#688 – The Tandy Train

Chris Gammell: This is The Amp Hour Podcast. Release February 11th, 2025. Episode 688. The Tandy Train.

Dave Jones: Welcome to the Amp Hour. I'm Dave Jones from the EEV blog.

Chris Gammell: And I'm Chris Gammell of Contextual Electronics.

Dave Jones: I've run out of cash again.

Chris Gammell: You have no idea what I'm talking about. Are you talking about like folding dollar bills?

Dave Jones: No, not cash as in cash.

Chris Gammell: I guess you say cash. You say cash.

Dave Jones: We say cash here in Australia. Yeah, that's what I say.

Chris Gammell: But I say cold hard cash.

Dave Jones: Cold hard cash. Cash.

Chris Gammell: Just to really throw things around, yeah. Yeah, okay.

Dave Jones: My business ran out of cash again. It happened.

Chris Gammell: Man, it's been tough times. You know, Dave's Patreon link will be down below.

Speaker ?: Right.

Chris Gammell: It's falling on hard times.

Dave Jones: Exactly. Can't feed the kids, you know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yep. Yep. Bloody hell.

Chris Gammell: Can't feed the meter even outside. Do you say that feed the meter? Do you? Like if you, uh. Do you guys say that? Oh, kind. Well, we do have meters here.

Dave Jones: We do actually have parking meters. You're talking about parking meters, right? Yeah, parking meters, yeah. Yeah, yeah. We have parking meters here, but we don't, you know.

Chris Gammell: It's actually pretty hard to find one that still takes coins, you know. Like.

Dave Jones: Yeah, exactly. I got a. I think there are still a few here, but.

Chris Gammell: I got a. Uh. I don't know. I got to go. Tap the meter, I guess. It would be like if you got a tap to pay, right?

Dave Jones: Right. I find they don't work half the time. When I go to like a. I don't go anywhere, so it helps. Experience. Oh, right. Okay. But every time I go anywhere, and especially outdoor ones, because they just get abused to hell, and the buttons are all faded. You can't read the screens, and then they won't accept your card because, I don't know, however they're getting the internet there is dead. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: The skimmers, too. You know.

Dave Jones: Right. The skimming machines. Yeah. Still haven't found one of those. I'm kind of bummed that I've never found a skimming machine, because that'd be great.

Chris Gammell: It would be fun. Yeah. There's like the video. You see like the video, like YouTube shorts or TikTok. Actually tearing them off. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly. It's great. It doesn't seem like it takes much. You know, it's basically like an NFC coil.

Chris Gammell: It doesn't make much. Yeah. I don't think they're doing. I think they're doing tap to pay versus doing a, you know, because you just like tap it twice. Like, oh, that didn't work.

Dave Jones: Yeah, the old school swiping. Like, I don't. Like, does anyone actually swipe anymore? Like the actual strip? Yeah. In the States. Yeah, you still need to make that strip. You can.

Chris Gammell: You don't. I mean, every. I remember you telling me, I think when I visited there, oh, so many years ago, it was like tap to pay wasn't a big thing here yet. It had been a little bit, but you're like, yeah, everybody here is tap to pay. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Everyone was tap. And that was God. How many years ago were you here? Five?

Chris Gammell: Eight.

Dave Jones: Eight? Eight. Was it eight years ago? Crikey. Five years ago. Yeah, yeah. We were all tap back then.

Chris Gammell: Five years ago was the start of the pandemic, man. Oh, right. Oh, geez. Oh, God.

Dave Jones: Don't remind me. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, you're right. Stupid me. We are in 2025, we should say. Thank you very much.

Chris Gammell: Happy New Year, friend. Yep. I guess you were walkabout, so.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I went walkabout. And, but yeah, bloody, things don't work. Stupid machines don't work. Well, I actually had to insert it the other day. I didn't swipe it. Like I didn't, I can't remember the last time I've had to magnetic swipe the strip, but I had to insert it once because it didn't, you know, just. Oh, that's like the chip and pin. The actual chip and pin. Yeah. The exposed contacts on the little chip inside. Yep. Yeah. So I had to insert the thing because the tap wouldn't work, but, you know, taps basically everything. And everyone uses their shoe phone, you know, because it's got the, yeah. It's so easy to use this. Yeah. You know, I see people with their little stupid Apple watch thing and they're tapping it on the screen at the grocery store, paying for their groceries. I mean, that's the thing.

Chris Gammell: It's really, really convenient. I've got to admit it.

Dave Jones: Is it like, I did actually forget my wallet the other week. Like I went down to the local shop and said, I totally forgot my wallet. And I go, oh God.

Chris Gammell: I forgot my pocket watch and I forgot my billfold and my.

Dave Jones: Yes. And my. Oh boy.

Chris Gammell: My change purse. Sorry. I'm just trying to think of like. And my top hat. Yeah. My old top hat. Yeah. My monocle. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Monocle. I wonder if we can do a AI image of me wearing a monocle and a top hat. Maybe.

Chris Gammell: I'll just. Something like that. I'll just draw one on you, man. You must paint that thing. Cool.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Photoshop that bastard right on. Yeah. Yeah. Right. So. Yeah. So I actually, I had to use my shoe phone for the first time as a pap it and tap and go thing. And I thought, oh, I'll just open. Because I do actually have them programmed in there into Google pay. Right. Because I've got an Android phone, none of that Apple rubbish. And so I've got my cards programmed in there, but I usually use it online as a Google pay thing, which actually works fairly well. So I've got the business card in there. I've got the private card and everything. So. So I thought, oh, I wonder if that just works or do I have to go in and enable the bloody NFC? But I opened up the app. I chose the card and I just put it there and it worked. It was like, oh, yeah, I can see why people like this. You know. Yeah. Because they carry in their shoe phone everywhere, but they don't have their wallet. You know. Whereas I'm still an old school wallet guy. I still keep cashing there. Except when I run out in my business.

Chris Gammell: Except when you run out. This is what you want to talk about. Cash flow. Yes. Yes. Yes. Is this because you had to feed the meter?

Dave Jones: I had to. Yes. Did you see what I did there? Oh, I see what you did there. I see what you did there. Okay. Very nice. Yes. I will. Okay. I'll pay that one. Pun intended. Well, I can't because I'm broke. Oh, boy. Anyway. So, yes, I had to order like a couple of major shipments for meters because I buy a lot of meters because I sell a lot of meters. So, therefore, I'm going to buy a lot of meters and buy them in bulk. I'm talking, you know, five, six hundred at a time kind of thing. Right. In fact, this show might get interrupted by a delivery of said 20 boxes of multimeters. So, yeah. And like several of them came at once. And we're talking six figures here. Right.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah. Hardware businesses are not low cash. Yeah.

Dave Jones: No. And, well, the worst part is is I buy, they, the companies sell in Yankee bucks, freedom bucks, right? Oh, yeah. That sucks. And, of course, the Aussie dollar at the moment is in the toilet. Yeah. Yeah. That's stupid. So, it's like 61 cents or something. So, I'm buying right at the, you know. Right at the, yeah. So, I'm buying right at the rock bottom.

Chris Gammell: 61 cents?

Dave Jones: 61 Aussie cents to a Yankee buck. Oh, my God. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I think that's the thing. I usually look at it in the other direction. So, I'm like, oh, it doesn't look as bad. Right. Yeah. It's one point. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Whatever. No. But, I look at it in the, yep. The other way and it's, yeah. Take a trip. So, you know, like, so if I get a thing for like $40,000, nope, sorry, that's like 65, you know, Aussie or something. So, yeah, yeah, it's killer. And, you get a couple of those in a row and bam, I've run out of operating cash. So, yeah, cash flow. So, it's a big deal for businesses who are in, you know, when you're actually in the hardware business and you've got to buy stock and, you know. So, you have to keep that cash buffer there. And I do keep a cash buffer. I've mentioned before that I try and keep like $100,000 cash buffer in the business just for this, right? Sure. But, no. When, you know, two or three of them all come at once and bam. Mm-hmm. And, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Well, you're also, it's interesting too because like you are probably still riding waves from six to 12 months ago in terms of like pricing, like in terms of like forecasting and pricing and all that stuff.

