What have you bought recently?



received my 2 speakers I bought a short while ago (those guys were extremly fast at shipping, also a while ago they were cheaper too) and they are very neat for music so far, also they are very heavy - the case / legs is full metal

I wanted to use them as replacement for my old (crusty) Speaker on my gaming PC but so far I am battling with a small audio delay (really noticeable with lipsyncs in movies for example) ... not sure if its Bluetooth specific, my board chipset, their chipset or some flunky drivers (or the whole windows sound system)

also had my Capsule II projector for a week now and for my primary use as external laptop monitor during presentations it should work rather well
could not get screencast to work from Linux yet but a simple HDMI cable works a treat, as for the brightness - for presentation I can get a bright image the size of a PC monitor from it perhaps 27"-35" witch it does very well, beyond that it gets rather dim fast but if you want to watch movies at night 60" would be feasable I think, quite impressed how tiny this stuff gets actually
 
Last Sunday I went again to the flea market and I got something interesting: A 256kB XT mainboard in original package. The problem has been quickly found and bad chip has been replaced, so now I have a 4.77MHz mainboard in a good condition.

Two weeks ago: Two Compaq Aero notebooks, 33MHz 486. With hard disks, 4MB of RAM, batteries, complete. The problem was that one had trackball not working (fixed by seating the ribbon cable) and the other one had broken hinge (not my photos of the exact same problem: here).
The hinge was a problem. If it is broken for too long, it will destroy casing. There are no such hinges for sale, and it looks like that another one would break too as its arm is made of cheap Zinc-Aluminum alloy. I decided to make a new part using old metal plate from some PoS keyboard I took from recycling some time ago and desoldered for microswitches.
I do more complex metalworking at workshop in my workplace, where I have access to a better tools. So I asked my friend for the workshop key to repair the laptop. And of course do they still have a table drill here? Circular saw? Vice and hammer? Yes, that's great. I took a key, and additionally 2.5mm drill and quite large hammer and went to the workshop.
My friend shares a room with some researcher. His face when he finally understood that I really want to repair the laptop with such tools was... quite unusual, he recently heard that I repaired an expensive server there :).
OK, the idea was simple. First, removing the broken part, leaving only the hinge and shaft. To do this, it is needed to hold the broken part in vice, put a nail or screw in the hole and gently hit it until the hinge falls off.
Then, I cut an L-shaped piece of metal from the keyboard plate and machined it with file to dimensions. It had square holes for keys, so it was easier to cut using existing holes. The shorter part of "L" is a bit wider and longer, so it was possible to grab it into vice and just use the hammer to make a round profile, with internal diameter like the shaft protruding from the hinge.
The next step was to push the hinge's shaft into it by squeezing it in vice. Generally the harder it goes, the better.
Finally, drilled holes in a longer part of "L" and put it in case as it originally was. Although this is ready to be installed, there are two things I recommend:
1. Find a longer screw for the part closer to the keyboard (it breaks there). Because my re-make was thicker and because point 2.
2. Use a washer between this screw's head and the metal part.
There is literally no sign outside that the hinge is re-made.

Now I have 3 of these, fully working... and no floppy drive.
 
Wanted to update my laptop but I've gotten so used to apps on my phone that I got a samsung tab s4 256gb with a keyboard case. Keyboard works well for me since I don't type fast enough for the lag to hit. klwp for creating a live wallpaper for the home screen. I'm working on making it look like a windows 7 desktop. Just like how it looks. tasker and autoapps from the google play store are going to be completely abused lol. got an extra 256gb mini sd card to bump up the total space I can use to 512gb.

Still not sure what all I'm going to do with this but it's fun customizing the look and feel of how everything works on this device.
 

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PCH-1102 PS Vita , $112.50 AUD. forgot i put a bid in ,was expecting it to go for more than that! lol... now i have to figure out what to do with it.. did not come with a memory card.
 
Been wanting some actual retail version of Dreamcast games in my collection.

Japanese Import of King of Fighters 2001
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Soul Calibur
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spud42 said:
PCH-1102 PS Vita , $112.50 AUD. forgot i put a bid in ,was expecting it to go for more than that! lol... now i have to figure out what to do with it.. did not come with a memory card.
Click to expand...

Get a micro sd card adaptor for large and cheap storage.

Also DON'T UPDATE IT. So you can hack it and load homebrew, roms etc
 
Wall mounts!
It got really cluttered on the floor, now I got more space and the wall above the sofa looks nice.

