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Post by flylear45 on Mar 25, 2018 11:17:30 GMT -5
If you have the same luck as I have had you will love the M2ATX. Mine has been rock-solid through any weather NE Ohio has to offer living in the trunk of my car for years now.
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Post by jhornbr225 on Mar 26, 2018 8:19:48 GMT -5
Yeah, I've probably got at least 4 of them, some in use, some not. A couple years back I bought a couple used car PC's from an MP3Car.com user for $100 each. They are a little slow, but the parts alone were worth over $100. They each have WIN7 home, Voom2 case, M2-ATX, 160GB non-ssd drive, DVD-writer. I actually use one in my garage as music and internet device. My wife has the other on her desk, because she wanted a separate pc, so she does not have to use her work laptop for personal stuff. I then have another car pc built up, almost exactly the same, but better components, and a little faster. But I have since decided that I wanted smaller pc. I aquired those 3 towards the end of the mini-itx era. And then I have another group of parts somewhat assembled as a car PC, it's got XP on it though.
I have had one M2-ATX somewhat fail on me. It was on the XP PC. I power it up occasionally to let it do updates, (I did the POS 2009 registry hack on it). It's also a Voom2 case, but I don't have the cover on it. Anyway, I heard some sizzling, and I looked down and some some caps smoking. I did a quick shutdown. I ordered some better caps, I believe they were the cheaper Cap X Con's. I replaced them with some, can't remember the brand at the moment, but a good brand, and I bought enough to do several swaps if I need to. I powered it back up and everything was fine. Only that one has failed so far. In my office and garage I use salvaged ITX supplies, jumpered to be powered on all the time. I then use a switched power strip to turn them on. For the wife's, I had a 12V, 30A switching supply sitting around, way overkill, but it was spare, so I used it. It's also on a switched power strip.
I got notice today that the second batch of circuit boards and parts will arrive tomorrow. I won't be able to play with them till the weekend though. Once those boards are made up, I'll be able to fully mock up the Accord pc on the bench. I guess I've got some code to modify for the Pro Micro. It will be close to the Tacoma PC's that I wrote a month or so ago. I need to add code for the resistive steering wheel controls, and change the start up and shut down logic slightly.
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Post by jhornbr225 on Apr 15, 2018 19:09:23 GMT -5
Spent yesterday building the PC board for the rear control of the Accord PC. I'm missing some filter caps, I've got them on order to arrive this week. I drilled mounting holes for the board in the enclosure. I dis-assembled the Optical to RCA converter and de-soldered the output RCA jacks and power jack from the board. I'll wire them directly to this rear control board. I also constructed another small relay board that will shut power to this board off controlled by the Arduino up front. It appears that there will be enough room inside the enclosure for that little board as well. I was hoping not to have to have it outside the enclosure. That would look hokey. I'm still going to drill a couple holes to bolt down the 3-terminal regulators, and devise some way to hold the Optical converter still. I'm going to cut a hole in the side of the enclosure for the optical cable to get in. Had some problems with the Garage PC yesterday. It's been not liking to boot when it's cold. It'll have errors, then have to do a repair and run CHKDSK. Not good. Assuming that a hard drive was about to go, I got a Samsung SSD, imaged the original drive, and installed it. It worked great. But I noticed yesterday that Windows was nagging me about not being genuine. So I tried calling the Microsoft Activation support people. Since I got this PC off an MP3Car user 5 years ago, and no installation media or Product Key came with it, they told me without a product key that I would have to purchase a new Product Key. What? I replace a failing hard drive, and I have to buy another copy of Windows? So I got online with Tech support today, and after several hours, 3 remote sessions, one call from Microsoft that got disconnected. After we got disconnected, I called the activation people again, and they told me that my Product Key was Locked! I got back online with tech support, and I now have a new product key and product ID. I finally have an activated, legal, genuine copy of Windows 7 Ultimate on my Garage PC's SSD, just like I did when I had a normal hard drive in there.
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Post by flylear45 on Apr 17, 2018 19:26:54 GMT -5
Pain in the rear getting Windows re-authorized.
