Chris Reitz dot Com

OK, so I promised pictures. here they are. Yup, got my computer fixed, so now I should be able to post a little more regularly.

Fig 1 - The layout I'll be using. The ciircuit board will go where the ribbon cables are.

This next one made me mad, because it means I’ll probably have to buy about $12 more worth of switches, and spend another hour soldering them all up.

Fig 2 - The broken switch

Fig. 3 - Most of the TRS jacks in place. Still need to paint the back plate.

Well, sorry, I know that this is a pretty lame post, but I didn’t really have time to do more. Hopefully the pictures make up for the lack of new info. Part of it is that I’m waiting for a nice day, so I could paint my back plate black, and part of it (ok…ok…I admit it) is laziness. I’ll have more next time.

Pictures coming soon…

I got set back on this a little, because I needed to shell out for a new suspension and a 60,000-mile checkup on my car. In the meantime, some good things and some bad things have happened to the project since.

The Good

I got some more TRS connectors! I’m almost ready to put the whole thing together! I only need one more connector.

The Bad

One of my switches broke. Yes, that’s right, broke. The ones I got were made of plastic, and apparently I bumped a switch and the threads broke, so I can’t bolt it down anymore. I’ll have to decide whether to buy another switch, and just hope it won’t happen again, or whether I should replace all the switches with better quality ones. That’d take a lot of desoldering, and resoldering though…we’ll see.

I’m probably also going to need to get some pretty long, pretty skinny bolts from somewhere. Again, we’ll see

The Obligatory Rant

Some pretty smart people have worked at Radio Shack, but unfortunately, usually the ones who make a career of working there seem to be complete morons. I went into the Shack today to buy my TRS jacks, and I had to tell the guy five times that I didn’t want any batteries, cell phone accessories, batteries, batteries for my smoke alarm because Daylight Savings Time is coming up, batteries, or anything else (including batteries). Maybe next time I’ll just tell him, “if you keep going with your litany, I’m going to put my connectors back, and get them from Full Compass.” That ought to shut him up. I guess at least he’s not like the guy who used to work there. You’d ask that one for a resistor and he’d take you to the remote control cars.

Anyway, I’ve been having computer problems, so as soon as those are done being fixed, I’ll post pictures.