Also, if you plan to start soldering more regularly, you might want to get some desoldering wick and a desoldering pump, check some tutorials, and practice on some scrap parts first.

I’m no sponsor or shill for these items, just a casual stroll through the bay for suggestions…

https://www.ebay.com/itm/322171797486

https://www.ebay.com/itm/187338588903

https://youtube.com/watch?v=rK38rpUy568

Mechanical keyboard don’t have super thick heavy duty power traces, so basically any cheap $25 dollar 30 watt iron from Lowe’s or other hardware store should do the trick for your needs.

When looking for solder, look for flux core or rosin core solder, practically all electronics grade solder is hollow and has flux/rosin already inside the solder.

For larger projects where you’re dealing with large power traces and/or large wires, you might want to invest in a more professional temperature adjustable soldering station, and additional flux.

What old flux I’ve been using (I admit I haven’t done all that much soldering in years after I quit that job, chemicals aren’t exactly healthy yo)…

NC-559-ASM-TPF(UV)

But hey, if you want some cheap flux, just go cut some bark off of a pine tree and let the sap run for a day or two. The original soldering flux was pine sap.

Good luck fully cleaning that shit off though, pine sap is super sticky…

Use flux, pre-tin your soldering tip and the stuff you’re planning to solder before you actually solder things together, rubbing alcohol and Q-Tips to clean residual flux off afterwards.

Yes that’s an extremely simplified explanation, but for real, cleanliness is of utmost importance. When solder is clean and has flux, it flows almost like mercury when hot.

Also, you don’t want the iron too cold or too hot. I’ve found temperature ranges between 370⁰C to 420⁰C typically best, lower temperature for thin data line traces, higher temps for large ground plane or power traces.

If I had to spot a guess, he was taking advantage of his savings account building interest, he had me and at least 2 other employees doing this. Walmart would charge $6 for the check processing fees, so…

(1500 - 6) * 3 employees = $4482, every week.

I think he was taking advantage of the delay in Walmart’s check verification and racking up his interest buildup on his savings, then turning around and paying back the original amount prior to interest accumulation.

Something like that anyways, that’s the loose understanding I came away with.

Edit: Damn good question though, if someone has a better explanation, by all means please share and educate us…

A former computer repair employer of mine apparently had us running what they call a ‘check racing scam’ back around 2014. I didn’t fully understand the nature of the scam back then, but I knew it seemed really fishy.

He’d write on the memo line ‘loan to shareholder’, though he wasn’t on the stock market and we most definitely weren’t shareholders.

When 2015 came, I was expecting my tax documents so I could file and get my tax returns in a timely manner, which should be given to employees in January and are due with the IRS by April 15th, at least here in the USA.

But no, even by April 15th, we still didn’t have our tax documents. It was on that very day I quit, and I reported everything to his banker, his tax people, and Walmart, where he had us cashing those checks.

Needless to say, those organizations were not happy with my former employer. That’s also how I learned what they call that sort of scam, a check racing scam.

He’d print out and have us cash checks in the amount of $1500 at Walmart, then have us bring the cash back to him and he’d go to his bank and deposit the money into his own account. Apparently Walmart doesn’t bother verifying the checks for another 2 days or so if the amount doesn’t exceed $1500.

As I reported his fraud to the different companies involved, I made it clear with them that any check in the amount of $1500 was part of his scam, but the lesser checks around ~$400 to $550 or so were my legit paychecks.

His tax people told me that what I reported answered a lot of questions they had. His banker said he didn’t have the privilege to share the employer’s banking data with me, to which I responded that I wasn’t asking any questions, I was only there to report (with evidence in hand).

I forget what Walmart told me, but their money center apparently passed the info up the chain of command. And then I just walked, and took my own personal toolkit with me.

I was one of the best employees he ever had, nobody else was worth a shit at soldering or had the knowledge and ability to get rid of rootkit infections.

