Hardware
On Mondays and Wednesdays, I've been having an interesting problem: two almost-adjacent two-hour classes that require me to run back to my dorm after the first class is over, so that I can recharge my laptop. Annoying? You bet.
I researched an extra battery but found out that one would run me $180, and I wouldn't be able to use my docking station with it. So I came up with this:
"This" being a 180-watt-hour battery pack constructed from two UPS batteries and a car adapter. Now I can run around for eleven hours without having to plug in - although my...
Today I brought my watch to have the battery replaced - I figured that was a simple enough process. After trying Wal-Mart and Target, both of which told me they didn't service digital watches (strange, seeing as Wal-Mart is usually where I bring the watch to replace the battery), I brought it to a small local jeweler and ended up having to pay them eleven dollars just to replace it.
But it doesn't end there. When the jeweler's gave me the watch back, I found out that none of the buttons on the side were functional. Furthermore, part of the seal...
I managed to scrounge up yet another dead LCD monitor today. This one sat on a desk for about three years and had a relatively uneventful life, yet managed to fail anyway - with the exact same problem as the ViewSonic one I got a few weeks ago, no less. A real testament to how they don't make them like they used to!
(For clarifications, though I thought I had fixed the ViewSonic monitor, that actually turned out to be a side-effect of heating it up with the hairdryer. Once it cooled back down, it went right back to shutting off.)
A: What can't vinyl tape fix?
The button board had been acting flaky for awhile, and often to set the clock I'd just open it up and short the accumulator pin to adjust the time. It turned out that the material between the buttons and the board itself had dried out over the years, thus squishing instead of depressing as expected. I tore it out and used some tape in its place.
(to Antony: this is the same one I modified earlier. Why buy a new clock if I can just fix up what I have?)
While on my way home from the post office today, I found a relatively new-looking ViewSonic LCD sitting out on the road, so I picked it up and carried it home with me. I plugged it in and, surprisingly enough: "No Signal" flashes on the screen for half a second, then the entire thing shuts off. With a computer attached: "No Signal", and again shuts off half a second later.
I find it interesting that, of the six or seven CRTs I've found in this manner, only one hasn't worked. By contrast, the three LCDs I've found, this one included, have...
I dropped my laptop off at the FedEx store today for shipping back to the HP repair plant. Some of you may remember some of the problems I had last time around, where my laptop took a month to come back after getting lost in Costa Rica, so I'll be interested to see how long it takes this time around. Antony seems to think that last time was a one-off incident, but I have a feeling this will take awhile.
In the meantime, I'm stuck using my Pentium 3 box at home, and I'll be taking my Pentium laptop around as...
Due to financial constraints and the upcoming transition to college where I'll have less desk space to work with, I've decided that I'll be selling off two of my three video game consoles. I've been debating for awhile which ones to let go of. My options are:
The PS2. This one isn't doing a whole lot, and I've already finished all of the games I have for it. I don't use the DVD or CD player on it either. However, new games are still coming out on the PS2, meaning that I can continue to play some...
It feels nice to have some time to spare and catch up on things. I've been quite busy recently, with family, life, work, and school, and the sheer volume of what's been going on had put me off from taking the time to write a blog entry about anything. For those that have kept up with me via e-mail, AIM/iChat, Skype, and the like, bear with me for just a moment.
Things start in mid-April, where I had been working on a series of videos for the senior comedy event at school. This was, more or less, the only time when...
By now, some of you have probably seen the photos of how dirty my Model M keyboard got before I cleaned it. That keyboard hadn’t been cleaned at least since I acquired it in 1996, and I can’t be sure that its previous owner had cleaned it since its date of manufacture in 1989. Of course, the keyboard really never left my desk, so it wasn’t that bad of a dirt magnet.
Enter my laptop. Going on three years old this July, it’s been everywhere from hospitals to restaurants to train stations – it quite literally provokes a, “Do you know...
Well, it’s official – my laptop has a problem cooling itself again. I might end up buying canned air and cleaning out the fan and heatsink before assuming the worst, though.
Full Hardware Archive