Zel's Fleet Blog...Rover, Renault, Peugeot, Trabant, Invacar & Sinclair C5

Post pictures and stories about your cars both present and past. Also post up "blogs" on your restoration projects - the more pictures the better! Note: blog-type threads often get few replies, but are often read by many members, and provide interest and motivation to other enthusiasts so don't be disappointed if you don't get many replies.
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Zelandeth
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Re: Zel's Fleet Blog...Jag, Citroen, Mercedes, Sinclair & AC Model 70

#771 Post by Zelandeth » Mon Dec 14, 2020 12:00 am

JPB wrote:
Sun Dec 13, 2020 11:18 pm
Looks and works like a new one, photos taken in July 2011 and it's still in occasional use:
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And the box is still with it, though being a protective thing for the calculator, it's taken some abuse:
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Rich, anyone (especially Zel, by the looks of everything else in this thread 8-) ) can restore anything if they have the time and pain-free hands with fingers that all work.
Parts are unlikely to be available except by buying an additional specimen to harvest said parts from, but there's always the possibility of reproducing case sections by the sorcery that is 3D printing.
That's a nice one. Commodore stuff often seems to command a pretty penny these days.

-- -- --

So, have I fixed the issue with the Jag's wipers? Nope...Worked perfectly until I turned the wipers off for the first time, then refused to start again until I thumped it again.

Fine. We'll pull the wiper motor apart, clean and generally service it then. My money is on it just being a dirty or sticky switch/brush. Given that the wipers work absolutely perfectly once they're started without any juddering or lack of torque I reckon it's a simple dodgy contact.

The plus side is that with the removal of four bolts (well, three in my case as one is sheared), removal of one plug and pulling off the washer feed tube the whole assembly just lifts off the car. So I've brought it into the house so I can work on it tomorrow inside when it's forecast to be tipping it down all day.

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Parts manual is already coming in handy with a nice diagram showing what to expect when I start stripping it down.

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Hopefully shouldn't be a major headache to sort. At least it will give me the opportunity to *properly* clean up and regrease things rather than the slap-dash job I did yesterday.

The calculator thing has definitely snowballed again. This little bundle was bought a few days ago and is on the way.

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This was mainly for the Sharp one as it's a style I've not seen before. Though the TI-1250 is a nice addition as I've already for a TI-1200 (same thing but sans memory functions), and the Casio LC-828 will be a nice companion for my really battered LC-826.

In addition I also just bought this off eBay.

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That will be the first one in the collection to use a neon display which will be a nice box to get ticked off.

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We do have a fault with the display whereby the top segment in all the digits is missing...Hoping this will just be a duff transistor (given the display will almost certainly be multiplexed that would make sense to me). Based on a little research I believe that this is a Kovac K-80D, dating from 1972 it looks like. Should be an interesting little addition to the collection - and actually a bit nice to have a fault to hunt down. Probably the only reason it went for less than £15, anything with a more exotic display than a VFD tends do be quite pricey.
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Current fleet: 73 AC Model-70. 75 Rover 3500. 84 Trabant 601S. 85 Sinclair C5. 88 Renault 25 Monaco. 06 Peugeot Partner 1.6HDi.

Dick
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Re: Zel's Fleet Blog...Jag, Citroen, Mercedes, Sinclair & AC Model 70

#772 Post by Dick » Mon Dec 14, 2020 5:45 pm

My dad used to have a casio similar to that, ill have a look when I get back to Blighty after the virus.. i will keep an eye out for old calculators from now on.
Talking of wipers i treated my cars to rainex a few months ago, galaxy and clio really appreciated the treatment so i did my works truck, the first time i used the wipers they protested and juddered but after that every thing is fine and now the screens are a lot easier to keep clean.. thanks for the advice!

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Re: Zel's Fleet Blog...Jag, Citroen, Mercedes, Sinclair & AC Model 70

#773 Post by Zelandeth » Wed Dec 16, 2020 12:58 am

Continuing the theme of "can you daily an Invacar in 2020?" TPA was out and about again today.

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Had a good chat with a gent in the car park at the Westcroft Morrison's who was very curious as to the differences to what they thought were the facts about Invacars, and the story of how we'd been able to get some of the survivors back on the road. They own a VW based trike, so not a huge surprise they were drawn towards unusual looking three wheeled vehicles.

