Restore or upgrade some older tech!

I have in my hands an item that is at least 40 years old haha

This camera belonged to my grandfather and I've seen many moments in photos that this relic has immortalized! My grandfather was an enthusiast of technology, even in times when it was advancing at “small steps”. I wonder how he would be today in this world where technology is making huge leaps forward day after day, he would be fascinated!

We keep these and other relics here at home as a way of keeping a bit of these very special people too. This bounty made me want to rescue it and try to get it working again. I've given it a general clean, and with a change of filter and a new film, maybe I can make some records with this relic!

For a while, I had a popcorn machine lying around. I got it as a gift years ago, but it never worked properly, either not heating up or the fan not spinning. This is a situation when a repair shop asks for three times the price of the device. Throwing away nearly new electronics feels weird and doesn't help the environment.

So, thanks to this bounty, I finally found time to get my hands on it and try to fix it.

After removing all the covers (it was quite problematic due to some weird triangular screw heads) and getting to the engine chamber, I found the problem. The wire clamps were damaged. After releasing them properly to the wires, the machine started to work!

So, even if I'm not getting a reward, kids can now make healthy oil-free popcorn.

I had this old Lenovo office computer sitting around for about two years. A friend gave it to me when his company upgraded their tech, but when I tested it, it wouldn’t even turn on. I thought, "Well, I could sell it for parts and make a little profit". But I never got around to it.

When I saw this bounty, I immediately remembered the PC and thought, "You know what? Let’s take a look". The LEDs weren’t lighting up, so I figured it was either a motherboard or power supply issue. I tested the power supply on another computer, and it was fine. Then I checked the motherboard and discovered the RAM… RIP. For some reason, the RAM was covered in rust - only the RAM?!

Then I bought a 2GB DDR3 stick for R$25 (about $5) and popped it into a clean slot to avoid dealing with the rusty one. Boom! It worked!

It was probably the easiest repair I’ve ever done. Honestly, I wish I were a tech restorer so I could charge at least $50 for this fix and the cleaning I did haha. The total cost was the same as the reward, but it was a fun adventure and now I can even sell the PC to someone. Oh, and I also formatted the system, but that part was straightforward.

Loved being part of this!

This upgrade was actually a two-step process.

I had been planning to upgrade my home server for a while, specifically to install powerful NVMe drives for caching, particularly for virtualization. Since this would involve heavy read and write operations, I chose SN700 WD Red drives, which are rated for server/NAS use and designed to handle such workloads. To accelerate both read and write speeds while ensuring redundancy, I set up a pair of these drives in RAID 1 to protect against data loss.

Knowing that NVMe (or any SSDs) are susceptible to data loss during power outages, I also added a small 360W UPS to provide an extra 60 minutes of power for saving data and shutting down properly. These units are fairly inexpensive—I picked mine up for $60.

After installation, however, I wasn’t entirely happy with the temperatures the drives were running at: 55°C. While this is perfectly within normal operating limits and well below throttling thresholds, I decided to go for a cheap upgrade: heatsinks. I installed aftermarket heatsinks with large heat dissipation surfaces for just $8, and they brought the operating temperature down to 42°C - a significant reduction.

Now I’ve got excellent cache acceleration running at a much lower temperature. Mission accomplished!


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JA has a bug with connecting Instagram (already reported) so I'm adding a random video, otherwise, it does not allow me to submit

I took my DSLR, which was just going to gather dust, and gave it a new life.

I astromodified it so I could continue using it for my astrophotography hobby.

Basically, I opened up my DSLR and removed one of the two filters in front of the sensor, which is responsible for blocking the reds in photos. This way, I can capture the hydrogen alpha from nebulae.

The video is in Portuguese, but the entire process is recorded there.