Author: /u/someperson42

I recently moved into a house in Montrose, near Lanier Middle School. I was expecting trick-or-treaters tonight, but I’ve gotten exactly 3. Is this just not a thing kids do anymore? I thought there would be a lot of them in an area like this.

I have some old books that I would really like to scan, but I am having a difficult time finding a place to do it. I’ve been trying various libraries:

• The Houston Public Library has a couple of KIC Click Mini book scanners available for use. The problem with this machine though is that it requires placing a book on a flat surface. This is not ideal for a quality scan since it’s difficult to make the pages sit flat, but it’s also not going to work at all for some of my older books, since trying to get them to sit flat would damage them.
• The Harris County Public Library apparently does not have a book scanner.
• The University of Houston has several KIC Bookeye scanners, which seems like it would be perfect. However, I just got off the phone with them and was told that only students and faculty are allowed to use them. Apparently, being a UH alumnus isn’t good enough.

Does anyone know anywhere else I might be able to try?

I have an old laptop motherboard from the year 2000 that released the magic smoke. Having removed the damaged board from the machine, I can see that there are 2 obviously damaged components in the area the smoke came from: an inductor hanging in midair, and a mosfet with an obvious dimple on top.

Pictures: https://imgur.com/a/JAzDRyE

I have replacement components for these parts, but I was wondering if there might be somewhere I can go to get them put in. My soldering skills are not that great and while I suspect I could replace the inductor on my own, the mosfet has tiny pins and I am less confident in my skills with that.

I know there’s no guarantee that replacing these parts would get the board up and running, but I figure it wouldn’t hurt to try.

I attempted to cut out the back of a PCIe x1 slot to fit a longer card (as absurd as this sounds, this actually will work in most circumstances, albeit with the card running with less bandwidth). Unfortunately, I didn’t make the slit quite wide enough, and the slot cracked in half when I attempted to insert a PCIe x4 card, so now no cards work in the slot. I could buy a replacement slot easily enough (and ones with the back open to accept longer cards exist), but I do not trust my amateur soldering skills to replace the old one, especially not on a board I rely on daily for work. Does anyone know of a trusted place where I could get this work done in a short amount of time?