Notladstyle

Chronicals of Fail: False floor in my grand prix

2010-02-24T11:13:00.007-05:00

Here is a project I put together from scrap wood and old PC parts I had laying around the house. This was about 5 years ago, I was 17 or 18.

The idea was to put everything under a false floor - no wires in the way, no way to scratch the components, plenty of room to store stuff, and it had the potential to look really cool!

Only there were a few problems: it was really heavy, it make tweaking the settings on the amps near impossible, and the PC (a desktop pentium 4 board running off an inverter) drew a HUGE amount of power.

I got as far as putting some temporary carpet on it before I got bored and ditched it.

New fiberglass subwoofer enclosure

2009-10-05T17:09:00.004-04:00

The first subwoofer enclosure I ever made out of fiberglass was for myself. And I've had that box for 4 years!

Finally, I got around to making a new one.

Total cost for parts is about $90, excluding tools.
Speaking of tools, you will need at least a dremel and a rotary sander... sawzall and a heatgun will make thing a lot easier and quicker.

materials to make a fiberglass enclosure

Make sure you push out the bubbles in the mat as you paint it on.

Once you have the wheel well mold, the hard part is done

I cut in a little "toe" on my box to keep it from tipping when cornering hard.

Test fit OFTEN!!! I test fit after every cut, and every few layers.

Once you are satisfied with the mold, frame up the face. Test fit it before and after you glue it together to make sure it remains properly aimed.

Old t-shirts! they are free and work well.

Test fit it again

Safety first! Always wear protective gear while sanding and working with fiberglass.

Finished product!!

Dell Mini 12

2009-09-29T01:27:00.006-04:00

Its a shame Dell discontinued this thing. 12" LCD, 5 hours of battery life, less than an inch thick, and a 60GB hdd for less than $300 is a steal.

This thing rivals some $2000+ ultraportables if you can afford to wait a few extra seconds for programs to load. The touchpad is roomy, the keyboard is easy to type on, and it includes bluetooth, 3 x usb 2.0 ports, and an SD card reader.

With the 6 cell battery and the power adapter it weighs almost exactly 3lbs.

The problem, it takes sales away from Dell's higher end ultra portable systems, and the users who buy it are expecting a lot more processing power from it than they get. But I run office 2007 suite, firefox 3.5, and a java ME sdk with no problems at all. I also have the entire drive encrypted which runs in the background unnoticeable.

The suspend/resume in XP is quick and clean and almost never lags on finding a wireless signal by the time I've logged back in.

My desktop rig (new case & cooling)

2009-09-18T17:24:00.005-04:00

Well my rig wasnt as cool as I wanted so I grabbed the ol jigsaw and added some fans.

e8400 3.0Ghz 6MB L2 cache
OCZ Vanquish CPU Cooler
OCZ 700w 4 rail PSU
Nvidia GTX 260 core 216
GSkill DDR3 1333mhz 4 x 1GB
WD Black 500GB Drive

2 x 120mm fans = cool.

Stealthy under the desk...

An ODE to my Cheap, Quiet, and Versitile NAS

2009-01-16T18:18:00.006-05:00

I've had the same Pentium 3 motherboard with a P3 800e chip running for almost seven years now. Its purpose over the years has changed greatly though. When I first picked it up I was 17 and traded a cheap set of car speakers for it.

When I first got it, it had a 20gb hdd and 128mb of ram. I used it to play old games until I got a p4 laptop for my birthday and totally forgot about it.

Then I started messing with server software and pressed it into use as an internet gateway with windows NT4. It crashed frequently due to what I eventually discovered was a bad hdd cable...

My server in 2001

We moved to California from North Carolina and it moved with me. Since it was a most unreliable internet gateway, our family bought an internet router and my server became a free agent. I experimented with all kinds of software from mail servers to game servers, it still came in handy the most for backing up files during my frequent formatting runs on my other computers. Thanks to my trusty server, I have been able to archive almost every photo and file I have ever saved.

Over the years it has been retrofitted with parts needed to keep it useful - a SATA controller for storage drives, a gigabit LAN card for more bandwidth, more ram for hosting applications... But the motherboard and CPU have never had to be upgraded.

The great thing about the pentium 3 chips was their incredibly low power consumption and heat dissipation. My board is almost always room temp and the chip is usually 4-5c above room temp. The fans spin at 20% throttle and are almost whisper quiet. The power supply in my box is 85 watts - total. Since theres no need for processing power in a NAS, its a win win.

As it stands now, my trusty server is running Server 2003 and still acts as a file server but it also runs a torrent client and print server. When I need to get into it, I use windows RDP as there is no keboard, no mouse, and no screen.

