Saturday, December 6, 2008

trashing electorics

The mentality of the modern consumer is to buy something until it wares out and then trash it to get another. Rarely do we ever replace parts or repair anything. I thought maybe i'd try to get a little more knowledgeable about electronics in the last couple years. The best i've done is bringing a dead hard drive back to life.

Today I did my fist soldering. Well... desoldering. There was a ball of solder on a board that i actually had to solder off the thing before the board would become active. After a lot of trial and error i actually managed to do it.

I have completely fixed up dan goats' old xbox 360 that he gave to me after it crashed. It cost me 15 (maybe 10?) dollars for a new cd rom laser and another 5 dollars for Wd-40. Now the thing is running like a tank after having constant problems with the cdrom drive. First it wouldn't spin discs so i dismantled the thing and sprayed the spindle/rails in the cdrom. Then the laser went slowly but surely. Replaced that today. xboxes now (after a price drop) go for about 200 bucks so i think it was a decent investment, and i learned a whole lot. Hopefully i just put at least 5 more years into the (very fragile) system.

The only thign to fear is the red ring of death.