Consumer Reports: iPhone 4 - Not recommended

SMS <[email protected]> wrote in news:4c43cda3$0$22161
[email protected]:

> http://www.soaresantiques.com/images...onics/9018.jpg

Speaking of CB, we were in the CB business in Sumter, SC, called Seely
Communications. As the CB business waned, and the new microcomputers were
just becoming more than a toy, we moved the business in that direction,
becoming Ohio Scientific computer dealers. Look on page 8 of the 1980
brochure here:
http://technology.niagarac.on.ca/peo...s/OSI-1980.pdf
and you'll see the last entry in the South Carolina dealers on the right
page is Seely Communications, your friendly local Ohio Scientific computer
dealer with its massive 74MB, 14" platter FIXED DISK in the Challenger 3P
with triple processors Z80, 6502, 6800 (not 68000). Programming was in an
extended BASIC interpreter under OS-65/U running on the 6502 processor's
huge 8-bit real estate in the BIG box! We also sold ADDS Regent 25 RS-232
terminals for it. The business system didn't have direct video. The C2P
home computers did...PEEK and POKE directly to video making it faster...

We wrote a few business systems to sell in addition to the OSI standard
line of software the company provided. Seely survived until some johnny-
come-lately's called Micro$oft robbed everyone with the fancy IBM PC....

It was great fun being in the computer business at the beginning of
micros....almost like not working at all!

The day we got the first C3P home, we didn't even know how to boot it
up!....hee hee....boys with toys. SWTP was my first box....years before.

Well, we better get back to arguing about stupid sellphones before they
start pissing on us......iPhone SUCKS!


--
iPhone 4 is to cellular technology what the Titanic is to cruise ships.

Larry

---

› See More: Consumer Reports: iPhone 4 - Not recommended

On 18/07/10 10:02 PM, Jeff Liebermann wrote:
> On Sun, 18 Jul 2010 20:59:41 -0700, SMS<[email protected]>
> wrote:
>
>>> 196? CB repair for Olsen Electronics, Radio Shack, Lafayette.
>>
>> Wow, Olson and Lafayette brings back memories. Spent a lot of money as a
>> kid in those stores.
>
> The highlight of that experience was driving 10,000 miles for pickups
> and deliveries without changing the oil in my mothers 1960 Ford
> Falcon. The engine seized. In order to get the RS contract, we had
> to take on almost all the CB repairs for every store from about Long
> Beach to Pomona to San Fernando Valley. A one hour repair would often
> produce an unpaid 2 hrs on the road. We didn't make any money, but we
> sure learned how NOT to run a business.

"Mercy sakes alive, looks like we got us a convoy."

>> Do you remember the Olson Electronics pearls?
>> "http://www.soaresantiques.com/images/electronics/9018.jpg"
>
> Yep. I saw them in the store, but never bought one.

No, you got one free for every $10 you spent.

Jeff Liebermann <[email protected]> wrote in
news:[email protected]:

> ncidentally, your 12dBi yagi is probably legal, but not with a 3 watt
> bag phone. The typical modern cell phone belches about 100mw maximum.
> 0.1 watts * 10^(13/10) = EIRP
> 0.1 watts * 20 = 2.0 watts EIRP
>
>

Too bad there's no antenna connector on them, any more. I do have a V60i
flipphone with a 3W amp and the connector adapter for that phone. CDMA
works great at 3W from the cellantenna.com dual band power amp. It's in a
box around the shop, "somewhere"....

Of course, the V60i has a REAL antenna so you'd need an external amp/beam a
lot less than the new craphones, now. The Z6m's antenna jack is inside the
battery cover under the top-mounted antenna pod by the camera. I've never
tried hooking it to the amp/beam. I think I have the little connector it
demands. Hmm.....(c;]



--
iPhone 4 is to cellular technology what the Titanic is to cruise ships.

Larry

On Mon, 19 Jul 2010 11:59:40 +0000, Larry <[email protected]> wrote:

>Jeff Liebermann <[email protected]> wrote in
>news:[email protected]:
>
>> ncidentally, your 12dBi yagi is probably legal, but not with a 3 watt
>> bag phone. The typical modern cell phone belches about 100mw maximum.
>> 0.1 watts * 10^(13/10) = EIRP
>> 0.1 watts * 20 = 2.0 watts EIRP

>Too bad there's no antenna connector on them, any more.

So, use a coupling loop. Some of the car kits do that when there's no
antenna connector. With the iPhone, it's easy. Just a copper spring
connecting to the frame antenna. Y'er on your own for impedance
matching.

