Hi Welcome to everyone's favorite segment: Mailbag where I just opened my mail that people have sent me. Why is it popular? I don't know. It's like Christmas for nerds, I guess. So this one comes from Sweden.

Hi to all my Swedish viewers, it's from uh. Patrick Johansson Johansen. Thank you very much Patrick. It just says electronics.

Well, this is the Electronics Engineering Video Blog. Is it not? so? Let's uh. let's have a squiz here and see what Patrick sent in. Oh okay, hey, it looks like I've got a bunch of miscellaneous stuff.

First, cab off the rank. We have ourselves a, uh, a ripoff. Um, one hung low, brand, uh, multimedia. It's kind of like got the raised bottom like the uh, Fluke 80 series and well, yeah, it.

actually that doesn't actually feel that it's made in Korea. Oh, it's a fine, okay, no fight. No, I thought it was finest. Um, instrument caught.

But it's fine Instrument Corp. All right. we have to do a 10 minute, two minute tear down on that puppy. and uh, we've got something with a tuner on it.

There's our tuner and uh, so it's a yeah Rfin and um, oh, it's yeah. I don't know. I don't know. Some sort of, uh, weird ass did multi-way din connector.

Like a 10-way like din connector on the thing. Weird. You should probably read the note. There's a whole bunch of, uh, postcards.

I have no idea why Patrick sent a postcard from Looks like Michigan. Um, and we've got some old cars, vintage cars. I don't know what that one is, but it's got fluffy dice, looks like it's as big as a whale and uh, we've got a are they? No, I was going to say they're not high voltage test probes. No, definitely not.

Um, I guess we should read the note and a clamp tester. So we've got a whole bunch of really old oh goodness. wow. that's got analog job that's got late 70s.

No there we go. there. You go. 76.

it's written on top there. woohoo smell. Still pretty accurate and Patrick's a forum user who's handled his Grand Theft Auto for Life. I guess he loves playing Grand Theft Auto.

I thought he'd be a bit over it. His 25 year old, uh, swede works in industrial automation and um, he sent postcard of Michigan because he wants to visit Michigan. Excellent. Why not? gotta have a goal.

And um, this random board is like, um, he says it's probably from a car or something like that and we'll He's like, yeah, I don't know. We'll take a look at it and a quick check. It looks like we're 1.3 percent out there and uh, wind that range down a bit. Oh, look at that.

2.6 percent. That's pretty terrible for a uh, digital meter. 1.1 percent there. Maybe there's a trim point inside we can go, but the resistance on it ain't too shabby at all and looks like one point four percent out on the current there and we can, uh, wind the wick up on that.

Yeah, there we go. a bit out on the current. Yep, equally out there. And here it is.

Total manual range job as uh, they was pretty common back in the day. I'm talking. you know, 1980s vintage multimeters and this is a fine instruments carl mean, I've heard of finest. I don't think I've ever heard of.

Fine. So there you go. It's got a faster rupture. It doesn't say Hrc, but it feels pretty solid.

I don't mind that case at all. Yeah, as I said, quite a few manufacturers sort of started coming out with this, sort of, you know, like, recessed uh switch because the fluke of course 87 famously has that little dip into the rain switch. All right, let's crack her open. Oh yeah, we've got some uh, insulation under above the shield.

there classic 9-volt battery and well, you know it's clean and simple. I'll give it that, flip it over here. and hello, We got ourselves some nice big ass Hrc fuses. Look at the big back to back protection diodes as well.

That's uh, you know it's not too shabby in terms of, um, the fusion protection. and uh, check out the uh, the wire just hanging there. The sense wire hanging off the current shunt there. somebody's held their tongue at the right angle and has, uh, tweaked that.

But you know it's yeah it. You know it still does the business today. And that's about where the protection ends. There's no uh, mobs or uh, that I can see anyway.

but hey, at least I've got big ass Hrc fuses. Classic 401 1, 4000 Series Cmos, Japan Radio Corp. They've just got a Joe Blogs Op amp in there. Nothing fancy whatsoever.

