Episode: 4654
Title: What's in my component Box?
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4654/hpr4654.mp3
Transcribed: 2026-07-31 16:16:04 (official HPR transcript)

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4654, for 2026-06-04
Today's show is entitled, "What's in my component Box?"
The host is MrX and the duration is 00:27:51
The flag is Explicit, and the license is CC-BY-SA
The summary is "Describing the contents of an old storage box I have."
You are listening to a show from the Reserve Queue.
This show was submitted in September 2025 to cover occasions like this
where there are gaps in the schedule.
Hello and welcome hacker public video din's, my name is Mr. X, and welcome to this podcast.
As usual, I'd like to start by thanking people at HPR for making this service available to us all.
HPR is a community-led podcast provided by the community for the community. That means you could contribute to
if everyone gave one sure year, but have more shows we know what to do with, so why don't you pick up a microphone
and give it a go, it's very easy, I'm sure you've got something to you could send in,
and there's that there's less than a website of ideas if you can't think of an idea.
So this show is going to be from the reserve queue, that means if you're listening to now,
HPR is short-tone shows, so if you could give a show that'd be very handy.
I think we've got a bother time to get this started, because it's been a wee while since I've recorded
something for HPR as well, but I've done at least one this year, and I think I reserve one as well,
maybe. Anyway, I am so the idea for this came from, but we were doing some cleaning out in the house,
and Mrs. X came across a box, and she just wants that whole box to do what?
Do you still need it? Well, what's in it? Well, I'm a bit of a hoarder, it has to be said,
and I think the longer you have something, the more attached you get, at least it is for me like that.
So this is, well, I call it my component box, and it's, um, and of course, Mrs. X, well, when does
last time you used it, and of course, I couldn't really answer that, and to be honest, I can't even
think of the last time I've ever used anything at all within it, so it really is utterly redundant.
It's like, well, I'll tell you what it is, I've gone a rabbit, he's done about it too much already.
I call it my component box, but it's really like a fly fishing line, because it was your first
first one, first one is tackle box thing, that, you know, it's got some individual compartments in it.
It's made of plastic, I think I think pictures of the thing, it's about 12 and a half inches wide,
five inches tall, and five and a half inches deep, so it's not big, it's got quite small, really.
So this box, I've got this vague recollection of hounding my parents for this,
hounding, I want a component box, I don't know where I got the idea from,
kind of my whether it was in an electronics magazine, I looked at, I don't know, I can't remember,
but so that this box is possibly 40 years old or more, so I don't know, I'll tell you something.
It's surprising that the plastic hasn't all gone brittle, because it's all plastic.
Very soon after I got the thing, I snapped, there's a cunning looking fold out the handle in the
top, and if you were to pick up by that one end would come loose, like that, and the whole
thing would come crashing through the ground, because I just fiddled over the thing, and when I was
at a young boy, and ended up snapping it inside, I wasn't able to repair that. Another thing I did to
well I was fiddling with the thing is a young boy, there's a catch that a looking catch, and it
you flip it up and locked it on the top, it flips over and keeps it closed, and I fiddled with that,
and eventually I broke it attaches to the bottom, and I say, you'll see when I open, I think
I picture the inside of the box, you'll see that that broken bit on the bottom from edge basically,
and I tried to patch it with it, by putting the clip back on and smithing about a plastic
into it, and lastly for a wee wee wedding broke, and I thought I'll just say to manage the
out that I suppose, and then I cut to me, well the catch is identical on both sides, it's maybe
just for simplicity of molding the half, I don't know. So I thought, well, why am I trying to fix
the bottom? I thought, and it used bend the clip out, put it on the top half, and then flip it
down, and in fact, it feels more natural to flip it down and lock it into place than to flip up
and latch it, so I think it's better than that way, any rambling on here. So if I open the box,
and it consists of two top trays, and a big lower compartment, and the individual compartments,
some of them, not all of them, I've got what do you call it now? I think I wrote this down now,
dimo tape, you used to see this everywhere back in the day, and funnily enough, I was in a shop
recently, and to my utter amazement, they had like label printers and one of the modern label
printers you get, but there was actually a dimo printer, so you can still get it, which is quite
remarkable, so I've got some of the things I printed with, I've got red and blue dimo tape on it,
switches, resistors, earphones, earphones, what else did it say? Capacitors, transistors,
really diodes, same thing else, thanks so, and almost none of these things is what's behind the label,
so it's complete nonsense, and it's really just a mess of rubbish, so I can't bring myself to get
rid of it, so if we go through the things that are in this box, starting from the top row,
if you're vaguely interested, and the top row compartment one top left has some stereo jack plugs in it,
jack plug in a socket as well, and a double pull, double throw, two-way switch,