I really do need to figure out a better arrangement for our driveway at some point...With how well TPA is running these days I actually want to use the car, but it's a 15-20 minute production every time I want to get the car in or out - and if there aren't two available parking places on the road to temporarily stuff two cars on I'm basically stuck.

When we got to the evening I figured it was about time I tackled the Jag wiper assembly.

Afraid not a huge number of photos as I pretty much from the start was covered in grease so it wasn't really practical to get too many as it required me to wipe my hands and remove my gloves every time I picked the phone up.

Breaks down into a surprisingly large number of pieces.

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Once we got into the motor itself it became pretty obvious that (exactly as I expected given the issues I'd had with the scuttle drains) that it had been sitting in water for a while.

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Thankfully aside from the visible gunk you can see there the only evidence we had of this was a single very sticky brush (blue wire)...which would precisely have matched the symptoms that I was seeing. When I first opened it up the brush wasn't actually touching the commutator at all. The brushes have a bit of wear on them but look fine. A little bit of cleaning and working of the sticky brush got it moving freely again. The grease in here wasn't actually bad at all. It had gone a bit dark in a few areas but was still behaving like normal grease, I honestly expected it to have turned into soapy plastic by now...might well be that someone has been in here before me. The only bit that was chalky was on the reciprocating slider, so that was cleaned and regreased - I just kind of slathered all other moving parts inside the casing within reason.

Getting to the park switch would have involved removing the ring gear, and I didn't have to hand a small enough set of circlip pliers to get the retaining clip for that out. However testing it with a meter showed that it seems to be working fine anyway so I'm leaving it alone for now. I was pretty much expecting this - while I wasn't 100% sure I would have sort of expected a fault with the park switch to result in the wipers never stopping rather than not starting.

While it was a bit fiddly, didn't take long to get things put back together.

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...At which point I stood up and heard something go "clink" onto the floor and roll off towards the kitchen.

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Which after a bit of head scratching (it doesn't seem to be shown in the parts manual diagram) I figured out was a thrust plate designed to take up endfloat in the motor shaft...so I had to take pretty much the whole lot back to pieces again. Annoying.

Slightly later than originally planned, we got it back into one piece though.

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Sadly far too late in the day to get it back to the car to test it by then though. We'll give it a try tomorrow...fingers crossed this will have sorted it though. I think it will though, reckon it was just that brush sticking due to the water ingress from the blocked scuttle drains.
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Re: Zel's Fleet Blog...Jag, Citroen, Mercedes, Sinclair & AC Model 70

#774 Post by Zelandeth » Wed Dec 16, 2020 12:48 pm

Do the wipers now work? Yes!

Do they now switch off? No!

Guess I need to pull everything apart again to figure out what's up with the park switch...which worked perfectly when I checked it!
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Re: Zel's Fleet Blog...Jag, Citroen, Mercedes, Sinclair & AC Model 70

#775 Post by Zelandeth » Wed Dec 16, 2020 11:06 pm

I went back into battle with this thing this afternoon. Started at about 14:30.

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Dismantled it...Couldn't see anything obviously amiss...Double, triple, quadruple checked that the switch actually worked and that there was actually continuity all the way to the harness socket in case we had a wiring issue.

Reassembled...Exactly the same. Rinse, lather, repeat...EIGHT TIMES.

Until...

Brief, very poor quality, dark, rainy YouTube video clip

I said six in the video, but this was the eighth attempt judging from how many pairs of gloves I'd gone through!

That was the first time it hadn't just taken off the moment I turned the ignition on.

The only thing I did differently that time was actually making absolutely sure that it was in the parked position when I reassembled it (I had the meter hooked up in continuity mode, beeping at me during the whole process).

I'm not sure precisely what difference this makes, but the one thing I can think of is that maybe if it's not hooked up in the parked position that the relay logic used to control things might get confused. No idea...All I can say is that this time around it seemed to work...and I spent a good five minutes further turning it on, off and switching speeds after I turned the camera off and it kept behaving. I'll put the rest of the mechanism back together tomorrow. At least I had the sense after yesterday's failure to only reassemble the mechanism itself prior to the test rather than the entire assembly.

The parking mechanism deserves a little bit of a mention as it's a little bit strange.

