Fixin' to be Green

Fixing an airplane. In Antarctica

2014-01-30T11:00:00.000-07:00

A good summary of the amazing 45 day effort can be found on Hackaday. The plane's cockpit and other parts were repaired following a non-fatal crash Antarctica.

Young Tinkerer: Fix Your Dishwasher

2014-01-15T10:00:00.000-07:00

This 11 year old tinkerer fixed the family dishwasher for $1. Nice work!

http://veryhappyrobot.com/kit-review/completed-projects/dishwasher-fixing.html

Picture of bad control board from veryhappyrobot.com

Fixing a floppy magnifier lamp

2013-08-15T12:00:00.000-06:00

My dad (RIP) left behind an old, crusty, but good magnifier lamp with a floppy head that he'd shimmed with neoprene and paper. After the zillionth time the lamp head flopped down while about to solder a tiny electronic component, I decided to do something about it. Here's how I fixed it.

The head is attached to the arm with one screw. Remove that and don't lose the spring underneath the screw. The two halves of the clamp that hold everything together will probably fall all over the place, possibly landing on your toe.

You'll find that the head has a thin brass bushing clipped to it. Roughen the flat side with 100 grit sandpaper. Also roughen the surfaces on which the bushing ride.

The arm end has a shaft on which the other end of the clamp rides. Roughen this surface as well then attend to the remaining halves.

The critical step is that over the years these surfaces have worn down, so the clamp can't close far enough to exert sufficient force. You have to clearance material from the clamp, on the edges in my case. The bright shiny parts are what I removed, using a benchtop belt sander.

Finally, roughen the surfaces on the clamp where the bushing and shaft both ride as best as you can.

Reassembling was a challenge. I started by fitting the electrical wire into place in the clamp, then coiling the rest into the hollow space in the bushing, then holding everything together, and screwing it back together. I don't have a picture because I lack a third hand. :)

That's all there is to it. My magnifier lamp works beautifully now, happily keeping its position no matter where I place it.

Ken's Droid Incredible Repair

2013-03-01T07:00:00.000-07:00

Ken at Over Engineered blog describes briefly the process of repairing a cracked Droid Incredible screen. The post includes a link to a youtube video with instructions. Enjoy!

Fixing a Leaky Refrigerator Water Dispenser

2013-01-23T19:55:00.000-07:00

Picture from Over Engineered

Ken over at the Over Engineered blog posted a great article on repairing a leaky refrigerator water dispenser. He traced the problem to a leaky solenoid and talks about how he fixed it. Neat.

I'm due to repair my ice maker one of these days. I'll be sure to post up when I do.

Cardboard Drill Holder

2012-12-01T18:00:00.000-07:00

In his later years, Dad loved making things out of cardboard. It's a really interesting material for fabrication. It's easily cut, edges can be sanded, and it can be made pretty strong with wood glue. Of course you can get it for free, too.

Here's a drill holder he made out of cardboard. I don't have the plans, unfortunately, but hopefully this will give you some inspiration if you want to do something like it.

Dad's cardboard drill holder

Tool Box Lid Stand

2012-11-01T18:00:00.000-06:00

I don't know what to call this clever idea of Dad's, but he needed a way to support his old toolbox lid so it wouldn't tip over when you take out the tray and put it on the lid.

When you open the lid, the metal rods swing out automatically so the lid is supported. You can then take out the insert tray and put it on the lid without the toolbox tipping over.

Here's how he did it. As a former employee at Lear Siegler in Tucson, working with sheet metal, he brought home lots of scrap plastic edge protectors used with steel strap to package sheet metal.

The red thing on the front of the toolbox is one of these. This particular style has a loop at the edge leaving a space for a metal rod.

He bent up copper wire in a U shape, stuck it in the loop edge of the protector, cut the protector to fit the lid and its latch, then drilled and pop-riveted the protector onto the lid.

Some fuel hose is used to weight the rod so it'll swing down when the lid is opened. The copper rod is bent over at the end so the fuel hose will fit snugly and not fall off.

Trash Can Wheel Repair

2012-10-01T18:00:00.000-06:00

My wife ran over our trash can which was unharmed except that the wheels popped off.

I needed to pop the axle back into the slots. I gave it a go but it was too hard. I tried again, and again. I pried the slot open with a screwdriver, and pushed down really, really hard. Pop. Trash can fixed.

Don't give up. If things aren't coming together, remember there's usually one easy way to fix things and a lot of hard ways to fix things. You just have to find out what the easy way is.

Fixing a Logitech Mouse Scroll Wheel

2012-09-21T18:00:00.000-06:00

picture from http://basejewellery.com.au

Originally found on Hackaday, here's an article on fixing a Logitech mouse's scroll wheel by refitting it with titanium scrap from his ring-making.

DIY Garage Shelves

2012-09-01T07:00:00.000-06:00

If you have--or can find--some scrap 2x4, 2x3, plywood, you can make some convenient, sturdy, DIY garage shelves. Or you can buy the wood new. I confess I had to use quite a bit of new wood but made the most of my scraps, too.

Ah, wonderful shelf space for my gadgets and camping gear...

DIY Garage Shelf Design

The design I've been using for several years utilizes 2x4 vertical members in front to support the shelves, 2x3 frames for the shelves, and cheap 1/4" pressboard surfaces on top of the frames. The frames are secured to wall studs in back and the 2x4 verticals in front.

The DIY garage shelf design

I put a set of shelves in several years ago and they've held heavy Jeep parts, gardening supplies, and myriad other items without any issues.

Disclaimer: of course you're responsible to make sure of the safety and viability of the design and your installation as with any DIY project.

The pressboard will deform over time if the weight on it is above about 50 lbs. If that matters to you, thicker pressboard or plywood will support more weight without deforming but it's more expensive. You might try 1/2" or even 3/4" thick material.

Garage Shelf Construction

Two 2x4 uprights supporting a single shelf secured to wall studs in back

First, determine the depth of the shelves. In my case, about 17" was acceptable, with an extra 1.5" for the width of the studs in front of the shelves.

Subtract the width of your 2x3 boards, a total of 3", from the shelf depth to get 14" in my case. That's the length of the shorter pieces.

Measurements for the shorter shelf pieces

I made the longer pieces 4' (48") as 2x3 and pressboard comes in 8' units.

Now build two shelf frames, the lowest and the highest shelves, then measure and attach to the wall at the desired heights.

I constructed the frame with 2-1/2" or longer wood screws and secured the frame to the wall studs with 3" wood screws.

At this point you can now attach your 2x4 studs. At the start or end of your shelving, place the 2x4 flush with the end of the shelf.

Front view. 2x4 is flush with shelf edge

If you have two shelves side-by-side, a single 2x4 upright is used to support both shelves, just put the 2x4 in place to overlap two shelves.

Back view; note two shelves supported by single 2x4

Detail shot of the installation; single 2x4, two shelves

Cut the pressboard or plywood panel to fit the shelf, in my case 17"x48". Secure it with 1" wood screws or longer. I used self-tapping flat head 1-1/2" screws.

After you've gotten the first two shelves and the two uprights in place, it's easier to add more shelves and uprights. After awhile you'll have a set of nice, useful, sturdy garage shelves. Enjoy!

Fixing a Thermos Lunchbox

2012-08-01T07:00:00.000-06:00

What Dad's Thermos lunchbox used to look like (not his actual lunchbox)

My dad, Melburne Shimniok (he passed away in July of 2011) is the one who taught me how to fix things and I wanted to share some of his fixes and inventions, starting with his old insulated Thermos lunchbox.

An insulated Thermos lunchbox; came with drink container

I remember as a kid seeing this old Thermos lunchbox every day he'd go to work at the sheet metal factory. Well, somewhere along the way he crushed it and cracked the end off of it.

Can you tell that my dad liked bananas?

Dad grew up in the depression and wasn't one to throw things away easily. He kept this lunchbox for at least 35 years. He fixed what broke instead of throwing it away. I try to do that too.

Using a sheet of aluminum that he cut and bent to fit in the hole, Dad pop-riveted the metal in place, then bent and pop riveted a bracket on so the clasp would still work. He used it like this for many years. I don't even remember a time when it wasn't in this state of repair.

Pop rivets aka blind rivets

Pop rivets are one of the earliest fasteners I remember learning about from Dad. They are simple to use, hold permanently and look cool when you're done. They're particularly useful when the back side of the materials to join is difficult to access; that's why these are also known as blind rivets.

photo: www.bayrivet.com

You drill a hole through two or more materials, stick the rivet side of the pop rivet into the hole, then insert the shaft into a special pop rivet tool. Squeeze the handles a couple of times and it pulls the shaft, which pulls the secondary head and deforms the back side of the rivet, clamping the materials. Finally, the shaft pops off (hence the name) and you're left with a nice rivet.

Upcycled Cardboard Bookshelf

2012-07-27T18:00:00.000-06:00

Hackaday posted an article about making a cardboard bookshelf. The original article is here.

Photo: Lucas Ridley, creator of the cloud cardboard bookshelf

Fixing a Cordless Drill

2010-10-01T07:00:00.000-06:00

I have a DeWALT DW953 cordless drill and it's seen a lot of use over the last 15 years or so.

Recently, the speed selector / gear shifter broke (see picture to the right; small black part top center) rendering the unit useless.

The shifter mechanism had been growing stiffer and more difficult to use in the year or two prior to its failure.

Rather than throwing it away, I thought I'd try to fix it and get another 15 years of life out of it. Here's how I did it.

Summary
The factory part is no longer available for purchase, so I had to fabricate a part that would serve the same purpose using readily available material and a minimal set of basic hand and power tools.

Factory Parts?
Factory replacement parts are always a good option versus fabricating or hacking your own fix. It's easier and doesn't usually cost much. I started at DeWALT's parts page. From there to the DeWALT service net which allows you to find parts for this and other brands: Porter Cable, Delta, and Black and Decker. I found the exploded diagram.

DeWALT DW953 Exploded Diagram

The broken part is #9, the "SHIFTER", and is no longer available. Probably because it was poorly designed and all the spare parts stock burned up a long time ago.

The Shifter

The shifter is a piece of plastic which engages a C clip (the curvy wire thing extending from the rectangular part 9 above) to move the shift collar in the drill. Part 10 is a detent spring that locks the shifter in the high or low position. You can see the C clip below and you can see the channel that part #9 rides in.

Note shifter wire (C clip) and channel for part #9

Shifter Details and Failure

The shifter is a piece of plastic with a channel in it, into which the C clip fits. The channel essentially broke in half as you can see below.

The shift selector split in half

Options and Solution

I could have used plastic glue to repair the part. I've used plastic glue before with some success. But I don't entirely trust it for high stress areas and the design was already weak when it was a solid piece of plastic. A glued piece of plastic might not hold well.

Epoxy can make strong repairs and may have been a good option, provided both halves and the wire C clip were all glued together with a big blob of the stuff. This would've strengthened the area and it may have survived for a long time. But not as long as metal.

Instead I chose to crudely fabricate a replacement out of aluminum. Any of us mere mortals without a CNC machine in the garage can replicate this work with basic hand tools.

Broken shifter at top, two-piece fabricated shifter in the middle.

Making a Replacement

I made the replacement out of two pieces of aluminum arranged in layers. The top layer slides in the original channel in the drill's body (below).

Channel where shifter slides. Some material had to be removed.

The bottom layer (right) has a slot to hold the C-clip. The slot has to be only just wide enough to hold the C clip rigidly upright so it can shift the geartrain of the drill.

Top layer (left) and bottom layer with slot (right)

The top layer (left) has a relief cut to let the c-clip fully seat into the bottom half slot. I cut the slot in from the side as that was the simplest approach.

Bolted together

The layers are bolted together. I used a tap to make threads in the bottom layer. A bolt with two nuts serves to hold the pieces together and provide something to grab to select the drill's speed.

Finished and installed

I also had to remove some material from the drill body, specifically the channel in which the part slides. Otherwise it was a pretty straightforward process.

The Results

How does it work? The first iteration didn't work well as I positioned the knob/bolt in the wrong spot. The second time around I got it right. Shifting has never been smoother.

Which is good but also bad. There's no longer a spring to make the shifter click and stay in place. It slides so easily that the shifter will slide forward and backwards just with gravity.

I'll figure out a fix for that one of these days... But at least I have my drill back.

Batteries

I'm due for new batteries, however. I am thinking of getting rebuilt battery packs rather than buying new. I looked around and I think I'll go with Voltman Batteries. We'll see.

Fix a USB Mouse Cable

2010-09-01T07:00:00.008-06:00

Cheap mouse, bad cable

I bought these cheap $5 optical computer mice from a local computer store (CompUSA, when they still had storefronts) several years ago. They've held up great to daily abuse but after awhile, one of them started disconnecting itself if I moved the mouse in certain positions. One of the wires inside the USB cable had broken.

Sure I could throw it away like everyone else and add yet more crap to the landfill. Or I could pull the ultimate "in your FACE, throwaway society" move and actually repair an ultra cheapo piece of disposable modern technology. Well, obviously the latter was my choice.

Ha. Take that, throwaway society!

Identifying the problem, it was pretty clear from bending the wire with the mouse plugged in that the break in the wire was very close to the mouse body itself. I'd have to cut out the bad section of wire. Easy.

First, take apart the mouse. Most look pretty similar inside. A small circuit board with optical sensor, USB chip, etc., to which the USB wires are soldered, an optical sensor on the board. Couple of buttons, scroll wheel, etc.

The exposed mouse guts. USB wire at top, sort of left

Next, cut off the bad part of the wire, desolder the end of the bad wire off the board, making careful note of the position of each of the colored wires.

Newly stripped USB cable with color coded wires re-soldered

You might consider knotting the wire to prevent it pulling out of the mouse housing. Now, strip the remaining good wire outer jacket. Then individually strip a short section of each of the wires, and resolder to the board. Reassemble the mouse and you're set.

I didn't bother with the strain relief at the mouse body. A blob of RTV would work but I think it'll be fine as-is. There, that's all that it takes to repair a bad mouse wire!

New Fixes Coming...

2010-08-15T14:03:00.000-06:00

For new readers, welcome! For everyone, there are some new fix-it articles coming. I'm now posting new articles every month and will continue to do so until I run out of things to fix or talk about (we'll have flying cars by then I'm sure). Some upcoming titles:

Fix a Flaky USB Mouse,
Broken Radiator Bracket,
Fixing a Cordless Drill

Enjoy and thanks for reading!

Fixing Another Chair

2010-08-01T07:00:00.033-06:00

I never realized how much I rely on my office chair's arm until the thing came off. I'm not throwing out the chair for something that is this simple to fix. That would be absurd. Yet I'm sure people do just that all the time.

Here's what I did to fix it, so you can keep your chair if something similar happens.

First you have to figure out the broken item in question is constructed.The arm is attached to the back with one bolt through the back frame. It screws into a threaded insert in the arm. The arm attaches to the seat with two bolts and two threaded inserts.

Two threaded wood inserts attach arm to seat

Threaded insert

Next, figure out the root cause. I tried simply reattaching the arm but it didn't work; the threads seemed stripped. Further investigation revealed something else going on.

The bolts in the seat didn't extend out very far at all. As a result, they engaged only the first couple of threads in the inserts and those threads finally gave way. Either the countersunk holes in the seat weren't drilled deep enough, or the bolts weren't long enough (maybe I used the wrong bolts when I assembled this thing?). Fortunately, the bolts at the back do extend far enough and fully engage the inserts.

Bolt is too short to engage threaded inserts

Finally, evaluate repair and redesign options and pick the one that best meets your needs. I could have gone through the trouble of drilling the countersunk holes deeper. But why not just install longer bolts for a minimal cost (if you don't happen to have bolts of the right size and pitch)?

Well... that was easy.

To prevent a similar failure on the left side, I swapped those bolts too. Thread locking compound on the bolts will hopefully prevent them from backing out.

This chair has been in heavy use for five years or so. Aside from tje finish fading in a few spots, you may have noticed that the seat (is it leather or is it naugahyde? or pleather?) is cracked and coming apart. Clear packing tape is holding it together for now, but a recover and repadding is in order. My butt will thank me.

Fixing a Chair

2010-07-01T07:00:00.064-06:00

One of our dining chairs' seats came loose. I guess if they still had it in stock we could've bought one. But fixing it was easy and only took me about 20 minutes. Here's what went wrong. The seat is attached to the chair frame with three screws in pocket holes (arrows, below). Two of those three screws stripped loose from the wood and so the top was loose.

Arrows show pocket hole locations

I don't have a pocket hole jig, so the next best approach was to drill vertically through the 4" deep chair frame. However, the screws I have aren't long enough to go all the way through, so I needed to drill a large countersunk hole, bigger than the screw head, and drill a smaller concentric hole through which the screw shaft would pass and finally drill a small tap hole in the chair seat. Drill stops make it easy to ensure the right depth of the larger counter sink hole.

Screws and tools required: drill bits and drill stops

Most drill bits don't have pilot bits on the end, so your best bet is to drill the small hole first and then drill the countersink using the first hole as a guide. Or, use a Forstner bit with a spike on the tip, or as I did, a bit with a pilot tip, and use the small center hole these bits create as a guide to drill the smaller hole. Position the chair seat, screw the screw into the chair wood a little, to create a mark, then drill the tap hole into the chair seat. Now fasten the two parts together. Below is the countersink hole offset from the pocket hole.

Pocket hole, top; countersink hole, bottom

Fix it better than new!

2010-06-01T07:00:00.000-06:00

One of the things I learned from my dad is that it often isn't enough to just fix what breaks. Sometimes you have to fix the original design, too. Fix it better than new!

If whatever broke in the first place was due to bad design and engineering then fixing what broke will probably fail again. The best way to fix something is to understand why it failed and improve upon the original design.

I'll try to give you examples of this principle in all the fixit articles I post. Like adding the spring to the step pedal trash can. It reduces the forces needed on the pedal, so less chance of failure in the future. Or the Yamaha receiver's display backlight bulb. Throw a small resistor inline to run the bulb a little cooler so maybe it'll last several years longer than last time. If the mechanical structure failed, reinforce it.

Fix an Old Solar Calculator

2010-05-01T07:00:00.003-06:00

Trusty Casio Sci Calculator

I wonder how many calculators get thrown away every year? Rather than pitching it, I'm going to give my trusty old scientific calculator some TLC and extend its life another couple of decades*.

Though worse for wear, I've had this Casio fx-115M solar-powered engineering calculator since I bought it new around 1988 for Electrical and Computer Engineering 101. That's 22 years ago as of this writing. Dang, I'm getting kind of old.

Anyway, it served me well through college and continues to be my go-to engineering calculator for many of my hobbies and projects like robotics, electronics, home repair, mechanical repair on the Jeep and more.

Early on in it's life, the calculator's critical inverse key tore loose. I replaced it with a carefully cut piece of eraser which remained in place all these years despite constant use. The fix worked surprisingly well, believe it or not. Even so I decided to "upgrade" to a newly and squarely cut piece of white vinyl eraser. (I spared no expense on this repair!) :)

The inverse key was replaced around the time the web was invented.

The screen is pretty scratched up. Some day when I finally get a buffing wheel I'll polish it back up again, a technique that should work for most plastic faceplates on a variety of products.

And with a little Goo Gone, I'll remove the Professor Fahey's sticker (verifying it is not programmable and ok for use on ECE exams). The stuff works wonders at removing many kinds of adhesive residue.

Several years ago, the battery backup function stopped working. The other day I finally got fed up and decided to fix it. I removed the two screws on the back of the calculator, carefully unlatched the tabs holding the shell together (actually one tab was broken).

Just two screws. Easy!

Battery, holder, negative, and positive clips.

I found a small battery labeled National GR927. This link says to use a common 399 Silver Oxide battery, which I found at Radio Shack. With the battery reinstalled it will remember what "mode" it was in when I turned it off, eliminating my only frustration with the calculator.

When done, this old calculator will be good as new for another two decades. By then we'll all have brain implant calculators, I'm sure...

...with no inverse keys that tear loose.

* Why did I keep this antique calculator all these years? What features would possess me to hang onto it, or for that matter, what would possess Casio to continue making it, in an upgraded fx-115MS form? A short list of feature I like:

ENG button converts to engineering scientific notation: kilo, mega, milli, micro, pico, etc... extremely handy for electronics
It does math on fractions. No, not decimals, real fractions! Enter 1/2 + 1/3 and it gives you 5/6.
Does binary, hex, and octal conversion and logic operations--helpful for programming geeks
Does degrees, minutes, radians math
Change precedence with parentheses
Does combinatorial math
Does factorial math
Does inverse trig functions -- give it a ratio, it gives you the angle.
And a bunch of stuff I've never used like standard deviation

Trade in Working Electronics

2010-04-22T07:45:00.004-06:00

Radio Shack sent me an email saying they take working electronics for trade. More information here. They refurbish the electronics. Didn't know that. Cool deal!

Happy Earth Day 2010 (April 22). Maybe it's a good day to fix something instead of throwing it away. Or take it in to Radio Shack to save some green.

Lamp Repair

2009-09-08T18:24:00.003-06:00

Lamp stopped working? Knob popped off and can't secure it again? What piece of junk, right? But not the kinda junk you toss, the kind you fix. One of our floor lamps had a socket that went bad right after the knob cracked and fell off. But it's a nice looking lamp, and I wasn't about to trash it!

I did a little web searching to see if I could find instructions for how to replace lamp sockets -- yeah, they are out there. You can do your own search, or find a book at the hardware store, etc. You'll want to follow reasonable, sensible precautions to work safely and to repair the lamp to a safe state.

In my case, just the socket itself was bad, though I bought the entire assembly from the hardware store. They are pretty cheap so no big deal.

Fixing was just a question of unscrewing the cap over the socket, pulling the socket out of the lamp (feed the lamp cord into the base to give some slack), and then swapping in the new socket -- after pulling that socket out of its assembly.

I preferred to swap one wire at a time to ensure the right wires remained on the right screws/tabs of the new socket. You'll probably want to make sure you get the same kind of socket, too -- like, 3-way vs on/off, same watt rating, etc.

Organize by Reusing Containers

2009-07-17T07:00:00.000-06:00

Here's another Fixit Fundamental. You can reuse (hoard?) containers to help you fix other stuff. So you're repurposing some things while helping you do a better job of keeping other stuff out of the landfill. Wild!

I always seem to have several repair projects going at once. These things take time, so as I take a break from one thing I start up on something new, or continue with another project. But always there's little nuts and bolts and pieces and whatnot that I invariably lose.

You can reuse any of the following containers and more, one per project, to contain those bits and pieces. Label the container with tape and a sharpie as to what project's parts are contained within:

Plastic yogurt container with lid (some brands have lids; large or small)
Plastic salsa container with lid
Illy espresso tin with plastic lining and screw top lid (yummy coffee too)
Steel coffee can with plastic lid (I also like Lavazza espresso but anyway...)
Large plastic pickle jar
Prescription medication container
I'm sure you can think of more...

Ok, sure, much of this stuff you'd recycle, but re-purposing is probably even better, right? Especially if it helps you keep track of several simultaneous repair projects.

Mostly what I look for is any container that has a lid that stands a reasonable chance of staying on even if bumped or dropped. Doesn't really matter to me if it is metal or plastic. The other thing is I try to hoard anything I use regularly like yogurt or salsa containers. Hope this helps you organize your repairs!

Squeezing more life out of that PC

2009-07-11T08:00:00.001-06:00

I say you can get up to 10 years of useful life out of a computer!

I know. You think I'm nuts. Or a luddite. A 30+ year computer geek regularly using a Mac G4 450MHz tower and a Compaq 1.5GHz Pentium 4 tower in the year 2009?!

They still work for me because, with a few techniques, you can squeeze 5-10 years of real, genuine usefulness out of a computer, and another 5 years of limited duty use before all the thing is good for is recycling or reuse.

The most important technique is to resist the urge to upgrade just to have the latest, greatest. I think it's more cool to squeeze life out of a computer than to get the latest, greatest. It's definitely cheaper and less wasteful.

In the interests of full disclosure :) I do have a 2.2GHz duo-core MacBook as my main computer but I also plan to keep it another several years. The iBook G3/800 that preceded it lasted me 6 years before it broke.

The Mac G4

I got the G4 in 1999, factory refurbished to save a little money, and it has been an excellent machine. (picture from http://www.adoptamac.com/ where you can buy these older Macs)

It holds all my music, many photos, and lots of other data on an external 300G drive. I've used it for web development, iPod updating, productivity, web surfing, movie editing, picture editing, and lots of other stuff I've forgotten.

What works and what doesn't

It is running an older Mac OS X operating system, Panther (10.4), iLife, the latest iTunes, the latest version of Firefox, an older Photoshop 7, Microsoft Office for Mac, and other stuff. Most of this stuff works fairly well.

Firefox is starting to get pretty slow, particularly client side code (AJAX). OpenOffice 3 is very nearly unusable because it takes SO long to load. Ripping CDs takes forever and with USB version 1, photo loads off the camera take a long time, too.

Software

Sometimes if you can get away with older software, like my old Microsoft Office X, it will continue to run fairly well. Sometimes it is unavoidable. If you're a gamer, none of this applies, obviously, because you always have to have the very latest, fastest machine to run the latest, best games. Even if you surf the web, having the latest feature-rich browser can really tax your old computer. Some browsers are more efficient than others. Firefox tends to be a bit of a pig where Safari is less so. I haven't played with Opera in awhile but when I first used it I remember it being quite zippy.

Memory
The main key to the life I've gotten out of this machine is memory upgrade. Once I upgraded to 768M of memory, it worked pretty well until probably 2007 -- 8 years. But the memory is speed limited, too. It would probably work a little faster loading larger software images like OpenOffice and Firefox if I maxed out the memory.

CPU

But it is still very CPU bound as evidenced by CD imports. For this, it may be worth trying to find a used Sonnet (or similar) accelerator card on that famous auction site. Even upgrading to 800MHz might help a little, but the computer's bus is still stuck at a slow speed and there's nothing you can do about that.

Other Hardware

I finally got around to installing a CD-R in the machine, something I'd been wanting for a long time so I could burn my music, photos, etc. I got a used one off of that auction site for something like $20 shipped.

If you play some older games and find the video card lacking, you could upgrade that too.

And it is possible to find USB 2 cards for the machine. I would suggest buying older, used versions of this hardware to keep costs down.

For any Mac you might want to check this website for tips on getting more life out of the machine: http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/
Operating System

You might consider installing a different, somewhat more efficient operating system, particularly YellowDog Linux. You can select what packages are or aren't installed. You can even choose to disable the graphical interface.

Mind you, I'm not saying ot use an outdated operating system that is no longer supported with security patches. That is a recipe for disaster. I am saying to use a modern operating system that is more efficient.

Narrow Purpose

Once you get to a point where the system is really unable to do much of anything, you might find a very narrow use for it. For example, I could turn my G4 into a music server so that it's only purpose is to deliver music to my stereo. Or, if I ever get around to building that homebrew CNC machine, it could be used to run the control software. Or perhaps I could turn it into a firewall or a wireless access point.

The Pentium 4

I got this computer for $5 at a yard sale. It's a Compaq Presario 5000, 1.5GHz P4. It had 256MB of memory and came with XP. I loaded it up with OpenOffice, Firefox, IE8, and few other goodies.

Memory

All of this worked pretty slowly. Until I added 512MB of memory for a total cost of $26 shipped. Now it is tolerably fast running all the above software. I'm also using it to run LTspice, which is software for designing and simulating electronic circuits. This software is pretty lightweight and speedy.

I used to use the Pentium III as a software development station for one of my robots so I will transfer that software to the new machine. If I go back to managing my GeoCaching hobby on Windows, I'll transfer the data from my Pentium III and reinstall the necessary software.

I anticipate this machine will be pretty useful for some time to come.

CPU

Unlike a Mac, with a PC, options are a bit more open for upgrades. I can upgrade the motherboard and CPU. I'd tend to want to buy used because I could get a motherboard that's a few years old much cheaper than a new one.

Other Hardware

Video card upgrades are easy enough as well but I've pretty much given up playing new games and I think this system will do fine running my older games should I ever bother to load them up again.

Operating System

If it comes down to it, I may end up loading Linux or one of the BSD variants. But right now I am running some Windows specific software so XP does the trick. I wouldn't even consider Vista on any but the newest systems due to its tremendous CPU and memory requirements.

Reaching the End

At some point, you just have to throw in the towel and admit that your machine is fundamentally too slow and no amount of upgrades or leaner software will help. Throwing more money at it doesn't make sense.

When you finally reach the real end of usefulness for the computer, now what? For example, this Pentium III is just too slow to tolerate. I could load Linux but I don't really have any genuine use for it. I will look into recycling or else I will donate it. I don't have any info or experience recycling computers yet but I'll do an article on this when I learn more.

I used to have three Mac PowerMac 7500s with YellowDog Linux and really all they did was run Seti@Home. Slowly. :) (Pictured is a PowerMac 7200, image from www.forevermac.com) I had upgraded the CPU daughter cards in each one from a somewhat newer PowerMac.

One of them was a file server and one was a print server. It was tough finding decent sized SCSI disks, so the file server thing didn't work too well. Finally, I didn't really need file or print servers anymore, so I donated one to an art gallery after loading it with some older graphics editing / publishing software. The other two went to Goodwill in hopes someone would be able to do something with them.

