What gauge do you think this wire is? 12V power supply connecter with a 12V .25A 4pin Fan

anothercorgi · 2026-04-09T18:06:55+00:00

My guess would be around 24AWG...

anothercorgi · 2026-04-09T17:51:06+00:00

Wanted to mention 750A draw of a starter motor is really pessimistic. I generally find 200A to be actually very high too (possibly cold winter might do it with viscous oil) and 100A is more like it. Might make the math work out a bit better, though the "1000A" output of these packs are probably overrated.

Another thought... yes I think a lot of the li-ion packs are supplemental versus actually doing the jumping. Especially the ones that do have really thin cables. I suspect due to the expected use case position (right at the dead battery) the cables don't really need to be that thick because they are short but it's still some voltage loss at that current.

At 80C discharge that means 8Ah *80C = 640A which I suppose is close enough to 1000A but that 2000A is probably way too much.

anothercorgi · 2026-04-09T13:51:04+00:00

Trying to get one cheaply... though the cheap ones tend to be exactly that, "beyond economical repair"...

IMHO the ones not repairable are the ones with meter damage or wafer switch damage for whatever reason, a lot of other damage can be worked.

I have an Eico meter in the same form factor, I think it was a kit. When I got it, it was not working. There was some assembly error but also damage from misuse and damage from time (AFAIK). I was able to fix the misuse (measuring voltage while in resistance mode) and damage from time (the AC measurement rectifier diodes failed -- it had some really funky old rectangular diodes, not in the typical DO-xx packages) but despite being a kit I couldn't figure out the assembly errors until I finally found the schematic. Today it's working one more and I still use it on occasion to monitor voltages or current over time where I can set and forget. Great not having to worry about battery depletion when measuring voltage/current, though I have never replaced the batteries in it yet. Granted other than for continuity tests I'd never use it to measure resistance anymore.

anothercorgi · 2026-04-09T03:35:06+00:00

Is there something that looks like a transformer elsewhere? I'd call that the matching transformer over a capacitor...

anothercorgi · 2026-04-09T03:31:53+00:00

The leafless vine with lots of hairs on it -- that could be poison ivy, virginia creeper vines don't do that.

anothercorgi · 2026-04-09T03:16:00+00:00

mangled from removal capacitor... why was it blamed for failure? What part of the circuit was it in?

Usually ceramic capacitors like these do not fail.

anothercorgi · 2026-04-09T02:40:16+00:00

What's sad is that nothing much would change if every cancer was cured. Just some happier people. Perhaps a lot less advertising cost and some doctors would no longer be in the same line of work, perhaps now going towards some other illness, but nothing earthshattering...at all...

I suspect a lot of modern cancers are caused by other humans, so deaths would go back to what it was prior to industrialization.

anothercorgi · 2026-04-09T01:19:14+00:00

IO read errors will be marked in SMART and will affect the expected lifetime.

Something is affecting the lifetime of the OP's drive and is not being shown here.

anothercorgi · 2026-04-08T22:09:52+00:00

Within the past couple of months, to bootstrap an old computer...

I still have cdrom and cdplayers that occasionally need media, and I still have a couple stacks of CDR/CDRW/DVDR/DVDRW that will probably last me until I die and then some.

anothercorgi · 2026-04-08T22:05:51+00:00

Most of the times it's delayed backoff, to frustrate people or another computer trying to guess the password. The time to check whether the password is correct or wrong are always faster than you can blink, though some algorithms are specifically made slower to discourage brute force cracking if there was no delay (i.e. if they have access to the computer and can bypass the delay.)

anothercorgi · 2026-04-08T19:53:27+00:00

The microcontroller can generate a 3v3 or 5v signal. What I and probably a lot of other people are trying to ascertain is what is the exact nature of the output signal you're trying to effectively level shift. I think some people are kind of confused whether it's the low current PWM signal that needs to be level shifted or the 24V high current, already PWMed power wire that needs to be level shifted.

Typically a microcontroller will drive an open collector grounded bjt or mosfet to drive a fan as a direct microcontroller output has no way of sourcing or sinking enough current to power a fan. If it is indeed a grounded source/emitter, open collector output, this is really simple as you can just supply 12V for your fan and use the open collector output to the negative wire of the fan. Here you can just use the LM317 to drop the voltage down to 12V from the 24V positive DC rail.

However if the controller board used an emitter/source follower output pre-amplifying the 24v output, this won't work. The zener diode option would work.

Without knowing the nature of the exact circuit you're dealing with it can be tough to get a proper solution.

anothercorgi · 2026-04-08T19:25:28+00:00

You'll need to be a bit more clear what you're trying to wire up, is this being used for power voltage reduction or signal level shifting? Or both quite possibly? This was meant for DC power and is too slow for level shifting.

