mending things

I have an Apple G5 iMac and I use the standard Apple Mighty Mouse with it. This is a wired, optical mouse , with a small tracker ball on top for scrolling. The top ball develops the same dirt build up on the underlying rollers that afflicts conventional ball mice. However the Mighty Mouse is much harder to remove the ball. Mine stopped up scrolling , so I googled this problem and found this excellent site. http://www.linklink.co.uk/apple-computers/cleaning-inside-and-dismantling-the-apple-mighty-mouse/ It's a fiddly job, and the tiny magnetic rollers are best handled with non ferrous (i.e. non-magnetic) tools, so a pair of plastic tweezers are a big help. I followed the instructions above and my mouse is back to normal. Shame it's so hard and involves forcing the "skirt" section away, necessitating super glue to fix it back on though Update May 2010 Well once again the tiny roller ball has stopped working. I really like the look of the new magic mouse which has no sc...

This article is intended to hi light some things you can do if your dishwasher is not cleaning effectively. NOTE : Do not access any of the internal electrical mechanisms of a dishwasher unless you are qualified . The purpose of this article is not to explain how to repair the internal electrical systems of a dishwasher , this is for the service engineer. However if your dishwasher is not performing well there may be a number of things you can safely check to return it to form. Since the late 80's we have owned two dishwashers. The first was a Bauknecht and lasted around 8 years. Our current model is a Bosch. Dishwashers are complex machines, taking cold water from the main, heating it internally and pumping the hot water through various jets at the plates, pans and cutlery etc. stacked in racks. They normally have a number of cycles which make up a program. For washing, detergent from tablets, liquid or powder, is mixed with the water. For the rinse cycle , hot water is mixed wi...

My Son was kindly given an Xbox 360 a year ago by friends who returned to the USA. It's been great but in May it died, suffering the red circle of death problem. This is the Xbox equivalent of the PC "Blue Screen of Death", though is actually worse, as it indicates a hardware problem. The Xbox 360 has a very powerful dual core processor and onboard graphics, and throws out of lot of heat through two case fans at the back. When running a game, it resembles a fan heater. Some of the problems appear to be heat related. This is well covered elsewhere on the web and I don't intend to discuss it here. Microsoft have extended previous warranty to 3 years. We got ours repaired by Microsoft and it's up and running again fine. However I decided I'd try to avoid this happening in future by improving the cooling of the unit. I did not want to open the 360 as this will void the warranty, which still has 2 years to go. I looked at commercial 360 coolers, and these seem to ...

I have owned 2 Dyson Vacuum cleaners since 1991. The first was the DC01 model, which served for 7 or 8 years but eventually failed. The main problem with this model was the choice of plastic, far too brittle. So, the inner tool clip fell out from the wand, and the plastic bushes from the wheels disintegrated and had to be replaced with brass tube sections. The cleaner sometimes cut out, caused by a poor cable connection and had to be rewired. It basically vibrated its self to death over a number of years. This was replaced with a DC14, 4 years ago. The DC14 is better made of a more robust and flexible plastic. It is also a more complex design, incorporating more cyclone chambers and removable sections for accessing blockages. It does however exhibit a few problems from time to time, but they are easily solved. It's ironic that devices designed to clean things (vacuum cleaners, dish washers, washing machines) are often vulnerable to dirt or debris. "Screaming" This is ...

This is my first Blog . It will be dedicated to the maintenance of assorted household technology