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

[K. Pruitt]

----- 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.