Richard
@messaroundery.net
Co-developer @86box.net, compulsive storyteller with the most random interests.
Reposted by Richard
T H I S I S R E A L T O U C H
November 2, 2025 at 2:06 AM
T H I S I S R E A L T O U C H
Reposted by Richard
This 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.
October 23, 2025 at 3:39 PM
This 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.
Unearthing an Android app that hasn't been compiled in years is always fun. You have SDKs, JDKs, Android Studio telling you to install a different Gradle every step of the way, small Gradle syntax changes, library dependencies that were lost to the JCenter shutdown...
October 13, 2025 at 6:11 PM
Unearthing an Android app that hasn't been compiled in years is always fun. You have SDKs, JDKs, Android Studio telling you to install a different Gradle every step of the way, small Gradle syntax changes, library dependencies that were lost to the JCenter shutdown...
Reposted by Richard
if you love something, take it apart until you understand it, then share it with the world.
August 25, 2025 at 9:11 PM
if you love something, take it apart until you understand it, then share it with the world.
A 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.
August 12, 2025 at 9:11 PM
A 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.
Reposted by Richard
My old Wikipedia Chain experiment (inspired by xkcd 214) is now working again after modern browsers broke it. Also added the ability to start from a random page.
richardg867.github.io/wikichain
The Fediverse bot at mastodon.xyz/@wikipediach... is still going after years of zero maintenance.
richardg867.github.io/wikichain
The Fediverse bot at mastodon.xyz/@wikipediach... is still going after years of zero maintenance.
Wikipedia Chain
Clicking random links on Wikipedia articles couldn't be more fun.
richardg867.github.io
July 28, 2025 at 10:31 PM
My old Wikipedia Chain experiment (inspired by xkcd 214) is now working again after modern browsers broke it. Also added the ability to start from a random page.
richardg867.github.io/wikichain
The Fediverse bot at mastodon.xyz/@wikipediach... is still going after years of zero maintenance.
richardg867.github.io/wikichain
The Fediverse bot at mastodon.xyz/@wikipediach... is still going after years of zero maintenance.
The 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.
July 25, 2025 at 1:25 PM
The 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.
Had a BSOD today, and a frame from the video I was watching managed to sneak in through the GPU video decoder!
July 15, 2025 at 9:51 PM
Had a BSOD today, and a frame from the video I was watching managed to sneak in through the GPU video decoder!
Built 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.
June 27, 2025 at 1:51 PM
Built 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.
Reposted by Richard
The existence of Norway implies the existence of Nandway.
May 24, 2025 at 6:18 PM
The existence of Norway implies the existence of Nandway.
In 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.
May 5, 2025 at 10:50 PM
In 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.
There'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.
April 16, 2025 at 7:34 PM
There'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.
The Thunderbolt port failure issue with some ThinkPads bit me... or so I thought. My X390 showed some (controller gone) but not all (15W charging) symptoms, and I'm sure it already had the fixed firmware. A hard reset through the bottom pinhole brought it back to normal.
April 2, 2025 at 4:51 PM
The Thunderbolt port failure issue with some ThinkPads bit me... or so I thought. My X390 showed some (controller gone) but not all (15W charging) symptoms, and I'm sure it already had the fixed firmware. A hard reset through the bottom pinhole brought it back to normal.
Reposted by Richard
The Windows API is... wild. You're trying to change the color of a button and the answer is like "use setwindowshookex to inject a dll back into its own process using some undocumented GUID" and you're like, surely this is a hack, but its how Word 97 did it so it's part of the official docs now
February 12, 2025 at 2:23 PM
The Windows API is... wild. You're trying to change the color of a button and the answer is like "use setwindowshookex to inject a dll back into its own process using some undocumented GUID" and you're like, surely this is a hack, but its how Word 97 did it so it's part of the official docs now
Had to deal with an Android app that wouldn't build because two dependencies are pinned to versions that were only ever uploaded to JCenter which is gone now. Just those specific versions, all others are on Maven Central. Guess I'm too used to centralized repos like PyPI and npm.
March 20, 2025 at 2:23 PM
Had to deal with an Android app that wouldn't build because two dependencies are pinned to versions that were only ever uploaded to JCenter which is gone now. Just those specific versions, all others are on Maven Central. Guess I'm too used to centralized repos like PyPI and npm.
Latest 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.
February 12, 2025 at 7:12 PM
Latest 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.
Cursed 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.
January 8, 2025 at 7:23 PM
Cursed 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.
Obligatory: 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.
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.
December 16, 2024 at 2:35 PM
Obligatory: 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.
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.
One 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.
December 8, 2024 at 11:23 PM
One 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.
Latest 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.
November 28, 2024 at 1:11 PM
Latest 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.
Protip: don't let a Windows 11 machine run with no disk space for an extended period of time. UWP falls apart, you lose search and the Terminal, and fixing this is a world of hurt. I got away with an OS reset followed by manual repairs, but reinstalling is best.
November 18, 2024 at 7:45 PM
Protip: don't let a Windows 11 machine run with no disk space for an extended period of time. UWP falls apart, you lose search and the Terminal, and fixing this is a world of hurt. I got away with an OS reset followed by manual repairs, but reinstalling is best.
Bad 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.
November 11, 2024 at 10:19 PM
Bad 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.
Just dug up a "Coov N100 Plus" Nintendo Switch controller converter from many years ago. Was in firmware update mode, the file has disappeared from the web but I found it in my data hoard. Unfortunately this device is too old for Xbox Series controllers. messaroundery.net/assets/files...
messaroundery.net
November 4, 2024 at 2:48 AM
Just dug up a "Coov N100 Plus" Nintendo Switch controller converter from many years ago. Was in firmware update mode, the file has disappeared from the web but I found it in my data hoard. Unfortunately this device is too old for Xbox Series controllers. messaroundery.net/assets/files...