2nd Life Inc.
Monday, November 17
I started using the Flipper Zero for speeding up computer inspections again, by using BadUSB to open a terminal and run commands to list system information.
I eventually came across an Dell Alienware gaming laptop, having an Intel i7 10th Gen of some sort, RTX 2060 Ti, 144Hz display (AUO AHVA) and 16GB of soldered RAM.
Tuesday, November 18
At some point around noon, I was tasked to swap the fan/wireless assembly out of an Apple 2013 Mac Pro which was surprisingly simple and took less than ten minutes to do.
I started to work on some HP monitors again, I came across one with a broken panel but the section of the screen that the service menu still somewhat worked. With my luck it was an Innolux M215HCA-L3B which is unfortunate as it is broken.
I came across a couple Dell UltraSharp 2007WFP which I found fascinating as it had integrated PIP (Picture in Picture), 16:10 aspect ratio, along with the classic early-mid 2000s Dell aesthetics. It easily became one of my favorite Dell monitors.
Wednesday, November 19
Using an antenna cable found somewhere, I was able to extend the Wi-Fi/Bluetooth antenna from the work PC to somewhere on top of the workbench. I have noticed an immediate improvement in range with Bluetooth audio when listening from the desktop as it allowed direct line of sight with the antenna and the headphones. I have been planning to listen to music on the work PC in order to be able to have stats pushed to last.fm again. Bluetooth audio has seemed to become quite reliable on Fedora 42 so this helps.
I came up with a tiny Chrome browser extension to automatically redirect IMS (inventory management) search pages to those without leading zeros in the search query. This was helpful as the asset tag barcodes include leading zeroes when scanned with a barcode scanner, those zeroes would be present. I have noticed a great improvement in speed with my inspection work due to this.
I came across some DisplayLink-based USB video adapters, with past difficulties in getting anything DisplayLink to work on Linux, I had usually ignored these. I found out that the older USB 2.0 DL-1x5 series is supported on Linux with a built-in open source kernel module named udlfb, which had these mostly usable on Fedora, apart from X11 crashing when the adapter is unplugged. It is not perfect but it is still a vast improvement over trying to use the proprietary userspace drivers that is required for the newer DisplayLink chipsets.
Others used chipsets named MCT Trigger, which are currently entirely unsupported on Linux outside of some community experientation with the later Trigger5 and Trigger6 series.
Thursday, November 20
I continued looking inside the USB video adapters, making note of what chipset and DRAM is present.
I left at around noon for an appointment.
Friday, November 21
I came across multiple bins of wires and boards from a local business named Babylon Micro-Farms. The parts were quite interesting, including custom-designed Raspberry Pi carrier boards and switching boards. Not until a couple weeks later (see Week 49, 2025), I actually started to dig through this stuff.
The rest of the day I continued to work on various monitors.