EEVblog

[@kenwolfe6093]

The tip wasn't all the way inserted into the soldering iron! That's why it wasn't getting hot and why it was flexing.

[@the_real_foamidable]

I was screaming that too.

[@Gameboygenius]

And Louis Rossmann, over at his channel, just did a long rant about a warranty claim with Hakko when the element in his soldering iron broke down. He had to explain to the Hakko rep that yes, he has a small tip, a micro pencil in fact, and that yes, the small tip was fully inserted.

[@kenwolfe6093]

I watched that earlier too!

[@EEVblog]

Nope, and Nope. It could have gone on a bit further if I really forced it, and I've tried it and it makes no difference. It still flexes and it still can't so the common mode choke pin.

[@kenwolfe6093]

It looks like the center pin isn't making proper contact from the view I had. I watch your videos on a 60" Hd non-interlaced screen. (Made for a cool knee operation view). However, obviously I wasn't there.

[@edmundfisher4951]

55 minutes of mailbag? Hell yeah!

[@EEVblog]

I'm glad someone is pleased!

[@eimparas]

+EEVblog i like long videos to

[@MattExzy]

Beats anything on TV. An hour of TV would have me committed (to an asylum, obviously).

[@arongooch]

I do enjoy watching Mailbag also ;)

[@markybyeah]

+EEVblog Yep. Longer the better

[@RoyHess666]

Thanks for the extra long (55 minutes!) Mailbag video Dave! Greetings from germany!

[@PasanKarunanayake]

Mailbag segment has biggest people attraction. And the Daves knowledge and comments make the show very interesting.....

[@josjong5522]

Elektor (then called Elektuur, in The Netherlands) got me into electronics in the eighties. Good memories.

[@jody5661]

"And you know that you have too many multimeters when they are under the mailbag thingies" Yes Dave we all have mailbag shelves that overflow

[@mechadrake]

I just have "hay, take a look at this for me or throw this in the bin if it is not very fixable" shelve, which is overflowing.

[@heathwellsNZ]

My first modem was a 300 buad jobbie in 1985... it cost me $1,700 at the time. It never detected the carrier so the process was... you dialed the BBS phone number and when it answered you whistled the carrier frequency yourself down the phone (actually pretty easy to achieve) yourself and once the other end changed to a data noise you pushed the button on the modem and you were away. I used that modem until 1987 when it was replaced by a 1200 buad hayes compatible one... Such fond memories. This modem in your mailbag is very reminiscent of the one I had...

[@adriansrealm]

I loved on the disk drive how they tried to mate a plug and pin with different pin pitches by bending the pins to fit

[@Streamtronics]

I don't know, it looked like the tip of that soldering iron wasn't properly pushed on?

[@kenwolfe6093]

Posted that earlier.

[@funcatvids9198]

At 21:43 you notice that they removed the solder mask to make a contact with the case. The problem, in my opinion, is that the case is aluminium, which does not behaves very well when in contact to gold (it creates over time the so-called purple plague, which has a low conductivity and induces also other mechanical problems).

[@sgoat1102]

Wow, Sendata 300 modem, I designed that thing about 100 years ago... The Reticon part is a filter

[@EEVblog]

You actually worked at Sendata and designed that?

[@sgoat1102]

Hi Dave, yes; the company was Electro Medical Engineering (Sendata was the modem brand), I worked there for some years, then Banksia and later NetComm

[@Rizon1985]

Why would you send Dave your soldering iron. That's just sadistic for him and you.

[@userPrehistoricman]

Much better to send a wireless anti-static wrist band.

[@nameistunbekannt7896]

Everytime I thought I misheard it but he really says "Bob's your uncle". Greetings from Germany.

[@Bob11808]

I got home from work and I have the next two days off. I was wondering if I should hide away in my lab for a day and tinker with my electronics.... Or do responsible adult things like be social or something. After watching this mailbag oh baby its tinker time! Thanks Dave! You always get my creative mind flowing! Keep up the good work. Love, A canadian who can't wait for winter. ( Winter is the best tinker time coz nobody expects you to leave the house ;)

[@Ardren]

I'm still dealing with AT codes on a GSM modem...

