Gee, maybe this should be called “What’s not behind my TV?”…

I had pre-ordered a few months back a new bias lighting / back lighting kit called the “Lytmi Fantasy 3” to replace a failing LED strip that I had connected via a Smart WiFi plug and the tiny Apple 5W USB adapter. That LED strip in the end only worked when held at an angle using duct tape, and I had been on the look-out for years for the right replacement. I knew I wouldn’t be happy with one of those back-lighting kits that had terrible latency, let alone one that used a camera at an angle above the TV aimed at the screen.

When I saw a YouTube review of this model, I was very interested! It ticked all the boxes… My unit arrived this week, and so now time to install.

When I took the TV (65-inch Sony Bravia) off the wall, I thought I would take a picture to go over all the other clobber that is hidden there…

From middle top clockwise there is a wall-plate with two HDMI outlets that come from across the room where a sideboard sits, that connection is for a Wii U and a Switch, there is a HDMI repeater there as well due to the signal being borderline with the 7.6m Amazon Basics HDMI cable - most likely due to an HDMI splitter at the other end. I was originally planning to use one HDMI run for the Wii U and one for the Switch, but ran out of inputs on the TV.

There is more cable conduit on the right, mostly for additional capacity when needed, along the bottom right to left is a power outlet for the TV and the Apple TV, the centre speaker below with the IR bar for the Wii U, a wall-plate with 3x Ethernet outlets (the fun part with that was drilling through the concrete slab below and behind the wall to reach the rack I have in the garage), then a bunch more cables hidden in the conduit on the left, including an IR repeater. Top left is the Apple TV and next to it is the Home Assistant Yellow, between them a recessed power outlet. Finally in the middle is the TV wall mount, and behind that a recessed wall alcove to fit the console of our Bose CineMate 520. There is gap below that which contains a bunch of the speaker wires, as well as a special (optical?) HDMI cable I had to run for the PS5, also across the room.

All this so I could replace an IKEA cabinet I had previously wall mounted below the TV, everything else that had been in that I moved to a side-board I mentioned which sits across the room. I also moved the TV down slightly as it had been too high before.

I will post again once I have set up and used the new back-lighting kit, hopefully it meets my high expectations!

Currently listening: LTJ Bukem - Twilight Cosmic D&B Set

I had bought a couple of [RTC modules] (https://monotech.fwscart.com/DS12887_RTC_Drop-In_Replacement/p6083514_19810725.aspx) a while back from a company in New Zealand, and I finally got around this week to fitting one. It was to replace a defunct OEC12C887A on an old Socket 7 Motherboard (Pentium powah, baby!).

The ODIN OEC12C887A is an encapsulated package which has a small coin battery and a crystal oscillator on top of a chip. In keeping with the fine tradition of planned obsolescence, the coin battery is not designed to be replaced and the whole thing is soldered on to the motherboard not socketed! Given the battery is pushing 25+ years old, it no longer holds any semblance of charge. This means the time/date is lost when the power is pulled, but more annoyingly, all of the BIOS settings have to be redone as well.

To replace it, I first dremeled off most of the top half of the ODIN package - nasty material to go through. I removed the coin battery and the oscillator inside, then used the Dremel to shave down the sides of the chip below, meaning I could then use side-cutters to chop the legs off the chip. I then used my soldering iron to heat each pin on the underside of the motherboard, and pulled through the remainder of the chip legs with ceramic tweezers. I then wicked up as much of the solder as I could. Finally, I (very!) carefully used a pin vise to drill through the solder still remaining in the through-holes.

I’m sure there is a less labour-intensive way - I do own a hot-air station - but hey, the end result is, after soldering on a socket and installing the replacement RTC module, the motherboard is much happier now, and a lot less of a pain in the rear to use :)

Currently listening: Brother’s Gonna Work It Out - A DJ Mix Album by the Chemical Brothers

The HDMI connector for the VersaTerm arrived, I soldered that on and all is well. Last step is 3D printing the case, I have chosen an era-appropriate drab grey :)

With the E Ink Display, I have assembled and tested it using the demo program Waveshare provided, it is working fine… Where I am stuck is finding something that will let me update the image more easily, as I have yet to come across a simple program that will work with this panel. Ideally I want to be able to press a button on the Stream Deck and have the Raspberry Pi update the graphic shown. Easy enough to have a button that issues a “GET” for a local website in the background, that part is covered. I tried this project, but it didn’t seem to be compatible with my panel. More research is needed!

