Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Sure, i'll be glad to help you break the law!

Collapse
This topic is closed.
X
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Sure, i'll be glad to help you break the law!

    Another goodie from my days at Radio Shack:

    Had a guy come in and want to buy a really long cable for his TV. Then he took me aside and asked me what he needs to buy so he can run a cable from his neighbor's place to his so that he can watch TV - right then I told him I would not be able to help him so he stormed off cussing me out!

  • #2
    Too bad you didn't have the TV version of the "etherkiller" (or at least plans for it) in stock.
    Last edited by wolfie; 01-08-2013, 04:55 AM. Reason: Detailed description was skating too close to the line on board rules.
    Any fool can piss on the floor. It takes a talented SC to shit on the ceiling.

    Comment


    • #3
      Soooo it's basically an Etherkiller?
      Aerodynamics are for people who can't build engines. --Enzo Ferrari

      Comment


      • #4
        Had been clarification of something I shouldn't have posted.
        Last edited by wolfie; 01-08-2013, 04:56 AM. Reason: Skating too close to the line.
        Any fool can piss on the floor. It takes a talented SC to shit on the ceiling.

        Comment


        • #5
          OK, I'm a little confused, and when I ran this by the rest of the mod team, they were pretty confused as well. Is this something that could destroy someone's TV? If so, that's not something we can condone here, no matter how much you think they may have deserved it.
          Sometimes life is altered.
          Break from the ropes your hands are tied.
          Uneasy with confrontation.
          Won't turn out right. Can't turn out right

          Comment


          • #6
            You know, back before cable TV reached near-100% penetration, they really used to sell some weird thing that hooked up to the 300Ω antenna terminals and the other end plugged into the AC. Allegedly it "turned your entire house wiring into an antenna". No idea if this actually worked or if it was just some snake oil thing to syphon money out of your wallet. (The plug had a large cylinder coming out of it; if I was more cynical, I'd guess that inside there was an ordinary dipole, and the only thing the plug part did was to hold it securely fastened to the wall. Wonder how many people saw that, thought "Gee, I bet I could make one myself!", cobbled on a plug to the end of a bit of 300Ω twinlead, and blew up their TVs.)

            I also had a set of RS intercoms that ran on VLF (180 kHz if I remember correctly) transmitted through the AC lines, but it never worked right in our house. I've wondered if that was because, due to the peculiarities of the AC distribution infrastructure in New York City, half the house's outlets were 120 degrees out of phase with the rest of them.

            Comment


            • #7
              Quoth MadMike View Post
              OK, I'm a little confused, and when I ran this by the rest of the mod team, they were pretty confused as well. Is this something that could destroy someone's TV? If so, that's not something we can condone here, no matter how much you think they may have deserved it.
              If I read the post right, the device if used improperly could destroy some electronics. So it's more of a "buyer beware" scenario.

              Quoth Shalom
              they really used to sell some weird thing that hooked up to the 300Ω antenna terminals and the other end plugged into the AC. Allegedly it "turned your entire house wiring into an antenna"
              They make something similar for ethernet now. The example I found was: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16833122233. I have no idea how well it would work, but the theory is sound.

              Comment


              • #8
                . Then he took me aside and asked me what he needs to buy so he can run a cable from his neighbor's place to his so that he can watch TV - right then I told him I would not be able to help him so he stormed off cussing me out!
                I wonder how he would have felt if you called the cops on him.

                I had a situation like that at the library. At one point we received about 30 diff. newspapers throughout the US. So one evening this guy was cutting out coupons for transferring his meds from one place to another to get $5 off. Getting cheaper drugs, not bad, destroying City property, bad. We told him to stop and of course he was going on about how the other side of the paper was another ad, so he wasn't destroying anything important. I forgot if he cussed us out but he was angry with us and stormed out.
                Time! Time! Time is what turns kittens into cats.

                Don't teach me a lesson; all I learn is that you are an asshole.

                I wish porn had subtitles.

                Comment


                • #9
                  Quoth Shalom View Post
                  Allegedly it "turned your entire house wiring into an antenna".
                  The Masochistic part of me wants to try this just to see if I'll get hit by lightning. Why, Me, why??????
                  Now a member of that alien race called Management.

