- 2023
- Feb
- 7
A General Electric T-125A “All American Five” Radio
This is a radio a co-worker rescued from a barn sale, and wanted to know if it could be made to work again. The T-125A was manufactured between 1958 and 1962 (or 1963, depending on who you believe.) It still has the civil defense markings on the dial, so this radio was probably one of GE’s last radios to have this marking.
The radio apparently spent the majority of it’s life in a woodshop, and it shows. While the case plastic is in excellent condition with no chips or cracks, it’s stained with various wood coloring products. Back and original cord are present and intact, although the cord is getting stiff. It, however, exhibits no cracking so it will get left as-is for now. The inside of the radio shows you where it was for most of it’s life, being coated with wood dust.
Since these are simple inside, there wasn’t any need to grab an isolation transformer or variac, just plug the thing in. The worst that would happen would be the across-the-line capacitor would pop, so…
It exhibits exactly what you’d expect. A loud 60Hz hum, so the filters are bad. That was completely expected. It’s a dual section filter consisting of a 50uF and a 30uF capacitor, so I’m simply going to get two 47uF @ 150V caps and replace it. The across-the-line cap is .047uF at 600, it will be replaced with something similar. The only other suspect item would be the coupling capacitor between the detector and the power amplifier, so it will probably get replaced as well. The grid capacitors could be eyed with suspicion, but I’m going to leave those alone unless they show problems. One is in a couplet, which would require rebuilding the device if it’s bad.
The owner simply wants it to play long enough to go “Hey, that’s cool.”
A quick cleaning with a paintbrush and some canned air got rid of most of the dirt:
So it’s ready to repair. I’ll pick up some parts at the next few hamfests I attend.
One interesting thing about this radio is the 50C5 power amp tube. It has different color writing, so I assume it’s a (genuine GE) replacement tube. It still has something interesting about it - the getter is black. I can’t say I’ve ever seen one like this without the tube being red-plated. I have to assume this radio was on for most of it’s life. Pretty cool.
Off to a show for parts. Check back later for results on this radio.
The GE T-125A schematic.
Courtesy of radiomuseum.org
https://privateemail … 729ec/1/8/NjQ/NjQvOQ
- 2023
- Jan
- 29
Addendum to the hamfest list…
As much as I’d like to make it to the Toledo show, that may not be possible this year due to the drive. I’m still going to try, however.
In the meantime, I may try to get to the show in Dover, OH at the fairgrounds. According to the information, this is their first show since 2019, so people may be itching to get out and bring their junk out for sale.
TUSCO Amateur Radio Club Hamfest
Sunday, April 22nd, 2023. 8A-1P
Tuscarawas County Fairgrounds
295 South Tuscarawas Street
Dover, OH 44622
The flyer notes to enter through the Tuscarawas Ave gate.
https://forums.qrz.com/index.php?threads/tusco-hamfest-dover-ohio-april-22-2023.848201/#post-6430335
- 2023
- Jan
- 23
StatusNet: Cleaning up the main page.
This is the second (and last?) part of my cleaning up StatusNet. This deals with removing some of the main page identifiers. While this isn’t hardening, it obscures the doorway just a bit, and hopefully drive-bys will just look at it as a not very worthwhile target. It also removes links to things that aren’t what they were when the service started, so there’s less chance for a user to click on something that may now lead to a malicious site.
This does remove some of the boilerplate regarding the GNU license status, among other things. While I don’t like to do this, StatusNet is so old that there are probably no new installs happening, as it won’t run on modern PHP. If you’re running this commercially, you may be obligated to leave those license notifications alone, so use your own judgement.
***
Here’s the original assets, and what we’re going to change:
The first thing I like to do is get rid of the dead link to status.net, and the link to wikipedia. The first isn’t necessary because status.net is just a garbage page full of SEO grabber links, and the second both because I don’t like some of Wikipedia’s practices and you hopefully know what microblogging is now. The term itself has passed into the legend of Web 1.0, so it’s not even a relevant term these days.
(I assume you’re comfortable with your webserver and know where things are. No warranties are expressed or implied, it’s up to you to make sure you’re doing this right.)
