[Coco] [off-topic] cabling problems

[gene heskett]

On Friday, April 20, 2012 09:02:35 PM RJRTTY at aol.com did opine:

> In a message dated 4/20/2012 4:05:27 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
> 
> gheskett at wdtv.com writes:
> >Unforch, they did not tolerate the EMP's induced in the
> >long  runs by nearby lightning strikes, and we had a 255' lightning rod
> >30
> >
> >feet out the back door, so I had to stock those in "by the tube"
> >quantities.  It got "interesting" at times. ;-)
> >
> >Cheers,  Gene
> 
> We used to have a huge alarm light panel board at the plant where  I
> work that had incandesant lamp driver chips on removable cards
> all connected to an average 1/4 mile of solid 18 gauge solid  wire
> pulled through plastic conduit in the ground.  With an "antenna"
> that long every spring,
> after the usual electrical storms, I would have to go to the
> "big city" to buy a bag of them to replace those that had
> been "cooked" on those boards.   It was an interesting  time.
> Now everything is fiber optic and computer
> consoles so now I spend most of my time watching
> TV.....  :(
> 
> Roy

Chuckle.  But isn't that how progress is measured?  By how much tv you have 
time to watch?

Today I would probably ship it over ethernet, but the cost of the 
interfaces would very quickly eat up any maintenance savings.  Then, we had 
44 individual mono feeds, by now, with all the digital stuff plus running 4 
channels of programming, 2 each on two separate transmitters, we probably 
have 2 or 3 hundred in full stereo.  And a lot of it is opto-isolated, but 
we're finding the 3 to 5 kv isolation the opto stuff gives is not 
sufficient unless the opto path length is several feet between the fibers 
driver and the fibers receiver.  Its a whole new ball game, but the end 
result is at the end of the day, about a 10x improvement in reliability, 
but the fixes are also correspondingly higher too.

I think I must have chosen a good time to retire, I got to miss the AH & 
Elbows part of the digital conversion.  ;-)

Cheers, Gene
-- 
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<cas> well there ya go.  say something stupid in irc and have it
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