DD_Brando

Hi Shadrach, I don't think the slop at the full out position is due to uneven wear on the square shaft. Rather, the lack of slop in the full in position is due to the fact that in that position the "front end" of the shaft is entirely within the round retaining portion of the main shaft and therefore has a lot of stability. Interesting that you think there's a good chance of finding a square tube within a tight tolerance of the square shaft. Ultimately, that's likely to be the best long-term solution and certainly worth exploring. If a square tube with a tight tolerance with respect to the square shaft can be found, then it may not be necessary to close off the minigap, so long as the space between the tube and the shaft is smaller than the "minigap". If a tight tolerance could be found, then I could carefully sand two sides of the square shaft until I have just enough of a gap. and then lubricate the two with some graphite powder or other lubricant (would graphite powder affect the pots)? In other news, the BU0836 still has not arrived. I hope it's not stuck in some warehouse for payment of duties... I can still move forward on looking for a suitable tube and material for the end bracket in the meantime. C_G I would avoid graphite powder. It can conduct electricity and that's not good if it gets into pots or onto PCB. A contained area like the inside of the yoke aggravates the issue. A good silicon-based grease, used sparingly, will do the trick. A word or two about mixing materials: you need to be careful! Look for the root of the problem first before adding extra weight and/ or denser materials into the mix. Remember that adding a metal skin to the shaft will increase weight and possibly increase the damage to the square opening which is at the heart of it all. This is the spot that requires strengthening and I would focus my attentions there. This is the part that has failed, mainly because it has distorted under pressure; it ain't strong enough for purpose. It's like a wheel bearing which has run dry.... replacing the wheel and the axle won't help.... the bearing needs changing. The big problem seems to be that the thickness of plastic that the square hole is formed in is too thin for purpose. If that area could be beefed up then most of the problem would go away. Ideally, two washers of the largest possible diameter, with the correctly-sized square hole in them, fixed to either side of the original would do the job. I would use a Dremel to roughcut the holes, and finish off with a warding file to get it spot on. Alignment isn't too difficult if the two outer leaves are drilled while clamped together. One leaf (washer) can then be aligned on the original part as a template and the mounting holes drilled through: the other leaf will automatically align. Two small BA bolts, with Nyloc nuts if available, will pull the three leaves together into a really rigid whole. (Pardon the pun - I didn't get it until I re-read the piece ) B

I'm going to stick with the round plate/ square hole suggestion simply because that will take up the wear that is occurring on all four sides of the aperture, and allow the self tappers a bit more meat to bite into. I don't think that locating screws close to the edge of the hole is a good idea based on my own experiences with plastic modding. I own a southpaw version of the CH Fighterstick, thanks to Mark , which I further modded with parts from a second Fighterstick. I learned a fair bit about using screws on that job. I certainly agree with nylon as a good material for the patch and on reflection I think it would pay to use both Araldite and small self tapping screws to fix it on. Make sure that the diameter of the pilot holes in the original piece is a tad smaller than the screws so that you get a good cut-in for the thread, and don't over-tighten the screws or you might bugger the whole thing! cheeers

The mini gap looks to be the result of relatively rough handling and poor design at the point where the square shaft enters the cylindrical one. The square opening takes the 'knock' when the female shaft gets to the limit of yaw, right and left, and the whitish marks around the square opening tell the tale (viz. the final picture) In my experience, attempting to take this up by enlarging the square shaft will not work beyond one or two flights - if at all. Note that the distortion of the aperture is not square in nature. The hammering has created tiny arcs at the contact points. Also, the duct tape is by nature softer than the original material. This will cause it to dent, which will cause ridges to form around the dents, and hopefully you can see where that will end. There is hope. The square aperture does not appear to extend right through the cylindrical piece. (Perhaps you could confirm this?) I suspect that the cylinder is a hollow, injection moulded piece; and that the square aperture is either moulded in or cut out afterwards. I would expect to find another square aperture at the other end of the cylinder nearest the yoke (?) and you may expect to find similar wear there. OK. So, because you have basically two circular plates, pierced with square holes, at each end of a hollow cylinder, there is a possible solution. The main problem is what material to use, but let me explain the fix first. Basically you need to add an extra plate to each end, pierced with the correctly-sized aperture in the right place, sized to clear any obstructions. The main obstruction I can see is the pitch stop, visible on the right-hand side of the square shaft in the fore ground of the final picture. The thickness of the new plate needs to be sawn off the pitch stop unless this can be overcome by software adjustment. Again I would expect to see a similar situation at the other end of the cylinder. Attaching the patching plates would probably best be done mechanically as you may not find a suitable adhesive for this type of plastic. Two-part Araldite might do it but may not be able to hack the lateral stress that the yoke operation creates. Better would be to use small self-tapping screws into previously made pilot holes. It's not as complex as it sounds but just a bit time consuming. Care is needed in positioning the patch over the original aperture to get a workable result.

The inspiration? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecsEAXNlfv0 and no, it ain't a Sherman, but never mind.

Hi Angus I look forward to seeing your pictures, especially with regard to the clearance issue. It would be good to know what type of plastic it is made of.