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Also the six string bass on the right as well as an Aguilar Agro distortion pedal with a high price, but a very nice doom sound, now my bank account is pretty empty.
I've been practicing every day for the last 2-3 months though and can finally play melodies and power chords in all keys in several areas on the fret board, so: Progress!
 
Finally I found a source of very cheap TTL logic chips. I was thinking that it will be cheaper in Internet shops - wrong, it was a local man who sells electronic leftovers in the local market. At first, I bought a small quantity for testing are they OK, but it looks like they're OK, they are new old stock, leftovers from some repair workshop from factory. Now I'm going to buy many types, as I need them for various projects and I want to have some spare. It's harder and harder to get these ICs now in non-SMD version.
I decided to gather chips needed for projects which I may do in future (mostly old computer replicas like Grant Searle's ZX80 or COBRA), and I stuck with 2102 - it's really hard to get them nowadays, harder than 2114. Additionally prices of 1MHz crystals seem to go irrationally high without reason.

As I needed it, I added a "Series testing" feature to my IC testing software - it is possible now to load a test sheet, click the button and it will ask after every test (or a specified number of repetitions) to insert next chip. Some additional test sheets have been added too. I should start fixing bugs in this software, but they're not critical and both users of the solution never complained about these 3 bugs (one in the viewer - support for too long description, one in editor - reading "don't care" state gives strange "send" command, one in log - copying and pasting may lose a single space if line starts with it when random non-last item is selected).
 
Now that I have a computer again, I made my first Steam and GOG purchases in ten months. From Steam, I got Slime Rancher for $9.99 + tax, and from GOG I got the first three X-Com games for $1.49 each.

Having already played Slime Rancher for an hour, I must say, it's the best poop scooper simulation money can buy. And I don't throw that compliment around lightly. This is hardcore poop scooping, guys.
 
First of all, don't buy the "XCSD" brand SDHC cards. Advertised as "Class 10"? No, they should be advertised as "Class 225" as in ST-225. 0.8-0.9MB/s write, 1.5-1.8MB/s read. Booting an RPi took 15 minutes and blown up, as some operations got timed out and ext4 fell apart right after resizing.

I decided to go buy more ICs, unfortunately not this Sunday, but instead I bought an old desktop AT PC casing. I have a lot of old mainboards and other components for them so I decided to make some working machines with configurations according to their age. This is an old casing from around 1991-1992, which opens to the top allowing easy servicing without fasteners. Originally it had a 386sx, and I decided to put a 386sx there: 386SX/25MHz, 2MB of RAM, 40MB IBM hard disk, Octek VGA board, 3.5 and 5.25" drives. This is a case for a late 286 or early 386.
But first, the casing was in a price of scrap materials for a reason. The front panel got torn from it, leaving only the support "tubes" broken off, still joined by screws with metal. Additionally it had to be stored in a basement standing vertically on rear, and got flooded exactly two times (what could be read from amount and shape of dried mud on it).
Fortunately these cases were not using rivets - there are screws everywhere, so I could just dismantle it entirely, wash all parts, remove rust with sandpaper where needed and put back again.
The bigger problem was with these plastic support parts. Generally after gluing them with cyanoacrylate twisting forces of a screw installed during re-assembly break this connection. So I decided to go three ways simultaneously:
1. Acetone on the inside of breaking plane as a "plastic welding" agent (its penetration time has been extended by adding a small amount of an oily solvent).
2. Cyanoacrylate to the outside of the crack. Not specifically to connect, but rather fill remaining gap and prevent crack from forming again from the smallest force.
3. Metal clamps welded in with soldering iron to take torque.
It worked very well, even with long screws!
Power supply was in a relatively good condition. There were no disastrous damages, probably because someone who took it from the basement was too afraid to plug it in. The only problems were: dry mud in the fan, blocked heatsinks, enormous amount of dirt and... every electrolytic capacitor. After testing random 5 I knew that it will be better to replace them all, as they did not look like capacitors from flowing current's perspective. All capacitors have been replaced, fan and heatsinks have been cleaned and thermal grease added. The power supply then started from the first try giving a nice, stable voltage under load.
I have spare AT power supply units, but I decided to save this one as this casing requires a special power unit with a switch on its side.

What can I say about 386SX compared to DX, is that the visible performance difference is significant. Anyone who wants to make a computer for old games will go better with a DX. The problem is not a SX's bus there, as most of these machines go well with 2..4MB of RAM, but absence of cache memory in SX.
 
 
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