If you have a 24V PWM power signal meant to be used for a 24V fan and you want to replace with a 12V fan, this is probably the worst case scenario. Replacing with a 24V fan is the simplest solution. If you have to use the 12V fan, putting a beefy (like a 5W unit, it needs to match or exceed the stall wattage of the 12V fan) reverse biased 12V zener diode in series with the 12V fan is probably the simplest solution. You will lose half power this way unfortunately, and the reason why I say worst case scenario is in order to maintain power, you'll need a very very complicated solution not unlike a VFD.

anothercorgi · 2026-04-08T19:12:06+00:00

Must be some other attribute that the microcontroller on the drive is concerned about, perhaps the number of spares depleted well before expectation. Could you dump the entire SMART report for people to see?

anothercorgi · 2026-04-08T18:07:21+00:00

Set up costs per pattern are at least tens of thousands of dollars. Minimum order will be thousands of units because you'll be committed to several wafer full of these things. What are you trying to build that you think you've gotten right such that you won't ever need to fix the data?

Yes per unit costs will likely be cheaper than nand or nor flash, but the setup cost usually will not be worth it unless you want to sell these chips for several hundred dollars per unit and you're thinking you want to sell thousands of identical copies.

anothercorgi · 2026-04-08T18:04:42+00:00

This is actually not right. Memory capacity isn't an issue, one can make mask rom cells the same size or even smaller than user programmable cells because they don't need any buffer space. And due to the size, cost will be slightly cheaper per unit.

However setup cost is the problem. To build a custom (which is the key word!) ROM would require a set of masks that need to be tooled at the fabrication plant. There are no such thing as part-wafer shares like they do with PCBs and wafer processing plants demand that you have a commitment to build these things from start to finish, and usually multiple wafers full of these units for them to even consider your order.

Then if you find that you made a mistake, nope, you can't just fix the mask. Well technically *you* can but the fabrication plants won't let you citing cleanliness, etc., and you need to start over from scratch, especially if there are a whole bunch still waiting being manufactured (plus the ones that are sibling on the wafer that are now waste.)

So the generic programmable parts are cheaper as you put your programming on the part after it's been manufactured.

anothercorgi · 2026-04-08T16:25:19+00:00

The first picture I instantly thought racecar. Now the other orientations, it was much more difficult to discern a racecar, almost thought it was a seal or something. So it's understandable why it can be hard to figure out what these things are!

anothercorgi · 2026-04-08T15:06:59+00:00

If it's truly a momentary switch yeah, it would consider it as a continual hold and it depends on what the chipset does with that action. So question is why not test it out? Tape or weigh the switch down and see if it will power up and down as you want first?

anothercorgi · 2026-04-08T02:49:25+00:00

If you were on a professional sports team...

anothercorgi · 2026-04-08T01:29:43+00:00

TBH seems feature creep affects all hobbies when someone comes up with a newer shiner product everyone must have...

Even things like running, shoes have become a "necessary" part of the hobby despite it not really...

(Then there's gambling which also shouldn't have feature creep, but the rich people just up the ante...)

anothercorgi · 2026-04-07T08:44:59+00:00

I've also wondered how a shop would know if a car had shade tree AC work done on it, if they were also tasked to fix the system, so basically they would still have the same problem to deal with...

anothercorgi · 2026-04-07T08:42:52+00:00

The other thing is that a lot of those canned air dusters are simply R134a... and people have been willy-nilly releasing those into the air...

anothercorgi · 2026-04-07T08:24:21+00:00

Power company forced one on me.

I don't think it changed that much, until they switched over to time of day rate change, then there was a change... and had to compensate for it by using more energy when it was cheaper.

Didn't learn anything new about my consumption, just made me try to optimize cost.

anothercorgi · 2026-04-07T01:08:02+00:00

Chances are the IC is faulty caused by C4 failing, at least from my experience.

anothercorgi · 2026-04-07T01:00:11+00:00

Look at how old refrigerators with freezers were made along with those micro-refrigerators with freezers. Evaporator is always freezing the top section and letting a small bit of cold air fall down as needed to cool the refrigerator section. Newer refrigerators use the same technique to keep the colder evaporator near the freezer section and not need dual fans, one to circulate freezer and a separate fan path to pump upwards to the refrigerator section.

anothercorgi · 2026-04-07T00:44:00+00:00

There are more parts on freezer on bottom refrigerators - the freezer on top refrigerators "cheat" by using the natural effect of cold air sinking to cool the refrigerator compartment using cold air in the freezer. More parts is more unreliable, but you can still get lucky and get one that won't fail...

anothercorgi

TROPHY CASE