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Bad Mood

Published December 7, 2008

After failing to get my grandparents iMac G5 working again and with an overwhelming feeling like I haven’t been accomplishing anything, I started to get in a bad mood this afternoon. Fast forward to this evening and I’m feeling downright awful. I think I’m just acting cold, not very talkative, and extremely pessimistic all while feeling like little matters and I can’t fix the problems I’ve created. I wish I knew how I could make myself be in a better mood, but absolutely nothing sounds like it’ll help.

Maybe I just need some better food and a good night sleep. The bowl of potato chips in front of me do not qualify as good food, so I’ll have to eat something else soon.

On a related note, I think the only realistic solution to my screwing up my Grandparents’ computer is to build them a PC out of spare parts, locate a (working) monitor, and get that to them. It’s not as elegant as an iMac and likely won’t be as easy to use, but at least it should work. I’ll then part out the iMac and sell the pieces on eBay. I know the display, RAM and various small cables work properly.

This means more work for me. Hopefully I won’t screw this up somehow too.

(No, I didn’t get it working, even after attempting to reflow some of the connections, checking for any solder droplets or wire pieces on the board, ensuring all cables are right, etc.)

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Dirty Bike

Published December 7, 2008

My bike got very muddy during some late autumn / early winter slushy riding. Most of this is from 26-Nov. It was all washed off on a 20°F day.

After some slushy / muddy riding on 26-Nov my bike needed to be washed. As today was the first sunny day I’d been home, I decided to wash it off, 20°F (-6.66°C) weather be damned. Having a straight hot water line from the house kept the job from being too cold, and I was able to keep ice from forming on the bike. Now the bike is mostly dried off and sitting behind me in my office drying the rest of the way.

The lockout on the fork seems to be broken, so I’m going to try and take it into the shop this week and see about having it fixed. I purchased the bike just after Christmas last year, so hopefully it’s still under warranty.

I think I need to look into some clip-on mountain bike type fenders for future poor weather riding. Here is another photo, this one of the down tube, BB, crank, etc area. That night was really muddy for this area.

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iMac G5: Worse Than Before

Published December 6, 2008

Image of the machine in Open Firmware showing video glitches present after recapping. I suspect that there are cold solder joints and the video card isn't getting proper power.

Well, I managed to get all the capacitors I previously complained about desoldered and the new parts fitted. However, the iMac G5 now displays video glitches while POSTing, and it never boots past a plain blue screen with an artifacted cursor. As can be seen above, video glitches are also present in Open Firmware.

Looking at this photo (large size here) and seeing what may be some cold solder joints I suspect that some of the caps — specifically those for the video controller / memory — aren’t doing what they are supposed to. This means that I’m going to be taking the machine back apart tonight or tomorrow and attempting to reflow those joints.

I’m disappointed. It really frustrates me when I screw something up.

UPDATE: I think I should probably take a look at the display cable and its connector as well.

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I Fail At Desoldering

Published December 6, 2008

Another view of the domed caps, after some of the dried electrolite had fallen off.

My grandparents computer is an older iMac G5. When installing an Airport card in it last weekend I noticed that a number of the capacitors were domed, and some were leaking electrolyte, a sure sign of failing capacitors, possibly because of the capacitor plague. After digging around through Digi-Key, Mouser, et al I found that the cheapest way to get a set of replacement caps is to order them from The Cap King. He sells a set of the 25 needed caps for $16 shipped, and the set arrived earlier this week.

After sorting the caps, tearing down the iMac, and removing the logic board I identified which caps needed to be replaced, marked them by type, then set about desoldering two of the most accessible ones. This is where I began to have problems.

Normally I’m pretty decent at soldering, but getting these first two caps out was difficult. The first one left a lead sitting in the board, and the other three holes still contain solder. I presume its because of the number of layers in the board and the giant planes of copper near them, but I cannot seem to get enough heat on the board to melt the solder all the way through and wick it out.

Here are two photos of where things currently stand: 1 · 2. I think the next thing I’ll try is pre-heating the board with a hair dryer, then leaving the hot air flowing over it while attempting the desoldering. Hopefully that’ll help.

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Defective Toilet Paper

Published December 4, 2008

The toilet paper in the middle stall near me is defective, as if someone spilled glue on the roll. It comes out in multiple narrow strips.

