And because I am a future engineer Because I am bored and am within convenient reach of a screwdriver, I decided upon the dissection of my trusty radio last week.

But of course, since the radio doesn't work anymore, it can't really be said as "trusty", so I have no qualms about opening it up. "Fix it or throw it away!"-- said mum. Fair enough. I chose option C. (Because it evidentally ain't gonna get fixed even if I opened it up, though I did think I could.)

But fiiiirst, a photo of its intact-self:



And in the background you can see my Football #2. :) The #1 has conceded itself honourably to misoverusage and abuse loving attention and has since been reduced to a furry ball of volleyball-lookalike thingy.

Moving on.



Well, hm, signs are meant not to be followed, eh? Seriously though, if the radio is not connected to the mains and is stripped of its batteries, there'll be no potential -potential- to run a current through myself. :) Ithink.
So off must go those batteries!



And in the corner you can see my red shiny batting glove that I used as a precaution to any "leaking" "combustible" batteries that might cause harm to my byootehful handz. But I mean, look at the photo. You see what I mean? Those batteries are like -ancient-! The brown thing is not some fancy brown moss but rust. Which frankly looks even more disgusting than brown moss (if that'd ever existed).

So after removing the batteries and any remaining vestiges of flaky rust, it's time to TAKE THE SCREWS OUT!!! I put in in caps and exclamation marks because it is quite an exciting thing to do, as seen in:



SPIDER WEB!!! Twirled out some spider webs, which admittedly wasn't quite in my proposed itinerary. But hey, 'twas 2 hours after midnight and any shocking twists are welcomed. (shocking twist was an unintended pun, if there ever was one. "Sticky twist to the situation" would be more appropiate. Eh.)

But there was one screw, screw it, that just didn't want to be unscrewed (It kept twisting in its place without coming out). Upon using my seventh-sense of useless intuition (aka close-eyes-and-feel-the-sides-for-movements), I concluded that the screw-holder itself has broken off from the main body, so, hey, saved me some trouble there.

After some initial struggle with the backcover ("Damn I know my strength wasn't what it used to be, but... ...?!"), it finally gave me face and came off. To my delight, my seventh-intuition proves correct! But still as useless.

(See the left-bottom corner? It's broken.)


And yeah, those squiggly colourful metalish thingies? I forgot what those are called but who cares. Though I used to get in close contact with plenty of them when I was a child: my mum took on some work from a friend that required us (yes, -us-! Little chibi me got to fiddle with those things too) to make wafers and all those things that resemble motherboards.

Do you know I'm cheating you through this entry 'coz I didn't really take a lot of photos? Heeeee.



Please ignore the pink mat. My mum had this sudden mat-buying fetish when we were in HK.
I took out the wafers and circuitboards that were inside too, but I didn't take photos. :) Being that my radio is a duo-purpose one of tune-in radio and tape-radio, there were lots of gears and clicks and switches for me to play and explore with. Not to mention there were o i l. Got oil on me batting gloves. Maybe wearing these rubber gloves could give me a lower chance of getting electrocuted or something, y'know? So I wore them throughout the operation. :D



Things thingity thingy. See? Toldja I'm cheating you through this entry -- I have no more photos~! *leers* Well actually there was this one place I was -itching- to open up: the connected area to the AC mains supply (See the above above photo in the bottomleft corner). It's a little green box thing that I presume contains the important wires and -- more pertinently -- the answer to just why the radio was not working. BUT! I just couldn't open it. This little screw here (after I unscrewed an other screw and the inner companion screw) decided to become unscrewable. Everytime I exert force in the clockwise direction, it cries "EEEK EEEK EEEK" in an ethereal plea for me to leave it alone. It. eeek just. eeek wouldn't. eeeeek open. crrk for me. It's the last freaking screw to the grand AC box thingy beyond.

But what can I do? I left it alone after the 4064-th try.