timixretroplays

timixretroplays, 4 months ago to random

I'm getting back to the chessboard project this week, and I still have a big conundrum to solve - the top surface will actually be a panel of toughened glass, on top of the 3D printed board surface, and I need to bond the two together.

A glass-specific glue is the obvious choice, but my experiments so far with CA glue and clear acrylic have produced surprisingly poor results - I was not expecting the glued portion to be more obvious on the black squares than white, but it's terrible either way.

timixretroplays, 2 months ago to 3DPrinting

Introducing the second iteration of my #fakerbeams project. I wasn't happy with the results of emulating aluminium extrusion as-is, so this is an entirely new construction system designed from the ground up for #3Dprinting, heat-set inserts, and metric everything. Finished structures get M3-bolted together for strength, but prototyping is done with bits of 4mm doweling for speed - it took just minutes to pull apart the little cube and rebuild it into the bigger box!

@3dprinting @3dprinting

A photo of a small section of the parts, disassembled, to show how they slot together.
A photo of a large (roughly 20 by 20 by 30cm frame) built from 3D printed parts.

timixretroplays, 1 month ago to random

Taking a short side quest away from the photo box project to build some workshop infrastructure with my #plasbeams. Any guesses as to what this set of parts will become?

A photo of some 3D printed construction beams, four short beams form a square with hinges in each corner, and the square is bolted to the middle of a longer post.
A photo of some smaller 3D printed parts, one short beam and some parts with a cylindrical cutout.
Two of the cutout parts are now screwed to the beam and it's clear they're meant to carry or hold something that's about 2cm thick.

timixretroplays, 5 months ago to 3DPrinting

Ask your doctor today if Bowl O' Plastic is right for you! The next step in my #Thrixels madness is seamlessly joining multiple panels together to support larger mosaics. Here's a test with no extra clearance - not only is there a gap, it's exacerbated by the tiles pushing the thin substrate walls outwards, so those will have to be cut away in the next attempt.

That metal pin is from the #GravisGamePad project - I will need to find a different "dowel" material.

#3DPrinting @3dprinting

A photo of the mosaic split in half, with a metal pin showing how the two halves are fixed together.
A close-up photo of the inner edges of the mosaic, showing the plastic texture.
A close-up of the underside of the assembled mosaic, showing a clear gap between the two halves.

timixretroplays, 6 months ago to retrogaming

This week's acquisition. I'm a prolific collector of controllers, but it's rare that I actually want a game console to go with them - this is the second one I've ever bought, and the first was a second-hand MegaDrive in the 90s.

This is the EverCade Atomic Edition, and it's the only way to play the re-make of Duke Nukem 1. I won't have time to properly get into the game for a couple of weeks, but I am going to open it up and check out those gamepads, because of course I am. #retrogaming

A photo of the other side of the box, which reads: EverCade VS Atomic Edition, includes Duke Nukem collection 1 and 2.

timixretroplays, 7 months ago to Playstation

This is the Logitech Cordless Action Controller, a wireless pad for the #PlayStation 2, and it hides a puzzle I need your help to solve.

For every forum thread calling this the best controller ever, there's another complaining it doesn't connect to its receiver. I think either the controllers or receivers are failing over time.

Do you/did you have one? Does it sync, does it not? What are its model/part numbers? Send photos!

Boosts appreciated, help me solve this!

#retrogaming #retrocomputing

A photo of the back of the controller and of the receiver. Controller: Model number: G-X2D11 Part number: 863239-0000 Receiver: Model number: C-x2B31 Part number: 863240-0000

timixretroplays, 5 months ago to retrogaming

This will be another super long-term project, but here's my proper inaugural #CGAPrints post. I'm seeking out 3D printing filaments to match the original 16-colour palette from IBM's Color Graphics Adapter (CGA), so I can eventually make some pretty #retrogaming art.

This is dark red, represented by eSUN's Fire Engine Red PLA, and light blue, which is Tecor Blue-Grey PLA+. These choices may change as I find and test more colours, but we'll see - I have more coming this week! #3dprinting

timixretroplays, 1 month ago to random

Have you missed an alarm on your iPhone lately? It's not you, it's an actual bug in the software that means the alarm just doesn't work sometimes: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/04/apple-confirms-bug-that-is-keeping-some-iphone-alarms-from-sounding/

The reddit thread I saw was full of people saying they'd missed work, interviews, all kinds of stuff. You'd absolutely assume you were at fault, and not the thousand dollar smart device failing to do something a $10 bedside clock can do, right? What a mess.

timixretroplays, 3 months ago to retrogaming

So, uh, I collect old game controllers - mostly gamepads, but a few joysticks, mice, and weirder things here and there. You can see some of them in the photo below. This collection - and attempting to appropriately document and meaningfully share it - is why I joined Mastodon in the first place. For those of you who follow me for #retrogaming and #retrocomputing stuff but have been cursed by endless 3D printing posts - sorry, the good stuff's coming, I promise. 1/🧵

timixretroplays, 1 month ago to australia

Hey #Australia, naive household question - how do I replace this bit of a light, just the translucent bowl that screws in around the actual light bulb? Are there standard sizes, if I take this to a lighting place are they likely to have the same one on the shelf? Or am I going to need to get someone to install whole new fixtures? Our place was missing a few of these when we bought it several years ago and it's finally bothering me enough to do something about it.

timixretroplays, 4 months ago to 3DPrinting

Today's silly project is exploring the world of 2020 (2x2cm) aluminium extrusion by... #3DPrinting it instead. I have an ambitious project idea that would require a strong metal skeleton with 3D printed trim, and instead of buying, cutting and wasting a bunch of actual aluminium, I want to see how far I can push the prototype using printed plastic instead.