Hmm. I wonder if we can tweak that puppy? And on the bottom side here, they haven't got a gold plate. so they've got nickel plated contacts here. not uncommon for the day, really.

And a uh, Jrc the Japan Radio Corp multimeter chipset. I didn't know they did multimeter chipsets. There you go, Jrc again. Jeez.

Learn something new every day. Wonder if you can find data on that? Hmm. and I just checked. and yes, you can get data on that.

Unbelievable. Yeah, it's a three and a half digit multimeter chipset. Well, there's two pots in there. I get my tongue at the right angle and of course I'll choose the wrong one.

We've got a adjustment hole in there. let's see if we can do anything, so Murphy will ensure that I pick the wrong one. Let's give it a burl. Hey no, no, no, no, not a sausage.

Hey there we go. So sorry if you can't see that there we go. tongue at the right angle. It's all a bit how you're doing with these damn things.

But oh there you go. You take the take the slack off there lack of ten turn pots. You take the tension off the damn thing in it. Yeah, wow.

Yeah, it's not easy, but told you Murphy get you every time. There was no way I was going to get that one. First go. Ah Crikey.

Ah, it's a bit hard when I'm leaning over the bench like this. Jeez, Hang on there we go. That one's good enough for Australia. Let's uh, haven't got the rain switch in there, but yeah, it'll uh, because it's got the divider in there.

It'll You know I feel it. It's going to have a half reasonable divider, so once you just set it on one range should be fine on all the others and that's pretty much come good on the resistance too. So the other one might be a, uh, Ac compensation and not too shabby on the current either. So pretty happy with that.

That's all right. Nothing wrong with Point Three, no walkers and it's bang on on the 10 there. But uh, you put that down on the one and that's no good at all. Yeah, we've got some range issues there.

I tweaked it down on the one volt range, up down on the one volt range here and it's uh, hunky dory. But yeah, you take it up to 10 and uh, so meh. it's not worth much more effort than that. Does anyone want this puppy? Anyone in Australia that is first person to leave a comment gets it? Well check it out.

1976. Hiaoki. Um, excellent. Uh.

Japanese brand. Of course we got ourselves an analog. It's not just a clamp meter, it's actually a multimeter look at that can do volts, ohms, and amps. Whoa.

But it looks like there's only a single range for the Ohms there and it basically is just going to go from zero to basically 1k. There's been, you know, designed for like, uh, you know, cable resistance checking and stuff like that. Very basic and I don't think the meter lock was on. During transit, you notice that the needle can, uh, wobble there, but you whack the uh, lock that on and during transport, protect that damn needle.

Beauty. Look at this. It's still got the original protective plastic on it. Wow, look at that.

Ah, oops. probably shouldn't have done that. That wasn't nice. That was proper protective plastic.

I thought it was like current day protective fill. Nope. Oops. Okay, let's open this puppy up.

And because it does, Ohms, it's going to have a battery in there of course. So uh, how does that? Yeah, Wow. look at that. Definitely 1976 vintage.

Ah, I wish this was smeller vision and it's fused for your protection all the way up there. Wow. and uh, it looks like the battery was in there, but I'm not sure what happened to the uh, negative. um.

terminal? Well, it's the contact would have obviously connected from there to there, so I'm not sure. So that fuse was basically just for the battery by the looks of it. and uh, yeah, that's uh, seeing better days. the battery holder, but uh, jeez, that is.

That is Krusty Burger that is. But the good thing about analog meters is that they just work. I mean, you know there's nothing that can go wrong with them. You've got a meter movement, you've got some range resistors, and, well, that's pretty much it.

