I got a bulky tablet computer from ewaste and it turns out the operators of this tablet created an add-on which involved INJECTION MOLDING a piece to hold a USB serial adapter and USB HUB to the back of the tablet.
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@danne backups of IR/X10 configs
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Got it open. Surprisingly clean inside! The outside was filthy, I heavily cleaned it prior to taking pics.
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It had three network cards inside it.
Wifi, Bluetooth, and 56k modem.
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the hard drive was TAPED in? taped AND screwed?
fun thing about the hard drive:
it is mechanical and has NO PADDING! on a tablet! designed to be used by hospital patients who might DROP IT! -
BTW that USB drive embedded in the milled-plastic? it's just a backup of all the REACH configs.
possibly because they kept DROPPING THE THING AND FRYING THE DRIVE
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@foone Wow, a FireCracker; I haven't heard of those in a long time. I looked into X10 for home automation way back, but but decided it was too unreliable (sending signals over power lines) and couldn't do much more than turn lights on and off. Nowadays, home automation is much better and mostly just works but I realized I don't have a use for it.
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@foone X10. Now that's a name I haven't heard in a long time
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@foone that's how I want to spend my final days, high on strong opiates, shitting my pants, making the blinds go up and down with a tablet.
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@johnefrancis why wait?
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@foone My guess is it was prolly wall mounted or on a pedestal as a kiosk of sorts.
Those thread inserts look like it’s about the right size for a VESA pattern.
We have a similar mount for standalone iPad kiosks at work.
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@forgifuzzbutt that'd make sense!
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so @forgifuzzbutt pointed out the holes in the milled plastic look like they might be VESA, so this was probably mounted on a wall or on an arm
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Otte Homan - R.I.P. Geordiereplied to Ken Shirriff last edited by
@kenshirriff @foone but ... WIRELESS? In the year of the Lord 2000 ? Amazing! The antenna seems to hint at something in the 100 to 400MHz range (radio, teevee). I wonder what the protocol looked like. #AT commands in plaintext?
Amazingly, the X10 website is still alive, and apparently they've heard that USB is also a thing now.
https://www.x10.com/products/cm17a -
@foone Is it at least one of those special mobile-use HDDs that detects hazardous movement and parks the head(s) automatically to minimize issues?
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@lispi314 I don't think so
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I put it back together and put in the battery to try and charge it, but my one barrel jack adapter that matched the connector started, uh... melting.
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Mark Eichinreplied to Otte Homan - R.I.P. Geordie last edited by
@otte_homan @kenshirriff @foone Heh, I maintained one of the debian packages for driving these frobs for a while back in the day. They also had cheap wireless cameras - which were (as far as I could tell) analog 2.4ghz FM, completely destroying my house wifi (in the era of the Apple Airport and the Orinoco PCMCIA cards.)
(These days I do this kind of thing with Shelly Plugs and BLE - cheaper *and* CE certified...)
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@eichin @otte_homan @kenshirriff yikes. Analog video over 2.4ghz? They must have destroyed the bandwidth of wifi devices!
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The 500 Hats of LambdaCalculusreplied to Foone🏳️⚧️ last edited by
@foone Now put Doom on it.
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@foone why do I assume your middle name is Bee, like that one episode of the Simpsons where Homer found out that J. was short for Jay?