The collected works of guardian452 - Page 21

Raion-Fox wrote: I spent most of my morning and afternoon under my rust bucket Miata replacing the clutch master and slave cylinder and bleeding it. The car I bought for $2300 last summer, I've already replaced the following:

Radiator
Thermostat
Convertible top
Clutch Master/Slave
Four brake calipers
Battery
Air filter

Still needs an AC compressor, a new front bumper, a new front core support, and the rocker panels and trunk torn apart and de-rusted. When all's said and done and adding a hard top I'll have invested probably another 3-4k in the car.

Totally worth it viewtopic.php?f=1&t=16730589&start=180#p7395084

But... if you skip the hardtop then you don't need the AC, either

IIRC the only thing engine related I ever had to do in my 91' protege was the t-stat (not counting distributor and plugs etc). I think very similar to your motor. (if u have 1.8?) I've had 4 mazda so far: protege, rx7, 3, and now mx5.

ibmfiles wrote:

foetz wrote: of course windows 10 is a joke for professional use. and i'm not even talking about things that involve sensitive data.

Professional or not, the world either runs on Windows or mac OS with a majority on Windows--choose your poison; and that's not about to change any time soon since people still use VGA and serial ports as a requirement; VGA predates me .

I use serial ports all the time but I don't think I've seen a VGA tube monitor in 7 or 8 years now. In all fairness I had some 13w3 monitors until 2014 when I got rid of the last of my SGI machines.

Don't know what display ports have to do with operating system... are the (non win/mac) systems only supporting DP and HDMI nowadays? Ditto for serial port.

Sure my thinkpad w520 still has the socket but I haven't seen a (monitor/tv/projector) with vga in several years. Most monitors DP, TVs HDMI, projectors either HDMI or some wireless thing (at our offices we have chromecast in conference rooms but apple tv seems fairly common as well). Hell even my vintage cinema 20" at home is DVI. And it's 15 years old.

We are mostly apple-centric at work with google services. Being an engineer I can mostly pick what I want (hence, razer and lenovo) But we also seem to have a very small IT team. Also since my company is tiny part of parent firm we are mostly ignored except for vpn (only necessary to access accounting files on network).

foetz wrote:

ibmfiles wrote: the world either runs on Windows or mac OS with a majority on Windows--choose your poison

oh i did choose quite some time ago and i'm pretty happy with osx since then.

I was happy living the apple life till my workload became heavily solidworks-centric. Because I spend whole days inside one app (solidworks, matlab/simulink, Codesys, recently Wachendorff projector, etc) I have learned that I really don't care what the underlying OS does so long as it stays out of my way.

And I know razer is at a premium over apple but having a decent keyboard, screen, and trackpad (not to mention REAL power!) are more than worth it. I'm hoping this or next year I can swing an upgrade to a blade pro from my w520. Our blade stealths (me+wife) are REALLY good

Apple is cheap and boring which is why IT likes it and I definitely appreciate the appeal, but at least the thinkpad has that classic style

GM's aren't meant to last more than 3 years. This one was on borrowed time.

The only good thing about GM cars is that you can lease them for $39 or $49 / week. Which is honestly not a bad deal if you don't care about cars and don't live in an area that has a good rideshare/carshare program.


But if you go through all the trouble to replace the block why not keep it?

Well I washed my wife's car. Took the 90 seconds to adjust the trunk lid stoppers so the inner and outer tail lamps actually line up with each other. I've never seen another challenger that has these set properly, even brand new they are waaaay off and nobody cares :/ Could probably do with another slight tweak but it's 90% there.


Should probably file under "what pointless thing are you doing now" but starting on a prototype wire harness for an electric bus... I guess it counts as car talk. Notice, I got smart and took the hood off the hinges after the *first* time I hit my head. Normally it takes 3 or 4 goose eggs before the hood comes off

P.S. see the "bone" creeper? 300% recommended!

I have a laptop, wii U, switch, and PS2.

I use them for the normal things that normal people use their normal computery-type things for. Tho the only game I've played recently on the PS2 is Rez and that was several months ago.

I'm glad I went through the big-iron-hoarding phase, but I'm also glad I've grown out of it My electric bill is rarely over $50 now.

Nobody asks me questions like that.


___edit:___
Oh shit, I forgot about the apple IIe.

To which most people just think it's cool. To most people it's about on the same level as the PS2 or any other old game console.

