1202 ALARM

I was given another Acer C720 Chromebook recently and after taking the back off and removing the write-protect screw I flashed the firmware and installed GalliumOS as I did 2 years ago with the white one. Installation wasn't as slick as last time and I'm leaving the original 16Gb SSD in this one and using Google Drive for cloud storage. It seems to be working well so far.  I gave away my old HP Pavilion G6 ( laptop upgrade ) to a guy starting an OU course now that I have this laptop as well as the updated Intel-based Dell for the workshop. I also repaired this Aiwa Walkman for the lady who gave me the Acer C720. A bad synthetic drive belt was the problem, but this was fixed with a rubber belt cannibalized from an old answering machine. The synthetic belts rot away to a sticky goo that is a pain to clean off even with cellulose thinners. This needs some Wham or Duran Duran! 

A spudger (apparently) is a plastic device for prising open the cases of electronic items to get into them to repair them. You can use a flat-bladed screwdriver, but will probably crack or score the case unless you are both lucky and careful.  I never throw out used toothbrushes because they are invaluable for cleaning and degreasing engine parts (EGR valve on a Skoda Fabia being a personal favourite!). It occurred to me that they would make good spudgers with a bit of, well whittling I'd guess you'd call it. If I'm honest, the inspiration was the classic jailhouse shank actually.  Get your Stanley knife and instead of using it for a thrill-seeker liquor store hold up (putting you in the aforementioned jailhouse), whittle the tops of a couple of old toothbrushes into fine spade ends. Ideal for opening radios, DVD players and especially tablet computers. Free and greener than just chucking them away.

Another damaged portable DVD player I got from a kind lady on Freegle. She said it had been dropped and wouldn't play discs anymore. The unit powered up okay and as luck would have it, can read DVD and DivX files from a USB flash drive. A bit of testing revealed that the main turntable motor was only getting 0.5 volts instead of 6 volts and the drive transistor was probably blown. My guess is that when the unit was dropped something jammed the spindle and the stall current blew the transistor.  Anyway, my eyesight isn't up to even trying to replace a surface mount transistor so I thought, why not gut the DVD parts out of this thing and just keep it as a digital player.  And below you can see Chun Yu Fat in the classic action film 'Hardboiled'  playing from DVD files copied on to a USB flash drive. A 32Gb flash drive will hold around 45 DivX film files, plenty of choice.