Diary PCBuds mini-grow

[PCBuds]

You've got some great stuff in here. I'm going to dig through your thread when I get some time this week

Yeah, but there's a lot of crap too. Lol

Be careful how deep you dig.
You might find poop. Lol

 

[f-e]

Pink Floyd, Dark side of the Moon.






Notice how white light is separated into it colors when shon through a prism.

Sunlight shining through a prism will show a different spectrum than your Grow Light, and I will show a different spectrum with my LED strips...

A CD has a similar effect. There is a science project where a spectrometer is made. Slotting the side of a tube for a CD to fit in.
This was my effort. Looking at the smart chip cobs used in garden floodlights.
Purple Blue Green Orange and Red. The Green is too prominent, and at 100lm/w this dropped the useful PPFD to levels a CFL could compete with.

 

[PCBuds]

A CD has a similar effect.

I remember getting stoned around 1983 and shining my CD into the overhead light and staring at the reflection for hours.

(Well, it felt like hours anyway, I was really stoned and time shuts off when you're really stoned. Lol)

 

[PCBuds]

This was the first CD I ever bought.

It was one of the first 100 CD's ever produced.

It was a demonstration disk to show what your stereo was capable of.

Pink noise, white noise, square waves, sound effects.


It was was the only CD I owned for over 5 years because it cost almost $40 in 1982.

My first CD player only cost ~$300.




I remember driving in my car with my Sony Discman plugged into my GLC while delivering pizza.


I pulled up to a stop light with a woman in front of me in her car and I cranked up the jet flying by.


It rocked the whole neighborhood !!

She leaned forward in her car to look through her windshield for a Jet overhead but didn't see anything.

She sat back in her seat, looked in her rear view mirror, and saw me laughing my ass off. Lol



The CD came with a warning label to not turn it up too loud, or you'll blow up your stereo !!



You can tell when a vinyl album is turned up loud, even when it's quiet.

You would hear the noise.​​​​​​

 

[H.Marks]

I remember getting stoned around 1983 ...

83 is a complete daze for me... well out of it.

Stopped it all in 1984 but 79 to 84 boy Oh boy.

StoneHenge free festival 2 years on the trott... HawkWind etc. Cloth acid that was litterally damp lol. PCP one time at Henge.

Mind blowing times man.

 

[PCBuds]

Wow. I had to check my amp actually has a phono input. Many don't now. I have not seen one with cartridge capacitance matching before. I see moving magnet or moving coil selection switches, and know the term riaa correction. At that, my knowledge craps out.

I remember moving magnet and moving coil cartridges.
(I have no idea about riaa ?)



I remember going in to Gr.13 calculus class and talking to my teacher about the new Grado cartridge that I just bought.
(he was right into stereo too.)

He asked which one I bought and I said the $80 one.
He said "too bad, you should have bought the $30 one."

It turned out that the $30 cartridge was some sort of fluke, and had no resonance.

I spent more money on the more expensive one, thinking that it was better.

I kicked myself for months for buying the wrong cartridge.

I have taken bluetooth boards and devices and put them inside older amps recently. Using the phono input selection, and a bit of artistic interpretation (a marker pen) to change phono to phone The biggest issue has been powering them. In each case, an old phone charger has been scavenged.
The phono input was already bust on one, while the others phono stage gave up an op-amp for the main amps input stage. I didn't trash perfectly good amps
I paid about £3 for a finger shaped BT device that receives from your phone, and offers a headphone socket. Internal lithium cell. I think aimed at Iphone uses that lost the headphone socket as they were further insulted without realising. I have not actually installed that, but the voice is batmans butler and it made some old PC speakers live on as bluetooth ones.

I have almost no knowledge of that other than the phono input gets about 10-100 times more amplification than the line level inputs.

225w uses a unit every 4 hours (well 250w does) so 4 units a day. 28 units a week. About 115 units a month?
How much is a unit there? Here it could be 25p so an astounding £30 a month.
You need to look at your electric bill to see what a unit costs on your deal

I have no idea.
We have loonies and schooners here in Canada .

(The ship was the Bluenose, and was the fastest sailing ship on the water at the time )

My amps quite basic. 13.5Kg of oomph though. The texture on the front plate is that left by a rough concrete cutting mill or something. You could light a match on it. The volume is quite wobbly though. I think it's a comical throwback to some old rock gear, but I don't know.
I have the matching CD player with digital/usb inputs round back. It won't scan through tracks though. Only skip them. Instead, it has a light underneath so it looks good in your rack. It's blue when the Digital inputs are selected. White at some other time. Off generally. It's the oddest indicator light, but does let you know whats happening from across the room. While making the rack look good lol
https://www.roksan.com/en/product-ranges/k3/k3-integrated-amplifier/
I must get around to selling before the new model comes out. I have never liked the CD player and the amp sounds alright on bluetooth but a bit harsh through other inputs. It's on the smooth side of neutral, but I like really smooth. Like the Yamaha that's actually a bit too muddy to ever be actual hifi.