I still maintain that there is no application that an apple 2 can't do. Only limits to the imagination.

We call those things fish sticks.

http://www.bonecreeper.com/

vince gebardi wrote: ...

Hi hamei

Fluid Film.

Put it on under our old escape and not a spot of rust after many ohio and ontario winters.

IIRC only the bodywork on DMC's were aluminum. The rest of the car rotted away even more quickly than normal. I talked to an owner at a car show once so I'm now instantly an expert

Well since the end of last year I've dumped (sold):
-iphone, ipad, watch, mac pro, macbookpro (still have AEBS!)
- xbox one, 360, and PS4.

Gee-whiz fact: the latency on the Wii U's gamepad's wireless display is *less* than any HDMI TV (admittedly, a low bar). It also doubles as a TV remote which is very handy because I haven't seen mine in years.

Raion-Fox wrote:

guardian452 wrote: I have a laptop...

Boring...

I like my laptop. Furmark will trip the power strip circuit breaker So it's not that boring. But it still has a high WAF .

For most people my age, their first computer ran Windows 7 or 10

How old are you, 6?
My first computer was my parent's old 386 that I got when they bought a new pentium in the early 90's. It was a HUGE deal for a kid to have his own PC back in those days. I suddenly don't feel so young anymore.

My girlfriend currently made a big stink about the state of my office and I took her into her walk in closet and pointed out the 50 pairs of shoes and the receipts from her shopping for clothes.

My wife complains I have too many shoes. Sneakerhead. But I'm not complaining.

Y888099 wrote:

Shiunbird wrote: I guarantee you will get a fantastic job in the future

Bah, I am afraid nowadays all the knowledge acquired on how to reinstall windows doesn't pay you back

Because it's so hard to stick in the disk your computer came with, and leave the thing alone for 4 hours? Is there seriously *any* knowledge to be had there when the 3-step-instructions are printed on the case of the (CD/USB drive) that came with the machine? Actually, some computers just come with a little pamphlet telling you to hold down F8 or cmd+R and they do everything over the internet.

Bah, I got an "D" in high school computer class (mainly involved understanding the vagaries in office '97) and I turned out alright. All that experience taught me was that adults are hopelessly clueless about using new technology. Now that I'm an adult myself, I'd say that's more true than ever.

Knowing how to prepare delicious dishes, and ice-creams, can't be overridden by the so called "Chinese's art of being masters at copying for replicating and releasing cheaper".

It sure can! All these prepackaged prepared meal places like blue apron, purple carrot, etc, are chomping at the bit to figure it out. And hitting it big in the restaurant industry is about as realistic as becoming a footballer. You can make good tips as a waiter, if you work at the right place.

A much better experience would be learning chinese and learning to work directly with manufacturers, learn how to purchase and import your own products. Start with some vendor from alibaba on a small project. I also recommend you try this after getting fucked over by a couple american vendors, so you understand why everything is so much better from china even with language barrier, quality problems, and shipping headaches. Even learning the language is largely overblown. Any chinese businessman will speak english...

Just remember the old adage, if technology makes your job easier, it will eventually make it irrelevant.

Right, the last auto accident I was involved in I was walking in a crosswalk and was hit by a driver DUI (on oxys) who was turning left and didn't stop. The police let her go without even a citation. At least she was honest and admitted she shouldn't have been driving. I hope things like this can be prevented by AVs.

I'm 23... I went 157 in it and beat a Mustang Cobra...I rear ended an SUV in my Lancer because I hit a floor joint in a tunnel which tripped the ABS and made me lose control.

Sometimes I weep for humanity. So did insurance buy that BS about your ABS not working, or was it just an excuse for mommy and daddy? Because whenever a young 20-something rear-ends an innocent victim, they always have someone else to blame. Some of us here actually know how ABS pumps work because we've had to sit through many long design meetings about their control software. So you were already on the brake and beyond the limits of the car on a public road. Just admit it.

So you're a walking, talking statistic driving society and regulation *towards* driverless cars and excessive surveillance devices.

I refuse to drive cars newer than 2011 due to the government thinking it has to hold my hand with electronic stability control that cannot be disabled.

