Toastie

That was stretching it a bit, wasn't it? You know, I am entirely with you on everything stickers related, and I love this thread; however, I am ever alerted by the word "problem" As far as I am concerned, there is no need for any hat, I believe just plain vanilla observations may aid ... Define "problem": For whom, and to what extent? I simply conclude by looking at sticker mania (oh, they promised not to, but so did - almost every company out there ...), that TLG is getting away nicely with them. Over and out. Too bad, but that's capitalistic life. If any crazily money making enterprise out there gets crazily money making TLG by the balls with doing prints, I will say otherwise. So the "problem" is maybe a more personal issue (that I certainly have), rather than a hat thing. Best, Thorsten

I am not sure about this (the dust only bit). Yes, dust is a devil, as there are Dirt Devils to take care of dust. However, When you look at the behavior of ABS exposed to different levels of humidity at different temperatures (there are ample references out there), you'll find that ABS is changing shape. Not much, so little. Well, with all these super refined drive trains and all that - it just may jam up. Built at 40% rel humidity, 25°C, may have issues at 80% rel humidity and 15°C. Go all metal if you want to avoid that - as they do in real life - or rebuild your model with parts equilibrated to new conditions (takes time though, days or even several months). And yes, keep the dust out. Conclusion: Build your complex LEGO models in a Class 7 (or better) clean room operated at specs (pressure, temp, humidity) and leave it there. And run it there. Best, Thorsten

I think so too - this pretty much sounds like Dacta sets; did you check here? https://www.toysperiod.com/lego-set-reference/educational-dacta/mindstorms/rcx/ "Storage bins" is another hint at Dacta sets - you may want to look for sets that don't have the RCX/tower combo, as the large yellow beams come frequently in Dacta building "experience" sets. Cranes and such. Windows idiot here, so I don't know about Linux. Best, Thorsten

Because TLG chooses to do so - and because there are many, many believers - regarding that narrative. And of course the molds - still believed by many to be of insane value, in 2022. They are expensive, for sure, but they are absolutely not "that" expensive. All you said is what I am thinking. The thing is, how on Earth is it possible that some competitors still exist? In a truly market-oriented, capitalism environment? That does not make any sense, does it? When molds and prints are so insanely expensive, well then something is completely off here. Best, Thorsten

It would look better I don't want to see what that big set looks like with some or all stickers peeling off or crumbling, because it was not stored in an appropriate location Best, Thorsten

Yes, that is what I tried to say. They suck sh*t. Best, Thorsten

Just one more reference that I did not find when I started this thread - it appears as if this thread becomes obsolete. On the other hand, the information is so widely spread out (as far as I am concerned) - there are movies on the WayBack Machine, links on diverse websites not related to LEGO at all ... maybe this thread may serve as a LEGO related "link repository" ... This is from the Louisville Hackerspace website: https://wiki.lvl1.org/Lego_Interactive_Interface-A_Driven_via_Arduino with many references. By the way, 9750 arrived from Holland today. And yes, it works with TCLogo as well as QBasic programs I am composing on my IBM XT. Actually, I am composing them on my laptop using DosBox-X and then transfer the program files to floppy disk images, which are read by the GoTek on the XT. Will post more here - chances are, what I post has been posted somewhere else on the net. Of course. Nevertheless: I am very happy with 9771 and 9750 run by an IBM XT. Latest hardware is from 1987; 9750 that is. I just love this. Best, Thorsten

No, unfortunately I cannot locate that code either. Hmmm. John as in John Hanson? Best, Thorsten

What's wrong with the stickers? It's stickers, to be applied by consumers. Playmobil does apply them during production in a probably very clean environment, and maybe using adhesives, you don't want to see in the open market (kids peeling off the back and licking the adhesive, swallowing the sticker, eating the entire sticker sheet plus a few bricks). Plus grease from your hands, a little dust here and there - if you have a clean room at hand, go there and apply the stickers - they'll probably live a couple of years longer (in the dark). Well, I never apply any stickers - for that very reason (I don't have a clean room, and it is bright and warm up here, in my attic. Prints never crumble though. Would they have been printed - the whole "never can use this piece for other builds" discussion will explode. Solutions: Don't apply them. Should the set look crappy because of missing stickers: Crappy set. Best, Thorsten

Huh? Really? 39°C of what, the equilibrated environment (Lipo and surrounding) or the internal temp in the LiPo "box"? Never heard of that. Once LiPos are doing chemistry (either charge or discharge) they generate heat for sure. So once you fire up a LiPo it gets "warm". Never heard of 39°C as sweat spot though ... this could be used as optimization temp for both, juice in or out. Best, Thorsten

