I know it's not great but it's a raise and that's not something to sneeze at these days. I noticed a pretty discomforting trend during my recent change of employment. When I would tell someone that my last day at work was going to be X about 90% of people assumed that I had been laid off and that I'd subsequently be unemployed. When I would tell them that I had elected to make the change and already had a new job lined up most were shocked. Three years ago I didn't know anyone looking for a job, today I know several who have been out of work for more than 6 months and more than a couple who are nearing the two year mark.
Good luck Dan!
A handcuffed one, sure. If it does what you want a computer to do then it is a terrific device, but my experience with it and other apple products are that you have to be careful about researching your use case vs. what they assume your use case will be. Flexibility is not its strength, in my opinion.
You can bet good $$ that I won't be cutting the holes for the motor run caps my 307A will be using!
And I think the 100uF/370VAC caps that I used for the outputs on the original Menace were roughly the size of a can of soda.
I have yet to encounter a 5U* that had a rise time anything like a 5AR4 and I'd wager that I used just about all of them. Certainly the GA, GB and plain G did not in the Menace or HA-2. And yes, 68uF is a great target, although still a pretty big can.
I'd try to get the capacitance in the last filter stage down a bit if you can, motor runs of that size (100uF) are brutal chassis work. And really, if you're going to tube-rectify the thing it'd be a sin to use electrolytic caps. :evil:
EDIT - and I'd go with the 5AR4 over the 5U any day, its semi-soft start is a welcome bonus.
The funny thing is Marc, I've never had a blown beta22 blow fuses. Even the ones with cooked output stages would still turn on. I can't fathom what non-visible failure of this amp would cause it to draw excessive current at startup. But I'd certainly like to see some pictures before Steve throws another fuse in and hits the button.
The screen is fantastic and the phone itself is no larger than my iphone was in the otterbox case. Actually it is much thinner than that phone was and as expected V's network kicks the crap out of att's. It's still not a perfect device but I like it a lot better than the iphone as a total package. Simply being able to download a podcast wihout having to connect to a compy is pure win.