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Joined 9 months ago
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Cake day: October 3rd, 2023

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  • I used to like the a400, had a few of them in service, but a few years ago I tried another one and it was terrible. Just… Slow… like an HDD. I did some research and apparently they changed something with the nand somewhere along the line. Did a bait and switch. I don’t remember the details but it annoyed me.

    I actually needed to buy a budget SSD just today, and I got a BX500. We’ll see how it goes. I know not to expect much from a drive without DRAM, but at least I know that going in.








  • Hey thanks man I really appreciate all your detailed help, and offer to buy those phones.

    I contacted one of those resellers, and they unsurprisingly weren’t interested in anything. I probably won’t try to put aftermarket firmware on them, I looked into it a bit and it seems it never really took off. Plus I live in an apartment. I’ll try to offload them on eBay or something.

    I’m certainly interested in getting you these phones, I have no use for them, and it seems like you do haha. Whatever is a fair price for you is fine by me, I’m not looking to get rich. I’ll try to send you a PM, I don’t even know if Lemmy supports that.


  • Hey thanks for the big writeup! Sorry it took me so long to get back to you.

    It’s a bummer that Meraki stuff is less desirable, I just pulled it all out of the closet and it looks like that’s most of what I’ve got.

    I’ve got two of the MR84, three of the MR36, a MS225-24P, some antennas for them, and three of some kind of IP phone CP-8841.

    Is the Meraki stuff contract only? My buddies boss gave him this stuff from the closet at work. Says he didn’t want or need it. Then he gave it to me 🤷‍♂️ I know my buddy didn’t steal it, but I’m hoping it’s not considered stolen or something? Because you have to have a contract? Idk maybe I’m overthinking it.





  • Nice! Did that for a long time, got pretty deep into it. Over a dozen DE razors, some straights, I had brushes and soaps and all that.

    Eventually I settled into a routine with a feather asd2, Astra blades, and clubman’s shaving cream in a tub.

    I have super coarse whiskers, they mostly grow straight down but I get some swirling, especially on one side of my neck.

    I was able to do my whole shave in one pass, mixing WTG, XTG, and AGT depending on where I was on my face.

    So I started wetshaving for the nice experience, but ended up with fast efficient shaves. Still though, I’d occasionally not have enough time, and I’d use the electric. Even though it was nowhere near as close, it was even faster.

    Recently I’ve started to grow a beard, so I haven’t shaved in a couple months. This is the first time in my life I’ve tried growing a beard, so we’ll see.

    I’m sure my wetshaving skills will come in handy for trimming and cutting a line on my beard.





  • I have a 600w ham radio amplifier from the 60s. It’s a Heathkit SB-200

    I’m very proud of it because I bought it in rough condition, and repaired it myself. Replaced all the leaky capacitors and did some other work in there. Now it runs like a dream! It was my first time working with tube gear. The voltages in these things is 2500 volts, that’ll kill you dead before you know what happened.

    I also have an SB-220 that I got broken. I fixed it up but didn’t do a full rebuild on it. It’ll do 1200 watts, but I don’t need that much power so I haven’t used it much. It’s in storage. That one is from the late 60s early 70s.

    My next oldest device is also ham radio gear, a Kenwood TS-530S from the 80s. There’s a lot of solid state stuff inside, plenty of transistors doing all the work. But the final output stage is still a good ole pair of tubes. I bought this in non working condition, and fixed it myself as well. Good fun!




  • Open it up and see if any of the capacitors are leaking! Soldering is a great skill to learn and you can fix it yourself.

    The biggest problem people have is buying a bad soldering iron that gets way too hot. You can get an excellent iron for only 10 or 20 dollars more than the garbage out there. I used to recommend the TS-100, because that’s what I use and love, and they used to be way cheaper. The TS-80 was an upgrade to that, which was also nice but I never liked. If you’ve got the money, I still recommend them. However for the budget minded, the pinecil is almost the exact same thing, it’s well made, and it’s still like $30-40 bucks. In fact some people prefer it over the others. You can power it with a beefy USB-C charger if you have one, or an old laptop charger if you want to cut up the end and put a barrel jack on it. The thing pulls about 90 watts at full tilt, but only for brief periods.

    Next you want to buy yourself some practice boards, you can get soldering kits from AliExpress that will let you build little flashing trees and hearts and stuff. Or even small handheld games if you’re getting better at soldering.

    Then you watch YouTube tutorials, find several. You want to focus on quick work, at low ish temps like 280C, keep the tip clean, and flux is your friend. The very tippy tip of your iron should always be shiny, if it starts turning black, it’s building oxides from being too hot and not enough flux. Clean that thing with flux. If you leave it that way too long you’ll ruin it, that’s why most people struggle to solder.

    Then once you’ve learned, and you’re ready to go. Watch YouTube videos on fixing the Xbox, buy the caps, crack that thing open and have fun. Caps aren’t that hard to replace, compared to other soldering projects. You’ll do fine 👍