I use a nifty little tool called Belarc Advisor. It scans your system and outputs a file with all your licenses and keys...... even Windows and Office.
I run and print the output, then put the hard copy in a computer file folder for each machine and always have it when bad things happen.
Your hardware skills are awesome, BTW. You are really going to have a nice system when you get it all together.
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Post by COMpulse on Apr 18, 2018 7:10:47 GMT -5
Good job with the activation. I probably would have given up and used more questionable methods to resolve the issue.
And that Win 7 license may even be able to upgrade to Win 10 if you wanted to.
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Post by jhornbr225 on Apr 18, 2018 10:59:08 GMT -5
I'm pretty patient. After my dealings with the Beelink, and now this garage computer, I now know, don't bother with the activation people. They are quick to tell you that you have to buy another license, even the supervisors. For both machines, I've been able to go to online chat with Microsoft Support, and they have been able to remote in and fix the problems and get me activated.
I'm not sure about upgrading to WIN10. It's a pretty low featured machine, Dual Core, 1.86Mhz Atom. Although the Microsoft tech did tell me the memory was WIN10 ready. I suppose I'll re-visit it when WIN7 support dies.
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Post by jhornbr225 on Apr 18, 2018 10:59:34 GMT -5
I have an update on the electronic load tester that I bought a few months back that was a fake. I ended up sending it back to China to the Ebay seller. The time had expired with Ebay to complain, but Paypal gives you 6 months. Since the seller continued to lie about sending me another unit until the time expired that I could file a claim with Ebay, I'm sure that they thought they were out of the woods with me. It turns out that in certain cases, Paypal will issue a $30 shipping credit to ship stuff back to China. So I shipped it, got credit for the shipping, and got my money back. I ordered another one of the same unit, from a different seller. This one appears genuine. The actual current matches the measured current and I am able to adjust it in 10mA increments, just like you are supposed to be able to. Through some research, I have found that if the load tester does not have the polarity of the incoming power supply silkscreened on the board, and if it says "LCD" under the LCD screen instead of "Electronic Load V1.6", then it's a fake. Now there is no way to guarantee that even if it has the polarity and the V1.6 silkscreened on it , that it's not a fake. Those fakers are crafty, you know. But the chances are better if it's got the right silkscreens. And when it's powered up, the screen should say "Welcome To Use". Although my fake one said that, even though it was fake. But if the measured current does not match an ammeter that you place inline, and if you change the setpoint in 10mA increments, but the actual current only changes in 100mA increments, then it's a fake.
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Post by jhornbr225 on Apr 18, 2018 11:49:40 GMT -5
Flylear, thank you for the kind words. Powering the PC is easy, getting it to automatically start up and shut down, now that's the hard part. There are times I feel that I do dumb things, or miss things I should have caught. If you look closely at this board, on the left side you see the L IN, L OUT, R IN, and R OUT? Well, I should have grouped the L+R IN's together and the L+R Out's together, as that's how RCA cables are laid out. It's a minor thing, but I should have thought of that while laying out the board. I also found that the text for AUD IN ended up being on a solder pad for the PT2257, so it got cut out. Writing the code yesterday for the Accord controller, I found that I'm not going to use the power antenna to power this front processor circuit as I originally planned. So the silkscreen on the board says PWR ANT, But I'm going to put Ignition power there. The hole that says IGN, I'll leave empty. That way Ignition, (in the PWR ANT hole), will now power the circuit, and be an input into the Arduino. The relay, being used as a latch to keep power on the circuit after the key is turned off, will only turn on if you turn on the stock radio, (that has no speakers attached to it), thereby powering up the power antenna. I'll run the power antenna into one of the spare inputs, and that will cause the relay on the board to come on. I will only have to add a resistor and SOT-23 surface mount MOSFET to the board. Good thing I left myself some prototyping area. I just have to be sure that I use components there that are short to the board, as the USB plug for the Arduino Pro Micro goes through there. So, to shut the computer off, you can either turn off the radio, or turn off the key. Both of those actions turn off the power antenna. After the computer is shut down, I'll leave a delay, and then I can shut the relay off, which will kill all power to the circuit. I'm also going to make a spare output from this board go to the back board to turn on the additional relay I added there to power up that circuit. That way the back circuit will only power up after the power antenna signal comes on. I used my new load tester to test the 5V SMPS yesterday. I set it to 3.5A, and let it go for a few