ACHTUNG! SEHR HEISSE OBERFLACHE

This one is a photo for photo’s sake. I have no idea what this thing is. It is a random bit that showed up in a box of old parts we picked up with some classic HP servers, but doesn’t go with any of them. There is a possible part number, but Google knows nothing of it.

The title comes from the warning sticker on it, in German. It translates to Watch Out! Very Hot Surface. That also gets us no closer to knowing just what this is, and time is runing short for such shenanigans. But it does make for an interesting photo.

Don’t use the gum wrapper

Today’s picture is of impending annoyance. The thing you’re looking at isn’t particularly annoying, but chances are, the only time you have interacted with it, you have been annoyed. At least, that has been my experience. Is that a good enough hint? Scroll to see the bigger picture.

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It’s a fuse. A glass body cartridge type fuse to be exact. The fact that it is included on this board gives you a clue to the vintage of gear we are looking at.

Fuses have an interesting history that dates back to the 1800s, before they were fuses. An example, in telegraph stations, reduced section conductors were recommended to protect the apparatus and wiring inside the building from lightning strikes.

The title is a reference to an old trick. If you blow a cartridge fuse, like this one. You can take the foil from a gum wrapper and wrap the fuse in it to complete the circuit. Of course, you should never do that, because the circuit will now be operating without the protection of the fuse.

Cu later Coppergator

Honestly, I have no idea what this part is. It’s just a rando bit card I found hanging out on the back of a shelf. Likely out of some long forgotten piece of tech that nobody is using any more.

But that copper coil is cool! And copper is really interesting. To answer our trivia question, a tiny copper awl was found in the Middle East and dates back as far as 5100 B.C.

Some other fun facts: The word copper comes from the Latin root cuprum, derived from the phrase Cyprium aes. That is, “metal from Cyprus”. As you would guess, much of the copper used at the time was mined in Cyprus.

Copper is second only to silver where electrical conductance (how easily current flows through metal) is concerned.

Copper and gold are the only metals on the periodic table with coloring that isn’t silver or grey.

And finally, rather frightingly, the boiling point of copper is 5,301 ℉. Boiling copper seems like the stuff of horror movies.

Smells Like HPUX

More than anything else, music is the thing that drives home the passage of time for me. If you were to tell me that Smells Like Teen Spirit was released 28 years ago (it was!), I would be a bit gobsmacked. That sounds like so long ago (it is!), but it doesn’t feel like it has been that long (it has!).

Some of the classic HPUX/3000 systems feel the same way. We are again peeking inside the power supply of the A500 today. Amazingly, the A500 was introduced May 1st of 2000. It is nearly 20 years old. The N4000 will be 20 on April 1st. That is an eternity in computer years. And there are still many of them in service. I use an A500 here as my ignite server and keep a N4000 around for testing parts.

The latest technology is great and allows us to do amazing things. But it is super interesting to know that these old machines are still working away.

Our old friend, the capacitor

Here, we are again taking a super close-up look inside the power supply from an A500. You’ll notice a couple of capacitors there, which is what prompted our trivia question. The answer might go further back than you think.

It turns out the capacitor was invented in 1746 by Pieter van Musschenbroek at the University of Leyden. This first capacitor was called the Leyden jar, and there wasn’t actually a use for it at the time. But it did allow other scientists to do a greater variety of experiments with electricity.

Notable among those was Benjamin Franklin. He used a Leyden jar to store electricity from lightning in the kite experiments of legend, proving that lightning was electricity.

Supermoon!

We’re taking a break from super close-ups of tech gear to go exactly opposite. Last night was a supermoon, and I managed to get a pretty good photo of it.

A supermoon is a full moon that coincides with perigree, the closest the moon comes to Earth in its orbit. Technically, this is called perigree syzygy, but from a marketing perspective, you get a lot more traction with supermoon. 🙂

The opposite of the supermoon, when the full moon coincides with apogee is called a micromoon, or apogee syzygy. A supermoon can appear up to 14% larger than a micromoon.

What is this?

Normally this is a puzzle where you get a super close-up of something. Then we scroll down and see the wide shot and we all know what it is. That’s not entirely the case today. I think I know what this is, but I am a bit over my skis, so I could be completely wrong. Anyway, here is the wider shot.

This is one of the many interesting little bits inside the A500 power supply. For reference, that red ring is about the size of a half dollar. My best guess is that this is a common-mode choke. That is, coils wrapped around a ferrite core to suppress electromagnetic interference and radio frequency interference. But that is just my educated guess.

Whatever the case, it is super cool looking. It would be right at home on the side of the device the villain in a 50s sci-fi film was using in their ill-fated scheme.

HP 3000 Classic Gear

Those of you that have been kicking around the HP3000/9000 servers for a while will no doubt be familiar with the old A500. I just replaced a power supply in one, which gives us a chance to take a closer look at one of the more interesting parts in the HP line.

For those of you unfamiliar, one of the things that sets the A500 line apart is that they did not have a sealed up, swappable, power supply like you would see on the Ns, Ls, and pretty much all the newer servers. Instead, you have this bit of crazy pictured above.

That is the power supply you replace on the A500. To me, this is the computing equivalent of riding around in the back of pickups when we were kids. We all did it, and somehow managed to survive, but most people wouldn’t even consider doing that today. Likewise, I can’t fathom a manufacturer bringing out a server that exposed any part of the power supply like this today.

It is fascinating to look at though. In the next couple days I will get some super close-ups of the more interesting bits hiding in there.

Here comes a long weekend

We all have a lot of extra time on our hands. As someone who is accustomed to going to 4 or 5 theatre/dance shows a week or doing multiple photoshoots on the weekend, I haven’t spent this much time at home since Clinton was in office. I kid. I’ve never spent this much time at home.

That means many of us will be taking up projects that had been pushed to the back burner. And that, right there, is your clue for what this photo is. Scroll to see the big picture.

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It is your friendly neighbourhood hacksaw. This one has seen some miles, as evidenced by the wear of the paint on the blade and all of those little nicks and dings. Stay safe, and have a great weekend!

Lights, Camera, Action

I don’t really expect anyone to guess exactly what this is, and it’s actually not a great photo. But I wanted to use it because of that tiny detail of the wires. Something I never would have noticed without taking this close up. The problem with the photo is that all of those things you see are under a sealed plastic cover, which apparently is terrible for photographing through. Still, it is interesting. Scroll to see exactly what this is.

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This is one of my LED lights for film/photography. It is mostly used for film, as most of my lighting for photography is done with monolights and speedlights. But these do occasionally come into play when doing something like focus stacking, where the strobes are less practicle.