--
# Jeff Liebermann 150 Felker St #D Santa Cruz CA 95060
# 831-336-2558
# http://802.11junk.com [email protected]
# http://www.LearnByDestroying.com AE6KS

"Larry" <[email protected]> wrote in message news:[email protected]...
> Military was Navy. EIL Instruments, TRACOR ESD, Amex Systems, Charleston
> Naval Shipyard where I worked in the metrology engineering center just
> before she closed forever....very sad.

For me, Mare Island Naval Shipyard (Vallejo, CA), electronics engineering,
until she closed for good in Sep. 1996. Sad indeed.
--
John Richards (ex KN9EAF)

"John Richards" <[email protected]> wrote in
news:[email protected]:

> "Larry" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:[email protected]...
>> Military was Navy. EIL Instruments, TRACOR ESD, Amex Systems,
> Charleston
>> Naval Shipyard where I worked in the metrology engineering center
>> just
>
>> before she closed forever....very sad.
>
> For me, Mare Island Naval Shipyard (Vallejo, CA), electronics
> engineering, until she closed for good in Sep. 1996. Sad indeed.

Which code, John. I was in Code 132.1 Metrology Engineering Center of the
Quality Assurance Office.

Very sad they closed some of the best yards, leaving others open for
political purposes.....

My mistake wasn't taking some offers from friends who were in NAVELEX.
SPAWAR is big in Charleston. I should have moved over there. I was a
GS11/4 when I left CNSYD. I could have gone much farther and had a better
retirement coming in. Hind sight is 20/20.


--
iPhone 4 is to cellular technology what the Titanic is to cruise ships.

Larry

"Larry" <[email protected]> wrote in message news:[email protected]...
> "John Richards" <[email protected]> wrote in
> news:[email protected]:
>> For me, Mare Island Naval Shipyard (Vallejo, CA), electronics
>> engineering, until she closed for good in Sep. 1996. Sad indeed.
>
> Which code, John. I was in Code 132.1 Metrology Engineering Center of the
> Quality Assurance Office.

Code 270.3, Electronics Engineering, part of the Code 240 Design Division.

> Very sad they closed some of the best yards, leaving others open for
> political purposes.....

Indeed. It was very much related to who had more political clout.

> My mistake wasn't taking some offers from friends who were in NAVELEX.
> SPAWAR is big in Charleston. I should have moved over there. I was a
> GS11/4 when I left CNSYD. I could have gone much farther and had a better
> retirement coming in. Hind sight is 20/20.

Luckily I had enough years (31, including military time), to qualify for an
immediate pension under the old CSRS (rather than FERS) retirement plan.
I had been a GS12 step 10 for quite some time, so at least the pension is
sufficient to live on. With a 'defined benefit' I don't have to worry about
401K plans declining in value. :-)
--
John Richards

"John Richards" <[email protected]> wrote in
news:1%[email protected]:

> Luckily I had enough years (31, including military time), to qualify
> for an immediate pension under the old CSRS (rather than FERS)
> retirement plan. I had been a GS12 step 10 for quite some time, so at
> least the pension is sufficient to live on. With a 'defined benefit'
> I don't have to worry about 401K plans declining in value. :-)
> --
> John Richards
>

Excellent. Our yard closed before I could become vested in CSRS, so I
extracted my money before some bureaucrat penned a reg and stole it from
me. I rolled it over into some investments that have a fair income
coming in, though a retirement check from your rich Uncle would have
been better.

I entered CNSYD as a WG-10 Electronics Mechanic and made WG-12 in the
Shop 67 "Instrument Room" before taking a lateral to a GS-9 in the
Metrology Lab, which was a good move as I made GS-11, top grade for the
worker bees, in no time.

I rarely worked on a bench at Metrology. I wrote a Dbase III data
processing system on the new fangled IBM PCXT with a lot of
enhancements, compiled with Clipper, the Dbase compiler, that brought
local control of the MEASURE system from the mainframe at China Lake,
CA, to the lab floor. The MEASURE system at CNSYD was always a disaster
because of all the interim calibrations of anything use on a nuke
reactor, like torque wrenches that had to be cal'd every few hours
during use, before and after use, and during the normal interval.
MEASURE, the old batch processing from the 60's, was swamped with hand-
written cards that made the error rate 50%. Navy had no idea what the
yard's metrology status was. In 2 months after my implementation...me
and Gloria, my GS-3 clerk typist data entry clerk...we got the error
rate down to .6%, then to 0% after I found that errant record on the
cool dual 33MB (not GB) Tulin full-height hard drives. After adding an
NEC self-threading 9-track tape drive with a hacker's PC bus interface
card and drivers, I wrote some Dbase code, compiled with Clipper of
course so it didn't take all week to run, that streamed the exact data
image the big mainframe at China Lake wanted to see, completely
eliminating all the errors caused by keypunching it all in again from
our carefully printed METER cards we were mailing them. We went
paperless! The mainframe guys, though very curious, were convinced it
would never work, but did cooperate enough to let me run a "test
database" on the mainframe, loaded from my mail-it-to-them-monthly 9-
track tape. They were astonished at the results, which isn't rocket
science.