Dave Jones: Oh, yes. Yeah, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Because you're buying from a manufacturer who's ultimately buying parts that has been dealing with that supply chain then. Yes. So, like the actual ripple effect from. Oh, it's, yeah, it's crazy. So, if there was like a thing that happened today, it probably wouldn't ripple through to you until you put an order in in like 12 to 18 months, right?

Dave Jones: Exactly. Yes. And it goes up. Yep. And I might buy stock that lasts for six months, for example. Right, exactly. Yeah. It depends on the product, but yeah. Ah, it's crazy.

Chris Gammell: Sounds like you need an ERP system, my friend.

Dave Jones: Oh, well, I was thinking about that, but it's like- No, really? Oh, no. My needs are so small. Like, you know, I've basically got, what, half a dozen products. It's like, you know, it should be possible on like just a spreadsheet or something, but I need something to like alert me and then, but then I need it to tie into my Shopify stock. But even then, I don't keep my Shopify stock thing up to date. It's not like 500 meters come in and then I suddenly go put 500 on my Shopify store because I don't know whether or not I'm going to send some to Amazon or what I'm going to do, you know? So it's like, ugh.

Chris Gammell: Hey, ass monkey, huh?

Dave Jones: Yeah. So anyway, it's pain in the ass. So yeah, oops. So I had to sell some of my investments to actually pay for the meters. Oh, geez. I didn't really want to sell them, but yeah, I needed the cash. So, oops. You know, oh, well, shit happens. How it goes. That's how it goes. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: But the hardware business is hard. There goes the Pokemon cards and the Beanie Babies. The what babies? The Beanie Babies? Come on, man.

Dave Jones: Oh, Beanie Babies. Oh, right. I kind of, I've heard of them, but I kind of, right. I have to look up Beanie Babies.

Chris Gammell: Oh, those are big in like the, there was like a fervor over them. They were basically like the Dutch tulips of the 2000s, the early 2000s. Actually, no name. Sorry, that's too late. It was like mid to late 90s. It was around, as eBay got popular, basically, that's when Beanie Babies were up.

Dave Jones: Okay, no, I wasn't really into the Beanie Baby. I mean, like, is each one like an individual different kind of thing? Is it that kind of?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. It was like a collector item and they would do like special releases, but they're like, they're literally like beanbag. Yeah.

Dave Jones: But they're not all different, right? No, yeah. So they're not like every.

Chris Gammell: There was like rare ones. Yeah. But then.

Dave Jones: But they will make multiples of them. They're not like a Cabbage Patch Kid.

Chris Gammell: Cabbage Patch Kids also had multiples, right?

Dave Jones: Uh, no, I thought Cabbage Patch Kids were all unique in some way, weren't they?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, because they belong to you, Dave, and you got to give them hugs. No, I don't know.

Dave Jones: I think they were. Well, what was the one I'm thinking of that, you know, each one was like different? Like there was never two that were truly identical. I don't know. You know, it's paradoxical.

Chris Gammell: I actually don't think that's as valuable in a marketplace collector system, right? I think what you really want is you want a lot that are the same. Yeah. A lot of the same and then you want the scarcity. Yeah. And then you want a couple that have defects or like slightly different so that those become collector's items. Totally. Anyways, Beanie Babies failed because the company that made them got super greedy and then started making more of them and then devalued their own stock.

Dave Jones: Ah, right.

Chris Gammell: In beanbags. Beanbags.

Dave Jones: Beanbags?

Chris Gammell: I mean, they're like little beanbags. Oh, they're little bean-filled.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, exactly.

Dave Jones: They're like bean-filled, you know, teddies or something.

Chris Gammell: They are worthless trinkets that people have subscribed a lot of value to. Can you think of other things in the modern day that maybe are the same way, Dave?

Dave Jones: Yeah, I've got a segue. Use test equipment.

Chris Gammell: Oh, I was going to say Bitcoin or crypto or what's the...

Dave Jones: Nope.

Chris Gammell: One of those stupid images. Nope.

Dave Jones: I will not try and educate you on crypto because you're uneducatable.

Chris Gammell: That's very correct. So anyways, use test equipment. That's a much better segue. Thank you.

Dave Jones: Anyway, so I found this link. It was on the EVBog forum. This guy, I guess, he calls himself the emperor of test equipment. And have you got the link?

Chris Gammell: I don't.

Dave Jones: It's on the Reddit there. It's like at the top of the Reddit. Should be at the top of the Reddit or pretty close.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: Very tippity top.

Chris Gammell: Improved test equipment. I see it.

Dave Jones: Yes. There you go. Have a click. And it's just one gigantic page of every single bit of test gear that he owns. And then he's got histograms of when he bought... He actually analyzes the data on all this test equipment. And he's got histograms.

Chris Gammell: Dave, he says right at the top, I do not go out of my way to publish this URL other than a few random posts. This is going to go the other direction for him. He's going to... I guess he's probably already on the forum. Come on. He's got way more traffic from the forum than he would from this. Yeah, exactly.

Dave Jones: So, yeah, this is great. And if you scroll down to the very bottom of the page, you might have to actually hit the end button because it's a huge, massive page. He's actually got some stats and he's actually counted all of the knobs and switches and front panel LEDs and BNC jacks. And he's got 88 multimeters, 38 oscilloscopes, 11 logic analyzers, 58 function pulse gens.

Chris Gammell: And a partridge in a pear tree.

Dave Jones: Oh, God. Oh, God. It's just great. It's great. And he's got photos of most of them, I think. It's just... Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, this is a true labor of love, I've got to say. Yeah, totally. There's a whole section on dead equipment and...

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It's not dead. It's just waiting to be... Someone on Twitter... It's just waiting to donate his parts.

Dave Jones: Well, someone on Twitter pointed out that there's a difference between hoarding... Because this is not hoarding. This isn't hoarding. Oh, okay. Because he has curated these, right? Ah, yeah, there you go. So, Fran says this because she's a... Like, people think that she's a hoarder because she's got two storage vaults full of just, like, floor to ceiling of all these tubs of old stuff, right? And, no, she insists that the difference between hoarding and collecting is curation. So, when you curate them, like this guy has, then, yeah, you're officially not a hoarder. So, congratulations.

Chris Gammell: I'm a museum keeper.

Dave Jones: Yes, yes. The keeper of the vintage.

Chris Gammell: I'm a museum keeper of tiny baggies of resistors, then.

Dave Jones: What? You like to keep... Are you talking about, like, the little mouse and digi-key bags or what?

Chris Gammell: I wouldn't say I like to keep them, but I would say I compulsively do keep them. Like, if there's one resistor in one cut tape in a tiny baggie from Digi-key...

Dave Jones: Yeah. I'll throw it in the bin. Oh, right. Okay. So, you will throw... I thought you were going to say you're going to keep the one resistor in the one tape in the one baggie.

Chris Gammell: I do. Oh, sorry.

Dave Jones: So, you don't throw it in the bin.

Chris Gammell: You keep it. I throw it in the bin. What do you think? I throw it out? What am I, a psychopath? I'm going to need that, Dave.

Dave Jones: Oh, right. No, you threw it in the junk bin, not the bin bin. Oh, sorry.

Chris Gammell: In the bin of resistors. I'm sorry. Yeah, this is a language different. This is a vocabulary. Yes. This is a... I'm sorry. Yes, yeah. No, I'm literally staring at a bin of resistors. Yes. But I'm saying it as like a bucket or a container. It's a storage container. Yeah, you say bin like trash bin.

Dave Jones: Yeah, trash bin. Yes.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. No, gosh, no. No. Why would I throw it out?

Dave Jones: I know.

Chris Gammell: That's one perfectly usable resistor. There is no higher high to a hardware engineer than to find that one part that you just knew you had and you needed it.

Dave Jones: I found it. Oh, my God. Have you seen the video? Oh, I wonder if I can find... I'll try and find it in the background here. But it's this video of it like spoofing exactly that. Like the guy finally found the bit of wood that he's been keeping for 20 years. Yeah, you've seen that one?

Chris Gammell: It's the father and son. It's a YouTube shorter TikTok. The father and son.

Dave Jones: It's a shorter TikTok or something. Yeah, it's great. Oh, my God. Yeah. That thing's got like 40 million views too. It's really good. It's incredible.

Chris Gammell: Definitely sent that to my dad. That was like classic.

Dave Jones: It's incredible.

Chris Gammell: Anyone who's got like a workshop full of like, you know, all sets of wood.

