while(luck == BAD) be_alive();

This has not been my day week month. I’ve lost 2 t30 motherboards to the same, unknown and undocumented as far as I can find, error (no, not the RAM slot,) a t30 LCD, a HP 15″ LCD, and all but one of my PATA laptop hard drives and the one I was borrowing from my brother (5 in all). I haven’t listed the countless little things that have stopped working with no rhyme nor reason, but alltogether it’s over $500 worth of equipment I can’t afford to replace. It would be over a grand if I count in installation/repair costs.

Since the original writing of this post, some things have been changed. I got my brothers hard drive replaced on warranty by Western Digital, and nabbed a couple of replacements off the thinkpads forum. I got one new motherboard, as the second randomly decided it wanted to work again; no idea why. I’m still a t30 screenshort though.

I bought a new butane soldering iron from the local electronics store. The seller didn’t seem to think it was a great idea, and advised me that I’d be better off with an electric, which I already have, for hobbiest electronics. He didn’t seem to get that it was slow and didn’t work well on motherboards. He was right about it not being good for hobbiest electronics though; things fall apart before they can cool off if you’re not careful. It also heats up the wires like mad. Even so, it worked great for RAM slots, and got the other dead t30 planar working perfectly. A $30 investment paid off well.

About Truk

New to blogging. I was going to create a custom blog, but this was much easier.
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