Another project that I have been working on is resurrecting a colour video card for the Macintosh SE/30. It is a Lapis ColorServer PDS/30-17, and when I first connected to either of a couple of SE/30s, nothing would be output on the display connected to the card, the internal screen would remain grey, and there was no HD activity… So essentially just stuck.

The first thing I tried was burning a replacement ROM, after fitting that the card has the below output. Not perfect, but definitely on the right track… I assume now that one (or more!) of the video RAM modules is faulty, I have some replacements on order. When those arrive I will swap and test ‘em out, hopefully that will take care of this and I will have a functioning card - then that’ll be part of a bigger project I am working on :)

Currently listening: Trans-Central Connection (1996)

Received my order from Mouser Electronics this week which included the bulk of the rest of the components I was waiting on for the VersaTerm, the final thing still on the way is an HDMI connector. Given the VersaTerm has a VGA out as well, I decided to finish the assembly process anyway…

The trickiest bits were soldering on the surface mount diodes and running some wires to a couple of pads on the RPi Pico. Last bit was copying across the software, which involves holding the “BOOTSEL” button down whilst connecting the RPi Pico to a machine via a Mini USB to USB cable, dragging across a UF2 file, the RPi then disconnects and reboots.

After that, I fired it up and it is indeed working, F12 brings up a settings menu with a plethora of options… Now to try it out with some serial devices!

In other news, here’s a fun website toy my kids have been playing with recently: Orb.Farm

Currently listening: Atmosphere Chapter 2 - Deeper Drum And Bass (2007)

I ordered one of these handheld Android gaming devices recently, and it will be arriving soon. As processors in the mobile phone space rapidly improve, it’s interesting how other use cases become feasible - enough power/different form-factor and a device focused on emulating a vast range of older gaming systems even up to the PlayStation 2/GameCube/Dreamcast is realistic. I’ll also be trying out builds of Mini vMac and DOSBox, hopefully they’ll be usable also. TBH, I will probably get more jollies from setting it up and tweaking things than I will from actual game time…

I chose “Clear Purple” pictured as it resembles the classic “Atomic Purple” colour-way that sets off a whole bunch of old school Nintendo nostalgia vibes :)

Currently listening: Peshay Studio Set (1996)

I ordered the PCB for this project a while ago, I’ve been gathering up the parts over the last couple of months, and so almost ready to begin assembling. When it’s all together and finished, I can plug in a VGA or HDMI display, connect up a PS/2 or USB keyboard, and I’ll have myself a serial terminal AKA dumb terminal. I’m old enough to have used the last of DEC’s venerable VT line up in the early-mid 90’s, so there is definitely the nostalgia factor at play with wanting to set one of these up!

github.com/dhansel/V…

Currently listening: Dr Alex Paterson’s Voyage Into Paradise

Powerpal Home Assistant Integration - made some progress, as the build errors I were running into were happening to others and a fix was found, but I’m now stuck further along… More banging my head against the brick-wall is required I think.

Prusa MK3S+ OctoPrint / HyperPixel Mod - I have set up OctoPrint and gotten the HyperPixel touchscreen working properly with it on the Raspberry Pi. Finished printing the parts, I carefully installed the HyperPixel into the new front panel only to find the I2C chip on the back of it now had loose pins… Resoldered those today, all happy again… See picture below. Now just waiting on a couple of last little parts, then will have to swap things out, test, and hopefully everything will be good :)

Store front door E Ink display: Finally got the shipping notification for the E Ink display, it has been on back order for 6 weeks or so! Looking forward to that arriving in the next few days. The current ethernet run I had that goes almost to the front door seems to have a faulty pair, so will try redoing the RJ45 connectors and run another cable if that still doesn’t sort it. Then I have to fit everything in the frame I have, and then just figure out the software side of things (Draw-the-rest-of-the-freaking-owl vibes right there). Currently listening: Wipeout: 1997 Liquid D’n’B Mix

