My latest voodoo projects

Just saw it.

I didn't do an in depth build. Tested the board without components until i was satisfied it was not going to fry anything and then built it.



Outstanding issues:
Touchpad is fugly
system does not see optical drive (may be interested in purchasing optical drive daughter board if you have one with that fried v5.2 board) I will play with it and see what I turn up. Have other optical drives to test too.
Main system fan does not sound like it is in the best health
Figure out why pcmcia slot is dead (almost never use it anyway)
Fish out screw previous owner lost inside of machine.

I am going to resist the urge to do a full tear down until my solid state drives and $2 black touchpad board arrive in a few days. I was thinking about swapping it in and painting the worn mouse buttons black. Thought it would look nice.

Got about an hour and a half this morning off battery which is not bad at all considering my t model only gets an hour. Cant wait to time it with the ssds.

Edit: Oddly enough it was the optical drive itself despite working perfectly in my other d900k. DVD-ROM/CD-RW combo drive I have works fine. I have a matched pair so I guess I will install them.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/blank-your-monitor-easy-readin/ - best plugin ever.
https://justgetflux.com/ - best software ever.

makes using your pc and the internet at night a more natural experience.

Looks like you got it going pretty good except the couple of things you mentioned. I will post a picture of what I have left in the shed when I finally get a change to straighten the new man cave out.

So this is the "screw" the previous owner lost in the system that was being kicked around by the primary fan module

https://i.imgur.com/ZzvQqol.jpg

Weird part is that type of plastic structure isn't even part of a d900 series laptop to my knowledge.

couldn't resist.

Making custom themes is fun.

Removed bad pixelated triangle resource and blacked out the progress bars.

Anybody remember my sony VPL-vw10ht with the dead lamp? Found somebody who had one with a dying display today and bought their previously owned lamp pretty cheap along with their spare dust filter.

Will see if it comes back to life or if it has deeper issues. 90% sure its just the lamp but it could also have a bad display, who knows. It was a curbside find...

Cleaning out the basement so it was either finally fix it or trash and well I have always wanted to play n64 on my wall since I was a kid. Hoping to play ocarina of time.

Provided it works I hope the 1366x768 res does not leave me regretting my decision.

$30 on a used lamp later...

that is awesome... I loved legend of Zelda for N64, both Majora's mask and ocarina of time.... It's great that you have managed to fix it!!!! now time for some mariokart on the big screen!!!
edit: jajajajaja, wouldn't you know it, this is post N64 for me.... 

Now to find a suitable sound output device. I am thinking about using my old logitech thx cert 5.1 system with it.

I am thinking about getting a first surface mirror and doing a ceiling projection setup (seems more ergonomic for the bedroom then a tv)

May make an adapter cable to pass the center speaker signal but not the bass so I can use it late at night if I go that route.

I have been researching it a bit and given what I spent on the lamp and dust filter ($30) and the capabilities of the projector I think that i did well fixing it. It was one of sony's top dogs back in the day and it still performs quite well for its age. Resolution is nice but I wouldn't mind more lumens for daytime use.

I wonder if the universal remote codes for a sony tv would work this thing...

Dang it, page was loading slow and I hit that dam negative sign on your post. How do I get that off?

Other than my screw up looks like it's coming right along.

Our new beast. Canon MF8580CDW AIO photo laser. Gets to sit next to the omen.

New theme WIP

Headset mic is too loose to stay in position. Last razer product I ever buy, Junk. Simple not so elegant fix and it stays in place at least.

How the "ereader" build is coming



Things still to do:
Thermals
"middleton" x61t bios
See if by some chance that thinkpad stylist my neighbor gave me when he was moving is compatible with the x61t.
hdd caddy.

This is one of the few incomplete machines I have ever purchased off of ebay on the economy side that arrived with a working 3+ hour battery. (Seller didnt say a word about the battery one way or another) He also stated the tablet had 2gb of ram. I took that to mean 2x1gb (you know how ebay pc sellers are) Imagine my surprise when it showed up and had 1x2gb in the dimm.