He had 5 shops open when I quit. Within 2 years, they shut all of them down. Last I heard through the grapevine was that he was planning on opening a restaurant somewhere.

Lesson: If you’re running a tech shop, don’t fuck with the hardware and data recovery specialist, we do keep backups.

As a final note, once I got my ‘tax papers’, it was in October, and it was just a fucking PostIt note with how much I earned the previous year.

Edit: Yes, I’d still do that again to this day, if I had to. I despise scammers, and I especially despise scamming employers that make their employees part of the scam as part of their terms of employment.

I’m starting to think he just likes writing his name on anything, just like he likes hearing his own voice and patting himself on the back diaper.

He probably doesn’t even read much of anything he signs.

I wish he’d just resign, and take Vance with him while he’s at it…

Did your keyboard have a stroke? Haha, I more or less get you though.

Tell them “I need this job because working 40 hours a week at the sperm bank is very exhausting”

You do have a point, but most phones have one edge that doesn’t have any buttons, and most people have their phone in a case, which assuming it’s a proper fitting case, usually cancels out that camera bump issue and makes it sit properly flat on a table.

That’s actually a pretty good question.

With no exact answer, I do think this will at least in part depend on relative comparison to how exactly level your floor/ceiling/counter/table or other frame of reference is, which itself might not be perfect.

Side note, basically every smart phone out there has orientation sensors, so it should be just as easy as downloading a Bubble Level app from the app store.

Nah, if you knew my dad at the time, he insisted there was nothing wrong with my vision. I actually was already a pretty intelligent kid, mostly from book learning at the time.

Book learning worked great for me, but only because the book was close to my face, which works fine for nearsighted people. So my dad was convinced, my vision was fine.

I was disappointed at my dad for quite a few years, but ultimately had to let my anger go.

A few years later, dad asked me why I didn’t tell them I had bad vision. All I could tell him was “I didn’t know, until I finally got to see good vision.”

Nope, they sure didn’t.

I actually thought about that as I typed out my short Ted Talk, it’s really a shame isn’t it?

Thank you for understanding, things might have went differently if I wasn’t afraid of the teacher authority at the time and just walked closer myself.

Please, if anyone happens to see children acting ‘strange’ or whatever, please do have them checked out for the bare basics of vision and hearing.

Some of us weren’t trying to be weird kids, we just perceived the world differently.

At age 7, I got in trouble for ‘acting out’ when they gave all the students a basic eye chart test. When it was my turn, they put me on the measured out line and asked me to read the chart.

I asked “What chart?” The teacher pointed at the door. Apparently the chart was on the door, but all I could see was a large white/greyish rectangle from that distance.

Yeah, my vision was that bad. You know that big capital E on the top of the chart? Yep, nothing, I literally couldn’t see the chart. So I didn’t know what else to do but keep asking “What chart?”

They called my dad in and between him, the teacher, and the principal, I got scolded for ‘acting out’.

The next year, age 8, they assigned seats in order based off the first letter of our last names, which happened to put me in the back of the class. I couldn’t see a damn thing on the chalkboard…

So my parents finally had to take me to a proper eye doctor. They found out my vision was like -4.5, which is extremely nearsighted.

So I finally got glasses, and about 2 weeks of apologies from my mom. Every time she apologized, I reminded her that she had absolutely nothing to apologize for, I was just thankful I could finally see!

I never got an apology from my dad, the teacher or the principal though. It’s a bit fucked up that they could have caught it earlier on when the whole reason they gave students the basic eye test was literally to catch obvious vision problems early on…

You’d remember shit like being a plankton, a slug, a housefly, a dung beetle, a rat, a squirrel, a raccoon, a double headed snake (fuck Larry life), a cat, a sloth, and finally a human.

Good luck with that.

Can confirm, unfortunately I grew up and live here.

Fuck Tater Reeves

Also, 1474560 / 1024 = 1440

If anyone could keep up with binary numbers back in the day, floppy disks were literally measured in binary megabytes.