Here's this board we looked at before and look, it's got a, uh, it's got a tuner there and by the looks of it, and uh, some more Rfe going on over here and uh, what the hell, have we got some Um, Trs jacks and looks like we've got an Rf input there. We've got a, uh, power, uh, looks. that's almost certainly some sort of audio amp. So it does.

Looks like some sort of car, uh thing, one of these blade fuses that's a straight out of automotive stuff and that, um, the weird ass, um, multi-way ding connector. So yeah, there you go. Anyone can identify that? I don't know. something out of car.

Yeah, there's a fair bit of business happening on the back too. and uh, I don't know. I'm not too fussed over that, uh, particular chipset, but if someone can tell us what the hell that thing is, leave it in the comments. Actually, Grand Theft Auto says that, uh, these are some sort of our diversity antenna inputs so it's weird.

We got ourselves some Russian stamps. hi to all my Russian viewers. Uh, we don't get too many, uh, from Russia. There is a decent contingent though.

Um, this one comes from um, Andrev or Andre? um B. And then the stamps. cut it out. So sorry, I don't know your last name.

Thank you very much Andre. Let's take a look inside for Andrev. How would you pronounce that in Russian? Would it be Andre or Andrev? I'm not entirely sure. but uh, let's take a squeeze.

What he's sent in. I've got a letter I have. What on earth are they? What on earth Are they some sort of biscuity type thing? I don't know, and sorry. I can't speak Russian, but there's some sort of like wafery bread.

Like a yeah I icing covered bready thing. I don't know a word for that. Thank you very much. But there's something in a little, uh, static box.

I'll get my, uh, well, conductive box. That's what I mean by static box. and there's something in here. Wow.

What is it? A little thing with a screen and three buttons. A screen and three buttons. What the? I have to read the note. You are not going to believe what this puppy is.

It is a little pocket open source, geiger counter. Awesome. A digital dossie meter. Full open source.

It's a little project. Um, that he's done. and whoa. Awesome.

We'll take a look at it after I eat my gingerbread. That's what it is. Russian gingerbread. Um, it comes from uh, Tula, the famous Russian city for its gingerbread and is known as the home of the weapon masters.

These pesky Russians. All right. let's see how Tula gingerbread tastes like. Hmm.

not bad. and this is one of the coolest things I've ever gotten in the mailbag. Check this out. Ta-da Wow.

Look. and yes, you did hear a vibration motor there. It's a little. a geiger counter slash digital.

uh. dossier meter. It's called the Ultra Micron and isn't it cute? It's just absolutely tiny. This is the size of it compared to an Australian 50 cent piece.

Wow, look at that and it's got a beautiful little, um, a backlit, uh, display on the thing. and it's It's a full dot matrix of course, and it's a rechargeable battery. It's got Usb and it can. Also, it's continually storing, uh, the radiation data as well, even when it's like switched off in quote marks.

There we go like that and it's continuously monitoring and saves it internally. It does data logging and you can download it to your Pc later. Fantastic. Oh, it's just beautiful.

That's so cute. And of course it displays it in micro regions per hour. But um, yeah, that's not the more standard micro sieve. it's so.

But you can just easily, uh, convert between those two units, so no problems whatsoever. Ah, if it's good enough for Doc Brown, that's good enough for us. And it's got all sorts of statistics and stuff. Eyes is just beautiful.

So beautiful. I'm gonna do a separate video on it, including a teardown. Click here to see it. So thank you very much Andre.

That is one of the coolest things out there. And yes, it is open source hardware. I'll link it in down below and it's all on Github and everything else. Ah, huge thumbs up! This thing is awesome.

Next up, we've got one from Seoul, Hi to all my Korean viewers. Uh, from Minji? You I think from Um. Sol Grugu Something like that. I assume that's an area.

thank you very much. Min Ju Min, Jay Min Zhao? I don't. no, sorry, gotta pronounce it. I don't know how to pronounce anything.

I'm hopeless. I shouldn't, uh, be in the mailbag business. really. Um, considering that I'm so hopeless at it.