a 12 volt DC relay from Alice components, if you're interested, the part number 8217-908, a three-legged
semiconductor device, maybe I'll just regulate it or something, I'm not sure,
I'm moving on to compartment two is a whole pile of different fuses, mostly car fuses,
multiple colors, so that's that, compartment three has got a small pouch of silica gel,
God knows why I've got that there, a little bit that I do, and multiple switches, so I've got a PCB
mounted switches which are push button, but it's got quite a long actuators on them, you know,
I don't know, we'll be used for a keyboard and I'm not quite sure what that would be, they're very small,
I've got a small push button, panel mounted, this switch, I've got a slide switch that was
probably pinched from an old radio, you're like mix switch between AM and FM or something like that,
and old radio switch, I've got a switch which, again it's a double pull,
two-way double pull, so the spring-loaded, so I think this was inside a hand microphone,
you know, communications microphone, and for the PTT push to talk, I must have pinched that from
our microphone, what else, what are these things called? These are called or micro switches, yes,
these micro switches, which is just, you might get a roller that rolls over the top of them and pushes
them down, you might, might be used to sense when a door shut or open or something like that,
use all over the place, spare soldering tip, and some red relays, so these red relays are
glass, and in clashes in the glass tube, and when you bring on magnet next to them, they open
our claws, I'm not quite sure which way they go, you know, the public claws when the magnet comes
next to them, so they can be, again, used to sense if a door is open or closed or something like that,
okay, just looking at my volume wave, I was in the looking a wee bit on the twice it, I think
I'll just, no, just that upper bit, okay, that way better, that way better, something like that,
right, that's that, I'm going to put them back down again, so that was what was that, that was compartment
one, two, the compartment three, oh I'm gonna hear all day at this rate, a compartment four,
um, has potential meters or reostats or variable resistors, I don't know why they've got all these
different names, uh, you basically, when you turn the knob or the control, at 10 varies the resistance
of the, uh, there's a white part that saves along a carbon track, generally, and varies the resistance,
uh, that's how that works, use for volume controls and such like, there's some of them here
and also got an adult switch so you can hear it, yeah, so at 10, you might turn it, click it,
turn it, turn the device on and then just the volume, and it also some knobs to go with it with these
pots, um, so on next one along one, two, three, four, um, compartment five, go compartment,
four was called switches, and it doesn't have switches as I said, compartment five, which we're going
to, it saves resistors, pit doesn't have resistors in it, compartment five, large selects,
enough miniature panel mounted, total switches, uh, all various different kinds of things,
there's any point in going through them individually, so I'll see you at the time, compartment six,
two crocodile clips, half of a high-fife, speaker plug, and a washer, why, I don't know, so, um,
yeah, high-fife plug that's, you know, the, kind of, it's got a flat, um, terminal, and a pin,
and you're pushing it into the back here, this plug would be in the end of the speaker,
you plug it into your high-fife, uh, right, okay, okay, come moving, I'm going to come,
well, now by the way, that was called that, that compartment was called earphones,
talking about, I'm going to move my earphones because I just slide down my head here,
I hope professional, like, oh, do you, I've moved that, like, compartment seven,
it's quite arc in a long compartment, in the top tree, and it contains mostly chocolate block
connectors, these are the type of connectors whereby you push a wire in one side, you push a wire in
the other side and you screw down a screw in the, uh, in the middle, um, either side, and it,
it clamps the, the wire in place, obviously, to join wires together and whatnot, um,
so called chocolate block connectors looks about like a block of chocolate, I guess, different segments,
uh, it's also got, um, there's more selection of glass cartridge fuses,
I've got a single, uh, 13-amp mains plug fuse, and then he does well, a sort of an off-soldering iron
tips, another crocodile clip, did I say a crocodile clip as it's, so it's like, well, it looks like
the jaws of a crocodile, you would push a attach a wire to it, screw it down, clamp it in place,
and then you can, ideas that you can move the wire connection to different points by opening the
crocodile, um, and releasing it, it's an spring-loaded thing clamps onto things, it's a way of,
you know, you would use it to connect with to various points, um, and a circuit or whatever,
let's say quite big, quite clumsy by modern-day standards, actually, but anyway,
that, um, oh, an air bed, or, or something like that, adapter, you, it's got a screw
end on one side, and you have attached a foot bump, and you can bump up an air bed or something,
and what else have we got, um, spare nozzle for a desoldering tool, made from PTFE, poly tetra-floor
to ethylene, um, so it's kind of heat resistant, um, so a desoldering tool, you know, you, you
would basically, it's got a plunger, but like we, many foot pump, uh, in reverse, because it sucks,
push plunger down, he, the solder joint up, put it over the top of the joint, um, hit the button,
and it sucks up the, the solder, uh, hence why it's called desoldering tool, but that
