The Cubic 3250 VLF-HF receiver is a 10kHz – 30 MHz DSP based radio receiver with 51 IF bandwidths and 7 receive modes. It falls into the category of professional/military grade equipment and the build quality certainly reflects this. According to Fred Osterman’s book, “Shortwave Receivers Past and Present, 3rd Ed.”, it was manufactured from the mid 1990s until at least 1998 (possibly later). I have found that the audio recovery and readability of this receiver is outstanding.

As both of my units were made in 1995/96, they are 25 years old and likely have thousands of hours of use. So I elected to replace all the electrolytic capacitors in the power supply with (arguably) an abundance of caution.

Xbox 360 Power Supply Replacement

If you own one or more Xbox 360 in its various incarnations, including the newer 360S and 360E, you have likely experienced a power supply failure. These units all use an outboard power supply which plugs into the wall outlet at your local voltage, and connects to the 360 by a special power cable. I say special cable because the cable and plug design has charged numerous times over the years. The failure modes that I have experienced go something like this:

1) The power supply (“brick”) begins to get noisy on power up, but then settles down to its former noise level in a few minutes. This behavior continues for a few weeks or months. At this point I generally take the brick outside and blow it out with a super duster (canned air).
2) The noise … Read More »