I spent a very enjoyable day on Saturday meeting up a bunch of like-minded vintage Apple enthusiasts, including Ken Gagne, the editor of Juiced.GS, which is the sole remaining Apple II focused magazine. Got to help out with resurrecting a Lisa (I think technically it was a Macintosh XL), which was neat. I also learnt you can have emoji in SSIDs (WiFi network names) :)

Currently listening: BLKSMIITH - “breakcore mix to chill and study to 2”

Of all the donations I have been the appreciative recipient of at my store over the years, this takes the cake… Someone dropped off a PowerBook 150 and the oh-so-chunky “Apple Low-Power AC Adapter” yesterday. It is not booting, and a quick internal inspection does reveal evidence of both battery and capacitor leakage, so I may have a bit of a project ahead of me rubs hands together with glee…

The one request the lady who donated had was for me to erase any and all data on the hard drive - I did offer to attempt to recover it. To be able to see if the 2.5-inch SCSI hard drive is even functioning, I have ordered from Aberco on eBay an adapter from the SCSI connector variant these old 2.5-inch drives use to the more common 50 pin connector on 3.5-inch drives (I did have one of those adapters a long time ago). So, once that arrives I will see if the drive works and run through a secure erase or three…

Update: Noticed this morning when looking at the entry in Mactracker that the PowerBook 150 actually uses IDE for the internal hard drive! So, pulled the drive, connected it up via a IDE/USB bridge, and… it spins, but not detected. May be worth trying in in an older machine as the adapter may be “too new” for it to work.

Update 2: I connected to an internal IDE connector in my Power Macintosh G3 tower, wouldn’t mount, Drive Setup said it couldn’t initialise it, but DiskWarrior v2 rebuilt the directory successfully and it mounted! All empty, but ran through a secure erase anyway. 120MB capacity, back then that seemed like so much :)

Currently listening - [AllttA (Featuring a AI-generated version of Jay-Z) - “Savages”] (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7r6PAkFRfU)

Something I picked up on a recent day trip at a Church book sale, first published 1958…

Currently listening: Michna & Dust La Rock Mix The Orb

I have started gathering the parts needed to make a front door sign for my store out of a Raspberry Pi Zero, an 7.3-inch E Ink Display that can show 7 different colours, and an IKEA Ribba 13cm x 18cm frame. Apologies for mixing Imperial and Metric there ;)

Here’s the E Ink display:

core-electronics.com.au/73inch-ac…

The idea is I will have this showing the opening hours, or back in 5 minutes, or closures for public holidays. At this point, those little signs are the last thing I use our printer for. It’ll be powered with a PoE adapter which plugs into the micro USB connector on the RPi Zero, which also gives it network connectivity.

Hopefully the electronics will all fit inside the frame, I may have to 3D print some sort of backing to it with ventilation.

I will put up an update when I make some more progress! :)

Back from a holiday! Here’s a photo I took whilst away :)

I ordered and fitted one of these replacements for the charging socket on my T520.

That means over the years I have had it I’ve upgraded: the charging socket, the RAM, the display panel, the CPU, and swapped the HD for an SSD!

Swapping the charging socket over does require pulling the laptop apart a fair bit, but quite manageable as long as you take it step-by-step and have a good system to keep track of the screws.

Currently listening: Coldcut - “Journeys By DJ”

Today’s project was swapping over a failed HD in my PowerBook G4 12-inch. I used an mSATA adapter I picked up very cheaply, I believe the same one recommended (or at least tested) by Action Retro…

Using the always helpful iFixit guide, as it has been a while since these were a machine I was constantly working on, I swapped the drives over, installed Mac OS X v10.3 Panther, and the operation was a success :)

In other news, I’ve been thinking about setting an account at OMG.LOL to take their various services for a spin… Can’t go past the name :P

Currently listening: [The Orb - The Orb’s Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld] (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaXT3raG5gY)

I recently had a conversation with ChatGPT and asked if it knew HyperTalk, the high-level scripting language behind Apple’s HyperCard, and not only did it know of it, it replied that it knew it. So, I asked it a couple of “how do I do such-and-such” questions, and it indeed was able to provide annotated code snippets that checked out! I am blown away, as it means the training model had included what is these days a fairly obscure language on the off-chance some nerd asked about it :)

