Hi.

The latest batch of kits shipped over the weekend, so people should start getting them tomorrow onwards. I am trying to do about 25 every 10-14 days, which is about as fast as I can process the kits. There's a lot of work involved, about 1.5 hours of effort to get a finished box of bits, which is more than I expected. Oh, the naiveity! US customers are getting the weatherband modules, while everyone else is getting EU ones.

As you may have noticed, the website is currently down. I'm not sure what the current problem is, but I've spoken to the hosting company and they're going to sort it out ASAP. No existing orders have been affected by this, although obviously no new orders can be taken until the site is back

pca

Just got my tuner kit this morning (thank you very much Patrick!) and very excitedly, I hopped on over to www.pcats.co.uk ...NO!!! This is torture - I've got the box right in front of me but I can't do anything with it without the manual.

Could a kind soul upload/email it for me?

Phew...I just looked up Patrick's site in the Google cache and found to my delight that the manual is hosted on a seperate web server so I was able to download it after all.

For anyone in the same boat, here's the link:

http://www.reality.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/manual.pdf

I think its time you got a new ISP Patrick.

The same ISP that blocks traffic from parts of the world because they think that the IP address ranges for those innocent countries are where Korean hackers spam the world from. And doesn't do anything about it when its pointed out them that they're wrong.

Then email to your own domain doesn't work - for the same reason I'd bet.

Then your ISP goes "off the air" for extended periods of time.

Gee, If I didn't know better, I'd swear your ISP was a division of The Sirius Cybernetics Corporation or at least the Marketing Division of SonicBlue Corporation.

They're not actually my ISP. I connect to the net via blueyonder cable services, which is very fast, but their tech support appears to consist of a guy hopping around in the server room waving a stick with a chicken tied to the end chanting 'please work' over and over. (I said almost exactly those words to their support manager, which reduced him to helpless laughter for several minutes. I think it cut a little close to home )

The hosting company the pcats website is on is run by some friends of mine, who normally offer a good and reliable service. They don't block the australia area because they think that's where korean spam comes from, they block it because that's where australian hackers come from. Twice in the last year, one particular group of little sods in Australia have rooted the box, and seem to be deliberately targeting several websites on it. So they eventually simply blocked access to the entire area. There are numerous cracking attempts that come regularly from Sydney, Brisbane, etc, even now.

Unfortunately, you're right about mail to the address on the website. It is forwarded through the same machine, so has the same limitations. You can always mail me via an alternative address, such as pca at reality dot demon dot co dot uk.

As far as them being down, though, I'm not sure what the hell is going on there. The machine is up (I can ftp to it), but Apache doesn't appear to be working for some reason. I'm prodding them to sort it out.

pca

stick with a chicken tied to the end

Ah, the RITA. A well-documented troubleshooting tool.

ROFL... The ascii drawing of the chicken is priceless.

I said almost exactly those words to their support manager, which reduced him to helpless laughter for several minutes.

It had me reduced to helpless laughter for several minutes, too.

I particularly liked the upgraded model with the flying lead for ethernet coming out of its arse!

It works!!!

number 32 works!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I can even get Radio1 with RDS on a screwdriver aerial!

Hi PCA

I'm nervous about my radio kit...
I saw someting like "Orders 51 through 160 should ship over the next few weeks" in your web, I'm #74 and probably I wont be able to read the web in the next weeks becouse I'm going on hollydays... Is there any way to know more or less the day you expect the mail will be sended to me?

Thanks a lot:

Miguel. Madrid.

You aren't the first to be on vacation at the time you expect your kit to ship. Just send him some email ([email protected]) with your name and order #, and ask him to hold your tuner until the date you return. Worked for me, anyway.

I wonder how close he is to shipping #94...

I don't think I have ever looked forward to burning myself with a soldering iron before

you're the lucky on - i'm #137 or something close.

On the note opf soldering...
Is there enough space in the unit to use chipset holders?? IE the little 'caddy'-type things for integerated circuits that means you solder the holder into place and don't have to worry about burning out the IC before it's even used??

If not, are the ICs being used good with resistence to heat??

I'd hate to get my kit at the end of summer only to blow out a chip that's really hard to get hold of.

GT

PS - if it would make things easier, i would be happy to pre-pay for my unit as long as insures that i do indeed get one.

Anyone coming to the European Owners Meet on July 5th will have a chance to win a tuner kit (kindly donated by Patrick) in the raffle. There will also be a home dock donated by Mike and a Car Player donated by the empeg folk.

Rob

Mark, not Mike!

Mark, you can make him to remember this forever while riding with him from Cambridge to Amersfoort....