Wow thanks very much for that! I'll check that out! What sort of thing do you recon I should get for my first try at making something? Do you recon this would be a good buy? MPLAB Starter Kit for dsPIC DSCs Thanks Big B - I'll practice my electronics a bit. I've got quite a few wires resistors e.t.c. lying about so I'll have a play about. And thanks again ferg!
Well i'm pretty new to the electronic engineering side of things TBH, and tend to work on very very (30 years) old hardware for a sub-contracting job I do so don't really know where i'd start with new stuff. Probably be best to start making something to a simple design to start with, if you start from scratch especially without any design phase it'd probably be as difficult as coding XHTML when you have only just been taught how to open notepad
Christ what do you work on?? I'm currently sorting out and upgrading machines when I work on a Satuday which are as old as 20 years, and I thought that was bad!! I think the oldest has an 80286 CPU with 8Mhz. It's still in use on a daily basis.
Hehe, well take this for example - in my hand I am holding a prom (no not an eeprom a prom - the type you wipe with UV light for 15 mins taking the sticker/cover off) it is an AMD AM27c256 with a date stamp 1986 also have an Intel similar chip with a date of 1982 - and these are from some of the most recent hardware I'll work on! Of all things they are petrol pump controller heads & forecourt/till systems, the very oldest I think is around 45-50 years, valves & mechanical logic, with the spinning numbers on a reel to show the price, its quite interesting work getting these ancient machines working - still highly in demand too. I do this once a week to ensure I get some real hands-on work as a change and to keep me sane.
Wow! That would be so amazing! How big are the machines you put that sort of thing into? Propper mainframes?
Nothing too massive, they had/have to fit inside petrol stations remember, largest is about 4ft tall and wide I'd say, weighs an absolute tonne though.
Wow that's amazing! You say that they're still in quite high demand..... where would you suggest I could get that sort of thing (ebay?) - how much would you recon one would cost - could it even be posted?
Well its a highly specialised bit of kit, only useful to petrol station owners still using the legacy hardware, but a full till system & pump controller 20 years old can run up to £10k as opposed to the brand new systems which can easily run up and over £50k. So not really the sort of thing to start playing around idly with ^_^ EDIT: but it is quite often the sort of thing that people are unaware of the re-sale value of, and with over 2 petrol stations closing down per week in the uk keep an eye out and do some skip-sifting while they are doing the site clearance, you never know ^_^ EDIT 2: Just remembered that it was modifying consoles that first got me into all this, got anything to mod?
Thanks very much! A bit expensive just for a freelancer to be playing around with but I'll keep my eyes on skips. Just to keep you guys updated: I've drawn up plans of a processing unit which can respond to punch cards fed in by the user and carry out various actions like one punch card controls the speed of my desk fan and another controls the volume of my computer speakers. Both pretty pointless but a start nonetheless. EDIT: And all for just over my initial budget but I've managed to find a lot of the stuff on skips so should ultimately come to less!
Sounds fun, only advice I'd give you there is to show you where we get nearly all our hardware from - CPC | CPC - Over 100, 000 products from one of the worlds leading distributors of electronic and related products. I remember seeing a USB development card for sale in the catalogue the other day, I'll post the item number if i find it. But you'll get all your caps, resistors etc from them, really good service, strongly recommend getting an account and a catalogue - with the amount of stuff they have a physical catalogue is a must Edit - found it: VELLEMAN KIT | K8055 | Electronic Kits | Car, Leisure & Hobbies | CPC
Thanks very, very much for posting that website - it looks really useful and much better from scrounging off ebay. Is it CPC | CPC - Over 100, 000 products from one of the worlds leading distributors of electronic and related products.? Anyway thank you very much again! I've got money from a website job coming in pretty soon (in fact I should have had it by now) and exams are nearly over so project here I come!
