I'm retired, so 2020 has only caused a minor change in my "free" time. The allocation has changed quite a bit, however. But recently I've been working on: Fixing a Kenwood KT-56 tuner (bad cap) Fixing a "dead" HP laptop (replace the mosfet with a piece of wire. This is *always* the fix for dead laptops, it seems.) Replacing the cells in a Lenovo laptop battery pack. Got the Lenovo as a trade for fixing the HP. Scanning the service manual for the KT-56 that I bought on Ebay and uploading it to hifiengine.com Fixing a broken HP scanner. (Fortunately, I have a back-up scanner for the service manual project). I think the opto-interrupter that tells the computer that the scanner has travelled to the end of the bed is broken, and I think I can hack something up to replace its function. Writing code for the ESP32 based TTGO-Twatch-2020, which I'm using as my "daily driver" watch lately. Making a welding table out of a Harbor Freight wood-working table (mainly, having a steel top made for it). Making welding table clamps for the above welding table project. "Restoring" a 21 foot steel pipe I found in the ground (!) to use as an antenna mast. I de-rusted the outside, welded up some holes, and got it "more or less" straight. I manage to keep busy. Bill Dudley This email is free of malware because I run Linux. On Tue, Dec 29, 2020 at 10:33 AM Jameel Akari via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
The past few days I’ve been working on re-finishing a closet that I use for (vintage) computers & parts - insulation, Sheetrock and paint. Just got that last part done yesterday and will be trying to put stuff away and organize. Assuming I don’t get squirreled by the state of the lighting wiring in there.
That’s getting done now because we’re also trying to rewire and repaint my home office / lab, so everything’s gotta be moved somewhere else.
I have too much stuff, so I hope there’s a Spring VCF swap meet, or the VCF East consignment sale.
Other people are doing cool stuff that made me finally sit-down and reply:
On Dec 29, 2020, at 9:19 AM, Alexander Jacocks via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
Sounds like there are a ton of interesting projects going on!
I’m working on a bunch of things, as usual: - waiting for parts to try to install OS/2 on the museum’s PS/2 model 70
As per my OS/2 exhibit a couple years ago, I have not had great luck with the hard disks in these machines. I’ve read suggestions to try re-capping them (the floppy drives certainly need them) but haven’t got back to that.
- replacing failed Dallas chips on a variety of machines, including a sparcstation 2 and 20
I feel that’ll be a thing I’ll need to do soon as well.
Non-vintage, but I also wrote an published an Ansible role to use
EntryDNS
to answer ACME challenges. I really enjoy working with Ansible!
I’ve thought about playbooks for less-common vintage UNIXes. It’d be nice to be able to just push config onto a fresh base OS without spending hours re-installing and re-configuring every time I want to replace disks or whatever. And to have that playbook configuration be code-as-documentation.
On Tue, Dec 29, 2020 at 02:44 Ethan Dicks via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
On Mon, Dec 28, 2020 at 1:00 PM Jeffrey Brace via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
I'm curious what projects everyone is working on.
I've been doing a lot of software projects in recent weeks - disassembling and commenting 6502 application code from the 70s and 80s. On the bench, I just received (after 2+ months of waiting) some edge connectors to finish constructing the memory/expansion board for my SYM-1, and I'd like to turn back to Commodore-128 keyboard overhaul
I was surprised on how expensive those card-edge connectors are. OTOH, I haven’t managed to come up with anything to do on my SYM-1 that strains the 4kB on-board or needs more I/O than it already provides.
Meanwhile I still have the Lego Saturn V from last xmas to build…
— Jameel Akari