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An audiophile and petrolhead's journal: Buckle up!
Jul 22, 2014 at 12:30 AM Post #7,112 of 9,499
Yeah. I had the superchargers. It was a riot configuring inclined tracks to see how much climb you could get. The Thunderbird being the heaviest Hot Wheel ever made was problematic. Most likely where I learned all about momentum and intertia.
 
 Putting the open wheeled Lotus through the supercharger was a monumentally BAD idea:wink:
 
Jul 22, 2014 at 12:42 AM Post #7,114 of 9,499
Never had that. I did have the flared jump ramps though. Combining that with the supercharger provided endless hours of amusement.
 
Jul 22, 2014 at 8:46 AM Post #7,115 of 9,499
Sizzlers were *perfect* candidates for the 9 volt mod. I would take the body off, remove the battery, wire-up the 9v, and then tape it to the chassis. They usually couldn't stay on the track around the curves.

I always tried to gang bang the superchargers with a very short piece of track between them. Usually didn't work - kick back was a bitch...
 
Jul 22, 2014 at 11:00 AM Post #7,116 of 9,499
I probably had hundreds of Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars, but I was never given any tracks so I would terrorize my parents by improvising all over the house. I wish I knew where I put all those cars, despite their poor condition by now.
 
As for RC planes, my one and only foray into that territory ended up downed in a farmer's field next to a public park.
 
Jul 22, 2014 at 1:49 PM Post #7,117 of 9,499
billybob_jcv said:
Sizzlers were *perfect* candidates for the 9 volt mod. I would take the body off, remove the battery, wire-up the 9v, and then tape it to the chassis. They usually couldn't stay on the track around the curves.

I always tried to gang bang the superchargers with a very short piece of track between them. Usually didn't work - kick back was a bitch...
Click to expand...


I forgot about the Sizzlers. It was about that time I think that AFX came on the scene.
 
Jul 22, 2014 at 8:48 PM Post #7,118 of 9,499
I'm more familiar with the AFX slot cars, my best friend in highschool had a Bathurst track special and I we used to race at his place.  Always had to clean the track contacts with a coin so they can operate correctly.
 
Jul 22, 2014 at 9:12 PM Post #7,119 of 9,499
sp wild said:
  I'm more familiar with the AFX slot cars, my best friend in highschool had a Bathurst track special and I we used to race at his place.  Always had to clean the track contacts with a coin so they can operate correctly.
Click to expand...


Or steel wool so you could watch it spark up when you put power to the track:) 
 
There was a real AFX cult up here for a while with custom bodies and chassis. Some guys spent enormous amounts of money on these things getting the last little ounce of performance out of them.
 
Jul 22, 2014 at 10:16 PM Post #7,120 of 9,499
My Dad built my older brother a permanent slot car track on a 4x8 sheet of plywood. It was a bit old by the time I was old enough to enjoy it. These were old school HO slot cars from the 60s - no fancy AFX magnets, banked track or anything else that kept the cars on the track. I just remember being darn lucky if you could get the cars to do one successful lap.
 
Jul 22, 2014 at 10:40 PM Post #7,121 of 9,499
Never realised slot cars went so far back.  Reading all this makes me feel sad that todays kids dont enjoy the simple pleasures that we seem to have a common thread with in our kind of toys, I guess we could be all gen x in this regards?
 
The parents can't possibly afford these old school toys...especially when they're not  in the christmas wish list...I phones need updating, video games costing nearly 100 that they must have.  There is no competition here, kids much rather blast their way via video games and get preoccupied with technological gadgets.  Parents wont let their kids out because 'they' tell them the world is ending.  But we'll just let the Ying and Yang do its thing...pros and cons, zero sum game etc.
 
Jul 22, 2014 at 11:09 PM Post #7,123 of 9,499
Oh, yeah - there used to be slot cars that were much larger than HO scale. There was a place in Pismo Beach, CA (located in the attic above an arcade) that had 3 or 4 different tracks intended for 1:24 scale cars. You could rent cars or bring your own, and you rented time on one of the tracks. The tracks were ~6 lanes wide. It was great fun - those cars were really fast compared to the HO cars of the day.

I remember my brother's HO cars had motors that looked like this, so I suppose these were the kind of cars he had. Wikipedia says these types of cars were called the "Aurora Thunderjet 500", and that sounds about right. They were introduced in 1963 and were replaced by the AFX line in 1971.

 
Jul 23, 2014 at 11:50 AM Post #7,124 of 9,499
Well, our database is now (finally) running locally. Billy would like our array, it has a 10TB RAID-0 array of SSDs caching a 100TB RAID-10 array of HDDs. Over 10Gb ethernet, I can't tell what's running off my local SSD and what's coming from the servers (they run on a 40Gb/s fiber backbone). Oh, and the whole thing is on a rack that fits in a small, well-ventilated, closet.

Back in the old days I remember how much of a pain it was to add drives to an array, especially SCSI drives (*twitch*), but now we just add more* and the controllers automatically configure them. Then the system asks if you want to add them to the array, you click "yes", and it just does it. No waiting, no drama, no rebuilding of partition tables and worrying... it's unnatural. :blink:
 
Jul 23, 2014 at 11:31 PM Post #7,125 of 9,499
magick man said:
Well, our database is now (finally) running locally. Billy would like our array, it has a 10TB RAID-0 array of SSDs caching a 100TB RAID-10 array of HDDs. Over 10Gb ethernet, I can't tell what's running off my local SSD and what's coming from the servers (they run on a 40Gb/s fiber backbone). Oh, and the whole thing is on a rack that fits in a small, well-ventilated, closet.

Back in the old days I remember how much of a pain it was to add drives to an array, especially SCSI drives (*twitch*), but now we just add more* and the controllers automatically configure them. Then the system asks if you want to add them to the array, you click "yes", and it just does it. No waiting, no drama, no rebuilding of partition tables and worrying... it's unnatural. :blink:
Click to expand...


Very nice! That's very similar to the SAN we have from EMC - it has three tiers of disks: 1) SSD for cache, 2) high speed drives for primary storage and 3) lower speed, high capacity drives for data used less often. The EMS software manages the entire thing dynamically - we just define the logical drive space we want and then let it do the rest. Works great! If a drive fails, the SAN will isolate that physical drive and then email us *and* EMC about the fault. EMC ships us a new drive that day, and all we have to do is pull out the bad drive and plug in the new - the SAN will automatically recognize the new drive and incorporate it into the array.

Tonight I took a couple of co-workers on a foodie adventure in Dallas. We went here: http://www.knifedallas.com/

It was PHENOMENAL!!! Great starters, great steak, great sides, great dessert. Highly recommended!!
 
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