Extra Content #2: Motherboard upgrade from ASUS PRIME B550M-A to ASUS ProArt B550-CREATOR

This post is part of my video blog: In The Lab With Jay Jay.

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This is a long and unedited video of me upgrading my computer from ‘longing’ https://www.jj5.net/sixsigma/Longing to ‘lore’ https://www.jj5.net/sixsigma/Lore

As I said today was computer upgrade day. I made a video of me doing the upgrade, it runs for about two hours: Motherboard upgrade from ASUS PRIME B550M-A to ASUS ProArt B550-CREATOR. It was pretty uneventful and so far it seems to have been successful too. Yay.

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Following is a product I use picked at random from my collection which may appear in my videos. Clicking through on this to find and click on the green affiliate links before purchasing from eBay or AliExpress is a great way to support the channel at no cost to you. Thanks!

aToolTour Black Hexagon Deburring Drill BitThis is an image of the product.notes

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Interlude #2: Mail Call! Plus Two Old Books And A Floppy Disk | In The Lab With Jay Jay

This post is part of my video blog and you can find more information about this video on this show’s homepage which is here.

You can support this channel on Patreon: patreon.com/JohnElliotV

Silly Job Title: Ohm Oracle

Old Book: Electric Circuits by J. Richard Johnson published 1984 with 888 pages.

Today we pop open a few bags of stuff that has arrived in the mail.

I mention about the trouble I had with my Western Digital Purple drives.

I mention about my new Western Digital Black 1TB NVMe M.2 SSD WDS100T3X0E drives.

I mention about my Educational 555 PCBs which have arrived from PCBWay. The website of the designer is given as: basitelektronikprojeler.blogspot.com.

The systems of units mentioned in the old book Electric Circuits are discussed at MKS system of units and Centimetre–gram–second system of units.

The 256GB M.2 NVMe drives I got to use as my ZFS L2ARC cache are these: TOSHIBA KIOXIA 256GB BG5 NVMe SSD M.2 2280 – NEW GEN4.

The automotive fuses I got are these ones: Car Fuse Blade Fuse Kit Fuses Automatic Truck Blade The Fuse Insurance Insert Insurance of Xenon Piece Lights Auto Accessories.

The test clips I got are these ones: 10X Universal Chip clamp micro IC clamp SOP SOIC TSOP MSOP SSOP SMD IC Test Clip pin Socket Adpter Programmer for logic analyzer.

The book which arrived in the mail was The SCSI Bus and Ide Interface: Protocols, Applications and Programming (2nd Edition) by Friedhelm Schmidt published 1997 with 396 pages.

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OULLX NSS-681HDMI-RJ45 Cable TesterThis is an image of the product.notes

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Electronics Project #2: Teardown of Homemade Continuity Tester | In The Lab With Jay Jay

This post is part of my video blog and you can find more information about this video on this show’s homepage which is here.

You can support this channel on Patreon: patreon.com/JohnElliotV

Silly Job Title: Grounding Genius

Old Book: Industrial Electronics Reference Book by Electronics Engineers of the Westinghouse Electric Corporation published 1948 with 680 pages.

Today we teardown a homemade continuity tester which I put together for use before I had a multimeter, so that was in the early days of my new lab, circa August 2021.

While I was preparing the links for this blog post I discovered that the plastic case I used for the continuity tester was the HB5610 Black Hand-held Electronic Enclosure from Jaycar. I purchased one of these for AU$9.95 back in August 2021, which was around the time that I made this continuity tester.

I subsequently purchased a ten pack of similar plastic cases from AliExpress for AU$64.55 (inc shipping) in March 2022. I went to find the AliExpress listing so I could link you to it, but it’s an old listing and has been taken down. I did search for an equivalent product but didn’t find what I was looking for. The dimensions are roughly 70mm x 135mm x 24mm and there is a facility for 2x AA batteries built in.

The multimeters I use/mention in this video are:

The multimeter I mention I want to get is this one: EEVblog 121GW Multimeter.

What I say in the video about active vs passive piezoelectric buzzers is correct. The active buzzer will do the buzzing for you, all you need to do is supply some power. The passive buzzer will need an input signal in addition to power, so some sort of oscillator if you want to generate a tone.

