A weekend of awesome

Well this weekend has been productive.
The HTPC is almost done, all of the bugs have been worked out, the remote software on the android and iphone are working perfectly. One last thing to do is fix the boot screen to get rid of the rolling text and it'll be ready to roll.
Sunday was great, my parents took her on Saturday and so I got to sleep in on Sunday. Jackie made breakfast for me and then dinner at my parents place.
Today I went shooting with the guys for the morning, hang out for the afternoon and then jam night tonight.
All in all not a bad thanksgiving.

Not really much update project wise but once the boot screen is fixed I'll post some videos of the HTPC starting and working.

-Colin

Where has the time gone?

So in the world of baby rearing there isn't much time for anything project related. The XBMC HTPC is still on the bench and unfinished. Hopefully I'm going to get it finished this week, fingers crossed.
I've managed to squeeze in some time on Monday nights to jam with the guys. It's a good stress relief to get away from everything for a few hours.

Other than that, not much going on in the world of projects.
I've got the following to finish off, hopefully going to get some time soon to finish them and I'll post updates as I go.
XBMC HTPC
Basss Amp repair for jam night
Effects pedal repair for Dan
Electrical and Drywall in the basement.

Hopefully more to come soon and regularly.
-Colin.

Amelia

Some more photo's of baby Amelia for all to enjoy.

Yessss Come to the dark side!

She looks so happy here.

I've got a bad feeling about this.

Metal!

The minimalist approach

Well sometimes in any field of science there is an amount of trial and error. In my case we can call this computer science and in this particular case we have more error than trial.
It looks like whatever it was I did to the boot of this system has rendered it un-bootable. Not a total loss though, I've been looking forward to trying a minimal install of Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat.
The reason for choosing the previous version of Ubuntu; more support for XBMC.
This is good for a few reasons.
- Smaller more efficient install and thus more space for content.
- More support for XBMC and libraries.
- I get to watch an old style ASCII installation screen, something I haven't seen in years.

While I continue this re-install enjoy a low quality cell phone picture of my system partition being setup.

Updates

So updates, updates, updates.
To be honest I haven't had much time to do much of anything lately as the baby is taking up a lot of time and the times when she is sleeping is time for me to catch some sleep as well.
I have managed to fiddle a little bit with the media centre and iron out a few more kinks. Boot time cut down by half, grub2 boot loader visibility has been eliminated so it makes the boot that much more cleaner.
All that's really left to do is to adjust one of the visible menu options in XBMC add an XBMC splash screen to Ubuntu 11. I haven't been able to get it to work, however I have a feeling that it's the resolution of the image that I'm using.
Jackie is out tomorrow night with her friends so if Amelia cooperates and decides she wants to sleep I'm going to get a few solid hours of tinkering in.
More information to come and hopefully if I can get to it, a demo video of the system starting up.
-Colin

More XBMC Linux Fun

Hi, so I did yet another install of XBMC on Ubuntu 11 as I seem to have broken my old setup. I'll chalk that one up to a bad case of the sausage fingers.
I noticed that I forgot a step in the previous tutorial. The XBMC PPA keyring.
If you get the errors listed below about no GPG key after adding the Maverick PPA lines to /etc/apt/sources.list and then doing apt-get update, then try the command further below and it should correct it.

W: GPG error: http://ppa.launchpad.net maverick Release: The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY 6D975C4791E7EE5E




$ apt-get install xbmc-ppa-keyring

After running the above command you should no longer get any errors when updating apt and you can continue along with the XBMC installation as listed in the previous post.


Next installment I'll probably have some nice bit about alternate ways to share files and access the system, along with some fine tuning of Ubuntu and XBMC.


-Colin.

HTPC V 2.0

Hi everyone, I decided to redo my HTPC using all open source software. For this I chose XBMC again and Ubuntu Linux. The version out at the time of writing this is version 11 and I will be utilizing some of the repositories from previous versions for compatibility with XBMC.

Doing the install
Well let's get started.
First off you'll need to download a copy of Ubuntu and burn it to a CD. I'll assume since you are reading this you know how to burn an .iso file. If not, do a quick google search for some help.
Next up you are going to install Ubuntu from the CD you just burned. It's a very simple straight forward install. You can choose to do an install along side an existing OS, such as MS-Windows or you can do a clean install taking up the whole drive. Either choice will work out fine.
You'll be prompted to enter in some credentials and it will ask you about your startup screen. Select the option to automatically login, it'll save some hassles down the road.