Anyway, let's have a look more food. We got some like, um, cracker wafery type biscuits cool and a note with two very lightweight and probably delicate items. It's dead wrapped in plastic. Okay, what do we got? Hang on.

Oh, it is a tube for all youtube aficionados out there. and uh, it looked, uh, decided. I don't know. I'm not gonna say Russian too, but uh, it could be.

And then, hey, we've got some nixie tubes. Love them. I thought they looked decidedly Russian. Uh, as it turns out, yeah, he's um, South Korean, but he studies in Russia.

So there you go. Thank you very much Minjay! And oh yeah, Dave's Hammer. You just gotta love these displays. Ah, look at that.

All individually hand wired in there. Look at that with the spacers on them. Beautiful. And each segment is, you know, it is a separate layer in there and these puppies can all light up.

I've actually, I'm sure I've done these on mailbag before now. I believe these puppies are in12s. They're the top emitter ones or whatever you want to, uh, call them so you can, actually, uh, direct mount these on the Pcb. So instead of having the, um, the vacuum uh port on the top, and then having a side emitter out the side like the round nixie tubes normally are, these are the end emitters like this.

so you can mount them directly on boards and on front panels and they look really, really nice. I love these. All right. let's see if we can power this puppy up.

I think they take like a nominal 170 volts or they should turn on, uh, something lower than that. So um, he's not sure if these things work. But anyway, let's give it a bill. I've got the I think I've got the pin outs right and the polarity right for the, uh, this thing.

So let's uh, whack it in and uh, 100 volts? so nothing's happening at 100 volts. Let's wind the wick up. 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 60. Wow, Look at that.

What a Bobby Dazzler! Ah Beautiful brings a tear to the eye. Look at that, I'll just turn down the contrast. Oh look at that faint glow. You can see the grid on the front.

Ah, is that a six or a nine? You be the judge. Oh Beautiful. So thank you very much Minjay, That's just awesome. Look at that next up one from Alex Rich.

Thank you very much Alex. He's from uh, the United States of America and uh, has anyone like got any stats on which countries send the most stuff? Um, to the Euv blog because uh, let's you know the U.s would be up there. But I don't think it's number one. I think maybe somewhere in Europe.

Well, definitely Europe. If you compare Europe and America, Um, I think the Yanks are gonna, um, we've got the um, Jolly Spanner isn't it from? uh. hackaday Note: There is a note. Should we read a note? Nah, let's not read the note.

Let's try and figure out what this puppy is. Here we go. Oh, it's a. um, it's a clamp.

It's a Pcb clamp. We've had a similar one to this before. Well check it out, but I love this. Very nice milled that out.

Fantastic. That's beautiful. I love that that is that really works. Well wonder how I did that? Uh, converted it to, um, like an outline.

I took my photo, converted it to an outline. You'd have to tidy it up, the image and stuff like that to make it. uh, usable. That is quite neat.

I like it. Um. Enclosed is a sample of Stick Vice. It's called the Stick Vice.

That's what happens when you don't clamp the thing springy. It's a low profile Pcb. advice for holding a board at table level. Great for soldering and testing, especially under magnification.

Um, he's encouraging mods and upgrades. Tons of ideas. 3d printable downloads on his website stickvice.com I'll link it in down below. Um, a 3d printed jaw set with wires and grooves and other stuff.

Yep, cool. Let's check it out. And here's the Stick Vice and I must say, I rather like it. It is hack A Day approved.

There you go because uh, Alex started this project on uh, Hackaday and then they, um, helped support it or something like that. So it's yeah, it's hackaday approved. Maybe we're gonna have like Eev blog approved? Hmm. actually I'm kind of sort of maybe working on something like that.

Anyway, it's a Stick vise. Love the name and of course it just um. oh. it's springy loaded like that.

so you can just put your board. Of course you can just adjust this thumb screw here to move it up and down. You just put your board in there. It's got a couple of V grooves in there to take our smaller like you know, 0.8 millimeter boards as well.

