From michael at deegan.id.au Fri Mar 2 21:05:36 2012 From: michael at deegan.id.au (Michael Deegan) Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2012 21:05:36 +0800 Subject: [tech] pinball improved Message-ID: <20120302130536.GB6006@deegan.id.au> Hi, I ditched the nvidia driver (by uninstalling nvidia-computeG02 nvidia-gfxG02-kmp-desktop x11-video-nvidiaG02) in favour of nouveau. Installing Mesa-nouveau3d made direct rendering work. Chrome now no longer renders pages requiring hardware acceleration as solid blue, which is the itch I was succeeded in scratching in the first place. :P Oh, and I also installed some SOE packages (see wiki). :P Enjoy, -MD -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Michael Deegan Hugaholic http://www.deegan.id.au/ --------------------- Guvax bs vg nf ribyhgvba va npgvba. --------------------- From bob at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au Tue Mar 6 18:06:51 2012 From: bob at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au (Andrew Adamson) Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2012 18:06:51 +0800 (WST) Subject: [tech] Door lock Message-ID: Hi all, I spent some time today replacing our old electronic lock with a newish one which has been sitting in the tool cupboard for a couple of years. It's not wired up as yet so you will still need to use the key for now. In the next day or so I plan to redo the wiring back to the machine room, at which point the door modem may or may not get replaced with an arduino or analogue circuit. There is no longer any need to slam the door to make it close, and the lock even closes itself now. Enjoy! :-) Andrew Adamson UCC President bob at ucc.asn.au |"The faster you move, the slower time passes, the longer you live." | | ---Peter's Laws | From matches at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au Tue Mar 6 18:30:10 2012 From: matches at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au (Sam Moore) Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2012 18:30:10 +0800 (WST) Subject: [tech] Cabellera Message-ID: Hi all, Cabellera was suffering an exitential crisis. [TPG], [SLX] and I have reinstalled debian squeeze 6.0.0 I believe that a bug introduced at some time between 6.0.0 and 6.0.4 may have been causing the issue. I haven't had time to investigate. Description of stuff 1. Cabellera was working fine after the last email 2. Bob realised it was using the uwa mirror, which is horribly out of date. He then changed the mirror to aarnet (I think) and updated everything from 6.0.0 to 6.0.4 3. Cabellera crashed on reboot and every subsequent boot. It managed to get partway through the boot, the last message before it crashed was something about "exim" 4. [SLX] and I tried reinstalling debian using the aarnet mirror - The installer failed to detect the hard disk - We then tried the official ftp.au.debian.org mirror, same error 5. We changed the mirror back to uwa, the hard disk was detected, things worked. [TPG] has installed the SOE and graphics drivers. Things appear to be working well. Obviously we shouldn't rely on the horribly out of date uwa mirror, but at the moment things are working. Unless you need to update something in particular and are aware that things will probably end up in flames, please don't update cabellera. We might be able to look at this on Saturday? [SZM] From bob at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au Wed Mar 7 17:51:42 2012 From: bob at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au (Andrew Adamson) Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2012 17:51:42 +0800 (WST) Subject: [tech] Door lock In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: The door is now back online. The in-wall wiring has been redone, and the power supply has been replaced with something smaller now that we need less current. We are still using the modem, so if the system breaks in the next couple of days we know exactly what is wrong. Please note: you no longer need to bang/kick on the door to open or close it. Andrew Adamson UCC President bob at ucc.asn.au |"The faster you move, the slower time passes, the longer you live." | | ---Peter's Laws | On Tue, 6 Mar 2012, Andrew Adamson wrote: > Hi all, > > I spent some time today replacing our old electronic lock with a newish > one which has been sitting in the tool cupboard for a couple of years. > It's not wired up as yet so you will still need to use the key for now. In > the next day or so I plan to redo the wiring back to the machine room, at > which point the door modem may or may not get replaced with an arduino or > analogue circuit. There is no longer any need to slam the door to make it > close, and the lock even closes itself now. Enjoy! :-) > > Andrew Adamson > UCC President > bob at ucc.asn.au > > |"The faster you move, the slower time passes, the longer you live." | > | ---Peter's Laws | > From bob at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au Wed Mar 7 21:51:48 2012 From: bob at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au (Andrew Adamson) Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2012 21:51:48 +0800 (WST) Subject: [tech] Door lock In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: *sigh* So I got back from the pub and went to close the clubroom, and guess what wasn't working? I've turned the modem off, since it is obviously the problem and was causing the lock to heat up. I bought a little 5V relay board at altronics today [1], which could be combined with the Seeeduino in the machine room to replace the modem system. Unfortunately I won't be at uni for the next two days, so if someone wants to work on that, just let us know on the list. [1] http://www.altronics.com.au/index.asp?area=item&id=S4440 Andrew Adamson UCC President bob at ucc.asn.au |"The faster you move, the slower time passes, the longer you live." | | ---Peter's Laws | On Wed, 7 Mar 2012, Andrew Adamson wrote: > The door is now back online. The in-wall wiring has been redone, and the > power supply has been replaced with something smaller now that we need > less current. We are still using the modem, so if the system breaks in the > next couple of days we know exactly what is wrong. > > Please note: you no longer need to bang/kick on the door to open or close > it. > > Andrew Adamson > UCC President > bob at ucc.asn.au > > |"The faster you move, the slower time passes, the longer you live." | > | ---Peter's Laws | > > On Tue, 6 Mar 2012, Andrew Adamson wrote: > > > Hi all, > > > > I spent some time today replacing our old electronic lock with a newish > > one which has been sitting in the tool cupboard for a couple of years. > > It's not wired up as yet so you will still need to use the key for now. In > > the next day or so I plan to redo the wiring back to the machine room, at > > which point the door modem may or may not get replaced with an arduino or > > analogue circuit. There is no longer any need to slam the door to make it > > close, and the lock even closes itself now. Enjoy! :-) > > > > Andrew Adamson > > UCC President > > bob at ucc.asn.au > > > > |"The faster you move, the slower time passes, the longer you live." | > > | ---Peter's Laws | > > > From bob at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au Sun Mar 11 22:20:53 2012 From: bob at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au (Andrew Adamson) Date: Sun, 11 Mar 2012 22:20:53 +0800 (WST) Subject: [tech] Door lock In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Hi All, The modem has now been replaced with the arduino and the small 5v relay board. It's working for now, but it's a hack and not even properly boxed up. [TPG] has already modified dispense to suit it. If it breaks, I'll let you keep the pieces. For posterity, here are the super-sekret settings and commands: Serial over USB connected to merlo, 115200 8n1 Type "2;" and it will respond with "1,The UCC door is alive;" Type "4;" and it will respond with "1,Opening door;" , keep the lock open for ten seconds and then say "1,Locking door;". The command codes are strange numbers because I hacked the CmdMessenger [1] library example to do the job. I've found using picocom to check it is easier than minicom. The following command* will start picocom with the correct baud rate and a command character of x: `picocom /dev/ttyUSB0 -e x -b 115200' Andrew Adamson UCC President bob at ucc.asn.au [1] http://arduino.cc/playground/Code/CmdMessenger * merlo is only open to wheel members |"The faster you move, the slower time passes, the longer you live." | | ---Peter's Laws | On Wed, 7 Mar 2012, Andrew Adamson wrote: > *sigh* > > So I got back from the pub and went to close the clubroom, and guess what > wasn't working? I've turned the modem off, since it is obviously the > problem and was causing the lock to heat up. I bought a little 5V relay > board at altronics today [1], which could be combined with the Seeeduino > in the machine room to replace the modem system. Unfortunately I won't be > at uni for the next two days, so if someone wants to work on that, just > let us know on the list. > > [1] http://www.altronics.com.au/index.asp?area=item&id=S4440 > > Andrew Adamson > UCC President > bob at ucc.asn.au > > |"The faster you move, the slower time passes, the longer you live." | > | ---Peter's Laws | > > On Wed, 7 Mar 2012, Andrew Adamson wrote: > > > The door is now back online. The in-wall wiring has been redone, and the > > power supply has been replaced with something smaller now that we need > > less current. We are still using the modem, so if the system breaks in the > > next couple of days we know exactly what is wrong. > > > > Please note: you no longer need to bang/kick on the door to open or close > > it. > > > > Andrew Adamson > > UCC President > > bob at ucc.asn.au > > > > |"The faster you move, the slower time passes, the longer you live." | > > | ---Peter's Laws | > > > > On Tue, 6 Mar 2012, Andrew Adamson wrote: > > > > > Hi all, > > > > > > I spent some time today replacing our old electronic lock with a newish > > > one which has been sitting in the tool cupboard for a couple of years. > > > It's not wired up as yet so you will still need to use the key for now. In > > > the next day or so I plan to redo the wiring back to the machine room, at > > > which point the door modem may or may not get replaced with an arduino or > > > analogue circuit. There is no longer any need to slam the door to make it > > > close, and the lock even closes itself now. Enjoy! :-) > > > > > > Andrew Adamson > > > UCC President > > > bob at ucc.asn.au > > > > > > |"The faster you move, the slower time passes, the longer you live." | > > > | ---Peter's Laws | > > > > > > From bob at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au Sun Mar 18 13:36:21 2012 From: bob at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au (Andrew Adamson) Date: Sun, 18 Mar 2012 13:36:21 +0800 (WST) Subject: [tech] Motsugo Monitoring Message-ID: This is probably more relevant to hostmasters, but sent to tech so that others can learn. Motsugo has been spamming hostmasters with email alerts about RAM temperature pretty much every day since the management controller got un-broken/rebooted. This is probably due to the internal layout of the server causing decreased airflow over some ram modules. Anyway, today I finally got sick of it and increased the alert thresholds an extra 5 degrees. Since you can't change thresholds (or do anything useful) from within the webpage config, you have to use ipmitool from the command line. The required command is `ipmitool sensor list' to get the list of available sensors, and then `ipmitool sensor thresh "P1-DIMM1A Temp" upper 70 75 80' (and similar for the other DIMMs). The three temperatures are the non-critical, critical and non-recoverable thresholds respectively. Andrew Adamson bob at ucc.asn.au |"If you can't beat them, join them, and then beat them." | | ---Peter's Laws From mattman at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au Fri Mar 23 15:54:41 2012 From: mattman at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au (Matt Didcoe) Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2012 15:54:41 +0800 Subject: [tech] NetApp setup Message-ID: The NetApp FAS2020 has finally been setup to work in a reliable fashion. There's 760GB of usable storage with 20% reserved for snapshots (that are taken every 4 hours) and double parity setup. Two controllers are nortel and onetel, nortel has the primary disks, onetel is basically for failover at this point - if we got a netapp disk shelf we could make use of that to serve them up. The storage is mounted via NFS on motsugo:/vmstore for use by the new VM setup that matches and others are working on. Any issues let me know. Cheers, [MRD] From trs80 at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au Fri Mar 23 19:23:41 2012 From: trs80 at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au (James Andrewartha) Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2012 19:23:41 +0800 (WST) Subject: [tech] NetApp setup In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, 23 Mar 2012, Matt Didcoe wrote: > The NetApp FAS2020 has finally been setup to work in a reliable fashion. Cool :) > Any issues let me know. Could you install the root keys on it? -- # TRS-80 trs80(a)ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au #/ "Otherwise Bub here will do \ # UCC Wheel Member http://trs80.ucc.asn.au/ #| what squirrels do best | [ "There's nobody getting rich writing ]| -- Collect and hide your | [ software that I know of" -- Bill Gates, 1980 ]\ nuts." -- Acid Reflux #231 / From mattman at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au Fri Mar 23 21:59:44 2012 From: mattman at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au (Matt