![]() Yep, I can even simulate a phone network to test old POTS phone equipment. There’s test gear here for vacuum tube, solid state, and computer-era equipment. There’s a guitar in the building I use to test effect pedals I build from bare boards using the finest components I can buy. The old Radio Shack receiver was my Elmer’s (Elmer is an amateur radio term for a mentor) who is SK (Silent Key). Yes, that is a Novell Intranetware Clock and a Pignose guitar amp. ![]() The Sun Microsystems keyboard and mouse were salvaged from a trash can the Yaesu FT-450D HF radio and Icom ID4100 DStar VHF-UHF radio were both won this year in radio club raffles. The best part is that I’m out of the house. I did buy a new chair to be all-day comfortable. I have two 27-inch 4K monitors, a repaired Cherry keyboard connected to my work laptop, and dock. It’s outside the home and has an internet Ethernet connection, plus it is fully insulated, heated, and air conditioned. The building is a mess but it’s made a really nice home office. In this building, I can build/repair many vintages of guitar, radio, and electronic equipment. When finished, I filled it with my hobbies and stuff. I found some heavy-duty shelving in a dumpster driving home one day…and filled my SUV with all I could grab. The primary work table is an eight-foot-long solid core door that I can stand on to get to the higher shelves. Knowing I have lots of stuff, I built it with a nine-foot-high ceiling. Not having a place for my pursuits, I used my skills learned in the construction trades to make a place in the backyard. So, I needed a place to work that’s not in the house.Īlmost 20 years ago my wife and I moved into our current home. By the end of the week we were both cranky. So like many others, I went to work at the house.Īt the house, there was an issue. I started a new job in February 2020, and in early March, the new company moved the majority of the people out of the office. Oh well their loss.After over 20 years with the same company, I changed jobs. I often tried to convince him to make a Geochron part of our standard datacenter deployment configuration, but once it got to the bean-counters it was always shot down. When I first started the CEO/Founder had a Geochron in his office, but it was his personal unit. I spent the last 20 years building and maintaining a global time distribution hierarchy within the corporation (as a hobby that someone else funded if you will) but eventually ‘corporate’ caught on and it was adopted and taken over by enterprise IT. I have recently retired but in my ‘working life’ I was a Computer Systems Architect, but my passion has always been accurate time. (OK EST is boring, but being retired my life is now much less complicated.) From the top down of the stack we have EST, EST, GMT and EST. You can’t miss it, I just point when someone asks what time is it? I have five more of these units scattered around the house connected to IRIG-B by a coax that I have run to each display (what is the point of a time display it is not millisecond accurate…). The ‘TCD26’ photo is the time display in my basement office, it is synchronized to an XL-AK using IRIG-B. I have deployed all these units literally around the world. The two bottom units are TrueTime XL-AK GPS Time and Frequency Receivers (the oldest, but arguably the best). These were much more expensive than the MCR, hence why we moved to the MCR. The second unit is a Symmetricom S250i, IRIG-B synchronized Network Time Server. The top unit is a Masterclock MCR1000 Network Time Server (newest of the bunch), a ‘low cost’ unit of which I have deployed 100’s in the systems I used to design. The ‘rack’ photo is a part of my collection of time and frequency instruments. The ‘new_clock’ photo replaces the Raspberry Pi driving the screen with my new Geochron Digital Atlas 4K. To the left of the GC1000 is an active shortwave antenna control box this antenna facilitates such reliable reception. It has been maintained and upgraded many times over the years. I purchased it six months after introduction, a great expense at the time. The ‘GC1000’ photo is my oldest, and dearest, clock a Heathkit GC1000. And just to really expose my obsession there are several Masterclock TCD 26 time displays scattered throughout the house driven by one of the XL-AK GPS clocks providing IRIG-B. They are two TrueTime XL-AK’s, a Symmetricom S250i (IRIG synchronized) and a Masterclock MRC1000 time server. Not in this photo is a ‘rack’ of various GPS based time servers/clocks. The TL-3 runs ‘synchronized’ almost the entire day, even way out here on the New England coast. Yes they are still out there and running. The true Time Geeks may be able to identify it, it is a TrueTime TL-3 WWV shortwave radio clock. In the picture is a four time zone wall clock (also many years old), a kit built Nixie Tube clock (using IN 14 tubes) and in the lower center one of my most beloved clocks.
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