Just hold your board in there because when you're placing surface mount parts, you want a bit of weight and a decent sort of base on there. If your board keeps sliding around like often happens when you're placing parts and things like that, it can be a real pain in the butt. So yeah, this thing damn handy. Check it out.

I reckon everyone should have something like this and there's lots of 3d printed add-ons and things like that. And here's an example of a 3d printable jaw that you can just whack on this thing and it helps you do wiring and stuff like that. Very nice and we've also got some standoffs. Very simple, but it just allows you to get, uh, extra clearance on the bottom side.

Beautiful! So thank you very much Alex. I reckon that one is a winner. I'll link it in down below Beauty and I love that that's just great. Next up one of these cool blue boxes.

Again, you know what that means. It's from the Netherlands. Hi to all my Dutch viewers, this is from uh Gerbin or German, uh Vanderword. Thank you very much Gerben.

Anyway, um, it's got a whole bunch of stuff including oh I won't say let's just open it So the Netherlands is on my list of uh places to go to. By the way, always has been never had a chance to go there so let's have a look for Sagan. Awesome! He's got something for Sagan. Oh oh I think Sagan's gonna like that This this Ferrari is only for Sagan and not his daddy who probably never could over would be a be able to buy such a Ferrari.

No kidding or is to sell more than one million micro currents. Ah, that's the Ferrari 250 Gto. Woohoo Awesome! Wow. Oh and the steering wheel turns.

Oh fantastic. And that is the Ferrari 250 Gto. Ah thing of beauty. But hey, as an aficionado, I'd much rather have the 250 Gt California.

thank you very much. That was uh, one of those puppies, uh, sold for I think about 11 million us bucks. set in a record at the time for the world's most expensive car. This is just a regular Gto and of course it's made in Italy.

There you go, and for those playing along at home, it is 1 24th scale, beautiful. And of course the doors open. As I said the uh, the steering wheel. uh moves.

When you move the wheels, look at that. Ah, that's a Bobby Dazzler And there's the Ferrari Donk for all you aficionados. So all right, let's see what else he sent in. It's not the end of it.

Uh, a Citizen compact. Black and white Tv. Oh goodness. Oh wow.

Is that like a two minute tear down specifically for the Netherlands? Um, and what is in here? Wow. Wow. It's even got a serial number on the front of it. It's going to be a meter of some description.

Hang on. what? Earlier the 1960s? I reckon. mid 50s? Oh holy goodness, look at that. Wow.

So I was built in 1956 apparently. but uh yeah, it actually comes from the 40s. And look at that super accurate mirrored uh back there to prevent parallax error. and this is good Ac Dc indicator on front when you turn this switch.

Watch this. Watch this puppy here. There we go. We're going over into the red Ac brilliant and Gerbin assures us that there's some quality switching in here, not the cheap Chinese rubbish.

Oh, look at that. Yeah baby. that's their switches. Look at.

uh now we're talking. Look at that business. Yeah, still going after like 60 years. still is like a bought one.

Check out the amps and volts. Switch on here. this is great and then you switch that over inside. Oh look.

classic old school, but it works and it's a Norma meter. I don't know. is that like a brand or is that uh, Norwegian for a uh multimeter? I don't know. but here we go.

Inside gets a little bit uh I I guess crustier but uh oh man. look look at the attention to detail with the lashing on the wires down in there. Just brilliant. And sadly it's a little bit out.

didn't quite survive the test of the time. It's supposed to be full scale there. that's on the six volt range. and this isn't even a volume either.

a Vom, a volt Ohm meter because it doesn't do ohms at all. It just does volts and amps. So is it a Vam Hm? That is a fascinating look at what you got in the 1940s and 1950s. This is.

yeah, this might have been the duck's guts. And check out this puppy. A compact pocket. Black and white Lcd Tv.

