Kodak Carousel Slide Projector Chattering Buzzing Noise Fix

If you have a Kodak Carousel projector and it is giving a buzzing noise, especially when the slide button is pressed, here is the fix.

It is generally caused by a faulty diode bridge located on the board next to the transformer. 

The faulty bridge can sometimes cause the fuse to blow but this in the extreme case.  Any way, if one of the diodes fails in the bridge rectifier, then there will be a AC component on the DC power rail.  This will mean that the solenoids will buzz, chatter and will be actuating very weakly.

The bridge rectifier in my Carousel was a B125C 1500.  I used a W04 as a substitute.  The secondary rail is about 24v so it is within the 50v rating of the W04.

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Downloading files at a fixed slower rate using trickle and wget

Sometimes downloading files causes connections to saturate or hang.

Installing trickle on Linux can help by allowing the user to shape the download / upload speed for any application!


First, install trickle.
sudo apt-get install trickle or compile from source

In this example we are shaping the speed of a wget download to 50kbps.

trickle -d 50 wget www.download.com/files/myfile.avi

There is a lot more trickle / trickled can do so check out the man files for it.

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Fake 32GB MicroSD Cards being sold on Ebay H2testw

Tests using H2testw have found this to be about 2Gb only.  If you got one, you have been ripped!!!!!!


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Hang in there buddy!!!

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FetchTV YX-6936U Main Board Connections

Here are the connectors on the main fetch board.


1    Ethernet
2    HDMI
3    Optical
4    Composite S-Video Component
5    Rear USB
6    Front USB
7    SDA/SDK/ERR/Sync2/Clk2
8    Tuner Data D0-D7
9    Tuner Clock/Sync/Valid/Error
10    Tuner Power + I2C
11    From Power Supply
12    Smartcard Reader
13    Front Panel Light + remote
14    TTL RS232
15    3.3v + unknown
16    Sata

Power + Tuner Power

Tuner Control

Tuner Data + Control Front, USB

Front Panel

https://plus.google.com/photos/111113446315432778457/albums/5797610812510676321

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Hp WebOs Touchpad Tablet sell for $99, Dont Buy it.

It is simply abanonded hardware.

It will never be updated, like android.  It is closed source, with some open source aspects released under GPL.

Also a tablet without 3G or any other real portable internet connectivity, is crippled and homebound.  Only having Wifi is not good enough.

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FetchTV YX-6936U Boot messages from rs-232 header inside unit

Inside the FetchTV box is a straight 6 pin header, if you look closely at the white writing near it, you will notice the assignments given by the first 4 pins.

The other four pin header has 3.3v and probably other things.

The data needs to be converted from TTL to rs-232 using a max232 chip.  Look on ebay for rs232 translator boards.  In my case the 5 volt rail powered my translator board, I used ground ground one of the tv tuners.

The connection speed is 115200 N,8,1.

As soon as the boot commences, it begins to spit out data.

The full dump is here

Interesting lines from the boot sequence:
BCM74130011
Shmoo Version=3.5
BCM97413B1 CFE v2.21.2679, CFE core v2.12, Endian Mode: Little
RSA encryption


So much like the Tivo, Generation 4.....

If anyone want to share their FetchTV dumps, please paste on pastebin.com and put a link in the comments below.

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ATI Radeon 9600XT disassembly, cleaning and repair

Why bother with this junk, an old ATI card which was full of dust.

A complete tear down and wash with solvent was required.  Also the fan was cleaned and reoiled.

Choking

Two small black tabs need to be pushed out to remove the heatsink

Remove the three screws holding the top plastic case to the heatsink

Another three screws hold the fan, the bearing is under the label

underside of the board

All cleaned

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Flamers

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Ubuntu tool for finding duplicate files, images, pictures - Fslint

Fslint is great, it can scan several directories and find all your duplicate files, for instance duplicate images or music files.

You can bulk select the duplicates using selectable criteria to get rid of them.

It also does tonnes of other things too like empty directory detection and searching for bad filenames (Samba?)

A must too for Linux.


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Farmers retaliation for unjustified coal seam gas extraction in australia

There are many problems with the extraction of coal seam gas in agriculture land.  Farmers end up with ground water that burns and becomes contaminated.

Since the crown owns all minerals, mining companies are allowed to enter anyones land and mine the minerals without permission.

I wonder if one solution of getting payback would be to drill another well into the gas seam, pump air into the seam and then ignite it so the gas "safely?" burns/explodes underground....