Start by making a copy of websiteroot/actions/public.php, and then open the original for editing. (Always back up your original, just in case!). Move down to the very bottom of the file. You’ll see this:
And when we’re done, it will look something like this:
To change the header box in question, edit the ’showAnonymousMessage’ function to say whatever it is you want. Use this as a guide, essentially you’re getting rid of all of the links and creating a static header that shows regardless of the other options chosen for the site. That’s why it’s duplicated in the ‘if’ block.
Since the site in question is TheDoghouse, %%site.name%% will show that, followed by ‘Woof!’ - you don’t have to use the variable here, and you can put anything you want in the block as long as it can be printed. I chose to use a simple message that will show “This is TheDoghouse. Woof!” on the main screen where the description about StatusNet and the service description lived. The variable originally used was left intact for this step.
The next edit is just to reduce clutter. In the block directly above the one we just edited is the sidebar links. I edit those out so, while they still are there, the function to actually print them on the screen is commented out with #. This isn’t necessary and doesn’t really offer anything, it’s just something I like to do. The base skin for statusnet will show the same size box, but other skins will reduce the amount of space used based on how much or little you comment out.
Here’s what it looks like by default:
This gets rid of the “Popular”, “Groups”, and “Featured” links on the main page. While they are still available, to me and my private site it’s just unusued cruft. So away they go. I didn’t delete them in case I want to re-implement them, the function block simply doesn’t show what has been placed in the variables. Similarly with the site name, I left the if/else case alone so later edits will be less painful if certain functions need to be restored. But that’s why you made the copy, right? You did make a copy, right?
But there’s nothing preventing you from putting whatever you want there. Just replace the variable with whatever you like and let the show function print it for you. (I suggest you check out some basic php stuff before going crazy!)
Save your edits, and check that permissions and owner of public.php are correct. Since you created a copy, it’s probably now root, so change that back to whatever your webserver uses as it’s username. load your site up, and you should see your changes.
The next, last, and other thing I like to get rid of is the footer, and all of it’s links. This shows up on every page regardless, even the main page. While again, this does contain license information, many of the links are dead and the version number of the service is present. As before, there are probably no new installs happening, so having this information isn’t terribly useful. It exposes things that could make it (ever-so-slightly) easier to probe for entry, so it goes away. Again - this isn’t hardening, it’s simply covering up the door so the curious passer-by hopefully doesn’t see it. The microblogging term stays here, but be careful of your license requirements.
For this, navigate to websiteroot/lib/action.php. Make a copy, and edit the original. Navigate to showStatusNetLicense, and you’ll see this:
What gets shown is dependent on if you have the “Brought By” line filled out in your config. But I don’t care about that, as before I’ve left the if/else cases alone so they can be reverted easier, if necessary. All of the “runs the” information is gone, as is the license, and the service shows the same information regardless of config options.
The last thing I like to get rid of is the set of links present at the bottom of every page. My site is private, so some of those are not useful. The rest are dead links, and like the now defunct status.net page, may lead to something unsavory. Those are fairly easy to get rid of, navigate to the showSecondaryNav function in action.php and simply comment out the block.
Here’s the original:
And my edits:
Everything is commented out except the first few and last few lines, which give the function something to do when called. Other than that, everything else is ignored.
Save your edits, make sure permissions are correct, and check your site.
That’s it. Your main page now does not show much information about what this is, other than StatusNet.
Troubleshooting: If you’re having some issues where you are now getting a 500 error, check your permissions. That’s probably going to be the main issue here. Also check that you’ve used the correct syntax in the code, variables are always enclosed with %% %% and lines must end with a semicolon; Beyond that, copy your original file over the edits and try again. I found out by trial and error, so don’t be afraid to play with stuff even if you don’t understand 100% of what it’s doing.
There are a few other things you can do inside the service to remove unwanted things like maps (that don’t work,) but I’ll cover those in a separate article.
- 2023
- Jan
- 8
My 2023 Hamfest list. See you there!
2022 was kind of a moderate year in regards to the hamfests I was able to attend. While it started off strong, weather and a bad cold given to me by a sick building and sicker co-worker prevented me from going to anything later in the year. This year, I plan on making up for it with a few new shows and a bunch of regulars - as if I need to bring home more junk.
I only have a few devices in my wish list this year, and those are mostly “Get them while you can, because they are getting scarce” devices, including a decent tube tester as well as a couple of particular types of radio.
