The cable box, that the relative's cable company never wanted back well over a decade ago, has come out of hiding down the back of a workbench in a shed and yielded a 500GiB Seagate hard disc. Not to be sniffed at.

If I can figure out how to get the heat sink off, I shall satisfy my curiosity about what CPU it used.

It's one of those affairs that uses the 'H' type of torx-head screws — purportedly a 'security' measure, but I was able to buy a set of L keys for £15 from Machine Mart.

Thanks should go to whoever it was on the FediVerse who put me on to #MachineMart a couple of years ago.

https://machinemart.co.uk/p/laser-miniature-star-bit-set-tamperproof/

Yes, I know. £15 for something that I could have got for a tenner off e-Bay is not the best trade. But I'm having fun channelling #BigClive, opening the thing up with pry bars and sticking the hard disc into another machine to see how it is partitioned and formatted.

#torx #ShedClearance

The most amusing thing today, I discussed on Mastodon.Scot.

The second most amusing thing was, after a relative had complained more than once about the little surprise trip potentially making xem late for a 14:00 appointment, asking said relative, when we had arrived at Machine Mart in the big city, to get out Google Maps and work out whether 3 hours was enough time to get to that appointment … which was 800 metres down the road.

#MachineMart

A poor substitute for a @lindasgoluppiart task.

Today:

Find a piece of furniture of some kind with a sliding drawer, preferably with ball bearing runners but this is not required.

For 1 minute, slowly slide the drawer all of the way out and in again. Listen to the sound. Feel how much friction there is (which shouldn't be much with ball bearings). Look inside the drawer.

When the man in #MachineMart comes over and asks you if you are interested in the toolchest, say not today.

#SlowLife

#MachineMart was quite interesting. They had a waterseal Stanley FatMax. No-one seems to stock them any more.

Add on a visit to B&Q, two visits to ToolStation, and one to Homebase, and it was quite the #BankHoliday round.

It turned out that Homebase had a sale on, and something that was going to be bought a month from now was bought at 20% off. I only decided to swing by there, on the way back from ToolStation Pilgrimage Number Two, on a whim.

Now I have to collect it.

#DIY #WhiteVanMan

@FourT4 @BruceShark

I might just sneak in a visit to #MachineMart as well. Someone from the FediVerse suggested it to me months ago, and I keep meaning to take a look.