Re: What has happened to 4HV
2Spoons, Wed May 29 2019, 11:08PM

It really has gone very quiet. That login really is a PITA.

Re: What has happened to 4HV
MRMILSTAR, Thu May 30 2019, 03:38AM

One of the main reasons that I joined this forum was the ability to post images. That seems to now be lost.

Re: What has happened to 4HV
Bjørn, Thu May 30 2019, 03:24PM

The technical problems and the lack of progress in fixing them has had a significantly negative effect on the forum. This has been a problem for many years and it has gradually become worse as the software has been aging/evolving.

Re: What has happened to 4HV
DerAlbi, Thu May 30 2019, 11:39PM

Society is changing too. Coilguns for example, are just not interesting any more. It is not only this forum, i dont find coilguns anywhere else on the internet. The login and broken state of the forum is no help for sure. Kids these days do not have the stamina to get through this.
Additionally i kind of feel that laziness and creationism have won over engineering - doing real work is simply not cool anymore.
Especially in the more exotic fields of our electronics hobby, there are not many good and (for modern standards) appealing sources out there.
There are also too many people who have polished their hobby work so much that it is just intimidating to any newcomer. The standards are increasing. For the Facebook kiddies these days, if you cant share that you are the absolute best, you are a failure.

Just my opinion.

Re: What has happened to 4HV
Conundrum, Sat Jun 01 2019, 01:19PM

Agreed, that CAPTCHA is a pain.
I have a lot of problems using 4HV on phones because the letters are just illegible.

Re: What has happened to 4HV
Ash Small, Fri Jun 07 2019, 07:33PM

There's plenty I want to post, I've finally got around to doing some interesting practical circuit work this past year or so, winding chokes, etc...

I'm just waiting until we can post pictures again, in the meantime, I'm experimenting, and using FaceBook groups, but I miss the expert advice here, but it's generally at least a minimum requirement to be able to post a schematic when asking a question, for example.....

Re: What has happened to 4HV
johnf, Sat Jun 08 2019, 07:33PM

Maybe the board needs a parallel site that uses phpBB to run on.
I say parallel as it would be a real pain to port over the forums to phpBB

Re: What has happened to 4HV
Ash Small, Mon Jun 10 2019, 04:30PM

I think once we're able to post pictures again things will start improving.

In the meantime I'll keep trying...

Re: What has happened to 4HV
klugesmith, Tue Jun 11 2019, 05:36AM

I make sure the capcha is obvious before ever bothering to type username and password.

Am beginning to think that we'll never again get easy picture posting with this software.

1 vote up for John's suggestion about getting 4hv set up to use phpBB.

No need to automatically link old threads. Anyone continuing an old thread can include a link.
Not much would be lost. Existing posts less than 6 months old are text only, or have pictures included the hard way.
Pictures in posts from before the great extinction are, as far as we know today, already lost.

When I have an extra half-hour to spare, to recover my imgur access (or flickr, etc), will post pictures of horizontal sundial progress.
Just got the shortest and most challenging 2 1/2 months of stripe painted in one easy session, using a Mylar stencil laser-cut from my dxf file.
Same stencil sheet includes the whole month of August, in two sections, to finish the 12:00 hour line.

Re: What has happened to 4HV
hen918, Tue Jun 11 2019, 07:44PM

I think a kickstarter for a new website with imported database would be a good idea. The website bit is easy, the importing all the old data, not so much

Re: What has happened to 4HV
Mads Barnkob, Thu Jun 13 2019, 07:04AM

Long story short.

We tried in the admin team to work on this, it is no trivial task to convert 3 old legacy databases into a new system. Eventually this died out for various reasons

Two years ago we were some users from 4hv that started a new forum, HighVoltageForum.net , to have a updated modern forum software to keep sharing our projects, discussion etc. on.

I have kept myself from trying to hijack 4hv users, because I never wanted to do that against Chris, the admin of 4hv, and this is also why I first mention this 2 years after our launch.

