Recently [Bits und Bolts] stumbled over a pair of Dragon 3000 branded 3dfx Voodoo 2 cards in his unfixed cards pile, and decided that the best course of action was …read more

For those of us old enough to remember the harrowing days of the early 2020s, alongside another major kerfuffle there was a complete breakdown in global supply chains that led …read more

Sometimes you purchase an old device that is very cheap for a good reason. So too with the 1995 Apple PowerBook 150 that [Hugh Jeffreys] purchased for a single Aussie …read more

There’s no shortage of cloned Nintendo hardware out there, and most of it is pretty poor. A few are actually pretty interesting though, such as the GB Boy by Gangfeng, …read more

Before the Apple MacBook there was the Apple iBook, fruity 1999 colors included. These PowerPC-based laptops targeted low-cost PC-compatible laptops much like the iMac did, albeit it the latter with …read more

Everyone loves those rather bouncy wooden lounge chairs that got popularized by a certain Swedish seller of furniture, but as tough as they are, the laminated wood can still break …read more

Cotton candy is probably the best way to eat pure sugar, which makes having your very own cotton candy vending machine to automate making it a bit of a dream. …read more

In the search for more exciting broken electronics to repair, [Hugh Jeffreys] bought a GoPro Hero 10 for US$100 with an apparently rather common issue of no camera input, along …read more

After the Foucault pendulum at the Houston Museum of Natural Science stopped working a while back after maintenance on the building, workers set out to determine what was wrong with …read more

It seems to be becoming a bit of a theme that consumer electronics are dying not due to some critical fault, but due to Cooked Capacitor Syndrome (CCS). Case in …read more

When [OGS Mechanics] got a Mercedes EQC 300 battery-electric car in for repair, it was found to have a bit of a weird issue: after sitting in a garage for …read more

Generally when a game console with an optical drive stops reading discs the first thing that people do is crank on the potentiometer that controls the power to the laser …read more

We miss the old Heathkit. You could build equipment that rivaled or even surpassed commercial devices. The cost was usually reasonable and, even if you could get by with less, …read more

Nothing lasts forever, but you’d think the leaded-glass face of a CRT would not be a place you’re likely to see Father Time causing failures. Alas, the particle accelerators we …read more

Power banks come in many sizes, and those that target construction sites are probably among the largest. The massive four ton unit based around lead-acid batteries which the [Buy it …read more

The Commodore CBM 3032 is a successor to the original Commodore PET 2001, yet due a conflicting trademark issue with Philips these first European PETs were called ‘CBM’ instead. Hence …read more

Modern-day receivers are miracles of digital audio and video processing, but compared to their more analog brethren, they can come with a host of new and fascinating faults. The Onkyo …read more

Hacks are of all ages, with the Victorian-era Claymills Pumping Station being no exception. When its old Lancashire boilers from the 19th century were finally replaced with modern 1930s boilers, …read more

The good part about older game consoles like the Super Nintendo is that they have rather rudimentary region locks, but unfortunately this also gives some people the idea that installing …read more

As common as the Xbox 360 was, the development kits (XDKs) for these consoles are significantly less so. This makes it even more tragic when someone performs a botched surgery …read more

Despite the best efforts of the manufacturers, there are folks out there that try to repair power tools, with Dean Doherty] being one of them. Recently he got a Milwaukee […read more

It’s no real secret that modern-day cars are basically a collection of computers on wheels, which also means that we get all the joys of debugging complex computer systems and …read more

Poorly designed PCBs and enclosures that slowly cook the electrolytic capacitors within are a common failure scenario in general, but they seem especially prevalent in so-called Internet-of-Things devices. The SwitchBot …read more