I suggest you take the tinfoil hat off and stop reading internet screeds from salty idiots who think because they worked at a goofy lube for two months and learned how to change oil and tires they know more than the combined knowledge of an industry that has existed for well over a century. It's 2017 with 2018 models coming out, and there's still no trouble disabling these devices for whatever purpose you desire.

Dodoid wrote: I would use a self driving car only if were open source and stored maps locally when parked so as to avoid any wireless communications while driving. If we get a Google car that is always online, constantly invading your privacy, working off of unknown algorithms, and has about as much security as your doghouse, there's no way I'm even standing in front of that thing while parked.

Interesting. Some of the bigger issues with AVs today is (1) LIDAR range is only a couple hundred feet, which limits applications mainly to low-speed or controlled access highways. If more people knew what the Tesla S could actually "see" they would not be nearly so trusting with autopilot. (2) computer vision having great difficulty recognizing unusual situations. V2V communication can greatly reduce the scope of these problems so to deny it creates extra challenge. There's no shortage of problems to solve in this field.

Since this technology is inevitable, rather than bellyache about it why not go to a trade expo such as http://www.autonomousregulationscongress.com and work on improving it. Bring resume. Y'all whine your pants off but why not learn about it and make things better?

I might be there representing both a manufacturer of vehicles, some of which are upfitted with AV equipment, and a fleet operator. We could have lunch. Detroit isn't that far from Ottawa. You could talk to some other vendors and see what they think about open source AVs. Because I genuinely find this idea (open source AVs) interesting but it's not really my field.

Raion-Fox wrote: You can disable TCS, but not ESC altogether, from what I have understood. ESC consists of several parts including skid control computer, yaw sensors and lateral acceleration sensors

You are referring to two separate systems. "Traction control" reduces motor output to prevent wheelspin, and exists on some older cars with ABS (mid 90s-early 2000s). My trans am had this. Because the APP was cable driven it would literally kick the gas pedal back at you "ESC", "DSC", etc (everybody has their own name for it) modulates brake pressure to individual wheels to prevent wheelspin (this is often an improvement over TC because it can modulate each driven wheel separately) and also typically works to prevent oversteer.

There is one module which contains your "several parts". This is a Bosch unit on FCA VF (promaster/ducato) but they all work the same. Every carmaker has their own secret sauce "tuning". There is a microcontroller (a pretty beefy 32-bit unit) and 3 axis MEMS accelerometer and gyroscope. It reads the wheelspeed sensors. It can send a message to ECU to cancel motor torque. There is a pressure pump (like ABS pump) and proportional valve for each wheel (whereas ABS was only one "channel" of control) so it can activate one wheel at a time. Some FWD cars have one valve for both rear wheels.

Some tunes cut in before you even notice any slipping. The promaster is like this (well, duh. It's a little scary being sideways in a very tall 7000# cargo van) Some let you get darn near sideways. Mazda tends to strike a nice balance of (just barely) staying out of your way. You get a bit of oversteer, more than any sane person would want, but can't do anything silly without turning it off.

Anyways, if there is no button or menu to turn it off on the dash, you can always pull out the fuse or unplug the thing (my hand is on the plug...). You will get a warning light regardless. For some cars you will lose the brake booster pump as well, which is only an issue for EV/HEV and forced induction.

They tend to range between $200-$600 at the dealer parts counter.

It also enables one of my favorite features: the hill holder. If the car is stopped facing uphill (on the miata, it also works when downhill and the transmission is in reverse. But not the Ducato. Promaster comes with an automatic transmission so it's still there but fairly redundant) it will keep the car from rolling backwards until it detects forward motion and releases the brake.

This makes it a great car for teaching new drivers I've taught 2 people with the miata so far and it really helps with all of the hills around here.

There are some other neat tricks: the challenger (not my SXT of course, but, you know, the hellcat version) have a line-lock feature so you can heat up the tires for drag racing. I'm sure the mustang and camaro also offer this on their hot-rod models. Some cars (focus ST and other cars like that) use it as a sort of LSD. Which is why many of these hot hatches have so much brake dust on their wheels all the time.

dexter1 wrote: To Raion-Fox and Guardian452, please stay on topic or move to another thread (i can split it for you)

fine by me

dexter1 wrote: and please refrain from making personal comments.

Sorry

dexter1 wrote: I know both of you feel strongly about the subject of cars and automotive technology, which is absolutely fine. but i am not inclined to make a separate forum-section about automotive tech on this forum

Oh god, please not another auto rag website.

