One for my twin, 5andy.

[runnach]

Ripping out old en-suite room, removing bath and installing a roomy walk in shower and new white goods. And what a coincidence when I found a sheet from the Sun newspapers, date on our shared birthday. See date with corny joke

And hands up who had the then state of the art Amstrad tower unit, cooncil unit compared to the posh Bang & Olufson. Also hands up, anyone who poured their heart out to Dear Deidre?

Workwise, I was near to leaving seven year stretch with a local company, to start with another company Jan 84.

What a find

​

 

[5andy]

….and only the year before we actually got married. After over 40 years maybe a question I should now be asking…Probably better not…..Good find though Terry.

 

[runnach]

….and only the year before we actually got married. After over 40 years maybe a question I should now be asking…Probably better not…..Good find though Terry.

Yes, best to keep it zipped, Sandy.

I forgot to mention, and I'm puzzled why the page was neatly folded and behind the top vertical mitre of door facing where it meets top horizontal over door facia door mitre?

Amstrad was the beginning of the making of Sir Alan Sugar.

 

[wildebus]

Never heard Amstrad called "Cooncil HiFi" but it matches the product
Play the lastest cassette on it when enjoying your carryout with 'Hoose Rice'

 

[wildebus]

Amstrad was the beginning of the making of Sir Alan Sugar.

The company I worked for in the mid '80's designed and made the hard drive in the Amstrad 1640's (that hard drive was the worlds first 3.5" hard drive and designed and built in the UK ). I wonder how many people here who had one of those PCs remember having to take hold of the computer and give it a violent twist to get it to work? The HD Drive used to suffer from stiction (probably used wrong grease or something) and the drive needed a sudden jolt to free the head mechanism.

 

[wildebus]

Ripping out old en-suite room, removing bath and installing a roomy walk in shower and new white goods. And what a coincidence when I found a sheet from the Sun newspapers, date on our shared birthday. See date with corny joke

And hands up who had the then state of the art Amstrad tower unit, cooncil unit compared to the posh Bang & Olufson. Also hands up, anyone who poured their heart out to Dear Deidre?

Hell of a coincidence with the dates there! Your post about finding the paper in the en-suite .... reminds me when I redid the bathroom in my House in St. Albans. house built 1940 and underneath the bath found some newspaper sheets from I think the Daily Mail dated mid 1950's and there was a 'dear deidre' type section on one page. Still remember one question and answer quite well .... "My husband comes home from work and doesn't take any notice of me" or something like that.
The advice from the 'Deidre' was along the lines of "be greatful he comes home. have his slippers ready and a drink to hand to him. get the children to bed so they don't annoy him. freshen your makeup", etc.
I think that would be considered slightly sexist nowadays, perhaps?

 

[runnach]

Hell of a coincidence with the dates there! Your post about finding the paper in the en-suite .... reminds me when I redid the bathroom in my House in St. Albans. house built 1940 and underneath the bath found some newspaper sheets from I think the Daily Mail dated mid 1950's and there was a 'dear deidre' type section on one page. Still remember one question and answer quite well .... "My husband comes home from work and doesn't take any notice of me" or something like that.
The advice from the 'Deidre' was along the lines of "be greatful he comes home. have his slippers ready and a drink to hand to him. get the children to bed so they don't annoy him. freshen your makeup", etc.
I think that would be considered slightly sexist nowadays, perhaps?

Yep, them were days before all this women's right crap, the worst thing that happened to man, when women were unshackled and allowed to leave the kitchen!!

 

[Rumour]

I had occasion to meet just plain old Alan Sugar when he had a small warehouse on the St. Albans Road in Watford. He hadn't long started up and imported quite a bit of cheap stuff. It was the late 60's and I was working at a hire place in St. Albans. He hired heater and other things from us. He could be seen in the early days rolling up his sleeves and unloading truck of these products. The picture portrayed of him now is not at all the guy I knew. But I guess he is acting to make the show watchable to some. Not me!

In 1976, I moved from Hemel Hempstead to Northants and my second next door neighbour bought a similar tower system in the early 80's. He was so proud of it he invited me in to have a listen to his new "HiFi". It was dire... I had a pre plastic crap Aiwa system with a linear deck, so when he played his loud, it nearly destroyed my ear drums. It was a couple of years later he heard my system and next thing I knew, he bought a Sanyo Music Centre. Shame really, Amstrad did make some better units, but he went Music Centre "HiFi"

 

[runnach]

Putting last of flooring back and this caught my eye, anyone know what card game on the rear is about?

 

[bartman]

Hell of a coincidence with the dates there! Your post about finding the paper in the en-suite .... reminds me when I redid the bathroom in my House in St. Albans. house built 1940 and underneath the bath found some newspaper sheets from I think the Daily Mail dated mid 1950's and there was a 'dear deidre' type section on one page. Still remember one question and answer quite well .... "My husband comes home from work and doesn't take any notice of me" or something like that.
The advice from the 'Deidre' was along the lines of "be greatful he comes home. have his slippers ready and a drink to hand to him. get the children to bed so they don't annoy him. freshen your makeup", etc.
I think that would be considered slightly sexist nowadays, perhaps?