Dave Jones: We'll certainly understand that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Speaking of, this weekend, the mechanical bench is going back up in the new garage. It's been in piles. And I've told myself I've carved out time and it will be installed this weekend. That is what I've told myself. We'll see how realistic that gets.

Dave Jones: So you're actually using a garage not to store your cars?

Chris Gammell: Oh, no. This is a big garage. This is like, and you know, I got, I heard some of the sweetest words I've ever heard, which was my wife saying, as long as I can walk around the cars, you can put whatever you want in here. Oh, right. And so that means, I don't think she understood the depth of milling machines and just like

Dave Jones: stuff. So are the cars still in there?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. They can fit the cars. And then there's probably like about two and a half meters past the front of the car to the back of the garage. So there's like, it's a two car garage. It's a good size. Yeah. And then there's like a thing off to the side too, where the work punch is going to, yeah, it's, I got very, very lucky on this. Yeah. The only downside of course, is that it's hot as hell here sometimes. Oh yeah.

Dave Jones: No.

Chris Gammell: But I can work with that. I can sweat a little.

Dave Jones: I used to have my lab out there, dude. Yeah, exactly. And you had spiders. You had spiders. You had spiders and everything. Yeah. Yeah. Birds chirping outside and snakes coming in. I remember. Oh, do I remember. Yep.

Chris Gammell: So do listeners. They're still in the recordings. Go back to the early days, folks.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Go back to the early days and they, yeah. I thought about, yeah, I should do that. I thought about just, cause I do actually have recordings of those birds. So I thought just, you know, scattering them in the background. Oh yeah. Just at a low amplitude in, in my videos to see if anyone notices. I mean, you should just do it in your office.

Chris Gammell: You just have them playing.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. It feels like home. Yeah.

Dave Jones: It feels like, yeah. I hate my garage, so it's too small. As you said, like yours goes like two and a half meters past the back of the cars. Well, technically so does mine. Right. Well, maybe two meters or something. Yeah. But you know, it goes past cars, but then we've got a laundry there and a cover as well. So like, no, that just takes up everything. So, you know. Yep. And now I've got a home storage battery there, you know. So yeah, there's zero room at all.

Chris Gammell: I'm getting a quote on solar this week too. Oh, excellent. You're finally getting solar. Lots of news. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. We got some trees trimmed.

Dave Jones: I was going to say, I was going to say, cause you kind of have a tree issue there, don't you?

Dave Jones: Yeah. I'm not sure. You won't get early morning sun or late afternoon sun, will you?

Chris Gammell: My roof is unfortunately pointed. The biggest part of the roof is pointed west. So it would only be afternoon sun for the main part. But the garage actually has a pretty decent sized roof as well. And that faces due south, which would be, and that's like very clear of trees now. And I think it can hold a decent amount of solar. So that's really what I'm going to be pushing for. What's a decent amount?

Dave Jones: What have you sized it up?

Chris Gammell: I haven't gotten the quote yet. I'm not doing it myself.

Dave Jones: Oh, you're not doing it yourself. You can get the data sheet of the panels are about 1.8 meters by one meter.

Chris Gammell: I don't know how big the roof is. I don't know.

Dave Jones: Well, get up there, dude, with the tape measure.

Chris Gammell: I don't have time for this, man. I don't have time for this. I'm going to have the professionals do it and just be done with it. Shouldn't you have professionals? You had professionals do yours, right?

Dave Jones: Like, yeah, but I specified everything.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: I got up there and told them how many I wanted and how many could fit and where to put it and blah, blah, blah.

Chris Gammell: How did they like that, Dave?

Dave Jones: Well, I paid them and they did what I said.

Chris Gammell: Okay. Yeah. Great.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I'm likely to be sold to a little bit more. Right. Yeah, I don't know. Cool. I'm going to be, I'm really optimizing for like tax breaks and like, you know, system set up and low hassle.

Dave Jones: Do you have like state incentives there or something?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, there's, well, there's a little bit of state. Actually, it's, I'm on Duke Energy. And so that's the name of the power company. And they have a, they have like a big break right now. It's like per kilowatt hour of battery plus solar because they want to offload the grid a little bit. And so if you install a combo, then they'll give you, they'll give you Duke money. And then there's also federal.

Dave Jones: Right. Oh, okay. So it's not state money. It's federal money. Uncle Sam money.

Chris Gammell: 30%, 30% tax credit right now.

Dave Jones: Right. Right. Wow.

Chris Gammell: And then Duke also had another thing at one point where they have like a lottery, but it's like only one out of every three can get the, it's like actually money from Duke. But I don't know. I don't know if they're doing that still. All right. So again, I got to talk to a salesperson for this sort of thing.

Dave Jones: Right. So you don't even know what sort of battery they'll just give you whatever they are flogging. Is that the idea?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. They have, they had two listed. They had a power wall and a, what's the AC coupled one that's Enphase? Is that the popular one?

Dave Jones: Enphase do an AC, Enphase is AC coupled. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I think it was Enphase.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: So. But this is like one provider out of many, many, many, many. I just, I want to talk to one and get like a baseline. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. Start talking to others.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Well, it'll be.

Chris Gammell: Don't at me, bro.

Dave Jones: It'll, it'll be very expensive because. Oh, no doubt. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: Anyway, it sounds like fun.

Chris Gammell: Except for the dealing with salespeople. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Right. Yeah. Unfortunately, the battery that I got is not compatible with the plan that everyone talks about here. There's this company called Amber Energy who do like trading. You can get up to apparently up to $8 per kilowatt hour feed feedback. Yeah. $8.

Dave Jones: Not cents.

Chris Gammell: Oh, they're getting carbon credits, aren't they? Are they doing carbon credits? No, no, no.

Dave Jones: They just do it during extreme peak periods. Right? Huh. So they, you know, so you give them full control. And then they will, like during extreme peak periods. Yes. Yeah. The wholesale rate of that power could be $8. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Because it's like preventing you from kicking on another plant or whatever. Right?

Dave Jones: Something like that. Yeah. Yeah. Something like that. Yeah. So it's at the wholesale level and everyone raves about it and I'm going, yeah, great, but my battery's not compatible.

Chris Gammell: Just as a baseline, what's the normal rate per kilowatt hour?

Dave Jones: Five cents per, I'm getting paid five cents per kilowatt hour feeding. As a consumer, sorry. Oh, as a consumer, 30, 30 to 33 cents per kilowatt hour.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. So like 25X almost. Oh, yeah. 24X. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. That is, that's extreme. Yes. Yes. It's extreme. And they're making margin on top of that.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Of course. So yeah. Yeah. It's crazy. Anyway. But the flip side is they, if you're not careful and you don't switch it off at the right times, like as in disable the system or whatever, they will steal it. They will, if you're exporting energy to the grid, they will charge you.

Chris Gammell: Oh, because you're overloading it.

Dave Jones: You're overloading the grid. So they will charge you massively. So it's a delicate dance there to sort of get that feed in, but not give anything back to them. So yeah, you've got to like actually switch off your inverter, you know, like, oh no, I'm going to get charged dollars per kilowatt hour to feed it back in. I'm getting massively, you know, penalized. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So you've got to be careful. But I guess that is kind of the benefit. Like it is truly like a market system like that.

Dave Jones: It's a market. It's a decentralized market system. Yes.

Chris Gammell: Someone's getting hosed.

Dave Jones: That's the downside, right?

Chris Gammell: You might be making eight, but someone else is paying it. So yeah.

Dave Jones: It's a big club and you ain't in it.

Chris Gammell: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. What was that called again? Amber? You said Amber, like A-M-B-R? Amber. Yes.

Dave Jones: Yes. A-M-B-R. So if you search for Amber Energy or something, Australian website, yeah. Amber.com.au and if you go to their solar and battery solutions, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Cool. They support every battery except the one I have, unfortunately. So I can't even experiment with it. Yeah. Well, I might be able to. There is a back doorway into the system and I have signed up for an alternative service which then plugs into Amber. So I've actually signed up for that to see if I can sort of bodge it in a way. Anyway, yeah. Yeah. I'm waiting to hear back from that company who they've partnered with, which if your battery is not supported, you can still kind of sort of do something with them. I don't know. So.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: We'll see. We'll see. Anyway, good luck with your solar adventure.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. We'll see how it goes.

