I wrote about rechargeable batteries back in April 2009 and while I have expanded the installation of the iPowerUS 9V batteries to three chargers and twelve batteries at the church and one charger and four batteries in my facility, I have adopted a different approach to AA and AAA cells from that outlined previously.

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Battery technology continues to improve. In 2007, I bought some Sony fast-charge nickel-metal-hydride (NiMH) AA cells and charger. They have worked well for digital cameras, electronic flashes, and a portable audio recorder. NiMH cells are available in major stores and some offer long-shelf-life-per-charge and come pre-charged.

Recently, I did a thorough search for 9 V rechargeable batteries for wireless microphones at church. I was pleased to discover that iPowerUS (they have a Toronto office) was able to provide lithium polymer 9 V batteries that far outperformed the available NiMH offerings. We bought one DC9V charger and eight DC9V-520mAh batteries for alternate use in four wireless transmitters that we use regularly. We expect this system to pay off in a year or less.

I also bought their GC-60 tester/charger for my NiMH AA and AAA cells which, so far, looks excellent. Both chargers come with a “wall wart” and a car cord.

See updates in this article.

My storage systems have grown to keep up with storage needs. I am currently running two NAS units in RAID-5:

Unit #1 for client audio projects is a Netgear ReadyNAS NV+ with four 500 GB drives, providing about 1.3 TiB of storage.

Unit #2 for personal projects and general data is a Thecus N5200 Pro with four 1000 GB drives, providing about 2.7 TiB of storage.

These two units are then duplicated off-site and connected by a fibre optic link (currently running at 100 Mb/s while the rest of the network is running at 1000 Mb/s). (more…)

For many years, I had been in favour of the Primera Z1 small optical disc printer. When Primera discontinued this several years ago, I was not pleased and purchased two as spares, hoping at least the ribbons would continue.

It appears that I am not alone in thinking this is a good product as it has resurfaced as the U-Print CDP78, now in black, and available from many online distributors. The cartridges appear to be interchangeable with the Primera. I can now suggest that this is a good alternative for safe, long-lasting, and reasonably attractive text labeling of CDs and DVDs. It appears that the Teac P11 is also similar. The last time I checked, the Casio required manual rotation of the disk, rather than the Primera’s automatic rotation.

Please provide me with any feedback pro or con—preferably as comments to this post.

The question of how to format hard disks (i.e. what file system to use on them) for easy interchange is another FAQ. A recent experience brought home the fact that it is more complex than one might hope. The computer industry is headed towards universal readability, but it is not there yet. The most-able-to-be-read-and-written format appears to be FAT32, although my friend Eric Jacobs makes the point that NTFS is a more robust hard disk file system, and I have to agree. (more…)

I received the following in an email from a person only identified as Ross. I thank him. He sent me the following in reference to this post. concerning Philips and PoziDriv screws as used on Nakamichi Dragons and other Japanese equipment. I, too, have a set of Hozen drivers which I obtained from www.escience.ca (more…)

I first wrote about seeing the tracks here in March of 2006. While these solutions work, the Plastiform viewer needs to be kept in a humidor and the Kyread spray is a bit of mess to use and the results are variable. One result of the Kyread treatment can be seen here (please wait for the pictures to load, it’s a big page).

Here is what appears to be a vastly improved solution:

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This has been updated 2007-06. Please look here, but there is still good information, below.
Two ways of seeing tracks on a tape are listed here. We’re collecting more in the comments. (more…)

Many pieces of equipment with cross-headed screws actually have Pozidriv screws rather than Phillips screws in them. This is especially true of Japanese equipment. [EDIT 2007-11-26] Or are these yet different JIS screws? See the updated post about this here.

I bought a set of Hozan [JIS] drivers, but now that I’ve learned that PB makes them [maybe] (see tools article) I’ll buy any additional ones from them. Pozidrive screws have “tick” marks between the slots–or should.

Here is an interesting explanation of the different screw heads in the context of cabinet/furniture making.

After some testing with both Phillips and Pozidrive drivers, it seems that some/many of the inexpensive screws that come packaged with home hardware-type items are non-descript and perhaps don’t meet either standard!

The 2 mm hex head screws that hold panel modules and blanks on Studer A810s are easily stripped by slightly worn hex drivers. Studer used 2.5 mm hex head screws in the later A807, perhaps aware of this issue. Using PB drivers from the start will reduce the possiblity of this happening.

There are essentially two choices when this happens:

• Slot the screw with a Dremel rotary tool and a small cutoff blade and use a slotted screwdriver to remove the screw.
• Use some sort of Ez-Out screw extractor.

When I was confronted with this situation recently and I didn’t have an EZ-out of the correct size to bite into the screw without drilling, I grabbed a T10 Torx driver and gently tapped it into the screw head. I pushed in hard while starting to turn and the screw came out.