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Up Early

March 27, 2007

Walking into work early…
(Click for more moblog photos.)

Just after 5am I woke up and realized that I wasn’t especially sleepy, and I could just wake up then. So I did. I took a nice, long shower, then made some coffee in the Moka before heading out to work.

It was nice driving to work in the dark, windows partially down, singing along with TMBG‘s Lincoln, feeling the slightly-warm air from the car’s heater swirling around with the ~56°F outdoor air. I took the 22 Mile -> Ryan -> Hamlin -> West Entrance Drive route, which was empty enough that I had to occasionally use my high beams, just to make sure that there weren’t any deer on the road.

Now I’m here, and I’ll see what I can get done before the time I’ve been coming in lately (~9am). Hopefully all of my work for the day.

moved from livejournal work

Screen Door

March 26, 2007

There are a few times each year which sticks in my mind. The first time the furnace has to be turned on (and the accompanying burnt dust smell). The first snowfall which makes it too difficult to go somewhere. The first day so hot that one must retreat to the cold of the basement.

Growing up I remember this day as the time when my dad (and eventually I) would open my bedroom window, slide the glass panes out of the way, and slide the screen into place. That was also the amazing day where there would be nothing in the window and I could lean out, looking straight down at the ground. This was also the day when my dad would get the screens for the front and side storm doors out of the rafters of the garage, replace the screen material (if needed), remove the glass from the doors, and replace them with screens.

After this point all the doors and windows could be opened and the finally-warm Michigan wind would blow through, airing out the house from months of being closed up against the cold.

Today is that day.

around the house moved from livejournal weather

1050 Parts Ordered

March 26, 2007

Well, it looks like the total cost to replace all the electrolytic caps in the Atari 1050 is about US$12. The 35V 6800μF caps were a little pricey at $3.02 each, but it should be worth it. Hopefully I’ll have all the parts and bits to connect things by the end of the week and I can image the floppies this weekend.

acquired things electronics moved from livejournal

Atari 1050 is looking up!

March 25, 2007

Atari 1050 drive PCB with most of the electrolytic caps removed.

Well, it appears that I’ve got the problem with the Atari 1050 sorted out. It seems that some of the 47μF caps (C42, C43, C69, C70) were bad, causing the shorts. I’ve also removed all of the other electrolytic caps and will be ordering replacements from Mouser tomorrow. (The board had looked like this before.)

I did make one pretty substantial mistake and inadvertently lift a trace on the top of the board when removing one larger caps. The hole really didn’t seem through-plated and the leg of the capacitor didn’t let go from it, and I peeled it right back. Thankfully it should be very easy to jump around with a 2″ piece of wire, so when I put it back in place I’ll do that.

Hopefully by the end of the week I’ll be able to properly image old 800XL floppies. Yay!

electronics making things moved from livejournal

Electrolytic Caps

March 24, 2007

Question for anyone who can answer it…

When electrolytic caps eventually fail due to aging, will they ever fail in a shorted state? That is, a state of being conductive?

This is going back to the Atari 1050 floppy drive I mentioned before. I’ve pulled the mainboard, removed all socketed ICs, and disconnected the electromechanical bits of the board. The short is still there, so I know that the problem is somewhere on the board. As it was working fine the last time I tried it (a number of years ago) I’m guessing that the failure is in a part which degrades with age.

There are some rather large electrolytic caps on here, including some smoothing ones which are (likely) located right after the LM7805 and LM7812. I figure if these have failed shorted, they could cause the problem that I’m seeing.

I’ll probably try pulling them tonight or tomorrow and seeing if the short(s) go away. If so, I might just replace all of them. There are only nine, so it shouldn’t be too expensive to try, and I need to place a Mouser order for other stuff already.

(And no, I can’t find a schematic for it, unfortunately.)

electronics moved from livejournal

Atari 800XL Composite Video Cable

March 24, 2007

Atari 800XL and my TV

Thanks to this page about the Atari 800XL’s monitor connection output I was able to cobble together a composite video output cable for my parents old Atari 800XL. Thankfully the monitor connection is a standard DIN5 connector, so it was made by sacrificing a spare MIDI cable and an old red / white RCA cable pair.