Once you've got it all installed you are going to need to install some extra drivers. For the bulk of HTPC systems out there it's best off to run either an Nvidia or ATI chipset. There are extra drivers for each. You may be prompted to do it, if not head to the system menu and choose aditional drivers, enter your password and they will install. Once they have finished, reboot your system.

Now the easy part is done it's time to get rolling on setting up all the nitty gritty HTPC bits and pieces.
Here are the steps I've compiled from my install.

Open a terminal or console
$sudo su
Enter your admin or user pass depending on the type of install you did
$passwd
Enter in new password info.

Now you won't need to enter sudo for every command like you see in a lot of tutorials, just su to enter super user mode and work from that, when done exit back to your user account.

Network Access 
If you are like me and you have a file server with all your information on network shares you'll want to mount your network shares automatically when the system reboots. We are going to install smbfs using the apt-get command and then have everything auto mount.

$apt-get install smbfs

Now create a point to mount the shares. For this I've chosen to create a mount directory off the root. You can use the exiting /mnt or /media if you like as well.
$su
$mkdir /mount
$mkdir /mount/tv
etc…

Now let's automount the shares in the file system table.
$su
$vi /etc/fstab
Go to the last line and type "o" to insert under the current line.
Paste this  information in and adjust it for your variables

#mounting smb shares
//ip address/Movies /mount/movies cifs  username=,password= 0 0

When you are done hit ESC and then wq to write and quit back to the command prompt.
Now you can do one of two things, reboot the systems to see if they mount on boot or you can use the following command to reload the file system table.

$mount -a
$cd /mount/movies
$ls

Now if you see all of the files listed in your network share, in this case all my movies, you are successful. If you get an error from the mount command copy it into google and you'll get your fixit results. Most errors I've had have been typos, so you might want to check for signs of hotdog fingers in the fstab.

Installing the frontend
Now we are going to install the repositories and the XBMC software.

Here we are going to add in the XBMC maverick and natty ppa's. Maverick and Natty being different releases of Ubuntu.

$su
$vi /etc/apt/sources.list

Go to the end of the file.
Hit "o" to open a new line under the current one.
Paste in these lines.

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/team-xbmc/ppa/ubuntu maverick main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/team-xbmc/ppa/ubuntu maverick main
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/team-xbmc/ppa/ubuntu natty main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/team-xbmc/ppa/ubuntu natty main

Hit ESC and then wq to write and quit the file.
Now we are going to refresh the apt repositories.

$apt-get update
$apt-get install python-software-properties pkg-config
$apt-get update
$apt-get install xbmc xbmc-standalone

Say yes to install any dependencies that come up.

That is all there is to it. To launch XBMC type it in the terminal, alternatively you can right click on the desktop and choose to make a new launcher, under the command just enter in xbmc. For me it had even gave me the icon for the program. Bonus.


In my next installment I will show you how to tinker and setup XBMC and how to add in those network shares we created earlier. I'll also show you how to have the system automatically boot XBMC and how to change the startup window and how to setup a network share in case you download files on one machine and want to store them on your HTPC system.

Cheers,
-Colin

The HTPC

Hi, I received a number of gift certificates and cash from fiends and relatives for my birthday back in May and I used them with some of my savings to build an HTPC for our living room. I'd started the build before Amelia was born, but now that she is here and sleeping most of the day it's time for some more tinkering.
The system is built on a relatively cheap AMD platform and performs very well.
Here are the system specs and costs in Canadian funds.

MB: $89.99 - Gigabyte 880GMZ-UD2H
CPU: $84.99 - AMD Phenom II x2 555 Black Edition Dual Core AM3 3.2GHZ
RAM: $48.99 - 2x 2GB Mushkin Silverline DDR3 1333Mhz
HD: $74.99 - Western Digital Cavair Green 2TB SATA
PSU: $49.99 - Corsair Builder Series CX430 V2 80W Plus
Case: $99.99 - Silverstone Grandia GD05 Black HTPC mATX
Extras: $37.99 - Rocketfish Micro Bluetooth Dongle
Total Cost: $486.93

The system build is a very standard setup, being that I chose the motherboard based on all the on board components, HDMI, DVI, VGA, Optical Audio, Multiple USB ports, and eSATA, there really was very little to setup. Insert parts in case, screw down, route cables and install an OS.
Here is a quick picture of all the insidy bits with the case lid off.