Dave Jones: Yeah. But it's a huge amount of money up front. You know, you have to have the coin up front to do it. So. Or is it like on a. There is financing. Oh, I was going to say you're on a financing plan. Right. Okay. Yeah. Got it. Okay. So you won't have to pay the 30 grand up front. Or whatever it is. Right. Right. Exactly. Okay.

Chris Gammell: Exactly.

Dave Jones: Got it. All right. Good luck.

Chris Gammell: I hope Uncle Sam comes through. Nice. What was the last thing we were speaking about before you went on vacation? I don't even remember.

Dave Jones: You seriously expect me to remember that?

Chris Gammell: I don't know. You didn't go. You didn't go like on a bender. Did you? I don't know.

Dave Jones: No. I don't remember. I don't remember. I don't remember details. I never have. Remember details of previous episodes. Why do you think I'm going to start now?

Chris Gammell: All right. Well, I guess I'll look at some list of things here then. Well, no.

Dave Jones: I've got plenty to talk about, dude.

Chris Gammell: Oh, okay. Well, then that's fine too. I guess I was asking about old things. What would you like to talk about this week, Dave? I've got a list of stuff. I have a list of stuff.

Dave Jones: Oh, excellent. Well, I mentioned it first, so I'm going to start first, damn it.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: Just before the show, because I know you're not following me on X, because you don't use X anymore. That's right. Sad for you. And I was literally, just before the show, I was seeing if I could generate a 3D CAD file in OpenSCAD using AI with a text input. Because what I wanted to do, I've got a Tandy 200 vintage computer, which I just did a video on, and it doesn't have a battery door on it, like one of those sliding battery doors on the back of it. Right? So the batteries just fall out, and everyone's going, just 3D print one. And I go, yeah, okay. If I had any CAD skills that are worth a dime, I could do it. But then I thought, hey, well, like I've actually heard about this, that OpenAI and other large language models were capable of generating OpenSCAD files and other CAD files. So I thought I'd give it a go. And I can actually send you, I don't know if you've got access to X, but I can send you an image of what I'm doing at the moment. So you can, there you go. Boom. And this, I just sent you it in the Google.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I see.

Dave Jones: Google. Yeah. So I have not used OpenSCAD before. Well, I did like 13 years ago or something. So, but yeah, anyway, it did work. But the finer details of the, like the battery, like the battery protrusion things that come out, and they have the little tabs on them, you know, the battery tabs that come out and then, you know, they sort of hold it in place. And it kind of didn't quite get it. And I've been through nine iterations now, and it's close and it just gets sort of, I can't seem to massage it. Into place. But it's really cool. Like OpenAI, right? It actually puts the OpenSCAD code there for you. And then when you tell it to make a change, it actually goes through line by line of the code and actually regenerates it on the fly. It's really cool. It actually does the same thing for code as well for, you know, C code and other stuff. You know, code for Python or whatnot. But yeah, it actually does it for SCAD as well, which is really cool. But yeah, it's not quite there. And it's not quite there. It's not. And some people on X are telling me, yeah, it's probably not going to work. So...

Chris Gammell: I mean, it looks like this actually could work. So I'm just going to try and describe what it looks like. It could work, yes. It's like, so it's a bunch of elongated, it's basically 3D rectangles. And this one kind of looks like a log with a tiny stick next to it, but the stick is just off the log. And the little stick needs to be longer to cover up the log.

Dave Jones: It needs to move it down. So at the moment, it's un-3D printable. Yeah. So it just...

Chris Gammell: Why not just modify that part yourself? You could select and find the code that's there.

Dave Jones: Yes, I could, but that's not the point. I'm trying to get it to work with text AI. Okay, so at a certain point, I'm doing this as an experiment.

Chris Gammell: You could always take a generated image and put it into GIMP or Inkscape, but you're saying, I'd rather, I want the computer to do it.

Dave Jones: I'm literally testing large language model AI to see if it's possible to generate CAD files with it. It's purely an experiment. Yes, I do want the end result of my battery door, but the whole idea at this point is to sort of massage it, is to use my vast prompt engineering skills to try and talk the AI into understanding what I want.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, this is the time in a project when I'm using these kind of things that it gets very frustrating. Like when you know exactly what you want.

Dave Jones: Yes, I know exactly what I want.

Chris Gammell: It has no concept of what you're trying to tell it.

Dave Jones: Well, it's pretty close. It's not far off. Like it kind of does understand, kind of does. Yeah, but if you're trying to like get it

Chris Gammell: to cross the chasm of like, hey, this actually is not physically possible. It's that last 5%. Yeah, no, it just loses. Yeah, it loses any aspect. This is like you've used a printer before. You understand what it looks like. Like you understand the limitations and it's just trying to piece it together.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: It is interesting that it could do this as far as it has, sure.

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah. No, I just find it fascinating. And yeah, so it's not quite there, but it's interesting nonetheless. It gave me like, and interestingly Grok gave me, Grok also works, but its code looks different to OpenAI. They, like using the same text input, it actually generated different code. It was using for loops, whereas OpenAI uses unions or something. So translate union, something like that, which is interesting. So yeah, but they did produce basically a similar sort of basic result, but the fine details just aren't there and I can't coerce it. So my next step is to actually, to see if it can do images because I have not done a video on this yet, but once again, I did put it on X, if you follow me there. I recently did a tutorial video on time domain versus frequency domain, complex numbers, RLC circuits and stuff like that, right? So I did a whiteboard tutorial. So I thought, wouldn't it be interesting if I could photograph the schematic on my whiteboard and then tell OpenAI to solve it and bam, it got it. It got it. I was thoroughly impressed. It actually converted, I probably can't find it live now for you, but it converted complex, like it converted an RLC circuit. It understood what everything was. It understood my handwriting for one. It understood what, you know, minus J100 ohms is. Yeah,

Chris Gammell: that took like four or five, you know, NVIDIA GPUs, I'm sure, just to get that going.

Speaker ?: Yeah,

Dave Jones: just to understand my Dickie whiteboard handwriting, but it did it. I was stunned and it knew exactly what it was doing and it described step by step how it solved it. I was, and then some people like, and I actually, like I actually put that on X and I went, wow, this is amazing and everyone went, oh no, that's just nothing and I'm like, I don't know, that's bloody impressive to me because not only does it have to do image to text conversion, it's got to understand that it's a serious circuit and I didn't tell it anything. I basically just said, solve this circuit, solve for the current flowing in this circuit. So it had to convert, not only convert it into a circuit, it had to understand, okay, that's capacitor, that's inductor, that's a resistor, it had to understand the voltage source with the AC symbol and then it had to understand that the voltage source was in polar form, was 100 angle, zero degrees. It had to interpret that and then it had to figure out that, okay, am I going to solve this in the time domain or am I going to solve this in the frequency domain and then, you know, like it was just, and then give you a complex number answer result. Are you kidding me? I was thoroughly impressed and I got it. Damn, I didn't have to massage it at all.

Chris Gammell: See, I think those kind of solutions where it's like, like it almost sounds, I agree, this is impressive, no doubt. So like the image classification, the converting it to be a problem, but then like the problem set that looks like a textbook problem, at that point, I actually do think that that's, that's like what it's built for, right?

Dave Jones: It is what it's built for, but still, I was impressed that it could do all of those things combined together without any massaging. Yes. So yeah, I was like.

Chris Gammell: I think this is actually a good set of like, like contrast between those two problems because one is like kind of an open-ended like, oh, make it look like this thing that is in the real world and the other one is like, solve this thing that has an answer, right? That looks like a textbook. Like that's, that's to me is like a, I've run into similar, similar problems.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Also interesting is when you do, so I use this a bunch, I used it for doing troubleshooting on like some Zephyr code that I wrote and then a different time on like some Linux stuff I was dealing with.

Dave Jones: Which tool are we talking about? OpenAI?

Chris Gammell: I did both OpenAI and I did Claude, which is the anthropic version. And both just, they don't because it was like, there was just too much, too much information. There was too many moving things. Like they weren't, they weren't talking about the state of the art because they didn't know the state of the art, which is totally fine. And so, and it was just like, just guessing. And it's fine. It's like what I would have been doing anyways.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Someone, someone X suggested that I didn't approach it in the right way, the OpenSCAD thing. And they said, I should, I should preempt the chat. The, I should, I should prime the large language model by saying, be exhaustive, be accurate at the cost of seed. Time is important. Accuracy, time is not important. Accuracy is. And then assume, and then tell it, assume the persona of a highly skilled, accurate, and informed, OpenSCAD file generation engineer. And it's like, oh God. To me,

Chris Gammell: that sounds like the equivalent of like, well, I just talk louder when I'm speaking Spanish and they understand me better.

