A Crummy Commercial

A Roz Chast cartoon in The New Yorker - the bearded prophet carries a sign which reads: "THE END OF YOUR OPERATING SYSTEM IS NEAR": source:  https://media.newyorker.com/cartoons/6a0387dc4ca8f0266f755ca3/master/w_1280,c_limit/a61789.jpg I thought of this in connection with both Android and Windows (what'll Windows 10 users do when the extra year of support on Windows 10 is up later this year ?). I just got a new Android device, it had version 15 - of course right away it wanted to update to version 16.  And I *think* I might get another version updated to 17 - and that's it. But the problem is that the apps are jealous of the latest OS version - they want it to be a certain level or that's it, no dice.  With a previous Android device support ended at Android 11.  December 2025 this broke my banking app.  So I wasn't able to deposit kit checks via the app, I had to mail them in to the bank :(   Now I can use the app again on the new Android device versi...

I just had to post this picture of Charles P. Steinmetz in his 1914 Detroit Electric car: Outside the car are Marjorie, William, Joseph Jr. and Joseph Hayden Sr. - they were Steinmetz's adoptive family.  Maybe Mom Hayden took the picture ?  :)  That car had a tiller and could be driven from the back seat.  It didn't go that fast or far but Schenectady wasn't that big a town then. Here are a few articles on the car, Steinmetz and GE: https://spectrum.ieee.org/charles-proteus-steinmetz   The original Steinmetz car was found and restored:  https://www.union.edu/news/stories/201404/Shifting-gears-A-new-home-for-Steinmetz-car A Steinmetz bio:  https://archive.org/details/steinmetzenginee00klin   The General Electric book,  Men and Volts : https://archive.org/details/menvoltsstoryofg0000john Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

I was living in Milwaukee in 1957 but I was 2 years old so that's my excuse for not remembering this: source:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5ssyM57Kjo The first World Series played in Milwaukee - 7 games and the good guys won !!   I had seen Tony Kubek on all those NBC MLB games on TV and knew he was a Yankee - he often mentioned Stengel, Berra, Mantle and so on.  But I didn't know he was from Milwaukee.  He's still alive and living in Appleton, Wisconsin. The Yankees and the Braves played another 7 game series in 1958 as well but the bad guys won that one: source:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d15WrNtLTeg I've blogged on the Braves before: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2024/06/the-bat-versus-ball.html https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2023/12/warped-perception.html https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2022/09/leaving-early.html but by the time I was old enough to be a fan the Braves were headed for Atlanta - they weren't all that good at the end in Milwaukee. Best R...

After mentioning the Video Toy Walkie Talkies yesterday: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2026/05/toy-video-walkie-talkie.html I remembered when I was a kid one of my friends had one of these: from 1965 xmas catalog, remember the need to buy the crystals and battery This was a superhet, better than the blue Knight-kit C-100 super-regen walkie talkie.  The C-555 also had a volume control and an earphone jack.  Well the problem was that I didn't have the money for either a C-555 or a C-100.  Here is the closeout price: Note that the buyer still had to buy 2 crystals and a somewhat unusual 9V batter so the actual price would inflate to this: you have to add $5 worth of crystals plus a 62 cent battery to the $8.95 sale price Even at the end of the C-555 product life it was just too much money.  Eventually my Dad bought me a pair of walkie talkies like this Midland: The ones he bought were from Olson Electronics and were white but otherwise the same.  They were 50 mW supe...

 A pair of these for $15.19 ?: And yes, that speaker grille on the front does look like the Cisco logo: source:  https://www.ebay.com/itm/306853705822 Amazing !  I saw a video on them from BigClivedotcom: source:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPn97d48Rww Also, the fact that the pound and the dollar are about the same value ?  I can remember when the pound was worth like $5 ? Ask yourself: How much different are these from cell phones, NanoVNA, Tiny SA, digital oscilloscope, trail cams or any number of other devices? But I am resisting the temptation to buy a pair of them, it's another one of those, buy it, fool with it for 15 minutes and then stick it in a box to molder away.  I don't need any more stuff like that :) BTW, maybe someone took this assignment seriously ?: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2022/11/someone-needs-to-get-busy-on-these-its.html Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

A question occurred to me: how do smoke detectors monitor for battery voltage ?  Obviously it has to be a low power consumption circuit.  The smoke detectors I have emit a short beep when the 9 volt battery is low.  I actually did this with the DC Beeper kit too (the short beep when the battery is low): http://wb9kzy.com/dcbeeper.htm Why would I care about how a smoke alarm battery low detector circuit works ?   Because I've had multiple 9V Nimh rechargeable batteries go bad on me - I *think* it's due to the fact that a cell will be damaged if the battery voltage goes below a certain point, losing the voltage from that cell and driving it in reverse.  So it would be nice to have a low power battery monitor for those 9V batteries.  I suppose a DC Beeper could be used but it's somewhat complicated, large and expensive. I looked at the datasheet for this old Motorola smoke alarm IC: https://futurlec.com/Datasheet/Motorola/MC145012.pdf It's a CMOS part wit...

In the olden days of the 20th century Morse code keys were so common and cheap that you could do stuff like this: source on page 38:  https://www.worldradiohistory.com/Archive-Radio-TV-Experimenter/Radio-TV-Experimenter-1967-08-09.pdf BTW, I don't know what they are talking about at the end: "since most keys have both a make and a break contact" - I've never seen this - keys are single-pole-single-throw AFAIN.  I think the only way I could sanction this project is using one of those cheap keys with a plastic base like this one that came with the Knight-kit LC-1 CPO: Now Digi-Key doesn't sell keys (if they ever did).  They *might* sell you Fahnestock clips: (the key relay uses two Fahnestock clips) at $3.54 each in quantity 1000 and they have to be special ordered ! Yeah, I don't think I'm going to go into the key as relay kit business anytime soon ! Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm