Digsy

The "original" is itself a gored-up remake of a B&W sci fi classic called "The Thing From Another World".

Network adaptors and only a few quid aren't they? You could just buy a new one which would come with the drivers and not have to pay someone at the computer shop over the odds to find and install the drivers for yours (unless they are feeling charitable and do it as a freebie).

The calculator on my HTC HD2 does the same thing. 0 in basic mode, then turn the phone 90degrees to put it in scientific mode and you get 15.

I aplogise, I just double checked and you are quite correct (I'm on XP). How odd that they would deliberately make it behave incorrectly just because it isn't in "sceintific" mode!

I never thought I'd ever come across an internet discussion about BODMAS. Its definately 15. My maths teacher would gave said so, Excel says so and Windows calculator (even in basic mode) says so. To remove any confusion over spaces and multiplication notation: a=5 b=0 so the equation becomes: a+a+a-a+a+a-a+a x b or, a+a+a-a+a+a-a+a . b or, if you prefer, getting rid of the "x" or middle dot entirely: a+a+a-a+a+a-a+a b In the last form its especially clear that "a b" is a seperate expression that you have to evaluate first before adding the result to the rest of the equation.

There was a Wellington bomber in Loch Ness which was raised a few years back. I saw the TV documentary on it when they brought it up. The main wheels on that still had pressure in the tyres, too.

To read this thread you would think that the definition of a sports car is "its got a turbo". Has no one spotted that despite being normally aspirated, the engine pushes out as close to 100BHP / litre (74.5kW/litre) as makes no difference? That's not only a damn good achievement in a road car engine full stop, but its also massively bucking the current trends in engine development. Despite what you might think (having got used to twin turbo 3 litre units as being "the norm") this is, by today's standards, a large engine for that size of car. I just did a whistle-stop tour of my database of current engines and I didn't find anything above 61kW/litre that didn't have a turbo. Its not an exhaustive list but its a good indicator of how things are heading. The good news for all you turbo nuts is that in a very few years time pretty much every new gasoline engine will have a turbo strapped to it. The bad news is that power levels won't increase as engines are getting downsized in recognition of the fact that even in performance cars you don't use full power all the time. Today's 1.6 litre turbos are yesterday's 2.0 litre NA's. Engineering aside, the main practical limit to the degree of downsizing is the engine's response (i.e. what we used to call turbo lag). I reckon this is the main reason why Toyota and Subaru have gone for an NA unit rather than a smaller turbo because they are headlining on fun rather than power. Still some of the specs I've seen online say it doesn't hit peak torque until over 6000RPM. Hopefully its light enough to get off the line quickly. The times, they are-a-changing. Modern engines are far more stressed and run closer to the det limit than you could imagine. Meanwhile, to save wasting energy, oil and coolant pumps are being pared down to the bare minimum and internal components are getting lighter and lighter to save mass and inertia. Bearing sizes are coming down to save on friction. All of this is going to make life very interesting for the tuners and builders. If you think a 2.0 litre NA engine in a sporty Toyota is wrong then you should see the stuff that some OEMs have on the drawing board. In terms of power, the internal combustion engine is about to have its finest hour (right before the petrol runs out). However the technology won't be used to make engines more powerful, it will be used to make them smaller and cleaner.

Try DigiKey.co.uk I just had a look but they have literally pages and pages of connectors. What is the "proper" name for it? I cannot open your RS link at work.

My local laser cutting emporium (DC Developments near Norwich) can handle ally up to 6mm thick and program direct from a DXF file without any dimensions. I've used them several times for simple jobs. Far easier than cutting by hand if you can wait a week or so.

Good feedback guys. Old-skool solder it is then

Thanks for the fast reply I probably should have been a bit more specific about what I will be doing. I want to create some lights from LEDs which will be supported only on very thin wires which also take the current to them. The idea is that the LEDs will appear to be suspended in space. I have actually done a lot of soldering on PCBs but nothing that has ever been "on show" so I can get away with the odd botched joint here and there. I had assumed that paste would be neater, but it sounds otherwise. I suppose at least with normal solder I can suck the excess away with a desoldering tool and re-make the joint.

I may be doing an electronics project in the near future that will require some very delicate and very neat soldering. As I am neither of these things when I have a soldering iron in my hand I was considering using solder paste (A.K.A "wire glue") instead. My only reservation is that for my needs I will require the joints to have a good degree of mechanical strength as well as simply conducting electricity (approx 4V, 20mA). Normal solder would obviously be fine for this but I have no idea what solder paste is like. I believe that in SMT circuit boards the components themselves are held in place with "normal" glue and the solder paste just forms the electrical joint. But I may be wrong.

The resistor values don't matter insofar as making the voltage divider work, but it might be worth checking the impedance of the input to the ECU which might be in the tech spec somewhere. The maximum resistance between ground and the ECU input (in your case 1k980 Ohms with the switch in position 9) needs to be a lot smaller than the input impedance. For example, neglecting the input impedance, at position 9 your output voltage would be exactly 4.5V. With a input impedance of 1kOhms this would drop to 3.76V. If the imput impedance was 10kOhms it would be 4.41V Theres a handy calculator here: http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/electric/voldiv.html

Thankfully I havn't been forced into having to use any of these hateful things yet. Have they made dimmable ones yet? Nearly every light switch in my house is a dimmer.