Currently listening: Katarakt - “LoFi House Mix | 2 Years of Stoner House”

Listen on YouTube

I have a Macintosh Colour Classic in my collection, a beautiful yet flawed machine, which has given me a lot of grief over the years. I sent the main logic-board and analogue board over to Charles AKA Uniserver (who used to run maccaps.com - site seems to no longer exist, but here’s an archive.org mirror) and he replaced a bunch of capacitors that were the most likely failure points. It worked for a time after that, until it didn’t. I tried diagnosing it, I noticed there was a part wedged between two transformers making a nasty chirping/squeaking noise. I replaced that, and still the same issue of it not turning on. I left it for a year or so, and when a friend (Hi, Alex!) mentioned he was taking some machines up Canberra to someone who specialised in old-school Mac repair, I got in touch with him. With that person’s help, I managed to narrow down the root cause. Seems somewhat obvious in hindsight, but the issue was with another component that helped with feeding power to the squeaking component… Now, bear in mind it was cunningly hidden underneath an RF shield, so I couldn’t see the poor blacken husk of the failed component! Anyway, once I removed that and soldered in suitable replacement, it sprung to life! First run was outside on my driveway using a long power lead - I didn’t trust it not to explode :P

Currently listening: Asthenic - “Phase Change II”

Listen on YouTube

The main reason for my moving across to Plex/Plexamp for my music playback is the issues and changes in iTunes/Music.

Apple Music versions of songs replacing previously ripped/matched songs. Songs ripped losslessly swapped out to “HLS Media” files which won’t play elsewhere. Songs I’ve had for years suddenly unavailable in the catalogue.

This aren’t even the weird glitches I’ve experienced with the interface. Clicking into the search field, entering an artist name (for example “The Smiths”), pressing enter, and the previous search results being displayed, even though the top left says “Showing results for “The Smiths””. Clicking into “Recently Added” on the left under Library, and it showing the CD I’m currently ripping. There are plenty more examples…

So, I have been continuing the move over, and I am happy so far. The iPhone/iPadOS version of Plexamp doesn’t seem to have a simple option to download all of the tracks, but if I have enough loaded, I’m happy to stream the rest, albeit not losslessly perhaps!

Currently listening: The KLF - “Chill Out”

I’ve used iTunes since the very first version, in fact I used SoundJam MP before that, so I’ve been a user before it was even iTunes. I’ve gone through every version since, across Mac OS 9, Mac OS X, macOS, the change to “Music”… the whole shebang! Today, I’ve started the move over to Plex/Plexamp… Time will tell if it is a temporary thing, and I will certainly not be getting rid of my Apple Music subscription, as my family uses it, but I just couldn’t deal with sheer amount of issues I have been running into with Music of late. Search bugs, tracks having to be deleted and re-added, interface changes I can’t stand. I’ve tried starting from scratch, and the same issues crop up.

Now, I had already switched over my library of Movies and TV Shows to Plex about three years ago, so I already have the infrastructure ready in that regard, so that means I’m dumping across all of the compatible files and trying things out…

I will most likely also take the opportunity to re-rip my CD collection in a lossless format as well whilst I’m at it.

Currently listening: Vibe Chemistry - “Living Like This”

soundcloud.com/vibe-chem…

There was a cube between the NeXTcube and the Power Mac G4 Cube. It was around during the late ’90s/early Noughties, coloured bright blue, and functioned as a headless web, file, and print server. It was called the Cobalt Qube.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coba…

I have a first generation in my collection, which has the model number 2700. I was setting it up recently so as to play around with it, and when I connected power, there was a series of sparks and a nasty burnt smell. Not good.

Upon opening it, I found there has been a modification made with some components on a piece of perfboard, piggy-backed onto the DC-in socket, and an LED. It had been stuck on using double-sided foam tape that had long ago lost hold, and when I connected power had caused a short that vapourised one of the power traces…

Thankfully I was able to remove the modification and repair the blown trace (swapping over the DC-in socket for good measure), and it lives to fight another day!

Currently listening: Sergio Mendes & Brasil ‘66 - “Norwegian Wood”

Whoops - some how deleted this from a couple of weeks ago, reposting now!

