William Goodall's Blog » DIY

iMac RAM upgrade

William_T_Goodall — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 19:14:49 +0000

I upgraded my iMac from 2GB to 3GB so I could install Lion. My iMac is a late 2006 model Core 2 Duo at 2.16 GHz.

Package from Amazon.

The Crucial DIMM.

Instructions for accessing the RAM are thoughtfully printed on the underside of the stand.

Two original 1GB DIMMS with one removed (Samsung).

New memory inserted.

Reboot with 3GB RAM

New Bathroom Fan

William_T_Goodall — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 21:12:50 +0000

I bought a new bathroom fan from Amazon a while back but hadn’t got around to installing it.

Until today. My new drill came in handy as the knock-out for the wiring was in a different place and I had to make a new hole to feed the wiring through. The timer runs a little long so I may turn it down in the future – but the bathroom gets quite steamy so maybe I won’t.

(The fan is actually turning, the flash just froze it in the picture.)

DVD Home Theatre repair

William_T_Goodall — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 20:58:03 +0000

Time to replace the DVD unit in the home theatre again.

It was a quicker job this time. I didn’t lose any of my settings like region free or speaker delay. Successfully played my filthy rental DVD in time to return it for the next one

D-Link DNS-323

William_T_Goodall — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 12:57:08 +0000

The box containing the DNS-323 and the cheapest compatible drive I could find (which was a 500GB) arrives and is unpacked.

NAS and HD in boxes.

Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB.

Eco-friendly cardboard packaging on the DNS-323.

It is even smaller than I expected.

Cables, power brick.

It seems quite nicely made.

Side by side with HD before installation.

Another view.

Rear view.

Front cover just slides off to slide in drive(s)

Assembled and hacked in short order. Got lighthttpd mySQL and PHP running. Just a bit of tweaking and hardening and then I’ll find a place to tuck it away out of sight and save some desk space

Later

Tucked away in the home theatre cabinet with other fan-bearing gadgets.

Dead Server part ii

William_T_Goodall — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 21:10:21 +0000

I ordered a D-Link DNS-323 NAS on Amazon for under a £100 with the cheapest supported HD I could find without looking for too long which was a Western Digital Caviar 500GB for £36. Should arrive Thursday and once I’ve hacked it will have a web server, PHP, MySQL and such on it and will serve.

SKY HD reboot part 2

William_T_Goodall — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 18:39:34 +0000

Previously.

The mechanical timer did the job but was a bit too noisy.

So I replaced it with this.

I shall find out tomorrow if I managed to program it correctly

Duct Tape

William_T_Goodall — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 18:34:44 +0000

Pip managed to smash the dog gate but fortunately I had a roll of duct tape and some metal rods to splint it with.

Drawer Repair

William_T_Goodall — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 12:02:18 +0000

A while back my desk drawer fell off in a shower of ball bearings. I had to keep papers in a cardboard box on the floor. Today my replacement drawer runners arrived and I fitted them.

Pair of new ball-bearing drawer runners.

Bits of old runners after removal.

New runner drawer side.

New runner desk frame side.

Screw holding drawer runner in place from inside.

SKY HD reboot

William_T_Goodall — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 12:40:34 +0000

My SKY HD DVR needs to be rebooted every day or it develops issues like not recording things. To avoid the hassle of digging around in the cable mess behind the home theatre I plugged it into a RC socket so I could reboot it by remote control.

However remembering to do that every day was a bit of a pain so today I swapped in a timer switch to reboot the box at 6AM every day (a time I’m never recording anything at anyway). Lets see if I got that set up right

Later.

Can Crusher

William_T_Goodall — Wed, 26 May 2010 16:24:32 +0000

Now that two-weekly bin collections have arrived here we have to start recycling. To fit two weeks of cans into the black box provided for recycling needs a can crusher so I fitted one to the kitchen wall using my new electric drill and masonry drill bits.

It also crushes more robust cans, like dog-food cans, in a two stage process.