Another Hamfest find is the Sinclair Radionics PDM 35 digital multimeter. Having grown up with ZX Sinclair Spectrum clone, and reading a lot about Sir Clive Sinclair and his creation I wasn’t about to walk by this. If the look of it is a bit calculator-like, that’s because they actually reused a calculator enclosure! This was a cheap model, selling for 33 pounds in the 70-s and 80s
It's a calcu-err-meter
It’s time to see what the flea market special $5 Fluke 8000A looks like up close
Missing an overlay
Here is the BMS that came with my Headway LiFePO4 cells. After a few pictures it’ll be very clear why I felt really leery about entrusting my cells to its care.
Looks like this was a 13 channel design, with only 8 populated
My old Dish Network receiver got finally obsoleted so I decided to take it apart and see what we can learn from the design. In the process we discover something unexpected
Lets take it apart!Samsung streak continues. This time I am a proud new owner of a dead 23″ Samsung 2333SW LCD monitor from September of 2009. Dead is a bit of an overstatement, but that’s what the previous owner told me. Since the alternative was for it to go into a dumpster, I figured worst case I get a 23″ LVDS panel to play with. On to the symptoms: backlight seems to operate and the “connect you video source” banner is bouncing around the screen. When I do connect it, I see a brief attempt to display an image and then it’s back to gray. Time to take it apart. Continue reading
You’d think after almost a decade of blown caps on motherboards, that the OEMs would finally take care of that? Yeah, sure. I got my hands on a Samsung LN32A330 TV, made in June 2008. Pretty much a brand new thing as far as TVs go. Main complaint- it stopped turning on. So I plug it into my trusty Kill-A-Watt meter and try to power up. I see that it’s trying to draw some current, but then shuts down. Continue reading
