[Coco] Zap 0.0.4 Beta has been uploaded to my drop box

[Gene Heskett]

On Wednesday 01 April 2015 01:08:18 K. Pruitt wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Gene Heskett"
> To: <coco at maltedmedia.com>
> Sent: Tuesday, March 31, 2015 9:11 PM
> Subject: Re: [Coco] Zap 0.0.4 Beta has been uploaded to my drop box
>
>
> <snip>
>
> > Well, its not as if it was magic. One usually figures out which end
> > of the soldering iron gets hot from the first touch. ;-)
>
> Yeah, I figured that out the hot end when I was four.  I "desoldered"
> a transistor radio using a woodburning tool.  I was fascinated by how
> many things I could remove before it stopped working entirely. 
> Transistor radios weren't the cheap throw aways that they are now. 
> Consequently I got in a bit of trouble for that experiement.  Not as
> much as I expected though.  I think my mother just couldn't figure out
> if I was showing signs of genius or retardation and wasn't sure how
> exactly to punish me either way.  But I was warned never to take the
> TV apart under threat of severe repercussions should I disobey.
>
> We had that TV (an RCA Maple Cabinet Television) when I was born. 
> From about the time I was about 5 that TV broke annually.  The guy
> would come out, look around in it and announce he had to take it in to
> the shop.  We'd dig out the spare B&W TVv and watch that until our TV
> came back.  Somewhere when I was around 10 the TV had it's annual
> death and we replaced it.  But we kept the broken TV around.  When I
> was around 14 I came across this TV as well as a bunch of repair
> receipts.   I noticed it was mostly the same tube being replaced with
> the occasional replacement of another tube.
>
> Suspect tube in hand I took them to the TV repair shop near my home
> and tested them on the testing machine.  They tested fine.  They guy
> who ran the shop asked me what I was doing and I told him.  He said
> that those tubes only failed at high voltage and the tester would
> report they were good.  I explained the history of the TV and he said
> that this was indeed the problem tube.  But he also told me that you
> had to always replace this tube and another tube at the same time or
> it would just fail again.  The other tube was of course the less
> frequently replaced tube in the TV's history of repairs.  He also told
> me to be careful poking around in TVs because the capacitors could
> deliver a lethal charge and then he explained how capacitors work. 
> I've rememberd and respected that piece of advice.  And why aren't
> there guys like that in repair shops any more?  I guess because there
> aren't many repair shops of any kind around any longer.
>
> So even though I was threatened with near death by my mother if I ever
> took that TV apart, I eventually did get my paws on it and fixed it
> right.  I lugged that thing around for years until the picture tube
> finally failed.  I even originally hooked my first Coco 2 to it in
> 1984.  In fact there were some issues with the color sync on that TV
> around that time and I used to do a couple of  CLS 4's as turning the
> screen red would cause the color to sync.  I'd forgotten about that
> until just now.

Its amazing at times what we CAN remember. I had my aha moment with 
capacitors toward the end of WW-II or perhaps the next year.  TBT, that 
hooked me to electronics for life.

Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene>