What do you do when you find a ISA Sound Blaster 2.0 card in a pile of scrap? Try to repair the damage on it to give it a second shot at life, of course. This is what [Adrian Black] did with one hapless victim, with the card in question being mostly in good condition […]
Repairing vintage computers is bread-and-butter for many of us around here. The machines themselves tend to be fairly fixable, assuming spare parts are available and there hasn’t been too much physical damage. Peripherals can be another matter, though. Since they interface with the real world they can have more esoteric problems that aren’t always solvable. […]
The modern hacker and maker has an incredible array of tools at their disposal — even a modestly appointed workbench these days would have seemed like science-fiction a couple decades ago. Desktop 3D printers, laser cutters, CNC mills, lathes, the list goes on and on. But what good is all that fancy gear if you […]
[Thomas] comes up with some unusual gear. In his latest teardown and repair video, he has a vintage 1943 Danish oscilloscope, a Radiometer OSG32 on the bench. It isn’t lightweight, and it certainly looks its age with a vintage cracked finish on the case. You can check out the tubes and high-voltage circuitry in the […]
To anyone who remembers Y2K, Sony’s MiniDisc format will probably always feel futuristic. That goes double for Sony’s MZ-RH1, the last MiniDisk recorder ever released, back in 2006. It’s barely larger than the diminutive disks, and its styling is impeccable. There’s a reason they’ve become highly collectible and sell for insane sums on e-Bay. Unfortunately, […]
While talking computers are old hat today, in 1978, a talking toy like the Speak and Spell was the height of novel tech. [Kevin] found a vintage one, but it didn’t work. It looked like someone had plugged in the wrong power adapter, leading to, undoubtedly, one or more unhappy children. There was some damage […]
[Menadue] had a vintage Compucorp 326 calculator with an aging problem. Specifically, the flex cable that connects the button pad had turned corroded over time. However, thanks to the modern PCB industrial complex, replacing the obscure part was relatively straightforward! The basic idea was simple enough: measure the original flex cable, and recreate it with […]
When your GPU fan goes rogue with an unholy screech, you either shell out for a new one or you go full hacker mode. Well, [ashafq] did the latter. The result is a delightfully nerdy fan controller powered by an ATTiny85 and governed by a DS18B20 temperature sensor. We all know a silent workstation is […]
Normally, mechanical devices like record players move smoothly, with well-greased contact surfaces enabling the tone arm to automatically move, the multi-record mechanism to drop down a fresh disc, and the listener to have a generally good time. Unfortunately, the 1972-era ITT KP821 record player that [Mark] got recently handed by a friend wasn’t doing a […]
[Jared] managed to find a professional FAA-certified flight simulator at an auction (a disassembled, partial one anyway) and wondered, what would it take to rebuild it into the coolest flight sim rig ever? In a video, [Jared] gives a tour of the system and highlights the potential as well as pointing out challenges and drawbacks. […]