I will fall back on my Arcam Alpha 8r amp and 8se CD player. About 20 years old, so relatively new still. £1500 pair then, that still fetch £300 but £3000 would be needed to replace them. The roksan kit was that sort of money, so a sideways step more than an upgrade. The roksans power is nice but no tone controls and the CD player is dysfunctional

I lost track of stereo stuff (and its accompaning expenses,) about 20 years before Bluetooth. Lol

 

[PCBuds]

Wow. I had to check my amp actually has a phono input. Many don't now. I have not seen one with cartridge capacitance matching before. I see moving magnet or moving coil selection switches, and know the term riaa correction. At that, my knowledge craps out.

Do you remember the Oracle turntable?

It was the Cats Ass, back in the day.

It cost like 7 million dollars !! lol

That turntable, along with a $30 Grado cartridge would Kick Ass !!

(there was a better Grado cartridge, but it was top of the line and worth about $800.)

IIRC, my calculus teacher had both cartridges?

 

[PCBuds]

Wow. I had to check my amp actually has a phono input...

Do you remember the Nakamichi Dragon Cassette Deck ?








I bought this Yamaha KX-800U a year or so after the Dragon came out for $740 around 1983.

The dude at the stereo shop said that it had the same specs as the Dragon, but it wasn't dual capstan drive, so it wouldn't play both sides of the tape without removing it and turning the tape around.

I figured, Perfect! , as good as a Dragon, only that I have to flip the tape.

It is a 3 head deck and can record and play back while listening to itself and adjust its bias current depending on what cassette tape is used.

It can record in Dolby B, or Dolby C, or dbx, with or without the MPX filter.

It still works great to this day!!
(but the rewind button broke off and I had to tape it back on. lol)

I don't use it anymore.

Who the hell plays cassettes anymore. lol

 

[PCBuds]

Purple Blue Green Orange and Red. The Green is too prominent, and at 100lm/w this dropped the useful PPFD to levels a CFL could compete with.

It is pretty cool to look at though.

I've been staring at it for hours.
(well maybe 5 minutes. I'm pretty stoned. lol)

It kinda looks like my eyes do right now. Lol
(mostly the red parts)
​​​​​​​

 

[H.Marks]

What drove to over water though?? Drunk? Someone else was in charge for a few days?

 

[PCBuds]

What drove to over water though?? Drunk? Someone else was in charge for a few days?

I have no excuse for that.

I don't really know what happened?

But a lot of times (especially when I'm drunk,) I do wrong stuff on purpose just to make sure it's wrong.

Like turning my lights way up and cooking half the leaves off my plant.



A bit like when you're a kid and you take your sisters Barbie Doll and rip its head off. Lol

 

[PCBuds]

My cat is more prissy than a Barbie Doll, but I'm not going to rip her head off.

She'd tear me a new one if I tried anyway.

She's got claws and teeth
Lol

 

[f-e]

Someone say Nakamichi?
We had such a bone for those as we competitively built our stack systems. If anyone had got one, that would of been competition over lol
The RIAA is the governing body behind the recording standard for vinyl. If you just pump up the volume, you find a very tinny sound is actually recorded. The preamp stage for vinyl must cut the treble and turn up the bass. Then it sounds right.
If they recorded the sound normally, the bass would shake the needle. Causing distortion and rapid wear.

I never got an amazing tape deck. I think my Sony tck 511? is about it. Central deck with a ceramic door liner, but no electric open/close like the 600. I did get dolby S though. The studio dolby standard. Dolby that wasn't like putting wool in your ears.

I also get lost in the CD light refraction image. Contact lenses were on my mind. That would be awesome. On a girl, of course.

The yammy's nice. Other than the master fader, it looks quite familiar. I bet you can still get new belts for it. I did my sony and aiwa a few years back after a storage session.

 

[PCBuds]

The yammy's nice. Other than the master fader, it looks quite familiar. I bet you can still get new belts for it. I did my sony and aiwa a few years back after a storage session.

I always thought it was direct drive with no belts?

I decided to find out for sure.

Yeah, you're right.
There's at least one belt.
It's been hanging in there since 1984 or 5. Lol

 

[PCBuds]

...
If they recorded the sound normally, the bass would shake the needle. Causing distortion and rapid wear.

My first vinyl album was Bob Marley Exodus in 1978.

My dad bought me a turntable, receiver, and speakers for my birthday/Christmas.

I was 15 years old.
Then I started getting stoned at 16 and I played that album literally thousands of times until I wore it out.

So I bought another album.
Then I bought it on CD. Twice. Lol

 

[H.Marks]

My first disc was ..rubber bullets 10cc... then brown sugar...rolling stones .. the rest is history.

 

[H.Marks]

Watching the Conjuring2 MY HOUSE...

 

[PCBuds]

Remember these ??

Automatic head cleaner and head demagnatizer.

I would always clean my head and capstan manually with a Q-tip and isopropyl.

And I had a magnetic wand to demagnatize my head.

 

[PCBuds]

My first cassette recorder in 1981 was a Sankyo.

I think that I bought it at Eatons department store?

 

[PCBuds]

What a Puss... lol