minutes. What I was really hoping for was to heat up the heatsink on the load tester to see if the fan worked. After a few minutes, the fan came on, but I noticed a "squeal" coming from the SMPS. I think my cheap 100uH inductors have come to bite me. I don't think they are really rated for the 6A that they were supposed to be. Also, looking at the design sheet, and revisiting Mickz's writeup, I see that they are supposed to be 22uH. At the time I thought 100uH would be better, but I see that at that frequency, the 100uH has a reactance of 163 Ohms, where the 22uH has about 36 Ohms. Looking at the design sheet for the LM2678 series simple switchers, they actually suggest that at 12V in and 5A out, that either a 15uH or 22uH is suggested. Oops!. I ordered some better inductors, at 15uH, that are really rated at 5A. Hopefully I didn't damage any other parts. So, I'll probably build another on the board that I designed for the first run of circuit boards that I had built. The extra parts I ordered should be here Thursday and Friday. Today I think I'll solder up the front control board, (for the most part), and continue to modify the enclosure for the back circuit. EDIT: The good thing about the SMPS circuit is that now with taking the feedback from the actual output terminal, the voltage holds rock steady at 5.12V, no matter what the current is. I did manage to get it to output about 4.2A until it went into shutdown for some reason. The good thing is that it recovered automatically if the load dropped below 4A.
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Post by jhornbr225 on May 14, 2018 11:04:34 GMT -5
This time of year is tough to get anything done. This week it's supposed to rain every day. I've got 3 big lawn mowers to get oil changes done,greased, and blades changed. We've got 5 acres to mow, and this time of year, you could probably mow every 2-3 days around here. If you don't, you have a jungle. I've got two of the mowers done, the first is a semi-commercial 60 inch cut zero turn. In addition to changing the oil, it's got 24 grease fittings. And none of them are easy to reach. The second is a tow behind, 60 inch. It's only got 4 grease fittings, so it's much faster to work on. With the first one done, at least we can mow. Having the other mowers done only makes it faster to mow. A couple days ago I did some experimenting with the car PC. I discovered, that I can enable the M2-ATX with a 5V supply. That's huge, as I can use an output from the Arduino Pro Micro straight into the ignition inputof the M2 to turn it on. I hooked up two supplies, a 12V and a 5V. I put 5V in on the ignition lead and measured the current. I figured it would be low, but did not want to chance blowing an output pin on the Arduino. Anyway, I measured what looked like 380uA on the ignition line when turning the supply on. I was not real sure of my ammeter, so I put a 330 Ohm resistor in series, and measured the voltage across it while turning on the supply. I read .121VDC, so that confirms about 366 uA. Seeing that an Arduino output pin is good for 40mA, I'm plenty good to drive it directly with the Arduino. I won't have to mess around with relays or a transistor to turn it on. I also spent some time in the Accord removing the factory stereo. I need to take some measurements to figure out how to interface with the steering wheel buttons and the big factory rotary encoder volume control. It was a bear to to the stereo out. Honda actually calls out a special tool to remove the top middle section of the dash, so you can access the three top screws that hold the stereo in. I looked at the pictures and cobbled up a stiff piece of wire to substitute for the tool. You have to pull the center section towards the back of the car, which pops a couple clips, then pull it up and back to pop the rest. There are a couple little slots in the sides of the center vents that the tool fits into. It was really tough, but I got it out. I then removed the stereo and disassembled it. It basically split into 2 parts, the front control board, which not only runs the stereo, but the heat and AC. And the back section which has the 6 disk CD changer and the factory amplifier. Looking over the control board, it was easy to find the volume control, and I identified the three pins on it. Two of the pins have 1K Ohm resistors off of them, so I'm going to assume they are the outputs. The third pin must be the supply. I'll have to take some resistance reading to determine which of the two output pins is A, and which is B. I'm basing all this on this link. www.buxtronix.net/2011/10/rotary-encoders-done-properly.html. My plan is to solder a couple wires onto those pins to bring them out to where I can access them easily. I'll need to measure the voltage on them with the stereo running, to figure out the level, and to figure out which is A and which is B. If it's 3.3V or 5V, I can run them directly into my Arduino. If they are 12V, which I doubt, as they probably go into a micro on the stereo's board, I'll have to use a couple FETs to interface with them. I'll either have to use 2 FETs for each, as they will invert the signal, then, I'll have to invert it back. Or maybe I can do the inversion in code, and only use 1 FET for each signal. But that might require messing with the encoder library that I am using, which I would rather not do. It's all much easier if it's 5V or less. Anyways, exciting times!
