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This is an idea I've had for years. I have a lot of audio equipment and other gear (but still a tiny fraction compared to many HCers). Much of it is in less than 100% working order. Some of it is "door stop" or "paperweight" status. There are bits I'd like to get working again and things I'd do better to throw out. I am sure I am not the only one. In no particular order: HeadRoom Milllet(t) Hybrid serial #1. Pete's name misspelled on the front panel. Class A circuitry. I bought it from one HighLife 10 years ago. I strongly suspect it's got bad caps. This is among the top pieces of gear I wish to restore. It's got real history to it. Also it sounds amazing when it works. The logistics of repairing are complex. I have to find someone who is willing to work on it. I've looked at the HeadRoom site and I hardly recognize it these days. I get the strong impression that they do NOT service old HR gear (or even acknowledge that it exists.) After I find someone to fix the amp, I have to send it and the PSU to that person and wait however long. The problem is I only have one HeadRoom DPS, which is currently being used by my HR Balanced Desktop (now my most used headphone amp.) Tascam 122 Mk III. The greatest cassette deck ever made, full stop. Bests Revox and Nakamichi units. (Tapes recorded on a Nak and played back on another Nak might sound better, but that's a severely limited prospect.) Mine has at minimum bad belts and possibly a bad gear. A clever friend of mine bought one and restored it himself. He said it was nontrivial, but not impossible. A pair of Unisound AU265 speakers. Way back in 2010, a website with the silly name ThingFling listed these for $100 or $200 shipped They were like $1200 new in the 00s. One of mine rattles like a bastard when any amount of bass goes through it. I genuinely do not know if it's one of the drivers or an issue with the cabinet. I'd love to get this pair working again because the Unisounds look like proper pieces of furniture and are the big burly battered black boxes that my NS-1000s are: My (sainted, octogenarian) mother would much prefer the Unisounds to these things. The NS1Ks are so imposing that the contractor we had in the house to fix some electrical problems talked about the speakers almost as much as he did the actual work he had to do. I thought it was hilarious. My mother was less amused. Symetrix 528E voice processor. Not an audiophile thing at all. For a good 15 years it was THE preamp to mate with an Electro-Voice RE20 microphone for speech purposes. As someone who has spent entirely too long pontificating about ...all sorts of things on the mic, I love the combo. There's actually a company that refurbs and even improves 528Es as a cottage industry. I was going to pursue this route ...then covid hit and life got complicated. I still have plans to pick up that thread. Audio Research LS-9. Very solid preamp with mixed balanced and SE I/O. It's a totally solid state design, which is unusual for the manufacturer. I found it to be very neutral. Whatever I put into it came out of it the same. Mine has ...issues. One of the switches is missing a bat after a wire got caught on it. Also there's some internal problems. I suspect bad caps. TBH I should really restore this thing but I'm not sure I can be arsed any time quickly. It really is a great pre. California Audio Labs tube DAC. I bought it from an HCr years ago. It needed a new chip and a tube. This is trivially easy to do, but I felt like a big boy when I got it working. It was actually one of my favorite secondary DACs. It was great for lo-fi content like streaming audio. Unfortunately, I used some idiot Monster Cable interconnects on it and those things grip like their life defends on it. One the DAC's RCA jacks came out with the stupid cable and I have never attempted a fix. Canon EF-S 17-85mm F/4-5.6 IS USM. The "better" kit lens I got with my EOS 30D in the summer of 2006. I used it extensively until it stopped working after I took this shot in 2009: TBH I don't think I'd pay to fix it. It's crap at the wide end and I'm done with EF-S until further notice. Canon EF 35mm F/2. It's had a broken AF motor since 2009 when some idiot club goer knocked my lens on to the floor. I've used it as a manual focus lens for 14 years now. It's still a great lens. I'm probably going to buy the newish 35mm F/2 IS at some point. As I have said many times in the photo thread, 35mm F/2 is the best lens for APS-C or full frame in my estimation. That's all the broken kit I can think of off the top of my head. I'm sure there's more, both here and still on the mainland. So HC, what broken bits of kit are YOU avoiding dealing with today?

I used Ref ormed Film Lab out of Florida to mail some rolls of film not too long ago. Price was reasonable, turnaround was quick and their in-house scans were pretty good to my un-tuned eyes. This was some Fuji 200 that expired in 2012 I think, on my Dad's old OM10 with 50mm lens.