Didcoe) Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2012 21:59:44 +0800 Subject: [tech] NetApp setup In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: All current wheel root keys are on nortel now. Please don't go changing things unless you know how to fix it when it breaks (counter-wheel behaviour I know, but netapp is somewhat special regarding plex aggregates which is what caused my original headache). On Fri, Mar 23, 2012 at 7:23 PM, James Andrewartha wrote: > On Fri, 23 Mar 2012, Matt Didcoe wrote: > >> The NetApp FAS2020 has finally been setup to work in a reliable fashion. > > Cool :) > >> Any issues let me know. > > Could you install the root keys on it? > > -- > # TRS-80 ? ? ? ? ? ? ?trs80(a)ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au #/ "Otherwise Bub here will do \ > # UCC Wheel Member ? ? http://trs80.ucc.asn.au/ #| ?what squirrels do best ? ? | > [ "There's nobody getting rich writing ? ? ? ? ?]| ?-- Collect and hide your ? | > [ ?software that I know of" -- Bill Gates, 1980 ]\ ?nuts." -- Acid Reflux #231 / > From alex at theducks.org Sat Mar 24 11:49:07 2012 From: alex at theducks.org (Alex Dawson) Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2012 20:49:07 -0700 Subject: [tech] NetApp setup In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Protip - I would have called them nortel-a and nortel-b - while the sep. controllers each own different sets of disks by default, they can move, and keeping it clear which HA Pair owns which is helpful. When you only have one NetApp, it's fine though. When you have 10, it's less optimal .. not like a co-worker of mine did with the first three NetApps 3170s we bought before I started at UBC, "kitsilano/quilchena", "hastings/strathcona" and "oakridge/kerrisdale". The new ones are called "SCPGKLNK301-A/B", "SCPLFSC301-A/B" and "SCOKEMEBL01-A/B" On 23/03/2012, at 12:54 AM, Matt Didcoe wrote: > The NetApp FAS2020 has finally been setup to work in a reliable fashion. > > There's 760GB of usable storage with 20% reserved for snapshots (that > are taken every 4 hours) and double parity setup. > > Two controllers are nortel and onetel, nortel has the primary disks, > onetel is basically for failover at this point - if we got a netapp > disk shelf we could make use of that to serve them up. > > The storage is mounted via NFS on motsugo:/vmstore for use by the new > VM setup that matches and others are working on. > > Any issues let me know. > > Cheers, > [MRD] From bob at ucc.asn.au Mon Mar 26 19:42:19 2012 From: bob at ucc.asn.au (Bob Adamson) Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2012 19:42:19 +0800 Subject: [tech] [committee] Wire wrap and other prototyping In-Reply-To: <4F700478.4070101@ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> References: <4F6FC942.8070709@decisions-and-designs.com.au> <4F700478.4070101@ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> Message-ID: <9441E459AEAF481CA6E20CA36B721557@Prometheus> I'm unsure why this was only on committee so I'm cc-ing to tech... UCC does indeed have a wire wrap tool, though it's a simple hand one like this: http://www.aeroconsystems.com/electronics/wire_wrap_tool.jpg Having never had all the equipment to do wire wrapping, I can't vouch for its effectiveness. I think the one we had many years ago got stolen with our toolbox in 2009. Any chance this talk could happen on a weekend or as part of a sunday hackathon? I'm pretty keen to attend and/or organise it, but weeknights are a pita for me. Bob -----Original Message----- From: Harry Sent: Monday, March 26, 2012 1:54 PM Cc: committee at ucc.asn.au Subject: Re: [committee] Wire wrap and other prototyping Hi Sam (etc) Can do. What date ? A calamity is that the little adaptor boards I have been using (SO8, SOT23, etc to DIP8) are discontinued from SoanarPlus. I'm just finding out now what is available. Manufacturer is Bellin Dynamic Systems: http://www.beldynsys.com/p513.htm Ok, Mouser still has them: http://au.