AM radio is a terrible transmission format in many ways but it's good because as you note it's extremely easy to decode into sound!
AM radio receivers are so easy to make that they scare people who make them accidentally! A pair of old not-plugged-in computer speakers can also be an AM radio receiver.
One night, after a particularly bad thunderstorm, our phone lines started picking up an AM radio station before you placed a call. My parents swore up and down somebody had left a phone out of the receiver and after unplugging every station in the house, we realized the problem. Now I can still pick up that same radio station if I hold the male end of a cable plugged into a guitar amp. At least the station plays decent music!
We had a similar problem at work in the late 90s. A member of staff reported that their mouse would stop working between certain hours of the day. It had apparently been okay in the morning, stopped working over lunchtime then started again later. On some days it would work perfectly all day long, but on others it would stop working between those hours. The biggest clue was it would always work perfectly on overcast…
Reminds me of a problem that I had (many years ago) with my iPhone 4 - if I tried to boot it in a dark place, it would get stuck on the Apple logo in an infinite boot loop. Turns out some versions of the Pangu jailbreak for iOS 7.1.x would crash during boot if the reading from the ambient light sensor was below some threshold. To this day I don't know the exact explanation of this bug, but it seems that Pangu include…
The intent might have been to prevent it turning on while in your pocket.
As a small engine mechanic, you you lucky. Usually those cheap carburetors will do the job, and usually the engine won't run quite as smooth. The rest of the times it's so erratic you have to buy an OEM one. I will always clean/rebuild carburetors before replacing. And usually when replacing I will explain to the customer and get permission to spend their money on an OEM one.
Thanks, that's good to know. This is a basic, older Generac GP5500 and I couldn't figure out how to get the carb apart, it really seemed pressed together. Maybe that generator already had it's replaced, as the replacement I got looked identical. Looks like the OEM part is only $50-some, so worst case I'll get one of those down the line, but the generator was running at a friend's house for three days straight a few w…
The emulsion tube might be pressed in on that carburetor. 99% of the time there's some deposits built up from old gas and that's why it doesn't run / doesn't run well. Use thin wire or a carb cleaner kit or a torch tip cleaner kit to poke the junk out of all the parts you can remove/access, and use a can of carb cleaner to spray through all the channels you can't otherwise access.
We had a similar problem at work in the late 90s. A member of staff reported that their mouse would stop working between certain hours of the day. It had apparently been okay in the morning, stopped working over lunchtime then started again later. On some days it would work perfectly all day long, but on others it would stop working between those hours. The biggest clue was it would always work perfectly on overcast…
Reminds me of a problem that I had (many years ago) with my iPhone 4 - if I tried to boot it in a dark place, it would get stuck on the Apple logo in an infinite boot loop. Turns out some versions of the Pangu jailbreak for iOS 7.1.x would crash during boot if the reading from the ambient light sensor was below some threshold. To this day I don't know the exact explanation of this bug, but it seems that Pangu include…
That's funny, there exists a similar issue with the LG G7 that a friend of mine ran into several years ago. The fingerprint sensor on his phone just straight-up completely stopped working, and subsequent OS updates did nothing to fix it. At first we assumed it was hardware failure, and he was ready to send it to a repair shop. While investigating it I saw a comment somewhere that it had something to do with the light sensor, and after holding my thumb over it for 10 seconds it "magically" started working again after 4 months of being completely non-functional.
My parents have some old Gateway amplified computer speakers. Came with the 386! They still work perfectly... except for a regular pop of noise every few seconds that would intermittently show up, that scaled with the volume setting. It turned out, their portable phone (read: landline with short-distance wireless RF handset) would ping from the base station to the handset, if it were off the cradle, which was being p…
Remember how old speakers would let you know if you were about to get a cellphone call. It was like digital precognition haha
This reminds me of a GM minivan that my youngest brother-in-law drove, back in the '80's. He'd gotten it from his father, who was a career GM automotive engineer - and complained that, occasionally & randomly, it would not start. It seemed like the minivan's whole electrical system was dead... Brother-in-law was known to be "not so good" with cars - so his automotive engineer father didn't take the complaints serious…
I have a 2009 Mercedes SLK that had the same symptom. It was absolutely fine 99.9% of the time, but one time in a thousand it wouldn't even try to start. No clicks, no indication that it even knew I was in there turning the key. Just dead. And then seven or eight hours later... it would start fine, as if nothing ever happened. Couldn't correlate it to anything. Had it towed to a service center a few times when this h…
Wow, it's crazy to see this comment because I drive the same type of car and recently experienced a similar problem.
The car was dead for long enough that I could get it towed to the mechanic and they educed it was a problem with the EIS (electronic ignition system).
The EIS computer was sent off to mercedes for diagnosis, they reported that the computer itself was fine but it was an issue with power. The mechanics traced it back to a bad connection of a wire somewhere.