I use a zalman fanmate2 to keep all of the fans running at their lowest speed and even then the case temp is never more than 2c over room temp. I also attribute the good temps to the case - it draws in air only from the front and across the drives and then out the PSU and exhaust fan, all of the other vents are blocked off.

Pentium 3 800mhz
1024MB pc133 SDRAM
Silicon image SIL3512 sata to PCI
Etherlink 1gb NIC
2 Seagate 7200.11 1 tb SATA drive (redundant storage)
1 seagate baracuda 40gb IDE drive(os)

Audi LED running lights on a grand prix?!

2008-12-06T03:04:00.003-05:00

There is no limit to my madness. Now my foglights will match my headlights! These are just prototypes - the finished ones should be a little cleaner looking and have a brighter green glow.

Kinda reminds me of the Hulk.
"Don't make me angry... you wont like me when I'm angry."

The flash really washes out the color

Finals Week!!!

2008-12-01T02:56:00.000-05:00

Its finals week and my living room has become a filing cabinet.

You see, my method is to surf the internet and chat during class, and then cram all the information from the past four months into four days before the exam.

Spider for payment on overdue account

2008-11-19T18:58:00.003-05:00

Too funny not to repost

New active directory server!

2008-11-16T20:10:00.004-05:00

So I built a new active directory server for work. Though I tried to fight it, I couldn't resist sprucing it up a bit.

We aren't quite ready to roll out exchange, so basically this box will just backup the most critical files and deploy group policy. More importantly though, it will make the hallway look oh so pretty.

It's running server 08, havent decided if I'll try out x64 or not. The specs are relatively modest since I had a very small budget to work with and no need to go all out.

The sad part is all the other IT guys laugh at me because I cant resist the LEDs =(

Oh well, someday I will have an entire server room filled with LED packed glowing servers. muhahahahhahahahaha

What a pretty couple!

2008-11-15T15:01:00.002-05:00

What a pretty yard!

Athsma sucks

2008-10-24T18:17:00.004-04:00

Ugh, for a week and a half I haven't been able to get a good nights sleep because of asthma attacks waking me up. Its been years since I had attacks this bad. Must be good old air pollution.

In other news, I got an awesome IT job at a small cpa company. The extra cash is always good around the house... or in my computer case :D

I really hate the new cfc free albuterol inhalers - they suck. I'm going to hoard my trusy and reliable ozone depleting aerosol inhalers as long as I can :D

Life with a Nokia N810

2008-09-23T19:11:00.010-04:00

My wife's birthday gift to me was Nokia N810 Internet Tablet PC. This little wonder packs a great deal into a VERY small package.

This handheld is a complete PC running a thin version of Linux called Maemo. The latest version, OS 2008, is pretty stable. It automatically grabs updates and can install them without reflashing.

This tiny PC fits in your pocket or bag and is so convenient to bring everywhere.

The hardware specs are as following:
400Mhz ARM cpu
128MB RAM
2GB Local storage
256MB OS flash ROM
4.1" lcd screen 800 x 480 resolution
resistive touch lcd display
GPS receiver
Blutooth enabled
Stereo speakers
3.5mm Audio Jack

Out of the box, Nokia has included everything you need to make the N810 a lightweight internet client that plays MP3s. The browser called MiniB, is capable of rendering almost all webpages since it can run javascript and Flash 9 apps. It is on the slow side however, a 40kb page with a few images will take 5 to 10 seconds to fully load, which is both due to the slow nature of the flash memory and the limited CPU power.

The included media player hd no problems with MP3s, MPEG4, and DIVX files, but wouldnt play DIVX5 videos. But readily avalable are thousands of addon programs among which is the popular program called 'mplayer' which has played every video format I have thrown at it.

I've found that the CPU is not the limiting factor in video playback, but the flash rams transfer speed. when streaming from the network, the N810 is capable of playing 720x480(dvd res) divx videos at 24fps.

While traveling, I encode my videos at 400 x 240 with about 200kbs which allows an entire season of CSI NY to occupy less than 1GB of space.

The included email client is basic, but finger friendly and opens and runs quickly. It is capable of connecting to IMAP and pop servers including compatible webmail servers like Yahoo! and Gmail. I currently use Gmail and it automatically logs in and check for new messages every 10 minutes. It will sound an alert and flash a blue LED located in the top left corner when a new message is received. Both these features can be disabled if so wanted. There are also several third part email clients written for hte N810 which I have not tried.

The qwerty keyboard is very handy when you need to type a paragraph quickly, for most internet browsing and quick lookups online, I usually use the on screen keyboard. A common complaint about the keyboard is the proximity of the top row of buttons to the screen. It does slightly slow down the speed of typing but I don't think many people will be typing essays on their N810s.

Battery Life on the N810 is AMAZING. the stock battery will run for more than 5 hours with constant video playback, 10 hours with MP3 playback, and will sit in instant on standby for 10 days.

