I sometimes pick up odd scanners and printers on FreeCycle, especially broken ones to take apart for the motors, sensors, mirrors and so on. On Friday I got an HP DeskJet F2180, which was only made in 2007 but had been dropped down the stairs! In taking apart, I found the paper feed motor's optical sensor had been jolted out of alignment in the ( Read more... )

I've switched back to part-time working for a few weeks now, so I've had a bit more spare time. Not that I've done very much productive with it, you understand. Well, I did make a photographic trip round the harbour:


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On FreeCycle, I have acquired a very fine Kodak Carousel slide projector. It's much nicer than my dad's old Gnome projector, which is of the type that literally slides the slides into place behind the lens. The Kodak has an infra-red remote control, auto-focus, a zoom lens and an 80-slide magazine ( Read more... )

Today has been a successful day. This morning, I found my MMJ serial console cable and ran the DEC 3000 Alpha 64-bit RISC machine. The MMJ plug looks just like an RJ-11 6-pin modular phone plug, except that the latch is offset to one side, making it incompatible. It was DEC's way to make serial connections to RS-232 terminals a bit simpler (all the ( Read more... )

I've been doing a lot with the Bristol FreeCycle mailing list recently. Now, the majority of stuff on there is out-grown children's toy and clothes, and household stuff. But every so often, computer parts and suchlike turn up. It all started with an iRiver MP3 player, 40Gb size, with no charger. Then I got a couple of in-car power amplifiers, ( Read more... )

On Monday, via FreeCycle, I acquired three rolls of thermal cash register printer paper. Well, they're just the ends of rolls, but there's plenty enough on them for testing the printer that I got way back in February. It's a Citizen CBM1000, with a serial interface (25-pin D-connector ( Read more... )

The pole-mounted camera project has progressed to the stage where we can use it to take a few test shots (see below). It's by no means finished, as I'd like to add a few features for better control of the aiming of the camera. For the video camera, this will be a fairly straightforward video monitor and a cable connection. For the stills camera, ( Read more... )

Today, I went over to the Uni to get on and do some stuff. I've been over there before, and spent all day getting nothing done. I've also stayed at home and got nothing done. But today I was firm with myself and gritted my teeth and ordered the CAN-bus AVR microcontroller modules that I need in order to make an autonomous robot vehicle. I refrained ( Read more... )

It's been a funny few days, but the funniest thing is that the days are not really getting started until nearly lunchtime. I really must find a way to get myself awake in the morning and get out and do something ( Read more... )

The big news of the day is that the Suzuki Cappuccino is back on the road again after three years spent dormant in the garage. It needed two new sills, two new tyres, two new brake disks and a number of other small repairs. The repair turned out cheaper that I had originally been told, because the repairs to the inner sills didn't need the ( Read more... )