I've not had many wiper systems apart, and most of those have been on buses...but usually I'm used to the parking system being based around either a microswitch or a hall effect sensor which is triggered by the ring gear on each revolution - it's just ignored by the control system until you switch the wipers off.

The hardware in this case is a conventional microswitch and a little metal arm on a circular collar that's pushed around by the ring gear. What's strange about it though is that it's actually held clear of the switch by a spring when the motor is running. To make contact with the park switch the motor has to reverse direction, at which point the metal ring with the actuating arm on rides up a ramp on the back of the ring gear so it can press the switch. *That* is why the wipers always change direction and complete a stroke or two backwards before the wipers park...it's necessary to get the motor into the "parking mode" due to this strange arrangement.

I haven't been able to find a decent photo or diagram on the internet anywhere and the parts manual appears to show the earlier motor style, so I might try to draw a diagram showing this arrangement tomorrow. I honestly thought I had taken a photo of it but my phone claims otherwise. It's not too hard to see how it works visually but it's not the easiest thing to describe.

Given it now appears to be working, I'm not pulling it to bits again for the sake of a couple of photos!

That wiper motor came very, very close to getting launched into low earth orbit this afternoon!

That video was recorded at about 17:30 I think. I might have gone ahead and reassembled everything today but it was tipping it down so my enthusiasm for being outside was pretty slim.

In other news the latest addition to my little collection of vintage technology arrived this morning.

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This is a Kovac K-80D circa 1972. Aside from one segment out on the display (given it's the same one on each digit and the display is multiplexed I'm guessing - and hoping - we've probably got a single dead transistor) this thing is absolutely immaculate. It honestly could have just been taken out of the box today.

Of course the first thing I did was take the cover off to have a look inside.

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I've usually have expected a calculator from this era to have a vacuum fluorescent display to be honest...Things generally jumped from Nixies straight to VFD/LED and then to LCD. The handful of models I've seen using digital neon displays usually have used Panaplax displays, which are planar seven segment neon displays usually with several digits in one envelope. I certainly can't recall ever coming across one before which uses a seven segment neon display with individual tubes for each digit. I'm sure there are a few, I've just not encountered them so I'd say it's a pretty rare setup.

Let's take a closer look at that display, because it's probably the most unique part of this calculator.

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These are Rodan MG-17G neon indicator tubes in case you were wondering.

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Digital cameras can never properly capture the colour of a neon discharge.

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The window over the display is lightly grey tinted to help improve the display contrast.

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Looking closely at the battery meter I think gives a good impression of how clean this thing really is. The complete absence of lint and gunk in the recesses around it tells the story I think.

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It just about qualifies as hand held!

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Okay. Maybe not. I think I'd label this as "portable desktop" in terms of form factor. It's the best part of a kilogram when loaded with batteries anyway so you're not going to go and stick it in a pocket.

Definitely glad to have this one in the collection, especially for the trivial price I paid for it. I'm used to anything with a more unusual display technology going for more money than the £14 I think it was that I paid for this.
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Re: Zel's Fleet Blog...Jag, Citroen, Mercedes, Sinclair & AC Model 70

#776 Post by Zelandeth » Fri Dec 18, 2020 12:54 am

Had a little package arrive for the Invacar I'd forgotten about until it turned up today.

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I noticed the last couple of times when out after dark that the indicator flasher was struggling a bit at idle when the headlights were on. To be honest I was rather surprised that it worked at all given it was in this state when I found it originally.

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I'm pretty sure that I shook a not inconsiderable amount of water out of it as well.

Given a new one was all of about £3 delivered from eBay it just made sense to change it.

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Indicators now flash even without the engine running with the headlights and brake lights on, so looks like problem solved. It's still a thermal flasher though so we should still get the old school variation in flash rate depending on system voltage (and ambient temperature) we're used to. The old one has been stowed in the "tired but serviceable in a pinch" spares box.


Next task, with everything now apparently working again it was time to put the wiper assembly for the Jag back together and onto the car. I was glad to find that the wiper assembly still behaved after I had reassembled it all.

However when finally putting it back on the car one of the hose stubs snapped off the check valve for the windscreen washers.

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*sigh*

I uttered some quite unprintable things when that happened.

Realistically it was all of £2 for a replacement from Motorserv...just was annoying to have to go out and get more parts! This is just one of those jobs which has been determined to take as long as possible from square one.