I have an old Kvaser pci card with two CANs on it, it could go in a shoehorn. Drivers shouldn't be too complicated. You can get an ELM327 with a serial port on the other end.

Raion-Fox wrote: As for the DMC-12, it's actually stainless steel panels, not aluminium.

I knew this, somewhere deep in the back of my head.

Regardless, the body may stay shiny but it takes a lot of proactive work to keep them from disintegrating underneath.

Looks like part of an old neon sign...

There's a reason nobody buys this stuff no more. Without software it ain't worth donkey pee.

The only gadget I've ever regretted selling was my ipad pro, thinking I could get away with only an iphone @ home. So I bought another one. I like my finger-painting. All the irix boxes I ever had I was glad to see go. PCs are a dime a dozen. Got a macbook at work which is nice but boring, it just does what it's supposed to do and stays out of the way. Nothing to talk about, there.

Which may be partly why very few of the people what used to come here does, no more. It's boring. There's nuthin happenin on the computin front and nothin on the personal discussion front.

Because you're the only one left that still uses the dumb things. Almost everybody else just beats their meat to them. I don't have them anymore. I liked buying the big ones in a broken state and then fixing them up but once I became an adult that became much less exciting.

The days of Irix bein King of the Hill is long gone. If'n ya hang onta that then all ya gon have is the audience like I posted a photo of above. In a commyoonity people gotta talk and people gotta talk about what's important to em. Ain't shit happened here for months, maybe years. Nekochan ain't good for software, it ain't good no more for discussion, ah don't hold no grudge against twelve year olds, we done had several through here over the years and they do bring sumpthin but when ya restrict all discussion to the level of twelve year olds, the place ain't worth comin to.

Seems like it may be time to consolidate the seventy-three SGI sub-forums which I haven't gone into in years except by accident, and make some new ones. Misc. OS and the OT pages are swollen because we all have the stuff that we like and very little of it has anything to do with Irix! Hell: power electronics (where anything under 10kw is banned from discussion ), synths and music, RF and microwave, embedded systems, whatever software fox and dodoid are cooking up, for a start. Because we do have a fairly unique crowd here:

ibmfiles wrote: like taking all of the niche forums and topics (vogons, VCF, EEVBlog Forum, VSF, gearslutz, geekhack etc etc etc) and rolling it all into one with each member on here knowing all of these topics and switching between them nonchalantly on the fly. I've never in my life switched from discussing OS/400 to DX7s and JV-1080s, nor did I think it was possible.

[meanwhile at nekochan] "No big deal , we'll just talk about System i, Irix, OS/2, FreeBSD, obscure PowerPC PReP machines, SGI Granite ALPS keyboards, Oberheims, Yamaha FM synths"...

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=16730589&p=7399648#p7399632

Cutting my hair. And wife's hair (on her request). Now we both have shaved heads

As far as stupid workarounds, have you tried leaving a silent (or mute the speaker) music track playing in e.g. itunes? Should allow the screen to be locked at least.

I've been using eagle forever, finally upgraded to autodesk version late last year. Worth it.

I've tried a few others and they all suck IMO. Their salesmen suck too.

I don't know orcad very well but building your own footprints/packages tends to be a pita no matter what you are using.

I've considered altium because we are solidworks shop and want to avoid a subscription price. However you cant do shit (activate/deactivate) to a solidworks installation without a maintenance service so unless you archive a VM at somepoint you will have to pay for backdated maintenance service. I expect altium/swpcb to be much the same.

Either pay the monkey or don't play the game. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I have also version 6.6 professional still installed (I don't trust autodesk much either, tho I've never had a problem, I also don't work in a bunker without a signal ), but being able to scroll and zoom via multitouch and not needing to find a mouse, and also mostly working retina support, are well worth the $15/month when I am working on a project (I rarely have something big that takes more than a month or two so it is easy to afford on a month-to-month basis).

Has your other neighbor noticed his fridge is warm yet?

The lockbar is like that likely to keep the back from getting bent in storage. If the back of the bar gets bent you're kinda screwed (BTDT)

The back looks like a normal vpro carrier to me. The screw hole on top is for if you were going to install the impact graphics carrier.

uunix wrote: So, I didn't quite get as much done as I would have liked.. the beer did get in the way..

