Maplin is back........?

[sunray]

I was working at Bush House and managed to destroy a Zener diode [given wrong advice on what a devices connexions were]. I phoned a friend who sometimes worked in the area and he gave directions to the nearest component store [even checked stock on line for me] as Maplins High Holburn. Nice day for a walk...

They didn't have any and checked stock, Tottenham court Road was nearest, still a nice day for a walk...

They also had an empty bin and showed stock at Parkway, Camden Town. Phoned the store to check stock and put 2 in a bag with my name, still a nice day but the walking wasn't so nice and not a cab in sight until Maplins was in view...

The girl I'd spoken with had gone off duty and it took 20 minutes before they gave up looking for the bag and got 2 more from stock.

Following day she phoned to ask if I was coming in to collect as bag was still on the till.

 

All good fun but the actuator did get repaired.

 

Following week a new Maplins store opened at the end of Waterloo brigde in the Strand only 200m from Bush House

 

[Paul TC]

I was working at Bush House and managed to destroy a Zener diode [given wrong advice on what a devices connexions were]. I phoned a friend who sometimes worked in the area and he gave directions to the nearest component store [even checked stock on line for me]

 

Working on a VHF "hilltop" radio site many years ago. Identified equipment fault and required a couple of transistors.

 

As the site was at top of town centre block of flats, quick trip down in lift and round corner to Tandy, (remember them ?)sourced replacements at the premium price.

 

When I put in receipt for £2 against expenses was asked why I did not drive a 50 mile round trip to the nearest detachment to get them from local stores.

Edited December 8, 2020 by Paul TC

[dje]

Working on a VHF "hilltop" radio site many years ago. Identified equipment fault and required a couple of transistors.

 

As the site was at top of town centre block of flats, quick trip down in lift and round corner to Tandy, (remember them ?)sourced replacements at the premium price.

 

When I put in receipt for £2 against expenses was asked why I did not drive a 50 mile round trip to the nearest detachment to get them from local stores.

 

 

I experienced a dead safety relay about 2 years ago on a job in Glasgow, the nearest place I could find with a workable part in stock was RS in Manchester.

Had them put it in a minicab, which ended up costing about 4 times what the part cost.

[sunray]

Working on a VHF "hilltop" radio site many years ago. Identified equipment fault and required a couple of transistors.

 

As the site was at top of town centre block of flats, quick trip down in lift and round corner to Tandy, (remember them ?)sourced replacements at the premium price.

 

When I put in receipt for £2 against expenses was asked why I did not drive a 50 mile round trip to the nearest detachment to get them from local stores.

 

 

I experienced a dead safety relay about 2 years ago on a job in Glasgow, the nearest place I could find with a workable part in stock was RS in Manchester.

Had them put it in a minicab, which ended up costing about 4 times what the part cost.

But probably a very relieved customer at getting a speedy repair.

 

Working in leeds, installing a new AV system I got a phone call from the office to a callout at Leeds University.

1) they were surprised I was there within 1/2 hour of the call.

2) the fault was a failed card in an AMX shelf... I phoned the office to arrange for a replacement card...

3) Delivery date declared by office to customer as 3 days as it had to be sent to office then out to site/me... customer went ape at me still on site.

4) I phoned office to see if it could be delivered direct to site on overnight, oh while on phone where is it coming from? Answer - York. I phoned supplier, Can I collect it from them?

5) When I got there I asked if they had anything for the Leeds job [by purchase order code] All of it was already packed for delivery and they were expecting to unpack for the repair job.

6) I took the lot. Did the repair, installed the original job, the programmer was able to finish his part of the job and be back in London that day & I finished the job the following day and back in the office the day after.

7) 2 happy customers

 

 

8) Several weeks later I was asked if the orders ever arrived as there was no delivery charge on the invoice.

Edited December 8, 2020 by sunray

[sandall]

Bit of a long shot, but did anyone buy one of their little FS500-S1 slide/negative scanners & still have the software? I've just dug mine out, but the CD has vanished without trace. I gather from various forums that they don't work on Win.10, buy I've still got a couple of XP laptops & many hundreds of 35mm slides that I was going to digitise when I "retired".