Nevertheless once I've got the replacement check valve fitted tomorrow hopefully I'll be able to button that area back up and forget about it for a while.

While I was putting things away I stumbled across an LED P21 retrofit bulb I discounted using for actual vehicle lighting a while ago and realised that I did actually have a good place to use it.

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That's far more useful than what used to be in there for a fraction of the power usage. We've found we do actually tend to use that light quite a bit in the evenings in the summer if we're sitting under the awning and/or when tidying stuff up. So having actually useful output from it is definitely a bonus.

This is a pretty accurate before photo if you were actually looking straight at it.

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At this point we make another drift back into the area of vintage technology again as another package arrived for me this morning.

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First up, the Texas Instruments TI-1250.

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This was a (relatively!) low cost calculator dating from 1975. The TI-1200 (which I have one of already) is identical but doesn't have the memory functions - well...it actually does. It just doesn't have the buttons fitted!.

This one is pretty much immaculate. The only visible wear anywhere is on the label on the back.

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Here it is modelling next to my TI-30 for scale.

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Nicely this one seems to be mercifully free of the key bounce issues which plague both my TI-30 and T-1200.

It's noticeable that this doesn't have the "screensaver" mode that the TI-30 does which blanks the display aside from a single chasing dot to save battery power. Also when the TI-30 encounters either an error or an overflow condition it actually prints out "error" on the display like so...

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...Whereas the TI-1250 simply flashes the whole display to signify such conditions.

This display is also about twice as bright as the TI-30.

Next up is the Casio LC-828. Again still with its admittedly rather battered box.

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While the box may be battered, the contents are immaculate.

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Launched in 1985 this is a carbon copy of the LC-826 from 1979, simply using more modern LCD technology allowing the yellow filter to be dispensed with and with the case graphics having had a slight refresh.

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Display seems to be identical even down to the border around the function symbols.

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Now for the main reason I grabbed this little trio though, the Sharp EL-8130A. I'd not seen one of these before.

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First impression on picking it up: "This feels expensive."

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It basically feels like a solid slab of brushed aluminium that someone has just carved a calculator out of.

I was expecting this to be mid 80s...but a bit of research shows this to date from 1977-79!

Look how thin it is!

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That's 0.5cm right there.

Even the texture printed on the rear of the case looks classy and brings to mind leather bound books.

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Guessing from that serial number this one dates from 1979.

I'm waiting on batteries to arrive for this before I can test it, though I've confirmed it does work. Still had the original (very dead) batteries in, being Sharp branded they're almost a museum piece in themselves.

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The flat panel keypad looks just like your typical touch sensor, but has an almost leatherette sort of texture to it and does deform just enough to know you've actually pressed a key - miles better than that Tandy (Casio made) PDA I got hold of last week! It also has the option for a keypad beep, which with any membrane keypad seems a sensible option to have. Turning that on or off is what the key with the musical note on is for.

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An interesting little time capsule from the era where there was a distinct race between makers to create the thinnest possible calculator.

Should hopefully have some more actual car content on the way soon!
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Re: Zel's Fleet Blog...Jag, Citroen, Mercedes, Sinclair & AC Model 70

#777 Post by Zelandeth » Tue Dec 22, 2020 12:00 am

Finally had a package from the US arrive today - which was posted well over a month ago.

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This was a very random purchase from a while ago which very much appealed to my inner geek.

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These bags contained these bits of hardware. One switch and one indicator.

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While these are both from the 80s I believe, the designs haven't really changed hugely since the 60s.

The number of components in this thing for a four way latching switch is absolutely ridiculous.

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From an engineering perspective it is simply a thing of beauty and a joy forever.

Now need to figure out something to do with it...Probably a master power switch for my workstation as I can use the split indicator (one side is red, other is green) for something useful then.

Yes, those are the same style as used in the Nasa control rooms from the Apollo era onwards (these are a slightly later style, but very similar). The one labelled Radar Acquisition is actually made by the Master Specialities Company who produced the original Apollo era kit, the unlabelled one is made by Unimax, but they're a very similar setup. Main differences are in the panel mounting method and the exact design of the ratchet used to latch it. The fact is that these were (and possibly still are) used in a plethora of military settings as well so they're pretty easy to find in the US.