Daily Mail in the 1950s. At least they'd got past their "Hurrah for the Blackshirts" days when their proprietor was praising Hitler and the British Union of Fascists.....or maybe they still haven't

 

[5andy]

Apparently as part of a promotion you could collect miniature playing cards. The grid allowed you to tick off which cards you have.

 

[wildebus]

I had occasion to meet just plain old Alan Sugar when he had a small warehouse on the St. Albans Road in Watford. He hadn't long started up and imported quite a bit of cheap stuff. It was the late 60's and I was working at a hire place in St. Albans. He hired heater and other things from us. He could be seen in the early days rolling up his sleeves and unloading truck of these products. The picture portrayed of him now is not at all the guy I knew. But I guess he is acting to make the show watchable to some. Not me!

In 1976, I moved from Hemel Hempstead to Northants and my second next door neighbour bought a similar tower system in the early 80's. He was so proud of it he invited me in to have a listen to his new "HiFi". It was dire... I had a pre plastic crap Aiwa system with a linear deck, so when he played his loud, it nearly destroyed my ear drums. It was a couple of years later he heard my system and next thing I knew, he bought a Sanyo Music Centre. Shame really, Amstrad did make some better units, but he went Music Centre "HiFi"

I like the Youtube channel by 'Techmoan'. He talks about lots of interesting tech, present and past, and one of his videos will probably interest you? the video is titled "Amstrad 'Hi-Fi' - the Mug's Eyeful" and definately worth a watch. I'm probably going to watch it again now I have looked it up to get the link

(FWIW, I didn't fall for the 'mugs eyeful' and buy an Amstrad, but I really really wanted a Fergusson Casseiver, which was basically a 'Separates' style Tuner and Cassette player combined, but by the time I had enough money to buy one I either changed my mind or they had been discontinued)

EDIT:
Watching the video above and I just had to screenshot a comment made about the Amstrad 'Hi-Fi' by one of Techmoans subscribers. It kind of sums up the whole experience of the time

 

[gasgas]

Amstrad was the next notch up from the worst con artist I ever came across. In about 1985 I wanted a PC. All the regular makers were selling 30Mb hard drive PCs for ?£399. ish. Or whatever it was. Amstrad however sold one with 40Mb of hard drive for £399. So I bought that. A year and a week later when the warranty expired, so did the computer. Totally dead. Deader than a Monty Python parrot. My boss at the time knew stuff about computers and I told him. He said he knows what's wrong, bring a nice bottle of Whisky and the PC round to his place, leave it with him for the weekend and he'll fix it. I did and he did. He explained: Uncle Tom Cobley and all the other reputable PC makers use a Seagate 30Mb hard drive and call their computers 30Mb. Amstrad also use the same Seagate 30Mb hard drive. But Amstrad spins the disc at 2/3 its proper speed so they can get more recording segments on the disc. Thus the 40Mb. However what this means is that the record / replay head on the disc has less 'real estate' on the disc to record on to and read from. This works for a short period but as soon as there is a tiny bit of wear or increased clearance between record / replay head it will not deposit enough magnetism on to the disc for the head to write or read. He did a hard reset on the disc and it worked fine. I immediately advertised it in the newspaper and got rid of it quick.

The worst con artist in this field was Sinclair, who makes Amstrad look like the revered saint of electronics. In about 1968 I went on a trip round the Plessey Semiconductor factory in Swindon. They showed us how they make transistors. At the end of the line, the transistor was tested for its gain. High gain = BC109. Medium gain = BC108. Low gain, but neverhteless working, = BC107. Having tested them they are stamped with their number. The gain was shown on an oscilloscope used by the tester. The scope had three lines crayoned on to its horizontal axis. Line A was the lowest and if the gain was low but above the line, it would be a BC107. Next up was line B - BC108. The top line was BC109.
"Any Questions" the guide asked us ( the Swindon Amateur Radio Society). I put my hand up (I was a schoolboy).
"What happens if the line doesn't reach Line A?"
" That transistor is scrap and goes in a skip. A bloke called Clive Sinclair comes and buys the skip load for £5". Transistors at this time were about £3.50 each.
A cry of "AHA!" went up from the Swindon Amateur Radio Society chaps who had bought Sinclair's first product, a ten transistor amplifier. None of them worked. Because he was selling them with scrap transistors. They were only sold as "Build it yourself kit of parts".
His clever trick was that at the bottom of his double page spread advertisement was a small panel which had two very important parts. One was "Don't worry if you can't solder, we include a soldering iron, solder and full instructions"
And another was the real trick:
"If you build it and find that it doesn't work, simply return it to us and we will repair it and return it in full working order. Simply enclose your P.O or cheque for £25 (or whatever it was)."
The trick was two fold: one was that it was marketed towards Mrs Mopp to build on her kitchen table with no electronics experience at all. The other was that the repair cost was the cost of replacing the scrap transistors with working ones. The circuit would actually work properly if proper transistors were used. His Cunning Plan was that most customers would say to themselves "I'm not an electronics person, the fact that it doesn't work must be my fault" and chuck it in the bin. This is why none of the Amateur Radio Club guys could get theirs to work. They simply then went away and replaced all the scrap transistors with proper ones.

The current industrial rogues of course are the Ford Motor Company, who have invented the Wet Belt. If you don't know what that is, look on Youtube and you will never again buy a Ford.