Re: What has happened to 4HV
DerAlbi, Thu Jun 13 2019, 08:54AM

Thank you for your efforts. It is hard to argue that you would take Chris something away - there seems to be no effort towards holding the community here.
There seems to be enough feedback that there is something drastically wrong with the forum, yet it seems like a one way communication - even if some of that is read, it would be nice to hear actual feedback or a plan for the future.

Maybe we are just standing around a dead body poking it with sticks to see if it still lives.

Re: What has happened to 4HV
hen918, Thu Jun 13 2019, 11:52PM

The thing is, there is a website, it's hosted, it has a domain, and it runs (kind of), it just needs that little extra, like an old CNC that has 0.2mm of backlash, but you have all the programs you need on the 1.44MB floppy in the still functioning drive in the control box. Someone needs to come along and fit some new ballscrews. A couple of days work, 9-5.

The host, domain, and the database all seem OK, it's a shame to abandon a good forum because of some stupid front end bugs.

Re: What has happened to 4HV
Patrick, Wed Jun 19 2019, 07:10PM

lets not kick around the admins too much. hopefully we can get a professional temp programmer paid 9-5 to straighten the forum out with a go-fund-me ? unless its data specific stuff....

I am getting ready to drop a major project i think we will all benefit from, i think ill do it via PDF to compensate for the crippled forum.

Re: What has happened to 4HV
Patrick, Thu Jun 20 2019, 05:39PM

Am I correct in presuming "php" is the code and tongue of the devil ?

Re: What has happened to 4HV
..., Thu Jun 20 2019, 06:40PM

I largely 'outgrew' high voltage, and by extension 4hv, when I moved to grad school and have all but stopped posting on 4hv as a result. I had been lurking once in a while, but the impossible captcha and frequent logouts made lurking less convenient. Now that the captcha is less bad I have started lurking a bit more but still don't post much since I have stopped working on hv projects.

It would be a shame to see the forum die because of bit rot causing the software itself to stop functioning, but I suppose that is how online forums work. Maybe it is time to move this forum to not-as-old.4hv.org with its previous 2 predecessors and start anew? In my opinion the most important part of the migration process is that the old posts remain archived somehow (looking at you, non-functioning old.4hv.org and older.4hv.org) since there is such a wealth of interesting information on them. For example I have a few coils where the only documentation I have for them was hosted on the old forums. After the forum backups went down I was able to get them off of the wayback machine for my own records, but they are basically gone to the ages at this point.

Re: What has happened to 4HV
Patrick, Thu Jun 20 2019, 11:54PM

no matter what we must preserve 4hv.org in at least an archived state. Its just to precious to lose !

Re: What has happened to 4HV
MRMILSTAR, Fri Jun 21 2019, 01:08PM

I have started using "highvoltageforum.net" as an adjunct forum to "4hv.org". I post to both as needed but if I need to post pictures or video then "highvoltagefprum.net" is currently the only viable alternative.

Re: What has happened to 4HV
Ash Small, Mon Jun 24 2019, 05:15AM

This forum means a lot to me.... I've met some interesting people, both online and 'in the real world'.... I'd certainly contribute to a Go Fund Me to get it fully operational, or at least archived with photo's.... It's not just the HV stuff, it's the attitude to general electronics and everything else as well.....

Re: What has happened to 4HV
E.TexasTesla, Wed Jun 26 2019, 02:21AM

I'm not sure what most people use this forum for but it sounds like you guys want more social media type interactions?

Re: What has happened to 4HV
2Spoons, Thu Jul 04 2019, 05:12AM

7 attempts at the capcha before it worked. No wonder no-pne bothers with 4HV anymore

Re: What has happened to 4HV
DerAlbi, Thu Jul 04 2019, 08:40AM

just to help you really quick:
1) the capcha is case sensitive
2) make sure you feel confident you can solve the captha before you type in username and password to minimize penalties.
3) if you cant solve it, refresh page (F5 in most browsers) until a relatively easy captcha is shown.
4) depending on your security needs, you can just stay logged in. Somehow i dont need a password for weeks on my Work-PC ^_^. My Home-PC neither saves a history nor cookies across sessions. There i have issues too.