I've always been a major Apollo enthusiast, so the moment one of the YouTubers I follow identified what the switchgear in the old MOCR (which everyone calls Mission Control) actually was I was on eBay hunting stuff down within minutes.

The seller I got this pair from has THOUSANDS of mil spec bits of switchgear and instrumentation in their eBay shop - I could quite happily have spent a small fortune in there as it's basically an entire shop full of stuff I WANT. I have precisely zero use for 99.993% of the stuff I'd buy, but that doesn't stop me wanting it! The only thing which saved me from going utterly overboard was that postage costs a small fortune from the US these days. If I'm ever in that area in a future visit to the US though you can absolutely guarantee that probably half my luggage will be full of stuff from that warehouse. I will seriously be like a kid in a sweet shop.
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Current fleet: 73 AC Model-70. 75 Rover 3500. 84 Trabant 601S. 85 Sinclair C5. 88 Renault 25 Monaco. 06 Peugeot Partner 1.6HDi.

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Re: Zel's Fleet Blog...Jag, Citroen, Mercedes, Sinclair & AC Model 70

#778 Post by Zelandeth » Tue Dec 22, 2020 10:19 pm

Nothing huge to report today, but the enclosure I'll be putting the distributor condenser on the Invacar has arrived.

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Nothing fancy, it'll do what I need it to just fine though.

I'll probably tuck it away underneath the battery tray in the engine bay so should disappear once it's in place and has got a bit of dust and grime covering it.

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Not sure if I mentioned it before, but I really want to install a remote engine start switch in the engine bay. That will likely end up on this enclosure as well which makes it a little less oversized for the job.

Amusing random anecdote from earlier in the day which might give you lot a giggle. Spotify appear as of the most recent update introduced a bug - at least with my exact hardware/software combination. This means that there appears to be roughly a 20% chance of the volume jumping to 100% the nanosecond I press play.

This is significantly annoying.

It has successfully made me jump several times when I've had my headphones on over the last few days. The best (or worst!) by a mile though was this afternoon, when I had it hooked up to my stereo. All 350W RMS of it. Unbeknownst to me the volume on that had been left pretty much all the way up as several of the devices which tend to be hooked up to the and in have pretty low output levels.

I reckon I must have essentially levitated a good couple of feet straight up in the air as the speaker I was actually leaning on at the time literally knocked the wind out of me. In addition to me leaving the ground, it felt like pretty much everything else around me did we well. Including the armchair that's a heavy two man lift, the sofa, both dogs and the foundations of the house.

These things pack a mighty punch...120W RMS (each), with integrated subwoofers.

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The speaker to the right is one of the Pioneer CS-585s I inherited from my grandfather and will never part with as they still sound fantastic. Really do need to sort the cat damage (which happened in the late 80s!) to the cloth covers though. They're normal classic hi-fi speaker sized and are shown there just to give a sense of size of the Sony ones...which are heavier than they look too.

It's astonishing how long it can take you to find a volume control in a situation like that! Hitting pause was out of the question as when I jumped my phone was launched into low earth orbit (we found it down the back of the sofa after about 15 minutes of searching.

Just about everything in that room that was just leaning against the walls or was loosely stacked (it's a bit of a junk store) ended up on the floor as well. My ears finally stopped ringing after a few hours...

If Spotify could fix that bug I'd really be grateful. Not sure my heart can handle that happening again!
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Re: Zel's Fleet Blog...Jag, Citroen, Mercedes, Sinclair & AC Model 70

#779 Post by Zelandeth » Thu Dec 24, 2020 1:27 am

Nothing to report car-wise today thanks to the non-stop rain. Unless nervously watching as the run off from the driveway made it into the garage counts - thankfully only by a few inches.

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It wouldn't surprise me if there had originally been a proper drain there and the previous owner of this place decided to bury it with a flower bed. That sounds like the sort of thing they'd do based on other sensible design choices found around the house.

Fair warning...The rest of this post is all vintage tech. If that's not your thing, don't bother reading on. I just don't do quite enough of this to really be worth my splitting of an entirely separate thread elsewhere...Plus I know from prior history that I'll utterly fail to remember to keep more than one thread updated.

This arrival was the last one I was waiting for - and one I was very curious to take a proper look at.

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Didn't spot from the eBay listing that it still had the original slip case, that's always nice to have for something in the collection. So what's in the case?

