Comment Heathkit H89 (Score 1) 523
With the hard-sector floppies of all things
Comment Re:"... GM's ... poor designs for 15 years ..." (Score 1) 198
The Japanese invented (first to implement anyhow) the hard chrome rings trick. That's what turned 100k mile engines into 250k. The world copied them about a decade after (mid to late 80s). Once consumers saw how long Hondas and Toyotas were going on the original engines.
I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that GM, Ford, Mercedes, VW etc had sat on that for decades. Liking the service income.
My dad remembers the annual valve job and 40k rings and bearings. Yeah metallurgy.
American cars truly did suck in the 80s, beyond the sloppy body fits which were just longstanding crap standards. The only computer controlled carb worth a shit came from Japan. Thank dog we've settled into EFI. EPA rules and carbs made for absolute shit engines, from everyone.
When my friends and I rebuilt the engines in our first cars (VW bug), we always put in new piston-cylinders with forged pistons and chrome rings. Those engines lasted 350K miles and more. And this was in the early 1980's. So that technology is very tried and tested.
Comment Already found Ultima Thule back in 1974 :-) (Score 1) 88
Comment Re: Not that useful anyways (Score 2) 582
Exactly. When Hurricane Ike came through here (Houston TX) and knocked out most fo the power grid, I had a POTS line at the time. Before then, the POTS lines ran all the way back to the local CO that had the infrastructure to keep everything powered almost indefinately.
Not now. As soon as the batteries ran down that powered the local equipment in the little hut or equipment cabinet at the front of the subdivision, the phones and internet quit working. Same thing for the cell towers. Even though most had some generator backup, their downstream links ran through the same equipment, so they became isolated too. You could text between cell phones on the local network, but that was it and even that was spotty. This also meant no 911 service the entire time. So the lesson for me was that you better be armed in such situations.
Power was off for 16 days. Ran everything in the house on a small generator except for the dryer and central AC. No cell service, internet, or POTS lines the entire time. Underground centralized service downtown where I worked fared much better and we made a few trips to use the internet on my company laptop and send out updated emails and such.
Slashdot Top Deals
Nothing recedes like success. -- Walter Winchell