Tough environment for your LEGO builds! Sounds like fun though - cool. Well, that is not that cold - LiPo's still should work fine. However, they do age as well, as you know. When a LiPo has done quite some work (#charging/discharging cycles, charging procedure, and current you are drawing during operation - sustained as well as peak), it may show poorer performance with falling temperatures. This will be more pronounced at lower capacity LiPo's. So yes, that behavior could very well be, depending on the history of the LiPo pack. Best, Thorsten

That could very well be! And this sounds like a fun collection you have! However, I believe that some of the non-LEGO bricks of the 2020's (that is when I found out that the Dark Side is much less dark than I always thought - the Flying Dutchman TLG never made really is the brightest star in my collection ) may also live that long - they are made from ABS as well. Yes, there are different compositions of ABS and the colors do affect their integrity. Well, some brownish LEGO elements tend to fall apart as well, chemistry on the Bright Side seems to be the same as on the Dark Side. And the other thing is: In 30 years, statistically, I am dead since long. Around here, there is not that much enthusiasm towards building with ABS pieces as I have (regardless of make and model). So I better have all the fun now rather than never . All the best, Thorsten

I love this, the temporary nature. Got past this stage: Here it began with having a box full of non-LEGO stuff. Then I ordered non-LEGO parts packs (tiles, this and that). And now - I just mix them all up. Reason: There is essentially no difference other than the logo (none vs LEGO). Glad that I am not alone ... Best, Thorsten

Define "The Cold" LiPo's (you are talking about LiPo's, don't you?) do have issues at low temperatures. Low needs to be known, though. Some believe 19°C is intolerable in a living room, others sleep well below 10°C. So what is the environment and battery type you are using? Best, Thorsten

I have no clue, but is this maybe what you are looking for? Simple PID control of the speed of a train: The trains use RCX + RobotC to stabilize the "set point speed" using a PID algorithm. The latest original RCX firmware did not execute fast enough to do proper PWM adjustment; the RCX RobotC firmware does, though. On page 59 to 61 of the Railbricks Magazine #3 (https://brickmodelrailroader.com/wp-content/uploads/railbricks/railbricks_3.pdf) there is a it on the programming, but also on the behavior of a PID controlled vehicle, when the P, I, D parameters are chosen badly - I data-logged the speed of the train. The parameters can be changed on the fly during train operation, that was fun! Best, Thorsten

Really nice! Taking full advantage of the hub's sensors! The "Universal Vehicle Controls" stand needs to be flush on a surface to operate correctly? So when walking outside and follow your MOC, that won't work, right? Other than: Really impressive work! Best, Thorsten

Man, I feel so bad. Really. The moment I saw your screenshot, my face turned deep red, I became sweaty - and thought to myself: It is all my fault, I am sure of it. 2 minutes later, that was fixed. Sorry again for bothering you and wasting your time. Yes you were damned close ... Best wishes, Thorsten P.S.: I am cleaning up the mess in this thread as good as I can.

Hi @Jim oh, they do serve the images: Issue 1: The link above is a deep-linked image. You click on it and the image appears. In the past (maybe a week or two ago), after c/p'ing the link, the picture showed up in the EB editor window, as well as in the final post and could be resized etc. That is not happening anymore, the question is why? Is this a BrickShelf issue? When is an image link embedded as image and when just shown as hyperlink on EB? Does the server (BrickShelf) need to provide a special service to make the image materialize on EB? Or is there a procedure to make that happen? EDIT: Issue 1 was entirely my fault, see above Issue 2 More importantly and much more annoying: In my older posts, the deep links (pointing to existing BrickShelf images, I checked) are now replaced just by the image name I gave it on BrickShelf. The entire link is gone, see for example here: When I edit that post and dblclick on any of the picture.jpg name, there is just the name, not the link anymore. So you can't even click on it to show the picture. No folder was changed on BrickShelf, nor did I delete the images, they are all there. I don't believe that BrickShelf has removed the links, did they? EDIT: Issue 2 was entirely my fault, see above Best, Thorsten

Define LOTS I also believe that there are LOTS of town builders, but I do have the impression that there are GAZILLION individuals (moms, dads, grandparents, and so on and so forth) that buy CITY sets for the younger among us. As GAZILLION >> LOTS, TLG = City as is. They care about the money . Label_1: Let MakeMoney$ = "And after that about more money" PRINT MakeMoney$ IF GAZILLION > LOTS GOTO Label_1 END Instructor: Oh, that is very bad programming! You have created an infinite loop. Beavis: Yeah, I know, it's kinda cool. Uhhh Huhuhu Huhuhu ... Best, Thorsten

Hello moderators! @Jim (Just trying to get some attention here, sorry!) Well, this issue of corrupt BrickShelf deep-linking (as so often advertised here) is obscuring basically all of my posts, as I am using BrickShelf as image repository. These are now gone in all of my posts - and were replaced with just the image name - no link anymore. This is really annoying, as there was no announcement at all that BrickShelf would go down in flames. Or is this related to some updates on EB? Well, it is much more than annoying, as all my posts with images have become corrupt. Maybe my fault using that old machine; but if so, I am out of here. See first post, the above is all not true. Best, Thorsten.

