tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-353524322009-07-16T20:58:53.970+01:00"When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all."Michael Saunbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00899702935992577808noreply@blogger.comBlogger54125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35352432.post-19491757202546956392009-07-16T20:30:00.004+01:002009-07-16T20:58:53.978+01:00

Another W.T. Cocking design from 1935. Unlike the 1934 Quality Amplifier it would be asking a bit much to build one of these from scratch today. Getting the valves would be fairly easy, but all those special variable selectivity transformers - not a hope.Fortunately all sorts of things show up on Ebay......

Michael Saunbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00899702935992577808noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35352432.post-7597412132670228142009-06-27T09:37:00.003+01:002009-06-27T09:53:01.854+01:00

The latest refinement to my Quality Amplifier is a pair of loudspeakers designed for use with valve amplifiers. I've been looking for something suitable on Ebay for some time. This week I managed to pick up a pair of original Leak Sandwich speakers for £32 locally. Large heavy items often don't make high prices here in the UK because shipping is very expensive - it would have been over £30.So

Michael Saunbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00899702935992577808noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35352432.post-90853368578064953532009-06-23T17:39:00.003+01:002009-06-23T22:52:46.856+01:00

For many years I've had SlimServer (now SqueezeCenter) installed on my Linux server and found it very good for streaming music to my Nokia tablets. These tablets have excellent sound quality so I often plug one into the hi-fi. These days it's usually the Quality Amplifiers.But I wanted more music - what to do? I tried "tuning" the N800 to last.fm but the results weren't good. Nokia tablets

Michael Saunbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00899702935992577808noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35352432.post-34679481090630425902009-06-18T19:52:00.001+01:002009-06-18T20:44:44.082+01:00

Weather Info for AllFrom a press release by Ericsson today -* Global Humanitarian Forum, Ericsson, WMO, and Zain and other mobileoperators to deploy up to 5,000 automatic weather stations inmobile network sites across Africa, where less than 300 arereporting today* Partnership will increase dissemination of weather information viamobile phones to users and communities, including remote farmersand

Michael Saunbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00899702935992577808noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35352432.post-85485496852038809812009-06-10T18:36:00.000+01:002009-06-10T18:37:09.135+01:00

See http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1192131/Word-Millionth-phrase-English-language-Web-2-0.html

Michael Saunbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00899702935992577808noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35352432.post-68846165040672711712009-05-31T20:07:00.004+01:002009-05-31T22:12:32.101+01:00

Late last year I started building a Wireless World Quality Amplifier.  The original design for this amplifier (mono) was published in 1934 and it became the reference British hi-fi amplifier - holding this position until the Williamson replaced it in 1947.As my intention was always to create a useful working piece of equipment I was going to need a preamplifier suitable for use with modern

Michael Saunbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00899702935992577808noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35352432.post-58658606029446664902009-05-13T20:44:00.004+01:002009-05-14T12:06:45.030+01:00

Although computers were developed during (and slightly before) WWII, they weren't widely available. Most likely they weren't even capable of many of the things we use computer for today. But there are other ways of doing real time data processing and even simulations. How about this -Read all about it (PDF)

Michael Saunbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00899702935992577808noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35352432.post-81365030799034926382009-05-12T15:47:00.004+01:002009-05-12T15:56:58.155+01:00

Here's another example of a piece of test equipment designed for repair.From gadgetsThis is a painted brass plate from the rear of a signal generator. It shows the complete circuit diagram on the left and operating instructions on the right.   Of course it makes lots of assumptions - e.g. not everyone can read circuit diagrams,  and there were many perfectly good substitutes for the valves used.

Michael Saunbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00899702935992577808noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35352432.post-60533242034683884442009-04-25T23:42:00.002+01:002009-04-25T23:57:59.658+01:00

Last weekend I collected a van load of very old electronic junk from a very nice chap in Cornwall.  He had a barn full of stuff he was clearing out so for a few quid I got some quite interesting stuff.  All of it was in a pretty poor state, rust, woodworm, that sort of thing.  It's hard to store things in the West Country climate.Included were a couple of old Marconi signal generators - one a BFO

Michael Saunbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00899702935992577808noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35352432.post-84329658191483595682009-03-22T20:00:00.006Z2009-03-24T10:19:49.170Z

Over on William Easterly's blog I posted the following as a comment. You can read the article here -http://blogs.nyu.edu/fas/dri/aidwatch/2009/03/why_does_british_foreign_aid_p.htmlBack in 2007 I visited Ethiopia, it was my first, and so far only visit. I'll not go into too much detail here, but just that one visit, preparing for it, and what happened next taught me a lot about Ethiopia, aid,

Michael Saunbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00899702935992577808noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35352432.post-24584653410843992722009-02-19T20:17:00.002Z2009-02-19T20:25:58.488Z

Over on my Google Sites wiki I've added a page on how Arthur C Clarke developed the idea of the geostationary communication satellite.  The idea resulted from the question I posted in an earlier blog, but as I could find no other mention of this earlier letter on the web I felt I ought to post copies of the pages and a little background information.   As always one thing leads to another, and now

Michael Saunbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00899702935992577808noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35352432.post-11408463632469186472009-01-04T17:16:00.005Z2009-02-06T10:29:31.906Z

From Quality AmplifierLargely ignoring this credit crunch thing with "experts" comparing the present situation with the 1930s I've been reading through magazines and books of the period, brushing up on my retro-electronics skills.    The latest result of which is this, my shiney new Wireless World Quality Amplifier, based on designs from 1934 to 1945.The transformer to the right is an old Varley

Michael Saunbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00899702935992577808noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35352432.post-26621849575238927232008-12-06T13:59:00.006Z2009-02-06T10:30:52.500Z

