Restoring my Ender 3

My Ender 3 is from 2018. It's not exactly vintage technology but in the 3d printer world, it's not brand new either. 

It has a bed that is really challenging to level. I think because of the heater, one end can’t quite get level with running out of travel on the adjustment wheel. So I installed a leveling probe. Now the printer is working better than it ever has. Here's to many more years of service!

I bought a BIGTREETECH MicroProbe V2 from AliExpress for about $19. It was the cheapest probe I could find at the time, but now BL Touch and CR Touch are going for around $17. If I were to do it again I would go for a BL Touch, because this one had a few problems. 

 

Here is my detailed setup experience setting up this clone BL Touch, in case Google got you here and you're trying to save time doing the same thing!

Wiring 

To wire it up, this Reddit post had some good suggestions: "The definitive guide to wiring BLTouch V3 on ICSP" My wiring looks like his, except my sensor pin is where the old Z stop was connected (the Z stop was removed). So the black/white pair here would go into Z stop, with the white wire towards the USB end. But my brown/yellow/red wires look the same. You could, of course, wire it exactly the same way as the picture here.

 

Firmware 

My Ender 3 has the classic AVR / Atmel 3124P. At first I tried installing the Marlin firmware to support the new probe, but Marlin couldn't compile into a firmware that would fit on this underpowered board. So I instead had to use Klipper.

The only thing I don't like about Klipper is naming. Klipper is fine, but Mainsail and Moonraker are just confusing. The documentation made Mainsail and Moonraker sound like rather generic "yet another" API layers, but they are actually specific to Klipper. The documentation also made it seem like you would need to interact with these different systems. The bottom line is, you don't have to think too hard about these projects. You can just install Klipper and give it gcode through a web interface.

Klipper recommends using a Raspberry Pi or equivalent SBC to power your printer, but for me, I found it much easier and straightforward to just install Klipper on my workshop computer. I used to have a dedicated Pi driving my printer but it was more hassle than the value it provided. My workshop computer runs Klipper great. 

The only thing you really need is KIAUH. I ran that installer and installed Klipper, Moonraker and Mainsail. I didn't need anything else. KIAUH also flashed the Klipper firmware to my printer.

Printer Configuration 

This is the relevant part of my Klipper  printer configuration. Note that for whatever reason, my printer's pins were inverted. I discovered this by issuing Kipper commands for deploying and querying the sensor. Other than discovering that the pins were inverted here, the Klipper documentation for BL touch was mostly accurate.

 [bltouch]
sensor_pin: ^!PC4 # Inverted z stop
control_pin: !PB5 # Inverted ICSP
probe_with_touch_mode: False
pin_up_reports_not_triggered: False
pin_up_touch_mode_reports_triggered: True
stow_on_each_sample: True
x_offset: -44   # change these to match the
y_offset:  -14  # mounting hardware you're using
z_offset: 0.365
speed: 5.0

[bed_mesh]
speed: 120
horizontal_move_z: 5
mesh_min: 10, 10
mesh_max: 180, 180
probe_count: 5
scan_overshoot: 8 

Mounting 

I used this Thingiverse object. I suppose that my BL touch clone is shorter than an actual BL touch. I used the tallest variation here. I mounted it such that when the probe was extended, it came below the extruder head, and when retracted, it was above. This took a couple tries to get right. Once it was in about the right spot, I "welded" it in place (the screw holes didn't quite line up how they needed to). And the probe was attached using zip ties rather than screws.

The X and Y offsets come from Thingiverse. The Z offset is calibrated in Klipper - just bring the extruder down and measure.

Printing Flow

My clone had one small problem - the probe wouldn't retract on command. But you could tap it up with your finger. So I added some instructions in Cura to pause the print right before everything is ready to go, and I can just tap the probe back into place, so it doesn't scrape against the build.

 ; Ender 3 Custom Start G-code
G92 E0 ; Reset Extruder
G28 ; Home all axes
G1 Z40 F3000 ; Raise Z 40mm so you have room
M300 S1000 P500
G4 S10 ; Pause for 10 seconds (wait for you to retract BLTouch manually)
M300 S1000 P500
G1 Z2.0 F3000 ; Move Z Axis up little to prevent scratching of Heat Bed
G1 X0.1 Y20 Z0.3 F5000.0 ; Move to start position
G1 X0.1 Y200.0 Z0.3 F1500.0 E15 ; Draw the first line
G1 X0.4 Y200.0 Z0.3 F5000.0 ; Move to side a little
G1 X0.4 Y20 Z0.3 F1500.0 E30 ; Draw the second line
G92 E0 ; Reset Extruder
G1 Z2.0 F3000 ; Move Z Axis up little to prevent scratching of Heat Bed
G1 X5 Y20 Z0.3 F5000.0 ; Move over to prevent blob squish

That's it! And before every print I can run a bed mesh.

New website - Rush.Gifts

I love Amazon wishlists, but nobody knows where to find them.

Rush.Gifts simply links to wishlists for me and my family.

  

Subdomains like Dylan.Rush.Gifts will link to specific lists.

Packard Bell Axcel 130 restoration

 

 

I purchased a robust collection of an Axcel 130 along with its monitor, boxes, manuals, peripherals. I was really enticed by the stickers on the desktop which promised "Packard Bell Navigator", Microsoft Works, etc. Unfortunately, when I brought it home, it wouldn't boot. I explored some of this in a Vogons post.

With so much of the original material included, I really couldn't help myself.

I believe some of the software promised here was missing from the hard drive.

The original board with some cards I tried adding 

The culprit: a leaky battery. This seems to be such a problem with these models that I couldn't find any without a leaky battery. This Youtuber found the same issue.