The list of what I’m planning to attend follows, and if you’re interested in this stuff at all, go check them out. Other than the Toledo show, I’ve been to all of them in the past and can give them a Grade-A recommendation. They may not be as big as Dayton, but there’s always good stuff to be found.
Some of these announce later in the year, check their links in April or so.
Sunday, March 19th - TMRA Hamfest, 8A-2P.
30335 Oregon Road, Perrysburg, OH 43551
http://www.tmrahamradio.org/hamfest.php
Saturday, April 15th - Cuyahoga Falls Amateur Radio Club, 8A-1P.
48 E. Bath Road, Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio 44221
http://www.w8vpv.org/hamfest.php
Friday, May 19th thru Sunday, May 21st - Dayton Hamvention
120 Fairground Rd, Xenia, OH 45385
https://hamvention.org/
Date TBA, Usually a couple weeks after Dayton - Breezeshooter’s Hamfest
1127 New Castle Rd, Prospect, PA 16052
https://breezeshooters.org/ns/hamfest/
(This one was cancelled last year for unknown reasons.)
Date TBA, Usually in mid-August - Columbus Hamfest
1801 Gateway Cir, Grove City, OH 43123
https://aladdinshrine.org/hamfest/
Date TBA, Usually in mid-September - Findlay Hamfest
1017 East Sandusky Street, Findlay, OH 45839
http://www.arrl.org/ … ts/findlay-hamfest-9
Date TBA, usually right after Thanksgiving - Fort Wayne Hamfest
4000 Parnell Ave, Fort Wayne, IN 46805
http://www.acarts.com/hfmain.htm
- 2023
- Jan
- 7
The TechTran 980 standalone 5 1/4” disk drive.
So what is this thing?
One of the devices I’ve had kicking around the shop for years are these TechTran 900 series standalone disk drives. These were the main storage medium for a large test platform at a former employer. They would provide commands to a computerized telco switching frame in the form of responses to a “Read next record” command. When the project finally ended, I asked the project engineer for the drive. Turns out there were 4 units, with manuals and service information.
So, it’s a disk drive?
These have two modes. First is a “File” mode, which works like you’d expect from a mass storage device. You create a file, write to it, then read it back. It also has a “Record” mode - instead of writing files with a directory, these store records, much like a punch card would store a piece of information that may or may not be part of something larger. You would write and read records - bits of text - in sequential order.
The unit does this via a RS-232C interface, using text commands. The device can operate in standalone or passthru mode, and has all the normal serial settings you’d expect - except everything is done via switches that control what is literally a box full of 74LS chips.
How does it work?
Because the device was expected to be continually available while in operation, the manufacturer set these so the disk spins at all times, and the device loads the head on to the media whenever an operation is requested. This has the effect of only requiring the time to drop the head and wait for the record of interest to arrive at the head before the operation is completed. Normally, a drive would spin up, perhaps drop the head on the disk after it was spinning, seek the correct record in the directory, and then move to read it. These spent the majority of their life reading sequences, while the time savings was small it added up to all the years the unit was in operation. File operations, of course, required seeking the record in a directory, but there was still a small time savings in not having to spin the drive up each time.
This made for a very noisy device, as the fan was spinning, the drive was spinning, and the head was being loaded on and off the media surface over and over (with an accompanying clunk of the head load solenoid) each time. Not something you’d want in a quiet space, but the noise of the test frames generally overrode any noise this thing made.
Really?
Kind of. I’m digging into the service manual more because it has a theory of operation. It looks like the record mode does create “files,” but not quite in the same way as file mode. More on that as I understand it.
I have to say I’m somewhat surprised that these things still come up. I figured the belts would have long turned to goo at this point, and the fact they’ve been sitting since about 2000 probably hasn’t done them any good either. They had a long life, being put into operation in the early 1980s and running up to early 2000 or so. But spin up they did, attesting to the fact they were well engineered (aka cost a lot of 1980 dollars) and designed to last for a long time.
The one in the pictures, a Model 980, is going to be the subject of an attempt to make it talk to something modern, which shouldn’t be that difficult as it speaks serial. Set your baud rate to 1200 and stand by for further posts in this series.
Deleted the manuals for now, will package them up again soon!