After the SIO2PC adapter arrives and I’m able to either fix my Atari 1050 floppy drive or borrow one from someone I’ll begin imaging the whole box of floppies leftover from my youth. This will be done using Ape and ProSystem to copy all the old disks to images so they can be archived. Then they can either be run under emulation, or directly on the 800XL with the PC pretending to be the floppy drive (via the SIO2PC).

I should probably also consider doing something with the tape drive as well. Maybe pulling data / games off of that or something… Hmm…

electronics making things moved from livejournal

Dead Short

March 24, 2007

Do any of you have any good pointers for troubleshooting a dead short in electronics stuffs?

I tried to power up my Atari 1050 earlier today and found that the power LED wasn’t illuminating. Opening it up showed that AC power is getting into it and being rectified, but the output legs of the LM7805 and LM7812 shows a dead short to ground.

Unfortunately I’m having a hard time finding a schematic for it. :(

electronics moved from livejournal

Vareity is the spice of life.

March 23, 2007

Today’s Beer Purchases
(Click for full resolution image.)

After a week without consuming any alcohol I decided to swing by the local good beer store on my way home from work. Here’s what I acquired, from left to right:

· Founder’s Black Rye
· Founder’s Kentucky Breakfast Stout (x2)
· Arbor Brewing Company’s Olde Number 22
· Dogfish Head’s Burton Baton
· Dogfish Head’s Shelter Pale Ale
· Dogfish Head’s Red & White
· Mahr’s Brau’s Jubelfestbier
· Stoudt’s Triple
· Breckenridge’s Vanilla Porter
· Victory’s Ten Years Alt
· Rampo Valley Brewery’s Passover Honey Beer^†
· Morland’s Old Speckled Hen (x4)

I’ll try and post an image and a bit of info about each one as I try them.

And yes, I know the image looks a bit soft. I’m not sure why yet. It might be that I had it at f/14 to ensure the edges were in focus too.

^† Not technically a beer, as it contains no malt.

beer moved from livejournal

DAC?

March 22, 2007

Can any of you recommend a decent DAC for me? I want to convert TOSLINK and S/PDIF to something I can feed into my NAD receiver to drive a decent set of stereo speakers. It doesn’t have to be something great, but not crap either.

I’ll be using an external switch to select devices, so it only needs a single optical and coaxial input. I guess it could even just have a coaxial input and I could just get an optical to coax adapter.

Even a schematic for a known-high-quality adapter would work, I could just build one.

electronics moved from livejournal

Cooking Dinner and Mama, Not In The Same Pot

March 21, 2007

Tempeh marinated in teryaki sauce, tahini, and roasted garlic
then grilled in a bit of oil and served on a bun. Two papadoms are used as a side dish.

Well, there’s my dinner; grilled tempeh bugers and two papadoms.

As mentioned earlier, Cooking Mama Cook Off for Nintendo Wii was acquired today. It’s pretty good. My biggest complaint is that some of the actions feel a bit laggy, but I think this is intentional. For example, when cracking an egg one makes a motion, then the egg moves and cracks. Move too hard initially and the egg breaks. Move too little and it doesn’t crack. I think the point of this is to get one to make the motion without the visual feedback so that muscle memory learns how to crack eggs and such.

When moving butter around in the pan (to cover it for sautéing) the tilt controls are wonderfully responsive and things work great, along with shaking various pots and pans, and things like that. That leads me to believe the previous behavior is intentional. Also, when chopping vegetables the arrow indicating where to chop isn’t visible if the cursor is directly over it. This was likely done to make the screen less cluttered while playing. However, if the level begins with the cursor already in the right place, it’s a bit confusing as to where one should begin. This goes away with a bit of practice too.

Other than that, Cooking Mama Cook Off is pretty much just like Cooking Mama for DS, except with (obviously) different actions for things, two player games, better / larger graphics, and… Wii-ness. I’d say if one likes the DS version the Wii version is definitely worth getting.

food games moved from livejournal