[CoCo] OT - Hams & Plans

[johnadonaldson at comcast.net]

When I lived in Houston, TX, we had a COCO BBS called the "Golden
COCO BBS". The Sysop had reconfigured the power supply to run off a
12V car battery with a trickle charger. 

John Donaldson


-------------- Original message -------------- 

> I know this is not directly CoCo related, but there are a lot of ham 
> operators in CoColand and I wanted to bounce some ideas off them. 
> 
> A growing concern to our national security is the possibility of an EMP 
> attack, which would wipe out most modern electronics and the equipment 
> that uses them. However, bicycles, breaker-point ignition cars, and 
> older electronics (tube, possibly individual transistor, old kit-style 
> radios) -- just about anything pre-1980 design -- would still be usable 
> after an EMP attack. Communications in a post-EMP era might depend to 
> a large part for a time on old-style transmitters and receivers. Since 
> a lot of Cocoistas are hardware hacker-oriented anyway, a set of plans 
> for a simple transceiver would make a lot of sense in a disaster kit ( 
> or better yet, having such a critter pre-assembled and ready to go). I 
> keep having visions of the old crystal set I built while in Cub Scouts 
> - wound my own coil, found my piece of quartz, tuned in to far-off 
> stations using no battery [gets glassy-eyed....]. Also, I have a 
> thought that electronics which are not actually plugged in or "on" 
> during an EMP attack might not be affected. In such cases, a battery 
> powered CoCo brought out of storage, with a packet modem, might be an 
> early step in bringing systems back on board ( I actually had 
> originally thought about this problem back during Y2K). 
> 
> So, in a small way, maybe this is CoCo related, if it leads to more 
> discussion of battery-powered CoCos. I think, though, that the people 
> on this list probably have a good deal of expertise, scattered 
> world-wide, as to how to revive power and communication services after 
> such a disaster. Feedback? 
> 
> 
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