When I was about 12 yrs old I had a 16k Sinclair Spectrum. I saved up my pocket money and bought another whopping 16k of memory. Quickly casting aside the instructions, I pulled open the case and shoved the chips in where there was space (bending legs as I went). On powering up the thing I was presented with a screen full of flashing purple and green ASCII characters and no amount of leg straightening and chip repositioning made any difference. Defeated, I pulled the chips and sent them back to the manufacturer with a note saying that they must be damaged and could I have my money back (which I would need to pay someone less clueless to fix my now dead Speccie). I got a package back from them with a nice note attached telling me how to insert the chips and also where I should put the other chips I had sent back to them - CPU, IO controller, etc. Basically the guts of my Spectrum had survived two encounters with the Royal Mail. Unfortunately the Speccie had a sad end - it melted due to overheating of the memory:(
I learnt my lesson and no longer immediately throw the instructions away.
It seems to me the hard part is getting hold of something of the right mass to tie the top end to - would the ISS do - its not like its particularly useful for anything else. If it wasn't massive enough then what about all those Iridium satellites ?
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When I was about 12 yrs old I had a 16k Sinclair Spectrum. I saved up my pocket money and bought another whopping 16k of memory. Quickly casting aside the instructions, I pulled open the case and shoved the chips in where there was space (bending legs as I went). On powering up the thing I was presented with a screen full of flashing purple and green ASCII characters and no amount of leg straightening and chip repositioning made any difference. Defeated, I pulled the chips and sent them back to the manufacturer with a note saying that they must be damaged and could I have my money back (which I would need to pay someone less clueless to fix my now dead Speccie). I got a package back from them with a nice note attached telling me how to insert the chips and also where I should put the other chips I had sent back to them - CPU, IO controller, etc. Basically the guts of my Spectrum had survived two encounters with the Royal Mail. Unfortunately the Speccie had a sad end - it melted due to overheating of the memory :(
I learnt my lesson and no longer immediately throw the instructions away.
It seems to me the hard part is getting hold of something of the right mass to tie the top end to - would the ISS do - its not like its particularly useful for anything else. If it wasn't massive enough then what about all those Iridium satellites ?