Woke up to all this in my inbox today. It was much scarier in person.
Author: Justin Paulin
Dirt Cheap Dirty Boards (DirtyPCBs.com) Review
After seeing the post about DirtyPCBs last month on Hacker News, I decided to give them a try and ended up ordering some prototypes of a basic Arduino matrix shield that I had been working on in KiCAD. When I placed my order on April 10th, 10 5cmx5cm boards cost me $12. Looking at the site now, it seems Read More…
Testing a Texas Instruments TI-99/4A Without Power or Video Cables
I bought this TI-99/4A computer along with around 70 games, 2 monitors, and a Milton Bradley MBX system at a garage sale a few years ago. If I recall correctly, the seller used to be a Regional Manager for Texas Instruments in the 1980s, and used it as his personal computer during that time. The Read More…
Converting a Merit Radion Force Countertop From CRT to LCD (Without The Official Kit)
During a recent auction, I purchased a Merit Radion Force game system with a dying monitor. As the monitor was unusably dim at maximum brightness settings even under dim light, the cathode gun was likely on it’s way out; and a repair would cost many times more than what I paid for the machine itself. So rather than sink any money Read More…
Android FTP Server Project – How to Give Apps Write Permissions to External Storage Devices
I recently purchased an inexpensive ($35~ on FastTech.com) Android Mini PC to replace the old Windows XP computer I had running an FTP server for offsite web server backups. It’s smaller, more secure, and uses a lot less power than the old computer did. However, with the stock Android ROM on the device, writing to Read More…
Jackpot Crossing – The Anatomy of a Ticket Redemption Arcade Game
This game only needed some sensor repairs (a few transistors and capacitors were torn off on the coin detection boards), so I figured I’d use this post to go over the standard features of a typical ticket redemption game as well as the repair, just to keep things interesting. This game, Jackpot Crossing by American Read More…
Simple Windows Batch File Scheduled Backups
Here are a few Windows batch scripts that I wrote to use for scheduled backups. Each is only a few lines long, and does everything that most people will ever need, including zipped, encrypted, and simple folder backups. To use them, simply edit the paths, save the contents to a batch file (.bat extension), and Read More…
Apple Time Capsule Power Supply Replacement Mod
After having repaired my Apple Time Capsule’s power supply twice due to heat-damaged bulging capacitors, I went ahead with a mod that I had been thinking about attempting for quite some time. The mod replaced the built-in power supply with a simple ATX Molex connector, allowing the Time Capsule to run without it’s hottest component, on Read More…
Identifying Fake Nintendo DS (NDS) Games
In addition to the fake GBA games I went over in my last post, I’ve also ended up with a number of counterfeit Nintendo DS games as well. In this post, I’ll go over how to spot a fake Nintendo DS game, both from the inside and out. As with fake GBA games, fake DS Read More…
Identifying Fake Game Boy Advance (GBA) Games
Since I’ve started purchasing large lots of games on eBay, I’ve acquired a number of Game Boy Advance games of dubious origin (All of which were covered by PayPal’s Buyer Protection on counterfeit items). In this post, I’ll go over how to identify counterfeit GBA games, and what steps you can take to avoid getting scammed. Read More…