Timex Sinclair 1000 and Atari 1200xl

I would have turned these two on and tested them, but there's a problem with the video setup. Anyways, here are the two of them:

Hazeltine 1510

Bumped into this recently, thought it might be interesting to post about all the terminals we have. It's a Hazeltine 1510 terminal, one of the many old terminals which reside here.
I think an old terminal such as this would make a great frontend to a project like a robot or a cluster.

Cop Equipment

About a week back we got a shipping pallet of cop equipment. There are hardened computers and laptops, flat panel screens, and data modems.

Panasonic CF-25: Soon to run Damn Small Linux

Pallet with mini-computers and boxes:


Rugged flatpanel:

Data Modem:
There was a box with about 30 of so of these nifty little boxes. They are Sierra Wireless 775 modems, capable of transmitting/receiving data over a cellular data network (I forget which one at the moment), and can pick up gps. They do require a sim card to send data, but at the very least, they will still function nicely as gps receivers.

TRS-80 Model III

This is a functioning TRS-80 Model III. It has 48k ram, a 2.03MHZ processor, and built in support for basic. In this picture, it is running a basic program. The only (but not so minor) problem with this unit is the fact that there is graffiti written in sharpie on the monitor.

IBM PCjr

This is an IBM PCjr. It has three ROM cartridges, one of them being BASIC. It also has the DOS boot disk. Unfortunately, I couldn't find an appropriate power cord to plug it in with, so I was unable to test the unit.

Electric Motorbike Conversion

Old Bike Frame

+

Forklift Motor

=

Vroom!

...it will probably be more of an electric-sounding whine. Anyways, the motorbike was stripped of its engine, gas tank, transmission, and the rest of its innards. The forklift motor was pulled out of a dead forklift. A basic prototype using a different bike frame and motor was demonstrated at the last Maker Faire. When this thing is finished, it will make for one hell of a stealth bike, and will eventually make use of those heatsinked mosfets in the UPS's as explained a couple posts back. Here is a pic of the older version, which is using a different frame and motor:

Water Electrolysis Machine

This interesting box, manufactured by Stan Rubinstein Associates, is a gas generator designed for welding. It takes in standard wall current, water, boric acid, and spits out two pipes of hydrogen and oxygen gas to weld with. Many possible applications. With a compressor, for example, the hydrogen gas could be stored in a high-pressure tank for use in a hydrogen car.

Clustering Projects

Over the years, there has always been some sort of cluster development or another going on. At the moment, we are experimenting with Instant-Grid.Above: a stack of relativly fast pentium 4 nodes.
Above: the master node under the table and its monitor.
Below: a close-up of the master running Instant-Grid.
Before experimenting with Instant-Grid, we used a custom build of Parallelknoppix. When using it, at least three big/notable povray rendering clusters were made (probably more which I can't remember.) But Instant-Grid has a lot more features, and although its documentation is half in German, it is remerkably easy to use.

Computer Case Mod

There was an old dead TV lying around, and it was decided to turn it into a computer. Here are the preliminary results:
[front view] - The screen reflection is of my eeepc which I used to take this pic. The pictures are too dark because of the poor lighting conditions in the warehouse, and I was using the eeepc's built in camera instead of the regular camera.


[back view]

Note I described it with the adjective "preliminary." The power supply has not yet been mounted, and several other parts have yet to be mounted properly. Also, there's a static electricity buildup problem resulting from the lack of a proper ground in the case, which stops the screen from operationg properly.

UPS's, MOSFETS, PWM and more!

This post will discuss an idea related to the circuitry inside UPS's and a possible application. Now I don't take credit for this idea, I am posting it here to get input on whether you/readers think it is feasible, or have any suggestions on its implementation.This is a picture of the circuit board of a UPS. There are many dead UPS's lying around the ACCRC.
This is a closeup of a bunch of the heatsink, which cools off a group of mosfets wired in parallel, the main current shifter. Each one of these mosfets, an irf3710, is capable of dissipating 50 watts. (according to the irf3710 datasheet) So together, they can supply 1000 watts, easily enough for a powerful motor.

The idea is to take these mosfets, and use them as the basis for a scalable high-wattage motor controller. When I was building a robot (more on that in a later post), the hardest part of the initial hardware design was getting a motor controller circuit which could put out suitable current to drive the motors. Motor controllers are expensive, and the lack of them is the main restricting factor of a lot of the electric vehicle/robot work that goes on here. Anyways, the mosfets would be wired in parallel, allowing for scalability. They would take input from a computer or a microcontroller which puts out PWM, like the arduino board, or the circuit based off a parallel port, as described at http://lukecole.name/parallelport_pwm_driver.php.

Combined with easy pwm circuitry, these mosfet arrays will make it a heck of a lot easier and cheaper to conduct robotic and electric vehicle research. Any questions/suggestions?