The mark of a true nerd is...

-

Zilog Z80. Ahhhhh.... (!)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

This is Not a Drill

-
Image
A few months ago I bought a mini electric chainsaw from Lidl to cut up wood for the stove. Going by the reduced gas bills I think the chainsaw has almost paid for itself. The chainsaw uses the Parkside 20-volt lithium-ion batteries and I bought a 4Ah battery and charger to run it. Since then I have bought a couple of other Parkside gardening tools and a larger 8Ah battery which was on offer. In all I've spent about £60 on the batteries so I want to get maximum use out of them. Now over the last few years I've acquired free or for a couple of quid, several Bosch drills. These are the last of the tools that used NiCad battery packs. The big SDS hammer drill above came with two 24-volt NiCad battery packs, one completely dead and the other almost dead. I bought a couple of 18-volt NiCad packs to run this and a smaller Bosch drill and they have been really useful, especially last summer when I was working on improving the patio lean-to. So could the Bosch dr...
Read more

Wind Up

-
Image
I was having a sandwich lunch down at Tyrella beach on the Co Down coast back in late September and went for a walk afterwards and found this thing half-buried in the sand. It turned out to be a boat immersion heater of some sort (I don't own a boat so maybe someone can enlighten me). There was an electrical element and 2 pipes coming out of the top and the bottom connection you can see in the photo. It must have been thrown overboard (assuming the boat it was on didn't sink!), maybe after being replaced. It had been in the sea a while by the looks of it, but being stainless steel it has started to polish up quite nicely. The lid is held on by 6 bolts and I gutted all the old gubbins out of it to get the cylinder itself. Willis Solasyphon Anyway, the basic plan is to wind 1 or 2 tight coils of 8mm microbore copper pipe like in the photo above and make a heat exchanger out of the cylinder. I've had a go at winding this type of coil before and it isn't easy, but I'd ...
Read more

Electronics Upcycling

-
Image
ELECTRONICS UPCYCLING FAQ CHECK OUT THE OTHER POSTS ON THIS BLOG FOR DETAILS ON REPAIRS AND UPGRADES GOING BACK OVER 10 YEARS - What's the story? I've been tinkering with circuits for over 40 years and have an MSc in microelectronics, and a few years ago realised I could combine this with saving the planet. Basically I'm Greta Thunberg with a soldering iron. - Saving the planet? Well every electronic item kept out of landfill reduces the amounts of dangerous 'forever chemicals', getting released into the environment. By repairing items or stripping out most of the reusable parts this reduces what ends up in landfill and ensures the components go into the correct recycling bins, such as hard plastic cases. - Don't the council do that? Up to a point, but information has emerged about huge amounts of European electronic waste being shipped to Africa and Asia where it continues to damage the environment and people's health, especially the women paid ...
Read more