The case is a very nice smooth design with little rubber grommets and bushings to prevent vibration noise along with 3 ultra quiet case fans. You can see a large open drive bay section here, I opted for no optical drive as I already have a PS3 and a DVD player. For the installation of the OS I borrowed the one from my desktop.

For the OS and media centre software I've opted for Windows 7 and XBMC. I've run the older versions of XBMC on my first generation XBOX and it is a very finely tuned system that is both intuitive and fast. I did try a number of other options for the media centre interface but none seemed either as intuitive or have the file support that XBMC has.

I'll post up some more information, screen shots and how-to's as soon as I get a change to document them. But for now the system is working and operational.
The one thing I will reccomend anyone using this board and chip combo is do the BIOS update using the Gigabyte update utility and choose the Internet update vs. the file update.
After updating, rebooting and then re-setting up the BIOS for the settings I wanted I had a very nice surprise. When booting up Windows was detecting 4 cores and automatically installing the support for them. The BIOS update had unlocked the other 2 cores so I got a quad core system for the price of a dual core. Thanks Gigabyte!

Here are some pictures to keep you occupied in the mean time.

Baby Amelia

My ever so dormant postings are usually due to lots of stuff going on. More time spent doing or being lazy than writing.
Well this time the wait for new posts is well worth it.
Amelia was born Sunday June 19 at 8:49pm at St.Joe's hospital. 2 Hours of hard labour and she was out.
Here are some pictures for all to enjoy.

Pooper Troopers part deux

So my plan was a success. I got up the day after setting up the camera and checked the basement before getting ready for work and I found a stinking pile greeting me on the floor so the first thing I did was to check the camera shots. I caught her!
Looking at the log of camera shots and all the other cats have no problems using the box except this princess.

Here she is looking at what to do.













Here she is going into a box. Looking at more pictures, she goes in and comes out one minute and thirty seconds later.

And here she is pooping on the floor!
GAH!

So now the big question is, how do I stop her from doing this ?
Well I opted for the teach a dog theory. Nose in the poop, put her in the box, do it twice with a strict voice and when I came home today. Looking good; No poop. I think she got the point.
That point being, don't be a princess and just use the damn box.

Not a very technical blurb I know, but a success of a small project.

-Colin.

Furry poop machines

So, last night I cleaned out the cat boxes. A task I'm sure you are all dieing to know about.
Got the good multicat litter, gave them all a good cleaning in the hopes that the cats will stop pooping just outside the box.
I came home today to find more poop on the floor and only 1 box touched.
4 cats, which one did it. I can yell at all of them, which I did but I know it's only one little idiot doing it.
Now I could sit for hours on a pooper stakeout, waiting and watching for one dingus to poop on the floor, but I've got better things to do with my time.

Webcam to the rescue!
I dug out my old webcam and set it up on the server in the basement.
Because it is so old there are no Windows7 drivers and the Vista drivers were all but crap. What the hell, let's try the WindowsXP drivers. Ten seconds later and I have an image. Awesome.
Next up, find some decent open source security software.
A little googling revealed a program called Dorgem found at http://dorgem.sourceforge.net/. It's been discontinued but I figured I'd try it out anyway as it had some pretty good reviews and was the first free one to come up. Yes I'm lazy. Thankfully it's a great and easy program.
Start it up, choose your camera, image store location and image interval and if you want motion capture or not plus a web server.
I chose motion capture and webserver for those times I want to check in on it.
You can get a sample of it at this address http://24.102.45.2:22559 (Excuse the lumber and mess, we are renovating. 1970's out, 2011 in. More to come on that in the future.)

I can think of a few other circumstances this would be beneficial other than the poop patrol. Watching the car in the driveway, catching people leaving trash and bottles in our hedge and keeping an eye on the baby to come in the crib or playing in the toy room when she is older. If you are of the younger audience, you can use it to catch those nosy siblings/parents on your computer or in your room. Wish I had this when I was growing up, it would have been easier than building my own sister catching security system.

If you've got a webcam give it a shot and see what you can do with it and let me know if you have any success or questions.

-Colin.

