Ben's Randomness

Tag: uselessness

  • Even more useless electrics…ish.

    So laying around I have one of my old laptops; a Thinkpad T23. Now I’d added wireless to this like 4 years ago using a mini-pci card, only cause I was using some shitty antennas, the signal was shite. Even in the same room as the AP I was getting pretty much no signal.

    So in my boredom a few weeks back I decided to start my genius plan to improve this. Many, many years ago (like at least 10) I’d used a similar solution to fix my shitty TV reception. The solution was to  extend the antennas using kitchen foil. This sounds rather… Wile E Coyote, but it worked pretty well back then. So I thought, why can’t it work here?

    I took apart the screen of the laptop, to reveal the shitty antennas that I’d installed all those years ago:

    These I think were never intended to be LCD antennas, as I had to bend them into place, I’m pretty sure they were keyboard mounted ones.

    So I cut them off just at the end of the wire, and then proceeded to try and solder the foil onto the end. This took absolutely ages, as I’m pretty sure you can’t solder aluminium using tin solder, but whatever, it worked eventually:

    Now after I’d done this it was getting pretty late, so I shoved the whole thing onto my side and went to bed. It sat here for probably 2 months until a couple of weeks ago when I got a new bed, and had to empty my room of shit to get the damn thing in. I decided to actually put it together properly instead of leaving it. After much shouting to get the damn wire to follow the path *I* wanted, it turned out pretty well (I fucked with the levels so you can see:

    After spending years trying to get the damn LCD back into place without breaking it, I booted the thing up..only to realise it had a failed attempt at a FreeBSD compile on it which just kernel panic’d. (I still never figured out what I did, but whatever). Again, I threw it onto the side and went onto other things.

    This week, I finally decided I should actually see how my work went. I went upstairs and plugged in my backup disc to cookiemonster, then came down and booted up Symantec Ghost, restored an image I had; which turned out to be like 4 years old as well, which was pretty interesting. Turns out my hack has worked incredibly well:

    That was taken the other side of my house to the AP, whereas before I’d get barely one bar in the same room, not bad, I’ll think you’ll agree.

  • I am the world’s worst electrician.

    So as some of you may/may not know, I rigged up a switch (pretty poorly rigged up) to control the LEDs on the front of my case. Being a slight insomniac sometimes, I can’t stand any form of LEDs being on at night; I’ve even gone around my room taping up those I don’t need. However in the case of my desktop computer I actually wanted to still be able to see them when I wanted; hence the need for a switch.

    Now this switch was rigged up on the back of the PCI slots, and this had presented me with an issue, I kinda wanted to go crossfire, and to do this… the switch had to go. I already had another switch further up the back of the case to control the cathode tubes I had. So I thought I’d move the switch up there (there were some nice holes here provided by Lian-Li for water cooling hoses, so nicked them for use as switch holes, to save me drilling into the case.

    Old switch:

    Problem is, for continuity’s sake, I wanted another switch that looked fairly similar to the one already there, so using the original toggle switch wasn’t an option, so I looked on maplin’s website. I could only find single pole switches of this type (I needed a dual pole one to turn off two LEDs). So I ended up going to maplin to buy a single pole switch, and a dual pole relay to turn the two circuits off.

    This presented me with an issue as I.. can’t solder for shit, but whatever, I’d figure that out further down the road.

    First thing I did was to get the switch to fit in the hole, as the holes in the back are for hoses, they’re pretty large, at least compared to a switch. So I had to make a template thing to put the switch in. Last time I used a CD case, but as everyone knows, these things are designed to break, so it was really hard. I didn’t fancy ruining 4 CD cases again this time. So instead I used a DVD case as these are far more flexible. I used a holesaw to drill out a largish section of the case, then  a smaller part of the holesaw to drill out the plastic in the middle for where the switch would sit. However one issue I had  is… my Dad’s holesaw is kinda fucked, so getting the different size blades in was… annoying, so at first I thought I’d use the drills motor to assist getting them in, kinda like you do to tighten the keyless chuck… yeah, bad idea:

    Fucked holesaw:

    After stopping the bleeding and cleaning up, I got back to work.

    Half completed template:

    After some cleaning up with a Stanley knife:

    Now I had my switch I had to start with some of the wiring.  I needed both a case for the relay to sit in, and some wiring, so I had a genius idea, I cannibalised a Zalman fanmate, as this had a fan header on, which I could use to power my relay, and sufficient amounts of cable for wiring it all up.

    Fanmate case:

    Wiring:

    So I cut off the bits I didn’t need, and trimmed the wire to the length I needed.

    Now I needed to start soldering shit to my relay, however as I stated earlier I..suck. After several failed attempts, washing and even grinding shit off the end of my soldering Iron I was still no better. I even watched several youtube videos, and whilst this helped, I was still pretty bad,  so I gave up, and heated the solder with a lighter (one of those that’s almost a blowtorch). This worked perfectly (aside from half melting the casing :D), and before long I had wired it all up.

    Sucky soldering:

    And finally done:

    Here’s the whole thing fitted inside the zalman fanmate case:

    And fitted into the case:

    And the switches together:

    The whole thing has turned out incredibly well considering my lack of skill, I’m pretty impressed. The next step is to wire both the LEDs and cathode tubes to the same switch with another relay so I have a “night mode” :D.

  • Lolz, theme.

    At last I’ve gotten around to actually doing a theme for this site. I know, it sucks. I half made it and other half was made by a generator. But at least it lends some individuality to the page. The logo is also shite; I suck at photoshop.

    There are many bugs to fix, but at one point I shall fix them… Maybe.