HardwareMusic thingummy

  

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 From:  CHYRON (DSMITHHFX)   25 May 2019 19:15 
 To:  william (WILLIAMA)       122 of 168 
42301.122 In reply to 42301.121 
I'd let it wear the scars like a badge of courage. But I'm uber lazy. Fuck I don't even own an amp.
“Man Stole Daughter’s Girl Scouts Cookie Money To Pay For Erotic Massage”
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 From:  william (WILLIAMA)    25 May 2019 20:30 
 To:  CHYRON (DSMITHHFX)      123 of 168 
42301.123 In reply to 42301.122 
I had a nearly identical one 30+ years ago but it developed a fault and I sent it for repair under warranty. It never arrived at the repair place: missing presumed nicked from whatever railway platform the Post Office left it on. The Post Office gave me £20 by way of compensation.

This one was given to me by my sister-in-law's husband who used it for 25 years. 
never trust a man in a blue trench coat, never drive a car when you're dead
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 From:  graphitone   26 May 2019 10:36 
 To:  william (WILLIAMA)       124 of 168 
42301.124 In reply to 42301.121 
If the case is disassemble-able then I'd be tempted to remove the whole shroud, or at the very least those bits that are visible when it's on a shelf/hifi rack, then fill, sand and re-spray the whole thing. If you're looking for a matt black hard wearing spray paint then you could do worse than this.
Aside from some minatures I discovered at my mum's house in a long abandoned cupboard which I've painted up just to see if I had the skills still, I've tried it out on some metal work I need to do for a fireplace surround and it's been brilliant.

 


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 From:  william (WILLIAMA)    18 Jun 2019 12:49 
 To:  graphitone      125 of 168 
42301.125 In reply to 42301.124 
OK, where I am now. 1) The Cyrus 2 amplifier is back from the repair man who has replaced all the key capacitors with "Nichicon audio grade replacements"* and cleaned and gold-electroplated the controls (inside - not the knobs) plus replaced various switches and resoldered bits and loads of other stuff.
2) Music all now in Flac form on my new tiny PC. About to add a wifi chip and antennas (antennae? Apparently "s" will do for the electrical sort) 3) Sadly decided to retire my ancient home-built transmission-line loudspeakers. 20 years is storage have not been kind. The drive units are failing along with the crossovers and replacements are eye-wateringly expensive. Plus I really can't be arsed to re-veneer two big floorstanding boxes. 4) Ordered some pretty speaker stands with bamboo feet and some new speakers. Boo! Phone call today - "Speakers out of stock and manufacturer says won't make any more. We have the replacement but it's an upgrade and an extra £250." As my tears start to fall, the sales human continues, "But my manager says you can have them at the same price." Hooray! These ones if you're interested. 5) Mrs WilliamA has told me that she simply cannot live with the clutter of stand-mounted loudspeakers next to the telly. Fair enough, but that means the music set up will move East into the extension (we've got a sort of open-plan thing going on) hence the need for a wifi chip in the PC as there's no nearby ethernet. Of course, that means I can't plug my PC into the telly any more. I've decided to go for an HDMI connected touchscreen. I only want something little to run a media player app + Spotify etc. so this Elecrow 7 inch thing should do. 

Question: the Elecrow 7 inch touchscreen thingy is reported to be quite good, but it's clearly pig-ugly with acres of exposed circuitry, casework, and mounting points poking out. Has anybody here got one and managed to find a decent case? I've seen this, which will do at a pinch. Failing that, has anybody got suggestions for a more cosmetically satisfactory screen? I've looked at pairing an old tablet to use as a screen, but I'd quite like to connect via HDMI because having a connected monitor works best for Anydesk, which allows me to control things from a remote phone or laptop (Anydesk likes the target computer to have a monitor connected).


*which I imagine is a good thing
never trust a man in a blue trench coat, never drive a car when you're dead
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 From:  graphitone   18 Jun 2019 19:02 
 To:  william (WILLIAMA)       126 of 168 
42301.126 In reply to 42301.125 
What do you need in a case? Is it going be wall mounted or something you can tote around?


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 From:  william (WILLIAMA)    18 Jun 2019 19:39 
 To:  graphitone      127 of 168 
42301.127 In reply to 42301.126 
It'll be sitting next to the PC. I'm not intending to wall mount or anything. I just want something that can be picked up to choose music or check what's playing. I don't want a big standard sized monitor or one of the mini-monitors with stands (that tend to be ridiculously expensive anyway) which is why the Elecrow range is attractive. For a case, I just want something to cover up the exposed circuits and tidy away the mounting tabs etc. If it's reasonably decent looking that's a plus.
never trust a man in a blue trench coat, never drive a car when you're dead
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 From:  william (WILLIAMA)    18 Jun 2019 20:30 
 To:  graphitone      128 of 168 
42301.128 In reply to 42301.126 
It's odd looking at this case. They seem to have deliberately made it not fit properly leaving ribbon cables and stuff on view from the front.
never trust a man in a blue trench coat, never drive a car when you're dead
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 From:  william (WILLIAMA)    19 Jun 2019 07:14 
 To:  william (WILLIAMA)       129 of 168 
42301.129 In reply to 42301.128 
Anybody know how to fool a PC into behaving as though it has a monitor attached when there isn't one? Anydesk, my remote connection software of choice, doesn't work well, or sometimes at all, when there's no monitor.
never trust a man in a blue trench coat, never drive a car when you're dead
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 From:  CHYRON (DSMITHHFX)   19 Jun 2019 09:17 
 To:  william (WILLIAMA)       130 of 168 
42301.130 In reply to 42301.129 
I either have it boot up with an always on vnc server or start/stop the server via ssh.
“Alligator with large knife in its head seen swimming in lake”
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 From:  william (WILLIAMA)    19 Jun 2019 09:21 
 To:  CHYRON (DSMITHHFX)      131 of 168 
42301.131 In reply to 42301.130 
You're quite right of course. I really should just use VNC - or any remote desktop thing without the monitor quirks.
never trust a man in a blue trench coat, never drive a car when you're dead
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 From:  william (WILLIAMA)    19 Jun 2019 12:07 
 To:  william (WILLIAMA)       132 of 168 
42301.132 In reply to 42301.131 
And I've discovered that it doesn't matter because the chipset on this mobo churns out a default 1024x768 desktop anyway with no  monitor plugged in.