Some bigwigs from NAVSEA came down to steal it from me and put their
names on it demanding I hand over the programs to them. I readily gave
it to them to take back to DC but got many angry phone calls when they
discovered they had the COMPILED version of my software, not the source
code they were only going to get over my dead, cold body! My shipyard
commander agreed and made a few angry phone calls of his own. We never
sent it to them. Pearl Harbor had a DEC VAX, 8 keypunch operators, a
systems analyst, a system operator in their local system. My whole
operation cost LESS then Pearl Harbor's PRINTER! My printer printed the
cards directly off the Z-fold at the touch of a button, one, more or all
of them, at 600 cps, which pretty much trashed doing anything else on
the 4.77 Mhz PCXT 8088 processor...(c;] So, I put myself on graveyard
shift doing all the database maintenance and daily printing and monthly
tape making jobs in the early morning....when noone was around. Best
job I ever had after it was all running smoothly.....THEN THE YARD
CLOSED...dammit.

Security Group dropped down on us from the political fallout of doing-
it-ourselves when we first went online. "How do you secure this system
when the shop is closed?", they demanded. "We turn the damned thing off
and lock the door on our way out!", I replied. At that time, Navy
computing was never just "shut off" because most of it wouldn't
"restart" in a month if that happened. The Security Group people tried
and tried to hack into my XT past the hardware lock I had installed to
keep the unionists from trashing it for a week but never succeeded.
There was a little board I guess they didn't know about you plugged into
the bus that had to give you permission to boot up. It worked great.

When the system booted, being a Navy computer, a green (monochrome
monitor) US flag came on the screen waving in the breeze and the little
speaker played a passable rendition of the Star Spangled Banner every
morning during the bootup procedure. If some computer bureaucrats hell
bent on destroying us were there, everyone in the shop stood at
attention, hands over their heart during the National Anthem and chided
our "guests" about why they were unpatriotic during our bootup. The
other little background bug running for them made all the letters on the
screen gradually fall into a pile along the bottom of the screen if you
didn't type on the keyboard within 5 minutes, horrifying mainframe
visitors until someone clicked the spacebar which restored the screen.
I found that on a BBS in Atlanta...cute. Like I said, a great job for
the time....

I still have the source code, a Clipper compiler, DBASE III's last
update for DOS 3.3 and my compiled runtime module on a few 5.25"
floppies in a drawer somewhere. My boss thought I was a genius....not a
bad thing at all!



--
iPhone 4 is to cellular technology what the Titanic is to cruise ships.

Larry

On Tue, 13 Jul 2010 14:36:09 -0700, in
<[email protected]>, John Navas
<[email protected]> wrote:

>On Tue, 13 Jul 2010 12:11:44 -0700, in
><[email protected]>, Jeff Liebermann
><[email protected]> wrote:
>
>>On Mon, 12 Jul 2010 13:54:04 -0700, nospam <[email protected]>
>>wrote:
>>
>>>In article <[email protected]>, John Slade
>>><[email protected]> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Yea it's clear from Youtube videos and tests like the one
>>>> from CR that the iPhone 4 has a hardware problem when it comes
>>>> to the antenna.
>>>
>>>touch any phone's antenna, watch what happens.
>>
>>Did you actually try it? I did with several phones that have
>>projecting antennas. LG VX8000, VX8100, and VX8300 on Verizon
>>(900MHz). Also, Motorola RAZR V3m. I can wrap my hand around the
>>antenna and get maybe a -4dB drop (about 1 bar). A 1900Mhz PCS phone
>>will probably have a larger drop.
>>
>>Might as well try it right now.... Going into field test mode, and
>>making a call. Rx power = -75dBm. Wrap my hand around the antenna,
>>and it drops to -78dBm (average). Not much but enough to drop a call
>>if I'm in a marginal area. Now, compare that to the iPhone 4 drop of
>>about 30dB.
>>
>>Try it:
>><www.wpsantennas.com/pdf/testmode/FieldTestModes.pdf>
>
>T-Mobile myTouch 3G 3.5mm Jack (aka HTC Magic, Android 1.6)
>No case. Signal strength unaffected by holding it in any
>way I can think of.

I've since determined that this was due to being in a strong signal
area. When the signal is strong, the phone won't show any drop in
signal strength no matter how you hold it. It's only in a weak signal
area where it will show a drop, on the order of about 6 dB for either
hand, no matter how the phone is gripped.

--
John

"Assumption is the mother of all screw ups."
[Wethern’s Law of Suspended Judgement]