Date:         Thu, 19 Mar 2009 11:34:48 -0400
Reply-To:     David Beierl <dbeierl@ATTGLOBAL.NET>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         David Beierl <dbeierl@ATTGLOBAL.NET>
Subject:      Re: Cold steering wheel
Comments: To: Rocket J Squirrel <camping.elliott@gmail.com>
In-Reply-To:  <49C25A8B.9060900@gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed

At 10:45 AM 3/19/2009, Rocket J Squirrel wrote:
>its composition, I still think that it is composed of an
>intentionally evil heat-sucking plastic. A creation of Nazi
>research. Probably a side-product developed at IG Farben under the
>direction of Dr. Laszlo Jamf during his development of the aromatic
>heterocyclic polymer, Imipolex-G.

<ROFL>

You may be right -- after all, that Saran wrap we use in the kitchen
is only one letter away from nerve gas.  And that could be a typo...

And indeed I once worked for a branch (we made 2/3-height 5 1/4"
floppy drives) of the Badische Anilin und Soda Fabrik, which was one
of the components of Intereissen Grupp(en?) Farbenindustrie -- and
the ability of our drives to clamp a disk so far off-center that it
went shlump shlump shlump and came out crumpled transcended
incompetence and could only be attributed to evil genius.  Whereas of
course the division head's insistence to customers that we didn't
have a clamping problem was just silly, since they had samples.  The
whole industry at that point had clamping problems, but ours was ten
times worse than anyone else's (because in order to shave the drive
height we used a very shallow puck).  We also used a $12
ironless-core unstoppable drive motor with no tachometer output and a
$5 single-source control chip from Thompson CSF, and had trouble
keeping +/-3% speed regulation.  Our competition used a $1.80 motor
designed for 8-track players and a 39-cent Cherry control chip, and
could do +/-2% or better.  Our parent also designed a home VCR that
ran at 72 ips for three minutes before banging off the end of the
cartridge.  It then stepped down a track, reversed, and did it again,
for a total capacity of maybe 45 minutes.  Turnover time was supposed
to be about a tenth of a second.  They probably used some of that
heat-sucking plastic to cool the drive motors.


  --
David Beierl - Providence RI USA -- http://pws.prserv.net/synergy/Vanagon/
'89 Po' White Star "Scamp"