This week was the final one (hopefully) spent rebuilding the various parts of my network infrastructure in my house. Media serving boxes, the backup machine, swapping drives, recovering data, replacing RAM… and all I wanted to do was just sit down, do some hobbies and paint some minis.
Alas, I didn’t escape the technical work on the hobby side either. My Elgoo Saturn has been a bit of a needy mare at the moment – obviously after being bought in 2021, it’s decided it’s feeling a bit old. So, after replacing the lamp unit back in May, one of the fans decided to be a little grindy. Not a massive problem but seeing as the Saturn fans are already loud, a little bit of extra noise was keeping me awake. So after ordering a replacement pair online (not easy due to the Saturn using 24v for it’s fans) I was able to plug in the new fans turn it on and… it immediately failed with only half the screen working.
This is usually the sign of a damaged or failing screen – this is a pain in the ass to source the replacement for on the Saturn due to it’s age. It’s ESPECIALLY annoying as I needed it back up and running relatively quickly (a certain Regular Opponent will be needing his Dwarf fix soon for wave 2 of his Old World army). Luckily I was able to find a screen on eBay and get it ordered.
However, before it arrived, I decided to try and double-check what was actually the problem. And this is where I get to talk about how much I hate ribbon cables (the flat flexible sections that link the motherboard to the screen and another to the front panel). It turns out that the reason the panel had failed was that in the process of reassembling the machine, I hadn’t quite lined up the connectors – quickly unplugging and replugging both of the cables related to the screen made sure they were all lined up and working.
Of course, my replacement screen then arrived. Annoying I had to buy it now, but at least at this point I have a spare just in case it actually breaks fully next time.
The big thing this week was getting this month’s Patreon writing finished off but I did manage to get some time away from the typing to put together the latest set from Combat Octopus. I just used the pre-assembled marksmen to speed up the printing (I’ll be properly assembling my custom set later), with the three Western-equipped guys being formed up into a two-man marksman team and another fighter on foot. As much as I love the customisation aspect of CO’s figures, it was nice to just get something on the build plate, print and put some heads on. The prone figure’s head took a tweaking to get into place but I’m looking forward to some time to get these guys (and the last set) painted up.
Speaking of the Patreon, I managed to write up a big post covering the use of Mercenaries in the ChargeReal setting. As well as the main post over on the ChargeBlog Patreon, I did also release a little lore drop here to show the type of stuff I’m getting up to. I’m hoping over the next few weeks to bring as much writing over from the Patreon to here, in part to keep it all together. The ChargeReal is something I’m getting very excited about so I really want to get the word out there and more people following along. I’ll also be setting up a ChargeReal landing page on this blog so you can find all much more easily.
That’s it for this week, with a new update coming next Sunday.
