Stuff I've Fixed

My friend has a very old record player he uses for doing DJing. The strobe light however stopped working as well as some other issues. After my friend did some research and probing, he suspected it might be one of the transistors involved with giving the 9V to the digital logic chips. Together we unsoldered the old transistor and replaced it with a new one. This fixed the issue and we also added a heat sink on so hopefully it doesn't fail again. I also got to have a go trying to speed match the record playing to another track like a DJ would do which was very fun!

The battery life on my laptop had been getting worse, so I decided to upgrade it. While I was at it, I also upgraded from a 500GB NVMe drive to a 1TB one. I repurposed the old drive for a Raspberry Pi NAS project.

Opening up my laptop was nerve-wracking, but everything went smoothly. I cloned the drive using Disk Genius, which was the only free tool I found that actually worked without hidden charges—despite many others claiming to be free. Now my laptop runs better than ever, and I’m happy with the results!

Recently, my PS5 controller, which I use with my laptop, started overheating and wouldn't charge or connect. To fix it, I bought a replacement motherboard from a listing on AliExpress:Working Great Original BDM-010 020 030 Touchpad Main PCB Board Motherboard for PS5 Controller Controller Joystick Function board - AliExpress 44  .

After desoldering the motor connectors from the old motherboard and attaching them to the new one, I noticed some of the face buttons weren't working. I suspect this was because the pads for these buttons on the new motherboard had been repaired, leaving them uneven in height. To resolve this, I used a small piece of foam to increase the pressure between the flexible face button PCB and the board. This fixed the issue!

Now I have a fully functional PS5 controller without having to spend £60 on a replacement.

It makes me sad how many people would get rid of a good tent with a broken pole. Getting a new pole of Ebay of the same diameter is cheap and after cutting sections to length, threading the elastic back in is surprisingly easy and quick. Just make sure that you thread in in the end with the smaller hole and not the end with the metal sleaves. Sorry I don't have good pictures for this one.

This Bench was my parent wedding present. It used to have plants growing all over it as well as thickly applied Danish oil which had started to peel. After a lot of hand sanding, a bit of wood filler, teak cleaner and teak oil, it went from looking dark and rough to actually looking like teak. Sadly, one of the beams on the seat was 2 far gone and had to be removed.