• Where do you go for gears?

    17 Jul | 12
    • in Computers • 
    • by FozzTexx

    I recently dug out my Apple IIgs which had been in storage for many years. For the most part it worked fine, but the eject mechanism on the 3.5" floppy drives had siezed up. Unfortunately I found this out the hard way. After trying to eject the floppy a couple of times, the motor just completely stopped working. I took the floppy drive apart to find that the sliding metal pieces were very sticky. I dug into the eject motor only to discover this: I disassembled the other floppy and...

    5 comments  |  read more
  • Arduino compatible with PoE

    23 Jun | 12
    • in Computers • 
    • in Electronics • 
    • by FozzTexx

    From the same post on Reddit as the other one I found out about these IBoard Arduino compatibles . They were the same price as the previous two that I got, $29, but these are a little bigger and have more built-ins. In addition to the Ethernet port and XBee ports, they also include a MicroSD slot. These boards are about the same size as a real Arduino, a little larger than the XBoard. They are 3.3v based which I'm not sure yet how difficult will be to work with. They also have used up all...

    read more
  • Arduino compatible with Ethernet

    14 Jun | 12
    • in Computers • 
    • in Electronics • 
    • by FozzTexx

    Thanks to a post on Reddit I found out about these Arduino compatible boards with built-in Ethernet. They are called the XBoard V2 and they are made by DFRobot. These boards are 5V based which in theory will make it easier to interface with them than a 3.3V based board. They are very tiny! I was expecting a board the same size as the original Arduino which is already pretty small. (The arcade tokens in the picture are just there for scale, they are the size of a US quarter, 24mm.) I've...

    2 comments  |  read more
  • When jQuery Gives You Roadblocks...

    04 Jun | 12
    • in Computers • 
    • by FozzTexx

    As a web application developer I build a lot of web sites. Generally when getting input from a user a form is used. When I build the form I use standard "old school" techniques and after every form submit a new page is sent back to the browser. It works but it's not considered user friendly because there are too many pages involved and it steers the user away from whatever it they were on. This is especially true of posting comments. On many sites adding AJAX functionality has...

    4 comments  |  read more
  • How connector 3 on the iPhone 3G and 3GS works

    03 Jun | 12
    • in Computers • 
    • by FozzTexx

    I needed to disassemble an iPhone 3GS and there's a lot of guides out there on how to do it, but not one had a good picture of connector 3. People would  describe what to do, but without seeing it, it's hard to guess what they mean. I kept poking at it delicately trying to figure out what to do and I was afraid of breaking it. In fact, I started to pick at the wrong side and I almost broke it. So here's some close-up pictures of that connector and how it flips up and down....

    2 comments  |  read more