exxos blog - random goings on

[exxos]

A dislike someone is jealous or just dumb , or maybe both

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[exxos]

Bit of a waste vs actual PCB here!

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Finally all soldered up!

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My RTC test station.

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Set time date in CP.

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Check a few mins later! All looks good!

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Decided to write a quick program to set the time and date so I don't have to keep clicking around Control Panel...

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I guess I forgot to add "STOP -1" on the end

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I can test about 8 RTC's at once, as its all the batteries I have So this will keep me busy for the rest of the day easily.

[exxos]

Also did a quick program to display the time and date, but it doesn't display right
Not sure if it's supposed to display 2023 or just 23. Does the same in steem so yeah whatever. Seems fine in CP.

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Empty my US cleaner.

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All clean!

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Instructions say put 1L of cleaning fluid in the tank

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Boards ready to go in.

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Now all sunk.

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Meanwhile I investigated the 7 which had issues. But was all easy fixes in the end.

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So all boards going though another 30mins in the US. Then I will give them a rinse after food. Hopefully they will start appearing back in stock sometime next week!

[exxos]

Soldering a V6 DAC board. This one has the 4MB RAM breakout connector on it.

[exxos]

Finally found my old STFM test machine. Now to re-assemble and see how many things wrong with it!

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Had to find my original dualtos board. Broken of course.

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Fixed and inserted.. Now to spend the next 400 years trying to get the CPU in.

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All back together.

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First power up as expected

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Re-seated the GLUE and it sprung to life!

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However the keyboard was not working, so I gave it all a hard calibration which did not really help

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Re-seated the ROM and back up again

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Will leave it running for a bit then try the V6 DAC board. I don't plan on soldering the RGB stuff as nothing has changed in respects to that. I just want to see if the RAM works with the DAC board.

[exxos]

Anti-static foam more than doubled in price since I last bought some

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RTC modules all done. Just need to bag'um up.

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[exxos]

Bit of a strange day of sorts. Nextdoor came around asking if I had a fan as they had a flood. Same issue I had about a year ago where the flexpipe to the taps exploded. But the guy is old and deaf so likely didn't notice the flood for some time.

So his daughter appeared as well to help. Turns out like 20 years ago I showed her 2 sons my Tesla coil in the garage. They must have been like 10years old back then. She said I must have made an impression as they both took up physics as their profession. Would be nice to think so

Maybe one day I'll get back into it. I built a huge rotary sparkgap years ago and still untested. Maybe take it all to a future cyberlegends event for after dark activities. Think we all need a change from chairsmacking to sending a few million volts though a few people instead.

Edit:
Oh wow they still holding events https://www.extremeelectronics.co.uk/
And
https://www.teslacoiling.co.uk/eventspage/

[Higgy]

Back at my old place of work they used to have a Cockcroft Walton generator. Apparently it featured in some old Dr Who episodes.

The large metal clad room and equipment was stripped out and replaced by a small box! Electrical progress!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cockcro ... _generator

Looked like the 2nd pic.

They also have a Cray 2 sat in the Indiana Jones style warehouse. The amount of wires in that thing was ! Fault finding looked an interesting task.

[exxos]

Cool! Kinda reminds me of the Marx generators. Not sure what the difference is offhand.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx_generator

I remember someone built a huge one at in of the events years ago.

[PhilC]

@exxos sounds good, last place in the gaming competition gets electrocuted.

Not looking good for @Icky