 

I desoldered the battery and cleaned up the corrosion, but I still could not boot - the BIOS kept claiming a missing operating system.

I was lucky to find a replacement board just down the road from me. This IBM board came with its own processor and RAM.

 

The IBM board's floppy connect had all of its male pins populated, while my cable (and all my other cables) had a female pin blocked, so I created a little adapter to fit them together.

I could also boot from my CF adapter using the IBM board. The board fit in the case and worked with the AT power supply. The ports were in a different order, yet fit just right, so now the subtle labels are amusingly mismatched.

I also had to replace the 3.5" drive, but now everything works! I may try to switch the drive's plastic face to match the colors again.

The next step is to wait for the replacement ISA riser to arrive so I can install some more cards, and try to fix the monitor's power switch, which needs to be held down for it to work.

Update: Rather than replacing the power switch, I just closed the circuit. I'll shop for a nifty retro surge protector to control it.

The power switch from the back of the PCB

Soldered heavy gauge wire to close the circuit

Rare look at the monitor without its shell 

 

Ready for business!

Jankily driving my vintage computers with new USB devices

Github

 

Using a Raspberry Pi, one or two Arduinos, and possibly a cannibalized PS2 mouse, you can create a device that translates modern USB inputs to PS2 input for a vintage device.

This project is basically a very janky version of USB4VC. USB4VC is a much more polished, well-engineered and maintained product. I built JankPiPS2 before I knew about USB4VC. I am putting it on GitHub in case someone may find it useful.

In the current incarnation there are two Arduinos, although you could probably just use one. One Arduino uses the ps2dev library to emulate a keyboard. The other controls a mouse.

I couldn't get the Arduino to emulate a mouse, so instead, I cannibalized a PS/2 roller mouse. There were two clicky buttons which would click if I brought them up to +5v, and the two quadrature encoders used for rolling. The encoders have four pins: GND, +5V, A and B. A and B would cycle as the ball rolls around. So I brought X-A, X-B, Y-A, Y-B, L and R to pins 4,5,6,7,8 and 9. The Arduino cycles the encoders to simulate movement and clicks the buttons. I actually works great and is much easier than emulating PS/2, BUT it is slightly slower than emulation - it has to "roll" the ball!

If you'd rather have serial mouse input, I have found that USB-Mouse-to-Serial works very well.

So this is about $20 worth of parts not including the Raspberry Pi. If you are very frugal this is probably the cheapest way to connect nested USB inputs to a vintage machine.

 

Keyboard-driving Arduino on the left with pins 2 and 3 driving PS/2 data. Raspberry Pi, hub pictured. Mouse-driving electronics in a little box behind the hub.

Mouse-driving Arduino soldered to the zombie mouse's encoders and clickers.

 

 

Love191.Live - Streaming Loveline episodes 24/7

 This is a simple internet radio station using Icecast and liquid soap (internet radio streaming tools)

 

https://love191.live/

World Records for Overclocking Obscure Hardware Combinations

 
I gathered four LGA775 mobo's - 3 from Craigslist and 1 from eBay. I also gathered a few CPU's from my local PC recycler (RE-PC in Seattle) and eBay. All of these parts are dirt cheap so I won't be heartbroken if they die.

For my GPU I pulled my 3080 out of my daily gaming rig. So I set out to get world records with the oldest CPUs that would run Windows 10 and a modern GPU.

My first rig was an Intel confidential / engineering sample QX6700. I put this under a modern Zalmann cooler - one of the only ones I could find with LGA775. For some reason this CPU would not go above 3.2ghz. I am pretty sure it was the CPU and not the mobo - no matter what FSB or multiplier I gave it, it wouldn't top 3.2ghz.

I paired this with 8gb of DDR2-800 ram and hilariously, an NVMe drive on the other PCIe slot.

I got a TimeSpy overall score of 4661. The graphics scores were fine but the CPU scores were understandably abysmal. But this is the world record for the combination of QX6700 + RTX 3080 - because nobody has submitted benchmarks for this combo.

dylanrush`s 3DMark - Time Spy score: 4661 marks with a GeForce RTX 3080 (320bit)

At almost 20 years old, the QX6700 was very snappy, especially with a modern SSD. I really think it would perform fine for a person just doing office work and internet browsing.  

 

The Pentium D 805 was my first real overclocking chip. Unfortunately I couldn't get this to properly boot into Windows 10. So I put it away for another day. I also had a Pentium D 945. As far as I know, this is the oldest chip that will possibly boot into Windows 10.

I put this chip between a ASUS P5W Deluxe (Intel 975X chipset) and a new Raidmax 240mm AIO cooler. The GPU was again my 3080. This time around I procured some 1066mhz DDR2 RAM from Corsair.

With voltages in the rather extreme range (1.65v CPU, I think 1.7v FSB and 1.5v NB), I was able to get the CPU up to 4.9 ghz (!), stable enough to run a benchmark.

Time Spy didn't run on this chip - probably lacking some instructions. Fire Strike did, though. I have the lowest Fire Strike benchmark ever submitted for a 3080. But again I have the world record, this time for the combination of Pentium D 945 + RTX 3080. I truly think I may be the first person to ever combine this CPU and GPU. I also might be running the fastest Pentium D in the world right now.
 

 

Two Compasses That Always Point To Each Other

 A wedding gift for my brother and his bride to be.

When sitting still it's a normal compass. When it's tapped or moved, it will get its position with GPS, send this to a server, and get back three bearings: the direction towards your house, the direction towards the companion compass, and magnetic north. Hold the compass so that magnetic north is under the red arrow and start walking where you need to go.

Based on the SparkFun asset tracker board