Off-Topic / Dumping Thread

[wierd_w]

I have been having a difficult time getting the PEB bezel parts to print and mate together to my satisfaction.  This makes me displeased.

 

I am considering a purchase.

https://www.amazon.com/VEVOR-Machine-600x400mm-Control-Engraving/dp/B07QZYK1S3/ref=sr_1_90?keywords=3+axis+mill&qid=1575989719&sr=8-90

 

It's basically a miniature 3-axis gantry.  The PEB bezel is a prismatic 3-axis part, straight up.  With the right tools in the holder, I could cut single-piece fronts.  I am thinking hand-sourced scrubwood. (My area has indiginous osage orange, which is a lustrous hardwood with a bright yellow hue. They get ripped out by the jillions every spring when the roadcrews prune the hedge rows on the roadsides.)

 

Alternative materials include-- cut, poured resin billets. (carbon black/loose toner, mixed with raw fiberglass styrene resin)

 

I will need to save for quite some time to make this purchase, but it should be suitable for the task. (large enough bed.)

 

 

Edited December 10, 2019 by wierd_w

[wierd_w]

I just slogged through doing yet another FactoryResetProtection bipass operation for a family member who could not remember their google account information.

 

I wish google would use that fingerprint sensor for something actually useful, like authenticating a user to bipass the lockout, so I dont have to play jiggery pokery to navigate the phone through a byzantine maze of software exceptions to get to the darn settings menu.

 

>.<

[Omega-TI]

 

- 

[wierd_w]

Basically, in an effort to curb stolen phones being resold, google and handset makers store flags after a factory reset operation so that the credentials of the last primary google account are needed to activate the phone.

 

We all know how well our lived ones remember those usernames and passwords and how they like to hand things they break that way over to us to fix.

 

Yeah. A cousin handed me her sisters stack of bungled phones that had reset protection triggered.

 

The endgame is getting to the apps settings menu to disable the baked in setup wizard then manually create a new primary account.  The handset makers do their best to prevent that so you have to trick the phone into letting you do that.

 

It would be nice if a fingerprint could just authenticate the user so people like us dont have to do semishady stuff to fix things.

[+OLD CS1]

This is also a problem for organizations which issue phones to employees without the benefit of a mobile device management system or setting up a generic Google account before the user does.  The phones can be wiped remotely via ActiveSync, but the phone is still unrecoverable to the organization without the login.

 

Google does not care, and Apple is exactly the same.  The way they see it, once a user implements a Google or Apple account on a phone, it belongs to that user.  Some organizations, for various reasons, are reluctant to hack the devices to regain control.

[Opry99er]

[sometimes99er]

 

[Asmusr]

 

A little experiment:

[Asmusr]

And another:

[HOME AUTOMATION]

I like experiments!

[wierd_w]

The Mario Bros test there is a bit .. chunky.. in places.  Cool all the same though.

 

 

OK, I am still considering how to actually make PEB fronts that are worth a darn.  While my 3D printed parts look nice and sand nice, the materials are perniciously difficult to get to stick together acceptably. (the glue keeps trying to break. )

 

SO--  Rather than consider that 3D mill, (which would still be a neat long-term purchase) I think I will do resin casting instead.  I have some legos floating around, and I ordered 3lbs of reusable mold making material suitable for resin casting.  You can get clear styrene resin at walmart. (It's in the automotive/sporting goods area. Fiberglass resin is really just styrene resin.)  Ordered some black toner powder as well. (Its carbon black embedded in polystyrene plastic powder.)  I should be able to mass-produce the PEB fronts with a simple pour mold, followed by a drill jig. 

 

That way my printed, sanded, polished front need only hold together long enough to make the mold with.

[+mizapf]

I just heard that Wolfgang Back has died. Not a TI user, but a familiar face for many of us in Germany who grew up with computers in the 80s and 90s. He was one of the hosts of the "Computerclub" TV magazine (together with Wolfgang Rudolph, both known as Wolfgang & Wolfgang).

 

If you like to know how such a TV magazine looked like back in those days, or for your memories, here is a link to a recorded show (in German, but it should be easy to understand what they are talking about).

 

 

 

[digdugnate]

Not crazy off-topic, but I didn't really feel it merited its own thread.  I've kind of gone into the story in the Classic and Modern tracker threads.

 

Since I found out my mom just sits by herself at Christmas, we offered to pick her up and bring her to Casa del DigDug for Christmas.  She was really surprised to see that I had a 99/4A, Speech Synthesizer, PEB, and that it played on a modern TV!  She was also surprised that the stuff still even worked.