On top of that, replacement batteries are cheap. Genuine Nokia batteries run $40, knockoffs are half that. There is also a double capacity battery made by a european company that doubles the run time of the N810.

Gaming on the N810 will bring waves of nostalgia. Some light searching online found several popular game ports straight to maemo, and even better, emulators for DOS, and other gaming platforms such as the Nintendo NES, Sega Master system, and Game Gear.

Below the Nokia N810 running DOSBox and Civilization through DOS. DOSBox also allows fullscreen mode and uses the keyboard and touch screen input.

Here is the N810 running MasterGear, a Sega Master System Emulator ported to Maemo. The compatibility isnt 100%, but I was able to run more than half my collection of roms with no problems. Brings back memories of good times...

The N810 isnt limited to just emulators when it comes to games though, some classics like Doom and Quake have been ported straight to Maemo.

My Birthday Wishlist!

2008-08-25T21:27:00.007-04:00

Hurry for birthdays!

Dell D/Dock PD01X with 130w power adapter
Link to ebay auction

Nokia N 810

^ maybe an extra battery and / or memory card

~~Camera Tripod~~(Thank you Yumbly!)

~~Seagate Hdd~~ (Thank you Booness)

Eary Birthday present to myself!

2008-08-09T22:08:00.004-04:00

Well my new laptop came with a DVI-I connector in order to use high res displays, so I though when is a better time than now to take advantage of it?

I ordered an Acer x203w 20" lcd off newegg for 169.99 w/ free shipping on a weekend sale. I was blown away with the picture quality. The only thing that I don't like it the short little stub they call a stand - it sits like 2 inches off the desk.

The screen itself it superb though. There is almost no light bleed, and the monitor was so bright out of the box, I had to turn it down to almost half of what it was by default.

I haven't done much gaming yet, but World of Warcraft looks as good as a game that old can. Its a whole new experience surfing the web on a 1680 x 1050 widescreen vs a 1280 x 1024 standard ratio screen.

On another note, I gotta give an A++ to the UPS guy - my house has a 8ft fence around it, and the carport is inside the gate so there's almost nowhere to leave a package especially one that is the retail LCD box(wtf was newegg thinking?) where it's out of the way. The UPS guy CLIMBED the fence to leave the package under my carport so it was covered. WOW.

I wish I could figure out who it was so I could give him/her a tip.

Newegg shipped it in this box... whats up with that?

I ordered a Dell Precision M90 Laptop

2008-07-24T16:48:00.009-04:00

I recently picked up a Dell Precision M90 Laptop from the dell outlet. It has a Nvidia Quadro fx 2500M video card and I was a little worried I would have issues with gaming, but after some research, the 2500M is apparently identical to the 7900GTX so I went ahead and bought it. Wow, I am impressed. I tend to stay at least one generation behind state of hte art so that I can always get the best value, and with this laptop I definietly got a great deal.

Specs:
Core2Duo t7200 2.0Ghz 4MB L2Cache 666 Mhz fsb
2GB DDR2 666mhz Ram
80GB 7200 RPM hdd
Nvidia Quadro fx2500M 512MB DDR3
Intel PRO Wireless 3945ABG
17" Matte LCD 1400x900

Gaming is much better than on my Inspiron which had an x1400 video card. The 7900 series is the top of the line gaming model from early 2007, and because it was the fastest and greatest thing it can still play modern games at medium settings. And it flies at anything released in 2007.

The m90 itself isn't built for mobility, or for long battery life, its sole purpose is to pack as much power into a notebook computer as is possible and still be able to technically call it a laptop.

The 9 cell Lithium Ion battery runs for about 2 hours with the video in miser mode. With the video at full power, that time almost halves to just over an hour.

The M90 is equipped with two fans; one that cools the CPU and GPU, and the other just for the GPU. Yes it gets that hot. at idle, the fx2500 sits at 60c and under load, it jumps to 75-80c. I've found that running vsync in games really helps to keep the GPU cool since it lowers the load on the gpu while it waits for the next frame rendering request.

The case is solid, it is made out of an aluminum-magnesium-alloyish type material that really screams firmness. the LCD is rock hard in comparison to the Inspiron's flimsy plastic.

The keyboard is roomy, and keys are responsive without being overly firm, very quiet, but the center of the keyboard near the top tends to get hot from the graphics card that sits directly underneath.

Overall, a very good buy at $800. The only thing that I didn't like about this laptop was the vista ultimate that came preinstalled. So I promptly removed it and installed XP Pro. As it is now, I am running stock drivers and 3dmark05 net the following:

And here are the detailed specs for the notebook.

June!!!