Meanwhile I still have my rugged old IBM Thinkpad 760EL (133MHz Pentium II MMX, picture from thinkwiki.org) that I bought over 10 years ago--it was already obsolete at the time. I originally bought it as an information security laptop.

All I needed was command line Linux so I loaded RedHat 7 and some security tools and after upgrading it to 48M of ram (!) it was a useful little tool for several years and it performed fine.

It also has a Windows 95 disk (you can easily swap drives on this model) and now the only use it sees is to run an old version of GPS navigation software connected to a Lowrance GPS of 1997 vintage. It's such a solidly built machine I think it's perfect to ride in a Jeep but it's not terribly useful for much else.

You can always convert your machine for another purpose, too, like the ol' Mac Aquarium.

Update, 2012

I finally retired the G4 from active duty, upgraded the MacBook hard drive and transferred all my songs and pictures over to it.

The P4 is also out to pasture, replaced by a used Dell Optiplex GX520 which runs a dual core 2.8GHz Pentium D, a decent speed upgrade at a reasonably low cost (not as low as the $5 yard sale P4).

We just traded out my wife's MacBook for a newer model that could run OSX Lion a year ago. Now that Mountain Lion is out, my MacBook is unsupported and hers may be as well. I never did update to Lion so I now have to call Apple support to do that so I can at least use iCloud on my phone.

I suppose with these old computers, it's always a game of balancing cost of upgrades with modern feature support, speed, etc. It's really difficult not to fill the landfills with e-waste. Our technology economy pretty much rewards doing so.

Laptop LCD Screen Repair

2009-07-08T00:47:00.014-06:00

You can get more use out of a laptop with a broken LCD. Here's how.

I recently got an old, broken laptop from a nice fellow off of Craigslist. Fortunately he'd just kept it around instead of throwing it away (too many toxins in electronics equipment to do that!)

The machine was in good shape, save for a broken LCD screen. Fortunately, this is a pretty easy fix. New LCD screens can be found on eBay for around $60 and on the web for a little over $100. (Seems to me this fix could remedy a broken desktop monitor's LCD screen, too.)

So, before we dive in, you may wonder: is it worth fixing a 5-10 year old PC? I say YES! I find that you can squeeze quite a bit of extra life out of your old PC or Mac, depending on how you use it. And that's a topic for a later blog post. Back to fixing...

Removing the Screen

Here's a quick overview of the repair and some important lessons learned. I went through some pain fixing this thing, so hopefully you can learn from my mistakes.

First of all, removing the screen is a question of removing the laptop's screen bezel, disconnecting the outer casing from the frame, and then removing the LCD from the frame.

On this particular model, an HP Pavillion ZE4900, two stickers and two small rubber bumpers cover screws that hold the bezel to the screen frame (see pic).

The Dell Lattitude D630 I use for work is similar. My older iBook has frame screws on the side of the housing (see picture).

On the HP and Mac, the screen frame consists of two vertical metal channels, one on each side of the screen. The LCD is screwed to the frame on the side at the four corners, but to get to those screws on the side, you have to remove four other screws that hold the frame to the outer casing.

Finding the Right Replacement Screen

For me the big challenge was finding the right LCD screen replacement part. The original was an LG Philips LP150x08(A5)(N1). I had hoped one could cross reference other manufacturer's part numbers and find an equivalent replacement, but I wasn't able to find a cross reference database.

Finding an exact replacement with the exact same OEM part number ensures a hassle free fix, but you may have to way awhile to find the part on that famous auction site, or you may have to pay more to get exactly what you want.

I suppose it is possible that you can get away with a similar model number. In this case, for example, maybe an LP150x08(A3) or LP150x08(TL)(A2) would've worked. I have no idea.

On the other hand, finding an equivalent may mean you end up buying one or more parts that don't fit. You can resell them, as I did with the WXGA screen, but you may end up being money ahead just getting an OEM replacement. However, if you feel like going through the effort of finding an equivalent replacement part, here are some tips that I learned the hard way!

Screen Dimensions and Resolution
Of course the most important thing is to ensure you get the right physical dimensions and screen resolution. A blog entry on icustompc.com explains the different types:

Standard	Resolution	Typical Use
XGA (Extended Graphics Array)	1024×768	[some 13- and 14-inch and most] 15- and 17-inch LCD monitors
SXGA (Super XGA)	1280×1024	15- and 17-inch CRT monitors 17-and 19-inch LCD monitors
UXGA (Ultra XGA)	1600×1200	19-, 20-, 21-inch CRT monitors 20-inch LCD monitors
QXGA (Quad XGA)	2048×1536	21-inch and larger CRT monitors
WXGA (Wide XGA)	1280×800	Wide aspect 15.4-inch laptops LCD displays
WSXGA+ (Wide SXGA plus)	1680×1050	Wide aspect 20-inch LCD monitors
WUXGA (Wide Ultra XGA)	1920×1200	Wide aspect 22-inch and larger LCD monitors

XGA is typically what you'd find on old school standard aspect ratio screens in 13-, 14-, and 15-inch sizes, like you'd find on original Mac iBooks or this 1.5GHz Celeron Pavillion, or a Thinkpad T42, or other computers of this era.