- 2022
- Dec
- 29
It’s not a job requisition, it’s just spam.
It’s been a while since I’ve made a post. The year end is always a busy time, both with people dragging colds into work and giving them to everyone to several holidays taking up time for preparation and celebration.
I wanted to step slightly aside and make a post about an experience I’m having with a contract recruiter:
There’s a local outpost of a larger global entity that has had a position open since about April of 2022 (It’s now the end of December, 2022.) This is a very senior level position, the person will be a single point of contact for a product line within the United States. Product manager, technician, repair, service, and support. Everything from A-Z. Granted, it’s not a very active product line, but it’s still a fairly comprehensive position where your name is on the paperwork as having said it works.
The reason it’s still open is the company (understandably) wants a laundry list of skills because of the nature of the position - but they aren’t paying enough to match that needed skill list. The pay rate has risen slightly since the position opened, about $2/hour, but it’s still probably 2/3 of what it really needs to be. I’ve sent a couple people their way, one declined the interview saying it wasn’t enough for the requirements posted, the other took the interview and said “It’s too much grief for not enough pay,” and ended up taking a non-managerial PMEL position that will net him about 25% more than this position pays.
Personally, I took a look at it in April when a recruiter I’d dealt with before asked if I was interested in it. I did some investigation, but immediately rejected it due to the pay rate. It was slightly higher than what I was making at the time (about 3%) but starting over as a contractor for not much more money didn’t appeal to me at the time, and still doesn’t. I turned it down in April.
It needs to be pointed out that they were trying to hire in April because the person in the job was either retiring or moving to a new division - I was never really clear on that. I just knew that they had limited run-time with the person currently in the job, and they wanted to get someone in there while this person was still available to train the incoming person. That didn’t happen, the person moved on, and there’s no one really there to be the “product guy.”
So that’s all well and good, right?
Sometime in May, the Indians started calling (or in this case, e-mailing, because I don’t publish a phone number and do not plan on doing so.) A half-dozen recruiting houses have called, all with the same job description and the same pay rate. They don’t take no for an answer, instead replying “How much do you need?” only to tell you that they are only authorized to offer the original rate in the posting. I would get perhaps 5-6 contacts per company before they moved on.
One in particular, however, has simply not let up. A company called Viva-IT (www.viva-it.com) is a company that claims to be based in a suite in Illinois, but is actually just a front for one of the many Indian recruiting houses. They’re calling you from Chennai, not Illinois, as evidenced by their business profile. Since the beginning of December, they’ve contact me at least 21 times, as evidenced by the “I’m not interested, remove me from your mailing list” replies I sent. I’m pretty sure there are more, but I archived my mail fairly regularly and don’t have messages before December.
21 times since December 1. Some days, it’s the same person sending me multiple contacts a day. What part of no don’t you understand? This doesn’t count the other companies that emailed me about this same job.
The last contact was really good. Backstory: I use a different reply-from address for contacts, as I have individual aliases set up for each job board. If I get an email from “myname-monster@mydomain.com” I know you found my resume on monster.com - telling me you found it on Indeed will result in an immediate discard. This recruiter both indicated that they’d called me and left a voicemail (to what number? None are published.) and used the generic reply address, indicating that he had found this address on a profile “on the job boards” and was emailing me about the requisition. This was someone that had contacted me multiple times in the past, and I’m not sorry to say I called him out on this behavior, calling him a liar and an idiot. I didn’t receive a reply of course, and none was expected. Amusingly enough, yet another Indian contract house has started emailing me about this job.
That was really the last straw. I found the hiring company’s contact email and sent them a message asking if they can do something about this particular recruiter and their constant badgering.
I received a reply - a generic reply from someone indicating that if I was interested in a career with the company to check some web page.
My reply was to indicate that this wasn’t about a career, it was about one of their recruiters being a complete ass, and how it reflects badly on them. This garnered a real response from someone, who cc’d me on a request to the company’s HR group, asking if they could investigate this.
HR simply closed it the next day as spam. My only reply was to indicate that I was disappointed that they are apparently ok with recruiters representing them in this manner. No reply here, and none is expected. A person on the inside indicated that they were not surprised either, and gave me some personal anecdotes about their own experiences with the company’s HR people.