Droid+1

Solution found!
Turning off USB debugging that was used to root the phone has fixed the PC mounting the SD card and cutting out Winamp.
Now i can charge and fire up some tunes without any problems.
-Colin

These are the droids I'm looking for.

I've been spending the past week turfing out the house with a 16 cubic yard dumpster in the driveway. Everything has been thrown out that isn't needed, new walls up in the basement, new windows in the house, lots of renovations on the go. With all of this the bulk of the basement has been packed up into plastic storage bins while the basement is being built and to this I've lots the last of my project space for now. To the ThinkHaus it is!
While waiting to get the windows in I decided that it was imperative that I hack my HTC Desire with root access, NAND flash unlocked and a new ROM.
It was actually a really easy process after some reading and tinkering.
I used the unrevoked3 app for OSX which is basically a one click root enabler that removes the read only flag from the NAND flash and installs a new BIOS and recovery mode.
From there is was as simple as transferring the new zipped up ROM to the SD card, booting into the BIOS recovery and selecting to load a new BIOS from the SD card.
Then it's just a matter of waiting for it to reboot and onto tinkering with all the settings. There are a lot of settings to play with. Install some custom skins and I'm good.
Right now I am running the Cyanogenmod ROM. It's pretty decent except for one feature and that is hooking the phone to a PC to charge. The standard factory ROM had the option of setting the default action when connecting to a PC, I would set it to charge as default. The new Cynanogenmod ROM doesn't. What it does is give the option to mount the SD card upon immediate connection of the USB cable. It's not a terrible feature, I just wish there was the option to change it as it cuts out Winamp playback.
Maybe someone has created a modded version of the Cyanogenmod ROM with this feature. Time to look around.
All in all I am very happy with the hack. My memory management is much better, I get better reception on WiFi and the phone just feels a lot more snappy and quick. It's very lean and clean.

In the mean time if you are looking to mod or hack your Android here are some useful links for you.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page
http://unrevoked.com/recovery/

-Colin.

Atari Reborn

This link came up today, a fantastic mod to an old system from my childhood.
The use of new bleeding edge technology such as cheap 3d modeling and printing along with cheap pre made USB controllers is a real testament of how the dropping costs of development and prototyping can enable some very neat things to be made.
Check out the link for more information on the micro Atari Disk drive.
http://rossum.posterous.com/a-little-atari-810-disk-drive

I think I'll be hooking up my atari 800xl once the computer room is finished off and I can bring my office out of storage in the dingy basement.
Hypothetical question: I wonder how hard it would be to build an interface to the atari 800xl to act as a keyboard for a modern pc ? I'd love to be using that keyboard again, such a great system.
Time to do a little research.

-Colin.

A Bushell of Apples

Ok so yes this isn't my work but it's an amazing bit of engineering none the less and something that I thought I'd share.
http://home.comcast.net/~mjmahon/AppleCrateII.html

It's called the Apple Crate project and it turns old useless Apple II systems into a neat bit of hardware for learning and experimenting with parallel computing.
I'd recommend checking it out for yourself and see. He's got some good music files done by each generation of the machine as well.

-Colin.

Stale Oranges

In the world of electronics sometimes you encounter stupidity. Sometimes this stupidity is your own. And sometimes it's the stupidity of age, which can also be your own.
For the life of me I can't seem to get my tubes to glow. The heaters will just not kick on. I've done the checklist.
Continuity, check.
Voltage from transformer, check.
Proper voltage, check.
Heaters on, uncheck ?
Yeah.
So I'm thinking that it's probably the transformer just not giving enough amps, it came from an old oscilloscope that's got to be easily 35 years old. Might not be in the most tip top of shape. Maybe it's time to buy one online spec'd out for a tube amp.
-Colin.

Glowing Orange

I've started working on rebuilding an old tube amp. The input stage is complete and I am working on the gain and output stages. It's turning into a very fun little project.
I picked up a book called All about vacuum tube guitar amplifiers, written by Gerald Weber. It's very informative and it's given me a greater understanding of the inner workings of the tube guitar amp.

For anyone building a guitar amp I'd highly recommend it.

Not much else for now, more reading and hopefully the rest of the stages completed this week down at the think haus.

-Colin.

Where's the ball ?