I've lightly modified this public domain model (https://www.printables.com/model/75833-aluminum-extrusion-2020) to fit 4mm doweling to join pieces together. We'll see how it goes!

timixretroplays, 5 months ago to 3DPrinting

Safety message for those who got a 3D printer for Christmas: Congrats on your new toy, which you should know is also actually a pretty serious industrial robot.

If your printer has been commanded to move or heat up, your flesh does not belong within its bounding box.

Your 3D printer is faster than you, and is capable of burning a 250 degree hole in your hand and filling it with molten plastic before you sense something might be wrong.

Be safe, don't be on the news!

#3DPrinting @3dprinting

timixretroplays, 6 months ago to random

I managed to collect something truly special this week - this is the #Stadia Launch Team controller! A limited number of these were made as gifts to the launch team in 2019, and a fraction of those have appeared for sale in the intervening years.

These are nonfunctional - they lack several components that would make them work as regular Stadia pads - and while a couple of people have refitted theirs with the hardware from a founders' edition controller, I am choosing not to do that to mine.

timixretroplays, 1 month ago to random

I miss the days of spinning hard drives being the norm. It's not nostalgia this time, it's because they were noisy - that sound of rain on a tin roof and a flashing red light was a sign your PC was busy thinking, doing stuff in the background, please wait patiently. Stuff still makes you wait today, but with no feedback of any kind. Has outlook finished loading everything yet? Has teams had its traditional morning crash and reopen yet? Will clicking make things worse? Who can even tell anymore.

timixretroplays, 7 months ago to Youtube

This feels like the end of an era. #YouTube won't "allow" ad blockers, I won't "allow" websites to dictate what data I don't download from them, or take a layer of security away from me. So I guess we're breaking up - I won't stand for controlling behaviour in a relationship.

It's going to be fun convincing creators I already support monetarily to move to platforms I can still enjoy their work on, but that's all YouTube will ever be - a platform, and there's plenty more of those in the sea.

timixretroplays, 8 months ago to 3DPrinting

I wanted a better way to mount these little spring clamps to the #solderingstation than just jamming them into place, so I've made these little stands for them. No doubt those M3 screws are actually meant for securing grounding wires or something, but they make neat mounting points for the clamps. #3dprinting

A photo of the spring clamps securely mounted into little 3D printed cylinders.

timixretroplays, 4 months ago to 3DPrinting

I've been avoiding looking into building a filament winder because it's always seemed like a big, complicated and stressful project, but not only do I happen to have exactly the right bearings and screws for this one just sitting around, the designer has made this 12 minute assembly video that is half ASMR, half live action lego instructions to go with it. By the end of it, you too will feel empowered by knowledge and unusually calmed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjryQtlMMHc

#3DPrinting @3dprinting

timixretroplays, 4 months ago to australia

#Australia, how the hell do you pick a new mobile provider when every man and his dog rates them one star on every review website that exists the moment they have to wait two minutes for customer service? I'm getting pretty tired of overpaying #Telstra to kick their many many back-end cans down the road, but every telco has low ratings and horror stories everywhere.

timixretroplays, 1 month ago to random

Building computers continues to be harder than it should be. Gigabyte didn't label the front panel connector pins on my motherboard, likely because they ran out of space in which to do so, but it seems like their support website has also run out of something today.

timixretroplays, 3 months ago to random

What fresh hell is this? Why would I ever want to log into my home router using Facebook?

It gets worse - I tapped on "Others" expecting to see a typical username / password prompt, but the only option in there is to... log in with WeChat.

timixretroplays, 2 months ago to 3DPrinting

Ok, I think I have a good handle now on managing parts - electronics, fasteners, filament, tools of every kind are all reasonably organised and quick to get at in my workspace. How the hell do I physically manage projects in progress? I've got big ones, small ones, some as big as your head. It's obvious they don't fit the same space or system as individual parts. Do I just get a big array of different sized tubs and stack them in a corner? How do you do it? Boost if you like. #maker #3DPrinting

timixretroplays, 2 months ago to random

Is there such a thing as a USB-powered screwdriver? I just want something in between a manual screwdriver and a cordless one to quickly buzz screws in and out of stuff at my desk. I don't want yet another battery-powered thing in my life, and "corded screwdrivers" seem to be expensive industrial appliances for putting screws in drywall.

timixretroplays, 7 months ago to retrogaming

#retrogaming, #pcgaming and #digipres friends, a serious question - say I theoretically came into possession of a pre-release, press-pack beta version of a 20-ish-year-old PC game. How should I navigate the ethics of publicly sharing (or not) that copy of the game and/or the stuff in the press pack? There's a chance I could still get in touch with the lead developer but their original org and publisher are long gone. Ping @dosnostalgic and anyone who might have seen this space before.

timixretroplays, 16 days ago to random

Fun language/free market convergence thing: A "right angle" is where two lines intersect at a 90 degree angle, and you can buy "right angle cables", where the plug at one end is rotated to point at a 90 degree angle away from the cable.

But what if you want a cable to go the other way? Well, in that case, you want to search for a "left angle" cable, and it'll point in the opposite direction to a typical "right angle" cable.

There also exist "up angle" and "down angle" adapters, like these.

timixretroplays, 6 days ago to random

This is an IOCREST-brand USB to RS-232 serial adapter, which I bought from a seller on AliExpress. It arrived in exactly the same time as an identical eBay listing said it would, for literally half the price - if eBay is still your default go-to for weird stuff like this, keep in mind dropshippers are probably fleecing you.

This adapter contains an FTDI chipset, not the much cheaper CH340, and it's time to see if this is the reason I couldn't get serial mice working natively on Windows 10.