u/Suspiciously_Ugly

EDIT: you guys are hilarious! maybe it was just a girly tiktok thing to put lace on pcs! i saw you say "doilies" and im like dollies?? the nendoroids in my pc?? and ive been laughing this past hour over this, i just need to know if the paint job is okay and the back isnt weird! lol.

I have horrid OCD. Horrid. I mean horrible. Like I overthink everything. So when I got my pc last year and I liked it at first and suddenly went.. no I don’t think I like the white I like black more, I overthink myself to the oblivion!! Do I have to buy a new case?!? How much is case swapping?! Then I went, okay. Just paint it!

The white is the before! Ignore the ugly lace, can’t believe I fell for that propaganda, and the after is the black. I usually ruin all my craft projects but I took so many precautions and I just need some words of advice or encouragement that I did okay!

The only downside to the paint is I don’t know how to take apart a pc, nor am I trusting myself to do that. So I taped it all up before painting but I didn’t paint over the vents where the fan was. (The white part) but you don’t see it, but I need to know that it isn’t like.. annoying, right..

The specs are dust, I swear.

Planted as a sapling somewhere between 10-20 years ago, it's kinda hidden in the back so the weed trimmer guard never got removed.

No matter the battery voltage, VBAT in the BIOS and lm-sensors always read 3.232v, even when the battery is removed. Almost dismissed the CMOS battery as good when diagnosing, I took it apart anyway and lo and behold, the battery was 2v, removed it and booted and it didn't change. PC is an old StrataCache mini PC.

How to tune random PCB antennas: https://www.reddit.com/r/rfelectronics/s/ReK6wPD8jt

Crappy Bluetooth devices have a lot of room to improve. This adapter I bought had no bass, terrible range, and 1 hour battery life. First thing I did was bypass the tiny output capacitors with some beefy electolytics, that fixed the bass, sounded like my ears were clogged before. Second, the LEDs were absolutely blasting so I disabled 2 of them, and added a resistor to the 3rd, that increased the battery life to 6+ hours. Lastly I thought I'd try my hand at tuning the PCB antenna (for more info, see post linked above), and was surprisingly very successful, the range now outperforms all of my other devices. It now reaches from one side of the house to the other, when before, it would drop out after just leaving the room. I know the soldering is sloppy but it's too small for my large gorilla hands and it beeps out so it's fine lol. Happy modding!

You will need a Vector Network Analyzer with a short pigtail, and a tiny 50Ω resistor (I used 2 100Ω SMD resistors in parallel). You must first calibrate your VNA to the very tip of the pigtail by setting the range (I used 2ghz start and 3ghz stop since it's Bluetooth), then soldering the wires together and pressing "short", then separating them and pressing "open", then soldering on the 50Ω resistor and pressing "load", then finishing and saving. Next, it might not always be necessary but you should isolate the antenna from the circuit if possible. Mine had a capacitor between the antenna and chip so I just desoldered that for tuning. You can now solder your pigtail anywhere on the transmission line going to the antenna, preferably as close as possible to the feedpoint, in my example I connect it across a couple of unpopulated capacitor pads (C20 in pic 1). Now just trim or lengthen your antenna to move the middle of the dip (the yellow line in pic 3) to the middle of the band you're targeting to get max signal strength. My Bluetooth headphones now reach from one side of the house to the other, when before, it would drop out after just leaving the room. Other unrelated mods explained here: https://www.reddit.com/r/hardwarehacking/s/L9EPLVUeTU