Dave Jones: Say it with more gusto. That just sounds silly. Yeah. That just, you know, no, no, I shouldn't have to do that. That's just, yeah. It's crazy. But anyway, yeah, so I was going to do a video on that. I probably will still do that. Just showing how it's capable of doing that.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I mean like, I was going to maybe try some other examples.

Speaker ?: You could maybe get it to do

Chris Gammell: keycat files, other stuff like that. Yeah. You know, you could, I'm sure there's, there's similar like text-based outputs that it is doing and maybe could be rendered and it probably has consumed or, you know, it being LLMs generally.

Dave Jones: Yes.

Chris Gammell: Still not, not quite there for solving all problems, right?

Dave Jones: Oh no, definitely not. Not even close. It's okay with me. But you're right. There's a lot of great things. But they're very useful. Yeah. They're still quite useful. Yeah. Mm-hmm. And, and, and hey, even this, right? Even though I've never used OpenSCAD before, it actually gave me the basic template for my, for my actual cover. It's there. And yes, and, and you're right. I could just figure out how to tweak, you know, drag, select that object, drag it down a little bit and, you know, boom. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I think if one thing OpenAI has as a feather in their cap, it got you to try OpenSCAD, which is, I don't know many other things that would have done that, to be honest. Right.

Dave Jones: Well, I, I think it, I think it said it can generate code for other CAD packages as well, but, Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. As CAD was like, It's very open.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yes. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Oh, sorry. Here it is. Um, I think it says, uh, Fusion 360, uh, Tinker CAD or Blender. Okay. It can also do those, I think. So, yeah. Cool. Yeah. Anyway. Yeah. So it doesn't have to be OpenSCAD. But anyway, um, so that's a, um, kind of useful level at the moment, I'd say.

Chris Gammell: You can use it, Dave, to, uh, maybe you can use OpenSCAD to print a new case for your Pebble watch.

Dave Jones: Why the hell would I want?

Chris Gammell: Oh, you didn't see the news today. No? Pebble. So, uh, today, Google did something that is very uncharacteristic for Google and it didn't kill something.

Dave Jones: What?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Can you believe it? It's a red letter day. I know. Yeah. So Google today, uh, with the, the help of, uh, many, many former Pebble engineers, then Fitbit engineers, now Google engineers, um, that's kind of the method. That's the, the path that Pebble has gone down. So Pebble got bought by Fitbit, got bought by Google. Uh, Google has officially.

Dave Jones: I didn't know Google bought Fitbit.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, that was a while ago.

Dave Jones: Uh, whatever.

Chris Gammell: Google has officially open sourced, uh, Pebble OS, which is the OS running on Pebble. And, uh,

Dave Jones: Are they still selling Pebble watches? Is that still a thing? Or is it only for old people? You can get them.

Chris Gammell: I mean, people that have them love them. Uh, yeah, right. I've never been a Pebble owner myself, but, um, but today I, I hope I don't butcher his name. I think it's Eric McGofsky announced the, what's it called? Sorry. The RePebble. Is it RePebble? Uh,

Dave Jones: okay.

Chris Gammell: Uh, basically they're bringing it, they're going to start manufacturing again on top of the now open source. Yeah, it's called RePebble.com. So you can sign up for a future one. Um, it's pretty cool. I mean, I think it's, so first off, pretty cool. Hat tip to Google. Hey, absolutely. Credit where it's due and all the engineers that made that happen. That's really cool. Um,

Dave Jones: wow. Pebble died in 2016, according to the tombstone that's on that website. Yeah,

Chris Gammell: that's right. Yeah. Yep.

Dave Jones: Wow. Yeah. Cause I had a Pebble watch. Um, didn't I take it through? Yeah. I took it through a mud obstacle course and then I dissected it and I think it's, I think I've got one in parts somewhere.

Chris Gammell: yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And we, uh, wow. Boy, I should really have this ready. Uh, we had the CT, former CTO of Pebble.

Dave Jones: Yes. Oh, how long ago was that?

Chris Gammell: Uh, uh, eight years ago. That was really long time ago. Andrew Witty. Witty. Yeah. Andrew was a, um, he went to the same school as I did. I remember that. Um, wow. This was episode 175.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: We are on episode 688.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: So a while ago. Um,

Dave Jones: wow.

Chris Gammell: But yeah, um, there apparently some people are gonna start manufacturing that again, but I think in the short term, there's going to be more support for the people that are keeping their own pebbles alive, which seems like there's not, not a insignificant number of people. Obviously they produced a lot in the first, in the first place. Oh yeah.

Dave Jones: I think there were millions of them. It was very popular.

Chris Gammell: It's very popular. Yep. Yep. So.

Dave Jones: Wow. There you go.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It's, it's like happy news. Yeah. That's, that's pretty good.

Dave Jones: That's upbeat for 2025. Yep. Yeah. I like it. Fantastic work. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It's interesting reading the, this is like 20, I mean, this was, this episode came out in 2012. It looks like it must've been around that timeframe. No, this must've been when they were doing a later one.

Dave Jones: Okay.

Chris Gammell: We really got to add dates back into our posts. Cause it's been so long. Yeah.

Dave Jones: I know. I've, I've often seen the, I've often gone to the website and it doesn't have the date on it.

Chris Gammell: You're always just counting on someone writing a, writing a comment, you know,

Dave Jones: it's really annoying. Yeah. Can we like modify the WordPress?

Chris Gammell: Can we modify the WordPress? Dave asks. Yes. Well, I can go in there and do it probably. You know, I know who, I know who would be modifying the WordPress. If you were going to go in there, it's going to have some open SCAD code in there. I'm sure. I can,

Dave Jones: I'm pretty good at bloody WordPress. You know, I've, I've hacked WordPress countless times over the years. Thank you very much.

Chris Gammell: Great. Great. Great. I think it's actually just a, our website is so old at this point. I don't afraid to touch anything, honestly. Yeah. This was December, December 10th, 2013 was that episode. So yeah, they think they were on their second, their, their second Kickstarter as that was happening. Got it. So yeah.

Dave Jones: Cool bananas. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: It's really, it's nice. But I do think there is some like, they keep saying e-paper, but it's not really e-paper, I don't think. So Eric wrote on his blog, that's the one we'll, we'll link that in to the show notes. It has links out to re-pebble and all the other things. Always on e-paper, but it was a sharp display. I remember that from the post. I remember that from the episode. Yeah. Well,

Dave Jones: sharp, sharp is a memory LCD. LCD they call it.

Chris Gammell: That's right. Yeah. Memory LCD,

Dave Jones: which is, which is technically different. It doesn't, because it uses an LCD. It's just ridiculously ultra, ultra, ultra mega low power. And, and it keeps the information in static SRAM on there, I believe. Yeah. And as long as you've got the voltage on there, it takes NAFOR current, like nano amps of current or something, but it technically, it does store it in there. Yeah. So yeah, if you turn off the power, I think it's dead ski. Yeah. From memory. Huh. Get it. I'm here all week.

Chris Gammell: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yep.

Dave Jones: Boy. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Well, that's exciting. So we'll see, we'll see how that goes. But good on you, Google. Excellent. That's good stuff. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Well done. You want to know what I hate?

Chris Gammell: What do you hate, Dave?

Dave Jones: Things that fix themselves.

Chris Gammell: That doesn't sound bad to me.

Dave Jones: That doesn't sound bad. Really? You've never, you've never had a faulty bit of hardware that you're about to work on. And then all of a sudden fix yourself. Oh,

Speaker ?: like that.

Dave Jones: I see. I see. And you go, it just magically.

Chris Gammell: The gnomes that come in the night and just, exactly. And just magically fix it. Got it. Yeah. Because you start to question your sanity and stuff like that. Yeah. Like, this was broke. I swear this was broken. Yeah. What happened?