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Bellin-Dynamic-Systems/B513/?qs=Gk9gycAtN1rmJArzNw%252b65w%3D%3D If you let me know the stepper driver chip package you were using (was it TSSOP28 ?) I can get one of those from you and set it up on an adaptor board (if available) to show a different approach rather than soldering to the SMD legs. All the best Harry On 26/03/12 13:11, Sam Moore wrote: > Hi Harry, > > I think this is a great idea. I know that my own prototyping methods are > fairly primitive (I solder everything... upside down). I've included > committee in this email. We want to try doing more tech talks / > workshops, so maybe we could organise some people who are interested to > present for this. > > I can bring my old robots, but I am not really very knowledgable, and > they are hardly good examples of how things should be done. > > Anyway, the first "tech talk" is on this Thursday. Perhaps we could > schedule this as the second? > > Thanks, > Sam > > > > > On Mon, 26 Mar 2012, Harry McNally wrote: > >> Hi Sam >> >> I was speaking to James Bromburger (old guard UCCan if you don't know >> him) the >> other night about general move towards -using- tech rather than >> -creating- >> tech with thoughts about UCC activities. >> >> I said hardware construction was pretty limited although recent work >> on the >> door lock and Coke refurbishment shows people are still doing it. >> >> I wondered if it was worth reviewing work on robots by doing a session on >> prototyping techniques for reliability and so on. If anyone has some >> built >> gear that they could bring along to discuss advantages and pitfalls of >> their >> construction and possible alternatives. I've used wire-wrap other >> prototyping >> boards (and still do for some things I want to adjust and play with) >> but there >> are other possible construction tricks as well. Let me know if you >> think a >> show and tell is worthwhile; maybe stand alone or on an afternoon of a >> ProgComp workshop. >> >> Just an idea to consider anyway and something that I think I can >> contribute to >> UCC. >> >> All the best >> Harry >> > From harrymc at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au Tue Mar 27 10:00:42 2012 From: harrymc at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au (Harry) Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2012 10:00:42 +0800 Subject: [tech] [committee] Wire wrap and other prototyping In-Reply-To: <9441E459AEAF481CA6E20CA36B721557@Prometheus> References: <4F6FC942.8070709@decisions-and-designs.com.au> <4F700478.4070101@ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> <9441E459AEAF481CA6E20CA36B721557@Prometheus> Message-ID: <4F711F4A.9070106@ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> Hi Bob, Sam et al I like the idea of a weekend (afternoons since I cycle in the morning, frequently both days). Sam, that particular board has a lot of small parts so I think it would be useful for adding some analog or interface glue onto something built around the embed board. I have an almost complete one of the boards that I am about to consume so I can bring down the results of that to show what I wanted to test. Wire-wrap will cost a bit more than solder, sockets, and wire (and you can get more circuit onto an area than using vero strip board) but the two advantages are that you can play with the circuit like using a breadboard but when you stop, the final circuit is pretty robust and ready to go in a box if you intent to use it more permanently. If you want to use larger SMD parts then we'd have to buy some individual adaptor boards. Have a look at the other general purpose boards (like TSSOP etc) on the Bellin site. Is there a UCC project needed based around an embed or arduino that needs doing that has to have some analog (op-amp buffers for ADC or DACs etc), power supply, interface (RJ45 with magnetics) that we could build up to demonstrate wire-wrap prototypes ? If you can think of an example we could meet, design, and order a few parts, then meet again to assemble the hardware. Harry On 26/03/12 19:42, Bob Adamson wrote: > I'm unsure why this was only on committee so I'm cc-ing to tech... > > UCC does indeed have a wire wrap tool, though it's a simple hand one > like this: http://www.aeroconsystems.com/electronics/wire_wrap_tool.jpg > Having never had all the equipment to do wire wrapping, I can't vouch > for its effectiveness. I think the one we had many years ago got stolen > with our toolbox in 2009. > > Any chance this talk could happen on a weekend or as part of a sunday > hackathon? I'm pretty keen to attend and/or organise it, but weeknights > are a pita for me. > > Bob > > -----Original Message----- From: Harry > Sent: Monday, March 26, 2012 1:54 PM > Cc: committee at ucc.asn.au > Subject: Re: [committee] Wire wrap and other prototyping > > Hi Sam (etc) > > Can do. What date ? A calamity is that the little adaptor boards I have > been > using (SO8, SOT23, etc to DIP8) are discontinued from SoanarPlus. I'm just > finding out now what is available. > > Manufacturer is Bellin Dynamic Systems: > http://www.beldynsys.com/p513.htm > > Ok, Mouser still has them: > http://au.