The muscle car freaks in the Technic Forum will be impressed!!! I mean, this is an at least 100 metric tons beast doing one power slide after the other. A Mustang Shelby GT500 just weighs a little more than 3 metric tons I love the moment, when it - a bit clunky (of course, it's a steam engine!) - leaves slowly the tracks - and no one knows what will happen next ... and then all hell breaks loose. Very cool find! Thank you for sharing! Best regards, Thorsten

@alexGS Hi Alex, it appears as if direct PCMCIA usage (1 to 1) to drive a logic that is similar to 9771 may be rather difficult. But maybe others know better. What I found though is a digital I/O PCMCIA card, that may actually work. A Google search "PIOD24" should get you to a couple of vendors, that may have the card in stock: https://www.artisantg.com/TestMeasurement/99727-1/Acces-PIOD24-PCMCIA-24-Bit-Digital-I-O-Card https://accesio.com/product/piod24/ From the online documentation (the manual is quite elaborate) I believe to understand that you can configure that card with some flexibility (responding to specific address/address ranges). It runs on DOS, Win3.x, Win95 etc. (16/32 bit) machines. It is also total overkill, but everything that goes into such a slot is total overkill in comparison to 9771 . The description tab says: "Once the PCMCIA Card and Socket Services recognizes the PIOD24 card it will then appear to your application software like a card on the internal ISA bus." There is a memory resident program that does all the synching between PCMCIA and ISA behavior. The output of that card is apparently a 8255 PIO and 3 programmable counters. The PIO does exactly what the 373's do in 9771: You load data into one of the three 8 bit output ports - or you read from them. The output data are latched as well; once clocked into the PIO, the outputs hold this information until the next write access - heck, this is how I/O chips work, you know all that. These cards maybe expensive though - the pages look like as if they do business with (old) industrial type hardware users, but I don't know. You need to call for a quote ... Best regards, Thorsten

Thank you very much for the update, appreciate that! All the best, Thorsten

Hello moderators, here is to you: - first things first! Is it me (most probably the case): When I insert deep links from BrickShelf, the images stored there used to materialize in the post as images. This is currently not the case, only links are inserted. It also appears as if deep-linked BrickShelf hosted images in older posts are not shown as images anymore; they are replaced by links (that do work). Is this intentional? EDIT: That is totally wrong: It wasn't Eurobricks, it wasn't BrickShelf, it was my very own stupidity: I am using "Privacy Badger" as Plugin for Firefox to get rid of unknown tracking activities. Fine when I am getting tracked, but I'd like to know. This worked for years with EB. All of a sudden (about weeks ago - maybe after an automatic update), it appears as if deep-linking from BrickSelf was judged as tracking. I put BrickSelf on a white list - and all images in old post are back: What I was seeing in the EB post editor (also when dbl clicking on the link) was just the image name - no link anymore. And that link was - I believe - removed on the fly when browsing - by Privacy Badger. @Jim I sincerely apologize for pestering you and being rude. I truly hope you accept this apology. I was "shocked" when I saw your post with the images ... and that then meant it could only be me ... With regard to deeplinking from BrickShelf: Works flawlessly, as before - after I put BrickShelf explicitly on the white list. Sorry folks for creating such a mess. With very best regards, Thorsten P.S.: Changed title accordingly

@alexGS Hi Alex, this was your question in the VC thread: "I am wondering whether the 9771 card logic (which I had found previously at the other link) could be interfaced to a PCMCIA slot as found on old laptops? Would the LEGO software then ‘talk to’ port 925 and would those signals appear at the PCMCIA connector?"  As already mentioned, don't know yet, but this something to investigate! Now, I assume that you want to use original TC1 software, right? The COM/EXE files that is? Or do you want to operate 9750 from an old laptop, using e.g. QBasic or the like? In that case, an Arduino would certainly do the trick: Feed the data from your program to a serial port of the laptop, hook that port up to a serial2TTL converter ($3) attached to the Arduino RX/TX, which in turn converts the data to 6+2 out+in digital ports connected to 9750. Again, if you want to run original TC1 software, this won't work, of course. So let's dive into the nitty-gritty of PCMCIA ... Best, Thorsten