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Gathering dust around your home and mine are many megabytes of RAM, SIMM, DIMM, … and so on. For one reason or another, obsolescence, salvage, changed prioritites, paid in memory, … the list goes on; the reasons fade with time but the chips lie behind. A handful of 4meg chips got me thinking, and so
did a ring-binder I use for arranging business cards.
Wouldn't it be nice if a ring binder could be fitted with a controller and a USB cable, and pages made with bus architecture inside each page? Then, gather up all your old memory and plug them into pages, put the pages into a binder and plug the USB cable into its port. Your computer would be able to access a proportionately larger RAM space for loading programs and files, for a sacrifice in speed that may be acceptable for some users.
Also, with an artsy cover it would look great on your bookshelf!
Supercomputing
http://www.halfbake...idea/supercomputing
An idea whose time is come (and gone). [reensure, Jun 13 2002]
Most common question:
http://www.fortunec.../nixieclock/ncp.htm
"Your <i>what</i> Clock Project ?" [thumbwax, Jun 14 2002]
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Annotation:
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//Wouldn't it be nice if//
I'm certain you didn't really mean that. |
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What reensure *meant* to say was not //Wouldn't it be nice if// but "what I propose is" |
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I'd prefer a plastic box to keep them dust-free but appreciate the idea. As the memory would be slower you could allocate it as a ram disk or us it as disk cache memory. |
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How big a battery would it need to keep it from going poof when unplugged? This would actually be cool... |
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A *rechargable* battery that pulls power from the USB bus. |
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Oh yes, I can just see it. And while you're making the RamFile, why not make a plug-in adaptor that allows you to connect all those old 5.25 and 8 inch diskettes via your DVD drive ? I don't think so. How about a USB paper tape reader while you're at it ? |
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Come on man, technology moves on. It's not worth it. Let it go ...... |
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Use USB2, gotta love that high transfer rate... |
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I work on elderly tube type radios and am currently in the process of starting to begin building a clock using Nixies, so telling me to let it go doesn't work really well. |
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Very cool, StarChaser - I'd love to be able to woik on a Tube Amp of mine, but it's sorta death-defying |
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Not that big a deal...just make sure it's turned off and unplugged, for the most part. |
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Apparently when the US captured the Mig fighter that had been frightening F-14 pilots, they found that the on-board computer used valves.
[thumb]: I do quite a bit of work on my valve amps; do like [Star] says, and make sure the reservoir caps are discharged (540V in those suckers!). |
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Don't knock the humble thermionic valve, old boy. They may be power hungry and bulky, but they are very resilient - especially to radiation and EMP wich can wipe out semiconductors before you can say "preemptive strike". |
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Never underestimate the effectiveness of the previous generation's technology. Remember what happened to the Bismark ! |
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I knoooooooooooooow to unplug, silly - It's actually discharging the caps...
*ZAAaaaAAAAAaaaaPPPPP*
(Entire City Flickers as Burns and Smithers watch Springfield and the Power Meter)
<M. Burns>hmmmm, Smithers - looks like this energy conservation fad is finally going the way of the dodo</M. Burns>
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[8th]: I'm not knocking the valve; in fact, I'm a huge fan. I have quite a collection of unused military-spec Mullards which I use in my amplifiers.
[thumb]: The official way to discharge caps is through a 5W 1megohm resistor, but I usually just short them to ground through a big (insulated) screwdriver. Nice sparks. If they're old leaky ones, they'll discharge themselves after a few minutes. |
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//Never underestimate the effectiveness of the previous generation's technology// |
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This from the man who also wrote: |
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//Come on man, technology moves on. It's not worth it. Let it go// |
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WIBNI they had a USB floppy drive that could read every known 3.5 inch format...Amiga..Apple...400k Mac disks... |
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Technology has produced a wax cylinder that will be playable after 100 years have passed...and a floppy disk that becomes unreadable in 4 years. |
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And the people said . . . |
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They should also make a USB Punched Card reader with an automatic feeder. |
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