I suppose there’s not really a point here - it’s more of a rant. But I have to wonder, does this recruiter even have a contract to represent the hiring company? (Probably not, if experience is any teacher.) Are they really ok with places like this representing them? And even if I did apply, would I even get my resume in front of the hiring manager (again, probably not from word on the inside.)
Recruiters like this are what give the industry as a whole a bad name. Quite possibly one of the many small reasons as to why companies can’t find people to fill these jobs - we’re burnt out from getting dozens of contacts from junk companies that we miss the one that may be real, or don’t care anymore.
It’s not a job requisition at this point - it’s just spam.
- 2022
- Nov
- 17
Fort Wayne Hamfest this weekend.
The 50th annual Fort Wayne Hamfest is happening this weekend. This is an excellent show, and is indoors - no parking lot to get rained (snowed?) out. See you there!
Where:
Fort Wayne Hamfest
Allen County War Memorial Coliseum
4000 Parnell Ave
Fort Wayne, IN 46805
When:
November 19 and 20, 2022
9AM-4PM
***
Unfortunately, one of my co-workers generously gave me a cold, which was amplified by working in a dirty, mold-filled building. I’m sorry I didn’t get to attend this one, but it’s on my list for next year.
- 2022
- Nov
- 2
The comments are locked.
I had left the comments open just in case, but spammers found it - as spammers do. Comments on this blog are now locked. If do you need to contact me for some reason, I suggest you head back to the homepage and investigate some of the other links. There is an address you can use. I will check this email address as time allows, do not expect a fast reply.
Use the LinkedIn link, or the Mastodon link if you’d like to contact me - I know that’s inconvenient for some, but with email and comment sections being nothing more than spammer playgrounds, it’s the best way.
The comment link at the bottom of each entry will no longer open the comment dialog if clicked. It will either open the entry on it’s own page, or will take you to the top of an open entry page.
- 2022
- Oct
- 17
Deleting bad files in Windows
Windows can be quite the turd at times. For example, while it enforces a 255 character limit on a file (both path and name,) it will still happily allow programs like Chrome to save filenames that can be overly long, or even full of invalid characters. You’re left with a file that you can’t delete - or even rename - because it’s invalid to Windows.
The easiest way around this, assuming you have admin access to the computer in question, is to install 7zip.
7zip is a cross-platform archiver that supports it’s own native format, supports archive/unarchive of a number of other formats, and can unarchive just about anything under the sun. (Sorry CP/M’ers, I think SQ is too old for even this program to handle!)
Download 7zip from it’s homepage, 7-zip.org
Once you install 7zip, open the file manager interface that comes with the program and navigate to your bad file. You can delete it right from the interface, as it ignores standard windows conventions and does what it’s instructed - which is what it should do!
I use 7zip for pretty much all archiving purposes, even letting it overwrite the native zipper in Windows. It’s just that useful.
- 2022
- Oct
- 11
StatusNet: Sending email instead of SMS with a new post?
What are you talking about?
If you’ve been around for a while, you’ll remember the birth of Twitter and the open-source clones that came out shortly after. While those clones are still useful, the Internet has become weaponized and services that worked because we had more trust now no longer work as intended.
This article is about StatusNet and it’s ability to send a SMS whenever someone posts a status to a timeline you follow. It uses the email gateway provided by most carriers to deliver a message to you - that is, it simply sends an email to “yourphonenumber@yourphonecompany.com.” In theory, anyway. These gateways now have a very suspicious eye when receiving messages containing links or other words that hurt the carrier’s feelings. They’re all but useless these days, and part of that is due to the ease at which spam can be delivered to your phone.
StatusNet in itself still does the same thing it did back when the last releases were made. We’re still using it for this reason, and because it’s visually more appealing than the lotsawhitespace Gnu Social that followed. It’s probably not something that you should expose to the outside world unless it’s on a low value server, however, as it is over 10 years old.
Yeah, so?
As mentioned, StatusNet can send an SMS any time your timeline is poked. However, this is just an email. Why not modify that so instead of sending an SMS instantly after a status is posted, it sends you an email instead?
That’s perfectly doable, and it’s all but transparent to the StatusNet instance.