(🐔 🍛 🍚 🍌 🥭 Chutney)

In no particular order: Finished another roll of film. The first one I put through my Rebel K2 in 15 years(!) Still have no idea where I'm going to get it (and the other three rolls I have) developed. The only photo from my ferry ride back from the mainland that I've bothered to edit. Departing from MV. Those are some very Vineyard weather conditions unfolding. Makes for ethereal imagery. Fussing around with a circular polarizer on my 17-40L. The combination is a PITA to use because I have to adjust the filter with the lens hood off, re-attach the hood and then frame the shot. Testing out my 5D IV the first day I got it. Taken with my 50mm F/1.4, which I hardly use because I prefer my OG 1986 "Nifty Fifty" 50mm F/1.8 in every regard. A young buck across the pond. It is with great restraint that I avoid shopping for Canon 400mm or 500mm L prime. Wildlife photography is where dreams and bank accounts go to die. The contractor working on our house is ...quite a character. He's either greatly over or under medicated for his ADD. He's got a really nice doggo however. Her name is Turkey and she's an English Bull/Boxer mix. She has a gorgeous brindle coat. Watching her dart around my yard put me dangerously close to wanting a dog. A study of the tool shed my grandfather build in the 50s. Futzing with the 85mm F/1.8. Absolute silliness with the 17-40 at the wide end. From my first test of the nutty Suntar 135mm F/2.8 M42 lens I bought for under $20. It has an amazingly long minimum focus distance and an aperture that only increments in full stops. This was taken at F/5.6 or F/8 IIRC. I ran this images through Luminar 4 and applied a LUT to it. Did I mention I bought a Holga HL-C 60mm F/8 in Canon EF mount? It's enormously silly. I got a Asahi Super-Takumar 50mm F/1.4 in the mid 00s, as part of a lot of M42 lenses I bought of eBay. It's quite expensive now. I find it to be reasonably sharp when stopped down, but never particularly contrasty. I post processed the above two photos extensively in Luminar 4 and Photoshop. This is Sweetened Water Pond, which is the one across the street from where I live. It's normally a Vernal pond, going dry in the summer. It stuck around for all of this year and the ducks were quite happy about it. You've heard of Turquoise Hexagon Sun? This is Orange Hexagon Lens Flare. The Takumar's element coatings are decidedly a product of the 1970s. The CZJ Sonnar 135mm F/3.5 once again proving it's the best actual lens amongst the army of 135mm primes I own. Early evening moon. 85mm F/1.8 again. It is a really good lens that I don't use nearly enough.

(🐔 🍛)

Last night, the guy next to me texted a picture of dessert to his wife, and his wife texted back (and I quote): F U Just Stop. The offending picture was one of one of these:

"a funny looking curry"

Turkey Chili (🦃 🌶️)

To the heat issue: I have a "standard" mini from the first group buys. Case, the unfortunate 3 oz board, 402 led resistor, 255 bias resistor, 15 mA bias. I used it with offboard regulators and without the top cover mainly for a time. Now I squeezed in the onboard regs second times a bit better with the same heatsinks but only with open lid. I would not like to reduce the bias so I experimented with @Skooby's resolution(see in this thread) a little. In my version there is almost 10 mm the distance from the transistors's heatsinks to the lid so I made a "heat bridge" from two 5 mm thick aluminium pieces as you see in the picture. The result is more than I hoped. Measuring the temp on the heatsink hotter side: with the top cover 85-86C; without the cover 70C. With the "heat bridge" and the cover 63C. The absolute temperature is depends on the ambient, the music, the headphones a bit but the more than 20C gain is stable. This was a surprise to me, the mod is easy maybe helps somebody. You can secure it with screws, widen it etc.. Maybe later. It is stabil mechanically I am happy with it as is. Thanks for Skooby! The temperatures were measured after cc. 90-120 minutes when they were stable.

Just a follow up on my SS Mini build where I used the MPSW thru-hole transistors instead of the PZTA SMD version. Listening tonight, after 1 hour or so, the chassis top measured a max of 46°C, and scanning inside with the IR gun showed a max of 66°C. I did not remove the top to scan individual devices, but placing my hand on the top ( after 1 hour and 2 hours), it seems like it runs considerably cooler than I remember the SMD versions that I built. Sounds great as well, though I think the same as the SMD version.

Well, it didn’t take long for AI imagery to step over the line. https://petapixel.com/2023/11/07/adobe-stock-is-selling-ai-generated-images-of-the-israel-hamas-conflict/