2008-06-24T21:19:00.005-04:00

The new voltage regulators I used for the angel eyes are holding up great. I am getting tired of circles though. Maybe its time for Xs...

I replaced the kenwood mp4028 pictured below... I really need to get some updated pics of that. I still have the lcd though.

all red LED lighting, the passenger compartment also has white LED lighting that switches with the doors.

25% Tinted windows vs Sock tint on a Grand Prix

2008-06-21T13:41:00.005-04:00

Stock windows compared to 25% tint. I used llumar tint. it is by FAR the best. Solar Guard cannot compare.

Acura RSX fiberglass subwoofer enclosure project log

2008-06-20T23:27:00.013-04:00

I spent my Friday working on a super fun fiberglass project! Heres some pics even though its not done yet, probably one be 100% done till next week when I can pick up the carpet.

The install sub is a JL 10w6v2. Our target airspace is .62 cuft

Taping off the trunk. Everything is covered in plastic to prevent accidents from becoming permanent damage.

Rough mold pulled out after one layer of mat hardened

Two layers of glass and then trimmed down the mold and sanded the rough spots

Frame to hold the flush mount ring in place

Cloth pulled tight around wood frame

Cloth coated with resin and one layer of mat layed

Thats all for tonight!

The rain is slowing my progress - I built the box up to three layers and test fitted the sub. The rest will have to wait till the rain stops.

Test fitting the 10w6 looks nice in the flush ring. Once carpet is in place it will be a snug and very flush fit.

I'm trying out some new stuff calls bondo glass, so far it has been pretty impressive when mixed with resin & mat. It makes forming things a lot easier and it's strong.

Sanded down and waiting for carpet.

And heres the final product

Installed in drivers wheel well.

Here is the setup with the two PPI amps installed:

Replace the wheel bearings in a 2003 Pontiac Grand Prix

2008-06-02T00:42:00.018-04:00

What I needed for the job:

Breaker bar
Ratchet
1/2" socket - a regular and an extended
15mm Socket
3" socket Extension
36mm lug socket
Flathead screwdriver
Wheel lug remover
Jack
Jack Stand (or bricks)

- Remove the tire.

- Put the transmission in neutral - be sure to set the ebrake and chock the rear wheels.

- Push the screwdriver through the rotor fins and the caliper bracket in order to lock it.

- Using the 36mm lug socket, remove the lug nut that secures the bearing assembly.

- Remove the screwdriver

- Use the 15mm socket to remove the two caliper bolts

- Remove the rotor

- Remove the ABS sensor connector

- There are three bolts that secure the bearing assembly, they are somewhat difficult to get to around the CV joint which is why I needed the extended 1/2" and the 3" extender. Turn the steering wheel to the sides to make reaching the bolts easier.

- Once the three bolts are removed, the bearing should slide off the CV join. If it doesn't, lightly tap the end of the cv joint to loosen it and pull outwards on the bearing.

- Thats it! put it back on in the opposite order and BE SURE to use the breaker bar to torque all of the bolts tight and don't forget you will probably need an alignment on your front end too.

My New Halos

2008-04-08T21:38:00.005-04:00

I finished building my new halos. They are 18,000mcd 5mm LEDs with a single 10mm 4000mcd Green LED in the center.

Two years later...

2008-02-14T18:43:00.007-05:00

I've almost entirely removed the neon lights and replaced them with LED lights. I accidentally broke my plasma ball and haven't decided if I will replace it. My old LED foglights got sprayed with paint when I got my bumper repainted so I am rebuilding them to be brighter and I'm adding a little color as well...

My Car

2005-12-06T15:41:00.001-05:00

My car is a 2003 Grand Prix GT. I hope to have this car for a long time so I haven't done any mods to the engine. I have done quite a few things electronicly because thats my specialty ;)

I built the angel eyes from scratch using 64 5mm LEDs arranged in a tight circle. They are powered by a 12v regulator and together they consume less than 400ma of power - the stock lights had a 7amp draw!

I also have color changing LED lights on the bottom which are going to disapear soon because they are difficult to keep clean and I dont think they match the style I'm going for. I might put some very bright white LEDs on later.

I currently have a fiberglass corner subwoofer enclosure in my trunk that I also made myself. The box measures just over 1 cuft and houses a Diamond D312d2 12" subwoofer. It is driven off of a Polk 300.2 amplifier that puts out 450wRMS into 4 ohms. For its size, it has a decent response graph.

I also have a kenwood mp4028 MP3 headunit and kenwood excellon mids.

As of now, I have a 6.5" LCD in the center console and a DVD player in my glove box. I'm planning to get an integrated TV tuner dvd player in the future to make better use of the screen.

Pictures of stereo components coming when i remember to upload them ;)

Of course, no true ricer mobile is complete without a plasma ball...