This involves poking around in and editing your StatusNet database. In particular, we’re interested in the sms_carrier table. I’m using phpmyadmin because it’s easy to make these changes, but you’re free to use what tool you like. I assume you installed the instance yourself - if not, this may not make sense to you. I’m not going to talk about how and where databases and other files are in this post - if you’re not sure where those are then this isn’t going to be of any use to you.
Open your database by selecting whatever you called it, then navigate to the sms_carrier table. We’re going to make two changes for each of the entries we want to add to our instance. Pick the row you want to edit, and click “Edit.” You’ll be on the screen with all of the things you can change about this entry. (You can also do inline edit, but I like to bring up the full edit screen.)
There are two ways you can do this. Either put a complete email address in as an entry, or use the built-in variable and patterns to allow multiple users with the same domain to enter addresses.
If you want to simply add a complete email address:
The first thing we want to do is give it a useful name: In the “name” field, under the “Value” column (last one) delete what’s there and type something that is meaningful to you. Next, in “email_pattern,” delete what’s in the “Value” column and type your complete email address. Do not modify any other value or function. When you’re happy with the changes, hit “Go” to save it. The StatusNet code will happily ignore the “number” you gave it and send to the email address provided. If something was messed up, hit the “Reset” button.
If you’re running a multi-user instance, I don’t suggest doing this. Any person using the instance can select your email. They can’t verify it because they don’t have access to it, but they can still select it and try to attach it to their account. A better method is to use the patterns provided by the original programming.
If you want to use the patterns:
You still want to give it a useful name, and for this example we’ll use “gmail.” Delete what’s in the “name” field under the “Value” column and type “gmail.” In the “email_pattern” field, we need to make sure we give it the proper information. You’ll see something like “%s@phonecompany.com” - replace the “phonecompany.com” with “gmail.com” - you should have “%s@gmail.com.” This will allow StatusNet to fill in the “number” you give it later. Hit “Go” and save your changes, or “Reset” to clear and start over.
With both of these methods, make sure all of your changes are fully saved, and exit the tool you are using. Now we’ll go to the StatusNet instance in question and log in.
How do I get that email?
When you are logged in, click Connect at the top. You’ll get a screen showing your connected applications, of which you probably don’t have any. There will be two options to the side, SMS and Connections. Click SMS.
You have two options here, depending on how you set up your database changes:
You added a complete address.
pick the name you gave the address in the “Mobile Carrier” dropdown menu, type anything you want in the “SMS phone number” box (it doesn’t care because we deleted that variable) and hit “Add.” It will process for a bit, then you’ll end up at the screen asking for your confirmation code.
You added a domain only.
In this case, chose the domain you want in the “Mobile Carrier” dropdown menu and type the username portion of your address in the “SMS phone number” box. For example, if your address is “mygmailaddress@gmail.com,” pick “gmail” (assuming you called it that,) and type “mygmailaddress” in the phone number box. Hit add, and you’ll end up at the screen asking for your confirmation code.
If you did everything correctly, you’ll have an email waiting for you with a confirmation code in it. Paste that in the box, hit “Confirm,” and you’re done. Now you can go back to Connect > SMS and select the “Send me notices” checkbox under “SMS Preferences” to receive a notification every time someone posts to you or on your timeline.
If you don’t receive an email, check that your spam filter hasn’t trapped it due to the name or sender. It’s kind of unusual to get an email for an SMS confirmation, so mail systems may say “No.”
Both of these steps assume you have an email sender set up on your machine, it’s configured properly, the relay or service you’re using is configured properly, and your receiving email isn’t overly aggressive about looking for spam. If not, this isn’t going to work (obviously!)
It works?
So now, whenever someone posts a message that is on a timeline you’re following, you should get an email notification.
It works! There’s still a chance that your email provider can trap the message as spam, especially if there are links that look spammy. Whitelist the email these are being sent from, and you shouldn’t have any problems.
StatusNet itself is getting pretty old, and there aren’t many instances left out there. If you’re like me, and have a couple of internal systems under your control, this can restore some of the functionality lost over the past 10 years.
This is part 1 of a 2 part series about bringing StatusNet a little bit into the modern era. The next and final article will be about removing some of the identifying information to provide a little less of an attack surface should someone happen to run across your instance.
Now tell the little blue bird to get lost. We have some statuses to post!