casual disassembling

 Back again with disassembling! This time nothing really "complex", but a couple of things that held some surprise nonetheless, a couple of ols PS/2 keyboards.

Let's start off with the first, a vanilla keyboard with numpad. As I'm still working abroad without specific tools, everything will be done with that Ikea set and little else.

Lots of screws in the back, but just that! No snaps at all: unscrew and open!

Two kind of screws of different lenght are found throughout the keyboard.

And some screw covers! I had a tiny , trusty old Victorinox helping me taking out those things that would have been very difficult to extract otherwise.

So we open Pandor's Box. So much dust in here!

A bit of cleaning can help!

  

So, here's the first keyboard internal part, the key contacts. Two plastic sheet with conductive paths, separated by a third layer with holes in correspondence of the keys. It's nice, I like the patterns :) and will help me understanding the keyboard matrix.

Under the conductive sheets, there are those tiny silicone caps acting as aprings. a lot of them went into the vacuum as they are very light... can't find any use for them, except as a kind of shock absorber in a package, but I don't have so many. Doh!

  

And the controller! now that's interesting. I hope to be able to convert it into an arcade machine custom controller... all I have to do is to learn how the kay matrix is organized, right? RIGHT?

The contacts look big enough to be hand-soldered to some more practical wires!

The plastic led indicator. Worth keeping as it fits over the leds on the controller, but I can see many other ways to show them.

And, finally, the keys. They are really difficult to pop out as they are fitted in with a double snap, but since it's all the same kind of plastic and there are no springs under the keys (apparently) shouldn't be too much of an issue... but I couldn't find any indication about what kind of polymer this is made of.

Our next subject is a more complex Logitech SZ-49 Internet Pro Keyboard with some broken keys.

We start off with better quality screws, burnished to conceal themselves in the black polymer.

And the extendable stands that came out with just a little pressure on a side.

A couple of metal screws were hidden under the rubber feet...

And here we go! This keyboard had snaps that helped keeping all together, but was more difficult to pry open and I feared that if I pulled with too much strength everything would be blown up around!

The first notable difference is that the silicone caps are kept together in a sheet. It's nice even if it uses a tad more of silicone because you don't risk to lose them around or to suck part of them in the vacuum. It's also "weird" to the touch :P

A second silicone strip is used over the multimedia keys.

The keyboard work exactly the same as the other one, except that this is somewhat better looking.

And has a large ground shield!

This piece of silicone ensured that the controller contacts and the conductive strips stood in contact.

I had to use the force to free the cable from the plastic, the hole allowed just the cable to pass through.

And another controller!

More contact strips!

Differently from the first one, this keyboard has an indication on the material. Both halves are made of ABS, that is a good thing for recycling.

The multimedia keys for volume up/down are kept in by triple snaps...

...and the other keys, like the first keyboard, use double snaps to stay in place.

Finally, multimedia keys and led covers. Those come away without effort as they where held in place by pins and nothing else.

And we're done! So what did we salvage? A lot of screws in first place. I can figure some uses for the silicone parts, but not so many for the conductive sheets. As I've said before, I'll use the controllers experimenting with custom arcade controls. There are a lot of sets available and an arcade controller would make a superb addition to my recently made arcade machine built out of an old Dell computer that would have been thrown away otherwise. The MAME works well with my XBox 360 Wireless controller but I find it impractical for some games like Defender, which is one of my favourites. This could be good material for a DIY post :D

Macchinazioni, macchine e gente che guida le macchine senza la patente.

Non sono solito fare post su cose del genere: "non ti curar di loro, ma guarda e passa". Ma stavolta si è toccato una corda (è proprio il caso di dirlo) che mi sta parecchio a cuore ed a cui ho dedicato una buona parte della mia vita.



Veniamo al casus belli:


http://www.lastampa.it/2016/05/19/cultura/opinioni/buongiorno/la-macchinazione-0VUrkQiRQecqMjft4cYmMP/pagina.html



In particolare:

(click per ingrandire)

