mending things

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...

The inevitable problem, too many records. Turntable and amplifier on top Like many record collectors around the world, I have a number of IKEA cube cabinets from both their EXPEDIT (older) and KALLAX (newer) ranges. These are easy to make, cheap to buy and perfect for record storage. The system comes flat packed and uses bolts and dowels to hold the system together. If you follow the instructions  the system is strong and should not collapse. You can augment the joints with PVA wood glue for extra strength. My turntable sits on top of an EXPEDIT 2x4 cabinet, laid along the long side, with some felt feet to support it from the floor, and you can use KALLAX in the same way. It's been great but has two problems I wanted to address : 1) Because the system has no back panel, the records  can be pushed too far back. 2) While the structure is strong and fairly rigid, there was some lateral movement. With heavy equipment on top, I found that if I nudged or knocked either top side, thi...

The Sonab 85S turntable You'll see from this blog that I'm interested in vintage audio equipment , especially turntables and speakers. I keep an eye on ebay for potential bargains, and saw this turntable listed quite close to me and for a very good price, £60 buy it now, including 45 adapter, dust bug, DIN adapter, record clamp and a very nice Shure M95 cartridge. Condition listed as very good and with the original sonab headshell. I've been interested in this deck for sometime, as to my eyes , it's a particularly nice design, with the very simple tonearm and deep chassis. I was aware that the model , from the late 70's was a cooperation between Swedish manufacturer Sonab and Yamaha. I don't know how much was contributed by which firm, but the same deck, or one very similar is also to be found as the Yamaha CP-500, though typically in teak rather than black. There were two Sonab models , the 75 and 85, the former being a manual  deck, the latter an automatic, an...

 I routinely search ebay for bargain HiFi gear, usually once great brands now rather forgotten. A recent search yielded a pair of scruffy looking speakers but I recognised the old name of Audiomaster. They had been one of the 50+ UK speaker manufacturers that existed during the 1970's into the 1980's along with the likes of Tangent, RAM , griffin etc. Audiomaster were one of the first brands awarded the LS3/5a licence - the right to make speakers to that BBC specification, no mean accolade. The speakers in question were in a poor state, the tweeter looked heavily corroded, the bass unit had tears in the rubber surround, there were no grilles and the cabinets were quite scratched, but the seller made this all very clear. I put in a very low bid,  and won them for £3.  Collected from the nearby Town and the seller was great, collected and set about trying to restore them. First off after a bit of research I think these are Audiomaster Image Two speakers. The complex crossov...

When travelling I use an IBM Thinkpad X.41 from 2005 ,the model is described  here The original spec was : Processor: Intel Pentium M LV 758 (1.50GHz, 90nm technology, 2MB L2 Cache, 400MHz FSB) Wireless: Intel PRO 2200BG or 2915ABG, Bluetooth optional OS: Windows XP Home/Pro Screen: 12.1″ TFT XGA (1024 x 768) RAM: 256MB or 512MB PC-4200 DDR-2 SDRAM (Upgradeable to 1536MB Max) Hard Drive: 1.8″ 20GB, 30GB, 40GB or 60GB @ 4200RPM Battery: 2.5 hr (4-cell) 5.7 hr (8-cell) (extended-life battery option adds 3 – 4 hours of life on top of quoted numbers for each respective battery) Ports: 2 USB 2.0 (1 IBM Powered USB 2.0), Infrared, expansion bus (for optional ThinkPad X4 Ultra Base Doc); external display; AC adapter; RJ-11 modem port;RJ-45 ethernet port; audio: headphone/line-out, external microphone. Slots: 1 PCMCIA card slot, 1 Secure Digital card slot Dimensions: 10.5″ x 8.3″ x 1.06″ (w x d x h) (with 8-cell battery it’s 10.5″ x 9.3″ x 1.06″) Weight: 2.7lb with 4-cell battery, 3.2lb wi...