I knocked up a schematic for this continuity tester, something like this:

Continuity tester schematic

I’m gonna try getting some PCBs made for this circuit from PCBWay, because I’m still trying to learn everything I can about that process!

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Following is a product I use picked at random from my collection which may appear in my videos. Clicking through on this to find and click on the green affiliate links before purchasing from eBay or AliExpress is a great way to support the channel at no cost to you. Thanks!

FNIRSI M328 Component TesterThis is an image of the product.

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New segment for In The Lab With Jay Jay videos

A while back now I had the good fortune to pick up Silicon Chip‘s library of old books. I didn’t get *all* of them, but I did get quite a lot.

I was thinking that as part of my In The Lab With Jay Jay videos, in future, I will tell you about one of these old books during the introduction to the video.

Interlude #1: Mail Call! Cheap Stuff From China! | Learning Electronics In The Lab With Jay Jay

This post is part of my video blog and you can find more information about this video on this show’s homepage which is here.

You can support this channel on Patreon: patreon.com/JohnElliotV

Silly Job Title: Science Officer

Today we’re gonna take a look at what arrived recently from AliExpress. They were having a sale so I purchased some natty tools and a few consumables. Details below. I made some notes at the time of purchase if you’re interested in what I paid for this stuff.

In the video I refer to the workstation I am planning to buy for the studio. When I get this new computer I should be able to improve the quality of my YouTube videos. If you’re interested in the details the new computer I’m planning is ‘victory‘. In the video I say this new computer will cost me AUD$6,000, but it’s looking like it will cost more like AUD$7,500 (roughly USD$5,000), so I will have to save my pennies! The Dell OptiPlex computer that I am presently using is ‘wonder‘.

In the video I refer to “box openers”. If you know what these things are actually called, please do let me know!

The spider who popped up on my bench during the recording of this video was found later. He, um, didn’t make it…

Thanks very much for watching! And please remember to hit like and subscribe!


Following is a product I use picked at random from my collection which may appear in my videos. Clicking through on this to find and click on the green affiliate links before purchasing from eBay or AliExpress is a great way to support the channel at no cost to you. Thanks!

Sudake SDK08 Test ClipsThis is an image of the product.notes

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Unboxing #9: Unboxing of Sudake SDK07 and SKD08 IC Clip SMD Gripper Test Probe | In The Lab

This post is part of my video blog and you can find more information about this video on this show’s homepage which is here.

You can support this channel on Patreon: patreon.com/JohnElliotV

Silly Job Title: Hack In Residence

Today: another unboxing video! This time we’re taking a look at the Sudake SDK07 and SKD08 IC clips / SMD grippers / test probes.

Originally I was going to demo these things in this video too, but the test circuit took like two hours to make, and then when I turned it on it didn’t even work, so I cancelled that and now this is just an unboxing video and not a demo. Stay tuned for the demo which I will do, just when I can find some more time.

These test clips are really great, they let you attach a probe to the foot of an integrated circuit or a surface mount device.

Be warned: there’s a bit of swearing and bad language in this video. What can I say? I’m just a passionate individual, ya know? :P

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Following is a product I use picked at random from my collection which may appear in my videos. Clicking through on this to find and click on the green affiliate links before purchasing from eBay or AliExpress is a great way to support the channel at no cost to you. Thanks!

Yum Cha 100pcs Releasable Cable OrganizerThis is an image of the product.

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Unboxing #8: Unboxing of Mini Classic Game Console | Learning Electronics In The Lab With Jay Jay

This post is part of my video blog and you can find more information about this video over here.

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Silly Job Title: Power Provider

It’s the In The Lab With Jay Jay Halloween Special! This evening: another unboxing video! This time we’re taking a look at my retro gaming console: The Mini Classic Game Console. Complete with 620 odd games!

I picked this thing up at Vinnies (the thrift store) for fifteen Aussie buckaroos.

The main circuit board looks like this:

I found the S71PL256NC0HFW5U2 which is a 64Mb flash memory. The details of the other circuitry was obscured.

