Welcome to the Ampex Mailing List. Please save this message for future reference, in case you later need to unsubscribe or otherwise change your subscription profile.
The Ampex Mailing List is a moderated forum for discussion of Ampex audio and video recorders, professional and consumer. (A moderated mailing list is one in which each post is reviewed for appropriateness before possibly being approve for distribution to the list.) This includes the use, maintenance, repair, modification, design, and history of all Ampex professional audio recorders from the first Model 200A of 1948 to the last ATR-800 of the early 1980s.
Since its inception, a major goal of the Ampex Mailing List has been to help Ampex users get the equipment, parts, and documentation they need. Thus for sale and wanted posts are definitely on topic. Please preface such posts with "FS:" ("FA:" if an auction and not a set-price sale) or "WTB:" in the subject field.
The Ampex Mailing List has a tradition of off-topic posts going back to the earliest days of its existence. The breadth and depth of subscribers' knowledge is amazing. However, in general subjects should relate in some way--possibly tangential--to Ampexes and their role in professional audio.
Posts about pro audio completely unrelated to Ampexes should be directed elsewhere. The Pro-Audio mailing list is one possible venue for such a discussion. For more information send email to pro-audio-request@bach.pgm.com with the text info pro-audio.
Please preface all off-topic posts with the string "OT:" in the subject field. This makes it easier to skip threads that are not of interest.
Over time, the topic of a thread may change. WHEN IT DOES, PLEASE UPDATE THE SUBJECT FIELD OF YOUR EMAIL TO REFLECT WHAT IS ACTUALLY BEING DISCUSSED IN YOUR POST.
Using the "OT:" convention and making sure the subject fields accurately represent what is being talked about allows persons not interested in those topics to skip them.
Experience has shown that posts on the following topics do not lead to fruitful discussions.
Politics and government
Gun control/Right to keep and bear
arms
Religion
Abortion/Freedom of choice/Right to life
Should you wish to expound on these issues with fellow list subscribers, please do it by private email. If you feel the need to pursue these subjects in a public forum, there are several usenet newsgroups devoted to them, including
alt.politics.*
alt.politics.usa.*
dc.talk.guns
fidonet.guns
gun.general
rec.guns
talk. politics.guns
tx.guns
There are also mailing lists on these topics. Finding them is left as an exercise to the reader.
SUBSCRIBERS ARE EXPECTED TO BEHAVE LIKE POLITE ADULTS. Personal attacks, flames, ad hominem arguments, and similar divisive, bullying posts will not be tolerated.
Studer products are also not an appropriate topic here, not because the subject is inflammatory, but because the Studer List provides more expert advice than does the Ampex Mailing List.
The list began in the summer of 1995. Therefore it should be no surprise that many topics have been discussed in detail already. These include
The power grid
Theatre organs
Steam power plants of all kinds
Tubes vs. transistors, in Ampexes and elsewhere
Ampexes vs. any other brand of tape recorder
New subscribers wishing to learn the list's collective (and considerable) wisdom on these points should retrieve the archives (see below) and search for relevant posts. Please avoid posting on these subjects until you have determined that you have a question to ask or a point to make that has not been covered previously, and even then seriously consider contacting the original poster by private email instead of using list bandwidth.
Anyone wishing to distill the best posts on these subjects in the archives for posting on the list's web page (see Resources, below) should contact the listowner, Howard Sanner.
To post to the list, send email to ampex@recordist.com. When replying, please TRIM UNNECESSARY PARTS of the original post to conserve bandwidth and server space. The moderator generally will not approve posts that quote all of the message being answered.
Please do not send HTML, MIME-encoded messages, or posts with vcard attachments to the list. If none of your posts appear, it is probably because you are sending them HTML or MIME-encoded. The list is configured to reject all HTML and MIME-encoded posts. Please configure your email client to send ONLY plain ASCII text. If you are unsure how to do this, consult the program documentation or vendor. In addition, this URLprovides help on this topic, including instructions for how to send ASCII-only mail from America Online. (It is around 30 pages if you print it out.)
Please do not send pictures and other binaries to the list. Send them by private email instead. If they are of long-term, general interest, please contact the listowner for possible inclusion on the list's web site (see below).
The mailing list has a web page at http://recordist.com/ampex. There you will find information about equipment identification, where to find parts and services, links to Ampex- and audio-related web sites, pictures of Ampexes, repair and maintenance tips, schematics, and photographs and biographies of some list subscribers. FTP is also available at ftp://recordist.com. Log in as anonymous with your email address as the password; then cd ampex to get to the files.
The mailing list software automatically compiles an archive of
all posts to the Ampex Mailing List. To retrieve a list of files
available, send email to majordomo@recordist.com with the text
index
ampex
end
if you are on the "regular" mailing list, or
index
ampex-digest
end
if you have subscribed to the digest version (see below). The
list is in the format of a Unix directory display, which means
that the filenames are in the far right hand column. Note that
Unix allows filenames to be more than eleven characters and to
contain more than one period. To retrieve files, send email to
majordomo@recordist.com with the text
get ampex
[filename]
end
or
get
ampex-digest [filename]
end
It is possible to get more than one file per request; just put each "get" command on a separate line before the "end" command.
At the moment, the only way to search the archives is to retrieve the files and use an auxiliary program (grep, or the search function of your favorite word processor or text editor) to search for strings of interest.
Anyone interested in implementing a program to search the list archives should contact the listowner.
You can unsubscribe from the Ampex Mailing List at any time by
sending email to majordomo@recordist.com with the text
unsubscribe ampex
end
Sending email to majordomo@recordist.com with the text
help
end
will return a list of the commands majordomo understands.
If you would rather read a compilation of the last few days'
messages rather than individual messages as they are posted, you
can subscribe to ampex-digest instead. This is a separate list,
so you must subscribe to it separately. Send the following
commands to majordomo@recordist.com to change from the regular
list to the digest list:
unsubscribe ampex
subscribe ampex-digest
end
To unsubscribe from the digest list, use the command:
unsubscribe ampex-digest
end
If all else fails, send email to Howard Sanner, the listowner, or to David Josephson, the list host.