The digial clock works! There really wasn't much that needed to be done. There were a few lose connections on the lamps, but none needed replacing. The two pin mains power connector and dual fuses were replaced with a single fuse and 3 core flex. But it was running slow, this was fixed by cleaning out the gearbox with contact cleaner and replacing the oil.From Uniselector ClockThe first

Michael Saunbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00899702935992577808noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35352432.post-22665280301263223062008-12-03T20:41:00.006Z2008-12-03T22:39:20.364Z

Quite possibly built in the late 1930s here's the electro-mechanical digital clock I've just acquired.It doesn't have a digital display, i.e. one with digits, instead it has 12 lamps for the hours, five for the tens of minutes, and another 10 for the minutes.  The lamps are switched by telephone exchange type uniselectors.  There are rotary switches on the side to set the alarm.The calendar part

Michael Saunbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00899702935992577808noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35352432.post-10960077568288162762008-11-28T20:57:00.007Z2008-11-30T19:01:37.861Z

It's been an interesting week. On Monday, in the UK Government's Pre-Budget Report, one of the less reported items was "reviews of the Met Office, Oil & Pipeline Agency..." So maybe, just maybe, in a few months my employer will no longer be owned by the Ministry of Defence.  Okay, for most folks in computing that probably doesn't seem like a big deal.  But for an organisation that's existed for

Michael Saunbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00899702935992577808noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35352432.post-54214582182471367492008-11-23T11:49:00.004Z2008-11-23T12:12:55.118Z

Almost exactly a month ago I "won" a "homebrew vintage amplifier" chassis on Ebay.  It looked to have a couple of decent quality transformers and I reckoned that it's hard to destroy them both accidently so bidding for what I reckoned one to be worth wasn't taking too big a risk.  Both turned out to be OK, but I decided not to use the mains transformer for the rebuild.Here are the before photos -

Michael Saunbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00899702935992577808noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35352432.post-34214426226944159212008-11-08T18:05:00.005Z2009-04-09T20:32:29.622+01:00

Judging by the high prices valve (tube) amplifiers and their component parts are making on EBay these days the following notes might be of use to others.  As I've now managed to gather more than enough parts to build a Wireless World Quality Amplifier I should really get on with building it  - not buying yet more valves, transformers, etc.Decent triodes seem to be unreasonably expensive at

Michael Saunbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00899702935992577808noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35352432.post-8095459443694478832008-10-23T19:28:00.005+01:002008-10-23T20:12:45.327+01:00

A couple of days ago I posted a question from Wireless World in 1942.  Here's the answer that was published at the time, and a letter from Arthur C Clarke published a month later.THE mere fact that we are able to observe the light which is reflected from other planets shows that there is nothing to prevent an electromagnetic wave traversing the space intervening between the earth and those

Michael Saunbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00899702935992577808noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35352432.post-27592552788327086742008-10-23T18:26:00.006+01:002008-10-28T09:37:01.771Z

After a failed attempt to "win" what looked to be a valve-less Mullard 5-10 chassis in the hope of getting a replacement output transformer for my 5-10 at a reasonable price I did a bit more googling on the topic of transformer rewinds. Somewhere in the many forum posts I found a mention of checking for failures where the transformer windings are joined to the connecting leads. Given the style

Michael Saunbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00899702935992577808noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35352432.post-58277904951406862012008-10-20T19:18:00.005+01:002008-11-03T15:29:17.011Z

It's hard to know what really changes the world for the better. Is it good people, or good acts, or good ideas, or, perhaps, good questions?Why do I ask? Well, in my idle moments I'm reading, scanning and learning the history of the Wireless World Quality Amplifier, the valve amplifier, that gave the British hi-fi in the 1930s and 40s. See here for what I have so far. (I shall be attempting

Michael Saunbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00899702935992577808noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35352432.post-32421577663066988442008-10-14T12:21:00.001+01:002008-10-14T12:23:24.092+01:00

Tomorrow is Blog Action Day. The theme will be Poverty.

Michael Saunbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00899702935992577808noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35352432.post-37752546980854341292008-09-18T20:34:00.006+01:002008-09-21T19:43:28.972+01:00

It's been a while since I've posted anything about technology from the present century, so here goes -On Tuesday I attended the London Google Developer Day, I have the T shirt to prove it!As with last year I don't intend to blog about it in any detail, since there were other bloggers there who are far better at such things than me.  See UK Developer Blog: A blog is born (the official blog) for

Michael Saunbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00899702935992577808noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35352432.post-70626120093309942682008-09-14T15:12:00.004+01:002008-09-14T20:22:25.027+01:00

 Over the last week I've spent evenings removing bad components and replacing with good ones. I found a few old Dubilier 0.1uF paper in oil capacitors that looked sound and measured OK on the test meter, so I've decided to try them. They certainly look the part. I decided it best to buy new electrolytics (except for the large HT filter cap - expensive) - Rifa's from RS look good and have decent

Michael Saunbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00899702935992577808noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35352432.post-15330321310500409832008-09-08T21:28:00.003+01:002008-09-12T12:31:58.335+01:00

I don't own either of these, but I've been skimming through the many copies of Wireless World I've acquired and came across these adverts.More constructively I'm listing the developments that led to the Williamson Amplifier - see here.LINKSHistory of QuadLeak (Wikipedia)

Michael Saunbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00899702935992577808noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35352432.post-7987492957817448642008-08-31T22:54:00.008+01:002008-09-01T13:39:38.501+01:00

One of my colleagues has just given me this valve (tube) amplifier built from a kit based on the Mullard Five-Ten design published back in 1954. Though this design is still being built by audio enthusiasts today, it seems this one is the genuine 1954 article. It's far from working condition though, so it's going to need a fair bit of work and a few replacement parts.As it's likely this will be

Michael Saunbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00899702935992577808noreply@blogger.com0