Australian Electronics Industry Doco - Trailer

[David L. Jones]

Karl Von Moller has finished the trailer for his awesome Australian
electronics industry documentary:

I'll keep everyone informed when the full version is available.

Dave.

 

[JD]

Karl Von Moller has finished the trailer for his awesome Australian
electronics industry documentary:

I'll keep everyone informed when the full version is available.

Dave.

Excellent!

VK5JE

 

[Phil Allison]

"David L. Jones"

Karl Von Moller has finished the trailer for his awesome Australian
electronics industry documentary:

** Looks bloody fantastic - wot a hoot!!

My old pal Doug Ford ( ex Jands Electronics and Rode mics) is in it too.

Be very pleased if anyone can supply his current email addy.



..... Phil

 

[Ross Herbert]

:Karl Von Moller has finished the trailer for his awesome Australian
:electronics industry documentary:
:

:
:I'll keep everyone informed when the full version is available.
:
ave.


Thanks for the update and the video link Dave. It is looking like it will be an
excellent doco if the trailer is anything to go by - can't wait.

 

[David L. Jones]

:Karl Von Moller has finished the trailer for his awesome Australian
:electronics industry documentary:
:

:
:I'll keep everyone informed when the full version is available.
:
ave.


Thanks for the update and the video link Dave. It is looking like it
will be an excellent doco if the trailer is anything to go by - can't
wait.

Yes, I'm sure it will be brilliant, as Karl is a world class director
and filmmaker (and an electronics hobbyist to boot). It will become an
historically important doco, no doubt.

Karl has a 2 hour cut already done and is working on a shorter cut as
well, plus another name to add to the list.

BTW, none of us were told any of the questions beforehand, so all the
responses are off-the-cuff stuff. In fact we (and even Karl) weren't
entirely sure of the direction of the doco when it was filmed, so it
will be interesting to see the finished product.

Dave.

 

[Swanny]

Karl Von Moller has finished the trailer for his awesome Australian
electronics industry documentary:

I'll keep everyone informed when the full version is available.

Dave.

What a great idea, and looks really well done. Look forward to seeing
the full feature.

 

[Swanny]

Yes, I'm sure it will be brilliant, as Karl is a world class director
and filmmaker (and an electronics hobbyist to boot). It will become an
historically important doco, no doubt.

Karl has a 2 hour cut already done and is working on a shorter cut as
well, plus another name to add to the list.

BTW, none of us were told any of the questions beforehand, so all the
responses are off-the-cuff stuff. In fact we (and even Karl) weren't
entirely sure of the direction of the doco when it was filmed, so it
will be interesting to see the finished product.

Dave.

Hopefully AWA is featured in there, as that has to be a complete rise
and fall story of Australian Electronics, not to mention some
electronics pioneers who worked there half a century ago.

 

[Tom]

On 7/10/2010 2:11 PM, David L. Jones wrote:
....

Karl has a 2 hour cut already done and is working on a shorter cut as
well, plus another name to add to the list.

I'm sure many (including myself) will be happy to spend 2+ hours watching it, we don't need shortcuts!

Tom

 

[terryc]

Hopefully AWA is featured in there, as that has to be a complete rise
and fall story of Australian Electronics, not to mention some
electronics pioneers who worked there half a century ago.

I had the impression that it was based around the "electronics magazines
of the 70/80's rather than industrial electronics.

 

[Nial Stewart]

Karl Von Moller has finished the trailer for his awesome Australian

electronics industry documentary:

I'll keep everyone informed when the full version is available.

Thanks for the link Dave, that's almost directly parallels the situation
here in Scotland (and the rest of the UK).

Nial

 

[Swanny]

I had the impression that it was based around the "electronics magazines
of the 70/80's rather than industrial electronics.

So it should be 'the state of hobby electronics in Australia' rather
than the 'electronics industry'?

Australia had a thriving electronics industry in the middle of last
century, we even had our own chip fab facility in the 80's and 90's.
Some seriously cool skunkworks activities went on as well.

 

[David L. Jones]

Hopefully AWA is featured in there, as that has to be a complete rise
and fall story of Australian Electronics, not to mention some
electronics pioneers who worked there half a century ago.

It looks like there might be some AWA stuff in it.
If anyone has any specific questions about the rise and fall of AWA they
want potentially included in the doco, please send them to me direct:
eevblog AT gmail DOT com

Thanks
Dave.

 

[David L. Jones]

So it should be 'the state of hobby electronics in Australia' rather
than the 'electronics industry'?