[@steve1978ger]

yup, AT commands are alive and refuse to die... If you enable internet via mobile network on your iPhone or Android it dials ATD*99# (or ATD#777) via UART to the mobile engine chip... the GSM standard extended on the Hayes commands quite a bit, and all the mobile engine manufacturers throw in a good measure of proprietary crap. A terrible interface. And these baseband engines sometimes take seconds to reply, just as if they were actual vintage 1200 baud modems. One Chinese manufacturer runs a complete Android on their engines. I don't know how Apple does it, but if you ever take a look at the Android code that handles this crap, I guarantee your toenails will curl up in anguish. It's all pretty horrible.

[@jaa93997]

+steve1978ger you said Hayes commands... you made feel like a relic...... curse you and your 1200 kbps Hayes compatible módem!

[@stevehawley5618]

One thing missing from the Bulgarian floppy drive is the strobe disc. This was a sticker put in place on top of the white plastic piece on the drive motor. You would run the drive under a fluorescent light and adjust the multiturn pot on the back board until the pattern held steady. A great example of practical engineering - spend a penny to make the device easily field maintainable!

[@Stefan_trekkie]

46:39 "remembering device on flexible magnet disk 5 inch" .. I had "Pravetz 16" (Правец) bit pc too. The factory is still there and it is 50 km away from me 2.8 MHz processor clock speed with 640k kb ram (upgraded).. What a time it was.. On that machine was my first steps in programming

[@rownadoherty]

Just heard your anger at ground pin not being on the end! I share this annoyance! I've had a lot of people tell me over the years that Pin 1 should always be the positive supply, but I've never really understood why. You're more likely to have multiple supply rails than grounds (well at least at the power inputs in simple products without multiple supplies and complex analog setups). I'd much rather see ground on Pin 1, and and power and supplies and signals on the remaining pins. Surely the reference (i.e. GND) should always be front-and-centre!

[@EEVblog]

Yep, ground pin 1 please.

[@Graham_Langley]

Re. Adler calculator: Looks to me like the board wasn't even roller tinned and the untinned areas are where a tape solder mask was put on it to leave the holes for the display wires clear.

[@JennyEverywhere]

YAYYYYYY! MAILBAG!!!! That NBN UPS thinger looks like the service point Verizon FIOS (one of our fiber providers in the US) installed in our basement. Then they ran coax upstairs to their set-top box which is probably the equivalent of that modem plus a TV connection. Then there's a wifi router connected with 10-base-T.

[@stonent]

Piece of trivia about the Apple II drives. The reason they made that machine gun sound when starting up was they had no head position sensor. The computer would just send it step back commands to get the head to the zero point and then the computer would keep track of the had position based upon where it had told the head to go from that point forward.

[@dhpbear2]

46:00 - I haven't hear of the Pravitz Computer. Although it looks like an Apple ][ drive!

[@bertblankenstein3738]

4:44 the post card is of the Valley of Ten Peaks. Moraine Lake, Lake Louise, Alberta. Thank you very much!

[@babybearkill1]

Working from memory, the Floppy disk is a copy of the Apple II external unit mostly used on the IIe. MC3470 head amp was a common point of failure.

[@andrewbaker4503]

The Sony "Motion eye" AKA Sony Vaio UX180P was a decent machine for field work/dispatch. I sold a ton of these to a field service company with a custom XP app to keep track of dispatches, inventory, record keeping, invoicing. At the time 2005ish there was not much around hand hold wise. These had cell modems cameras, touch screen and were fairly responsive. This single unit allowed the field agent to document images of everything before starting work, scan parts, get authorization signatures, document images after work, and then everything was automaticaly updated at dispatch. Nice units in all, but I agree the keyboards were dog snot.

[@randomviewer896]

Who is Bob and why is he my uncle.

[@JordyValentine]

oh my god that is so funny and you should feel so special for having been the first to think of it.

[@Tedybear315]

Oddly enough I have an uncle named Bob........ How did Dave know he's my uncle? We might never know....

[@toxanbi]

Luke, I am your... uncle!

[@Tedybear315]

99 problems Actually we know. Just having a bit of fun with the interesting word play and expressions.

