theinfamousbob

So I've got a story; sit around the campfire and I'll show you the mystical wonders of my day a couple weeks ago.

It all started when my friend needed some computer help; he was hosting a LAN party and needed extra computers. He also had a pile of proclaimed "dead" motherboards with Pentium IVs/Celerons in them. I went over to his house to see if I could get any of them working. Our best bet motherboard had a "case open" warning that wouldn't allow the computer to continue booting after the POST screen. Here's the fun part.

I think "How hard can it be to find the jumper for the case open warning?" Then I start poking around. By my highly sophisticated procedure (read: shorting pins with a screwdriver to check different configurations) I was able to find out what made the system hang. There was one pin configuration I couldn't try, however; the security jumpers were three horizontal pins; I needed to jump the first and the third....

Hmm. My current projects all seem to be backlogged and intertwined.

My CNC mill needs a L297/L298 board, and that'll be way easier with a manufactured board; however, the board would need to be produced by the mill unless I can sneak some ferric chloride home.

My RFID reader is on back burner, waiting for board manufacturing to become available.

My fan controller for my computer is still in design phase, I'm not quite sure how I want to interface it to my motherboard, and how I'll go about writing the software to run it.

All in all, I think I might wait until the fall, when I can get boards done for free at school. With silkscreening, etc. Good stuff.

Enjoying the updates to the forum; seems like it'll be even better now.

...Digg, here we come.