So for a local monitor, with some usb string for charging, I can buy a cheapo, no-name tablet and use iDisplay or similar.
never trust a man in a blue trench coat, never drive a car when you're dead
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 From:  william (WILLIAMA)    21 Jun 2019 13:16 
 To:  william (WILLIAMA)       133 of 168 
42301.133 In reply to 42301.132 
Pretty well finished now. I still have to put about 100GB of Classical Music on but that's going to mean a bit of faffing around with metadata as most media players only really play nicely with rock/pop/jazz etc. I also have to install a wifi chip, having recently discovered the difference between MHF4 connectors and mini PCI-E connectors on internal antenna tails (M.2 cards have the former and no matter how hard you push, the latter don't fit). Then there's some more cable-management and taking a look at Fidelizer. But, yes, nearly done. Sounds brilliant and I have a stupid smile.

 
never trust a man in a blue trench coat, never drive a car when you're dead

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 From:  CHYRON (DSMITHHFX)   21 Jun 2019 18:50 
 To:  william (WILLIAMA)       134 of 168 
42301.134 In reply to 42301.133 
"cheapo, no-name tablet and use iDisplay"

If you want to go really cheap, androidvnc is free (iDisplay is US$24).
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 From:  graphitone   21 Jun 2019 21:39 
 To:  william (WILLIAMA)       135 of 168 
42301.135 In reply to 42301.133 
Looks the business that does.  (yes)


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 From:  william (WILLIAMA)    22 Jun 2019 06:35 
 To:  graphitone      136 of 168 
42301.136 In reply to 42301.135 
It sounds pretty business-like. The speakers will take a few days to wear in, but at the risk of sounding like a HiFi prattler, they did improve with a day of use.
never trust a man in a blue trench coat, never drive a car when you're dead
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 From:  william (WILLIAMA)    22 Jun 2019 06:45 
 To:  CHYRON (DSMITHHFX)      137 of 168 
42301.137 In reply to 42301.134 
I've taken a false step there and I haven't worked out how to get around it. Tried a couple of VNC viewers and a couple of other remote desktop type apps. None were especially good. It's a combination of factors. Basically it's far easier to control from a laptop than from a small tablet,, especially one with a low res, laggy screen.
never trust a man in a blue trench coat, never drive a car when you're dead
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 From:  CHYRON (DSMITHHFX)   22 Jun 2019 10:44 
 To:  william (WILLIAMA)       138 of 168 
42301.138 In reply to 42301.137 
Vnc viewers can be finicky, and servers idiosyncratic so there is some trial and error to find the right combo of ip address and port. Then you're shoehorning a desktop display into a small screen.
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 From:  william (WILLIAMA)    22 Jun 2019 11:07 
 To:  CHYRON (DSMITHHFX)      139 of 168 
42301.139 In reply to 42301.138 
It's easy to forget that Android, iOS etc were designed specifically for touchscreens. You connect to a Windows box and straightaway you're faced with text entry boxes that don't automatically resize, links that are too small to tap reliably and so on. Switch Windows to tablet mode and after the pain of setting things back up so that you can find stuff it's not much better. Combine that with a painfully slow tablet and it's all but impossible. 

Trying to improve the memory situation with the tablet by adding a swap file/partition, but it's proving bloody hard to even root the damn thing.
never trust a man in a blue trench coat, never drive a car when you're dead
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 From:  CHYRON (DSMITHHFX)   22 Jun 2019 13:05 
 To:  william (WILLIAMA)       140 of 168 
42301.140 In reply to 42301.139 
Oh, your server is running Windows. I missed that. Windows RDP is actually far more bulletproof than VNC (IME) -- for seeing Windows on other desktops (Windows, OS X and 'mainstream' Linux distros). There is an rdp client for android iirc.

Ubuntu over vnc is pretty usable, even on a 7" tablet (1280x800), but I'd rather use JuiceSSH + Hacker's Keyboard for configuring stuff, because it's basically a full-screen terminal, and the keyboard gives a Ctrl key and other essential functions lacking in the onboard android keyboard.

I was able to 'unlock' my tablet, but not root it and after further investigation decided it isn't worth the bother. I did install a better recovery mode than stock, "team win recovery project," which enables a number of advanced recovery, backup and restore functions, mounting volumes etc. Otherwise it's the same old, lame-ass tablet.

I can see if you are trying to get a really simple setup for non-technical users this is all a complete non-starter.
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 From:  ANT_THOMAS   22 Jun 2019 13:17 
 To:  william (WILLIAMA)       141 of 168 
42301.141 In reply to 42301.133 
Very glad to see you're happy with the results!
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