Fuck all those shitdesigns that interface with their LCD using flat graphite cables!
USE FUCKING COPPER WIRES ALREADY!!! At least those things can take a small fucking tug of gravity during disassembly, unlike that micron-thick graphite junk which fractures even more easily than my goddamn toe did!!!

And as mentioned on Hackaday (https://hackaday.com/2012/09/...), repairing it is hell. How much does it cost to make a decent copper wire.. I can buy those things for like 20 cents from AliExpress, so don't tell me motherfuckturer that you can't. And these copper ribbon wires last on ya, AND can be repaired with a simple soldering job. Unlike this FUCKING GARBAGE!!!

Yet another rant about crappy electronic designs.

Just now I was cleaning my desk and stumbled upon some old hard drive in a caddy that I still had laying around.. I figured, let's plug it in and see whether the drive still works. And to some extent, it does! Except that every few minutes it craps out on me. And after disassembling the caddy, I think that I know why.

Just as background information, hard drives work at 12V and generally require about 10W to spin their motor. Meanwhile USB operates at 5V. So a boost converter needs to be present in the controller to step up the voltage and power the drive.

Now what's a boost converter? It's an inductor, a capacitor, a transistor and a diode in a specific arrangement (if you're interested in the design, check out https://youtube.com/watch/...), along with feedback circuitry to stabilize output voltage. Now that transistor is important.. it switches at very high frequency, and its rise and fall times create heat. In the particular transistor used in that controller, it apparently causes the transistor to operate at 65-68°C. That's quite toasty IMO, and overheating may be why the controller is so unstable. But the Chinese manufacturers thought that it's just fine and okay to be sold without heatsink or some research into transistors with better rise and fall times.

So the hard drive craps out on me and yet again it's because of certified shitdesigns. MOTHERFUCKTURERS!!!!

Follow-up to https://devrant.com/rants/1551635

I think that I've found the reason for this Acer motherboard's refusal to boot up now. Apparently this featureful piece of shit expects "something" on its ID pin as well.. and why ID pin you may ask? I reckon that it's because of "certified replacements". Because you know, if it doesn't come from our shitty factorias it's gotta be shit, right?!

How about no?!! You Acer really aren't the only ones capable of producing a fucking lithium battery! And did you ever think of the edge cases where you may want to feed a lab bench power supply's voltage into the phone to mimic the battery and troubleshoot the bloody thing? Because that's what I initially wanted to do, instead of that Doogee battery. The only reason why I didn't is because the supply is currently charging up another lithium cell that I salvaged from a donated (broken) Samsung tablet, and is taking longer than expected.

Point is, if you receive the appropriate fucking level of angry pixies, YOU SHOULD FUCKING USE THEM AND BOOT UP ALREADY!!! Regardless of whether it's some sort of certified fucking Acer component or not! Somewhere between 4.2 and 2.7V stable should be good enough regardless of what produces it!

At least AliExpress sells these batteries for about €4.5, and another €2 for shipping. Considering that I can buy batteries with this capacity for €2 a pop and free shipping, this would better fucking work. Especially since I'm buying an overpriced battery of which almost half the cost is fucking shipping, just for a stupid "certified" controller that' I'll also have to put between the board and any pixie wrangler or angry pixie containment device that I use to power this shitty board. Acer, you motherfuckers!!!