Australia had a thriving electronics industry in the middle of last
century, we even had our own chip fab facility in the 80's and 90's.

There is still a chip fab here in Sydney, it's changed hands a few times
now.

Dave.

 

[Swanny]

There was an interview years ago in The Australian Newspaper with the
main culprit responsible for getting AWA in debt: He was employed by
AWA to make forex trades to try and boost their cash reserves. According
to his account of things, he was assigned a secretary to help mind the
phones/faxes etc. As an older person than he was, she basically called
him a snotty nosed brat and spent all day filing her nails and making
phone calls as he tried to track everything on post-it notes and it all
came undone. Of course my recollection may be faulty so the usual dis-
claimers apply.

Page 8-9 of this document has a summary:
http://www.mulss.com/sts-2009s2/corporations/Corporations Law - Tute 5.doc

I rescued several large scrapbooks of AWA press clippings from many
decades that was kept up in the CEO's office and was skipped during the
great sell-off in the late 90's. Makes for an interesting historical read.

Japanese efficiency and mass production really tipped the scales away
from AWA's favour, since they had a lot invested in consumer electronics
in the 60's and 70's. Who didn't use an old AWA P1 black-and-white TV
modified as a computer monitor in the 70's?

 

[terryc]

Australia had a thriving electronics industry in the middle of last
century, we even had our own chip fab facility in the 80's and 90's.
Some seriously cool skunkworks activities went on as well.

As I found out in the 90's. Would have been wonderful if someone had
mentioned this in the 70's.

 

[terryc]

There was an interview years ago in The Australian Newspaper with the
main culprit responsible for getting AWA in debt: He was employed by AWA
to make forex trades to try and boost their cash reserves.

Yep, I was working at a merchant bank at the time and I knew about AWA
trades taking places.

The gossip was that they were making more money trading than from the
rest of the business.

 

[Joerg]

Karl Von Moller has finished the trailer for his awesome Australian
electronics industry documentary:

I'll keep everyone informed when the full version is available.

Dave.

Nice video Dve.
I had problems playing it in flashplayer 10.1 though.
Now that seems to be an Adobe problem, no hardware acceleration'working for this 'hd' video it seems.
So here is hwo to convert it to a lower bitrate forma ttha twil play wit hxine in Linuxc:

1) play the above url in flash, ignore any jerking picture and dropped sound,
wait untill it is fully loaded.
the video is then in /tmp/Flash....

2) Convert the video to some other format with a recent version of ffmpeg,
for example to .ts:
ffmpeg -i FlashXXVbtpgb -f mpegts -r 25 -vb 4000000 -y state_of_electronics_in_australia.ts

3) play it in the normal way with ffplay:
ffplay state_of_electronics_in_australia.ts
or xine state_of_electronics_in_australia.ts

I did chose ts format because it streams so nicely over the LAN.
-rw------- 1 root root 55262388 2010-10-07 14:01 FlashXXVbtpgb
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 108013332 2010-10-07 15:02 state_of_electronics_in_australia.ts
As you see the .ts is longer, but the bitrate 4000 kb/s is lower,
putting less strain on the hardware, it should play.
Picture is still OK.

MS win[!]do[w]s user will have to buy bigger hardware, much bigger.
Adobe sucks CPU cycles, I had a look at heir blog,
and flashplayer 10.1 does not seem to work for many people.

Why? Runs perfectly smooth on my Windows XP office computer. Oh, and I
have a SPICE sim running in the background. Maybe your Linux boxen are
the problem

Anyhow, do you know where one can buy the "third hand" holding device at
0:24 min into this video clip, in Europe? Looks a lot sturdier than
those flimsy single alligator clip with set screw things. A guy in
Germany was asking for just that recently.

 

[Joerg]

"David L. Jones"


** Looks bloody fantastic - wot a hoot!!

My old pal Doug Ford ( ex Jands Electronics and Rode mics) is in it too.

Be very pleased if anyone can supply his current email addy.

Why don't you email Karl von Moller for the address?

 

[Joerg]

MS win[!]do[w]s user will have to buy bigger hardware, much bigger.
Adobe sucks CPU cycles, I had a look at heir blog,
and flashplayer 10.1 does not seem to work for many people.

Why? Runs perfectly smooth on my Windows XP office computer. Oh, and I
have a SPICE sim running in the background. Maybe your Linux boxen are
the problem

It is probably a complot betwene Adobe and Microsoft.
The both adore the God Of Bloat.