Dave Jones: I literally said that in my video. Once again, I'm back to my, this Tandy 200 computer that I'm talking about with the battery door. Right. I pulled it out of my archive and it didn't, you know, I whack some batteries in and it didn't work. It went like the, I could hear something hiccup in inside, like the power supply.

Chris Gammell: What is a, what is a Tandy 200? I'm sorry.

Dave Jones: Tandy 200. I'm too young. Because you're a muso. Okay. Tandy 200. I think it's Annie Lennox. Annie Lennox. Annie Lennox. I will give you. Weird dreams all made of these. You and I will disagree.

Chris Gammell: Who am I? Who am I to disagree? Oh, who am I to disagree? Yeah, whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: There you go. I sent you a photo. Oh yeah.

Chris Gammell: The folding screen. Oh yeah. That's good stuff.

Dave Jones: Annie Lennox using a Tandy 200. Yes. Yes. It's basically the same as the Tandy 100, which was the first ever notebook computer, basically. Man, you know,

Chris Gammell: we are never, I don't care how much money AI tools make and whatever. We are never getting back to an era where someone as cool as Annie Lennox is on a train holding a Tandy 200. This is such a cool photo.

Dave Jones: Dave, what's his name? Her partner. I don't know. Sorry. Dave is on her lap as well. So she's got the laptop and he's just there lying on the lap and Tandy 200.

Chris Gammell: This is like, she's very cool. Yeah. Maybe this can be the thumbnail for this image. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Maybe this can be the thumbnail because it's just cool. Well,

Chris Gammell: I don't think we'd own this image, but.

Dave Jones: Oh, come on. It doesn't matter.

Chris Gammell: Maybe I'll have, I'll switch Dave in here and it'll be Dave.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: An open AI's lap. How about that?

Dave Jones: Okay. Yes. And as long as you modify the image, then it's. Got to just modify it, right? Yeah. You've got to modify it. No. Yeah. It's art. So yeah, you can, you have permission to Photoshop my head on Annie Lennox's lap. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. All right. You're terrific.

Chris Gammell: He's wearing two watches. What is going on?

Dave Jones: Oh yeah, he is too. And then can you please, while you're in the Photoshop, can you please modify the book to the art of electronics, please?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Right. Right. I'll just do this right after I change the site, right after I tweak some WordPress. Yep. Sure.

Speaker ?: Yep.

Chris Gammell: Okay. All right. So anyways, Tandy 200, you have one of these.

Dave Jones: Tandy 200. Yes. In the bunker? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Had to, literally had it in the bunker, pulled out of the bunker and put some, I can't remember why I got out. Anyway, I waxed some batteries in it because it was working last time I used it. It was working fine when I put it away. And so I put some batteries and then it's like hiccuping. There's this like hiccup sound, like the power supplies hiccuping or something like that. And the screen's flashing and it's not booting up this thing. And I want to try it multiple times, try different batteries and everything. And nope, nope. It continually does this. And I thought, oh, great. A repair video. Cause I've got the full service manual for this sucker. You know, back when service manuals were real service manuals and they had theory of operation and flow charts and they had bill of materials and they had, you know, schematics and PCB overlays and everything. Right. So I thought, oh yeah, great. A repair video. Fantastic. So I, you know, I set up all my, um, I set up my Togano microscope bench to do, you know, to clear it all out, to do the repair and everything. Then I set it up here, main camera on the main bench. And I started recording and go, Hey, welcome to a repair video, blah, blah, blah. You know? And, um, and then I pair it up and it works right on camera. And then it did it every time, every single fricking time. It was a hundred percent fixed. It was like, Oh, man, it was like, so yeah. Um, so I've got a couple of, so anyway, I, I, I completed the video anyway and did like a tear down and speculation.

Chris Gammell: Just broke it at the end and then, you know, did some editing magic and then you fixed it.

Dave Jones: Right. No, see, I'm not that cool. So, yep. No deceptive.

Chris Gammell: Deceptive. There you go. That's me. Yeah. And I'm looking at, there's an ad on the vintage computer.com, uh, page for the Tandy. Yeah. There's an ad that must be from, like a radio shack ad or something like that. All right. Add disc storage. So the, the unit itself, nine, nine 99. Okay. State of the art at the time. Disc storage and video. Yeah. 184 K floppy disk drive.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And expands with a second disc direct drive. Seven 99. Yep. Wow. That is, that's really something.

Dave Jones: And you can buy the new Tandy 200 with multi plan spreadsheet. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Multi plan. Man. Multi plan. This is just like a,

Dave Jones: and you can buy a barcode reader.

Chris Gammell: My brain cannot like really like, and you would have to go to store, you'd have to go to store, you'd have to like buy it, you know, you probably had to talk to a salesperson who got a, like a fat commission check off it. I just feel like I can't, I can't identify with this at all. You know, I can hear the keys, how loud those frigging keys are,

Dave Jones: but it is not part of your lived experience. Huh?

Chris Gammell: It is not. Yeah. I mean like, cause even when, you know, first computers, when I was like, I think we got one when I was like nine or 10.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: I wasn't buying it.

Dave Jones: Oh goodness. Anyway. Yeah. Fantastic times. Um, so yes, so I speculated on what could be the problem. It's possibly, um, because there's a, one of those, uh, rechargeable batteries in there, right? That really? Yeah. To, uh, store the memory. Cause there, there was no E square. You gotta remember, right? This is the mid eighties, right? Middle eighties. There was no E squared prom. There was no flash memory, right? There was no solid state memory storage. So you backed it up in SRAM. Well, if you, yeah, you can store it to mag, mag magnetic media. You can store it to disco or, or to cassette tape, but yeah. Um, but the main way you still, well, yeah, that's how you store stuff permanently. But if you just want to keep things alive and going, then you would, um, get the, uh, the, it would have a memory protection switch on the back and that would simply supply, that would divert the rechargeable battery through to the SRAM. And it would actually just keep the SRAM alive. So everything's just stored in volatile SRAM. Um, and anyway, so, so I thought maybe because it's rechargeable, I thought maybe if that, of course that would have been completely dead after being years in storage. Right. I mean,

Chris Gammell: that would have been a NICAD probably, right? It wouldn't have been like, it was a NICAD.

Dave Jones: It wouldn't have been, it wasn't lithium, wasn't even nickel metal hydride. It would have been NICAD. Yeah. And, uh, so, yeah. So I thought, okay. Whenever I think of NICAD,

Chris Gammell: I think of like the portable screwdriver, like power screwdriver my dad had that like,

Dave Jones: Oh really?

Chris Gammell: Over time, you know, you would hit the button and it would just go.

Dave Jones: When I think of, um, when I think of NICAD, I think of back when I was a kid and this was a luxury back then. I had a, uh, I had a Hornet, had a Hornet remote control. I had a Tamir Hornet. Like the airplane? No. As in a remote control car. The Tamir Hornet was one of the first build it yourself, super fast RC cars. Right. Oh yeah. And, um, you know, you got it in kit form and you had to assemble it and everything. Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, yeah. And, and it used a NICAD battery and it had this fast charger and it came in this fast charger, which you hooked up to your car battery. And it was just this mechanical timer. It was shocking. The, the abuse on that poor NICAD battery was, it was fun. It gets so hot when it was charging in 15 minutes. Boom. You know, when it was like the abuse on that. Flamming some amps. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that's my memory of when I think of NICAD, I think of,

Chris Gammell: I'm getting all kinds of like, like stuff popping up from the, just from this ad, even like there's a versatile barcode reader. Yeah. Like my, my mind is immediately cast back to the library system. Yes. The library system. Yes. But do you remember like they had like, like just like the, the little old lady that was a library.

Dave Jones: It was always just like public library. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And it was like, but it was like ASMR for me. Like I can still like, like hearken back to it of like her scanning the barcode. Yep. With a light reader, with a light barcode reader. And like, man, it's just like.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: That wand. Yeah. You would have that handheld wand and you'd drag it over the barcode. You'd do it at the right speed. Yeah. You should have to do it like three or four times. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Three or four times. And it went into the mainframe system. And it went into the, you know, the deck vax. The deck. Yeah. Vax system or something. And boom, you know. I bet there's a YouTube video, but I'm just like. Check that out.

Chris Gammell: An old, an old library and doing that.

