metal polish Archives - The Silicon Underground

Cleaning NES games and consoles

Dave Farquhar — Sun, 15 Jul 2018 11:00:15 +0000

Anyone old enough to have played with an original Nintendo NES knows the problem: You plug in the cartridge, turn on the system, and get a blank screen and the power light blinks at you. The schoolyard fix is to take

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Cleaning copper contacts

Dave Farquhar — Fri, 31 Mar 2017 11:00:23 +0000

There are any number of methods out there for cleaning copper contacts, but some of them are safer than others. Here’s my favorite method to thoroughly and safely clean copper contacts. It’s very thorough, safe, and cheap. The problem with

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Restoring Tootsietoys and other early diecast vehicles

Dave Farquhar — Thu, 02 Mar 2017 12:00:48 +0000

Restoring Tootsietoys can be a fun and satisfying way to enjoy old toy vehicles. Whether you want your childhood toys to look nice again or just enjoy bringing new life to neglected examples, it can be as easy and as affordable

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How to disassemble a Linksys EA6200 router

Dave Farquhar — Wed, 15 Feb 2017 12:00:29 +0000

The Linksys EA6200 is hard to open or disassemble. But there’s a trick. This trick looks like it will work with other 6000-series routers as well, such as the EA6300, EA6350, and EA6400. Here’s how to disassemble a Linksys EA6200

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Repair a Lionel train motor

Dave Farquhar — Tue, 14 Feb 2017 12:00:46 +0000

If you want to fix a Lionel train, what you probably really need to do is repair a Lionel train motor. There isn’t much to the rest of the train. The motors tend to be pretty rugged and they’ve held

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Lionel 2034 locomotive repair

Dave Farquhar — Fri, 05 Feb 2016 12:00:07 +0000

I have a Lionel 2034 that had a bent cab I fixed, but it ran poorly too. It would run, but only in super slow-mo, and that was when it would run at all. If I was really patient, sometimes I

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How to disassemble a Marx 999 locomotive

Dave Farquhar — Sun, 13 Dec 2015 12:00:48 +0000

Disassembling a Marx 999 locomotive isn’t too difficult, and it’s easier than the Marx 666, but it helps to have some instructions. The nice thing about the 999 is that if you can disassemble it, there’s a long, long list of

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Buy a used business printer and save a bundle

Dave Farquhar — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 00:55:43 +0000

I'm through with cheap consumer printers.

Due to the nature of my wife's work, we print a lot by home standards. We buy paper by the case, not the ream, and a case of paper probably lasts us a little more than six months.

Our workload just isn't practical for the kind of printers you find next to the telephones at consumer electronics stores. So I bought an HP Laserjet 4100. And even if a case of paper lasts you a couple of years, you might want to buy an office-grade printer too.

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Garage sale adventures: The treadmill

Dave Farquhar — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 19:18:01 +0000

Earlier this year my wife asked me to look for a treadmill. So I started keeping an eye out. A month or two ago I spotted one at an estate sale, but everything was wrong about that deal.

Today, I pulled the trigger.

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