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At a glance it's just a very basic four function calculator, by 1972 when this dates from that really wasn't anything to write home about. What was the standout feature of this example though was the display. This was as far as I'm aware only the second model commercially available which made use of a liquid crystal display. Though it's not quite an LCD as you know it (unless you're into this sort of stuff...though even then I'd not seen one of these in person until this evening).

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So it's got the light/dark flipped...what's the big deal?

Oh no...It's much more than that. This is a DSM LCD - or Dynamic Scattering Mode LCD. The Twisted Nematic LCDs you're used to seeing work by changing the way the polarise the light depending on whether a segment is subjected to an electric field or not. These are very, very different. For a start, no polarisers anywhere here. The way these work is that in their rest state they are completely transparent, however when current is passed through a segment here the crystal structure is disturbed so the segment becomes opaque, taking on the appearance of frosted glass.

The way Sharp used this actually to place the display segments in front of a mirror.

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The inside of the hood on this calculator is lined with a black felt which is what the mirror behind the display reflects so as to give a good visual contrast.

It's a challenge to photograph clearly! However the display is every bit as clear as it looks in the photos. The really interesting thing is that if you look close enough you can actually see a sort of shimmering effect within the LCD segments due to interference patterns set up within the crystals.

There are far less decent photos of DSM displays out there than I expected, so here's a few. I took something like 75 photos trying to get decent ones actually showing this display in its full glory...They'll have to wait for me to put it on the website.

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That's where I've slipped a bit of paper in between the hood and the display so you can see how the digits actually do appear like frost on the mirror rather than anything vaguely resembling the appearance of any other type of display I've ever seen. Nothing looks anything like one of these.

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(That one was from before I cleaned it, sorry).

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That almost retroreflective like texture on the surface of the digits isn't a camera artefact - it's not static either. The digits do actually shimmer very slightly whenever the display segments are powered. It's quite beautiful to observe through a powerful macro lens.

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I'll need to do some experimentation with a macro lens and natural light to see if I can do better.

A video showing some absolutely gorgeous super-macro video of these displays in action can be found here though:

YouTube Link

On a completely unrelated note to display technology, which is why I bought this thing...Is it just me, or does this thing seriously look like an Original Series Star Trek tricorder?

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The quality of this thing is worlds apart from anything like this nowadays...Absolutely everything about it just *feels* expensive and just oozes quality.

Quite a bit smaller than I thought it was, here's it next to the Kovac which turned up a week or so back.

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Yeah, this one is going to be staying on the desk full time I think.

That pretty much gives me *nearly* full coverage on display technology now I think...

[] Nixie: Check. Fine, it's a benchtop multimeter, but Nixie calculators are EXPENSIVE.

[] Panaplax: Nearly...The Kovac has a segmented neon display which is nearly there. The only calculator I'm actively looking for just now does have a Panaplax display though. Compucorp 324G or similar if you happen to have one floating around...

[] EL: No...Though I don't *think* anything as small as a calculator has ever used an EL display. They were more of a competitor to plasma displays in the early days of laptops I think.

[] LCD: All three generations, check.

Only missing the really exotic ones like edge lit incandescent or single plane projection (Don't think numitrons were ever used in calculators?)...Still have my eye on getting a proper flipdot display at some point to, but that's nothing whatsoever to do with vintage technology really, I just want one!

Oh...Or CRT. A Friden EC-130 or 132 would be sort of the "unicorn" find for me. I seem to recall making strange squeaking noises when I spotted one in the National Museum of Computing. Odds of ever finding one: Slim to zero. Odds of finding one for sale at a price I can justify paying: Probably less than zero.

Hopefully I might actually be able to get back into the garage at some point in the next couple of days if the rain ever stops!
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Current fleet: 73 AC Model-70. 75 Rover 3500. 84 Trabant 601S. 85 Sinclair C5. 88 Renault 25 Monaco. 06 Peugeot Partner 1.6HDi.

Dick
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Re: Zel's Fleet Blog...Jag, Citroen, Mercedes, Sinclair & AC Model 70

#780 Post by Dick » Thu Dec 24, 2020 7:52 am

I wasn't really into old tech, but ive started looking for old random things that should have gone to silicon heaven years ago.. im loving that Apollo button you have bought. Its fabulous! You must find a use for it, could you use it for a starter button, light switch or something similar??

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