Gee-k.net

Making a soldering station Extractor fan from an old PC case fan


Created on: 29-12-2020  By Gee
Smoke and fumes
Every time I solder something, I end up getting annoyed with the fumes. It comes up towards my face and I am forever blowing it out the way in an attempt to not breathe it in. For quite some time now I've been wanting to modify an old 80mm case fan to take care of this problem for me. I ordered some Carbon filters for solder fume extractors (opens in a new Window) and they had been lying on desks and getting moved around whenever they got in the way. Never actually getting used for the purpose they were intended for.
Finally building something
Whilst... Read More!


Schneider (Amstrad) CPC 664 surprise


Created on: 11-09-2020  By Gee
As a collector of Amstrad machines, the holy grail to me is the Amstrad CPC 664. Only manufactured for a limited amount of time between the CPC 464 and the 6128 (although their productions never stopped either), they are getting rarer and rarer. However, now and again they pop up on eBay and the likes so I keep my eyes open. I never though I'd ever actually get one to add to my collection.
Lets go back in time a couple of weeks when I'm doing my usual search on eBay of all things Amstrad and Schneider. Up crops a Schneider CPC 664 with some branding on it that shows it as the state property of a German speaking country. Naturally I'm intrigued as I always wanted a Schneider to add to the collection, so this would tick two boxes with ... Read More!


Yet more Amstrads added to the collection - ALT-386sx and PCW8256


Created on: 29-07-2020  By Gee
If you haven't guessed already, I like my Amstrad computers. Purely because of nostalgia and curiosity.
Recently whilst scouring eBay for all things Amstrad, I came across an Amstrad ALT-386sx laptop and thought it would be a great addition to my collection as it was both and Amstrad, and a 386 DOS machine. When I had bought that I called the gent to arrange collection and he then asked if I was interested in an Amstrad PCW8256 that he had lying around. Sadly, it had no keyboard or system disks. He told me he'd look for the keyboard, but when I arrived he told me he wasn't successful sadly.
386SX
BIOS
The first issue with the 386 machine was getting it to recognise the hard drive. The BIOS setti... Read More!


Replacing my lost floppy drive ability


Created on: 15-02-2020  By Gee
My recent PC build has meant that I now have a super fast computer, in comparison to the old beast I had. I say had, because I gave it to a friend who was using an old mac laptop (and it also got the huge massive pc case out of the house where space it currently at a premium).
I didn't exactly want to get rid of the old computer due to a couple of reasons. The main one being I'm a hoarder Collector of computers. That PC was made when XP was still very much king. Windows Vista was new, but was slated for taking up so much system resources. Just like any new Windows OS on release I suppose. Yet again I digress.
The other reason I didn't want to get rid of that computer was due to it still having the ability to n... Read More!


A new desktop PC in over a decade


Created on: 28-01-2020  By Gee
When I was at college studying computing tech support, I built a PC with the best of things that I could reasonably put on my credit card and not feel too bad about the debt. I was young and stupid, now I'm just stupid.
That PC had a (brand spankin' new at the time) core 2 quad Q6600 2.4Ghz CPU in a XFX nForce 790i Ultra SLI motherboard. I fitted it with 2GB of DD3 RAM (which was fairly decent in 2008 AND DDR3 was quite rare to use then), Two XFX GeForce 8800 GS Graphics cards running in SLI and no idea what HDD I was using. This was a time when 4:3 aspect monitors were still available and that's what I was using for a while (until I bought something from a college friend). Windows XP was still king. Windows Vista was on the cards bu... Read More!


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