Month: November 2020

First Sunday in Advent & the PCB Tree (#E16)

Well, looks like it’s the first Sunday in Advent already and I’m too lazy preparing a new post. I’ve been working a bit more than usual lately due to our products likely playing a role in the whole temperature controlled Covid vaccine logistics thing. On the remaining Sundays I’ve been extending my old PCB Christmas tree. It’s been using diffused slow RGB (self) fading LEDs ever since (“100pcs LED Diod 5mm RGB Blink Slow Flash Diffused Light Emitting Diode Rainbow 2Pins Lamp Red Green Blue RGB Flashing 5mm LED”, around 2€ per pack of 100) and quite a few of old PCBs now, some bare and scrapped before assembly, some from tests or failed revisions, and some from defective commercial products like routers, access points, projectors, SAS backplanes, RAM, IoT gateways, hard disks, you name it. […]


Bosch Gourmet 8400 oven mode selector switch repair (Dreefs 4-DPS/260) (#P31)

A long, tedious blog post for today. This has been in the making for about 9 weeks and I’ve been looking for parts for another year or two. Pictures have been taken on multiple occasions in multiple locations, so it’s a hotchpotch that somewhat reflects the process. This is the use case for the 3D model generation of the WHL #61 post.

Our Bosch Gourmet 8400 microwave and baking oven has been there for as long as I can remember. It’s a huge and darn heavy thing for a microwave oven (27l volume!), and rather small for a baking oven with grill (broiler) functionality. […]


Ubuntu and Firefox update (#E15)

Funny how UI changes in some of the most popular websites on earth can nudge you upgrading stuff. Oh, and how crappy (defective) hardware can finally flip the switch.

I’ve recently heard about the Ubuntu 20.10 release (Groovy Gorilla), which made me remember I’m still on 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver). Since I’m only jumping from LTS to LTS releases as my hardware gets older, I was determined to make the 20.04 (Focal Fossa) jump once I hit 256 days of uptime with my laptop.

I didn’t. Testing some old, almost forgotten, Ultrabay slice battery last week

+++ ThinkPad Battery Status: BAT1 (Ultrabay / Slice / Replaceable)
/sys/devices/platform/smapi/BAT1/manufacturer               = SONY
/sys/devices/platform/smapi/BAT1/model                      = 41U4890
/sys/devices/platform/smapi/BAT1/manufacture_date           = 2007-10-10
/sys/devices/platform/smapi/BAT1/first_use_date             = 2012-07-20
/sys/devices/platform/smapi/BAT1/cycle_count                =     44

caused an unexpected shutdown. […]