This happened for me with the scene in one of the new star trek movies where they play beastie boys while busting out of a cloud or something. Idk, it was a really cool scene, but I was mad that I’d already seen it in the trailer. It’s ludicrous. I still complain about it to my wife to this day.

Thanks, I thought of something even better. Slap Linux on that thing! Wipe the whole drive on “accident”. Linux is way more innocuous than pirate Windows 🤷‍♂️

Go with humility first, you screwed up. Follow it up with a joke about how you discovered a flaw in the configuration of work laptops, and now they can fix it to prevent someone else from being able to do that 🤷‍♂️ I think you’ll be ok

Thank you. My favorite thing, can never not think of it

Thanks!

When you say you use this for your parents, are they connecting to your home jellyfin server?

I’m running Plex right now for me and my parents, and I’ve had to do practically no network shenanigans, it just works. I’m beginning to worry about the direction Plex is going though, so I’m looking into jellyfin. But I’ve read that configuring remote access can be more complicated.

Yeah the extremeRate kit! I bought it but haven’t installed it yet. I don’t actually have a problem with the buttons as is, but it fell like an interesting change to make

That’s fair, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it lol

Thanks!

Hmmm that sounds like it might have been deoxit. It’s worth trying again, but it can only do so much, eventually the resistive track just wears away.

If you need to solder in replacements, I wrote up a short starter suggestion comment elsewhere in this thread.

Glad I could help! It’s a skill to learn like anything else, but once you get the hang of it, it’s super easy 👍👍

I have a 600w ham radio amplifier from the 60s. It’s a Heathkit SB-200

I’m very proud of it because I bought it in rough condition, and repaired it myself. Replaced all the leaky capacitors and did some other work in there. Now it runs like a dream! It was my first time working with tube gear. The voltages in these things is 2500 volts, that’ll kill you dead before you know what happened.

I also have an SB-220 that I got broken. I fixed it up but didn’t do a full rebuild on it. It’ll do 1200 watts, but I don’t need that much power so I haven’t used it much. It’s in storage. That one is from the late 60s early 70s.

My next oldest device is also ham radio gear, a Kenwood TS-530S from the 80s. There’s a lot of solid state stuff inside, plenty of transistors doing all the work. But the final output stage is still a good ole pair of tubes. I bought this in non working condition, and fixed it myself as well. Good fun!

I have a 2600 that needs the same treatment, haven’t gotten to it

Did you try cleaning them with deoxit? That stuff works wonders on crunchy pots. Might be an easy fix!

Open it up and see if any of the capacitors are leaking! Soldering is a great skill to learn and you can fix it yourself.

The biggest problem people have is buying a bad soldering iron that gets way too hot. You can get an excellent iron for only 10 or 20 dollars more than the garbage out there. I used to recommend the TS-100, because that’s what I use and love, and they used to be way cheaper. The TS-80 was an upgrade to that, which was also nice but I never liked. If you’ve got the money, I still recommend them. However for the budget minded, the pinecil is almost the exact same thing, it’s well made, and it’s still like $30-40 bucks. In fact some people prefer it over the others. You can power it with a beefy USB-C charger if you have one, or an old laptop charger if you want to cut up the end and put a barrel jack on it. The thing pulls about 90 watts at full tilt, but only for brief periods.

Next you want to buy yourself some practice boards, you can get soldering kits from AliExpress that will let you build little flashing trees and hearts and stuff. Or even small handheld games if you’re getting better at soldering.

Then you watch YouTube tutorials, find several. You want to focus on quick work, at low ish temps like 280C, keep the tip clean, and flux is your friend. The very tippy tip of your iron should always be shiny, if it starts turning black, it’s building oxides from being too hot and not enough flux. Clean that thing with flux. If you leave it that way too long you’ll ruin it, that’s why most people struggle to solder.

Then once you’ve learned, and you’re ready to go. Watch YouTube videos on fixing the Xbox, buy the caps, crack that thing open and have fun. Caps aren’t that hard to replace, compared to other soldering projects. You’ll do fine 👍

Not that it does you much good now, but you might’ve had a bad fan. My unit is a preorder one, and the fan wasn’t broken, but it was just… Noticable, when it was on. It wasn’t enough for me to say it was broken or anything, but I could just tell when it was running, especially at full speed.

It didn’t bother me, because I was like wow this game is really pushing the Deck hard, I can really hear the fan. Etc etc.

Well after a few months of hard use the fan developed a click, it was a bad bearing or something. You could make it go away by tapping it.

Anywho to make a long story short, after getting a replacement that was DOA, and then getting a second replacement. The new fan was noticeably quiet. So quiet that I thought I had another DOA. But no, it was working perfectly. I just didn’t realize how bad the original fan was.

So now I have a very quiet Deck, and I’m quite happy about it 😁

I have friends that do the same thing. It’s terrible. We were watching a movie I had already seen last night, and someone wanted the subs on. I couldn’t focus on the movie and I ended up playing on my phone. The subs kill me.

Ham here too, what practical uses have you found? Mine is sitting in a box, I got it almost a year ago and haven’t checked the latest firmware or apps in almost that long.

We use our breville for hot water too

I did this last month in my 04 Honda CRV, such a massive upgrade. I don’t have steering wheel controls, and I didn’t want to tap a screen for volume control, so I went with the boss be7acp because it has a physical volume knob. Added a backup camera because why not.

It’s been a massive upgrade! Crutchfield is the bomb, installation wasn’t that hard, a bit fiddly getting to the wires for the backup and park, but I was done in a couple hours, backup camera included.