Richard @messaroundery.net · 21/09/2026Different breed of horror from an LG monitor, presumably bad capacitors. 020
Richard @messaroundery.net · 07/09/2026This Windows 10 install was so messed up that it fell back to the hidden Windows 7 Basic theme. The built-in reset feature miraculously brought it back, and the clock on year 3224 somehow wasn't a hardware fault. 011
Richard @messaroundery.net · 19/08/2026I've had this Pokémon Go Plus autocatcher with a Chinese rechargeable battery (slots in place of a CR2032) for who knows how many years, but it's now having random charging issues. Micro USB needs rework, but it's also hard to tell if a cell this small has become a spicy pillow. 010
Richard @messaroundery.net · 12/08/2026One interesting detail in laptops assembled by Flextronics Brazil, like both T420 machines I had were, is the randomly slapped stickers identifying which workers and lines the motherboard went through. 010
Richard @messaroundery.net · 01/08/2026It's been a while, but I'm still having fun with obsolete electronic repairs, starting with a ThinkPad T420 board I damaged in 2019 by using a wrong screw. I got a new board back then, which has now failed, so I had a go at the original with the skills I've acquired since. 110
Richard @messaroundery.net · 02/04/2026Actual cause was the screen cable getting pinched by a broken hinge retention mechanism, because as a wise man once said, HP stands for Hinge Problem. 120
Richard @messaroundery.net · 02/04/2026Just repaired a laptop with a built-in analog horror generator. 2135
Richard @messaroundery.net · 23/10/2025This Sony Vaio laptop circa 2010 has, among other issues, a leaking NiMH CMOS battery instead of a regular lithium cell. Party like it's the 1990s Varta bombs. 020
Richard @messaroundery.net · 12/08/2025A cheap window air conditioner gave me quite the scare a while back. Control panel was acting weird and eventually started making arcing sounds. Looks like the switching power supply for the electronics failed catastrophically. 030
Richard @messaroundery.net · 25/07/2025The ThinkPad X1 Carbon 2nd Gen has many flaws, but requiring a SATA M.2 SSD (now a cursed form factor) takes the cake. In upgrading this machine, a brand new WD Green kept crashing so I had to fall back to a China special. 031
Richard @messaroundery.net · 15/07/2025Had a BSOD today, and a frame from the video I was watching managed to sneak in through the GPU video decoder! 021
Richard @messaroundery.net · 27/06/2025Built a bulk hard drive testing rig for validating a job lot of old drives. Horrible chain of power adapters as this PSU has the 5V capacity but very few connectors. Even got an IDE-SATA converter (works surprisingly fine) for the 7th drive. 020
Richard @messaroundery.net · 05/05/2025In trying to clean the sticky rubberized finish on this old laptop, I ended up stripping a chunk of the coating, then asked myself: why not go the rest of the way? It looks way cooler than I expected. Happy little accident. 173
Richard @messaroundery.net · 16/04/2025There's lots of speculation as to what exactly makes an USB-C dock incompatible with the Nintendo Switch. One factor is Power Delivery: docks tend to reduce the advertised current (because their USB ports need power) just enough to fall below the Switch's 15V 2.6A requirement. 010
Richard @messaroundery.net · 12/03/2025The active USB extension cable has failed. Hub no longer enumerates. I (literally) cracked it open and found the chip is heating up quite a bit on one end. Very minimal design, too bad the chip markings were sanded off. 010
Richard @messaroundery.net · 21/02/2025Also bypassed the fan controller with a solder blob, as it only goes up to about 90% voltage, and only the embedded controller firmware can access it. With both these mods, the CPU runs 12-16°C cooler under sustained load. 000
Richard @messaroundery.net · 12/02/2025Latest adventure: fixing the cooling on ECS Classmate PC netbooks. The Atom CPU throttles under sustained load because all it has is a tiny fan pulling air through a thin metal plate. Friend suggested adding a thermal pad between metal and plastic, which I've seen done before. 100
Richard @messaroundery.net · 01/02/2025One more repair: the external speaker/headphone amp chip failed, so I removed it and bypassed the input to the headphone output. First time using enamel wire, looks bad but works = a win in my book. No plastics broke during all this but I was lazy and melted some while soldering. 010
Richard @messaroundery.net · 21/01/2025A mod for easier battery swaps is born out of spite. I didn't have time to order a CR2032 holder, so I sacrificed a wired battery from a junk drawer, and applied the tried and true restoration method of wrapping a CR2032 really tight with electrical tape. Least it works. 120
Richard @messaroundery.net · 08/01/2025These FICs also have one of the most infuriating design decisions I've ever seen in a laptop. Another model had a wired battery in the same spot that I miraculously pulled and replaced using tweezers. Full disassembly takes time and the old plastics *will* break. 120
Richard @messaroundery.net · 08/01/2025Cursed capacitor 2.0: it gets worse, as this time it was soldered on at the factory. Yet another FIC Core 2 Duo laptop from a local OEM. 261
Richard @messaroundery.net · 16/12/2024Obligatory: who is "we" and why are they in my computer? The magic option may or may not be "Suggest ways I can finish setting up my device to get the most out of Windows", which was still enabled on this machine. 010
