Good grief, so that's how you solder - 40 years of great big globules and finally someone explains it clearly and concisely.

Congratulations on a really good, well thought out manual, you see them so seldom!

Patrick, do you have any idea when you'll be putting up an ordering page for these modules? I'm determined to get one from the first batch () but I'm going on holiday tomorrow so I need to know whether to leave instructions with someone to put my name on the list if it's going to be put up whilst I'm away (only a week but sod's law dictates that it will happen during that week!).

Thanks,

Greg.

P.S. Excellent manual! I was fully expecting the instructions to consist of a piece of A5 paper saying simply to solder everything to the board! That weighty document is definately the way to go for do-it-yourself kits!

Now I know why it takes that long for the tuner project to be finished... look at this manual...

Hey Patrick, I noticed that on the empeg harness pin 7 on the molex connector had a purple wire, there is no purple wire in your kit was it omitted? Also when I was reading the instructions I was wishing that I was actually putting the kit together I can't wait.

Your board diagrams appear to be raster images, rather than vector drawings (I assume that something in your production chain is rasterizing them behind your back). That would account for the large size of the PDF.

And I have to echo the praise given by others. It's 10 years or so since I last soldered anything, but I'm looking forward to it (even if I end up having to buy a second kit to repair my mistakes!)

Patrick,

This project must have taken you a lot of work. Just the manual is the most comprehensive contruction guide I've ever seen for an electronic kit. Excellent job. I look forward to building one.

To everyone reading this, it's upto us to make sure Patrick's hard work pays off. I certainly will!


Regards,
Aragon

Patrick,
The manual looks great, I'm looking forward to assembling a tuner.

I saw an error that stands out. On the top of page 11 you make reference to PL5, I think you mean PL6.

(Will a 3rd PCB become available for i/o?)

Thank you,
Joe Mumme

Patrick,
The manual is awesome. That is some of the best instructions and pics I have ever seen !!! Great Job, I can't wait to get one!!!!!

Holy crap... what are you hosting on? I d/l'd at ~410 kbps! The only other thing I've seen come close to that is easynews.

I am also envious of his host's speed. Did you mean 410 kbps (as in kilobits/sec) or 410 kBps (as in kilobytes/sec)? I got 130 kBps on a 1.5 mbps ADSL line in New Olreans. 410kbps isn't that rare, 410 KBps is.

Nice manual too. I am also have trouble getting the size down on our manual. The word file is actually SMALLER than the PDF, regardless of the image compression settings.

Stu

You guys should be writing these manuals in TeX, anyway, using EPS for your images. They'd be smaller then.

Aren't EPS files mainly for vector based images? That would be fine for Patrick's manual, but for ours which is 95% bitmap, that wouldn't fly. As I understand them, compressed bitmap EPS files are basically JPEG images with a wrapper on them and since we are already using JPEG it wouldn't really prove too beneficial.

Stu

He must mean 410 kilobytes. I can get around 290KB/s from here.
It's not surprising though, Blueyonder is a broadband ISP here so they must have very high bandwidth connection to the internet. One of the few places which give you an affordable 1mbps link as well.

- Trevor

Bps... sheesh... Bytes, not bits.... picky picky picky ;8^)

Patrick,

Do you think the tuners will be ready by November? The only reason I ask is that I've been roped into providing engineering support for my old university's RSL and I'd love to be able to listen to them in the car going to and from work, because the moment they go off the air I'll have to leg it over to campus.
I'm fairly handy with a soldering iron, have you decided who your beta-builders are going to be? I'll stop being so cheeky now!

What kind of internet connection do you have the draft manual sitting on? I just downloaded it at 3.8 Megs a second. I CANNOT BELIEVE how fast your internet connection is...

Yeah this manual looks great Patrick. I got about 400Kbyte/s from my colocation (which is on a multihomed Gigabit line) wooo :P

True. I was mostly thinking about Patrick's line drawings (there should be some way to only embed one image for each of the boards and then overlay that red mask separately). That, and being an anti-MS bigot. But I'll bet that the same text presented in the same way produced by TeX would be smaller than produced by Word, even after both were converted to PDF.

I CANNOT BELIEVE how fast your internet connection is...

It's not actually Patrick's Internet connection, the file is being hosted on one of his ISP's servers, so it should be fast.

First of all - Patrick, the manual looks terrific!

But - I suppose if we were all sucking the manual through a pipe as big as a coffee stirrer, then getting the filesize down to a minimal value would be fairly important. Like others here, though, I got around 200k/sec downloading the manual - so before I knew it it was done downloading. Now, if Patrick has some bandwidth limitations at his ISP - then reducing the size of the file further would make sense to ease the burden placed on his limits.

And BTW - that was a speedy download.

Why can't several of us just host the manual on our web space? I have 2 sites with nothing on them and would be happy to place the manual there.

I have unlimited bandwidth (within reason) on a T1...I could host too.

Hi.

I have updated the manual as a result of the feedback I received, and it is now here, for your perusal.

pca

could it be a good idea to colour the components a different colour once you've put them on the board?

I could do this, but it's an awful lot of extra woirk, which at the moment I simply don't have the time to do. Perhaps later.

pca

there is no purple wire in your kit was it omitted?

The purple wire isn't actually used. I forgot about this, and ordered a 100m reel of the stuff before checking the circuit diagram...

pca

(Will a 3rd PCB become available for i/o?)

Almost certainly. I haven't decided what the final feature list will be, and I want to the the tuners themselfs shipping first, but an expansion board(s) is/are certainly on the cards.

pca

I CANNOT BELIEVE how fast your internet connection is...

When telewest's service actually works, it works bloody fast. Pity it's more than a little unreliable, at least from the standpoint of the connection between me and it.

pca

do you have any idea when you'll be putting up an ordering page for these modules?

I will be setting up the page to take orders within the next two-three weeks. I have to go away on family business for ten days or so from monday (long story, but there's at least one wedding involved), but when I get back I will be working towards shipping the units as fast as possible. At least initially, the tuners will be available on a first-come, first-served basis, with a limit of no more than two tuners per person. Once the supply is increased I'll remove the limit.

I will set up an ordering page, where you can place an order and receive a queue number (ah, that brings back memories!), and when your number is up I will contact you and get your credit card number. The first ten units or so are already spoken for, to friends and the like, but after that they will be available to all and sundry.

pca

There is no great problem with keeping the manual where it is. I'd prefer it not be mirrored elsewhere, at least until it is finalised, because I don't want out-of-date versions floating around.

My web space on blueyonder isn't used for anything else, and as people have noticed has a very fat pipe feeding from it. I'll keep the manual there and link it to the main site on a different host when I get that set up. Thanks for the offers, though.

pca

I will set up an ordering page, where you can place an order and receive a queue number (ah, that brings back memories!)

Would you like to use the original empeg script for doing that? Might make some of your customers really nostalgic

Rob