True. But ... it works.

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/...-meet-to-discuss-partnerships/?ref=technology
Ballmer and the Adobe CEO got togeth4r to discuss strategy against Apple.
What a joke,
they should just make sane stuff, else they are finsished (Adobe already is).
Nokia also got together with MS, and even has an ex MS manager as CEO now.
No more Nokia for me, I know what will happen.

Well, I'll keep my trusty Nokia 2115i

Strange, that is at 14 seconds in my player....
You can get those from many places, Conrad has them too I think.
Or the one at 1:31 with the PCB in it?
Dunno about that one.

I meant the first one. The Conrad web site is so screwed up, do you have
any idea how this thing could be called in German or Dutch so one could
find it? I really like the sturdy little pole it is fastened to, and the
fact that it has two outriggers.

Oh, yes, Conrard.
I typed 'derde hand' (Dutch for third hand) in www.conrad.nl search window,
prices from 5 to 10 Euro (wity magnifying glass).

How do you get to their Dutch site? With "Dritte Hand" (German) I only
found the usual flimsy ones:

http://www.conrad.de/ce/de/FastSear...search=dritte+hand&=Schnellsuche&initial=true

It didn't recognize "derde hand".

I think the main problem with electronics for the beginner is that everything gets too small.
I mean you need a microscope and oven to start.
No markings on SMDs, so nothing to re-use.

I use a Veho microscope. It has cost me $100. Much less strain on the
neck and the eyes.

Ball grids so nothing for a kid to put together.

Even in my professional designs I never use BGA, except maybe a small
6-8 ball RF device. Anything much bigger is a recipe for field failures.
Even more so with RoHS.

The PICs is DIL is about the last thing that allows some beginners to develop something.

MSP430 also come in DIP. However, I think SMT is easier for hobbyists.
0805 and 0603 usually have markings but not the caps. For SOT23 you need
a look-up table but those are on the web. For caps, and ideally for
other stuff, you've got to get things organized into bins or coin
envelopes (I use both). The beauty of it is that it occupies a whole lot
less space in the cabinet. For hobbyists my advice is to keep some
larger boards with SMT. From the old VCR, and so on. If suddenly you
find you need a 12.4k resistor chances are there's one on there. Oh,
plus you can stack'em. And keep two solder irons, makes it a breeze to
get parts off the old VCR board.

 

[Joerg]

On a sunny day (Thu, 07 Oct 2010 01:44:41 GMT) it happened "David L. Jones"

Karl Von Moller has finished the trailer for his awesome Australian
electronics industry documentary:

I'll keep everyone informed when the full version is available.

Dave.
Nice video Dve.
I had problems playing it in flashplayer 10.1 though.
Now that seems to be an Adobe problem, no hardware acceleration'working for this 'hd' video it seems.
So here is hwo to convert it to a lower bitrate forma ttha twil play wit hxine in Linuxc:

1) play the above url in flash, ignore any jerking picture and dropped sound,
wait untill it is fully loaded.
the video is then in /tmp/Flash....

2) Convert the video to some other format with a recent version of ffmpeg,
for example to .ts:
ffmpeg -i FlashXXVbtpgb -f mpegts -r 25 -vb 4000000 -y state_of_electronics_in_australia.ts

3) play it in the normal way with ffplay:
ffplay state_of_electronics_in_australia.ts
or xine state_of_electronics_in_australia.ts

I did chose ts format because it streams so nicely over the LAN.
-rw------- 1 root root 55262388 2010-10-07 14:01 FlashXXVbtpgb
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 108013332 2010-10-07 15:02 state_of_electronics_in_australia.ts
As you see the .ts is longer, but the bitrate 4000 kb/s is lower,
putting less strain on the hardware, it should play.
Picture is still OK.

MS win[!]do[w]s user will have to buy bigger hardware, much bigger.
Adobe sucks CPU cycles, I had a look at heir blog,
and flashplayer 10.1 does not seem to work for many people.

Why? Runs perfectly smooth on my Windows XP office computer. Oh, and I
have a SPICE sim running in the background. Maybe your Linux boxen are
the problem

Anyhow, do you know where one can buy the "third hand" holding device at
0:24 min into this video clip, in Europe? Looks a lot sturdier than
those flimsy single alligator clip with set screw things. A guy in
Germany was asking for just that recently.

If God had intended us to do electronics, He would have created us
with three hands.

Good point! So we are all doing something rather sinful then?

Note to self: Must repent, must repent