Here is the list of games on this thing:

And this is the manual:

I managed to get this thing wired through an AV to HDMI adapter, then a HDMI to USB adapter, so in the last half of the video you can see me demoing a few of the games and scrolling through the full list of games.

Oh, and in this video I read “NTSL” on the manual and say “they got that wrong, it’s NTSA”, but *I* got that wrong, and it’s “NTSC”. The American video standard. In Australia almost everything is PAL.

Thanks very much for watching! And please remember to hit like and subscribe! :)


Following is a product I use picked at random from my collection which may appear in my videos. Clicking through on this to find and click on the green affiliate links before purchasing from eBay or AliExpress is a great way to support the channel at no cost to you. Thanks!

aToolTour Black Hexagon Deburring Drill BitThis is an image of the product.notes

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Unboxing #7: Unboxing of FILCO Majestouch 2SS Edition 104-key and tenkeyless keyboards | In The Lab

This post is part of my video blog and you can find more information about this video on this show’s homepage which is here.

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Silly Job Title: Sparky

Happy Halloween! Today: another unboxing video! This time we’re taking a look at my two new mechanical keyboards from FILCO (affiliate links):

As I mention in the video I usually like to purchase my mechanical keyboards from WASD Keyboards in California. They make excellent keyboards but just a bit too pricey for me at the moment. Instead of purchasing from WASD Keyboards I picked these keyboards up from Amazon Australia and I paid AU$202.55 (US$130) for the 104-key keyboard and AU$188.89 (US$120) for the 87-key keyboard which was roughly half of what I would have had to pay if I purchased from WASD Keyboards.

Both of these FILCO Majestouch 2SS Edition keyboards come with Cherry MX Speed Silver switches. If you’re into mechanical keyboards definitely give these switches a try; now that I’m used to them I will accept nothing less.

It was a bit disappointing that while doing the unboxing I discovered some of the keys had fallen loose during shipping. I have since plugged in and tested the keyboard (I’m using it now in fact) and everything seems to be working okay, so no harm no foul.

Thanks very much for watching! And please remember to hit like and subscribe!


Following is a product I use picked at random from my collection which may appear in my videos. Clicking through on this to find and click on the green affiliate links before purchasing from eBay or AliExpress is a great way to support the channel at no cost to you. Thanks!

Miniware DT71 Digital TweezersThis is an image of the product.notes

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Unboxing #6: Unboxing of K-CEVE AM-KVM401-K and KC-KVM401A 4-port HDMI KVM switches | In The Lab

This post is part of my video blog and you can find more information about this video on this show’s homepage which is here.

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Silly Job Title: Current Commander

Today: another unboxing video! I do these, not because I think that my regular viewers are going to be particularly interested, but because you really only get the opportunity to do these on the day that new equipment arrives, and I figure it might be helpful for people who search for unboxing videos for a particular product, so they can see what’s in the box before they make a purchasing decision.

This video is an unboxing of two different 4-port HDMI KVM switches. I would give you affiliate links but these don’t seem to be available in the USA, so here are the non-affiliated Amazon Australia links:

For the record I paid AU$64.56 for the AM-KVM401-K (US$40) and AU$84.14 for the KC-KVM401A (US$55). I don’t know what algorithm is in charge of pricing at Amazon but the prices seem to have gone way up since I purchased these things two days ago, now the AM-KVM401-K is AU$75.96 and the KC-KVM401A is AU$98.99, so not sure what’s up with that (but I do NOT like the idea that Amazon has a pricing system that isn’t offering all shoppers the same price all the time, which this smells like).

I reckon the K-CEVE marketing department is going to bit pretty upset with engineering or manufacturing about this, but when I was unboxing the AM-KVM401-K the front panel push button switch just dead set fell out! That’s gotta be embarrassing for someone.

Having done the unboxing I’ve decided I’m gonna try the larger KC-KVM401A unit first. Its larger size is a disadvantage but I like the fact that it has USB-A instead of USB-C inputs and I’m also happy that it has a dedicated 5V power rail, the AM-KVM401-K is powered off the USB bus which is less desirable.

I will post another article later to let you know how I went when I actually plug these things in, which I haven’t actually done yet.

Thanks very much for watching! And please remember to hit like and subscribe!