Dave Jones: Ah, yeah. Yeah. Fantastic stuff. And, and, and then on top of that, they would still stamp. They would still date stamp the thing on the inside front cover. The card. Like, Oh, they did cards for us. Oh, they did cards. Okay. As we usually like a stick on thing and you'd stamp the next slot in the thing with, with the date of, you know. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And kids, if you're too young for that, go watch Indiana Jones and the last crusade. And you can see it. Oh, right. Hilarious. Hilarious.

Dave Jones: The guy in the library. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. It's hilarious. Or go watch, um, go watch, uh, war games even.

Chris Gammell: Oh, war games.

Dave Jones: Even when he goes to the library and he uses the, microfiche.

Chris Gammell: Mm.

Dave Jones: And then she, and then she got like, and then he, you know, and, and card index files. They can't, you know, he's going through the card index files in war games, trying to find, uh, you know, professor Falcon's, uh, details. And she gives, goes, hands the index card to the librarian. She types it on the computer and then out pops his, from a dot matrix, um, printer, you know, he is, you know, actually deceased or whatever. Um, so yeah. So it would spoil it. Um, so yeah. Yeah. Fantastic stuff. Anyway. So it was either that battery that I, you know, I thought may like, because if that battery's not like, if it's at some threshold, weird threshold voltage and it hasn't charged up yet, then maybe that could have been the cause of it. And it just took, you know, several goes to charge it up or something. Or, um, it could have been, uh, reforming of the caps inside there. Cause they haven't been used for so long. And all these four, got to remember the caps inside this thing of 40 years old.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I mean, they're going to be electrolytic. They're going to be dried out. Yeah.

Dave Jones: They're going to be dried out. And it's not just leakage. You have to worry about it's about, you know, capacitor forming and stuff like that. So they can, but they can regain their capacitance. Yes. Sorry.

Chris Gammell: What does that mean?

Dave Jones: Oh, forming is like, um, the, I can't remember the exact chemistry, but it's like the, um, how the plates, uh, the charges form on the plates. Oh, the ions building up on one end. The ions building up on one side based on the electrolyte solution in there. And you can reform capacitors by putting a voltage on them for a long period of time. And you can essentially rejuvenate the capacitor, so to speak. So, so maybe it could have been that, um, you know, something like that. I don't know. It could have been a combination. Who knows? Um,

Chris Gammell: I mean, maybe it was your pocket watch ticking in your, in your pocket. And that's actually the, the, the clicking you heard. And, and the computer was fine the whole time.

Dave Jones: I think I didn't have my top hat at the right angle. You've got to have your top hat at the right angle.

Chris Gammell: Maybe you were listening to an Annie Lennox song at the time. Right. And it was coming out of your speaker and you thought it was coming out of the computer.

Dave Jones: Right. Oh boy. Together in electric dreams. We'll always be together. Please tell me you've seen. Actually, I don't know any Annie Lennox songs. Electric dreams. Have you seen the movie?

Chris Gammell: Electric dreams. Electric dreams. Oh,

Dave Jones: electric dreams. Oh my God. The, the computer comes alive and it talks. Oh, I've seen weird science. Oh, okay. Well, um, yeah. Cringier than weird science. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Weird science can get made these days.

Dave Jones: Right. No, that's great. Weird science is awesome. Oh boy. And, uh, yeah. Anyway, so yes, next on your watching list, I will, uh, quiz you the next time.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: Wait to hear that. Yep. Electric dreams. Edgar, I think is the name of the computer, Edgar, or is, or is that the name of the guy in it? The guy that stars in it. Yeah. And you can watch it. You can watch it with your lovely wife. It's a love story.

Chris Gammell: Oh, okay. All right.

Dave Jones: So, you know, yes. Anyway, it's, yeah, it's got the cool song. It's got the catchy song at the end, um, generated by Edgar, the computer or whatever.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: Now I have to look it up. Otherwise I'm just going to, I'm going to be bothered that I got that wrong. Um, which I have seen live, by the way, I ever seen a live, I've seen Phil Oakey live performing together in electric dreams. So, yep. I can't believe you don't know the song. It's classic, it's classic 1980s synthesizer.

Chris Gammell: I will promise. I will listen to it. I will. Yes. I will promise. Yes.

Dave Jones: You've got to listen to the song because it is classic synthesizer 80s. In fact, it's almost the definition of 80s synth, um, sort of, you know, music. So, yeah. Ah, very cool. Electric dreams. What, what, what date was that? 1984. Yeah. Yeah. There you go.

Chris Gammell: Same year as breaking. And breaking too. Electric booboo.

Dave Jones: Break dance here. Thank you very much. Break dance. None of that breaking rubbish. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: We've talked, yeah, we, yeah, I know, I know.

Dave Jones: I just posted literally the meme the other day of, um, uh, Jean-Claude Van Damme in his, uh, tights in, uh, breaking. Yeah. Yeah. In his onesie tights. Yeah. It's good stuff. Yeah. In the background. Classic. I'm sure there's tons of people who have no idea what we're talking about.

Chris Gammell: It's okay. It's for them to go look up. Yeah. And you know what? You will not be disappointed. You will not be disappointed. Oh, no,

Dave Jones: no, definitely not.

Chris Gammell: I think you probably watched the whole thing on YouTube probably at this point.

Dave Jones: I mean. Yeah, probably. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: You should. You should take some time, you know, for yourself.

Dave Jones: Oh boy. Yep. Ah, yes, yes, Edgar's the name of the computer. I think Miles, Miles is the guy in the,

Speaker ?: um,

Dave Jones: he's the guy who buys this computer at the local computer store, takes it home and, well, I won't spoil it for you, but the computer comes alive. Yeah. Yeah. Number five is alive. You do know that,

Chris Gammell: don't you? Yeah.

Dave Jones: Short circuit. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Excellent. Thank you. I'm, I'm actually surprised. I'm, I'm impressed that you know as much 80s stuff as you do, actually.

Chris Gammell: Um.

Dave Jones: Given your youthful, um, age.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I'm a child. Well, I guess I'm a child of the 90s if you think about, like, cultural stuff.

Chris Gammell: you're a child of the 90s. But, uh, yeah, I mean, replays are a thing and that you jabbering on, about movies for a long time. So I think that probably influenced me a little bit. Excellent.

Dave Jones: Good to hear.

Chris Gammell: TBS.

Dave Jones: All right. You wouldn't know, you wouldn't know the other thing I hate.

Chris Gammell: What's that?

Dave Jones: Speaking of which, um, uh, another video I've done, um, high impedance inputs, high impedance inputs on PCBs. Hmm. Um, leakage on PCBs. Cause I, I just did a, I did a, yeah, dirt and grime and oil and all sorts of crap. Inside your multimeter probes. Cause your multimeters that have the, um, those input jack alert things. Um, most of those use a very high impedance split. They have a split jack. So there's a split jack inside the amps jack. So that's how it actually detects that you've plugged the probe into the wrong jack. And then it beeps at you. Warning. Will Robinson. Don't, you know, probe the circuit because you've chosen volts instead of amps. You dummy. Um, so yeah, they, they use a split jack. And then a five mega resistor goes on real, you know, high impedance value resistor goes off to then a high impedance, uh, threshold, uh, you know, detector circuit. And if you get any grime inside your, um, dirt and grime or wetter water or moisture inside your, uh, jack, then, you know, it's gonna give you that warning error message, even though you haven't plugged the probing. And I've had, um, I've had, uh, quite, quite a few meters. Actually, uh, quite a few people contact me cause I sell a lot of multimeters, obviously. And they contact me and say, Hey, my meter's beeping at me, you know, and I'm going to clean the jacks, clean the jacks, you know,

Chris Gammell: and it usually works. That's like just some rubbing alcohol.

Dave Jones: Usually some isopropyl alcohol in there. And, you know, give it a good, uh, blow job and, you know, it's all good. Yep.

Chris Gammell: David.

Dave Jones: What?

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: Compressed air canned. Compressed air canned, dude. Um, so yeah, um, yeah, yeah, it's annoying, but it turns out that what the fault was in this meter that I was actually repairing and did a repair video on is it was inside, not, not inside the socket, but it was like inside the ABS material that the socket was made of. So the ABS has probably gone hydroscopic and it's absorbed moisture and it was permanently in there. And, and the act of actually heating up the socket actually, um, drove out the moisture, drove out the,

Chris Gammell: where was it leaking to in that case?