I mistakenly bought a WXGA screen because the seller claimed it was for a ZE4900 laptop. It wasn't. I needed an XGA. Oops. Don't do that.

In some cases, the video card on your laptop may support a higher screen resolution than the OEM screen can deliver. For example, the Pavillion was perfectly happy driving the WXGA screen above, though it obviously didn't fit, physically.

Thickness and screw hole spacing is critical, too. You could try to find datasheets for other models and verify that the thickness and screw hole spacing is the same as what you have. I didn't have a lot of luck finding datasheets for LCD screens except for a pretty big collection of LCD datasheets here at beyondinfinite.com. Hope that helps in your search.

Connectors
Also make sure the connectors are the same. Count the number of pins and look at the original connector socket on the screen to be sure.

The screen I replaced had 30 pins as pictured above, but I mistakenly got another screen that only had 20 pins, pictured below. Oops. Don't do that, either.

I did find a website that sells various inexpensive adapters between different LCD screen connectors. So this is one option if you find a screen that fits physically but uses a different connector than OEM.

As far as I can tell almost all of these screens use the same power connector to deliver power from the inverter, a long, narrow printed circuit board mounted below the screen on the frame, which powers the cold cathode fluorescent lamp backlight for the LCD screen.

Installation

As all the technical manuals say, installation is the reverse of removal. :) You might want to test everything before you fully reinstall. And that's all there is to it. A nice simple, inexpensive fix.

Sure beats spending hundreds on a new laptop and you save another piece of useful electronics form the trash (not that you'd throw it away, would you?) while getting the most out of the energy spent to build the computer in the first place.

Fixing a heat gun better than before

2009-06-26T07:55:00.002-06:00

This heat gun was destined for disaster! Followed by a simple fix; I'm not a huge fan of fixes that require machinist skills. Partly because I don't have the skills or equipment but, also, I'd rather share simple fixes that anyone can implement so that more stuff is diverted from destination Dump.

I bought this über-fancy Craftsman heat gun a few years ago for heat shrink tubing since using a cigarette lighter was a really sucky tool for the job of applying heat. And of course, I couldn't possibly get the low end heat gun like my wife did for her crafts. No, I had to get the heavy duty version. It even says INDUSTRIAL on the side, so it must be good! (It is at this point that we roll our eyes...)

After a couple months, I dropped it and the heat control dial ceased functioning properly. It felt like something broke off inside. That really sucks for a $110 heat gun.

I could've lived with it stuck at one (wrong) heat setting. Or, I could've opened it up and set the internal potentiometer to a more usable setting but left it non-adjustable. Or I could've simply glued the broken bits together to restore it to original condition. But what fun would that be??

I suppose most people, faced with an expensive, broken heat gun, wouldn't have thrown it out at this point. Maybe they would've had it repaired, or ordered replacement parts, I don't know. That isn't really the point. By not only fixing it, but making it better than it was before, there's a good guarantee the thing will last a long time and stay out of the trash and give the owner their money's worth out of it. So hopefully I'll inspire you to seek to fix and improve your broken widgets and wingdings.

Sometimes stuff we buy isn't engineered very well, and this heat gun's temp dial was a great example. The large flat disc was molded with a spindly little shaft coming out that engaged with the potentiometer. When I dropped the heat gun, that shaft snapped clean off because it had no real reinforcement at it's base. Chances are, Sears sells replacement parts but I'd wager they'd be just as prone to break.

So I took it apart. There are a few screws on one side that come out with a Phillips screwdriver. Easy enough. You have to unscrew the heat shield before you can separate the halves of the heat gun. Once you do pull it apart you see some electronics, a little motor to drive the fan, the heat dial, and some other goodies. What I originally found was the broken shaft (I could hear it rattling in there before I took the thing apart).

The shaft had parallel flats on the end where it engaged the potentiometer.

So instead of gluing the plastic shaft back in place, I decided to use a piece of threaded brass rod clamped to the dial with brass nuts. I chose brass because it is very easy to work with. I'd need to file down the flats and cut it to length. Brass is sufficiently sturdy and is kind of cool looking too.

I drilled a hole through the center of the dial, cut the brass rod to approximate length, then filed the flats by hand to fit into the potentiometer. Then assembled the dial, rod, nuts.

Then I put the dial back in place in the housing to test fit rod length. After adjusting for length using the nuts, I cut off the exposed end just long enough to put a fancy brass cap nut on it so it looks nice and holds the outer nut in place. A lock washer on the inside nut would've been a great idea. I've been using it for a couple years since the fix, it continues to work beautifully, and I am confident it'll hold up to all sorts of abuse.

Food for thought: another option would've been to use JB Weld or plastic compatible epoxy to reattach the shaft and also add reinforcement at the base. I like the brass better, but that's just me.