Ross, do you still want to unload the DDR3 ram? I've just blown one stick of my DDR2 but also realised I've got a couple of DDR3 slots in my old faithful P35 mobo and these would nestle nicely and get me into the exciting, actioned-packed DDR3 club. Yes mate, I'd be happy to let you have it for twenty squids. DDR3 is cheap at the moment, so all I can say is that this pair of sticks is practically unused, has pretty fast timings and comes with a lifetime guarantee. It keeps pretty cool with the Reaper heatsinks. If you're OK with that then let me have your snail addy and I'll post them over for you to try out. Ross

That's a very cool mod FT! I'm still plodding away with the CH Force conversion. I just decided to incorporate the business end of the Pro Throttle into the base..... This looks like turning into my best Xmas present!

Dear Jim, I felt really honoured to be invited into your private air force after my first UbiZoo coop session. I still feel that sense of belonging even though various parts of my family's life have changed and I've had to surface into real life a little too much for comfort. Just as it is for you and Helen too - something we have to do even though it grieves us immensely. In my own clumsy way I just want to say that you are a true fighter, boss; and a real example of how to take it on the chin and keep on keeping on. Thank you for the inspiration. Peace be with you. Ross

Honest, officer, I was just checking the pointing of the brickwork for a friend of mine. I had no idea that there was a girls' boarding-school on the other side of the hedge, honest!

There's your problem.

It sounds as if you may have missed a stage in the patching. Did you patch to 4.07m and test? Then 4.08m and test, followed by 4.09m and test? All before installing 4.10m.? Also, where did you install 1l-2 46? It's best not to place it in Program Files at all; it needs to go in a separate folder called (e.g.) Games. Otherwise you may find Windows is preventing the patch data from writing to all parts of the game. B

Me too! Er, wait, I am doing it - it's just that I'm still creating the boxes for all my buttons, switches and twiddlers to go into! I wish I could make them out of bricks......

I think that you need to back up your Raid0 to a separate HD altogether, and I think that Acronis will enable that. Raid0 is faster than one single disk because of the data being split and distributed across two drives - or striped - but it is vulnerable to total loss if one of the drives breaks down. Whereas Raid1, where the data is mirrored onto both hard drives, is safer than a single disk because, if one drive dies, all the data is still on the other. Raid1 does not have a speed advantage though. Its best to think of a striped array -Raid0 - as one single hard-drive for working purposes. I believe the Raid array can still be partitioned like any drive, but the partitions are still spread (striped) across the two disks in the array. Therefore, backing up on the Raid0 is still vulnerable to the physical loss of one HDD. Now, it is possible that some clever software exists that allows part of a Raid(ed) disk to be formatted in the standard way, so that the data is all there rather than striped, but I haven't heard of it. Mind you, when I was Raid0'ing drives to get a little extra oomph I was using 40Gig Maxtors! So some tweaks may have been worked out since. The best way to see this is as follows: 1) Your two hard-drives (500Gb each) are in Raid0, a striped array. Consider it as one large space, nearly 1 Terabyte, which will be shown in Windows as your default C:\ drive. Whoever programmed it may have partitioned the space to separate the operating system (Windows & apps) from simple data storage (films, pictures, music and so on) This second partition will likely default to D:\ - just the same as if you only had one hard drive. 2) Note though, this data (D:\) is also striped across two disks and therefore dependant on Raid0 to access it...... 3) Which is why you could back up the data to a single, separate hard drive large enough to accommodate it (i.e a 1 Tb drive).

Those were the days!

I'm going to leave it in cmosclr overnight and if no joy I'll be in touch, thanks for that, Rog @ Nick. A bag of Levingtons followed by a hydrangea I reckon, and well watered in, arrrr! @Jedi - your time will come my friend And off to bed with Ovaltine and a good book on my Kindle - Apache by Ed Macy ; wicked! 'Night all

..... and it's directed towards the guy who handed me this POS to repair, or the POS itself Trouble is that I built the thing, albeit from second-hand parts, and it was a nice piece two years ago. Now it's filled with a film of nicotine (he's a seriously heavy smoker) and, worst of all, it won't even boot into BIOS. It shows the static display with the instruction "press Del to enter setup" and "Tab for loading screen" but it goes no further. I get the chittering sound that denotes the keypress, after that it beeps and dies. It's an AMI BIOS and I've checked the beep codes - trouble is, it will vary between one, two or three beeps. All of these denote memory errors - but I've also tried using some Mushkin which I know is good. Oh, and I tried the AMIBOOT.ROM solution - but the floppy drive won't start up despite giving a green light. I can't decide whether to go down the new EEPROM route, £10 plus P&P, or just drop the thing over the balcony. Ugh! On a cheerier note, here's an email response from a Canadian buddy to my request for a 939 mobo: I love it. So, is that a paraprosdokian, Rog?

Did I win? The font of all misleading knowledge has an article on it with a late 20th century neologism you score double

We only have your word for this, Rog Paraprosdokian?Are you just trying to win a game of Scrabble out there?

I'll get my coat.