Btw, what is bugging me more is the missing private message system. I need to contact Usping, but there is simply no way -.-

Re: What has happened to 4HV
MRMILSTAR, Thu Jul 04 2019, 01:27PM

I just stay logged in all of the time. Problem solved (mostly).

Re: What has happened to 4HV
Ash Small, Thu Jul 04 2019, 10:39PM

I tried registering on the other site, HVForum.org, but not been anle to get in.... Does it take time to get authenticated?

Re: What has happened to 4HV
2Spoons, Thu Jul 04 2019, 10:55PM


Yep, I know all that. But how do you tell a capital O from a little o in a capcha where the character size is not related to case? Or a w or a v or an s or a c ?
And so many times I'm damn sure I typed it correctly ... but no. I don't seem to have this problem with capchas on other sites. It doesn't help that its really low contrast and very small.

I can see this being more of a barrier than a gateway.

Re: What has happened to 4HV
Mads Barnkob, Wed Jul 10 2019, 08:52PM


You can contact him on HVF, he posts once in while.

Re: What has happened to 4HV
Patrick, Thu Jul 11 2019, 05:33AM

Ash, it shouldnt be hard try again... tell me what it says.

Re: What has happened to 4HV
Ash Small, Mon Jul 15 2019, 10:33PM



It just says 'that username does not exist'...

Re: What has happened to 4HV
klugesmith, Sat Jul 20 2019, 12:37AM

Before more people drift away, I'd like to share personal contact information with a few other regulars. Have noticed that PM's are gone.

Some user profiles include email addresses. I am about to make my 4hv profile one of those. Please feel free to drop a line in this direction!

For practice, here's an image inserted by reference to an outside URL.

Re: What has happened to 4HV
MRMILSTAR, Sat Jul 20 2019, 03:27AM

I don't know if it is improper etiquette to suggest an alternative forum that works but I also post to "www.highvoltageforum.net". Images and video work there.

Re: What has happened to 4HV
Conundrum, Thu Aug 29 2019, 08:21AM

If its any help, it looks like the messages are still there but can't be changed.

Re: What has happened to 4HV
benbradley, Thu Sept 12 2019, 12:32AM

I'm on my big screen and noticed the captcha letters were quite low contrast, but I read them easily enough.

I get on here once a year or so whether I need to or not (and probably why I have to log in every time). Are people just finding other forums (other than the ones mentioned)? I don't recall any HV-related stuff on eevblog but it seems to be quite popular.

Re: What has happened to 4HV
Conundrum, Thu Sept 12 2019, 07:37PM

Same here. Adjust the brightness?

Also incidentally some missing posts showed up all of a sudden! Maybe Chris fixed it?

Re: What has happened to 4HV
dannybeckett, Thu Oct 03 2019, 03:49PM

Also, are new members even being allowed to register anymore?

I had an issue with forgetting my original login, i requested a new one, followed the rules and sent an email to the forum and did not get my account activated. Why cant new people join? The last person to join was "omjtest", 9 months ago! Chris Russel, who i suspect is the main admin, was last visited 9 months a go. I fear that this board has 9 months of join request backlog that has been totally ignored. The neglect is such a shame

Re: What has happened to 4HV
Patrick, Fri Oct 04 2019, 05:29PM

were trying to get the forum back together be patiaent, as long as the pics survived we should be good.

Re: What has happened to 4HV
dannybeckett, Fri Oct 04 2019, 06:45PM

Do you guys need any help with getting things back together? What actually happened?

Re: What has happened to 4HV
Patrick, Sat Oct 05 2019, 07:10AM

i think the best thing to go is to donate money to keep the servers up. but when ever i try the link doesnt work.