Sae-chan 1

Sometime ago, when Shizuma was being used as an FTP server and bound to the laptop cooler I made (I didn't want to carry her around because of the heat issues) and after I got rid of the netbook I had (the original Triela, but tbh, Triela didn't really fit as a name for that netbook), but before I got Triela, I was using Sae-chan for when I went over to my best friend's place. I was using the Bluetooth mouse that I was using with Shizuma (Shizuma had a different mouse) for Sae-chan with a bluetooth dongle.

At some point, I was poking around the internet to see if I was able to buy the Bluetooth adapter for Sae-chan, and found a way to solder a Bluetooth dongle to a wire harness and plug it into the jack where the Bluetooth adapter would connect to (turns out the jack is just a USB port). At first I had a bit of extra wire, but that caused some sort of problem, so I soldered the run of wire of the wire harness to the dongle itself.

Dongle soldered to harness, black stuff is liquid electrical "tape".

It worked decently, but I had a very limited range, since the dongle was encased in metal and couldn't really send/receive though it very well. Late last year though, I looked up a way to boost the range and found that soldering a wire to the antenna run on the PCB helps. I pre-ran the wire to the screen bezel to get an idea for the length that I'd need (plus a bit of extra, just in case), soldered the wire to the antenna run on the Bluetooth dongle, then set the dongle in and ran the wire.

I decided to ditch the plastic housing because I didn't want to waste time drilling a small hole and feeding the wire though it, so I just encased the dongle in electrical tape to prevent any short-circuits.

Dongle plugged in and set in place; the black rectangle is the electrical tape-encased dongle, and the yellow wire is the wire that's soldered to the antenna run on the dongle.

The wire follows some of the cords that go into the screen/lid area and tucks to the front/side corner inside it (I don't have a picture of this, unfortunately). Now the range is a lot better and I don't have to use the mouse on top of the keyboard for best reception (sad but true XDD).

While the lid was off, I decided to modify the colour of the apple. I used some cut squares from thick, pink anti-static bags, which gave it a nice light pink colour, and was okay when the light was on and shining though, but it wasn't what I had in mind. The picture with the light on didn't turn out well because the phone used it as the reference for white balancing.... -_-;;

Mod with the light off.

Originally, I wanted to use some red wrapper stuff I saved from Valentine's day long ago, but I couldn't find it (I think I tossed it, thinking I'd never use it), and so that's why I settled with the anti-static stuff... But I recently got more of the red wrapping stuff, and tested it out with my best friend's iBook G4.

It turned out well; the colour is more of a hot pink, which is a lot more noticeable. I then cut out a proper square for Sae-chan and installed it (after taking the old stuff off, obviously). When the light is off, it shows up red, but turns hot pink when the light is on.

Light off and light on. (Again, the phone failed balancing the white correctly, so the pink's actually darker than in this picture)

My best friend was surprised how it turned out.

I don't use Sae-chan much, but I don't have a good reason to retire her XDD

Melty 3

I got the LEDs from Jameco a couple days ago and was finally able to start working on swapping the LEDs of the PCI fan card. I noticed that the LED legs were long.... A lot longer than the regular LED legs and that I wasn't going to be able to do an easy swap.

It wasn't too hard to remove the LEDs, since they were just pushed into the holes, so I just pushed them out with a small screwdriver; de-soldering them, however, was a bit tough with the lack of clearance (I ended up burning a bit of both cover stickers).

I pondered a bit of how I was going to use the new LEDs, then measured the gauge on the stock LED leg, which was 24 AWG. Immediately, I thought of the extra cat5e wire that I stripped from a bad cable or something and went to grab the braid I made out of it. I unbraided, untwisted, straightened, and played with the wire to find a good length before cutting up the strand I was working with (white-orange).

When I was straightening the next strand (white-green), I was getting annoyed with straightening the wire and the outer clear plastic insulator crinkling as I was straightening the wire, so I decided to dig out the coil of cat5e that I turned into an audio cable (I made it when I couldn't use Ziggy for a jukebox and was still using Lie-chan as the workhorse computer) and measured a good length to allow me to get at least the right amount from one strand (I ended up with enough extra to make 3 more if I really needed it). I cut all the pieces I needed and then went to sleep, since it was about midnight and I didn't entirely feel like trying to continue working on it.

I began after breakfast, seeing how much of the LED leg to leave, stripping both ends of each wire piece, and preparing all the wire pieces and legs with solder. It was a bit tough to solder the wires to the legs, but probably not as time consuming as installing the LED and legs before soldering them to the fan PCB, testing to make sure the LED works, and bending the wire to be a bit more compact.

Intake side of the fan, where the holes for the LEDs are; exhaust side of the fan, where the LED wires connect to the PCB.

I obviously removed the stickers on the exhaust side, since I burnt both a bit - neither wanted to stay flipped up and out of the way - and replaced it with tape to cover the lock washer access hole (there wasn't anything else covering it besides the Vantec sticker). You can also see the orange "stripes" of the white-orange wire I used.

Obviously, I put it back into Melty, reconnected the power, closed the case, and then turned her on.... I was quite surprised.

View from the case window (I apologise for the reflection and glare).

Not only is the LED colour a cherry red, but the blue colour of the plastic is nullified into a dark grey upon closer inspection. The red LEDs are brighter than the stock blue ones (I think), but nothing to really complain about. Needless to say, I'm very happy with the results, now that there's not mixed colouring inside the case.

I also forgot to mention that I modded the LED of the card reader from blue to red as well, but that was a few days before I got the LEDs from Jameco. The LED I used is bright enough (obviously) but not ridiculously bright like the old blue one (I had to put electrical tape over the light because it was too bright at night). I was surprised that the stock blue LED had a glass casing instead of plastic (might have been why it was quite bright? XD). The way that it was set up made it a bit difficult to bend the legs like the stock LED, but I got it bent enough to solder it to the PCB.

Mei-chan 4

I got a filter for the 140mm side fan and after booting up, I thought I heard it kinda scrape against it a bit, so I poked it with the screwdriver (I tried to be very gentle) and broke one of the fins. The sound was persisting after I disconnected the fan, and found it was the rear fan; I felt so stupid, needless to say. I super-glued the fin back on just a couple hours ago, and hopefully it'll be enough to hold it into place for normal operations. The filter has a slight tear, but it isn't that noticeable, so I'm not concerned with it. I might get another one for the other side hole, but I'm not sure, considering that the case has positive pressure with the side fan running (I think it's just about neutral without the fan at the moment).

I also upgraded the Wifi card, which didn't change anything, but it allowed me to give Lie-chan the one that Mei-chan had before (and give the Dell the one that was in Lie-chan)

I'll write again when I test out the fan after the glue dries (I'm gonna give it a day or two).