I did though fit 3 monitor stand, which is excellent all so easy to move and adjust and gives me ultimate desk space. It was though not easy to fit.

Excellent. I have a "Wali" double monitor stand, it's one of those things where if you're messy like me it makes a big difference. Of course, the huge foot of the dell p2415q didn't help, either. (At least compared to the old apple screen which had a tiny foot). These stands are fairly cheap and a lot of people could benefit from them. You get back all the working space under the display.

Your setup looks real naice

I thought this was the one I used to have but different SN. Same spec with the addition of ASO. Same missing body panels

Nice machine.

Looks like it has 2 RMs so you need to run it on 240v (208 at least...)

For repairs, it could very well just be something not plugged in or no OS installed. But they are (supposedly) finicky..

jan-jaap wrote:

MrBill wrote: it is sold. i drive to get it saturday.

Congrats. Hope you have fun with it!

guardian452 wrote: Looks like it has 2 RMs so you need to run it on 240v (208 at least...)

There are only two cards under the big FP clam thing, and the right is the DG. So only on RM. But the ASO and ethernet options are worth something.

The 1st RM has to be in the slot next to the GE (IIRC)... It's hiding behind a ribbon cable, but you can see the top clip:

Indeed, the ASO is really hard to find. I really wanted one and could never find it. Ethernet is kinda nice too.

Was a tech at a soccer camp for some HS kids (many years ago when in university).

Well we were showing off for the kids and I said I could hit an exit sign more than halfway across the indoor field... totally nailed it even tho I was shooting for a different exit sign about 20' over another set of doors. I never said "which" sign I was shooting for.

Irinikus wrote: Mac Pro 2013 Trash can (currently in daily use)

Do you like it? I was planning to get one to replace my 2006 mac pro, but because they were never updated, the resale prices never really dropped, I couldn't practically afford a new one, and the prices on ebay got more ridiculous every month (I mean, the prices stayed the same, but the machines aged). Surely now if I really needed one I would buy new from apple, no question.

I see much more value in a machine built and sold in 2017 vs. a machine built and sold in 2013 even if the spec is the same. Call me crazy...

They'll probably be fairly rare in the future and maybe valuable to a collector? Probably on par with a G4 cube.

Irinikus wrote: sure you can get a more powerful machine for less in the PC world

Ummmm you do realize that you are at an SGI-based website, correct?

But the GPU in this machine is at least competent when it was new. I think the bigger issue was using two weaker units instead of one bigger chip, which made the software support awkward to say the least, and it is worse in MacOS than Windows. That, coupled with supposed reliability issues with overheating and crashing, and the fact that the IO is stuck in 2013 (no TB3, 10Gbe, limited 4k support, etc) make it a really tough sell when the imac pro is already announced.

My MacPro shipped with the Geforce 7300GT which was barely adequate in 2006. With the Radeon 5770 upgrade I was able to hack the machine to OSX 10.10 and used it until early 2017. Ram was plentiful and even the pair of Xeon 5150's I had no issue with. What ultimately did the machine in was simply old age, it started crashing randomly every few weeks and was replaced by a Synology because all it was doing was fileserving at that point. I could have swapped parts, suspecting the aftermarket ram that was installed before I purchased it, but at some point it's better to cut your losses.

johnnym wrote:

Raion-Fox wrote: Here's my newest project.

1994 Green Mitsubishi 3000GT (Jade Fox)

84k miles (branded not-actual-mileage due to a DMV transcription error, not my fault)

Automatic/FWD

Do you have all-wheel steering in it and will you paint it red later?

Why? It looks like great shape, and that green is totally 90's

Careful with those alarms. I thought I had mine competely out of the eclipse, but there was a kill relay on the B+... so I was driving home on a dark and rainy night and the car died, I had no lights, no hazards, no horn, took a good whack on the dash pad to get it working. Happened twice but was perfectly fine every other time. After the second time was when we traded it for the escape (kuga/maverick to the euros out there )

I learned my lesson to never buy a used car if you see any "aftermarket" wiring but a nice project like that is an exception

Also this eclipse had a bunch of other stuff, custom leather, custom fiberglass interior with "sub" holders probably very nice back in the day but I guess the 2nd owner didnt take much care of it.
We got a good deal on it but I wouldnt do it again.

Does it have one of those sirens that sounds like a toy space blaster?