[@harrkev]

Personally, I would not think that "ducks guts" would be a good thing, unless you happen to be a duck.

[@r2daw158]

47:08 It's soviet K155LP8 (74125 eq), and before 1990-s datecode was month and year, so it's not 11 week of 1986 but November 1986.

[@galileo_rs]

3½-inch SS 280kb and 5¼-inch HD 1200kb were introduced in 1982 so these were used in '87 quite extensivly. Even in the early '90 people used 5¼ because those were more reliable.

[@Razor2048]

For the battery powered soldering iron, the tip design is the same as that of the Weller branded ones. The solder tip is mostly hollow, with only the very tip of it being solid, this allows them to heat up quickly. There are also often 2 design styles for these types of iron. The first is to have the soldering iron heat the tip up to well beyond the required temperature in order to compensate for the tiny amount of thermal mass. The other design type is to have some form of temperature control, and a high current in order to attempt to power through whatever you are trying to solder. Both never work well, and are not designed for anything sensitive or surface mount as they often have you holding the tip to the item for a longer period of time. (e.g., I tried desoldering a micro switch with one, and while it did work, it also melted the bottom plastic of the switch due to how much longer I need to keep the iron there (weller model). The slightly more effective ones, are the ones that just run current through the item to heat it up, but those tips are often cheaply made, and break quickly.

[@seniorfrog7391]

Case on the streaming box looks like a ipod case gen 1 or 2!! Impressed with the build!

[@Mobin92]

Why is there such a long fiber inside at 3:37? To slow down the light a bit? :^)

[@murnelbabineaux105]

Stress

[@evansdm2008]

It would be interesting to overlay all the "hi, welcome to everyones..." to see if there's much variance. I reckon they'll be pitch and duration aligned!

[@bluedeath996]

I remember those days, using BBS and then when the web started and you had to wait an hour to see a picture on a web page. I was so excited when I got ISDN and then 500kb DSL. These days I can't imagine waiting for a web page to load, or not watching KZbin.

[@KentuckyRanger]

@ 15:23 I most certainly know what a cricket is! It's the little bug that squeaks...

[@PaulaXism]

Great to see you back at work Dave

[@philipcollins2691]

The 300 baud moden brings back memories from the mid 1980s as I worked for time at Sendata Pty in Armadale the products were ok but the production facilities bad - I think the building was an old bakery in Sutherland Road, however they did move to a new building later I believe.

[@JohnDoe-qx3zs]

300 bps was a lot simpler than the higher speeds. One tone for a 1 bit, another for a 0 bit, a PLL chip to tell the difference on receive, no protocol negotiations, compression or even async/sync bit saving conversion. I don't remember if it was full duplex, but it probably used different tones for the two directions (originate to answer versus the opposite).

[@0x8badf00d]

According to Wikipedia it's full duplex. It uses four different tones: one pair for transmission and another pair for receiving.

[@sprybug]

Ah yes, 300 Baud! That was my first modem on a Tandy Color Computer 3 dialing up in the late 80's onto Bulletin Board systems. Slowly went up over time to 1200 then 2400 then 9600 and finally towards the end in the 90's at 14.4k. I even had my own BBS from 1990-1996. Who remembers AT commands? I still remember a few. Of course the main one, ATDT.

[@pmgodfrey]

300 Baud is what I started with in the mid 80's. Couldn't imagine faster speeds back then -- but today, with speeds millions of times faster, 100Mbps seems slow at times. Parts shrunk in size and files got bigger.

[@jaa93997]

we have 100Gbps fiber rings and testing 400Gbps....

[@alaric_]

I have modem built by Nokia in 1981, speed is 1200/1200. Would have been the king of BBS back then :D What i have heard, these were only used between large corporations and banks. And it still works! At least the lights turn on and all the switches seem to do something.

[@pmgodfrey]

My first BBS experience was on a Tandy Model 100 with the built in 300 baud, pulse dialer modem. No graphics...just text. :/ Think it might have been a couple of years before I upgraded to a 2400 baud Hayes compatible and by the early 90's, spent close to $500 on an Intel 9600EX. Was able to finally download all the disks for Windows 3.11 from a BBS in a reasonable amount of time. :) Ran everything on the DOS version of Procomm Plus. Best modem I ever had though was the black US Robotics Courier v.everything external.

