade from 2K to 4K core (real core that is, wires and donuts) in a computer that was almost a full rack high with power supply and paper tape reader. Oh God, now I am going to have nightmares again! 00010011, 10111010, 1110101, no that was 11101101, oh darn where was I again....

Fortran IV?!?, yea they couldn't get it right in their first three attempts, what make you think it will be any better now?

Ok, the bootstrap is loaded, the paper tape is running, hopefully the program will finish loading before we get back from lunch.

Nice Amanda, now you have me started...Hit the "off" button someone, Quick!

04-14-2005 03:06 PM

Jack Jones

Re: pic: The warranty, voided

We had the same thing happen to our program connector. It happened when someone (initials = JJ) tripped on the cable. He blamed whomever it was that screwed the thing in.

Warranty? We don't need no stinking warranty! Just an old OI and some soldering stuff - voila, good as new.

04-14-2005 03:31 PM

Mark McLeod

Re: pic: The warranty, voided

Remember when the next great thing was the printing added to the top of the punch cards and you didn't have to read the holes anymore?

04-14-2005 07:12 PM

Rich Kressly

Re: pic: The warranty, voided

Oh nooooo ....

It's like being at the old dinner table from my childhood,

"And we drafted without computers...
forget the calculators - we used slide rules...
the punchcards piled up so high we needed more office space...
and we programmed in three feet of snow...
up hill...
both ways.

That's the problem with you kids, you get everything handed to you. No sense of appreciation for us old 'dinosaurs' as you put it Mr. smarty pants. Just remember that slide rule put dinner on this table for years..."

Make it stop, pleaseeeeeeeeee ...

04-15-2005 02:27 AM

Dan Richardson

Re: pic: The warranty, voided

Aren't vacuum tubes those things that get clogged when I'm cleaning my room and tick me off really bad?

04-15-2005 06:27 AM

Al Skierkiewicz

Re: pic: The warranty, voided

OK,
Which one? K+E or POST. I have two Versalogs witting in a drawer. Remember when you could hear an engineer coming down the hall by the thwack of the case against his thigh? Even uphill, both ways in the snow.

04-15-2005 05:15 PM

Rich Kressly

Re: pic: The warranty, voided

Al, that's a {sort of} quote from my father who is no longer with us. If you actually handed me a slide rule, I'd only be able to write about it. I have no clue what those names mean. Dad was a Mech E, project manager, and Chief Engineer who specialized in bulk material handling for 36 years and he loved being in the shop and on the job site. He always spoke fondly of his slide rule and the regular old drafting board. He annoyed the heck out of me when I was a kid about "the good old days" and only since his death 12 years ago have I really come to realize how amazing his accomplishments were. Two of them are here

Now that I've completely hijacked this thread (protect me, Pedro), I would like to say that the guts are certainly perty, but I hope to never see them up close. Keeping the magic smoke inside is a good thing, eh George?