Category: adapter

Allit EuroPlus Flex assortment box label holders (#P45)

Once a more a simple 3D printing part. Today, that’ll go into one of the excellent yet affordable (10€-ish, depending on the size of the swappable containers) “EuroPlus Flex” assortment box made by Allit. One of those (yup, stolen right from the manufacturer):

Outer size of that specific product is fixed at 370mm x 295mm x 55mm, and the inside is, aside from the front part that integrates the handle, fully configurable. There are 1×1 boxes in red, 2×1 in yellow and 2×2 in blue. For really large items that still need to be inside a container, there are also 3×2 green and 4×2 gray ones (not shown here), but I tend to just stick them in there without a container. […]

13th October 2024 14th October 2024 By Bzzz In No Comment

For Dell Laptop DC Power Charge Converter Adapter Cable Cord 7.4*5.0 to 4.5*3.0 mm Female (WHL #102)

Here’s something not to burn your house down with: DC power supply adapters.

My lighbox currently draws power from the 3D printer power supply, which does work, but has its limitations. Sure, I do have to move down the gantry to take photos in the first place, so the printer will be on anyways, but I am not able to run it during prints (time lapse?) due to power constraints. The build plate heater is 400W and only gets pulsed on-off (so no linear “oh 200W will do at the moment” regulation), and the power supply is a 500W unit from MeanWell. […]

8th September 2024 8th September 2024 By Bzzz In No Comment

*NEW*National Instruments NI GPIB-USB-HS Interface Adapter IEEE 488 Controller (WHL #87F1)

Well hello again, welcome to the famous “the internet is full of fake GPIB adapters” show! Today we got… *drum roll*…a fake National Instruments GPIB-USB-HS! Like last week, but different!

In all seriousness, after the recent experience with the fake adapter from Amazon (and NI’s reaction, or the lack thereof), I decided to buy one myself. After all, my HP 6644A power supply does offer HPIB/GPIB so I could maybe control it remotely and log data (with a Raspberry Pi?), plus likely any outcome of delivered goods would be suitable for a blog post. […]

28th May 2023 29th May 2023 By Bzzz In No Comment

Fake National Instruments GPIB-USB-HS converter (and NI not caring about it) (WHL #87)

Niche hardware again for today, a USB to GPIB/IEEE-488 converter from National Instruments. Or at least what the Chinese have deemed necessary for a functional copy…but first things first.

This adapter was bought at work for connecting an ancient beast of a scope (a LeCroy LC334 – 4 channel, 500MHz/2GSa/s, 400W, 20kg spread across 50 liters of chassis volume, 9″ 640×480 color CRT) to a modern computer. While that sounds crazy (well, it is), that old hulk was purchased with a current probe, which is actually very useful for a current (ha!) […]

14th May 2023 21st September 2023 By Bzzz In 3 Comments

SSD M.2 NVME to PCI-E 4.0 X4 Riser Card Replacement PCI-Express X4/X8/X16 M Key Adapter Card Computer Accessory (WHL #72)

More computer stuff this week, but with parts directly shipped from China.

With the somewhat recent upgrade from a socket 2011 to a 2011-3 desktop board, I also made the switch from Windows 7 to 10. Not that I like any of those, but more and more software will only work with the latter, and some specific tool that I wanted to try basically requires 10 or defaults into a non-hardware accelerated mode that is simply pointless to use. As I had a Win 10 diagnostics M.2 drive handy, that was my starting point.

Thing is – since I cheaped out on the board revision for a significant discount, it does not support v4 CPUs (which I’m fine with), and it also does not support NVMe booting (which would have been nice). […]

6th March 2022 6th March 2022 By Bzzz In No Comment

JMB363 2 Port PCI-E SATA II 2.0 RAID & 1 IDE 3.5″ to PCI Express Adapter Converter Card Expresscard (WHL #67)

Time-incorrect retro computing time! We’ve had a lot of computer-related stuff recently, but this one is an elegant mix of old, niche and Wan Hung Lo. It’s perfect.

First of all, what is it? It’s a PCI Express 1.0 x1 card with (according to Wikipedia) the only native PCIe to PATA and SATA interface chip there is, a JMicron JMB363. The “confidential” three-page datasheet floats around on the interwebs if you want to take a look. PCIe 1.0, AHCI and IDE compatible, HotPlug, NCQ, UDMA6 = ATA133 (1 port, so 2 devices), SATA2 (3 Gb/s and 2 ports, so 2 devices as well), RAID 0/1/0+1/JBOD functionality. […]

13th June 2021 14th June 2021 By Bzzz In No Comment

Quick Release Plate Camera Tripod 1.5×2″ Mount For Manfrotto 200PL-14 484RC2 (and modification for the Sony RX100M2) (WHL #65)

A ripoff product and some modifications to it this time.

In January I bought a used tripod set consisting of a Manfrotto 190 XPROB, a massively oversized 327 RC2 Joystick and a 200PL quick release plate (100 bucks plus delivery). While all of these are well made to a degree that I would totally buy them again, I wasn’t 100% satisfied with the quick release plate in combination with my Sony RX100M2 camera. Not sure if there are standards for camera mounts alignment and envelopes (so: “who to blame”), but the Sony does not align the UNC 20 1/4″ mounting thread with the optical axis, it touches the mounting plane with the focusing ring and even undercuts it with when swivelling the display. […]

18th April 2021 18th April 2021 By Bzzz In No Comment

Thermalright True Spirit 120 Rev. A BW 4U fan mount rebuild (#P29)

Technically the second step to the Fujitsu Esprimo board modification in #P28, but not necessary for regular ATX cases that are just big enough to fit a tower cooler, especially nowadays. Well, I always got special problems with my special builds, so I needed to address that.

With the Intel board mount, the Thermalright True Spirit 120 sits ever so slightly higher up in the case compared to the AMD one. It not only interferes with the card holder which is fixed by drilling two more holes in it, but the appended fan holder also touches the case lid. […]

30th August 2020 30th August 2020 By Bzzz In No Comment

High Speed 4 Ports LED USB 3.0 HUB With On/Off Switch Power Adapter USB Hub For Desktop Laptop and the CAT S61 (WHL #58)

This post is filed under “old, forgotten crap that has issues with recently added hardware”.

Well, this might be the new record holder for ancient reviews – but only due to recent events. I bought this USB 3.0 hub for 3.59€ with free shipping back in July 2017 (pricing hasn’t changed all that much). It was a purchase following up the 3+1 Gigabit/LAN adapter described in WHL #34. I still run this thing to support four USB3 keystone modules that are roughly 2.5m away from the mainboard. That’s not only difficult for the USB signalling at the highest speed setting, but also a strain when running high power devices such as 2.5″ hard drives or a mobile phone that needs a bit of juice. […]

19th July 2020 18th July 2020 By Bzzz In 3 Comments

Fake Akasa PCIe 6pin to ATX12V 8pin adapter (WHL #41)

Ah well, we haven’t been to adapterland for quite a while, have we? :roll:

I do have more pressing things to do as of now, but whatever. I bought an adapter cable for my new server setup at home, as basically all SFX PSUs with moderate wattage (sub-500, 600W?) do not offer more than one 4+4-Pin or 8-pin ATX12V/EPS12V power plug. Well, why should they, that’s not what they usually need to have. But most server boards, especially dual and quad processor boards, do “require” 2×8-Pin auxiliary power. On the contrary, there is no powerful GPU in that system, so the 6/8-Pin PCIe power cable would flap around in the breeze. […]

20th May 2018 20th May 2018 By Bzzz In No Comment