The toilet paper in the middle stall at work is currently broken. It seems as if glue (or something) ended up on the middle of the roll at the factory, which results in the paper tearing off in four thin strips. One for each half, then the separated layers. This was a hassle.

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x0xb0x #888 Begins

Published December 2, 2008

Parts have been checked against the BOM and sorted, the 2SA733 transistors sorted by hFE, and assembly can now begin.

The sorting of parts and confirming kit contents against the BOM is tedious. On the upside, this x0xb0x kit (#888) is not missing any parts and now that everything is sorted I can begin putting it together. That’ll be tomorrow or thursday’s task, and hopefully I’ll finish up this weekend.

This kit is slightly different from the past ones I’ve received, because it came with domed red LEDs like the ones I had to purchase separately in the past. I’ll have to order a red RUN button and some knurled black aluminum knobs from Digi-Key to match the last piece of custom artwork which it will be fitted with, but that shouldn’t be a big deal. I should probably put a power switch on this one as well.

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Oil Slick and Other Images

Published December 2, 2008

I do not like seeing oil slicks like this in a parking lot. This is from the snow plow / salt spreading people.

Here, have some moblog images:

· I do not like seeing oil slicks like this in a parking lot. This is from the snow plow / salt spreading people.
· Car with YOU SUCK @ PARKING written in paint marker on the side window.
· Engrish on a model helicopter box at Microcenter. (Click to read more.)
· Deatheater standing near the console at IPM.
· It’s December 1st, time to start on the advent calendar my mom gave me.
· DBAN having just finished running on my old D610.
· Bye bye, D610. Time for me to begin using another laptop at work.
· The bathroom at work has a shiny new air freshener installed.

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ObeXplorer Feeds My Moblog

Published December 2, 2008

ObeXplorer running on my work machine under Vista browsing Push Upstairs, my Nokia E51.

I’m now running Vista on my work laptop, and while I had no problem finding Bluetooth drivers for it, I didn’t like the default Bluetooth OBEX program which only allowed one file at a time to be exchanged. Looking around online I came across ObeXplorer, a free OBEX tool written by Giorgi Dalakishvili. It provides exactly the basic browsing and copying functionality that I wanted, and now whenever I’m using a PC I use this to pull files off of my phone for upload to my moblog. On OS X I still use Bluetooth File Exchange.

If you’d like a copy of it, please visit Giorgi’s post about it, or download it from my mirror here: 2008_10_ObeXplorer.zip

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Sanyo “The Claw” CD/DVD Media Destroyer

Published December 1, 2008

Sanyo The Claw CD/DVD Media Destroyer, model number CL-7, purchased from Woot for $4.99 (+$5 shipping). The piles of discs shown were destroyed one after another.

Not long ago John pointed me to a sale at Woot for a device which destroys CDs or DVDs. Having a huge stack of discs to dispose of and costing only $4.99 (+$5 shipping) I decided to order one. Today my Sanyo “The Claw” CD/DVD Media Destroyer arrived.

Yes, that’s exactly what it says on the box, not far from the part which shows that it is Compact Disc and DVD compatible. Too bad it doesn’t do Blu-ray.

After eating some dinner I set to work processing discs, and with a ~2 second cycle time per disc I was able to get through 163 discs (one after another) before The Claw stopped working, with a FreeBSD 3.2 CD stuck in the drive. Thankfully it was just a thermal shutdown, and after allowing it to rest in the garage for half an hour I was able to continue processing the discs, chewing through the remaining 70 or so in no time flat.

The Claw works by pinching the media between two spiked rollers, which put a bunch of small indentations all over both sides of the disc while at the same time somewhat deforming the plastic so that the disc isn’t really flat nor round. A test audio CD made a bunch of horrible noises when placed in a top load radio, so I can only imagine what putting one of these discs in a normal reader would do.

Here is a detailed image of what The Claw did to a NT 5.0 beta CD and here’s similar damage to a CD-R, including delamination of the foil. Here is a 600dpi scan of a processed CD-R showing the typical damage pattern.

Now that I’m done processing that giant stack of discs I’m not sure what to do with it. I could relabel it as a DVD cleaner and drop it off a the Salvation Army, but that’d just be mean.

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