[richardash1981]

Bit of a long shot, but did anyone buy one of their little FS500-S1 slide/negative scanners & still have the software? I've just dug mine out, but the CD has vanished without trace. I gather from various forums that they don't work on Win.10, buy I've still got a couple of XP laptops & many hundreds of 35mm slides that I was going to digitise when I "retired".

A few items suggest that it may work with VueScan, a third-party software stack which supports a lot of older scanners on current Windows. It's what my parents are using to get a venerable HP flatbed to work under Windows 10.

[Junior8]

Trust me you will get fed up with using this little scanner after about ten slides why not look on line for a used Epson Perfection flatbed film scanner like the 4490 - provided always that it comes with the film guides they are often missing - which does 8 slides or a complete 36 shot 35mm film at a time with the film guide automatically. Or do what my brother in law did which was to fire up the old carousel projector project the slides on the screen and photograph them with his digital camera! Edited December 23, 2020 by Junior8

[sandall]

Panic over (I hope) - the CD might have been easier to find if it had any mention of Film or Slide or Scanner or FS500 anywhere on it . I'll have a try with VueScan as a backup strategy, but while the Epsom looks great I've run out of space to park a flat-bed scanner, & I'm also not sure I could justify c.£180 to the finance department.

 

E2A: And, contrary to what I'd been reading on various forums, worked first time on Win10 laptop, though I suspect Junior8 is right about the scanner itself being too fiddly to persevere with for long.

Edited December 23, 2020 by sandall

[Junior8]

On that subject a national archive bid for and won what they thought was sufficient money to digitise their collection of photographic prints, They purchased the appropriate scanner and employed a person to do it and found in a very short time that the task would take far longer than they'd estimated. About 30 prints an hour was the best anybody could manage most of that time spent lifting and shutting the lid. So they bought a simple copy table mounted a digital camera with a cable shutter release and did it that way. It was very quick and efficient and in most cases produced a perfectly adequate copy. Once these basic images had been shot and catalogued if a 'worked on' copy was needed later it was done using the scanner and the appropriate software.

[sandall]

"Scanning" has certainly come on a long way. I've been downloading some family Naval records from the National Archives (free at the moment),& while some are decent colour photos of actual documents, others are grotty B&W images of bits of paper stuck to backing sheets (often overlapping & with lots of blank pages & several attempts at some docs); presumably rather scrappily microfilmed in the past & then digitised "as-is", rather than re-scanning the originals.

 

E2A: the DIY scanning services I've met in archives in the last few years tend to be as you describe - basically a digital camera attached to a PC, looking down at a table. Last time I used the British Library it was still flatbed scanners.

Edited December 24, 2020 by sandall

[Junior8]

There is/was some terrible microfilm in archives due largely to zero maintenance of the reader gates but degraded micro-fiche is even worse. I hope all those slides you have don't suffer with the dreaded fungus contamination of some kodachrome efforts.

[sandall]

I hope all those slides you have don't suffer with the dreaded fungus contamination of some kodachrome efforts.

You've got me worried now - there's 30 years worth, & they're all Kodachrome

[Junior8]

I didn't mean to spook you and you'll probably have no issues. It seems to vary with batches of film and storage and I suppose how well they were processed but it is a known problem. I wonder too if may be to do with their use of cardboard mounts. I have several boxes all with no problems (though I have some Kodacolour negs from forty years ago that have developed a red cast) and a large collection of slides I inspected some years ago were perfect too. It seems to be to do with the organic coatings used. I don't know if affects other makes but I have some agfa and fuji again with no issues.

 

Take a look here https://kodakdigitiz...ides-and-photos but also search Google about the issue as apparently cleaning can do more harm than good.

 

 

Edited December 24, 2020 by Junior8

[Jivemaster]

The colour sift in old C41 neg stock is due to one colour layer fading more than the others with time and effort altering each colour's contrast then OK files and prints can be made.

[pscandrett]

Since we've drifted onto photographic stuff... does anyone know where I can borrow/hire an APS scanner from? Companies will happily scan my (already processed) APS film but at really quite high prices. I have a few dozen of them from the late 90s when I was using an APS camera, and I have the prints; it'd be great to digitise them, though, and I thought it'd be best to scan the negatives. As far as I can tell the hardware is pricey... but so is scanning them all commercially.