Electronics, photography and small green things
It’s been long time since I last wrote something. I got couple weeks ago or so an iPod 5.5G a.k.a iPod Video a.k.a iPod 5th Gen Late 2006 from someone I know from Helsinki Hacklab. It is 80GB model, and came with Rockbox already installed. I updated the rockbox and made theme for it.
And beauty itself
Everybody knows old 78xx linear regulators. They are ok for many applications, but are problematic for bigger currents. They drop and regulate voltage smoothly for circuitry, but because all excess voltage are dissipate as heat, they are very inefficient. For my nixie clock I needed efficient little power supply for 5V rail, so I created this little baby:
Look how cute it is!
I uploaded some photos to my DeviantArt, made youtube video and gone pretty much viral in my first post to reddit, who could have guessed…
Updated the twenty ten theme and edited blog tittle image and wp-paginate parts in. If you encounter problems please comment.
A week ago I found Samsung SyncMaster 245b 24″ LCD monitor from trash. I tested it and it did barely power up. Blue led lighted in power button but nothing else. From the beginning I suspected powersupply, because its most common problem with LCD TVs and monitors. I opened display and started to examine the patient. Read More …
Now I know why I2C was not working in my nixie clock. Today I got an arduino nano from helsinki hacklab, and started to troubleshoot my circuit. Oddly RTC worked when I tried it in breadboard, and also in clock’s motherboard, when nothing else were connected. Also noticed that when nixie driverboard was connected, both of the i2c lines had weird resistance to 5v and ground. I once again removed driver board from case and measured. It was ok, of course. I didn’t even tough about cabling <.< Read More …
Yesterday I got a HD4850 card from post and happily installed it to my desktop computer. I noticed that my 15″ secondary monitor was not detected, but I ignored it until today. Working with two monitor is so much easier and faster, so I started to investigate problem. Read More …
I moved the old blog away, but it can still be found from http://ketturi.kapsi.fi/old_blog/. I am also doing some tuning to t wordpress, so if something seems odd or is not working, throw me a message pleas and I’ll try to make everything work. At this moment I’m fighting against a WP-paginate plugin for nicer paging.
I were somewhat surprised that Acer I found from trash didn’t support a 4GBb DDR2 memory, because computers with the same chipset and processor did support over 2GB RAM. I thought the bios version was really old so maybe updating it could fix this.
So the Nixie-clock isn’t working,.I don’t know why, but the AVR hangs when an I2C routine starts. RTC and I/O extender ic’s should be alright, because they are brand new from ESD tube. And yes, the pull-up resistors are also connected rightly and are 4,7k, which worked on the breadboard perfectly. I’m out of ideas how to make it work. My last resort is to try new AVR when it comes from ebay. If it will not work then, I don’t want to continue whole project <.<
Also, my 8800GT GPU card died today. 
Yes, something went horribly wrong and now it crashes every 5 minutes. Last spring I did reflow soldering because memory IC’s were detached from PCB. Maybe it’s now time to say good bye to an old friend and let it rest in peace. I will buy used 4850 for 50€ so wish me luck!
There’s something good, I found a broken and wet TravelMate 7520G 17″ laptop from the garbage one rainy day. It had broken LCD inverter cable which was an easy fix, and some coke on keyboard. I dried it, washed mobo with G20 dry cleaner (amazing stuff), changed the bios battery and it started to work \o/. Some days later i found another ACER 17″ with broken integrated GPU, which had same keyboard, so now I have a working high performance laptop (yeah I know, over 5 years old amd X2 64 TL-58, HD2400XT, 2GB PC2-6400 and 2x 160GiB WD blues is not even near high performance by todays standard(I could probably get faster netbook or tablet), but more than enough for me).