Hi, Where's the ball ? Don't ask me I couldn't tell ya, I've obviously fallen off it. Well it's me again after a month of lounging about and not doing to much more than clearing out and moving my computer room down to the dingy basement, making room for the new nursery for our bean to be. 3 months to go.
Projects have been somewhat put on hold for now as I am down some good workable space.
In the packup and move to the basement I did find an old guitar tube amp that was in bits and pieces so I've decided to rebuilt it. It's all basically there just a very poor ungrounded design from the 70's. So it's time for some more reading on tube amp design theory and see if I can get it going. And it's something that I can work on at the ThinkHaus and leave in my locker.

Other non related news, I just got back from a trip to Toledo, OH for the Weak Signals R/C show and man was it amazing. I saw some great scale stuff, new radios and lots of new production aircraft and helicopters. I picked up a few kits in the swap meet. A peanut scale DH Gypsy Moth and a 42" DH Dragon Rapide. They should both be fun builds.

That's it for now, just a quick check in and hopefully more active useful posts to come soon.

-Colin.

Arduino for all

I've been tinkering with the adruino now for a few days and I've found out how to access the analog pins and read data from them.
I've used a small accelerometer and managed to read the information via the serial console to the arduino.
I plan to see if I can then feed that information back to the computer along with an r/c gyroscope and use it as an HID as a game controller for first person gaming, mounted to a gun stock for a more realistic experience.

Another project to work on is a new remote programmer for work as our programmer recently died. I believe I should be able to read the code from the remote and then store it as a file and feed it back to a remote. There are only 6 pins on the programming cable, presumably GND, PWR and some data lines. It seems fairly straight forward. If it is possible I can sequentially do it to say a dozen remotes hooked up at the same time, cutting remote programming time down drastically.

I should be able to start on it this week and see if I can get it to work.
A few fun projects to learn some more advanced arduino programming.

-Colin.

Adruino is here !

Today my arduino uno arrived in the mail !
It is quite the neat little unit. I've created a simple circuit with an LED connected in series with a resistor, one end to ground and one to pin 13 as described in the sample code. The simple program initializes the port and then flashes the LED writing high and low signals to the pin with delays between each.
It's going to be fun playing with this unit. 5 analog pins and 13 digital pins should give quite enough room for a lot of experiments.

-Colin.

ThinkHaus new member: Me!

Tonight I became a new member of ThinkHaus
I met the bulk of the active users tonight, they are a great group with a lot of knowledge to share. It's good to see a group of people who enjoy the same level of hardware and software making and hacking that I do. It looks like it's going to be a fun time.
There is an ardiuno course coming up this weekend, free for members and $20 for non members. Looking forward to checking it out and learning some microprocessor programming.

That's it for now, just a quick blurb for today.
-Colin.

Reviving a dead LCD

I was walking past the garbage area at work last week and spotted a 17" Dell LCD sitting on the ground. After talking with our internal IT support tech he confirmed that it was dead and was going to be tossed out as they just got a replacement in. He said it was all mine if I could fix it, so back to my desk it went.

The screen powered on no problem and gave a picture but only for about 2-3 seconds.
I suspected some bad capacitors as it seemed like something was either not storing a charge or something was shorted and pulling a signal to ground.
Today I took it apart and my suspicions were confirmed. Bad capacitors.

Here they are once removed from the board. You can see them slightly bulging and one is just starting to leak.

This little guy is completely gone.

 

Here I've begun to take them off the board. I always label each part on any board I repair along with polarity if it isn't already marked. This board had the negative pole indicated, it only needed the part value. Over the years of repairs I've learned that this is a very very important step. Trying to figure out what part goes where after the fact can take twice as long as the repair itself.

A bit of searching through my parts bin turned up an old board from a printer with just the capacitors I needed. 470uf/25v. The 220uf/100v I had in my regular parts drawer.
I de-soldered them from the board and prepped them for the LCD power supply.

  



When I was taking the shell apart I accidentally cut the line to the front buttons. A little thin wire and some solder and it's all back in working order. I cleaned up the wiring with some heat shrink on each line but forgot to take a photo of it after I buttoned it all back up.
The LCD is now alive !

  

The original stand was used at work with the replacement LCD, so it's time for a little DIY solution.

I had some scrap MDF left over from a failed project idea, so I found the best fitting parts, cut all the knobbly bits off, measured the back mount and cut it all to fit. It's not the prettiest stand but it's functional.

