16-04-2013, 05:26 PM
(16-04-2013, 11:08 AM)Yorkie Wrote: Probably too early to ask Colin, but I notice that it says '0 - 50A' and I wondered how far down the current reading will go. In particular, for vintage radio purposes we may want to read just a few mA rather than Amps - I wondered if it went down as low as say 50mA? It mentions that the accuracy of current measurements is within 0.1 Amp, but I don't think we can infer from that what its lowest current reading is.
An amazing little unit and at £7.00 post free, at a rock bottom price! As you say, it makes you wonder just how they do it. Who ever would have thought in the 1970s that pocket calculators would be available for 75p in 2013 - less than the cost of a tabloid newspaper? (75p in 2013 equated to 9p in 1975, at which time calculators typically cost £25.00).
In the early 70s, I worked for Commodore in Eaglescliffe as a factory product-introduction engineer on the PET, VIC-20, the small calculators with red numbers with magnifiers in front of each digit, and "Green-line" calculators (http://www.vintage-technology.info/pages...co976m.htm). Contrary to what the site says, the Green Line calculators were made in the UK. We found that product from Japan suffered from poor quality and engineering and so switched production for European and US consumption to the UK. The Japanese had even used a mains shaver lead and socket as the 15v supply lead to the VIC-20!!!!! We only ever took the first batch of 10,000 VIC-20s from them, having to retrofit acceptable leads to all of them before shipment to end-customers.
I still have one each of the two calculators I referred to, and my son has a VIC-20 and PET that I repatriated from the engineering department when we closed down the UK factory.
Colin