[@John_Ridley]

The K key is for constant. With it held down, if you just kept whacking + it would keep adding the last value entered. I'd like to see if that 10^x thing worked - multiply all 9's by itself and see if it starts displaying exponents.

[@dennissmithjr.5370]

That was a great teardown Dave, thanks.

[@stefanmannn]

Gotta love mailbag, cant believe you still havent got like a zillion subscribers yet, greetings from the netherlands!

[@optroncordian7863]

The floppy drive from Pravetz is relatively new - they soon after stopped manufacturing. I had two of these along with one of their latest models - the 8C computer. It was the first model that has a cyrilic letters on the keyboard, arranged by the bulgarian standards - the others were by the phonetic layout. The floppy has parallel interface, but it is very easy to connect the cable in the wrong direction and it malfunctions - the plug design was unreliable. An IC, a parallel buffer burns out, so desoldering, solder a new one and back to life. After the second time I put a socket to be easier to replace it, and that way it spent the rest of its life in my house. Ah, the years when I was young! Marin

[@kirkb4989]

Were those Pravetz an Apple II clone?? The floppy sure looks like the ones I used to assemble for "RGB Designs" who made an Apple II compatible floppy drive back in the day...

[@optroncordian7863]

+kirkb4989 They are exact copy of the Apple ones, but using russian analogues of the components.

[@dhpbear2]

13:40 - That USB light is planned to arrive sometime in the future - 15 years, perhaps ;)

[@yuppiehi]

That floppy disk drive would work on an Apple II series computer. The Pravetz system was basically an Apple II clone. The drive hardware seems to be the same Shuggart part that the Disk II used, but past that the controller board is a Pravetz design. The design is actually more complex than Steve Wozniak's design. One thing that makes this better than Apple's is that large connector that connects the board to the drive hardware. The cool thing about these drives is that they never die. Maybe a cap or an IC would blow if you plug the drive in the wrong way, but very easy to service.

[@MatthewSuffidy]

Maybe the foam wad in the fiber modem is supposed to limit vibration or shock on the optical pickup.

[@voltare2amstereo]

i have a 2xAA iron that looks almost identical to that, same light and switch type/placement same rca connections for the tips - i bought it from either jaycar or DSE about 6 years ago - gives me an idea to rebuild it though (the batteries went leaky)

[@AstAMoore]

The socketed guy in the floppy disk drive is a Soviet analog of Fairchild’s 74125, a quad 3-state buffer.

[@ffmfg]

Haha, wow, Pravetz. Yeah I know that name. One of my first books on computing is called "System programming for Pravetz-16" (it IS, because there it is, still on the shelf). Pravetz-16 was one of the IBM PC compatibles, and that book (DOS/BIOS/system programming guide) was quite popular in USSR/Russia.

[@cemx86]

Solder Doodle. It did say 24 gauge wire and higher which probably didn't mean larger in diameter but higher in gauge number, like 30 gauge. So trying to desolder that large diameter pin on that connector was bound to fail. Give it another chance?

[@EEVblog]

If it can't do that small pin on the common mode choke then it's pretty useless.

[@richardkaz2336]

As you pointed out the internal wire connecting the battery to the switch and the tip were grossly under sized. Also did the unit have a current limiting circuit on the charger controller card that wouldn't help.

[@solarcycle1]

@@EEVblog I know you found my Solderdoole to be lacking, so I just launched another USB rechargeable soldering iron on Kickstarter called Solderdoodle Plus with double the power than the previous model, solders up to 14ga wire, and lasts at constant full power for over an hour. It can even solder to a thin copper plate!

[@pgreendale9931]

Something interesting about the Floppy drive: It contains Chips from Russia, eastern Germany and and America. Despite being produced behind the iron curtain at that time those ICs are staying much closer than the countries nowadays...

[@themrenerd7384]

Yay, new mailbag video!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[@EEVblog]

I uploaded it 1 minute ago, you haven't even watched it yet, it sucks!

[@themrenerd7384]

EEVblog Well, I probably should continue watching it and see if it sucks....