It’s the usual story, you start playing with something and fall down a rabbit hole of research / tweaking / etc :)

We have attached to our Smart Electricity Meter a “PowerPal” which helps us track our power usage, and turns out there is a way to get that info into Home Assistant!

Here is an excellent write-up that goes into all the details:

tatham.blog/2022/07/1…

I have ordered an M5Stack Atom Lite, and will set this up once it arrives :)

Currently listening: Ann Peebles - “I Can’t Stand the Rain”

That tiny M5Stack Atom Lite arrived, I followed along with the write-up I posted about a couple of weeks ago, and no luck…

I ran into an issue, but at least one that others have reported as well:

github.com/WeekendWa…

I’ll have to try again in a little while, hopefully the issue will have been resolved by then :)

Currently listening: PNAU - “Chameleon (feat. Kira Divine)”

Just managed to set up printing from a Power Macintosh G3 running Mac OS 9.2.2 to a much more recent HP Color LaserJet M377dw over Ethernet…

Not bad for an operating system declared dead over 20 years ago!

www.youtube.com/watch

So, the built-in printer drivers in Chooser (gosh, using that really took me back!) would not see the HP LaserJet, I’m guessing it was trying to use AppleTalk. Installing this HP software was the key:

macintoshgarden.org/apps/hp-l…

Once installed, I had their software create a Desktop Printer using a Generic PPD, entered the local IP of the printer, and it worked straight away. Now, I only tried text, as I didn’t want to push my luck, but perhaps I will try graphics next :)

Currently listening: Sir Sly - “High”

One project I wanted to undertake over the holidays was to replace an Aqara M2 Hub that I use with an assortment of their sensors around my house.

Thankfully the sensors are all Zigbee, so they’re not tied down to something vendor specific/proprietary.

I decided upon using Home Assistant, for two main reasons: I already had everything I needed, and I wanted to give it another shot.

I had previously tried it and Hubitat out but found them too complex for what I needed at the time. This time around I was just going to use Home Assistant specifically for communication with these sensors and exposing them to HomeKit.

So, I brought out my spare Raspberry Pi 4, a PoE hat, a 32GB microSD card, and ConBee II stick (the Zigbee radio). I imaged the latest version of Home Assistant on to the SD card using balenaEtcher. I then set up Home Assistant, deleted the sensors from within the Aqara app one-by-one, and added them in to Home Assistant using the built-in ZHA (Zigbee Home Automation) integration. I did try installing the deCONZ Add-on, but it seemed to struggle to pair with some of the sensors. I also set up the HomeKit integration in Home Assistant so all of the sensors are back in the Home app. Lastly, I went through recreating the automations within the Home app.

Once that was completed, I pulled my TV off the wall, removed the Aqara M2 Hub and PoE to USB adapter hiding there, and hooked up the Raspberry Pi instead.

In future, I may set up further devices in Home Assistant to allow for more complex automations, etc.

The other tweak I made today was swapping over the magnet my Garage Door Opener uses with its open/close sensor for a much more powerful one. This should hopefully fix a periodic issue I have of the magnet not being close enough when the garage roller door closes slightly askew.

Currently listening: Mekons - “Where Were You”

I install the Ray Traced version of Quake 1 the other day and it is darn impressive! It’s weird revisiting places that were such a part of my adolescence and seeing them looking so familiar yet prettier :)

www.pcgamer.com/heres-ray…

GitHub link:

github.com/sultim-t/…

Currently listening: Miami Horror - “Sign of the Times”

Well, we’re now coming up on the first anniversary of this blog, and I’m happy I have managed to stick to my “average of one post a week” aim, notwithstanding the occasional “nothing to post” week :)

It’s been fun just posting about stuff I have been up to and playing with, there are plenty more projects and things to explore for me over the next little while - including:

• Weather Balloon Radiosonde Tracking/Recovery
• Install USB-C charge port in ThinkPad T520
• Connect to BBSs using WiFi modem
• Install PCI serial card in Cobalt Qube
• Play Quake 1 RTX version
• Update Floppy Emu firmware and check out new features
• Install different macOS versions (10.8-10.15) on Mac mini (Late 2012)
• Install DOS or Windows XP on HP T5730 Thin Client

Hope everyone out there in Internet-land has a great break and see you in 2023!

Currently listening: Odetta - “Hit or Miss”