101–107 of 107 posts
> In addition, the signalling information for switching Economy 7 electricity meters is carried on Radio 4 LW. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_teleswitch Fascinating stuff.
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That's a DoS waiting to happen, IMNSHO. If it's easy to transmit on the frequency locally at low power and there's no auth, a drive around the neighborhood could create a blackout at anyone's demand.
At least in the UK, smart meters don't use radio-based time switching as they have their own clocks which are synchronized with their remote system. All commands to these smart meters (including the ability to remotely disconnect them) are cryptographically protected to ensure integrity and authenticity, and also have anti-replay protections. Disclaimer: I've worked for a smart metering manufacturer.
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Both sides of the political spectrum regularly complains about the BBC being biased towards the other side. It's the best evidence that whatever bias there is either is minor or short-lived. In my eyes, the biggest problem with the BBC isn't bias, but that they're terrified of seeming too biased, and as a result they're wishy-washy in ways that ironically makes them seem biased. E.g. the left will accuse them of bein…
There was a comment here a few months ago which mentioned a term. I have forgotten the term since but it effectively described a situation where an expert in subject matter foo reads an article about foo in a well-regarded news source (like say the Economist) which is either pretty incorrect or pretty biased and then the subject matter expert goes "wow they know nothing about foo" and then turns the page and reads ab…
I didn't suggest they were exemplary at all. On the contrary, I criticised them for not doing a proper job because they're worried about coming across as biased.
They've chosen to deal with criticism of bias by essentially trying their utmost to never say or do anything controversial, but the nature of the real world is that a lot of the most important journalism necessarily steps hard on someones toes.
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If you're designing your own boards with ribbon cables connecting them, I imagine that you could save a lot of money on parts by using 40-pin connectors with PATA cables--we're talking entire cents, for each of the 2 units. Also, I'm willing to bet a place like the BBC has boxes filled with spare PATA cables and 16MB SIMMs and 8 GB internal hard drives, and maybe even a room with a bunch of dusty 17" CRT monitors in…
If it was a scavenged system, I'd be apt to believe you, but a new build like this, you almost certainly would use new ribbon cables. In bulk, the ribbon is about fifty cents a foot, so reusing old parts wouldn't be worth the trouble of having to troubleshoot problems down the road.
You can easily see from the pictures that the ribbon cables are different widths. It looks like every ribbon connects a PCB to a connector on the backplane, most of them D-subs. The photo of the backplanes as installed show that most of the connectors aren't even being used.
By coincidence, the large-sized cables have 40 conductors. The medium ones have 25 or 26, and the small ones have 15 or 16. Those are all standard sizes for ribbon cable, and you can likely buy new cables of the correct sizes off the shelf for less than $10 each, or make them yourself at 20% the price or less.
In comparison to the overall cost of engineering the box, the ribbon cables are just a drop in the well. Nevertheless, about 12 of the ribbon cables in the box could theoretically be replaced by old PATA cables and 35 million people would still never know. The potential problems would be that some ATA cables block pin 20 as a mechanical key, they would be longer than strictly necessary, and ribbon cables are obnoxiously effective antennas.
The 40-pin ribbon cables as installed could almost certainly be used as very short PATA cable replacements, with a little mechanical modification of the connectors.
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If you're designing your own boards with ribbon cables connecting them, I imagine that you could save a lot of money on parts by using 40-pin connectors with PATA cables--we're talking entire cents, for each of the 2 units. Also, I'm willing to bet a place like the BBC has boxes filled with spare PATA cables and 16MB SIMMs and 8 GB internal hard drives, and maybe even a room with a bunch of dusty 17" CRT monitors in…
Exactly. And it has to connect to the same system as the original 1980s units, so whatever protocol it's using will be old. DB25-serial? SCSI? IEE-488? It would have been nice to have a few technical details on the system. Random BBC-related anecdote: the Cambridge University computer lab had, up to 1999, an info TV in the lobby driven by a 20 year old BBC micro in Teletext mode. This was apparently because it had an…
It lasted a few years past 1999 - it was still in service for some time after I returned in 2002.