Sunday, February 18, 2007
We'll have some major updates soon...
Well, it's been a while since anything major happened. I'm planning to put up something new on the website new; have bits and pieces of ideas - shall string them up before I post them here on the website! So please be patient and in the mean time you can enjoy the rest of the website...
Saturday, January 27, 2007
Fun with soldering!
Republic day - an auspicious day to try out something new...
Finally after all those years of doing engineering I tried my hand at soldering. Believe it or not most of the engineering students these days have hardly held a soldering iron in their hands! The iron was smoking the first time I plugged it in just as they had mentioned in the back cover of the soldering iron box.
My victim was the computer speaker which wasn't working any longer. I pried open the speaker to reveal its internals which was nothing more than a medium size speaker along with a small circuit board. While investigating with my new multimeter I discovered that the power supply was reaching the upper half of the circuit board - there was a connector between the two halves and there was no voltage on the upper half. I jumped to the conclusion that there must be some loose connection. After researching on how to use a soldering iron I came to one conclusion - many people have burnt their fingers during soldering and I wouldn't repeat their mistakes.
By the way, a soldering iron is nothing but a metal rod with a pencil like tip which when given power supply will become smoking hot. A solder is used to make electrical connections on circuit boards between two components.
I placed the iron pencil on the connection I believed had problem and almost immediately the pin sent up a few puffs of smoke! It seemed like I had burnt the pin. The soldering iron turned bluish golden and I could feel the volcanic heat under the plastic handle. I plugged off the power supply and decided that this was enough for one day. Just out of curiosity I checked whether power supply was coming to the upper half of the circuit board and voila: the meter read 16V. But the speaker was still not working and renewed with enthusiasm I thought that perhaps there was some other loose connection in the circuit board (I got this idea after seeing a guy repair my monitor by just reapplying solder on the entire circuit board - and the monitor worked after that!); and so off I went with the iron pencil (this time not smoking), trying to apply solder wherever I wanted to.
I knew I wasn't doing the soldering proper because I made 2 or 3 tiny metallic balls of solder which I had to push out off the circuit board! Still it was fun to burn some connections and see some smoke arising out of the board and the second time around I was worried of the smoke. Worst case scenario would be burning out the circuit board itself - I wasn't worried about damage because the speaker had served us faithfully for nearly 8 years; it was anyway due for replacement.
And if there are any would-be engineers reading this then I'd advise them to learn the art of soldering in college itself; you needn't rely on teachers - there is a good chance that someone from your own batch will have good experience in soldering.
Finally after all those years of doing engineering I tried my hand at soldering. Believe it or not most of the engineering students these days have hardly held a soldering iron in their hands! The iron was smoking the first time I plugged it in just as they had mentioned in the back cover of the soldering iron box.
My victim was the computer speaker which wasn't working any longer. I pried open the speaker to reveal its internals which was nothing more than a medium size speaker along with a small circuit board. While investigating with my new multimeter I discovered that the power supply was reaching the upper half of the circuit board - there was a connector between the two halves and there was no voltage on the upper half. I jumped to the conclusion that there must be some loose connection. After researching on how to use a soldering iron I came to one conclusion - many people have burnt their fingers during soldering and I wouldn't repeat their mistakes.
By the way, a soldering iron is nothing but a metal rod with a pencil like tip which when given power supply will become smoking hot. A solder is used to make electrical connections on circuit boards between two components.
I placed the iron pencil on the connection I believed had problem and almost immediately the pin sent up a few puffs of smoke! It seemed like I had burnt the pin. The soldering iron turned bluish golden and I could feel the volcanic heat under the plastic handle. I plugged off the power supply and decided that this was enough for one day. Just out of curiosity I checked whether power supply was coming to the upper half of the circuit board and voila: the meter read 16V. But the speaker was still not working and renewed with enthusiasm I thought that perhaps there was some other loose connection in the circuit board (I got this idea after seeing a guy repair my monitor by just reapplying solder on the entire circuit board - and the monitor worked after that!); and so off I went with the iron pencil (this time not smoking), trying to apply solder wherever I wanted to.
I knew I wasn't doing the soldering proper because I made 2 or 3 tiny metallic balls of solder which I had to push out off the circuit board! Still it was fun to burn some connections and see some smoke arising out of the board and the second time around I was worried of the smoke. Worst case scenario would be burning out the circuit board itself - I wasn't worried about damage because the speaker had served us faithfully for nearly 8 years; it was anyway due for replacement.
And if there are any would-be engineers reading this then I'd advise them to learn the art of soldering in college itself; you needn't rely on teachers - there is a good chance that someone from your own batch will have good experience in soldering.
Thursday, January 25, 2007
Verdict delivered
Well, the verdict is delivered; "my database is gone kaboom"! They said they are unable to recover the tables; and with it goes all my wonderful pieces of literature as well :-(
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