Notices by Karl Baron (kalleboo@bitbang.social)

New cursed Japanese power strip just dropped

*blinks with wide-eyes*

#GlobalTalk

So the electrician failing to properly terminate one wire in an Ethernet jack turned out to be my brown M&M. Since I realized he didn't test the jack I also no longer trusted him with power outlets and bought an outlet checker on Amazon

Sure enough, one outlet is literally upside down (but at least wired correctly), and two outlets have the live and neutral swapped…

#Japan requires an electricians license to as much as touch a power outlet, because “DIY people can't be trusted with safety…”

We’re out camping for the long weekend and this is the first time we have a camp site with power hookup, so maybe the readers of this thread would be interested in how that looks

@dokas @stroughtonsmith One of my favorite MacOS 8 easter eggs is how if you set your Macs date to something inplausibly far in the future (like “2025”), the crayons would be worn down as if they had been used

@SuperDicq It was just officially translated into English

Stumbled into the network rack gacha series 3 at the local mall!!!

Only got one duplicate before I completed the set, so only lost 300 yen vs “cheating” and buying a complete set online (and nothing beats that gacha gambling adrenaline rush)

#japan #gacha #syssdmin #networking #mb

@SuperDicq Oooh, thst can be fun if I get it to work!

I was walking back from the mall and figured it couldn’t hurt to drop in to HARD OFF on the way back.

Walking through the Junk PC aisle, I had a double-take, what is that purple beauty??

A SiliconGraphics O2? In MY rural Japanese city? How did that get here? At $60 I could not leave it there!

Lugging it home in the heat on the tram and in the rain was a slog but I made it safely back!

#silicongraphics #sgi #RetroComputing #mb

@SuperDicq Naw I’m just a troll I don’t like Tokyo either

@SuperDicq Osaka people have a hard on for being “different”, it’s how they justify being inferior to Tokyo

Spotted a Newton 130 advertised as not working, and picked it up for $34. While until now I've had luck with several "not working" devices just being user error, even if it actually doesn't work, it's still worth the price in parts (like the pen! My only other Newton pen has fallen apart, and I've literally never seen another Newton pen for sale, just lots of eMate ones)

Well it just arrived, let's take a look

#VintageApple #Newton #PDA #RetroComputing #mb

The logic board looks pristine! No signs of corrosion at all that I can see…

There are definitely signs of corrosion on the inside case though… I’m not sure if this is just light green copper corrosion from fumes/humidity, or if it’s the green from battery acid that someone before me has tried to clean??

After messing around with the main batteries, the backup battery, the DC jack, the contrast knob and the reset hole a bunch, it’s definitely not working right. Twice, seemingly randomly, I did manage to get it to light up with the boot screen and chime, but it went off again in a second.

On closer inspection, there are signs of corrosion on the battery terminals! But it doesn’t seem to have gone far - nothing is visible on the dock terminals, the serial port or DC jack.

Let’s open it up!

I am utterly incompetent at soldering..

“Oh too much solder, I’ll use some solder wick to get rid of it!” Solder wick is now soldered to the board… this is why I’m a software guy!

Anyway here is the result. It ain’t pretty but it’s in place and nothing is bridged.

So after finding the MP130 page on the PDA-Soft website, today I decided to take it apart further to see the other side of the board, at U43.

Hmm, he’s looking a bit askew.

Poking at it lightly with a tool pick, and just just fell off! Well there’s your problem!

#Newton #PDA

Nope, no luck. When I have more time I’ll tear it down further and see what things look like under the battery contacts.

Any #Newton experts out there have any ideas? Like I said, it did randomly show signs of life twice, so it’s not completely dead…

Holy crap it worked?!??! Didn’t even expect it to!

We had to go get the seatbelt fixed on our car. I love our car dealership - gutting fish in the drive, getting free lettuce

#WeirdCarDealershipMastodon #japan

@SuperDicq I thought people were calling him fascist because he praised systemd