Craptop Restoration - Acer Travelmate 5520

A few years ago i spilled rose wine on my laptop. I thought quickly and turned it off, removed the battery and left it in a dry warm place to dry out upside down. After about 24 hrs I rebooted and it loaded fine. The only thing noticeable was the clock being wrong. I reset it but it would often just change of its own accord. The laptop was still usable however. After a few months though i noticed the laptop was getting very hot during long term usage or when using programs that were hard on the processor. It began crashing due to overheating. The overheating was becoming so bad that i noticed the corner of the laptop was actually starting to deform.

The laptop was beginning to crash on very regular occasions. Eventually i couldn't even browse the web without it crashing. I bought a new laptop and this one went in the cupboard.

Two years down the line I've decided to look what i can do with my old laptop after reading various articles. I decided to experiment with Linux as id never before tried it. I knew i needed something lightweight because of the overheating problems so i decided upon XUbuntu. First thought, I wanted to completely remove everything on the laptop. I've found a program called DBAN which is essentially a boot disk. It boots DBAN and gives you a few options from zeroing the drive to complete annihilation. I wanted the drive to still be usable so I've gone for the zeroing. The laptop overheated during this process. So I raised the laptop using the TV remote to let  more air get to the vents. This time it worked a charm. When booting the laptop you get the message no operating system installed. Perfect. 

I created a boot CD for XUbuntu on my windows 7 laptop and used it to boot my craptop. It began to install and i could feel the excitement mounting. After installation i booted the Acer and i really liked what i saw. From the load screen to the desktop menus, the whole thing looked very stylish. I googled for essential things to do with a fresh install of XUbuntu and began the learning process. I was very impressed i must say. I probably used the laptop in excess of 4 hours that first time and the laptop was almost cold to touch. There was life in the old girl yet. Now I just have to decide what to use my Linux based laptop for. I would like to turn it into a terminal for programming/learning to code etc but i need to do more research on that. If you know of any good ideas then please feel free to leave a comment below.

Hack - Kenwood Car Stereo Aux in Lead

I've been meaning to install an aux in socket in my car for what seems like years now. Well I've finally got around to doing it. I found this car stereo lying round the house and i opened it up to see what i was dealing with. The plan was to try and solder a 3.5mm jack socket onto the CD input. The result should be that when i play a silent CD the audio from my iPhone should be played.

Anyway, I've opened up the stereo and dismantled it to where I've just got the main circuit board, which you can see on the left, in my hands. The component which has the red box around is where the ribbon cable from the CD player connects. This is the CD input that i need to solder the cable to.







This is what it looks like from the bottom which is the side i needed to solder. Now i wasnt too sure on which pins were the audio L/R and GND. So, i did a search on google. I was typing in various things and not getting much look. That was until i typed in "J76-0048-32 kenwood" which is the long number written in white on the top of the circuit board. It brought up a pdf file with everything i needed in it. I located CN2 on the diagram and found that the pins i needed pins 16, 17 and 18.



Now the problem was that i didnt know which end to start counting. There was nothing indicating what pin 1 was. I checked the CD player though and where the ribbon connected was a similar component. This one however had a small 1 at one end and 24 at the other. So i followed the ribbon to find out which end to start counting on my input. Easy as really.

These were the three pins needed. The right hand one being pin 16.

16 - Right Channel
17 - GND
18 - Left Channel

So I've soldered the cable to the points put everything back together. I did make a mistake here feeding the cable out the side of the unit. I never considered what id do when i had to push it back into the cage. It was a tight fit and a bit of a struggle but i eventually squeezed it through. In hindsight, you should feed the cable out the back.






And here is the finished article. I've raised the socket off the plastic by using a black washer which i think makes it look smart. The sound quality is fantastic too. I get like a 1 second blip when the CD recycles back to track 1 but that only happens like every 80 minutes or so.

Cheap but useful gadgets - 8gb Key Shaped USB Drive

This cost me £4.20. An equivalent would have cost roughly £15. This was obviously an eBay special from hong kong. It's almost certainly USB 2.0 as the speed was fine when transferring big files.

I like to keep a few utile on mine such as xubuntu live and a disk wiper which will completely zero the hard drive and completely eradicate any sign of secure information or dodgy photos you may have on there. That is a must if you're selling a PC. You don't want a dodgy criminal stealing your identity.

Cheap but useful Gadgets - SIGNALEX Multislot USB Card Reader

This cost me £1 from "Everything's a Pound" in the town center. I was dubious as to whether it would work and after plugging it into my USB slot for the first time I got a failed to install drivers message. I unplugged and gave it another shot and this time it worked fine. No idea what happened there.

For a solitary pound this is fantastic. It reads MS, SD, Mini SD and Micro SD. Its USB 2 to boot, so no poor file transfer speeds associated with USB 1.

Great Website - LifeHacker

http://lifehacker.com/

If you love DIY projects from small to large then this site is for you. Full of hundreds of helpful articles covering every subject you could imagine. There are articles advising what to do to get the most out of you disused old gadgets, articles on how to turn IKEA furniture into luxury items and articles on how to paint your nails. It's the little "hacks" I like the most though. The videos showing you how to open a bottle of beer with your bicep is a particular highlight.

Since discovering this site about two months ago I've lost many hours just browsing through hundreds of articles. I have bookmarked many that I plan on implementing when I finally move house. The Site doesn't generate all its content with links to other great sites. Hackaday.com and Ikeahackers.net are two very notable ones.

If there was one downside, it's that the site is US based but that only really effects the bare minimum of articles with the vast majority still being relevant in the UK. The Site was also having problems running on Google Chrome but they seem to have fixed that now.

Gadget Podcasts

I'd just like to take this chance to talk about a few gadget podcasts I listen to on the way to work. I've got a long one hour drive to work and back five days a week so I take this opportunity to listen to some podcasts.

First off I'd like to mention the iOS app iCatcher. It cost £1.49 on the app store. If you subscribe to podcasts via this app it will auto download each episode when it becomes available. You can set it so it only auto downloads when connected to wifi or if you're one of the lucky ones to have an unlimited data tariff then you may as well set it to auto download on 3G. You can also select a number of back episodes to download too if you want to catch up on anything you've missed out on or get a good listen to a few episodes before commuting to subscribing. A pay for app that's well worth the fee.

Gadget Gurus - This is the only US based podcast I listen too. It involves a lot of heated and amusing debates and some rather abrupt opinions. Well worth a listen even if you're outside the US.

T3 , Wired, CNet - All light hearted but informative views on the latest gadgets. Each has their own merits and I listen to them all.

Which Gadget - This is the gadget podcast by the popular Which consumer magazines. It offers some very useful legal and technical information. They also offer some god recommendations.

Click - BBCs podcast from their Click radio show. Tends to cover a wider scope of the gadget world than the other podcasts. A more "mature" podcast so to speak but not overly serious.

Great Apps - Fat Fingers

If you haven't heard of fat fingers, it's essentially a tool which searches for misspelt items on eBay, you type in what you want on the app and it will search eBay for any listings where that item is misspelt.

The theory is that misspelt items get less views and often sell for cheap. The evidence I have for this was an Xbox Kinect we bought for £40. It was as good as new but was spelt Knect. On eBay. A bargain I'm sure you would all agree.

You will struggle to find misspelt things like iPads or xboxs but items with longer names like blackberry and playstation may yield some results.. Difficult to spell item searches can be bountiful.

The app was free when I acquired it and I imagine it's still free now. The app is on Android and iOS and here is also a website you can use.