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Bellin-Dynamic-Systems/B513/?qs=Gk9gycAtN1rmJArzNw%252b65w%3D%3D > > > If you let me know the stepper driver chip package you were using (was it > TSSOP28 ?) I can get one of those from you and set it up on an adaptor > board > (if available) to show a different approach rather than soldering to the > SMD legs. > > All the best > Harry > > On 26/03/12 13:11, Sam Moore wrote: >> Hi Harry, >> >> I think this is a great idea. I know that my own prototyping methods are >> fairly primitive (I solder everything... upside down). I've included >> committee in this email. We want to try doing more tech talks / >> workshops, so maybe we could organise some people who are interested to >> present for this. >> >> I can bring my old robots, but I am not really very knowledgable, and >> they are hardly good examples of how things should be done. >> >> Anyway, the first "tech talk" is on this Thursday. Perhaps we could >> schedule this as the second? >> >> Thanks, >> Sam >> >> >> >> >> On Mon, 26 Mar 2012, Harry McNally wrote: >> >>> Hi Sam >>> >>> I was speaking to James Bromburger (old guard UCCan if you don't know >>> him) the >>> other night about general move towards -using- tech rather than >>> -creating- >>> tech with thoughts about UCC activities. >>> >>> I said hardware construction was pretty limited although recent work >>> on the >>> door lock and Coke refurbishment shows people are still doing it. >>> >>> I wondered if it was worth reviewing work on robots by doing a >>> session on >>> prototyping techniques for reliability and so on. If anyone has some >>> built >>> gear that they could bring along to discuss advantages and pitfalls of >>> their >>> construction and possible alternatives. I've used wire-wrap other >>> prototyping >>> boards (and still do for some things I want to adjust and play with) >>> but there >>> are other possible construction tricks as well. Let me know if you >>> think a >>> show and tell is worthwhile; maybe stand alone or on an afternoon of a >>> ProgComp workshop. >>> >>> Just an idea to consider anyway and something that I think I can >>> contribute to >>> UCC. >>> >>> All the best >>> Harry >>> >> > From oxinabox at ucc.asn.au Tue Mar 27 12:16:17 2012 From: oxinabox at ucc.asn.au (Frames) Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2012 12:16:17 +0800 Subject: [tech] [committee] Wire wrap and other prototyping In-Reply-To: <4F711F4A.9070106@ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> References: <4F6FC942.8070709@decisions-and-designs.com.au> <4F700478.4070101@ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> <9441E459AEAF481CA6E20CA36B721557@Prometheus> <4F711F4A.9070106@ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> Message-ID: <4F713F11.8090203@ucc.asn.au> On 27/03/2012 10:00 AM, Harry wrote: > Hi Bob, Sam et al > > I like the idea of a weekend (afternoons since I cycle in the morning, > frequently both days). > It is the desire of committee to run all Tech Talks/ Workshops Thursday Evenings (on every second week from this one). The goal of this is that people know when the talks are as so we can build momentum. Frames OCM Tech Talk Organiser From harrymc at decisions-and-designs.com.au Tue Mar 27 17:07:18 2012 From: harrymc at decisions-and-designs.com.au (Harry McNally) Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2012 17:07:18 +0800 Subject: [tech] [committee] Wire wrap and other prototyping In-Reply-To: <4F713F11.8090203@ucc.asn.au> References: <4F6FC942.8070709@decisions-and-designs.com.au> <4F700478.4070101@ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> <9441E459AEAF481CA6E20CA36B721557@Prometheus> <4F711F4A.9070106@ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> <4F713F11.8090203@ucc.asn.au> Message-ID: <4F718346.50302@decisions-and-designs.com.au> On 27/03/12 12:16, Frames wrote: > On 27/03/2012 10:00 AM, Harry wrote: >> Hi Bob, Sam et al >> >> I like the idea of a weekend (afternoons since I cycle in the morning, >> frequently both days). >> > It is the desire of committee to run all Tech Talks/ Workshops > Thursday Evenings (on every second week from this one). > The goal of this is that people know when the talks are as so we can > build momentum. Rightio. Makes sense. Can do. So Thursday 12th April. Praps some Bolshie subversives can also meet on the weekend for clandestine circuit wrapping .. Prior to the revolution, have a think on possible projects we can use to apply our wrapping skillz. Harry > Frames > OCM > Tech Talk Organiser From matches at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au Fri Mar 30 20:32:23 2012 From: matches at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au (Sam Moore) Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2012 20:32:23 +0800 (WST) Subject: [tech] [committee] Wire wrap and other prototyping (fwd) Message-ID: Hi Harry, It seems that somehow your email (and tech@) got left out of these messages. We have responded though; sorry about the mix up. Committee: Harry isn't on the committee@ mailing list (probably a wise decision on his part), so we need to make sure he is included in any emails we send about this. Probably best to cc to tech@ as well. Sam Moore [SZM] Secretary 2012 ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2012 19:59:23 +0800 (WST) From: Sam Moore To: Frames Cc: committee at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au Subject: Re: [committee] Wire wrap and other prototyping Hi, Sorry about my late response to this. I think that if a weekend works better, we should hold this on a weekend. There's no sense cancelling an event because it doesn't fit into a rigid timeslot. Harry; if you could let us know what time would be most convenient for you, we would be happy to promote and otherwise help with organising things. I for one would love to attend. I don't think we should advertise events specifically as for "old" or "new" members; new members might be interested as well. I went to the Learn to Linux event for example, despite having used it for 3 years, and I learnt a few new things. Thanks, Sam Moore [SZM] Secretary 2012 On Tue, 27 Mar 2012, Frames wrote: > Hi again Harry, > Discussing at the meeting today, > we were thinking this might be more suitable as a hardware hack-a-thon event. > Rather than try to shoe horn it into the Tech Talk box. > > Then we can fit it in with other such, > and can maybe set up some tables so people can have a play with the > techniques on display. > (Maybe could even put together a simple circuit for members to build, idk) > > Having this kind of thing on weekends might allow, > older members who have the experience to actually benefit from it to come. > The argument being that younger members who are normally around on week days, > don't know enough. > > What do you (and the other listeners on committee@) think? > > (Also sorry if I came across as abrupt before.) > > Frames > OCM > From harrymc at decisions-and-designs.com.au Sat Mar 31 16:34:05 2012 From: harrymc at decisions-and-designs.com.au (Harry McNally) Date: Sat, 31 Mar 2012 16:34:05 +0800 Subject: [tech] [committee] Wire wrap and other prototyping (fwd) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4F76C17D.1070601@decisions-and-designs.com.au> Hi Sam On 30/03/12 20:32, Sam Moore wrote: > Hi Harry, > > I think that if a weekend works better, we should hold this on a > weekend. There's no sense cancelling an event because it doesn't fit > into a rigid timeslot. > > Harry; if you could let us know what time would be most convenient for > you, we would be happy to promote and otherwise help with organising > things. I for one would love to attend. I'm easy time wise but I did enjoy a slightly more casual weekend time. If I cycle then I'm pretty unresponsive until about 1pm so a Sat afternoon would be good. If you'd still like a Thursday talk we could do that and do a bit more hands on with some parts etc on the weekend. Fine either way; I was being facetious and a bit rib pokey at Frames' formality ;-P > I don't think we should advertise events specifically as for "old" or > "new" members; new members might be interested as well. I went to the > Learn to Linux event for example, despite having used it for 3 years, > and I learnt a few new things. Ok. Given "an example is worth a thousand instruction manuals" having a design problem to think through and then prototype would be useful I think. I've pondered showing how a wirewrap works will take all of 15 seconds plus a minute to practice a few wraps so why is probably a better question than how. I have a few things on the go atm and I will bring one along more to talk about the steps along the way. In some cases you may not have a firm design or you may need to shuffle some microcontroller or CPLD I/O functions as you discover things along the way. Swapping things around is fine and reasonably easy if changes don't move towards smoke and hot wires. Good for learning and all possible with wire-wrap. Alwyn found a useful NASA reference for wrapping and it has some reminders about how to lay out the wraps. http://workmanship.nasa.gov/lib/insp/2%20books/links/sections/301_Discrete%20Wiring.html How about setting up for either Thursday 12th April and/or the Saturday a few days later ? Harry