Modified versions of various blank floppies
-------------------------------------------
These modifications reduce the number of
FAT tables from 2 to 1 and also reduce the
number of root entries down to 16 files,
which frees up some extra storage space.

The 1.72MB format can ONLY be used on Win9X
systems on real hardware, as not even WinNT
can access tracks 81 or 82 on floppy disks.
Disk image programs like WinImage can still
access files within 1.72MB floppy images.



1.44MB Standard:
80 Tracks		18 Sectors/Track
2880 Sectors Total	1474560 Bytes Total
-------------------------------------------
Sectors Per Cluster: 1	Number of FATs: 2
Max Root Entries: 224	Sectors Per FAT: 9
1457664 Bytes Data

1.44MB Maxed:
-------------------------------------------
Sectors Per Cluster: 4	Number of FATs: 1
Max Root Entries: 64	Sectors Per FAT: 3
1470464 Bytes Data

Differences:
-------------------------------------------
12800 Bytes More, 160 Less Root Entries



1.68MB Standard:
80 Tracks		21 Sectors/Track
3360 Sectors Total	1720320 Bytes Total
-------------------------------------------
Sectors Per Cluster: 1	Number of FATs: 2
Max Root Entries: 224	Sectors Per FAT: 10
1702400 Bytes Data

1.68MB Maxed:
-------------------------------------------
Sectors Per Cluster: 4	Number of FATs: 1
Max Root Entries: 64	Sectors Per FAT: 3
1716224 Bytes Data

Differences:
-------------------------------------------
13824 Bytes More, 160 Less Root Entries



DMF 1024 Standard:
80 Tracks		21 Sectors/Track
3360 Sectors Total	1720320 Bytes Total
-------------------------------------------
Sectors Per Cluster: 2	Number of FATs: 2
Max Root Entries: 16	Sectors Per FAT: 5
1714176 Bytes Data

DMF 1024 Maxed:
-------------------------------------------
Sectors Per Cluster: 4	Number of FATs: 1
Max Root Entries: 64	Sectors Per FAT: 3
1716224 Bytes Data

2048 Bytes More, 48 More Root Entries



DMF 2048 Standard:
80 Tracks		21 Sectors/Track
3360 Sectors Total	1720320 Bytes Total
-------------------------------------------
Sectors Per Cluster: 4	Number of FATs: 2
Max Root Entries: 16	Sectors Per FAT: 3
1716224 Bytes Data

DMF 2048 Maxed:
-------------------------------------------
Sectors Per Cluster: 4	Number of FATs: 1
Max Root Entries: 64	Sectors Per FAT: 3
1716224 Bytes Data

Differences:
-------------------------------------------
0 Bytes More, 48 More Root Entries



1.72MB Standard:
82 Tracks		21 Sectors/Track
3444 Sectors Total	1763328 Bytes Total
-------------------------------------------
Sectors Per Cluster: 1	Number of FATs: 2
Max Root Entries: 224	Sectors Per FAT: 10
1745408 Bytes Data

1.72MB Maxed:
-------------------------------------------
Sectors Per Cluster: 4	Number of FATs: 1
Max Root Entries: 64	Sectors Per FAT: 3
1759232 Bytes Data

Differences:
-------------------------------------------
13824 Bytes More, 160 Less Root Entries

If you’re interested in the blank disk images themselves, let me know.

The floppy disk format is based on the FAT12 file system.

https://www.cs.drexel.edu/~johnsojr/2012-13/fall/cs370/resources/UnderstandingFAT12.pdf

And with enough creative tweaks to that file system, you can get DMF 1.68MB format, and if you think a bit outside the box and erase the redundant secondary FAT table and settle on a max of only 16 files on the disk, you can squeeze a few more kilobytes out of that even.

I actually made a number of custom modded blank disk images with more storage space, I might dig out the full specs of all the variants later.