[@themrenerd7384]

EEVblog I watched the video and it was a bit boring, but I really liked the Sony Vaio and the bulgarian floppy drive and the Sendata modem.

[@EEVblog]

Sony Vaio teardown is mostly shot.

[@themrenerd7384]

EEVblog Nice.

[@NathanEll]

I have that same UPS for our fibre installation from Telus (ISP/phone) here in Canada. our phone service comes over the fibre network, so the UPS is used to provide telephone service when the power cuts out. Incidentally, that means our internet remains on too, as the pots line comes right out of the fibre network adapter

[@dhpbear2]

43:10 - Simple - They didn't want the wire-holes to get filled with solder

[@GreenAppelPie]

Those old floppy drives relied on the CPU of the attached PC for nearly all the logic control and encoding/decoding, hence they were so simple.

[@Tangobaldy]

good to hear you laughing so much in this video. tangobaldy gives you a thumbs up.

[@Phoenix88.]

That AV.IO 4K looks super skookum ;)

[@petti78]

A choocher, even?

[@AMalas]

+Jakob2803 shut up and focus you faack

[@John_Ridley]

I had a 300 baud modem, and it wasn't "smart" - it had a switch for answer/originate, and one for on/off hook. I hooked a reed relay up to the on/off hook switch and drove it from the DTR line, and I used a neon bulb and photoresistor driving an NPN transistor to drag the Ring Indicator line low when the phone rang, and wrote the code in the assembly language (hand assembled, couldn't afford an assembler) driver I wrote (interrupt driven TYVM) to sense ring and pick up the phone on my BBS (which I also wrote myself in BASIC). It could dial out by pulsing the relay at 10pps. Yah tell kids that these days, and they won't believe yah.

[@Vibinator]

55 minutes! We love you dave!!

[@ogvhsarchive]

That NBN fibre to the premises box is identical to the Chorus-badged ones here in NZ...

[@leftymuller]

ATZ, ATA, ATS0=4 ATH0 .. yep love the hayes commands.. these sendata modems where actually distributed by telecom in the day to use with their austpac and discovery service dialup service. and the trailerblazer speed was CONNECT 12000 :)

[@ChipGuy]

3:30: I guess that white spungee pad is just to prevent the heatsink coming off.

[@GadgetReviewVideos]

Solder doodle, maybe just for wire? I know guys that need something like this for automotive wire or stereo installs, alarm installs. So I wonder if it for wire only? Still don't know if it will do the wire, but thought I might throw that idea out for a try?

[@picobyte]

That solderdoodle tip design is the same as the one from weller I have here.It can only solder small resistors.

[@AiOinc1]

31:35 Dang, I've been looking for one of those for a very long time... Can't fine any for a reasonable price, I'm afraid. Too bad they don't make handheld PCs like this anymore...

[@the731272]

I gotta say I'm a little disappointed you didn't do a block-diagram tear down on that Sendata modem! It would have really helped people understand whats going on there, yunno, with all the complexity of it =P

[@thekitchengunsmith6435]

i'm a at&t technician i work with fttp system all the time. that first device you reviewed is a ONT (optic network terminal) with the Delta power suply. and yes is alcatel lucent branded. we actually install the ONT outside in enclosures and from there we run a CAT6 Ethernet cable to a router. in Miami FL we are converting almost all residential costumers but the business are falling behind too i don't know why.we are only limited by the gigabit Ethernet connection and offer up to 1gbps to residential costumers. they all use SC Fiber Connectors and probably APC type (angled polished connector) that can by identified because is green and the tip is angled. hope i answered your questions.

[@rocketman221projects]

Those are some nice looking LCD modules. I with they had some with a normal RGB sync input though.

[@david486038]

Have you tried the iso-tip soldering iron. there one of the best rechargeable irons that compete with mains iron. They give off some real heat due to the Ni-Cad batteries allowing high amp discharge.

[@computergarage-australia2301]

The battery backup isnt optional if you are a TPG customer

[@tylisirn]

Are you sure the soldering iron tip made full contact with the, uh, RCA lookalike connector? It looked like there was a lot of air inside the shield on the tip.

