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LAN_403

Conundrum

Sat Jun 16 2012, 06:23PM

Registered Member #96 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 05:37PM
Location: CI, Earth
Posts: 4059

the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.

would you frelling believe it, this previously fscked keyboard actually works despite being :-

1) Having the clear plastic back panel carefully removed
2) Doused in frelling HOT (it burns AAUGHHH) tap water
3) Scrubbed with a not particularly clean oven brush
4) Dried in domestic oven at 50 celsius for 1 hour.

Despite my theory that this would be a spectacular fail, it and its buddy both work perfectly.

One of them has a bad M key which evidently got torn off but the keypad underneath is fine.

I would hazard a guess that the problem was conductive stuff under the pads and the combination of
hot water and scrubbing dislodged it.

At some point I will be obtaining a new keyboard but for now it should be just fine.

I call that a success.
(typed on said keyboard, just to prove my point that it is in fact working.

To add to this success, the other laptop (an HP G6000) was in fact not in need of a reflow after all.
Turns out that a SMD capacitor near the CMOS battery had internally shorted and cooked with burn marks
at one end.
This was causing the board to fail startup, as it was obviously shorting enough to trip the board,
so it was removed and replaced with an equivalent.

Can someone please tell me what Alt Gr actually does, kthx.

This machine has also had the inverter bodged so that the missing enable line is permanently on.
It does sometimes turn on by itself, any ideas gratefully received.

Shrad

Mon Jun 18 2012, 08:49PM

Registered Member #3215 Joined: Sun Sept 19 2010, 08:42PM
Location:
Posts: 780

1: dishwasher
2: pulldown

;)

Conundrum

Wed Sept 12 2012, 08:04AM

Registered Member #96 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 05:37PM
Location: CI, Earth
Posts: 4059

Drat, the repair failed again. At least I got Windows installed on it, before I couldn't get it past the first stage because it wouldn't see the USB keyboard.

Another amusing kludge. Ghetto antenna switcher based around some antique monster Tek reed switches out of the Late Jurassic Era, a spare laptop CDROM sled with the motor, two end sensors, a 555 timer and a magnet.
Up to 8 possible switch positions and totally non volatile.
H-a-D posting in 3..2..1...

Hon1nbo

Wed Sept 12 2012, 12:36PM

Registered Member #902 Joined: Sun Jul 15 2007, 08:17PM
Location: North Texas
Posts: 1040

Here's a few off the top of my head:

I have a bike light I picked up from REI during a scratch 'n dent (normally $200, got it for $15 thanks to a slightly loose enclosure easily fixed)
I thought, you know what? this light is awesome, I wish I could take it on a night dive in a lake I had planned for a week or so later.
So I wrapped the wire between the head unit and the battery pack with acrylic tubing (the wire was insulated but for extra protection), filled the entire tube with silicone, lined every seam I could find with silicone, and might as well have made a silicone sarcophagus out of the battery pack.

and it worked... until I went more than 15 feet or so, then the membrane button collapsed in on itself and shorted the head light. After letting it dry out it appears to work somewhat, I haven't recharged it yet or repaired the switch. Saving that for a rainy day, where I'm not in a hotel room where the battery might explode haha.

On a particular project I'm not yet allowed to release too many details on (future topic in the project list though!), I was given a magnetic stripe card encoder. The police department had confiscated it from someone running a fake ID ring, and since the case had passed notified the IT department it was available for use. I was given it for the project, but unfortunately for me the police had only confiscated the actual write head. They didn't bother with the software or the computer with it, the data cable, not the power supply.
Being that it had an obscure enough power connector to not find a match easily (some thing with three pins in a slightly modified triangular configuration), I ended up crimping a few molex female pins to some wire, wrapping them in a layer of electrical tape, and shoving them onto the connector's male pins, then ceremoniously strapping the wire to the encoder housing with electrical tape.

and this one I'll leave to the imagination:

Cheers,

-Jimmy

Conundrum

Mon Mar 04 2013, 09:12AM

Registered Member #96 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 05:37PM
Location: CI, Earth
Posts: 4059

OK, this has to be the nastiest "quick fix" of a 3G dongle ever!
I replaced the snapped off USB connector, but it still wouldn't detect the SIM card so had to use an elastic post band to hold it in place.
Works fine, am going to wait until it needs topping up to see how long it lasts in this state

see

-A
"Bother!" said Pooh, as he impaled a LiPo pack by accident...

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