Various updates

1/1/2022

I haven't made a post in over 6 months because my website generator has had a bug with pagination and I haven't bothered to do anything about it.

I've become very interested in the hobby of soldering and have spent a lot of time practicing. I acquired a Pinecil iron, a holder, hotair station, DC power supply, cheap microscope, extra ts100 soldering tips, flux/solder/alcohol dispenser/good precision tweezers etc. I've been taking things apart, removing components and soldering them back on, mostly laptop motherboards. I've repaired a few broken items of mine so far (a wire breaking in a servo motor, ch341a voltage mod, a "smart" light bulb for a family member with an internal trace ripped), so these skills have come into use.

I purchased another Thinkpad x200, this time a Japanese import with a JIS keyboard, I think it's pretty neat.

I purchased two IBM Model M keyboards from ebay (1391401 from 1988 and a 1390120 from 1986). One keyboard was in great mechanical and electrical condition, I just disassembled the shell and cleaned each key and the shell, it works perfectly and I am using it now. The other, the 1390120 with a square medal badge from 1986 felt like typing on a sponge. So I have completely cleaned the shell/keys and am waiting on hardware to arrive to bolt mod it.

I'm going to start putting out more posts.

Here is a couple of photos of my soldering/desk setup and the x200 and keyboards.