Anyway things are progressing nicely with it. Hoping to have it finished enough to use for class this week. I have a spare caddy for it I just have to get it out, The plastic hdd cover that finishes secure the caddy in the tablet will be here this week. (looks like a job for duct tape!) lol. Seriously though it should be snug enough to stay in place as long as I am careful with it. Can borrow the one off my regular x60 should I need to.

From my experience firefox is junk lately, Causes what feels like hardware level freezes in windows. Thought it was the fault of my desktop until i switched browsers. These issues seem to be absent in firefox ultimate which is a tweaked build for 64bit systems (mozillia only released 32bit builds...) the 64bit build allows firefox to use more then 3gb of ram. Useful when opening flash based websites such as imgur that normally cause a "hardware freeze" I call it a hardware freeze because the mouse pointer stops responding until the webpage finishes loading. So annoying. anyway

http://sourceforge.net/projects/firefoxultimate/

It runs a lot better then the standard firefox builds from my experience and is compatible with all plugins written for its official counterpart build (v26 to 26 ultimate, v32 to 32 ultimate)

I have had a few problems with mine here lately as well. I will have to check it out.

One I have downloaded but haven't tried out is palemoon. A version of firefox that is suppose to be optomized for windows. It also has 64bit/32bit versions.

My oldest boy swears by the Firefox nightly builds or chrome.

Tore into the samsung 2693hm I came by for free a while back today and this is what I came up with.



All caps on the psu board are of the shit brand "Sam Young" 3 of which have visibly failed, (Korean quality at its finest) I have 0 confidence in the rest of the either. Not replacing every single one of them would be a waste of my time.

Check List:
3x 35w 1000uf - ordered rubycon
2x 10v 2200uf
1x 25v 1000uf - ordered rubycon
2x 50v 47uf
2x 50v 22uf
2 50v 2.2uf - ordered rubycon

And 2 others I can not see the rating on until I remove them. I will save those for last as they do not appear to have failed yet. (Will be better able to tell you once I get the board on the bench and start working on it.)

Quite a nice monitor when it works properly:

Replaced the 3 bad 35v 1000uf caps on the 2693hm psu today. Technically there shouldnt be anything stopping it from working now. I will test it and get back to you on that. Rest of the monitor is at my other place.

After I test I will be replacing the rest of the shitty sam young korean caps with rubycons. Hopefully the large one is available. Would be nice to find out the specs of it before pulling it. Don't want to have to try and solder the short legs back if its not available, its a pita.

I am currently lusting after this motherboard for an upgrade to my Omen-R next summer...
http://www.asus.com/ca-en/Motherboards/RAMPAGE_V_EXTREME/overview/

With this CPU...
http://ark.intel.com/products/82930

And this RAM (2 x 8Gb DDR4)...
http://www.crucial.com/ProductDisplay?urlRequestType=Base&catalogId=10151&categoryId=73001&productId=221001&urlLangId=-1&langId=-1&top_category=&parent_category_rn=73001&storeId=10151

This is the stage my (now mass effect, started as just high contrast) theme is at



Perfect for night time viewing

So a very dear friend to me spilled a slurpie all over her steelseries 62v2 mechanical keyboard. She was so sad. I decided I was going to replace it for her. I set out to find a used one on ebay in nice condition. I purchased one that was suppose to be tested and working. It arrived and it was quickly evident the w key was not registering properly. Spoke with the seller and expressed my disatisfaction. He gave me a full refund and told me to keep it suggesting I may be able to get it repaired locally.

Tore into it myself of course. Took about an hour of my time but it has been repaired and is working great. I was able to salvage the original switch. It has a piece of debris lodged in it. I was going into it thinking I was going to have to order a replacement switch. I am glad I decided to open the old one up. I was curious to see the insides of a cherry mx switch first hand as I had never seen one before and that is what I found. I am actually typing this on it as part of its test before I ship it out to my friend.

Got my first keyboard with Cherry MX switches -- Corsair Vengeance K70 -- when I got my new laptop, and I love it. Have not needed to take it apart yet, thankfully!