I love the website Cartesius, which has a trove of old topographic maps of Belgium.One of the maps that I consult the most is a stitch of all topographic maps of Belgium of 1969, zoomable and pannable like openstreetmaps. However, lately, the site has been acting strangely. The front portal continuously reloads, so it is …
Category Archives: Hacking
Repairing my fridge
I have a fridge I bought in 2009. In the door, there is a tray that holds heavy items like yoghurt cartons. That tray was held up with two tiny tabs on each side, which fall in a slot in the side of the tray. In 2013, those tabs broke off, which rendered the tray …
Using the LCD
I found an old beaten-up CD player a while back, and decided to take out the human interface card, with the LCD and buttons on it. In a previous episode, I managed to get the LCD to do something. Now, I will try to let it do exactly what I want it to do! The …
Scanning keys
Now that I deciphered where everything goes and how everything works, it was time to make sure I build a foundation to make the I/O a little more usable, instead of fetching raw data. Fist stop: make the input buttons accessible. Working with keypresses is actually not as simple as I intuitively thought. If you …
Controlling the card
I found an old beaten-up CD player a while back, and decided to take out the human interface card, with the LCD and buttons on it. In a previous post, I found out where all the connections on the PCB go and how they connect the buttons, LCD and chips together and what they do. …
Interfacing with a human interface card
I found an old beaten-up CD player (a Philips AK601) next to the trash container a while back.I picked it up, found it not worthy of being taken back into use, so I decided to open it up and maybe gut it for parts. I found a couple of motors inside, but what really drew …
Binders for cables — Bindstripjes voor snoeren
How to make DIY cable binders from double-sided velcro.
Hoe zelf kabelbinders maken van dubbelzijdig klittenband.
Restoring a template / een sjabloon restaureren
The ship I sailed on a lot, the Ebenhaëzer, is a so-called klipperaak — a ship with the front of a clipper and the rear of an aak.The front of a clipper — sometimes — has klipper curls [examples], which is a painted floral ornament, symmetrical on both sides Het schip waar ik veel op …
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Upgrading, no, Killing my media PC
I have a Lenovo ThinkCentre M73 as media centre, with beamer attached.It played most movies well, but some stuttered. It turned out this box doesn’t have the oomph to play movies. Adding a graphics card would help that. Today, I tried to add that graphics card, succeeded, and about 3 minutes afterwards, killed this pc.