[@khronscave]

Not impressed with the chips-to-heatsink thermal contact in that video capture thingie. How much heat do you think will get transferred through a THICK blob of goo? Some 0.5-1mm thick sil-pads would've been a way better bet there, but that costs extra, i guess.

[@lejink]

"Some 0.5-1mm thick sil-pads would've been a way better bet there, but that costs extra, i guess." Tell me how much you think pads over thermal paste would cost per unit

[@khronscave]

Tom George On the other hand, it might be safe to assume those three chips aren't identically tall, so even if the heatsink's "feet" / standoffs were machined to make proper contact with the tallest one, the others would still be some way off.

[@khronscave]

Dee Jay It's not just the cost in parts, but the labor as well. I imagine it's cheaper to just squirt some goop in the general direction of those chips in 1-2 seconds, than pick up a sil-pad, peel off the backing tape (on one or both sides) and align it at least roughly with each chip... But i might as well be wrong about that :)

[@John_Ridley]

That's what I was thinking. If the contact was good, a tiny drop of compound would have squished out to fill the entire area. that much goop just lying about in there means the contact is poor.

[@TheMidlifeIntrovert]

Hi EEVblog. Just curious to know what you do with all the retro electronics you are sent? Do you keep or chuck them? Is their a museum that collects this sort of thing?

[@wolfwaya]

if you have similar standards to here in the US it'd be: 300, 1200, 2400, 9600, then 14.4k baud. very similar to the serial port limitations of the times. At some point along the line there were US laws that limited bandwidth which set our speeds lower than what the hardware was actually capable of. when we had the 56k modems most of the world could use 64k modems, and the isdn modems capable of 64k or 128k were a separate thing altogether. I can still tell the difference between the 2 56k modem protocols (kflex/x2) just by hearing the handshake. the difference is near the end.

[@scotshabalam2432]

I have the same problem with my ISP in my area not wanting to run new line. I think what it is is they can only rip up road to run line but they don't want to spend for the road crew or mess with getting permits from the city to make holes an bury cable.

[@DAVIDGREGORYKERR]

One of those displays you showed earlier in your video should replace the broken display, I think that that portable soldering iron needs to be charged up for a couple of days before use.

[@EEVblog]

It should either work at full thermal capacity or it shouldn't work at all.

[@mrfrog8502]

oh I really want to see this modem in action now.

[@kaizen9451]

I only experienced a min 56K. I wonder if the modem featured has a tone?

[@Systemrat2008]

The original planning for the NBN was done on the back of an envelope during a flight by the then communications minister Conroy. Whilst I would love to see fiber to every house who is going to pay for that ? Hybrid fiber or high speed wireless might be better options. The other elephant in the room is Australia is on the other side of the earth to where most of the content is drawn from. Are we also going to up the capacity of the cables across the pacific or are we going to all experience the world wide wait ?

[@williefleete]

That modem is most likely just literally a modulator and demodulator, no Hayes modem commands, only enough smarts to produce the pilot/carrier tone and the 0 and 1 tones. If you throw data at it and stick an amp on the modulator out, it'll sound like a sci fi robot or something

[@EEVblog]

Yep, not Hayes rubbish here.

[@alecjahn]

I was just looking at some old computer parts on eBay and stuff from Bulgaria showed up. They even had a nice looking IBM PC clone! Nice!

[@richhyde4834]

Those who started on punch cards and then stepped up to 110 baud acoustic coupler modems on teletypes Thought those were wonderful.

[@mrnmrn1]

Good to see some vintage Hungarian tech in your hands! At 47:10 the 7407PC IC with TI07 designator is a Hungarian made Tungsram IC! :-) . Did you said Hajdu Attila as the CEO of 4dSystems? He is also Hungarian.

[@cvonkoss]

300 baud modem - I used to repair those things, along with Sendata 300/1200 baud acoustic couplers...

[@AMalas]

that first device is the same one Etisalat (our company for telecom) that was distributed to every single house in UAE!! It was like a raid when they came to replace the copper!!

[@oaxelo1]

One question. I'm curious about why they do the loop of fiber optic inside the unit?

[@ziginox]

Premade cable, I'd bet. It seems silly, though.