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Get a Typeable Location Text Bar in Gnome Nautilus on Ubuntu

Open gconf editor, in your shell go gconf-editor

Navigate to apps > nautilus > preferences and check the box "always_use_location_entry".

For all those power user out there.  You will be able to type where you want to go again.

source: http://askubuntu.com/questions/21924/how-to-make-nautilus-location-bar-editable#21926




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Don't Buy Optus Prepaid Broadband

It is shit, really shit and I don't recommend that you buy it, even if it is free.

Too many downloads, going 1-2% then stalling to dialup speed or zero KB/s.

At they same time they are robbing their customers with 10Mb increments.

Other people are pissed too!
http://www.cnet.com.au/optus-prepaid-broadband-data-robbery-339291339.htm

Fuck Optus.
Fuck Optus.
Fuck Optus.

http://www.optus.com.au/home/index.html
optus.com.au/home/index.html 

optus.com.au/store/prepaidwirelessbroadband/modems

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Accu-chek Performa Expired Strips hack

If you have a Accu-check Performa, you will know that the strips come with a expiry date.

If the strips have expired, you will not be able to use them, even if you manually change the devices date.

This is because the device has a second battery onboard, which powers another clock, which is set in the factory.


There are several hacks online showing you how to get around this problem, some which involve shorting out this second battery.  This does work, however I am not into shorting out batteries.



There are two screws on the back of the case, one is under the label.  (yes, goodbye warranty)

Then lever the case open, by pushing back on the internal case tabs in these locations.

The best method is to use a soldering iron to lift one side of the battery (point 1) of the board, then use a wire to momentarily short the contacts on the board (point 1 & 2) to totally discharge the real time clock circuit.

If you are no good with a soldering iron, I suggest that you don't do this procedure.  Also you should not rely on expired strips, because they are "expired"






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Unlocking and Debranding Vodafone K3570-Z 3G Internet Dongle

The aim:

• Get rid of the Carrier dashboard and replace with a non branded one.


• Unlock the device so any sim could be used.


• If patience persists, fine tune the device files to remove any USB reference to the carrier.

Tools and files:  Look here for links and here or google
QPST
Unlock software
ZTEMODEM.ISO_K3565-Z_debranding_v2.rar 
VF_K3570_New_Dialler.zip to patch the ZTEMODEM.iso file
Stupid Windows box
Brains


Prerequisite:
Install the driver for the device, either by installing the dashboard that comes with the device or by installing the driver inside the VF_K3570_New_Dialler.zip

Unlocking:
Follow the instructions on the bottom of this page, you will need a sim card that does not match the locked carrier.  Dont enter any unlock code if prompted by the dashboard, just use the dc program to unlock.


Unbranding:
Install the VF_K3570_New_Dialler.zip on a host Windows system

Once installed, grab the drivers folder located in Program Files\Vodafone....
You will see both 32 and 64 bit versions for XP / Vista / Win7 :)

Now you need to edit the ZTEMODEM.iso found in ZTEMODEM.ISO_K3565-Z_debranding_v2.rar , remove the drivers in that image (old k3565 drivers) and put the good drivers  in it!
Use your favourite ISO editor program to do this, ISO Master...

Now you have a remastered ISO with the correct driver for your modem finish the job by putting the CD image on the modem.

Following the instructions on this page, use QPST to delete the ZTEMODEM.ISO on the modem, then drag and drop the downloaded ZTEMODEM.ISO file into the modem file system.  Reset the device and check if it works. 

Unfortunately the switching between virtual CD and modem is not too user friendly.  These two sources explain why: Source 1  Source 2

Basically the Original Virtual CD is switched off once the driver is installed, locking you to use the modem on the PC that the driver was installed.  The only way to undo this is to use a Linux terminal with USBModeswitch to gain access to the modem and using AT commands to turn on the Virtual CD


No virtual CD = Modem detection
-----
Virtual CD = No modem detection


AT+ZCDRUN=E removes the file NODOWNLOAD.FLG
AT+ZCDRUN=8 removes the file autorun.flg
-----
AT+ZCDRUN=F restores NODOWNLOAD.FLG
AT+ZCDRUN=9 restores autorun.flg


Then ATZ before disconnecting

So what next, disable the Virtual CD and burn the ISO to a normal CD.




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Editing and modifying PDF files for free.

This is the best choice I have learned so far.

Editing a PDF file, for instance writing some text on a simple document, use Gimp to import the file.  I tried to use Libre Office Draw, but it is still not so good.

Deconstructing pages of a PDF or merging several PDF's together, use pdftk Builder, this is what we were missing for a long time here.  Available for Linux or Windows.

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