Ah, this would have been the ducks guts too back in the day. Citizen. Oh beauty, look at this and if we pop it open ta-dah Greetings to all radio hams from P-a-g-d Yeah, then from the Netherlands and the thing is, Lcd technology was so crap back in the day when this was done, you had to actually pop up and that's a mirror down the bottom. So you actually have the Lcd in there.

It reflects off the mirror like this, so you actually look at it down through there and it comes with this back light. If it's not bright enough, you actually get this backlight unit which has got a um, I presume and electro luminescent um, backlight on it that just clips on like that to give you extra brightness. Here we go, I've got some batteries in it takes uh, four. Aaa's in the bottom.

So let's uh, let's power it up. And for those playing along at home, there it is 0.3 watts. Made in Japan, of course. And uh, serial number 882.

Is it that low? Don't know what the other digits stand for. Anyway, here we go. let's see if it does anything. Oh, there we go.

It did something. Of course. we're not going to be able to, uh, watch anything. But yeah, you can see the Lcd.

Definitely doing something in there. A couple of lines on there, that's about it. Oh, let's try that again without the back light. There we go.

It's brighter because it's actually getting light through here. You can actually see my fingers through there like that. So let's let's try that. There we go.

that's better. We saw some, uh, saw some lines there. Ah, but that's about all we're gonna get. Pretty crusty.

All right. let's have a look inside this puppy and uh, this big screw here just, uh, takes out the antenna of course, just slides out and ta-da That is exactly what I expected. It'd be a combination of, uh, some through-holy uh uh stuff. In fact, very little of it.

Maybe just the controls and some sort of, uh, customized receiver. Is that like a receiver? I don't know. We'd have to, uh, have to look that puppy up for those playing along at home. Can always, uh, google that one.

but quite a few missing parts on there, which is interesting. Hmm. and we've got ourselves a flat flex up here. We had a little bracket holding that down.

There We go. They haven't bothered to use a connect a Pcb mount connector there. they just put the pads on there and just push that down with the plate because they had to. Um, they used that dust screw.

was also a board hold down as well. so there's that's quite nice and uh, hopefully this will just pop out. Oh maybe. Oh look, we've got some.

look. oh sorry, that's way off screen there. Very poor, unprofessional video blogging there. We've got ourselves our our dial.

Of course you can see because we have the uh, we have a real fair dinkum. that just that just popped out and spun around. Oops. because we have a real fair dinkum dial in there so it'll have a tuning that'll go into a a variable cap and uh oh, it's hard to get that out without damaging everything.

Hang on. Ah, there we go. Yeah. classic.

uh. Rfr section for the day. We've got ourselves a can there and maybe we can pop the hood off that puppy and uh and see what's under there. Here we go.

Ta-da Ah, look at that. That's nice and sectioned off. I like that. Geez, that's oh, that's beautiful.

That might be the screens. That might be the thumbnail for today's video. maybe? Ah. beautiful.

So they'd likely be all your typical uh sections found in a Tv receiver. in this case, a black and white. Uh, one. Of course they wouldn't go to all the effort to color when they can't display color.

So yeah, there'd be a part of the tunable filter of course, which would be all part of uh, this up here. And yeah, maybe the tunable filters under there or something with all your adjustment, uh, pots. But anyway. um, yeah, you'd have your low noise amp, you'd have like a notch filter, and you'd have your mixer and your Vco and band pass filters and all sorts of stuff happening in there.

so that's a nice little block. I like that. And of course, this mechanism here is just designed to move that up and down. That's just the indicator, but ultimately, what that belt's doing is pulling your variable capacitor up under there.

So yeah, it's it's a through-hole package down in there. somewhere. Next up, another one from the United States of America. America from Robert.

uh, Galleon. He's from um, Severeville in Tnt and it'd be Tennessee. Would it not correct me if I'm wrong? Um, I don't know all my U.s states, but I think Tn is Tennessee. Oh geez, this one's a bit.