Isn't one of the reasons they want to do this "to get the economy moving"? In that case I think we need it now and not after two years of (adopts weedy pose and annoying whiney voice) public consultation. FFS just run an ad campaign saying that the national speed limit sign now means 80 on a motorway and get it done!

If you are willing / able to live in digs during the weekdays then you are not a million miles away from Ricardo (Shoreham by Sea), or Aston Martin, Cosworth and Mahle (all Northampton). If the engineering consultancies are busy (which many are right now) they might be happy to take someone on. In fact most have proper "apprentice" programmes. You might not end up working on a motorsport project but you would get some valuable experience.

Might seem daft but if you rev your engine does the light go out? When my alternator started to fail, the oil level warning light was the first thing to come on.

OK, done it. Not too bad to do. The T piece is above the driveshaft where the exhaust splits into two after the second cat. You can reach it without taking anything else off the car but it pays to let the exhaust cool down a bit unless you want burned wrists The screws holding the cable to the chassis (2x 8mm and 1x 6mm) looked like they would wring off but came out with just a squirt of WD40. The 2x 6mm screws holding the cable to the wheel hub both wrung off - luckily I had a couple more with my spare cable. One thing to note, though, is that while replacing the RHS cable I spotted that the LHS one was also broken in exactly the same way. There is an aluminium casting at the wheel end of the cable which breaks as shown in the picture. When the RHS one broke it jammed the cable but on the LHS it hasn't yet, so it should be OK to get through the MOT next week. Might be worth checking these on more elderly Supras.

Cool. So its not hidden uo or behind a billon rusty chocolate screws then? Cant believe Ive never noticed it under there already while changing the exhaust or something.

Before I get into a job I can't finish and ruin my Bank Holiday Monday completely, can anyone tell me what to expect when I try to remove the driver's side handbrake cable? I know how to detach it from the handbrake at the wheel end but what happens at the other end I don't know. I'd like an idea of what I will need to remove and any possible pitfalls. I can't say I've ever noticed the "T" joint between the three cables when under the car so I'm assuming its behind a heatshield or maybe above the driveshaft or something. Thanks!

This kept me up until daft o'clock a few days back. Lots of obscure robots in there :-)

I found that Bathstore are OK to supply but their aftersales care was total chaos which in the end made it simpler to just buy new parts from elsewhere rather than wait for replacements from the store. No idea on fitting as we did it ourselves. No idea on B&Q, but my girlfriend has a kitchen from Homebase (again supply only). She went for a fairly high-end painted door finish but due to a "quality issue" at the factory the doors managed to absorb moisture and swelled, cracking the paint in several areas. To be fair they did replace the lot free of charge, but the replacements did exactly the same thing after about the same period of time.

Anyone who has read the small print on the Lloyds TSB website will know that Lloyds TSB will never e-mail a customer asking for account details. Unfortunately they have just changed thier login page, making the scam mail "seem" more legit at this moment in time.

None usually connected at power on, but I do have a USB data / charging cradle for my phone which, if I put the phone in the cradle before I boot up, my machine hangs at the "Windows" black splash screen (before the desktop even appears). Likewise if I turn on legacy USB support in the BIOS the machine also hangs in the same place. Its never caused me any real issues, appart from as you point out I cannot use anything other than a PS2 keyboard for starting in safe mode, etc. with I can live with. Usually all other USB devices work fine. Not tried that. Will give it a go. Yep. I'm not what you would call an "early adpoter" by any means when it comes to my PC It took me ages to go to SP2 after all the hoo-hah when it first came out. I do have SP3 on CD so I can do this. Anyway... As often happens after I posted on here I did another websearch and may have come up with a solution. Its not a standard part of Windows but you can download a tool from the MS website called "devcon.exe". This is essentially a command-line version of Device Manager. Using it, I have created a script which disables and then immediately enables my mouse and keyboard just after I log in. It works on a logout/login (mouse and keyboard freeze for a few seconds and then come back). Not tried it on a proper cold boot yet.

I own an MS ARC wireless keyboard and mouse. The recievers for these are plugged into a 2-port USB2 hub which in turn is plugged via a 1m extention cable into my PC. The hub has two LEDs on it that show when the device attached to each port is active. The problem is that when I turn on the PC, if the keyobard and mouse are not swithed on by the time the USB ports become active, then they will not be recognised unless I "restart" the devices by unplugging and re-inserting the hub. Also, even if the mouse and keyboard are recognised, during the time between when the desktop first shows and when the system, becomes available (i.e. while the program icons are loading into the system tray) the mouse and keyboard sometimes stop responding. Again, this can only be fixed by unplugging and re-inserting the hub to manually restart the attached devices. I have tried using different USB ports in my PC (I have 6) and not using the hub or extension cable at all. When I change ports it usually works better for a few days and then starts acting up again. It doesn't seem to be related to the condition of the batteries in the keyboard or mouse because once I get them working they stay working until I shut off the PC. I can even switch them off for over an hour and when I switch on agai they are instantly recognised. Its almost like I need a way to stop the keyboard and mouse USB drivers from starting until after everything else has started up. Has anyone else had anyting similar to this or found a fix for it? This is Windows XP SP2 in case its relevant.