I just modified the US NES version of KLAX to support controllers in the Famicom extension port. The Famicom version of the game already had such support, but some of the text (particularly in-game stuff, goals/hints) is in Japanese.
I should tidy it up, maybe test it a bit more, and share it with the interwebs.
Then I wanna see if I can do the same for Chip's Challenge (proto).
Soldered up the new LED ribbons for my Virtual Boy, which now works perfectly fine once again. Quite happy with the four bucks I spent on the new ribbons.
This unit wasn't working. At first I tought it was the corroded battery contacts. Some sandpaper on the contacts and installing working batteries (2xAA) resulted in nothing. Hmm. I unscrewed the screws on the bottom of the unit. The red wire from the battery compartment had become disconnected. Resoldering it fixed it. A nice, simple fix.
A brief 'review'
This unit is OK for learning numbers and the letters of the alphabet. Vowels are shown in BLUE. The quality of the voices could be better to more clearly enunciate some letters, so it's not perfect (to list one example, 'f' can sound like 's'). The voice has a British accent. It sells for around AUD $30 here in Australia. Over-all, a decent enough learning tool for children, with some fun thrown in.
Seat-mounted bass shaker (like Earthquake, Buttkicker, Crowson &c.), following instructions from Pulverrostmannen:
Dead subwoofer. Removed cone, replaced coil. Attached long bolt to coil & spider. Plastic strips act as a spring, bringing the coil back to centre. Bass amp with adjustable low-pass filter allows this to be silent (or at least much quieter than with the cone displacing air) - I can test whether it's working by letting through the unfiltered signal - it's still audible (HD Rumble XXL?). The plywood is for attaching it to the frame of my chair, and I have another piece behind this to angle it so the bolt is vertical with the seat in its minimally reclined position to minimise sideways movement that could rub the coil against the walls of the magnet.
I am constantly surprised by how much low-frequency audio games put out, which gets lost if you listen on headphones or even a sound system with the bass not turned up obnoxiously high. I love my SubPac (rumble [back]pack), but this goes even lower.
Ideal for tromping around Mira in my skell (though my downstairs neighbours may disagree - I mitigate this with some foam and rubber pads under the base of the chair).
See also: chest-mounted sub cannon:
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Frankenakkordeon
“Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow”
Transplanted the 12-button bass end from a too-small-to-be-useful piano accordion onto my Irish-style button accordion / melodeon (mini version of the type Jimmy Shand senior played, rows in B and C, so it has all 12 notes of the chromatic scale, but mostly on the push XOR the pull. For comparison, the standard morris/English D/G melodeon has notes for only a few keys but makes those keys easy to play / accompany). This is for my morris side - the original box had 8 bass buttons and don't have all the useful chords available in both bellows directions, which makes playing somewhat awkward (Irish traditional musicians mostly don't use the basses, or just honk whenever they can match a note on the treble side).
But it gets more ridiculous! To save weight, the 'chords' don't have a full set of their own reeds, but also sound the corresponding bass reed, AND are only two notes - the major third - so to get a full major chord you also need to press the next bass button up (e.g. C major would be C+E and G). But this is good for playing mostly in minor keys - I would add the major key's relative minor bass instead of the fifth above, e.g. A minor is C+E and A).
And I had to add an air button (nicked from a 10-button toy melodeon) - for piano or continental-chromatic button accordions this is mostly for closing the bellows when you've finished playing and is thus kinda optional. But for this type of box where most of the notes are available in only one bellows direction, it is vital to have an air button so I can prepare for / recover from phrases with a lot of push-only (C, G, F# &c.) or pull-only (D, F, A &c.) notes.
Furthermore, I have shifted the reeds over a couple of places (was Bb F C G D A) to start on C - I don't care about playing in Bb, and do want to have E and B. Despite having a row on the treble side that plays a scale of B major, I basically never do this - it's essentially a row of what would be the black notes on the piano, plus E & B in the opposite bellows direction from the main C row. So instead of a 'B major' chord, I have put the F bass reed there and blocked off the hole that would also sound the B at the same time. If I want an F Chord, I just press the buttons for C + A + F.
I have cut a sheet of cork-backed plastic with holes that cut out all the bass notes from the chord buttons to give me a tiny free-bass mode with a stop knob to dis/engage this, but didn't get it to work well enough. In any case, I seriously doubt whether I would be playing anything fancy enough to need this rather than just bass+chord of the five or so keys I actually play in.
C.......G........D.........A.........E.........B
...C+E...G+B...D+F#..A+C#..E+G#..just F
......................................................................(air button)
Just fixed a decade old Samsung TV my parents were using.
The fault was that it had these annoying circles on the screen, I expected it to be detatched diffusers from the LEDs but they were in fact intact.
Fortunately I had decided to just replace them with £20 replacements off Aliexpress rather than try regluing, so now the circles are gone.
Although my parents had already replaced the TV, so we'll just keep it as a spare, which is fortunate in a way as there are some dirt marks on the inside that would require me to dissassemble it again.
Removing the old LED strips was harder than I thought though as the clamps would struggle to budge. Ended up making a blood sacrifice and eventually got them out.
Get an otter box also, Mine has saved me from some High falls. Like from the stairs at my old place [midway from 13 steps] bouncing all the way down. But, Nothing happened to it. Nada.
Get an otter box also, Mine has saved me from some High falls. Like from the stairs at my old place [midway from 13 steps] bouncing all the way down. But, Nothing happened to it. Nada.
That phone ain't mine, is the one I bought to my momma couple months ago.
I'm not sure how she got the screen so badly damaged but it's not hard to guess how when my 2 (now 4) year old niece broke my phone after she kicked it.
Whatever, I'm glad I could fix it. The screen costed me $200 MXN, and looks really nice. Glad I have the skills to do this job, outside it would've been $800 for Display + $800 for "job".
That phone ain't mine, is the one I bought to my momma couple months ago.
I'm not sure how she got the screen so badly damaged but it's not hard to guess how when my 2 (now 4) year old niece broke my phone after she kicked it.
Whatever, I'm glad I could fix it. The screen costed me $200 MXN, and looks really nice. Glad I have the skills to do this job, outside it would've been $800 for Display + $800 for "job".
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replaced the broken handle.
bouncing all the way down. 
But, Nothing happened to it. 