[@madinatore]

could be that they get longer cables cheaper

[@trashunlimited]

If you put optic cable like that your internet speed will double or triple, depending on wounds. That's why they are doing it.

[@generatortonu4645]

;-)

[@theantipope4354]

Yes, it'd be a standard module, & provide strain-relief vs having end-users pushing/pulling on the actual laser module with the big-arse heatsink on it.

[@jabelsjabels]

Oh man I know all too well the pain of pulling on those Tek tabs and having one come off in your hand!

[@kiskiller3]

yeah those small soldering irons are just toys. when i need to solder something in the field i just use a 12vdc 30w soldering iron hoocked up to a small sla battery. this works very well. great video btw. waiting for the pocket pc teardown !

[@afrog2666]

Portable soldering? Dremel versatip.. Gas driven and sturdy. Mine has been keeping up for many years, I don`t even remember when I got it :p

[@afrog2666]

June 2009 I got it, and it`s good as new :) The tip is worn but works well. I don`t get why people knock it, it`s a pretty good soldering iron for portable use..

[@DOGMA1138]

It's not a serial connector, well it is but it's for USB it has the USB pinout with +5V :)

[@arnehermann3417]

I love the Sendata - what a retro-rush! I LOVE how it has a "data/phone" switch - you know, just in case the wife had to make, like, a PHONE CALL! But somewhere in my huge collection of old tech I actually have a 300 Baud Novation CAT acoustic coupler modem. This is the one that you would put a standard Bell Labs old-school telephone handset into. You know, to connect to the W.H.O.P.P.E.R. whereupon it would respond with "Would you like to play a game?". It's looks just like this guy (and I'll try to find it and send it to ya): en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_coupler#/media/File:Acoustic_coupler_20041015_175456_1.jpg Still, I gotta tell you that the first real computer I ever used back in the mid 70's was via a 150 Baud connection from a Texas Instruments Silent 700 terminal (that is, continuous-roll thermal paper 80-col term... ugh) to an HP-2000C time-share system the school district had the foresight to install. The 150 baud connection lasted just a few months before the BLAZING speed of 300 baud was implemented! Strangely, I cannot find ANY ref's to 150baud being a thing.. and yet, unless I've already lost my long-term memory, I would swear to it! This was back in 1977 I think. Anyone care to weigh in? It might have been a phone-line bandwidth issue and not a device upper-limit thing but....

[@greaser5691]

I'd suggest that the calculator PCB was likely bare copper. Components would have been loaded, with some tape (kapton perhaps) masking the display holes and machine soldered. The displays would be hand soldered later.

[@walsayer]

The link to the 4D site is missing s (products not product). And yes thanks for your videos. BTW. Could you cover surge protection in power strips. And how to choose a surge protected power strip?

[@TMS5100]

acrylic is brittle and a poor choice for cases.

[@mitch19636]

To think I have used that model of MODEM about 31 years ago. Memories. 300 BAUD. mmmmm.

[@SO_DIGITAL]

why is there a fibre loop in the modem/router?

[@TheKsax]

Poor usb soldering iron, I have seen a good Ni-Cd portable ones, meant for similar tasks, and heating up in few seconds.

[@richardkaz2336]

I can remember using acoustic coupler modems late 70's

[@kakureru]

ug, hdmi 1.4 on that capture thing which means 4k@25/30

[@spokehedz]

When that floppy drive came out, I instantly said "That is clearly a re-branded clone of a Apple ][ drive."

[@adamrogers1044]

I started with a 300bps modem, then went to a 2400bps, then once I could afford the trailblazer which was 14,400bps from memory (possibly even 19,200bps), but it was the fastest thing ever!! BBS's flew, as long as you had the same speed at the other end :) Now we get 90Mbps on FTTP and we complain about that..

[@steubens7]

doesn't that soldering iron thing need to at least be charged first?

[@EEVblog]

If it does then it should detect that and turn off. It should be all or nothing.

[@steubens7]

+EEVblog maybe, but the only UI seems to be the LED on the metal strip

[@OsmosisHD]

Wouldn't it be fun to help that guy out a bit? Like, take it apart and see what could be improved without drastically altering his design. I think that would be interesting to watch, I would watch it at least