is just a tip for it, um, a ferrite ring, um, made from ferrite, um, so yeah, I used that to, um,
reduce, um, interference and whatnot, you might wrap it a wire round or whatever, compartment 8,
8, which is also called earphones, um, it has some grommets and a heat sink,
heat sink, um, you know, it's used to, you might attach to a semiconductor device,
I don't know, transistor or regulators on my line, it tells, it pulls the heat away from the device,
so it doesn't overheat, um, that was compartment 8, now we're moving on to the, uh, middle row,
middle row has a large selection of glass cartridges, all different sizes, I won't bore you with that,
compartment 2, and the second row, which is labelled capacitors,
another selection of glass cartridges chooses, I don't know, but I got all these fuses from,
and there's a small selection of diodes and some, some of these are quite large and all this,
so whether you're used for power, or obviously for high powered applications,
maybe bridge rectification or whatever, anyway, um, that was compartment 2,
resistors or compartment, and in it we did the dimension, it's called, it's labelled capacitors,
yet compartment 3, which is labelled transistors, has two multi-turned precision variable resistors,
potential meters, you've stats if you call them, and a cheap variable resistor with inbuilt switch,
so yeah, it contains variable resistors basically. The multi-turn ones are precision, you know,
rather just turning round, from one end to the other, one 360 degrees, just can turn multiple
times 1, 2, 3, 4, I don't know how many times, but quite a lot of turns anyway, so, whatever the
resistance says, you can more finely adjust it, because it spreads over multiple turns,
this could be, it's probably wire around that, that port, actually, so um,
compartment 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, okay, is a bag of multi-colored LEDs, green, yellow, red, these were a cheap
set of Republican rejects, it was basically the cheapest LEDs I could find, on line, I can't
remember the time I was amazed how cheap they were, and I used those to, um, I've got an add-on board,
which I've, that I did it, which I did it, but, um, an episode about, which connects to Marasbury
Pi and it's got LEDs that light up depending, or to indicate things like how full of the
pi is, how many days it's been on, up time, and things like that, um, and it was actually cheaper
to buy this multi-pack of LEDs than to buy individual LEDs, it was so cheap, but as I think
it would rejects, but they were fine, so fine, we were, oh yeah, um, I've got, I've got, there's a
tiny 2-inch 8-ohm speaker, why don't know where to come from, no idea, and that compartment with
LEDs in the really LEDs and a speaker was labeled really for some reason, who knows why, uh, one, two,
three, four, compartment, five, contains, uh, panel-mounted, heavy-duty toggle switch, two-pole,
one-way, so yeah, that's a pretty beefy thing, it doesn't have any solder, and it's just not
just never been used before, no idea where I got it from, but at that, and it was called, that
had, I was labeled diodes for some reason, you could see I'm really organized, compartment six,
contains, uh, no, a light-dependent, there's a light-dependent resistance, you'd say, so, um,
you might see these things in your clock radio, if you've got such a thing,
hand as the room temp, as the room light changes, the display dims or brightens, so this light-dependent
resistance, it's resistance changes depending on the amount of light that it hits the top of it,
the surface of it, it's got a kind of glass, or a clear talk to it, so yeah, that's that, no use
for that whatsoever, it's never been used, I don't know why I got it, obviously I had some brand
plan when I was about to do something with that, um, oh and I've also got a large,
try-colored LED, so I think it goes, you know, green red, so one, one-platform, it was green, let's say,
other-platforms red, and if you all vary it, it goes on, but it's something like that, I can't remember
it's something like that, and this is also a retiny variable capacitor here, a PCB-mounted one,
we've got, um, a compartment 7, which is the long compartment, and it has,
it also has variable capacitors, actually I noticed that it's there in a bag, so I'm guessing
the one that's in the previous compartment, fell out of the other compartment, so I'm going to take it
back in the bags, they're all together, and this is Alice's stock number one, two, five,
dash, six, five, four, tuber, capacitor, apparently, what else, what else, what else,
spin-ozles for a desoldering tool again, made from PTFE, poly, tetra-floor, ethylene, I've got another
light pin that is listed here, maybe that fell out with the other previous compartment, I stick
wheels two together, I'm tidy up, it goes along, has an ugly idea, you know, I've got no use for
this box at all, panel mounted, heavy, GT, rotary, switch, two-pole, one-way, I can't remember where I
got that from, but there's definitely been use, came from something, an old bit of equipment,
bag of various fuses, oh I do like fuses don't know, I've got so many fuses,
a halogen 12-volt car headlight bulb, yep, I don't know if I've got that, but have,
variable resistor with long plastic spindle, panel mounted, yeah it's very long,
you obviously cut it to size, depending on how high you want it to sit, if it's set in a recess or
whatever, I've got a retiny thing color, a knife, a color, cutty sharp, which is a bit of plastic,
but you can slide the bleed out, it's a bit like a, what do you call this, a standard knife,
sort of thing, but it's a miniature thing, and what else, no, what else in here, I thought,
I want to turn just a heat sink, go to over the top for turn just to something like that,