All in all this was a great quick project that accomplished two major things.
1) It saved another piece of "junk" from the landfill or recyclers.
2) I now have a working secondary LCD.

Total cost: $0

-Colin.

Ardunio's are the new X

Today I ordered an Arduino. The ThinkHaus is offering a introductory course in programing and use so I figured I might as well jump in and give it a go. I've been looking at these micro controllers for a while now and have seen a number of people using them as the main interface for their CNC machines and 3D printers.
They are pretty cheap too, under $30 for the unit.

Looking around online and there are lots of resources and a growing community of users. Lots of add on boards called shields and plenty of open sourced schematics and programs.

I'm looking forward to it arriving so I can start tinkering away. ETA the 21st.

ThinkHaus

Tonight I checked out the open house for the ThinkHaus on Dundurn St.
It's an amazing collective of very smart innovative people creating some very neat things. Under construction was a RepRap (www.reprap.org) and recently added was a laser cutter. In the works are a mill, some ham radio setups and a photo lab. I never thought I would see all of these together in one place all for use.
There is an energy and drive from this place that makes you want to just keep asking questions and picking brains, which is really the whole idea of the space. Show up with your project, use the tools and resources at hand and get input from everyone to let some fantastic ideas make their way off the drawing board and into reality. It is a very communal environment where everyone is there to help everyone else.
There were people working out ideas for motor controllers for motorcycles, people working on robotics and people just bouncing around ideas for neat little projects. One gentleman (the name escapes me now, so many new names and faces) was working on a replacement license plate frame for his car. He was using scrap wood left over from the renovations of the building along side some hand tools and the laser cutter for some intricate designs to create a one off personalized plate frame.
Neat.

I suggest visiting their site, http://www.thinkhaus.org and check out their calender for the events coming up. They have an open project night this week on Thursday where you can see all of the neat projects people are working on.

-Colin.

CNC Progress

More sorting of pictures. This time, the CNC machine.
I've come along pretty far with this one, though I've had to stop due to funding and some more pressing projects, case in point the Bean's nursery. That should get finished this weekend and pay day on Tuesday, so I'm hoping to get it fully operational this week coming up.

This machine needs to run just well enough to cut the next machine. There is only a certain mark of  accuracy that I can achieve by hand. With each generation of machine cut by a more accurate machine the total end point accuracy increases exponentially.

The next machine will be of a completely different design, much simpler and cutting the parts count by more than half. The simplicity of the next design will enable them to be rapidly reproduced.

You can get an idea of the size and scale of the machine.

 Here are the motors roughly installed, the cutting bed has yet to be put in.

The cutting bed put in place and a pencil installed for testing in lieu of the Z axis.

A surplus equipment rack from work along with some salvaged equipment. Total cost on all of it. Zero dollars.

 This the the Y carriage bearing block.

Here you can see the Y axis moving freely.

That's all I have for now, more to come soon !

More R/C - The Spad XIII continues

Cleaning up some space on my phone I found these pictures of the progress on the Spad XIII.
Looks like I completely forgot to upload them after taking them.
Here you can see the progress in covering some of the control surfaces. I found the best way is to use an ordinary glue stick and litespan. The glue stick provides just enough "stick" for the litespan to be placed on the surface and then moved around without ruining it. Once the heat is applied the moisture content is evaporated from the adhesive and is cured when cooled. At the same time the mixture of materials in the litespan begin to shrink. With a bit of practice you can do this over the entire surface without it warping the balsa structure.

I have to say I'm rather pleased with the results being that this is my first attempt with this method. There are very few wrinkles, only in the tight compound corners, and everything is drum tight.

Where'd I Go ?

Wow, well I guess I need to start using these Internets more often.
Well that's a lie, what I need to do is start posting more and remember to take more photo's of my projects.
The current projects on the go are a nursery for the coming bean. It's half way done now and soon to be filled with cribs and rocking chairs. I'm in the midst of moving my computer/project room to the basement for now so I'll be losing some work space until the basement can be wired and dry walled.
I've also got 2 xbox's and a PS3 to repair, all of which are in bits and pieces awaiting spare parts to come in to resume repairs.
Here are a few picts of the PS3 in bits.

 The inner processy goodness.

 A rather smart looking heatsink and pipes.

You have to give Sony one thing, they know how to design a fan.

That PS3 was filthy inside. Here's the proof.