Computer control

start spamming me over the last couple of weeks......

-- cheers,

witchy/binarydinosaurs

Reply to
Witchy
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X10 and X10 are NOT the same thing.

X10 is a spec for home automation X10 is also the name of a spamming camera zoom firm thing...

Reply to
NorwichLad

Ah, right. Fairy snuff :)

-- cheers,

witchy/binarydinosaurs

Reply to
Witchy

Ah yes but the camera gizmo has an 12v power supply that is turned on and off using X-10 protocols with the video and audio being an rf transmission. They are intended to be used with several cameras transmitting on the same frequency to one receiver, but only the one camera being powered up at one time. Incidently although they respond to standard X-10 signals their implementation is slightly specialised in that tuning on any unit turns off all the other units sharing the same 'house code' (X-10 uses up to 16 'house codes' and 16 'unit codes' thus giving up to 16 x 16 = 256 items under control)

Andrew Mawson

(Who's morning bedroom kettle turns on using X-10 to make the tea !)

Reply to
Andrew Mawson

Yes, but, "X10-spamming bastards" are also the major suppliers of X10 protocol stuff.

X10 protocol is very largely out of patent, (it was invented by a scottish company in the late 70s) and you can "roll your own" in the finest traditions of UK.D-I-Y if you have access to the right bits (and quite a lot of bytes....)

Steve

Reply to
Steve

Ah yes thank you. I'd forgotten which was which.

500MB is enormous storage for RiscOS applications.
Reply to
Tony Williams

It is until you get into things like graphics and audio-visual files. Which unfortunately take up about the same space as on everything.

But for this sort of machine control, an A5000 with only 5Meg of ram and a

500M HD would be fine.
Reply to
Dave Plowman

If anyone would like a BBC Master 128 with an intermittent booting fault, they can have it for the cost of the postage...

Reply to
Huge

In article , Dave Plowman writes

Mine didn't - it suddenly decided to display the picture as a single line, so I chucked it in a skip. Also seemed to very particular about the brand of hard disk fitted (?Connor only)

Reply to
Andrew

Well, I was talking about the computer - not the monitor - and that's the fault you're describing.

It's a bit irrelevant given that its HD will outlast a PC one by a factor of several...

My point was that for DIY machine control it's a very easy and cheap way to achieve this. With excellent help facilities.

Reply to
Dave Plowman

If that were only true, the MTBF may be assumed to be X, but it 'aint always, having worked for IBM and seen the failures due to the wrong lube on the disks, and had a spate recently of HD failures here due to a known componet issue on the control board...

Niel.

Reply to
NJF

The point I was trying to make is that a RISCOS machine doesn't thrash the HD in the same way as a windose one.

Reply to
Dave Plowman

True up to a point, but the last lot of failures hadn't seen much use, and it was from cold boot that they wouldn't start....

Niel.

Reply to
NJF

Think I remember reading there had been problems with some IBM drives. And others. Western Digital and Seagate have been mentioned too. Suppose it's likely to be a batch thing.

Reply to
Dave Plowman

Both batch and model problems arise from time to time. From memory alone, the IBM model-wide problem was with the Deskstar 60GB model (to the point where some wag renamed it the "Deathstar" in a Usenet group, and the name stuck). Even there, though, it was by no means *all* Deskstars, but one particular model, which had specific reliability problems.

Few of us as individual users or as people with commercial responsibility for a "smallish" number of PCs will ever get exposure to a big enough sample of components to establish clear reliability metrics; and the mysteries of modern outsourced manufacturing mean it's quite problematic and potentially misleading to attach experience from one model sold under a given brand name to other models sold under the same name. Those few organisations (mfrs, large IT departments, and so on) who do have enough numbers don't tend to publish them either, but use them as a stick to beat suppliers with. For specific models, groups.google.com will help identify apparently problematic products; but you'll get depressed if you expect the problem reports to represent an unbiased sample of the population of owners! A change from 99.9 to 99.6 % reliability in a year will obviously quadruple the number of potential complaints, while still being trouble-free for over 990 in every 1000 owners...

HTH, Stefek

Reply to
stefek.zaba

I`m still using one of the affected drives - a 20Gb DTLA one - they were more prone to failure apparently if used at ATA100, and I came across something in a linux mailing list with lots of *very* low-level hardware experience* who commented that the drives were fine at ATA100 with *IBM* controllers which did things "by the book" - other chipsets used non-ATA- standard access methods apparently (from what I remember of the thread)

*ranging from system design to hiding nuclear subs behind plankton wavefronts (!)

Mine`s been fine, but i`ve never had it hooked up via an 80pin IDE lead !

Reply to
Colin Wilson

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