And it ended with the USB...

Finally, I bought the USB replacement part today and it was so expensive. For that price, I can buy a lot of resistors for that same amount. Yes it was RM1.00 and if it went any higher than RM100.00, I would have bought a new printer instead.

But it didn't.

And so, here I am.

In my room.

Taking the stupid PCB out yesterday was really frustrating. Its like trying to fish out a loose screw in the hot engine bay of your car..

Just to replace this snapped off USB port

Guess where all you extra ink went?

Yep. Its black, rubberish, soggy and when you step on it, you need to clean the floor on the whole house.

Before putting it back, some cleaning first. This is one of those alingment strip which tells the printer its current position. Since its the family printer, it is not funny to draw extra lines on it.

There. All done and off it goes to Papa Room for testing!

@#$&*! Its not working! And after an hour of doing this, one of the frail ribbon cable snaps and that's it. No matter how I tried to repair it, it won't connect. And this is not the main problem where the printer head just goes to one side and the rollers made stupid sounds.
And so, because someone snapped the USB connected, the printer literally died a gruesome death in the hands of a clumsy fat gorilla. Although it lasted us about nearly seven years, I don't think we're going back to HP so soon. It does its job well but there were no heavy jobs to make it stand out from the rest of the competition.

But then again, this is generally for home use and for the printer to last that long, it is actually very, very good.

Three motors

While we were discussing about stuff today, Kenny mentioned that he wanted some of the small motors I bought for Bruce for his SFTPMS Battle of Britain Group Build. I bought a lot because Bruce said he wanted about 20 but in the end, I was left with about 16 motors...

Soldered and tested the motor for Kenny for pick up.
I told Kenny he could have some because there are still a lot left. Not only that, I am worried that he might find the motors spinning a little bit too fast since these are designed to be vibrator motors for early mobile phones and pagers.

[Update: End August]
I really hope he finds the motor's speed just right because the last of the PCB boards which I used to control the motor's speed has been sold to another friend... as a welding flicker. Ha!

 [Update: Early Sept]
Whoa... just found that the last PCB I sold to my friend has been sold to another guy because he wanted it more than him. One thing that he told me that its sometimes very hard to describe things to people unless they see it and sometimes, when they do see it, they still don't understand... I offered to make another one for him but he said, no hurry. OK, so this PCB design might be a hit.

Trip to HHQ 27082012

I decided to spend the remaining hours of the day here after my Wife said she will pick up the kids. It was a long day, something which I would not want to mention for the time being.

These were on sale and they're very very old. I mean, look at the box. Its Matchbox/AMT, back during the days when they were very strong on the hobby scene. I like the Road Boss.

Although the parts looks the age, I would not want to build it but to frame it if possible.

I have not seen this before and again, this is nice but I would have problems fitting it into a diorama since most of the model kits nowadays are of modern types. Yes, do it as an antique show on a revolving stage, I suppose.

Quality-wise, the parts are very good but since I am spoilt by crisp details nowadays, its very hard to convince myself to get these anymore.

Aha... what a nice little place. This C-160. I was not sure why I am attracted to it but well, its better than a Hercules. Oh, hey, it has those landing ramps!

And so do these! The Spartan looks promising since the undercarriage looks 'fierce' and also, it looks massive from the box.

OK, a flying wing. If I did not check on the box, I would assume the size is the same as the box. But its when fully built. Which is 71.8cm, a little bit too big for me. But to be honest, I don't even know where to display it and because its silver, airbrushing it is also another problem since I do not have one.