A stable has been added to provide some shelter. An angel announces the news!
Christmas nativity scene 2020
More shepherds have heard and brought some of their animals to join the rest of the visitors. A dog, another duck, and another penguin have also joined the pilgrims. The road to the stable is getting busy. I think next year we might have to extend the road.
Christmas nativity scene 2020Christmas nativity scene 2020
Some new wise men and their camels have joined up with the wise men from the East and are continuing their journey. Commander Data has transported over to help guide them.
Cmdr Data has transported over to help guide the wise men from the East
The newcomers are pieces we bought from a seller on Etsy and come from the same set as the other nativity pieces made and painted by Connie’s mom.
It’s not difficult to find tutorials online for making French press coffee. I’ve tried a few, and settled on this method. It makes a cup that I enjoy black, or with a splash of cream.
My French press comes from IKEA, a 16 oz press (or a 32 oz press, depending on how caffeinated I want/need to be). You can find fancier ones out there, but these were reasonably inexpensive and do a perfectly good job.
Small (16 oz) on the left and Biggie (32 oz) on the right
New 16 oz Clemson alumni mug for scale.
I like to use an electric kettle to cook my water. Cooks the water quickly, pours nicely, and the one we have holds just enough water to fill the big press. Get one with an automatic shut off feature.
Electric kettle for cooking the water.
Most French press recipes call for very coarsely ground coffee and long brewing times. Since I don’t want to deal with having to adjust my grinder whenever I want to brew with the French press or Aeropress, I go with the same medium-ish grind that I use with the Aeropress. The grind size is pretty close to what you’d use for a regular drip coffee machine. I’ve found that one very heaping Aeropress scoop (17 grams or about 3 tablespoons) of coffee (double that if I’m using the big press) makes a cup of coffee that I like.
17 grams of ground coffee (about 3 tablespoons)
Dump the coffee into the press and add a tiny dash of salt (something I picked up from a Good Eats episode). I find it helps enhance the coffee flavour but doesn’t make it salty (unless you add too much).
Coffee into the press with a dash of salt.
Add water to about the top of the metal band, give it a bit of a stir, and put the press part on. I like to push the press down a bit so that all the grounds are submerged. Let it sit for about 3 minutes. Set a timer if you like.
Add water and stirPress down a bit to submerge the grounds
After the brewing time, press the grounds all the way to the bottom, and gently pour into your coffee receptacle of choice.
Press the grounds and pour.
The press uses a fine metal mesh to filter out the grounds, but really fine particles will still get through. Towards the end, I slow down the pouring and leave a bit in the press so that I’m not pouring all the fine stuff into my cup. That will help reduce the amount of sludge at the bottom of your cup. If you pour too quickly, the grounds get stirred up and you’ll end up with a bunch of sludge at the bottom of your cup. If you like sludge, then pour however you like.
Enjoy your coffee!
Drink straight up, or doctor it up however you like.
After going through a few forum posts, I think I’m going to start with replacing some of the capacitors and the 7805 5V voltage regulator on one of the Atari 2600s (the older one).
Physically the caps look fine but after who knows how long in storage, they probably need replacing anyway. There are three electrolytic capacitors, five mylar film (green chiclets) capacitors, two polystyrene capacitors and one ceramic disk capacitor I’m planning to replace.
I’ve replaced the video cord with an RCA-F adapter, so now the video signal will go through regular RG-6 coax right to the TV’s coax/cable input.
The power connector is a 3.5 mm tip-ring jack, which I’d like to replace as well with a more standard 2.1 mm barrel jack, but finding one with the right footprint is proving a bit difficult. That might be a second slightly more involved project.
Time to go shopping in my parts bins. I think I should have most of what I need already on hand.
On the bench are two Atari 2600 video game systems that were given to me by one of the members of the local Slack community I hang out in. They’d been sitting in storage for the past few decades and didn’t seem to be working so he asked if anyone wanted them before they went out to the dumpster. I, of course, said I’d take them.
They’re of two different vintages based on the serial numbers, and came with a number of controllers and cartridges. For having been in storage, they looked in decent shape, although the older one was obviously sitting out in the open more than the other newer one.
The older Atari 2600 system. SN 82227274
The 2600 isn’t too difficult to disassemble, and there’s already a pretty good Atari 2600 teardown on the iFixit site. This particular unit was made for Atari by Dimerco Electronic Corp in Taiwan and has serial number 82227274 according to the sticker on the back. I was able to brush off a lot of the dirt on this one, but it could still use a good cleaning.
Inside looked relatively clean with some tarnish and corrosion on the RF shield. No obvious issues with any of the components. From the silkscreen, this is a Rev 14 board.
Underneath the RF shield; MOS 6532 RIOT chip (top), MOS 6507 CPU (middle), TIA chip (bottom)
The RCA jack to the right is where the video signal goes out to the TV.
Initial testing of the two systems didn’t show anything on the screen. I ordered some RCA-F connector adapters (no idea these even existed until I started looking for them) to replace the RF modulator, and was able to get some images on the screen with one of the cartridges inserted. There was no response to any of the switches or controllers though, so more troubleshooting is going to be required.
It lives…sort of
I’ll need to do some more research on repairing and refurbishing these. I’ve found some potentially useful threads on the AtariAge Atari 2600 forum, so I’ll dig around there some more.