Richard @messaroundery.net · 08/12/2024One way to practice electronics repair is by doing questionable fixes to laptops nobody would touch these days. 2x ThinkPad X200 with failed input protection MOSFET, replacements fail again instantly, my bypass jumpers (with solder wick + lots of solder) work... at least for now. 030
Richard @messaroundery.net · 28/11/2024Heatsink off, chip identification is in the alt text. Unusual features include USB3, and a 32-bit PCI Gigabit Ethernet controller as they ran out of PCIe lanes. I/O shield is apparently the same for a whole range of Zotac boards, so it's full of holes (alt text again) on mine. 000
Richard @messaroundery.net · 28/11/2024Latest oddware find: Zotac IONITX-S-E motherboard, from that time Nvidia sold "ION" as a replacement for the awful Intel iGPU in Atom systems. First generation was a full 9400M chipset (as used in MacBooks); this is the second one which is a GT 210 connected through PCIe Gen1 x1. 100
Richard @messaroundery.net · 11/11/2024Bad SATA cables are a recurring issue in old HP office PCs I deal with. The rubber insulation gets sticky, flakes off everywhere and is a pain to clean. Only the black cables in 1st-3rd gen machines (like the once popular 8200) do this; gray ones in older Core 2/Athlon II are OK. 000
Richard @messaroundery.net · 25/10/2024The Adata NVMe SSD used in this experiment is a pretty-much-DOA unit. Taken from a brand new laptop and briefly used for testing, it went read-only after just 1 TBW and less than 3 days of power on time. 100
Richard @messaroundery.net · 05/10/2024Today on datasheet lies: Intel 4x chipsets (for Core 2) supposedly limiting PCIe x16 to x1 if integrated graphics are enabled. This Q43 system runs an NVMe SSD at Gen2 x4 speed (albeit CPU bottlenecked) alongside the iGPU. x8 may work; no x16 due to pin sharing with DVI/HDMI/DP. 110
Richard @messaroundery.net · 19/09/2024This old but never used USB extension cable spooked me with the Windows device sound when I plugged it in. Turns out whoever designed this found it better to build a single-port hub (at least it's actual 2.0, not the fake full-speed-only ones) than use a dedicated redriver chip. 120
Richard @messaroundery.net · 26/08/2024Very cheap USB analog capture device vs. a Conexant-based AVerMedia PCIe card, pictured capturing the S-Video output of a Chinese GeForce FX5500 card. The PCIe card has great quality, but ancient Windows drivers that sometimes just quit working and even knocked out my OS once. 010
Richard @messaroundery.net · 17/08/2024Turns out Linux can try to read the partitions on an *Atari ST* hard drive. This isn't one, just a regular 2 TB drive filled with 0x55 bytes by badblocks, which ended up being detected as AHDI with 4 equal 682.7 GB partitions. Not enough magic signatures in the format I guess. 000
Richard @messaroundery.net · 15/08/2024This USB keyboard's packaging unearthed the name people wouldn't stop calling Windows 7 during its beta period, I vividly remember. Bonus: Mac OS 9 (but not X) mentioned. 000
Richard @messaroundery.net · 12/07/2024Oh look, yet another Adobe ploy to try and get people locked into their ecosystem. Long expired because this is a clearance bin SSD dated late 2022. 000
Richard @messaroundery.net · 03/07/2024Cursed tech support call: this Samsung phone got *very* confused by a broken charging cable and started dumping more than 5V (presumably the main rail) out the USB-C port. It shut down two computers which thankfully survived without damage. Rebooting brought it back to normal. 010
Richard @messaroundery.net · 26/06/2024Both have arrived. Thankfully looks like just a packaging update, with a more recyclable box, new copyright year and booklets. Model remains A2049 (US variant); USB reports (USBTreeView on Windows) are identical save for the serial number; Android volume level issue not fixed! 000
Richard @messaroundery.net · 11/06/2024If that blog post I wrote a while ago didn't make it clear: Creative's sound drivers are pure unadulterated quality. 000
Richard @messaroundery.net · 30/05/2024Got this self-encrypting Seagate among a pile of random hard drives. Identifies as "HP Secure Hard Disk". Was tricky to unlock, because a PSID reset with sedutil only clears the encryption and not the ATA user password, but an "instant secure erase" with SeaTools got rid of it. 010
Richard @messaroundery.net · 12/04/2024Testing the lower limits of USB-C charging on two laptops of a similar age. ThinkPad E490 is my daily driver, 12W barely keeps up with idle power draw; Latitude 3410 can't charge another 3410, as it accepts 9V if powered off but not 5V. Not an ideal test as my cables sag ~0.5V. 110
![richard@nas:~$ sudo dmesg | grep sdc
[ 2.131181] sd 0:0:2:0: [sdc] 3907029168 512-byte logical blocks: (2.00 TB/1.82 TiB)
[ 2.131183] sd 0:0:2:0: [sdc] 4096-byte physical blocks
[ 2.262290] sd 0:0:2:0: [sdc] Write Protect is off
[ 2.262300] sd 0:0:2:0: [sdc] Mode Sense: 7f 00 10 08
[ 2.263324] sd 0:0:2:0: [sdc] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, supports DPO and FUA
[ 2.397926] sdc: AHDI sdc1 sdc2 sdc3 sdc4
[ 2.398929] sd 0:0:2:0: [sdc] Attached SCSI disk
richard@nas:~$](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:4uoxrx2ownskdgo774rc3rke/bafkreigt6lwqqkgpfcdghrjikyj2rdxm5or3l43oslb4wvlrma3z6j5rqe)
