Zel's Fleet Blog - BX, Jag XJ-S, Sinclair C5, Mercedes 208D & 230TE, AC Model 70.

[Hell Razor5543]

I don't know if you might find this useful, Zel;

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Electric-Preci ... d_source=1

I saw my cousin today, and he was able to pass on my (belated) birthday present. I have yet to use it, but it feels very solid. If you look for MJDDLSD003QW you can find it at better prices.

[Zelandeth]

*Bonk!*

[Zelandeth]

Not that I've got time to really do much with it at the moment, but some upgrades for the pinball table have turned up.



The tiny contactors in there were good as a proof of concept, but weren't nearly powerful enough to really emulate several items on the playfield. The pop bumpers and slingshots in particular on an actual table are downright violent. Tiny contactors don't really emulate them so well - they very discreetly go "click" rather than "THUNK!" as we're after here.

Some starter solenoids should do a better job of approximating the real things. I will actually be using the original contractors to switch the coils in these, as I'd rather keep these on a separate power supply to the computer given they're going to be as electrically noisy as physically, despite fitting commutation diodes. I don't want them nuking the PC motherboard...keeping them totally isolated just seems smart. Especially given I've already got these contractors in place to switch them with. Yes there will be more latency there, but there would be in the real machine as well. It'll absolutely be quick enough.

[CitroJim]

Good to see more progress on this Zel

[Zelandeth]

Zooooooooom!



Testing in the icy conditions has confirmed that this particular dog is very much rear wheel drive.

[Hell Razor5543]

Zooooooooom!



Testing in the icy conditions has confirmed that this particular dog is very much rear wheel drive.

Look at the grin on that dog!

[Zelandeth]

He looks particularly mad at the moment as his grin is all lopsided because he's just started losing his baby teeth so is missing one of his big front ones.

[CitroJim]

He looks particularly mad at the moment as his grin is all lopsided because he's just started losing his baby teeth so is missing one of his big front ones.

TIL! I never knew dogs had baby teeth as puppies... Always assumed that was very much exclusively human...

Every day's a school day

[Zelandeth]

He looks particularly mad at the moment as his grin is all lopsided because he's just started losing his baby teeth so is missing one of his big front ones.

TIL! I never knew dogs had baby teeth as puppies... Always assumed that was very much exclusively human...

Every day's a school day

I think the same is true of most mammals, certainly bigger ones like dogs. They generally start to lose their first set around six months, which he's just coming up on.

Most of them just vanish, though the bigger ones you do tend to find when he spits them out.



In other news, Star has been in today to have a tooth she apparently broke at some point over the last six months removed. Wish someone would knock me out like she was while I have dental work done! Just waiting to pick her up at the moment.

[CitroJim]

Wish someone would knock me out like she was while I have dental work done!

They will if you can give good reason. I was in that situation a few years ago when I needed a particular difficult extraction and found out all about it.

In the event I didn't but I easily could have.

[mickthemaverick]

You have the basics Zel, so can you do this? :

https://www.carandclassic.com/auctions/ ... 1bf3bf817a

[CitroJim]

You have the basics Zel, so can you do this? :

https://www.carandclassic.com/auctions/ ... 1bf3bf817a

Oh yea! Go for it Zel

[Zelandeth]

It's not really obvious at a glance but mine has quite a few upgrades fitted over the years.

You'd be surprised how similar the engine specs probably are. As far as I'm aware most of the internals of mine are the same - the far larger expansion chamber on the exhaust and an even bigger carb are the main differences. The setup as I've currently got should be good for somewhere between 30 and 35bhp from what I've read (up from the stock 26). The setup in that car probably makes somewhere nearer 50 - but only when it's absolutely flat out. Which is the big difference, the carb/exhaust setup on this is far more designed for real world usability. I've driven a couple of cars that were set up for competition use, and they were an utter pig to drive on the road as they just wanted to be wide open the whole time.

I wouldn't be surprised if the brakes on mine are actually better given I've got discs on the front - as they're not period correct they wouldn't be permitted on that one so they're limited to drums. No servo, but the car is so light you really don't need one, I'll take the more progressive nature and just needing to press the pedal a bit harder.

That has obviously had a lot more suspension work done, but the biggest improvement to these really is just fixing the rear camber, which is quite negative from the factory. For road use I don't see much point in doing anything else, the car is so light that it corners astonishingly flat at any sane speed. I think anything further would just make the already quite bouncy ride downright painful in the real world.

Obviously I'm missing a lot of structural bracing, though it's actually a really surprisingly rigid frame to start with, especially when you consider how light the car is. It's really hard to convey what a go kart it is when you've not driven it. The steering plays a big part in that I reckon, it's just that perfect weight and has great feedback letting you know exactly what's going on under the wheels. Very quick rack too.

