Yeah, a Mac Mini is considerably smaller than what's traditionally considered an "SFF" PC. The Dells I got recently are about 11" x 12" x and a bit under 4" thick.
Remember the original Macintosh computer? 128 kB in sixteen DIP chips, soldered to the motherboard. There was a cottage industry de-soldering them and replacing the 64k chips with 256k chips.Their laptops have been like that forever as well. Since around 2012. Two thumbs down.
My two previous laptops both died from their BGA video chip unsoldering it's self from it's heat.
My 1st was either the Mac SE or SE30. SIMM slots with 256k SIMMS, which were easily swapped out with 1Mb'ers.
Since 2009 the CPU has been soldered to the board on the mini. As of as late as the 2018 the ram is socketed & upgradeable on the mac mini
They made it a little harder than older ones like my 2012, but still doable
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Ask me how many solder in DIP chips I've replaced repairing Commodore and Atari computers.
My favorite was the Atari ST 512KB to 1MB upgrade.. Piggy back soldering RAM chips onto the existing ones...
My favorite was the Atari ST 512KB to 1MB upgrade.. Piggy back soldering RAM chips onto the existing ones...
I fondly remember the days when a person didn't need a microscope work on electronics.Ask me how many solder in DIP chips I've replaced repairing Commodore and Atari computers.
My favorite was the Atari ST 512KB to 1MB upgrade.. Piggy back soldering RAM chips onto the existing ones...
I do also, but that's cause I wear trifocals now.
I had a Surface Pro 3 that I thought was to absolute best. My office came home with me and did not weigh a ton. Then, it died of heat prostration. I ripped it apart and saved the SSD then recycled the rest. An expensive lesson was learned.
Yep, when a manufacturer crams five pounds of stuff into a two pound package, running it constantly is likely to limit its life. This is one of the reasons I still run desktop PCs at each of my desks and relegate my laptop to duties where portability is truly required.
When I replaced the Surface with its successor, one the checked for items was cooling. The Surface 3 was an expensive lesson, I was seduced by both looks and size.
I do also, but that's cause I wear trifocals now.
I knew I was getting out of board level repair in my 30's when I went to modify a Kenwood 741 to "expand" the receive frequencies. The resistor I had to cut was a little chip the size of a piece of, small, confetti. I used a loupe, then, to make sure I didn't damage anything else on the sub-board.
Heat is the big enemy. My desktop has an external 200cfm fan and it runs 24/7/365 without a problem. Both of our laptops are on all day, every day. Say from 7AM until 9PM or longer and are still running fine after five years of that. Both have cooler pads with built-in fans. Again no heat problems. Now a Surface Pro or the newest Mac stuff is a whole other problem. As my Father used to say "ten pounds of s.... in a five pound bag".
And I bought that bag, I am not sure what it says about me - but I think I will agree with whatever it says.
Expanded it both on VHF and UHF. There are limits due to the bandwidth of the actual front end and bandpass capabilities though. After I did that I used to listen to the UHF link that ABC news uses between their Fort Lee studios and the NYC studios. Heard the regular news type stuff and a lot of "interesting" chatter that never gets on the air.
I should have mentioned, back then I had 20/10 vision and still used a loupe!
I should have mentioned, back then I had 20/10 vision and still used a loupe!
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