I like all things electronics, so when someone asked me to chip their Samsung laser, I said OK... The chipping went badly, the samsung'd learned to check the eeprom wasnt write protected on late firmwares and all gibberish appeared on display. So because there were 2, I managed to learn about I2c and EEproms and copying stuff, and got myself out the hole with a new 24c64 chip and copying its data off the working one. (and changing its MAC in hexeditor)
so its got me back into playing with microcontrollers (I've been assembly languaging since z80/1981, ended up teaching the degree course I was on's 8051 programming module), and stuff so its nice to play again. (PC vb/C# is nice but you'll never need to know the IO address of the video chip!) which gave me the idea to tell him to copy the eeprom when new (mac address/serial number) etc with PonyProg and I saved him hundreds pounds in a year by just refilling and resetting to new. (even with nice connectors on and PC 9pin plug and stuff)..
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So he gave me a 3800c ricoh that was scrapped, and I'd already scrapped a few to get working ones going, (very successful, I love Ricoh stuff), and I came accross 2 identical morors, and big helical gears, and shafts, and bush/bearings made out of the electroclutch round inside bits glued on CD ..
The best thing I just found is the Duplex unit has 2 edentical steppers, and a control board! I can hack off the existing hitachi MCU, power the board, get my PIC running the SLA7023 chips inpute again to make another... Anyone scraps one, turn it into a fun car!
Hopefully, IR and possibly ultrasound sensory systems to come, but so far its like a "BigTrack", a favorite toy of my young days!!
NEAL
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