Is it quick in the real world? Hell no, it feels a lot more impressive than it really is though and is a proper giggle. It is actually usable though, I suspect that rally replica is a lot quicker, but it'll break your spine and make your ears bleed in the real world. Oh, no heater with that expansion chamber on the exhaust either!

It's a while since Jim was subjected to this car's nonsense, and the new engine was still being run in back then. Quite different now!

Actually had it out today for the first time in far too long.



It's nice having a car that's so easy to find in the car park. I keep losing the Volvo! It's also a right faff to park sometimes as it's a really long car and has the turning circle of an ocean liner.

[CitroJim]

It's a while since Jim was subjected to this car's nonsense, and the new engine was still being run in back then. Quite different now!

Would rather enjoy a bit more of that nonsense Zel!

It's nice having a car that's so easy to find in the car park. I keep losing the Volvo!

I find just the opposite - I keep loosing my AX in a sea of monster SUVs... Especially when I visit Waitrose The café I hasten to add, not the shop

The Waitrose demographic do see to have a preference for their large vehicles and it's interesting to note the Waitrose car park spaces are smaller than usual so many of these behemoths end up overhanging the parking spaces

[Zelandeth]

A project I have been working on for a while now has been getting our substantial collection of movies etc onto a network drive which can be accessed by devices around the house. This had taken something of a back seat as for several years we had odd problems with our network which meant that half the time you couldn't see the shared media anyway. I finally fixed that last year, so time to get back to it. I decided to start over as playback devices have become a lot more powerful, networks have become faster, and critically storage has become a whole lot cheaper than when I first attacked this in 2014.

Something this has necessitated though was putting additional storage into my desktop PC, particularly as when Bluray movies come off the disk the resulting MKV file before I chuck it into Handbrake to be compressed is in the order of 40Gb. That's 40Gb *each.*

This PC is a bit of a Frankenstein's monster. Some bits of it (including the case) date back to 2007 when it was built in a hurry using what we could get from Maplin and PC World. The case was cheap, nasty and poorly laid out in 2007. It hasn't got back any better with time. A 2020s graphics card which blocks two of the internal 3.5" drive bays really hasn't improved things. Nor has the number of *things* it has stuffed in it. Adding another drive to be my "work queue" while doing this, and a larger drive to actually back up the archive into...alongside the existing three hard drives, floppy drive, optical drive and card reader...made things become intolerable.



One hard drive is just sitting on the bottom of the case, another is wedged in between the case and the card reader, and another is dangling off one side of a 5 1/4" bay.

Believe it or not, that thing was at one time was really neatly cable managed.

I. Need. A. Bigger. Case.

A modern day version of the chassis its older brother was built on would be ideal.



Yes that machine is on wheels. No they are not for show. It is absolutely packed full and weighs a tonne. It's also alarmingly top heavy thanks to the circa 1991 1.2Gb hard drive that's in the top of the case because that's the only place it would fit. I don't want to know what this originally cost... especially as the original owner never used it. It was unused until I bought it somewhere around 2000 for £10.



Properly big tower cases it turns out are really expensive. They also tend not to have externally accessible drive bays any more as optical drives seem to be going the way of the dinosaur. Okay, alternative approach. Grab a cheap big workstation that's new enough to have an ATX (or near enough) motherboard that I can just build my machine in to. To that end a huge heavy box arrived this morning containing this.



Ah, the fun and games of weird standards you sometimes find on workstation machines. FireWire right next to USB 3.0 on the front panel anyone?



Opening it up (which is incredibly easy, the side panel on this is beautifully designed - unlike my current case) revealed that for all it's old, this is clearly a very low hour machine.



There is a tiny bit of dust on the fans, but this thing is incredibly clean. Crucially all of the drive sleds are still present - these very often are missing on ex business machines.



I then thought to actually look at the specs of the innards currently in there. Turns out that it's very similar in performance terms to my current desktop. However it's upgradeable a whooooole lot further than my desktop. Even better, as often is the case with obsolete enterprise gear, it's upgradeable really cheaply. The most powerful supported CPU appears to be a Xeon E5-2697 v2. This is a 12-core, 24-thread monster (compared to the i5-4600 in my desktop!), and given that this uses DDR3 ECC memory which is ancient enough to be at least somewhat insulated from the current memory price nonsense, upgrading it to at least 64Gb (though I'd likely go for 128 for a bit of future proofing) shouldn't break the bank if I shop around a bit. Even if I left that for a bit, it's already got 16Gb in it which is the same as I have installed in my current system anyway.

So assuming that it does actually work my plan has changed a bit. Spend another £30 on a CPU upgrade and just transfer over the drives and graphics card from my current desktop. Shouldn't then need to mess with it again for a good long while.

Yes I could probably pick up something cheap a bit more modern with similar performance, but there's something just satisfying about making something that is in computing terms ancient (2013 build date according to a stamp on the door), punch far far above its weight.