And what did we buy today?

It arrived and it got christened.. oh my goodness what a difference. Tool vs toy. The old sucker (although I've had it for 20+ years) is absolutely hopeless compared with the Soldapullt. This thing sucks like a deranged .. err .. sucky thing

I had one of the same solder suckers bought years ago from Jaycar, it finally packed it in a year or so ago and I got a goot solder sucker (which appart from colour looks just like your Soldapullt) and yeah the difference is substantial 🙂

Tony.
 
Ordered some sets of PCBs from China (to my design):
VCO
VCF
ADSR
VCA
LF
and a special PCB for my 32-step sequenzer.

Just sent in a $150+ order to Mouser for parts. Most of them are to finish several half finished (for lack of parts) Eurorack synthesizer modules.

The wood "rack" seen in post #48 in this thread:

Modular Synth build

Is now operational. There is one power cord to power it all, and a single USB cable from the PC to the Behringer DeepMind 12D. It converts the USB to 5 pin MIDI which feeds the other Behringer synths, each on a different channel. That leaves 12 channels for future expansion. One or two channels (switch selectable) get converted into Gate / CV to feed the analog modules that are being finished in the next few weeks. Then.....It's time to build the MOAS. (Mother Of All Sequencers).
 
As my main desktop computer setup has grown over the years (55" monitor, 4-bay server, etc.), I've had to increase the capacity of my UPS backup system accordingly. Of course, cheap bastard that I am, awhile back I simply added a second unit and split the load between them.

Recently the older one just up and died, so I bit the bullet and picked up a nice 810-watt sine wave unit on sale at BigBox. This one has ample capacity to cover my current and anticipated needs, and the remaining smaller one will find use somewhere else.

This thing has a nice display that can be set to monitor Volts, Hertz, Watts, VA, you name it. Only trouble is, in order to make use of this feature, it needs to be in a visible location instead of tucked under the desk where the old ones were.

3 HOURS later, my floor is covered with discarded cables, vacuum cleaner, empty boxes, etc, etc. Wound up basically redoing & cleaning the whole setup, which was apparently a bit overdue, 🙄 Much nicer now!
 
By the way: What to do when you have a nice new flat "fixed-installation" 106-inch projection screen, but you still sorta want to use your front door from time to time? Well it starts with a couple of heavy-duty drawer slides bolted together, heh:


FrameExtended.jpg

FrameRetracted.jpg

ScreenInUse.jpg
 
Found a $15 Gigabit Ethernet card (with USB3 to boot) to install in an older, hand-me-down HP tower that had been sitting in a box in my sister's garage (not for long, fortunately). Several Win10 reinstalls and many, many hours later, it has now successfully replaced an old, slow Synology NAS box in the patchwork quilt that is my backup server.

The main stumbling block was trying to get this old motherboard to talk to a pair of 4TB drives. I finally discovered that the onboard SATA controller mode had to be set back from AHCI to IDE, whereupon everything instantly started working like a dream. Sheesh. Wish I would've tried that first... 🙄
 
A few days ago I bought a Topping D30 Dac and a decent optical cable to go with it. It arrives Fri Feb 21. Looking forward to it, and I realize it may be outdated now to many here, but was a fit for me after lots of research. If all goes well I may offer my JDS Labs ODAC revB for free to someone on the DIY.. Next purchase soon is a new set of wheels that's 4-5 years old, as with my last car and current daily driver..

Edit: The JDS DAC sounds great but I cannot hook my TV up to it so hence the Topping.. The JDS is USB only and uses the same for power.. The new car will hopefully be a 4-5 year old Yaris. My current daily driver is a 2008 Toyota Yaris that I bought in 2012 with 103,000kms on it.. Never had any major issues with it ever and it's now at 275,000kms in this forsaken environment lol, and this is why I'd like a 2015-16 Yaris to replace it.. Best reliability set of wheels I've ever had..
 
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I've been buying in canned and dried foods, rice, noodles, pasta and rosti potatoes to give me 1 months supply just in case everything goes pear-shaped here in the UK with corona virus.

I also bought 200 face masks before most were sold out plus latex gloves, hand sanitizer etc.

If all goes well, nothing will be wasted. It will all be used up over the coming year.
 
I got a new T10 Torx screwdriver, since the last one I bought was trash.

Recently, I got a case and a chassis to build a power supply and integrated amp, and I found a couple more of the big power transformers I use for big tube amps for a VERY good price 🙂