 

I spent some time running through a few classic games but the really fun moment was when I loaded up some of my dad's music demos on disk through Extended Basic.  She said that Dad spent a lot of time programming the demos to sell to TI and that 'he made a lot of money doing it'.  The real truth is that he made enough money to pay for his 'buying more TI stuff' habit, haha.  ?  They don't talk anymore (there was a lot of drama in the divorce from the late 80s), but she still had fond memories of that, at least.

[wierd_w]

So, I grabbed possibly the last one of these from Amazon (in place of a genesis controller, because I think it fits better, and directly supports atari mode), and should be getting it today.

 

 

I also have today off.

 

Torn between actually sitting and playing on my TI today (for possibly the first time in a truly serious manner, since I will have a working joystick)...  And continuing work on sanding, polishing, and molding that RepliPEB front bezel I am working on...

 

Decisions decisions... Idle frivolity, or semi-productive frivolity...

[+OLD CS1]

My home office is roughly 10ft by 12ft. Since I have no place else to put it, in my office is my core network rack consisting of two APC SUA1500RM2U UPSes, two APC AP9225 PDUs, VDSL firewall and wireless, main network switch, Anywhere/USB 14, six-drive NAS, and Shuttle i7 Hyper-V server for staging. As well, I have my workstation with APC SU1500 UPS and printers.

 

With the ceiling fan running 24/7 the room averages 78°F with max of 84°F. The house A/C is set for human comfort and there is no special cooling in the room.

 

Since removing the two AP9225 PDUs and replacing the SUA1500RM2Us with SMX1500RM2Us the temperature has dropped significantly. The temperature difference over-night in similar conditions (weather and internal environment) was a full 7°F.

 

Of course, as the SMX lacks a Smart Protocol serial port (there is one buried inside, but that is a whole other issue,) the PDUs are unusable so everything on the rack had to be re-organized to take advantage of the three outlet groups on each UPS.

 

I also have an APC ATS (automatic transfer switch, selects between two power sources) sitting between the wall and the UPSes, with the B-input laying by the door for generator input during lengthy outages. Before the UPS changes and PDU removals, the ATS was reading 3.1A power draw for the rack and now it reads 2A. That is roughly 372W versus 240W, around a 4kWh drop over the month, just for running the rack.

 

I am looking forward to seeing the effect on the power bill, both from the consumption reduction at the rack and the reduced amount of heat pushed into the rest of the house.

[Nick99]

The Voder from 1939, luckily are our speech synth easier to use and smaller.

 

 

[Omega-TI]

[+OLD CS1]

Well, you know, if we are going to pick on teams...

 

 

Bearing in mind my favorite hockey team sits at 31st in a league of 31 teams.

[+OLD CS1]

I am upgrading from an older to a newer Netgear NAS.  I needed more space and speed, and less noise and heat.  Granted, the 3316 does snot put out a lot of either of the latter, it is a desk-top form factor holding six drives and the 2304 is a sleek four-drive 1U.

 

Anyway, I have an iSCSI LUN hosting a drive for my Windows workstation.  The prescribed method of migrating to a new NAS is the mount the new LUN on the new NAS and robocopy (or whatever your poison) from the old to the new.  This could take a while if you have terabytes of data.

 

OR, you could copy the backing store from the old NAS to the new NAS.  It is shockingly easy to do so.

 

https://atariage.com/forums/blogs/entry/16425-migrating-an-iscsi-lun-from-one-netgear-readynas-os-6-device-to-another/

[Mehridian Sanders]

Someone was looking for these I think.

https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.com%2Fulk%2Fitm%2F370931283464

I cannot remember who. So if anyone knows pass it on.

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[wierd_w]

Other than being a pizza box, (and using a VERY old SCSI wide cable type), that could be used in modern setups with some work.

 

You just need an HBA with a suitable external SCSI chain port on the back, A terminator, and an adapter.

 

 

It will be slow as hell, (vintage tech you see), but if you don't care about that and just want to jam a bunch of disks into a box, it would totally work, even today.

[Mehridian Sanders]

Sounds to me like a retro-NAS... dang..lol

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[Omega-TI]

 

Titan

[Mehridian Sanders]

 
Titan

Looks like Arrakis

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[Omega-TI]

28 minutes ago, Mehridian Sanders said:

Looks like Arrakis

Much, much colder!