Rescue That Dead Xbox With An External PSU

December 1, 2022 by Jenny List 13 Comments

There is nothing worse than that sinking feeling as a computer or other device fails just after its warranty has expired. [Robotanv] had it with his Xbox Series S whose power supply failed, and was faced with either an online sourced PSU of uncertain provenance, or a hefty bill from Microsoft for a repair. He chose to do neither, opening up his console and replacing the broken PSU with a generic external model. See the video below the break.

The Xbox appears surprisingly well designed as a modular unit, so accessing and unplugging its PSU was quite easy. To his surprise he found that the connections were simply two wires, positive and negative lines for 12 V. The solution was to find a suitably beefy 12 V supply and wire it up, before continuing gaming.

Beyond that simple description lies a bit more. The original was a 160 W unit so he’s taken a gamble with a 120 W external brick. He’s monitoring its temperature carefully to make sure, but with his gaming it has not been a problem. Then there’s the board wiring, which he appears to have soldered to pads on the PCB. We might have tried to find something that fit the original spade connectors instead, but yet again it hasn’t caused him any problems. We’d be curious to see what has failed in the original PSU. Meanwhile we’re glad to see this Xbox ride again, it’s more than can be said for one belonging to a Hackaday colleague.

Continue reading “Rescue That Dead Xbox With An External PSU” →

How To Repair? The Death Of Schematics

November 21, 2022 by Al Williams 97 Comments

There was a time when, if you were handy with a soldering iron, you could pretty easily open up a radio or TV repair business. You might not get rich, but you could make a good living. And if you had enough business savvy to do sales too, you could do well. These days there aren’t many repair shops and it isn’t any wonder. The price of labor is up and the price of things like TVs drops every day. What’s worse is today’s TV is not only cheaper than last year’s model, but probably also better. Besides that, TVs are full of custom parts you can’t get and jam-packed into smaller and smaller cases.

Case in point, I saw a “black Friday” ad for a 40-inch 1080p flatscreen with a streaming controller for $98. Granted, that’s not huge by today’s standards and I’m sure it isn’t a perfect picture. But for $98? Even a giant high-quality TV these days might cost a bit more than $1,000 and you can get something pretty great for well under $500.

Looking back, a Sears ad showed a great deal on a 19″ color TV in 1980. The price? $399. That doesn’t sound too bad until you realize that today that would be about $1,400. So with a ratio of about 3.5 to 1, a $30/hour service call would be, today, $105. So for an hour’s service call with no parts, I could just buy that 40″ TV. Add even one simple part or another hour and I’m getting close to the big league TVs.

Did you ever wonder how TV repair technicians knew what to do? Well, for one thing, most of the time you didn’t have to. A surprising number of calls would be something simple like a frayed line cord or a dirty tuner. Antenna wires destroyed by critters was common enough. In the tube days, you could pretty easily swap tubes to fix the bulk of actual problems.

Continue reading “How To Repair? The Death Of Schematics” →

ColecoVision Barn Find Gets Wireless Makeover

November 14, 2022 by Robin Kearey No comments

Few things are more satisfying than finding an old, forgotten piece of technology somewhere and bringing it back to life. And while it’s great to see a rare sports car or an Apollo Flight Computer being restored, even not-very-successful game consoles from the 1980s can make for some great repair stories. Just look at how [Discreet Mayor] describes his restoration and modification efforts on a ColecoVision that he literally found in a barn.

Given that the ColecoVision was on the market between 1982 and 1985, we can assume that [Discreet Mayor]’s console had been sitting on a shelf for at least three decades, and the machine was definitely showing its age. Several components had failed due to corrosion, including the clock crystal, a 7400 series logic chip and a capacitor in the power supply, but since these are all standard components it was rather straightforward to replace them.

The controllers however were sadly beyond repair. Replacing them with standard joysticks wasn’t really an option because the ColecoVision controllers included a numeric keypad, which was mainly used to select game options. Making something completely new was the way to go, and [Discreet Mayor] decided to go for a wireless system while he was at it. After all, he had already developed a modular wireless IoT system based on the IEEE 802.15.4 standard, which turned out to be a perfect fit for this system.

[Discreet Mayor] built a simple joystick-plus-fire-button setup on a piece of MDF and equipped it with his IoT transmitter. Instead of adding a replacement numeric keypad he decided to use the joystick to simulate the most commonly-used buttons: “right” for “1”, “down” for “2” and so on. The receiver module uses digital switches to mimic keypresses to the console’s input port. The end result might look a bit hacky, but the console is fully functional again and runs its games just like it did over thirty years ago.

We’ve seen several projects that add wireless controllers to a variety of classic consoles. If you’ve got a ColecoVision that turns out to be beyond salvaging, you can always just build your own from scratch.

A Homebrew AC Upgrade For The Fluke 8840A

October 20, 2022 by Lewin Day 9 Comments

[William Dudley] picked up a Fluke 8840A bench multimeter at an auction, but was sad to find out that it was reading resistances inaccurately. It was also missing the optional board to enable AC measurements. Desiring to use the otherwise lovely meter, he set about repairing and upgrading the device.

