Nintendo DS Projects

Within a week or two I happened to find not one, but two Nintendo DS systems at the Goodwill Outlet store. The first one was an original Nintendo DS and the second was a Nintendo DS Lite. Obviously since I found them that means they were left behind by other treasure hunters for one reason or another.

Regardless of others being scared to pick them up and give them a good home, I am someone who is never afraid to bring something home, especially for 79 cents a pound!, and give it a good repair. Both systems were broken at the hinges, ripping the top screen cable, as well as suffering from blown fuses. After some research it seems the latter of which is a frighteningly common issue with the first two inceptions of the DS line.

Since I didn't own a Nintendo DS I wasn't afraid to pick them up knowing very well I would have to pay a little bit to order parts and repair them. But this also gives me a chance to customize them to be my own, by ordering completely new plastic housings. I'm not exactly sure what housing I will be getting for each just yet, but I'm toying with the idea of a red DS Lite and a black DS.

As you can see these things have had rough lives thus far, but I hope that I can get the frustratingly small fuses replaced, keep them from blowing again and get both systems running proudly once more. As a matter of fact, the Goodwill outlet has even yielded some games to play on the DS, although nothing I'm dying to get to play. But even so, I am seriously anxious to get these DS systems back to working order.

And so we begin anew..

Well I had been pondering it for a while and finally decided to kill the youtube channel and start posting more Goodwill outlet finds here on the old neglected blog. Now, the Goodwill outlet store has been going through a slump lately, so I don't know how often I will be updating this, but I will try. So we begin with something I picked up a few months back.

The Goodwill outlet store is rife with treasure hunting goodness, digging through bins without care, dangerous glass everywhere that you could easily slice yourself open with, and I have, and just general wonder of what you will uncover next! A few months ago I found a seemingly untouched metal case, once I opened it up I nearly had a nerdagsm. Inside was a fresh looking Palm TX mobile organizer.

Sure the thing is old, sure its outdated and there are plenty of things on the market that are way further along, have much longer battery life and generally are better devices, but I've always been into older technology, hence the retro video games I adore. It didn't work at the time, so I just sat it in a drawer and waiting to find the charger cable to get this thing up and running. I happened to find a USB cable, but it needed a separate charging cable, still I waited.

Until just yesterday when I happen to find not only the official hotsync cable for the Palm TX, but also a charger that seems to be working quite well! I plugged it in and waited for it to spring to life, which it did. After doing a factory reset, because I'm not an asshole that wants to rummage through someone else's personal files, I did some customizing and continued to let it charge.

My only issue is that it may need a new battery, as the battery life literally drains off this thing by about 10% per minute. Maybe a good long charge will take care of that, or perhaps it was abused as a young PDA and will need a battery replacement. Either way I find it fascinating because its older technology, but it still has utilitarian uses that I can take full advantage of!

Kyser Demo Capo

The Goodwill outlet store has been good to me, but perhaps the most interesting find to date has to be this neon green Kyser Capo. Inscribed on it is "Kyser DEMO ONLY NOT FOR SALE". After a bit of internet sleuthing I have yet to find another in this color, or anything similar.

I already own a capo that I almost never use, but when I saw this I figured the color and the fact that it was guitar related warranted me to pick it up and buy it. It is missing the string rubber, which doesn't prevent it from doing it's job, but even so I still had to own it. After testing it on a few guitars and finding that it still works I've become a bit concerns about the strings scratching off paint from where the rubber should be, so I probably won't use this one all that much either.

Perhaps this is a NAMM promotional item? A custom order? So many options, the origins of which I do not know. I've fired off an email to Kyser to see if they can help me figure it out. Hopefully I'll find out something interesting about it, after all, they don't engrave DEMO ONLY NOT FOR SALE on production models.