let's take a break from computers and electronics, and go on a trip! a trip to San Jose. this is one of the rare little spots that's not overdeveloped. you can easily see the East Bay hills.
it's starting to feel a bit like the wild west.
railroad tracks and buzzards. if you look very carefully in the background, you can see the airship hangars at Moffett Field.
dirt roads and signal-free railroad crossings. this is definitely the wild west.
oh look, a house! we've arrived at the Bay Area's only ghost town, called Drawbridge. in the background you can see the Tesla factory.
a couple more houses in Drawbridge, behind the railroad trestle. there are no roads leading to the town; in the old days, you'd take the train.
today on the bench of healing: this Behringer S16 that decided to kick the bucket. so I think I'll take a crack at fixing it. 🧵
symptoms are: channels 1, 7, 12, 13, and 14 have a lot of attenuation. the unit also decided to attenuate nearly every channel by 40dB during sound check.
oh that's a lot of parts. but I think I see a problem already
here's something neat, and it was almost an Apple product! 🧵
the lid opens and folds underneath, revealing the nice large screen, still with the protective film. should I remove it?
the color reminds me a bit of the PowerBook, but as you can see it is different. the design language is not that similar. a lot of '90s products had this look
on this relaxing saturday afternoon i was digging through my collection of vintage 3" cathode ray tubes (as one does) and i found a *very* unique item! 🧵
it's a 3" CRT, but there are several strange things about it.
it's got the IBM logo on it, and the outside is coated in a conductive metallized layer...
a friend of mine has one of these (PVM-8044Q) and he's having issues with the degaussing circuit. it turns out the degaussing circuit is really interesting 🧵
here it is. looks a bit tricky, so let's explore it a stage at a time.
these resistors and the capacitor form a simple RC circuit. it charges and discharges as the power rail (thick line at the top) turns on and off.