Dice che il pianoforte è "meglio" del sintetizzatore in quanto "la differenza la fanno ancora quei pochi che sanno mettere le mani sulla tastiera" e parli di "suoni asettici".
Bene, allora lasciatemi dire, da Pianista e da Designer Sistemico, che il pianoforte stesso è ASETTICO: le corde vengono percosse meccanicamente da dei martelli in maniera più o meno forte premendo sul tasto corrispondente e vengono smorzate in maniera ugualmente meccanica quando si solleva il dito dal tasto. Le note sono tutte lì, pronte ad essere usate. Ci sono 1, due o 3 corde per tasto a seconda dell'altezza della note, ma il sistema non cambia. Diventa più complesso ma non più complicato.
Confrontiamo il pianoforte con il violino (o la viola, o il contrabbasso) o la chitarra: con appena 4, 5 o 6 corde (il numero varia, a seconda dello strumento) si possono avere quasi tutte le note comprese negli 88 tasti di un pianoforte. ma non basta "pigiare un tasto", bisogna saper muovere l'archetto o pizzicare la corda, bisogna saper regolare la lunghezza della corda per fare la nota giusta. e se in alcuni strumenti sono presenti i "tasti" che ci aiutano a fare le note intonate, nel violino il manico è totalmente libero: devi sapere TU dove fermare la corda, e lì è questione di millimetri. La ghironda da noi in Piemonte la chiamavano la viola d'j borgnu (il violino dei ciechi) perchè al manico del violino si applicava un artificio per cui attraverso dei tasti si otteneva la nota precisa facendo azione sulla corda interna strofinata da un "archetto automatico" azionato con la manovella.
Quindi il digeridoo è uno strumento INFIMO? Le percussioni sono paragonabili agli "ignoranti" della musica? No, sono semplicemente DIFFERENTI. Ci vuole abilità a tenere il ritmo, ci vuole abilità a fare la nota giusta e, per giungere finalmente ai sintetizzatori, ci vuole abilità nel cogitare la "patch" giusta.

Come sempre, il razzismo è figlio dell'ignoranza... anche nella musica.



Per riparare all'ignoranza, consiglio a Gramellini quel mostro sacro contemporaneo che risponde al nome di Wendy Carlos, un precursore del sintetizzatore e di sicuro una persona che "sa mettere le mani sulla tastiera".

Per chi vuole, e chi può:


http://www.amazon.it/Switched--Bach-Wendy-Carlos/dp/B00005ORCV/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1463647402&sr=8-2&keywords=wendy+carlos

I'm Back! (somehow)

Those last few months have seen me settling in another country - this time is Spain. Not exactly in a populated area, but I'll talk about this in another post. that's one of the reason I felt to come back to this. It's just a "hit and run" post,  but I couldn't let this slip away!

This time I've had the "disappointment" to disassemble an old CRT monitor. I was disappointed because I thought it would have had way more dinstinct components, instead I was able to completely disassemble with 13 screws in total. Quite a "sustainable" feature!

Let's start!

 

 Here it is, our "patient".

Moving away means that I couldn't bring a lot of things with me, even if I was moving with my car. So, I'll try to what I can with the tools I've got. It's just an "emergency kit" from IKEA but it works.

And all the tools I got for the job.

The base came out without trouble, as it was only held in place by 4 peg. One of the removable snips was damaged, too.

The adjustable mount.

The two pieces providing adjustability to the screen were held together by this mechanism - no screws at all. The fin prevented to accidentally dislodge the monitor from the support, but was easily reversable.

Finally the first 4 screws! Those were right behind the screen and held the back and the front frame together... and that would be 80% of the structure! :D

The first 4 screws! 

To completely release the back cover, a gente lift of those snaps is all what was needed after the 4 screws above.

 Free! And... oh the dust. So much dust there... thick, but not greasy. At least.

Dust. Dust never changes. 

The first thing I could take apart was the rear tube circuitry. I've cut the grounds soldered to the metal cage, but later I've discovered that I could just unscrew them. The screws were hidden under tiny mountains of dust tho, and not easily noticeable.

So far I can count only 2 more "big parts": the lower circuit board and the tube itself. I like the tube... has some kind of own aestethic.

Some vivid colours under the black dust.

Back to unscrewing! 4 copper screws hold the tube in place... and that's pretty much all.

Copper screws! Yay! 

Those snaps could be pushed back in to slide away the main board. A bit stiff tho... they almost shattered in the removing process.

Some coilings and grounds that could be removed. The thick one was mounted on the frame, while the spring one was on the tube.

There's no such thing as too much ground.

 

Cleaned tube.

 

This last screw kept the lower board together with the metal frame. 9 unscrewings so far! After pulling the snaps back in, the board slided away applying a minimal forse with the screwdriver.

The last screw!

Dust, dust everywhere...

Here is the board! Looks nice and "techy". The other side has A LOT of dust on it and I'll clean it as soon as I'll get the new vacuum (later this week hopefully. It's traveling!). there are a lot of interesting components on it, but without my iron I'm not able to remove any of them.

Finished! I plan to make some shelfy-thing with the plastic frame of the screen. I don't have a cat nor a small small dog here, otherwise it could be a nerdy housing for a pet! I don't really want to throw away the tube, since I "like" it, but I can't see any possible use for it. I am aware that is a "special" kind of component and isn't posible to recycle it in the glass bell, if I am to throw it away for good :\

CRT monitor are quite easy to disassemble, their bulky plastic cases could be differentiated easily! The boards... well, as with all the electronics, it's extremely difficult to find any use for them beside a weird decoration or other "artistic" uses. one could cut the up to pieces and use the single components on said pieces, but it's so much work that isn't a viable option IMHO.

That's all for now... thanks for reading!