                  Yeah, you see that right. Pink. Harness.

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Quoth depechemodefan View Post
                    I wonder how he would have felt if you called the cops on him.
                    I was wondering the same thing.

                    Quoth depechemodefan View Post
                    I had a situation like that at the library. At one point we received about 30 diff. newspapers throughout the US. So one evening this guy was cutting out coupons for transferring his meds from one place to another to get $5 off.
                    Libraries don't spend big bucks subscribing to newspapers to provide free coupons to cheapskates. He wants coupons, he can buy his own papers.
                    They say that God only gives us what we can handle. Apparently, God thinks I'm a bad ass.

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Quoth depechemodefan View Post
                      I wonder how he would have felt if you called the cops on him.
                      Cops probably wouldn't have done anything (small potatoes, and RS wasn't the entity that would have been harmed). Considering RS' reputation for demanding phone numbers, in your shoes I would have been especially anal about getting his name and phone # ("the system won't process the sale without it"), then calling the CABLE COMPANY on him.

                      Quoth Shalom View Post
                      You know, back before cable TV reached near-100% penetration, they really used to sell some weird thing that hooked up to the 300Ω antenna terminals and the other end plugged into the AC. Allegedly it "turned your entire house wiring into an antenna". No idea if this actually worked or if it was just some snake oil thing to syphon money out of your wallet. (The plug had a large cylinder coming out of it; if I was more cynical, I'd guess that inside there was an ordinary dipole, and the only thing the plug part did was to hold it securely fastened to the wall. Wonder how many people saw that, thought "Gee, I bet I could make one myself!", cobbled on a plug to the end of a bit of 300Ω twinlead, and blew up their TVs.)

                      I also had a set of RS intercoms that ran on VLF (180 kHz if I remember correctly) transmitted through the AC lines, but it never worked right in our house. I've wondered if that was because, due to the peculiarities of the AC distribution infrastructure in New York City, half the house's outlets were 120 degrees out of phase with the rest of them.
                      In theory, that TV device could have worked. It would use your house wiring as a random-wire antenna (would probably need to be plugged in the right way - this would also be before the days of polarized plugs, and I can only see it working with the hot wire) capacitively coupled (lets high frequencies through, blocks low frequencies such as 60Hz AC) to the TV's antenna terminals.

                      As for the intercoms, those would be carrier current devices. Again due to impedance issues, they'd need to be on the same phase as each other. In apartment buildings, the feed is 3-phase, and each apartment gets 2 of them (obviously not the same 2 for all) so that 240 volt equipment like stoves can be run from phase-to-phase (it would actually be around 208 volts, but the equipment still works). That's why some power interruptions in an apartment building will leave some people with some of their outlets/lights working and others dead while other people are unaffected (1 phase dead, and the unaffected people have the 2 live phases), and others will leave some people with some stuff working and others have no electricity (2 phases dead, the "no power" people have the 2 dead phases). Detached homes will have 240 volts taken from the same phase via a center-tapped transformer (the 2 "hot" lines are 120 volts each, but 180 degrees out of phase, so it's 240 volts from red to black). In either case, the transformer won't pass the carrier current signal from one phase to another because the windings are an inductor which blocks high-frequency signals.

                      The same situation applies to X-10 home automation (carrier current signalling used to control the modules). If you want to pass the signal from phase to phase, you need to put a capacitor across the 2 phases (acts as if it's a short at the control frequency, but small enough value that it's pretty much an open circuit at 60HZ). They make modules that will operate 240V devices (the type of outlet a welder plugs into, not a dryer or stove), and I asked them if these take the signal from the red or the black side, or if they have the capacitor built-in so that it doesn't matter (logical thing to do, since by its nature it has access to both "hot" wires, would be used by someone who has X-10 in their home, and would provide a "plug and play" way to pass the signal to the other side) - they said it didn't have the capacitor, but that it was a good idea.
                      Any fool can piss on the floor. It takes a talented SC to shit on the ceiling.

                      Comment

                      Working...
                      X