This one's a bit tricky. Anyway, we've got ourselves an Amazon Prime box. I suspect it's not from Amazon. Goodness Gracious.

There we go. Just cut through the damn thing. There we go. Float.

Oh, that's a it's a crusty old power supply. two minute tear down. seen better days. And oh hi, a calculator.

It's a Ti. It's an Sr-10 Oh, check it out. Two-minute tear-down time? You betcha! Love vintage calculators here on the Eev blog, but it's an electronic slide rule. No this calculator.

rubbish. Oh no Siri Bob and look at this. It's a thing of beauty. Aha, for those young whippersnappers out there who don't know, this was Texas Instruments first very first, um, Scientific Pocket Calculator.

Yeah, they did done the uh, Four Banger before, but uh, this one's well, it's kind of. Well, it's not kind of sort of scientific. You know, it's got like, um, you know, exponent and you can do square roots and squares and you know one over and stuff like that. So it doesn't have like full trig functionality and stuff.

but it's It's got a little bit more than your regular four banger. uh, calculator. So yeah, this was their, uh, their first one. So this is 1972 vintage of course.

um, the same year that the, uh, that? Well, the world's first truly, uh, pocket scientific calculator. The Hp 35 came out all hail Hp35. We are not worthy. We are not worthy.

And this one has a, um, unfortunately, it doesn't run on standard double A or triple A's It's got a built-in rechargeable battery which you, uh, charged from this yeah, rather crusty looking port. There might seem better days. There's a serial number for those playing along at home. and yes, it is an electronic slide rule calculator I'd like.

I'd call this like. a semi scientific calculator because as I said, doesn't have the trig functions. but it has like the exponent operators and things like that and the Um keys. They're a little bit spongy.

there's no tactile response on them, but geez, You know, I've felt a lot worse than that. And the case is actually there's a little bit of give in it, but otherwise, it's actually, you know, reasonably. uh, solid. Once again, I've seen a lot lot worse than that.

But obviously this puppy has, uh, um, out of juice. So you know, maybe we can whack some batteries in it and uh, see if she works? Let's crack it open. Here we go. Let's hope the battery hasn't leaked all inside.

No. Oh yeah. yep. Yep.

look at the corrosion. Yeah, there we go. But we could actually maybe still whack some batteries in there. Oh, look at Crusty.

Mmm yum. Look at that. Oh, there's the money shot, the Ti processor, and uh yeah, pretty old school. They've got some uh, um, just some discrete um, 75, 100 series.

uh stuff happening here. Um, but yeah, not much else at all. All the magic happens in there. There's our board for our uh, lead display up there, and just this crusty slide switch here.

And yeah, it's all hand soldered of course, but there's not much to it. Um, looks like we might have ourselves a regulator down here. No other reason why you'd have an inductor there, but it's all about how you're doing. Just slapped around the place.

really. Hmm, not that impressed. I'll try and whack some batteries in it, but those contacts are. yeah.

I haven't tried to. uh, hey, it's working. It works. It's alive.

Look at that. Don't breathe on it. We uh, might not. Uh, get a good contact again.

but there was a lot of force on those contacts and it works. Beauty. Three point, one, four, one, five nine. and we'll just invert that, shall we? Oh, look at that beautiful still works that you can actually see it, see it, processing, and then actually scan across the display there.

I might actually try and slow that display down and see what happens. That's interesting. Slow that display. damn, See what happens.

And it's got a whopping, uh, eight digit mantissa and two digit exponent. And can we do? Minus three? Do we have to do the minus first? Oh, look at that. Ah, Beautiful. and that's for you.

Lead bubble display aficionados love it. And this one was manufactured late 1973. So yeah, about a year after it came out and a quick one minute look at this 1983 vintage, uh, power supply out of an arcade machine. Well, that puppy's uh, certainly seen better days.

