News and progress
day 2 update now available
Radio Project
its up and running. this site is for those who may not have access to the ftp and want to know the progress of the project.
And so it begins…
My radio arrived today!
I plugged it in, and I can at least tell the circuitry is intact. Loud humming as I had suspected. So I need to get the filter capacitors replaced. Plus an inductor across the back is busted to all hell (you can see it dangling in the underside picture). So that’s gonna need fixed. And it’s possible that those two things will restore the radio part of it to working order. Then again, some other capacitors may still be bad.
I didn’t test the turn table, but the description stated that it did run, however only in the 78 RPM setting. My first goal, however is to fix the radio. Then I’ll tackle the phonograph.
I put the full set of pictures on the FTP if you’re interested. I’m trying to soak it up, because this thing is about to get dismantled for a good while. I’ll try to keep updating that folder with pictures and text files of my progress. Not that I expect you to care, I’m doing it mostly for myself, but in the event you do care, you can see how I’m doing on the project.
Only one request. Don’t give me any “tips” unless I ask for them. My goal is to tackle this by myself. =)
Wish me luck!
Mmm. Pancakes.
9:30 or so right now. And the smell of pancakes dominates the nostrils in my small little apartment. In a place the size of mine, it doesn’t take long for the scent to filter to every corner of every room. The washed out sound of an AM radio, with the occasional pop of static. But oh how much better it would sound on my Admiral radio. He he.
If course it’s only Tuesday. It’s hardly possible that they could have shipped the thing yesterday, and it travel from North Carolina all the way to Kansas in one day. But even though I haven’t even seen the radio with my own eyes yet. I’ve already learned quite a bit.
For instance. I figured out how traffic light sensors work. I always thought that when your car drove over the sensor, it sensed that pressure on the road and sent a signal to the box on the light. Entirely not so.
If you were to take a coil of wire, and wrap it around any metal that can be magnitized (like iron for instance), you can hook up a battery and you can store energy in that coil of wire in the form of a magnetic field. The more energy you “pump” into the coil, the stronger the magnet you make. It’s called an inductor.
Well, you can see a big oblong marking on the road at an intersection, right? Well this is actually a big coil of wire that is planted in the street, which is hooked to a powersource at the light. This coil of wire doesn’t store much energy on it’s own, since there’s no metal core. But when your car pulls over that coil, your car is the core, and suddenly a greater amount of energy is able to be pumped into the coils of wire beneath you and is stored as a magnetic field. The box on the stop light senses this power change, and then knows your car is there waiting for the light to change!
Pretty cool stuff, no? The way a radio reciever works it makes use of the same kind of inductor, but along with what is called a capacitor, which stores energy, but only in a different way. It’s a bit more complicated, but really interesting. So even if I don’t get the radio, I guess I can’t write it off as a complete loss.
oh my……..
welp here is the new computer im going to be building this summer and fall my desk will look somthing like this
also notice my l33t photoshoping skills =P …hehe i have way too much time on my hands
Edit: changed to link so the blog would look prettier =P
04.30.05My Project
Well, I had posted a while back that I was in search of a project to work on. I’d thought about building a go-kart, but realized after I move to Manhattan, I wouldn’t be able to use it much. And after a lot of thinking, I’ve decided I want to restore an old tube radio from the 1940’s.
It’ll be fun, challenging, but not impossible. Just exactly what I’m looking for! And not too expensive as it looks now. I got the radio for $45 on eBay, and it’s surely got bad capacitors, which in total would be about ten bucks. From there, it’s either repair or replace the turn table motor/switch and a new cartridge for the tone arm.
Really I think it’s a beautiful radio. Wish me luck!
I need a project.
I’ve been having this yearning for some time now to work on a project. I want to create something from nothing. I had thought about getting a model car kit, but that’s not really what I’m looking for.
I want to physically build something, but I’m also up for creating something on the computer, maybe a small game or something. But regardless of what I create, I want to learn a new skill in the process.
So I am enlisting you all for ideas. What should I build? A go-kart? A boat? An RPG? Hit me with the ideas, and if it’s good enough, I might just build it for you!
Up n’ runnin.
I can’t believe it. The only hitch was I needed one more IDE cable. I picked that up in town and the computer works like a charm. I seriously can’t believe I didn’t screw anything up. Everything went exactly like it was supposed to. Either I know more than I thought, or anybody could do this.
Best of all… no AOL signups to be found!
01.21.05First Pieces of the Puzzle
Well I got the case and monitor in today. Should get the rest by Monday. Here’s what she looks like now:
http://users.ucom.net/~bigdog/photos/comps.jpg
http://users.ucom.net/~bigdog/photos/newcomp.jpg
http://users.ucom.net/~bigdog/photos/powerbuttons.jpg
http://users.ucom.net/~bigdog/photos/jewel.jpg
EDIT: Reducing the pics to clean up the blog a little.
01.19.05Gonna need some Lego Skillz
I ordered my new desktop today through NewEgg It’s nothing to salivate over, but it should be fun enough to put together. Plus I’ll be setting up a server that should have some decent uptime. (Laptops just don’t make ideal server hosts.)
A rundown of the basic specs:
Celeron 2.26 Ghz
256 MB DDR RAM
80 GB Hard Drive
NVidia GeForce MX 128 MB
DVD-ROM/CD-RW
A brand new computer for right at $500. That’s if I don’t screw anything up. 😛