Roku Lives Again!

Finally got the parts in that I needed to finish repairs on the power supply for the Roku Soundbridge Internet Radio. I ordered the parts off of Ebay but didn't notice they were in Bejing, China. So, it took a little while to get here. The return address is from Ding Dong Feng. I swear...you can't make that stuff up! After working a bit and replacing parts, I finally powered up the radio. It lives once again! The only downside is that you need a remote control to program the unit. Fortunately, the Roku company sells them for $20. Not a bad price....so I ordered one. In the meanwhile, I will be able to listen to AM and FM stations just using the radio panel controls. Sounds pretty darn good! Thanks again to Chris "Kid Guzzi" Galardi for pulling it from a neighbors trash and giving it to me!

At Home Sick....But Still Busy....

Thursday night I came down with a nasty cold / flu bug that has really hit me hard. However, today I am starting to feel a little better. So, whilst I am moving slow I am still able to do some work on arcade boards. I have a few that will be going up for sale on Ebay this weekend. So far I have a Ms Pacman boardset, a Phoenix boardset, and a Popeye boardset. Tomorrow I hope to have a Donkey Kong boardset and a Gunsmoke boardset ready to sell as well. Maybe more...we'll see.

Also have to pull out the snowblower from the shed in the backyard as we are to expect some 2" - 4" of snow tomorrow and upwards of 8" on Tuesday. Not looking forward to that!

Sea Wolf finds a new home

Ever since I sold a Sea Wolf video game to a friend it has haunted me (see January 29th post). Came back to me after a week and has been here ever since (3 months now). I give up. Every time I fix one issue another pops up. Only the 2nd game to ever defeat my repair skills! I had it close to working and my friend finally said, "Just sell it". I put it on ebay not expecting much and a prospective buyer offered a nice sum of money to buy it direct. So, It will be on its way to California shortly. I wish it a fond farewell. My next projects are a Ms Pacman cocktail arcade game fresh in from Clermont, Florida (already fixed and working...just needs cleaning) and a Bullwinkle pinball machine. Looking forward to some pinball work....always fun for me! I will post pics of both soon.

New Project

My good friend, Chris Galardi, has finally moved back from Florida. Welcome home Chris...good to have you back! One of the things he found while unpacking was a non-working Roku Soundbridge R1000 radio. Pretty cool device. It connects to a wireless network to bring you free internet radio stations. Chris told me that it simply doesn't power up any longer and that it was mine if I wanted it. After graciously accepting this radio, I took it home to look at it. I did a little research on google for problems pertaining to this model of radio. Most of what I found pointed to a power supply issue. I was not able to find any schematics for the power supply so I was going to be flying by the seat of my pants with this. I opened up the unit (no easy task) and after an hour, I finally got to the power supply. I did find some puffed up capacitors. Those are definitely bad and can be caused by too much power or just faulty manufacturing. The google search said to replace them all. I have all but two in my stock and will need to order them. I will replace them with higher voltage rated caps. Hopefully, that will be the fix. Here are a few pics:







The Roku Soundbridge Radio



















The power supply to the radio











A couple of the "puffed" capacitors

Windows 7

I have been using Windows 7 enterprise version at work for the past few weeks and really like it. Recently, I purchased a refurbed pc from Dell and it came with a free Win 7 upgrade. Got the upgrade yesterday and installed it last night. The more I play with Win 7 the more I like it. Once I move all my apps over to the new pc, I will give the old one to my dad. Then I will take his old one and give it to my daughter. Cripes....I should open a freaking computer store!

And so it begins....

Early October and the flaky Nebraska weather holds true...flaky...
I am not ready for winter. Summer went by too quickly this year. Didn't
get nearly enough bike riding in.

Current events

Well, lets see what's been happening....
Found that I had a wasp nest in my back yard. Discovered this as I ran over it with the mower and got stung 11 times. Had the pest control folks come out and take care of that. Removed a bunch of bushes from my front yard. What a pain! Big stumps remained until this past weekend. Rented a stump remover (didn't even know those things existed) and took out all the stumps. Yard looks a lot different. More spacious now. I like it! On the game front...
I was getting ready to start working on a Bullwinkle pinball game until a friend of mine asked that I work on his submarine game. So...working on that now. Torpedo's keep shooting to the left or right but never centered. Found that one or two ic chips keep frying within a minute or two of replacing them. Trying to trace down that issue.
I will be getting some new neighbors soon. Current neighbors sold their house. Very nice folks that I hate to see go, but will not miss their 3 yapping little dogs. Always, always barking. Fun to see my dog go over to the fence, the little yappers come over to bark, and my dog pee's on them.
I will have some pic's soon to add to the blog!