This week’s Surfin’ anticipates hunting for SDR at the Dayton Hamvention.
Archive for the ‘hardware’ Category
Surfin’: Looking for SDR
Friday, May 8th, 2009digital television’s dirty little secret
Monday, February 9th, 2009
My daughter gave me eyetv as a Christmas gift. It allows me to view television broadcasts on my Mac.
It works great. My only complaint is that right after I got it, they came out with a version that also allows you to listen to FM radio broadcasts on a Mac.
Anyway, I connected the eyetv to my 25-element log periodic antenna, which is at the top of the tower, about 1000 ft ASL.
eyetv receives both analog and digital television broadcasts and that capability soon revealed to me the dirty little secret about digital television. The quality of digital television video is much better than analog television video, however, in order to view digital television video, the signal at your receiver must be stronger than the signal strength required to view analog television video.
Today, I can receive the analog television broadcasts of New York City channels 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11, and 13 with my eyetv and log periodic antenna, but I cannot receive any digital television broadcasts from New York City. So, when they finally shut down analog television broadcasts, I lose New York City. Similarly, I will lose other distant television stations once digital becomes the only television broadcast mode.
Is digital television a technological advancement? Not in my book.
Old Heathkit Manuals Forced Offline
Monday, December 29th, 2008
“Even though the company (Heathkit) stopped making and selling kits back in 1992, it apparently just sold the copyrights on its old manuals to another company, which is going around forcing any old manuals offline and demanding people buy them instead…”
Read all about it here.
Get Smart and my radio
Saturday, December 20th, 2008
Watched Get Smart last night. It has a couple of laugh-out-loud moments, but it is not a great film and I probably will not watch it again.
However, it does have a ham radio moment. In the chase scene near the end of the film, there is a two-way radio in one of the automobiles: a Yaesu FT-1802, the same model of radio that serves as my APRS home digipeater transmitter. The displayed frequency of the radio in the film was 143.910 MHz.
I had a choice of accompanying this post with a photo of the FT-1802 or a photo of Anne Hathaway and Steve Carell appearing in the film. I think I made the right decision.
Surfin’: Radio Shack Historically Speaking
Friday, December 19th, 2008
This week’s Surfin’ looks back on radio and electronic history via vintage Radio Shack catalogs.
Did you know that Surfin’ is a weekly column published on ARRLWeb that features Web sites related to Amateur Radio, specifically, and radio, in general? If you have any suggestions for Surfin’, please contact WA1LOU using the e-mail link to the right.
remembering memory
Saturday, November 29th, 2008
Last week, I wrote here about how I bought a 1-Tbyte external hard drive for backup after I noticed how low the prices had dropped on external drives.
I also noticed that the prices of USB memory sticks had dropped considerably. Since I was in the market to replace my well-worn 1-Gbyte memory stick, I hit the “Add To Shipping Cart” button as soon as I saw an 8-Gbyte stick for $16 on Amazon last week. The stick arrived on Wednesday and I immediately put it to good use.
Back in 1978, I paid $599 for 16-kbyte of RAM for my Radio Shack TRS-80 Model I computer. Adjusted for inflation, that $599 would buy me 124 Tbytes of memory today! Amazing!
new external hard drive
Thursday, November 20th, 2008 |
| wa1lou’s LaCie |
Daily, Retrospect runs automatically to back up my Mac at 2 AM to two 160-Gbyte SmartDisk external hard drives. I inherited one of the drives, so I put it to work and on even days, Retrospect backs up to drive “A” and on odd days, to drive “B.”
Problem is that some days, depending on what projects I am working on, Retrospect cannot do a backup because there is not enough space on Drive “A” or “B.” When that occurs, I delete some of the project files from my Mac and when 2 AM rolls around, Retrospect can do its thing.
This occurs about once a week and has gotten old fast, so every once in awhile I consider buying a larger external hard drive. That once in awhile occurred again last week and when I checked online, I was amazed how low the prices for hard drives have fallen. So I bought one: a LaCie 1-Tbyte external hard drive that includes a slew of interfaces including Firewire 800, which is the interface I was after. (The SmartDisks only had Firewire 400, while my Mac supports both 400 and 800.)
The LaCie arrived yesterday and I connected it to my Mac last evening. When I made the connection, my Mac asked me if I wanted to use the new drive with Time Machine to do backup. I clicked positively and my Mac informed me that Time Machine would do a backup on the hour.
I finished some work, then went downstairs to clean the litter boxes and walk the Pies. After I finished my sanitation assignments, I returned to my Mac to see how the backup was going. A progress bar indicated that there were over one million files to backup and that Time Machine was about one-third of the way through.
The Harmonic phoned and I talked with her for a half hour or so, then I checked my Mac again. The progress bar was nearly at its end and less than a minute later, the progress bar disappeared and the initial backup was complete.
I was impressed! Firewire 800 is fast. I expected that the initial backup would take the better part of the evening, but I estimate that it took no more than 90 minutes.
By the way, the new hard drive (specifically a LaCie 301827U d2 Quadra) is soundly constructed and not much bigger than the SmartDisks. It includes a bundle of software that I have not explored yet.
Surfin’: LOU on SDR and GPS
Friday, June 20th, 2008In this week’s Surfin’, we consider two initialisms that are on the cutting edge of Amateur Radio. After you read that, come back here to post your comments, if any.
By the way, Surfin’ is a weekly column published on ARRLWeb features Web sites related to Amateur Radio, specifically, and radio, in general. If you have any suggestions for Surfin’, please contact WA1LOU using the e-mail link to the right.
Surfin’: Mastering the Keys of Amateur Radio
Friday, June 13th, 2008In this week’s Surfin’, visits the Web site of a master designer, builder and restorer of telegraph keys. After you read that, come back here to post your comments, if any.
By the way, Surfin’ is a weekly column published on ARRLWeb features Web sites related to Amateur Radio, specifically, and radio, in general. If you have any suggestions for Surfin’, please contact WA1LOU using the e-mail link to the right.
Surfin’: Still Exploring 900 MHz
Friday, April 25th, 2008This week’s Surfin’ continues the exploration of the 900 MHz/33 cm Amateur Radio band. After you read it, come back here to post your comments, if any.
By the way, Surfin’ is a weekly column published on ARRLWeb features Web sites related to Amateur Radio, specifically, and radio, in general. If you have any suggestions for Surfin’, please contact WA1LOU using the e-mail link to the right.