FYI:
I looked inside my Xantrex XDL35-5 power supply the other day, and the QC stickers were TTi.
Just in case anyone is ever curious, as I was, who really made the Xantrex stuff. Not being a UK citizen, I never knew of TTi until DNA pointed them out the other day. (Thanks, DNA ;-)
-- Good day! ________________________________________ Christopher R. Carlen Principal Laser&Electronics Technologist Sandia National Laboratories CA USA crcarleRemoveThis@BOGUSsandia.gov NOTE, delete texts: "RemoveThis" and "BOGUS" from email address to reply.
The dark secret behind Thurlby-Thandar Instruments is that Clive Sinclair used to be on the board of directors. The brother of one of my colleagues was quality control manager there for a while - he could stop the production line any time he liked, but Clive could be relied on to pop out of his office and restart it within thirty seconds.
Happily, they managed to ease Clive out of hands-on control before his obsession with using the cheapest possible component did irreparable damage to the firm's reputation, and the stuff of theirs that I've used has been very good value for money.
No-one has every argued that Clive Sinclair isn't clever - though he was silly enough to join Mensa and was the president of the British society at one point - but his obsessive pursuit of the lowest possible parts cost to the exclusion of any consideration of reliablity has managed to bring down a number of really ingenious schemes.
-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen
So are they any good today?
What happened to Sinclair? He seemed to have a scheme to make a PC competitor, possibly based on Linux and ARM. Too bad that didn't materialize in a meaningfull fashion.
-- Good day! ________________________________________ Christopher R. Carlen Principal Laser&Electronics Technologist Sandia National Laboratories CA USA crcarleRemoveThis@BOGUSsandia.gov NOTE, delete texts: "RemoveThis" and "BOGUS" from email address to reply.
I have three TTI bench supplies sitting in front of me (models PL3200MT, PL330 and QL355). They work perfectly, and my only complaint is that the fan in the latest digital one (QL355) is a bit obtrusive ..
Dave
Further back in history, there were 2 companies - Thurlby & Thandar. The second used to be Clive's company that started off with cheap DMMs and a range of bench instruments including a dinky scope in matching stackable cases. Thandar were a slightly higher-end outfit (Although Lower would be hard...) These days things get rebadged in all sorts of directions - I had a Xantrex PSU (Apparently made by Xantrex) that was badged by a UK PSU manufacturer.
He sold his name to Amstrad. and went on to produce stuff under the name "Psion"
I didn't hear about that one.
Bye. Jasen
In message , dated Sun, 6 Aug 2006, jasen writes
He has new ideas every minute, like most inventors. But that one IS a bit obvious, isn't it? Even I thought of that, around 1990, and I don't 'do' computers. What Linux didn't have was a GUI, and Acorn had a very good one. Obvious conclusion. Linux depends on open-source code and anyone can contribute; ARM code is very economical and (some say) is very easy to write. Obvious conclusion.
Of course, the project was suppressed by a conspiracy between .... (fill in whom you (don't) like).
-- OOO - Own Opinions Only. Try www.jmwa.demon.co.uk and www.isce.org.uk 2006 is YMMVI- Your mileage may vary immensely. John Woodgate, J M Woodgate and Associates, Rayleigh, Essex UK
It would have had rubber keys that stopped working after a while and probably a dodgy proprietary tape storage scheme or non-standard diskette size and I'm therefore thankful he didn't make it.
Graham
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