and that's compartment 7, and the last compartment in the middle row, compartment 8,
is a variable resistor, PCB mounted, printed circuit board, PCB,
the circuit board mounted, yeah, so it's why I've got that no idea,
right, finally we get to the bottom compartment, this is just a big jump-bluff stuff,
let's see the notebook, the killer order, there's a DC red and black power lead with in-built fuse,
I'll be used for, I thought, not sure what it would have been used for,
I'll be to power a tape recorder so I have no idea, a small solderless bread board for prototyping,
so solderless bread board, that's like a white board, and you can push the components into it
to make contacts and build up a circuit, and you can just prototype with it, so it's a very,
it's a small one I've got of, it's, it's three and a half inches, by two inches, yeah,
it's quite small, bag of various plugs connectors, mostly jack plugs and sockets,
I've like, I've quartz crystals and a components receipt from 1985,
cuttle matey, I added some crystals to an old PMR, private mobile radio, which I was
stands for, a boot mount thing radio, it was possibly a pie Westminster radio, I'm not entirely sure
how they would look online or I couldn't find any information or any pictures of the
particular radio, I do remember it had a valve doubt boot, I mean you power it up,
you can hear it whine, you can hear it, you can find it then, where to bring it, or something like
that I think it was, to power the valve, big heavy thing, and other front, you know, a wire that
came from the mount, mount the boot mount box, and round to the front of the car, and you could
flick us, which would go different channels, five or six channels, of course you're getting
quite expensive, because these crystals are quite expensive, so I'm going to curse that two or three
channels, and it would work very well, I remember, and a good clear volume and all that,
but I don't need to be thrown out, I'll probably throw it out since then, several bits of
pairboard or stripboard, these stripboards are a bit like the, what would you call them, the
breadboard, a bit like a breadboard, but rather, you push it upwards into the holes in the
same place, the stripboard, a pairboard stripboard, as you solder it onto it, so you basically,
there's lines of holes and copper strips that run along the board, and one direction,
the separation is between each strip, and you solder the component from the other side,
and make links between it to build up the circuit, and I'm sure you could google it up,
I'll put a link to the pairboard and breadboards, so you can see the difference is between the two,
I've got a one-watt audio amplifier kit with instructions that I never built,
obviously grand ideas at the time, a D-type serial port mounted to PCB with screwed-on
connectors where I got that, no idea, bag of resistors, large bag of LED panel mounted holders,
so rather just jell-ing a hole and pushing the LED through it, on a panel, you could be
kind of jellous, bigger hole, fit this, then you push the, the hole that enter the hole,
and then you clip it, then you push the LED from the back through, and it goes on a nicer finish,
basically, I mean loads of these things, why the heck I bought those, no idea, they're a user,
I can't remember, I don't think so, and electronic instruction guide XH797, Marplan price 25B,
gives you general guidance about how to build circuits and do various things,
but, obviously, bought that at the time from Marplan a long long time ago,
chocolate block connector, that should be in other, that should be in a top compartment,
that I just do that now, take that position go along, I tell a scope pick, pick up for
recording, phone calls, never what, I've got in brackets here, so yeah, that was, I think I
think I got that with some sort of recorder, whether it was my miniature recorder, the basis,
you know, flash dry thing, that records audio, maybe it came with that, I can't remember,
but, years ago, we before that, I had that, certainly bigger pick-up coil, which did work,
I think this one's too small and never really what, you basically stick it on this side of the
old landline telephone, and the idea is that it picks up sounds from the phone conferences you
may have ever loved, piece of rubbish really, but I've kept it, multi-colored ribbon cable,
particularly used for computers and whatnot, plastic, chiming tools, screwdriver set, it's very useful
for television repairmen or people working with RF circuits and stuff, because if you bring a
metal screwdriver near RF circuits, it may have an inductor, it's got a core that you can adjust,
turn it back and forward to changing the inductance, and if you go near it with a metal screwdriver,
part of the fact that you could crack the core, it'll affect the circuit, I mean, you can get away with
it, it's not, you know, you can put your screwdriver it, you could be monitoring something, twist it a
little bit, take a screwdriver, see where it moves to, bring it back, because everything's been
screwed over next to the core, it would change the value, but with plastic ones, it doesn't do
that, it's that side here, these plastic tumour tools, and finally a panel mounted BNC socket,
partly stands for a baby kneel, constant, according to Wikipedia, I'll put a link to that in my show notes,
quote, that's 30 minutes, what a little waffle that was, so if you don't want to endure more
of this nonsense, I think you should send in a show, and if, I think that's about it, if you
want to contact me, I can be contacted at MrX at hpr at googlemail.com, as MRX, AT, hpr, the at
symbol googlemail.com, so until next time, thank you, and goodbye.
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