A Crummy Commercial

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

Charlie's Angels was a show that probably everyone watched at least once but might not want to admit it.  Kate Jackson was my favorite :) I remember them like this: But I kinda wish I hadn't seen this: But consider the fact that Kate Jackson is 77, Jaclyn Smith is 80 and Cheryl Ladd is 74.  They've got nothing to apologize for. Also, don't want to forget Farrah Fawcett-Majors (who would have been 79 now):   as Roger Ebert liked to say, the girl with the great . . . TEETH  :) BTW, this is why I never attend any school reunions, I remember those people as they were: young and slim and strong - with lots of plans and ideas for the future. Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

Here is a really cool video: source:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5WJUFvKzWk Go back 100 years => movies were still silent.  This one does have sound but no narration although it does have notes on the process (sorta like title cards in silent movies) - turn on CC to see them. This fellow is the silent screen version of Roy Underhill from PBS :) update 2026-05-12:  forgot their site:   https://trampverkstan.se/     Use some form of translation unless you've recently brushed up on your Swedish !  This video also reminds me of G5BD who has been mentioned before: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2024/05/saw-gil-cartoon-in-qst.html also see:  http://wb9kzy.com/g5bd.htm Can you say: Foot Mangle ?  :) Here's another G5BD page with a 1928 QSL mentioning foot powered: https://hamgallery.com/qsl/country/England/g5bd.htm And of course our Glen Gates Gang Field Day natural power efforts (the armstrong method was used rather than foot power): the lash...

This is really clever: https://spectrum.ieee.org/inchfab They don't mention packaging or for that matter, test.  But the concept of smaller wafers implying smaller equipment never occurred to me.  The IC fab machines that ASML makes are handling wafers which are at least 300 mm (think of something the size of an LP record).  Inchfab is using 100 mm wafers (smaller than a DVD). I remember one of the test engineers at GTE talking about when he worked at Teletype in Skokie, IL.  He mentioned that they had a 2 inch wafer fab there which really impressed me - I never knew that there were semiconductor fabs in the Chicago area.  The later Teletypes (like the model 43 ?) must have used these chips.  Think of a keyboard with a printer: I also recall him saying that Teletype worked on a 10-30 process.  Once they got to 10% yield they went into production, when they reached 30% yield it was time to advance to a newer design.  And sometimes they'd come back ...