Dave Jones: Well, it was, it was leaking across the contacts inside the socket. Oh, okay. Yeah. I got it. That's how it works. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, yep.

Chris Gammell: So did you have like an electrometer you could like measure across that sort of thing? Just like the plastic?

Dave Jones: I used a high voltage mega. Yep. Yeah. And another thing that hates, if you watch the video, spoiler alert, both of my megas failed on me. I've got two megas. So I, I got one out. I'll just try this. Nope. It failed. So I've got another one out, a, uh, key site, uh, multimeter looking one that, you know, can measure it several thousand volts mega. Nope. LCD is failed. The, the OLED display in it's failed. Doesn't bloody work. Oh man. As, as somebody said on, sorry, I would love to quote them, but, um, Oh, there's my phone. Um, no, no, I'm not answering that. I know who it is. Um, it's one of those people who'll be yapping on for hours, you know, kind of thing. I can't,

Chris Gammell: I can't do that. I'm right here, man.

Dave Jones: As we're doing a show where we yap on for hours. Yeah. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. Um, and, uh, where was I? Yeah. Um, somebody on Twitter said, um, yes, the, uh, the reason it's failed is, and like the reason that this old equipment fails is because if you don't, um, you know, power up and stroke your test instruments once in a while, if you don't give them love, they will just die of sadness. So, or, um, you know, something like that. So I thought that was really good. Yep. Power up your test equipment, kiddies. And, uh,

Chris Gammell: say hello to your old friends and yeah.

Dave Jones: Well, I mean,

Chris Gammell: what about the guy that has 450 pieces of test equipment? How does it would take him like four years? He'd have to loop back around and start over again.

Dave Jones: Periodically. Yeah. Right. Right. Well, we need to be like,

Chris Gammell: pay someone to come and like visit all of his stuff, you know?

Dave Jones: Yeah. But he needs to be like Sharia from the signal path. He just keeps everything plugged in. He's, you know, 200 bits of test gear. He just keeps them all plugged in. And then they're all, you know, in standby. Yeah. He's in standby mode. I think he said he uses like a kilowatt of like standby power or something.

Chris Gammell: That sounds about right. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's crazy.

Chris Gammell: And that's how calibration labs do it, right? They, they always, they, they just leave them on. They're always on.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Have to. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yep. But we won't go down that rabbit hole cause our amp power's up.

Chris Gammell: Oh man, I had one more thing to mention actually. Oh,

Dave Jones: well go, go for it.

Chris Gammell: Uh, I got, uh, I got a board back, uh, from a manufacturer. Local? Uh, uh, international, uh, it was JLC. It's fine. Yeah. And I was like, those folks, they left out my Vias. I, so I had an RF trace and I was like, I put Vias stitching along the RF trace. Yeah. And it took me a solid hour of like raging about it. And I was like, oh, they actually started, uh, capping and, and like epoxy capping all the Vias. So that doesn't show up on the actual silkscreen, on the solder mask anymore.

Dave Jones: Oh, right. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: It was very confusing at first. Oh, but, uh, yeah.

Dave Jones: So you got the assembled board back? Did you? No,

Chris Gammell: I just got just a PCB.

Dave Jones: Just the bare board.

Chris Gammell: Because it goes along a trace that's an RF, like a controlled impedance RF trace. that's where I was like, I thought there was Vias. Yeah. I went to the file, like, did I send the Vias in the files? I sent the Vias, but you can't see any Vias. And that's, wow. Yeah. They actually plug them up. That's the first time I've ever, I've never paid for that, you know, I've never paid for that before. So, um, yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Just keep an eye out if you, if you get that option. Uh,

Dave Jones: for young players.

Chris Gammell: Yep. Yep. Young and old. Cause I'm not young.

Dave Jones: Oh God. I just saw an X the other day. They've got glow in the dark solder mask now.

Chris Gammell: Really? That's interesting.

Dave Jones: I, I don't know whether or not to think, oh, wow, this is the greatest innovation or I'm deeply offended. I'm not sure which.

Chris Gammell: I'm not offended. Um, I'm not sure where I'd use it, but I mean, you could just as easily like, uh, go and paint it with glow in the dark paint, I guess. Right.

Dave Jones: Yeah. But the whole idea is it's done for you. Right. Yeah. Is that, oh, your reference designates line up. I don't have a good use for myself, but it doesn't, it doesn't offend me. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Glow in the dark solder mask. Is it two words?

Dave Jones: Yeah. And well, you can get every color under the bloody sun now. Sure. When I was a boy.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Jeez. Yeah. Unbelievable. You can choose any color as long as it's green. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Exactly. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Oh boy. I don't know. These kitties these days, spoiled. Yeah. Spoiled little brats. You know,

Chris Gammell: they always do UV curing too. So I wonder if that would also like recharge it with, you know, like use like UV light to charge up. All right. Glow in the dark stuff too. So maybe it comes precharged.

Dave Jones: Right. Pre-charge. You can order it pre-charged.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. I'm having trouble finding it though. Yeah, I don't know how. I would love to see a link of this. I'd never, I can't seem to find it online.

Dave Jones: Uh, yep. Yep. Yep. Give me a second. Let me see. Uh, uh,

Speaker ?: uh,

Dave Jones: I can never remember how to spell fluorescent.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah.

Dave Jones: Um,

Speaker ?: !

Dave Jones: Silk screen.

Chris Gammell: Or,

Dave Jones: sorry, it's, um, it's the silk screen, not the solder mask. I said solder mask.

Chris Gammell: Oh, okay. Yeah, you did. It's okay.

Dave Jones: Right. Uh,

Chris Gammell: fluorescent.

Dave Jones: UV printing equipment, UV, no, no. Uh, um, it was from PCB way, I think. Um, okay. So maybe if I, well, it doesn't matter that much.

Chris Gammell: It could be useful in certain situations, I guess, but you know, yeah,

Dave Jones: here it is. Found it. There you go. Okay. Uh, you've got an X account still, or no, you'll, you'll still be able to see the post, even if you're not signed in. Yeah, there it is. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Okay. Oh,

Dave Jones: that looks pretty cool, actually. Yeah, it, I've got to admit, it does. I wonder how long it actually lasts. Um,

Chris Gammell: well, like as in, like you charge it up. Yeah. How, how long does it, you know?

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. But it's kind of, you know, yep. Yeah. It's pretty cool. I guess. Still. Well,

Chris Gammell: I do think there's going to be an, yeah. Yeah. Like you said, there's already a ton of options out there. It's not gonna, that's not going to stop. Cause there's a lot of people that want that kind of thing. And, uh, no,

Dave Jones: I'm sure there's like PCB arts, a thing. You know? So yeah, I guess people will be salivating over that. Um, yeah. Anyway.

Chris Gammell: Are you sure this is real?

Dave Jones: Future. Future is here.

Chris Gammell: Are you sure this is real? This doesn't look real to me.

Dave Jones: Really? Well, it's, um, Simon, um, Gayo's, uh, I, he works. No. Um, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: No. Yeah,

Chris Gammell: maybe it is.

Dave Jones: Perfect. My, uh,

Chris Gammell: my daughter asks me that stuff all the time. She, she goes, is, is blank. She's like, are elephants real? And at first I laugh at it. And then you think about like the, the stuff that kids experience these days, like just even just media, let alone all the generative stuff that's out there, you know, like is blank real? It's like, yeah, I get these questions. I'm like, I'm asking that too.

Dave Jones: Hang on. It may, it may not be real. You're right. Um, Simon Gayo is G A O, um, is the one who posted this gal. Um, yeah. And, um, he copied in PCB way. He copied in PCB way, but it's a shout out to the designer, Jeremy, uh, at, uh, underscore bot matrix underscore. So that's the handle bot matrix underscore. I, maybe that's the person who did it. So it might be a, like a handmade, might be a custom handmade thing. It might be a custom thing. So I may, maybe you can't actually buy it yet. I think maybe he's hoping that they will.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Could be. But I don't know. Anyway, not sure. All right. Anyway, that's cool.

Chris Gammell: Well, more PCB innovation to come. I'm sure.

Dave Jones: In next week's exciting episode.

Chris Gammell: That's right. That's right.

Dave Jones: Same time, same bat channel.

Chris Gammell: That's right.

Dave Jones: Catch you next time.

Speaker ?: Yeah. administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered administered