DVD Rewinder

By all means try it, we are all in for a belly laugh.

Here are 100 of the small alligator clips with red insulators for $13. You can repair the damaged ones, or make your own.

Disposable-Red-Plastic-Covered-35mm-Metal-Alligator-Clips-100-Pcs-/

They have others at reasonable prices, as well.

mv /dev/null /dev/null ... that should do it!

Sure. Merely change /dev/null from a device node to an ordinary file with 666 permissions. The file will grow and grow until your disk fills up. Overflow indicates that it's time to clean out the accumulated junk with a simple: > /dev/null and start over. No need to have root permission, anyone can do it.

With this method, you have the satisfaction of knowing that /dev/null is working, not having a dangerous black hole in the middle of your system, and giving the NSA a chance to look at what you are trying to hide in /dev/null. If you get tired of clearing the /dev/null file, you can build a FIFO buffer (i.e. named pipe) where /dev/null is maintained at a fixed size, and new junk tossed into /dev/null will push old junk out the other end of the pipe. I'm not a very good programmist, but I'm sure it can be done by someone more evil and devious than me.

Alligator and crocodile clips are useless in todays miniature electronics. The best I can do are "wire hook" ends like these:

When you write "affect"/"effect" I take it you mean altering the resonance. It would be foolish to measure only resonance without also measuring Q, which would certainly be altered by metals.

Mike.

Perhaps someone should invent caiman clips. Ideally they would be sold duty-free (=Cayman; geddit?).

Mike.

To effect radio tuned circuits is to cause them to exist.

=-=- "Humans will have advanced a long, long way when religious belief has a cozy little classification in the DSM*." David Melville (*Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders)

In Telstra we used EZed hooks.

=-=- "Humans will have advanced a long, long way when religious belief has a cozy little classification in the DSM*." David Melville (*Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders)

If you recall the movie "The Graduate" there is just one word from the cocktail party scene that answers your point.

John :-#(#

I don't know if your scheme would work but I do know that airport metal detectors have some way to discriminate between a key in my wallet and all the titanium and stainless steel in my arms, back, and pelvis. I used to set the things off but not any more. I have spoken with folks who have long pins in their legs, artificial knees, and artificial hips and they don't set off the airport metal detectors either. Eric

Yuck. Hook clips work fine until one gets to boards full of SMT components. I have a box of spring loaded probe tips, originally from a bed of nails test fixture, positioned with the flex plastic hose used for coolant hose and camera tripods. The board is secured to a PCB holder and spring pressure makes the connection. Much better and easier than tack soldering wires.

I'll be at home for a while longer so no photos but here are the components:

PCB holder:

Spring loaded test probe/pin:

Flexible plastic hose:

More... The magic buzzword is "pogo pin": Note that there are also receptacles (sockets) for the pins, to make them easy to replace: Lots of different sizes and tip types.

Once you get into using these pins, you'll find yourself addicted.

Are you familiar with IDS and wirewrap?

=-=- "Humans will have advanced a long, long way when religious belief has a cozy little classification in the DSM*." David Melville (*Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders)

Insulation Displacement Something. Yep, been there with every ribbon cable connector. I even have the proper IDS compression tools for most of the connectors used in PC's.

Wire Wrap. Yep, I still have my spools of #30 wire, which I now use for soldering breadboards. I still have my manual tools as I sold my battery operated wire wrap gun.

Now, are you familiar with my policy of ignoring one line questions? The problem is that one line questions usually lack any content, value, understand, detail, and are generally not worth reading. Since your nom de plume implies uncertainty, I'll make an exception this time.

I'd enjoy seeing pictures of your test bench setup with those pogo pins. Near as I can figure you use those semi-stiff hoses to hold the pins on the UUT (unit under test). For me, not su useful as I am mostly fixing TTL stuff (not many folks still do that), but I can see it being very useful on SMT products.

John :-#)#

Not me. I tried it a few times and gave up. It takes forever, produces ugly looking monochrome CD labels, requires special expensive media, and seems to use buggy HP software: No thanks. An inkjet CD printer works better. However, if it ever can be made to work in color or obtain better mono contrast, I might try again.