Following is a product I use picked at random from my collection which may appear in my videos. Clicking through on this to find and click on the green affiliate links before purchasing from eBay or AliExpress is a great way to support the channel at no cost to you. Thanks!

Yum Cha TE-801 Third HandThis is an image of the product.notes

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Electronics Project #1: ALKOY Capacitor Discharge Pen Teardown | In The Lab With Jay Jay

This post is part of my video blog and you can find more information about this video on this show’s homepage which is here.

You can support this channel on Patreon: patreon.com/JohnElliotV

Silly Job Title: Electron Herder

This video is a teardown of the ALKOY Capacitor Discharge Pen which I did for YouTube user t1d100 who asked me about it over here: Demo of the ALKOY Capacitor Discharge Pen | In The Lab With Jay Jay.

I made a bunch of mistakes while making this video, so please bear with me. I tried to add some captions to explain things when I went wrong.

The discharge pen that I have was purchased from Amazon Australia here: 1000V Portable Capacitor Discharge Pen High Voltage Quick Discharging Tool Constant Discharge Pen Electronic Repairs Discharge Pen ALKOY.

There seems to be a similar product available from Amazon USA here: YEKMLCO Capacitor Discharge Pen Fast Discharging High Voltage 1000V Repair Tool Discharger for Electronic Safety Intelligent (affiliate link).

In the video you can watch me break this thing open. I didn’t exactly know how to do it, and I permanently damaged the device while opening it. In the end I wasn’t 100% sure what the safe and proper way to open these things really is. Giving it a mighty pull might work, otherwise you will need to leverage off some friction locks.

Before I broke the device open I tried to measure the resistance across its probes, but all three measurement devices reported open circuit. The device doesn’t seem to engage the resistor until it detects a voltage.

Eventually I got the device open, you can see some photos of the circuit board below, and I make some attempt to identify the components.

The MB10F on the top is a bridge rectifier, the M7F in the middle is a rectifying diode, and the resistor at the bottom is 2MΩ. In the video I say that the resistor is a “two ohm resistor”, but it is actually a “two MEGA ohm resistor” (I knew that, I just misspoke).

I’m not 100% sure what the CS01N100 A3R is, but it seems than an CS01N100 A4R is a silicon N-Channel Power MOSFET, so I think that’s probably what that is.

As I broke this device during the teardown I have purchased myself a replacement device for AU$23.02.

In the video I use the following equipment (affiliate links where possible):

Mini Digital Tweezers Miniware DT71 Mini Digital Tweezers Smart SMD LCRDVF Tester Multimeter Signal Generator for Measuring Components
SMD Digital Tweezers UNI-T UT116A Digital Tweezers Smart SMD Tester Electrical Multimeter Resistance Capacitance Continuity Diode Test Meter
Component Tester FNIRSI DSO-TC3 Digital Oscilloscope Transistor Tester 10MS/s Sampling Rate 500kHz Bandwidth Support Diode LCR Detect Signal Generator
Soldering Station Horusdy 2in1 Soldering Station Solder Iron Rework Hot Air Blower Digital SMD Display + 11 Tips, 4 Nozzles & Tweezer Set
Mini Screwdriver Set Legion Tools Precision Mini Screwdriver Set 11pc Jeweller Laptop Phone Watch Repair Tool
Repair Mat Kaisi Heat Insulation Silicone Repair Mat with Scale Ruler and Screw Position for Soldering Iron, Phone and Computer Repair Size: 13.7 x 9.8 Inches
Desoldering Pump Kaisi Professional Solder Auxiliary Tool 6 piece double-sided repair tool with Desoldering Wick & Desoldering Pump
Craft Knife Precision Craft Knife Set 52pcs Professional Razor Sharp Knives for Art, Hobby

In the video I have trouble with the connections into the DSO-TC3, the connections are documented here: FNIRSI DSO-TC3.

Thanks very much for watching! And please remember to hit like and subscribe!


Following is a product I use picked at random from my collection which may appear in my videos. Clicking through on this to find and click on the green affiliate links before purchasing from eBay or AliExpress is a great way to support the channel at no cost to you. Thanks!

Yum Cha 52 in 1 Tiger WrenchThis is an image of the product.notes

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