Thankfully, the 8840A was from a time when Fluke used to openly publish schematics in its manuals. Thus, combined with taking a look at some photos online, it was straightforward for [William] to recreate the original AC “Option 09” board to enable the desired functionality. As is usually the way, his efforts didn’t work first time, but after some bodge wires were installed, all was well. [William] reports the measurements are “reasonable, maybe even sufficient” with no calibration undertaken.

Repairing the resistance issue was easy. It turned out to be corrosion on the selector switches, revealed when high-resistance measurements were accurate, but low-resistance measurements weren’t. A bit of flick-flacker with some contact cleaner sprayed into the switches got things working again nicely.

It’s nice to see old hardware restored to full functionality, particularly when it’s as attractive and well-built as an old Fluke meter. Bringing back old tools from the dead? You know we wanna hear about it!

Everything You Wanted To See About Restoring A 1956 Radio

October 16, 2022 by Donald Papp 13 Comments

Ever wanted a good, good look at the insides of a 1950s radio, along with fantastic commentary on the internals and the purpose of various components? Then don’t miss [Adam Wilson]’s repair and restoration of a 1956 Philips 353A, a task made easier by a digitized copy of the service manual. [Adam] provides loads of great pictures, as well as tips on what it takes to bring vintage electronics back to life. What’s not to like?

Vintage electronics like this are often chock-full of components that deteriorate with age, so one doesn’t simply apply power to see if it still works as a first step. These devices need to be inspected and serviced before power is ever applied. Even then, powerup should be done with a current-controlled source that can be shut down if anything seems amiss.

Thank goodness for high quality, digitized service manuals.

Devices like these largely predate printed circuit boards, so one can expect to see plenty of point-to-point soldering. Vacuum tubes did much of the hard work, so they are present instead of integrated circuits and transistors. Capacitors in the microfarads were much larger compared to their modern equivalents, and paper/wax capacitors (literally made from rolled-up paper covered in wax) handled capacitances in the nanofarad range instead of the little ceramic disk caps of today.

One thing that helped immensely is the previously-mentioned Philips 353A service manual, which includes not only a chassis and component layout, but even has servicing procedures such as cord replacement for the tuning dial. Back then, a tuning dial was an electromechanical assembly that used a winding of cord to rotate the tuning capacitor, and replacing it was a fiddly process. If only all hardware was documented so well!

The end result looks wonderful and still has great sound. As a final tweak, [Adam] added an external audio input cable as a nod to the modern age. Now, we have in the past seen a small LED screen integrated convincingly into an antique, but in this case [Adam] kept the original look completely intact. You can see it in action, playing some Frank Sinatra in the short video embedded below.
Continue reading “Everything You Wanted To See About Restoring A 1956 Radio” →

A bike computer sits on a wooden background. The back of the bike computer has a 3D printed attachment with two white translucent zip ties running through the back.

Repairing A Bike GPS With 3D Printing

October 7, 2022 by Navarre Bartz 10 Comments

We love hacks that keep gadgets out of the trash heap, and [Brieuc du Maugouër] has us covered with this 3D printable replacement mount he designed for his bike GPS.

One of the most frustrating ways a gadget can fail is when a small, but critical part of the device fails. [du Maugouër] combined a 3D printed back and four M2x6mm screws to make a robust new mount to replace the broken OEM mount on his handlebar-mounted GPS. Slots for zip tie mounting are included in case the replacement mount breaks before yet another replacement can be printed. Apparently [du Maugouër] agrees with Chief O’Brien that “in a crunch, I wouldn’t like to be caught without a second backup.” [Youtube]

It’s exciting that we’re finally in a time when 3D printed replacement parts are living up to their potential. This would be a lot easier if more manufacturers posted 3D printed design files instead of getting them pulled from 3D file platforms, but makers will find a way regardless of OEM approval.

We’ve covered a lot of bike hacks over the years including DIY Bike Computers and GPS Trackers. Do you have a project that keeps something from becoming trash or might save the world another way? There’s still time to enter the Save the World Wildcard round of the Hackaday Prize (closes October 16th).

A sliced digital file of a marker light enclosure. Background is a white and grey grid and object itself is a series of print path lines in red, orange, and green.

3D Printing Hard-To-Find Vintage Vehicle Parts

October 7, 2022 by Navarre Bartz 52 Comments

When I was growing up, my dad and I restored classic cars. Combing junkyards for the pieces we needed was a mixture of interesting and frustrating since there was always something you couldn’t find no matter how long you looked. [Emily Velasco] was frustrated by the high price of parts even when she was able to find them, so she decided to print them herself. She wrote an excellent tutorial about designing and 3D printing replica parts if you find yourself in a similar situation.

All four marker lights on [Velasco]’s 1982 Toyota pickup were on their way to plastic dust, and a full set would run her $160. Instead of shelling out a ton of cash for some tiny parts, she set out to replicate the marker lamps with her 3D printer. Using a cheap marker lamp replacement for a more popular model of pickup as a template, she was able to replace her marker lamps at a fraction of the cost of the options she found online. Continue reading “3D Printing Hard-To-Find Vintage Vehicle Parts” →