One of my first posts in this blog was regarding the servicing of the Pioneer PL12D turntable, and that has proven to be the most popular by a significant margin. The Pioneer PL12D had its competitors, and probably the most popular alternative was the Trio Kenwood KD-1033 turntable. I use both names (Trio and Kenwood) as the company operated under different names in different markets. In the UK they were Trio, possibly because the brand Kenwood was most famous here for food blenders. 95% of a KD-1033 is similar to Pioneer PL12D, and servicing them is very much the same process. Both are belt drive , have an AC synchronous motor, mechanical speed change , a main bearing, sprung top deck and rubber motor mounts. the KD-1033 uses a different type of anti skate mechanism, employing a thread and weight. The plinth is shallower with an internal cross brace. One aspect that is different is the design of the main bearing, and servicing it is a little harder than a PL12D. The Pioneer main b
I recently decided to dust off an old gaming PC from around 2006 that was in the attic. I'm interested in folding@home , a way of assisting medical science donating computer time from home , and wanted to see if I could build a dedicated FAH (Fold at Home) rig using spare hardware we had. I'm also interested in computational heating i.e better exploiting the waste heat from computer systems . This will be the subject of another blog shortly, but when I got this PC down and booted it up, I immediately hit an issue with the LCD screen. It kept turning on and off approximately every second , but sometimes staying on for longer. I could see the boot screen, the BIOS and eventually the windows logo, but the screen wouldn't stay on. Very frustrating I later realised that if I left the monitor on for at least an hour it would stabilize and become usable. I looked around on the internet and realised this was probably a problem with the capacitors in the power supply. If you ha