But uh, yeah. typical single-sided stuff. and uh yeah, no expense. Bed Nippon Chemicon, thank you very much.

Um, these ones over here though. Wow, there's a blast in the past. Look at that. Marcom.

ha ha. What happened to Markom? You know, I don't know about you, but that down in there just looks like a dead worm to me. Next up, we've got one from someone everyone knows. Vincent Himpy.

my mate, Vincent. Um, he's Free Electron on the Forum and has written several books of course, famously and sent in a whole bunch of stuff. So thank you very much Vincent. Let's see what he said.

He's from San Jose in California and now works at Dumb Tesla. Awesome! And yes, we do have Tesla gear. There we go. Um, if you don't know, Vincent is the head Pcb designer at Tesla Beauty and oh, what do we got? What do we got? Ah, Buzz Aldrin Mission to Mars.

Oh fantastic. And I think I think I do believe it's signed somewhere. I do believe where is it? No. hang on.

Hang on there, it is there. It is Signed by Buzz. Awesome. Thank you very much Vincent.

That is fantastic. Uh, Vincent. actually, uh, knows Buzz. I think he uh, recounted on the forum that he went, um, diving with him once or something like that.

Anyway, Fantastic. Um, Mission to Mars? Oh, I'm a huge Mars buff by the way. Can't wait for the martian to come out. The movie that is.

I'm currently almost finished the book The Martian and oh Buzz. Brilliant. I've read the Kindle edition of this and it's very good. I highly recommend it Um as well as several Mars books Mars direct by Um, Zubrin and others and highly recommend it.

but it's signed by look, look look look He walked on the moon, He walked on the moon. Oh yes, and if you don't know, Buzz. He is actually an expert on uh, space aeronautics saying he holds a doctorate. They actually used to call him doctor Rendezvous because he'd um, actually figure out all rendezvous orbits and everything.

The guy's a a genius and this book is about um, his mission for getting to Mars which uh, involves the Um Aldrin cycler it's called. He came up with these uh, orbits that um, can continually my watch is going supposed to go pick up Sagan Um, these orbits he figured out called Aldrin um cycles at the cycler where a ship would just continuously or ships plural would just continually transfer in these really efficient orbits between Mars and earth and require like bugger, all energy to actually do it or something like that only when they have to course correct and and things like that. So that was his mission and also um, he proposes to go to uh, Phobos as well. Uh, first actually set up a uh, not a colony.

but you know, like go to Phobos first so that then they can actually, uh, assemble and operate robots on the surface of Mars before humans actually land on Mars. And that's different To Zubrin's Mars Direct mission which just says just go, you know, and um, actually send stuff first to Mars and then much like the uh, the Martian actually the book, The Martian and the movie coming out which is based uh, mostly on the Mars Direct Uh, Robert Zumerin's Mars Direct thing where you send, um, you send the equipment to Mars first, it makes all its fuel on site on Mars and then you send humans with habs and everything down. So um, yeah, Aldrin's one is different to that. I'm not sure.

like, like I thought I was a Mars Direct fanboy until I read, um, this one and Aldrin makes a lot of sense and he's a real smart cookie and he's done the math and everything else and uh, yeah, I like the idea of the ships just constantly going between Earth and Mars. Fantastic. That'd be awesome. Signed by Buzz I'd love to meet him.

Oh love to meet any of the moonwalkers and check it out. Tesla Merch. Awesome! Thank you very much Vincent! Oh great mail bag. I'm gonna have to read it again.

Ah, signed by the man himself. Oh and is there a Yep, there's hidden in there. I thought I saw it. Vincent's business card was, yeah, there it is.

I won't tell you all these details, but there you go. That's his Tesla business card. Actually, I'm quite unimpressed. It's decidedly low tech.

Hmm. I expected. You know, something fancy, but it's just regular stock paper card.