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Post by jhornbr225 on May 14, 2018 11:13:18 GMT -5
I've also made up my mind to upgrade my Subwoofer amplifier. I realize that it will be pretty hard to adjust the gain on the one I have once it's installed. Also the terminals on my existing amplifier are way too small for the 4AWG wire that I want to run to it.
I had about 300,000 Best Western points, so I cashed them in for Amazon Gift Cards. At 13,000 points for a $50 Gift card, I've got $750 in Gift Cards coming. I want a new Stereo Receiver for the Living room, and there will be enough left to get a new Sub amp. All I have to do is wait for the gift cards to arrive.
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Post by jhornbr225 on May 18, 2018 8:48:10 GMT -5
I soldered the wires onto the rotary encoder's output lines, and checked the voltage coming out of them. It was 5V! I attached them to an Arduino Pro Micro that I had installed the "poll" example of the Rotary Library. I then set the BeeLink in the Accord and started Arduino, and fired up the serial monitor. The sketch causes an integer number to increment and decrement based on the direction you turn the encoder. At first it didn't work. I measured the voltage, and could see that it was not going below 1V. Pull-ups were turned on in the code. I commented out that line and it started counting. I noticed that it took two "clicks" of the encoder to cause the number to increment or decrement. By default, the code is set up for "Full Step". I un-commented the line to turn on "Half-Step" and it started working as expected.
I then took some measurements on the steering wheel control's lines. Since I have the service manual for the car, as well as the electrical manual, I can see the resistor values for each switch. After taking measurements, I see that the Brown wire is tied to ground, it even says "Steering wheel control ground" in the manual, my first clue. On the Green/Red wire, I got voltages ranging from 4.02V with no buttons pressed, to 0.368V with the Volume Down pressed. This leads me to believe that the radio's 5V line goes though a 2500 Ohm resistor in the radio, then out to the steering wheel. I can easily mimic that with my circuit. I'll just cut those 2 wires loose from the radio, and tie them to my Arduino, and add a 2500 Ohm resistor in my circuit. I'll set up ranges in my code of a couple hundred mV for each button. I did test to see if any combination of a pair of buttons would give another output voltage, sadly, it does not. The lowest voltage always wins. So, Volume Down was 0.368V and Mode was 3.44V. If I held Mode, and saw 3.44V, then pushed Volume Down, the voltage went to 0.368V. So having combinations of buttons do different things is off the table.
Sure enough, as soon as I posted that I was waiting for my Best Western gift cards to arrive, there was a knock at the door. They arrived! I had to sign for them. I entered them all into Amazon, and ordered my new Sub Amp. It figures that the new Home Theater receiver that I was looking at went up by $100 that morning. So I'll have to wait for that price to come back down before I order that. If camelcamelcamel.com's history is worth anything, there have been multiple price changes over the past 10 months. The price goes up for 13 days, then comes back down. So I'll wait. There was even one instance where it came down by $200. Hopefully that will happen. If so, I'll order one of those Home Theater tuning microphones as well.
In the car, after I did all my testing, I started making the bracket to mount my new Sub Amp, as it arrived yesterday. It's the exact same footprint as the 4 channel amp I already have, so I made an identical bracket, and just installed it inside out, like a mirror image on the driver's side of the car.
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Post by flylear45 on May 18, 2018 16:58:51 GMT -5
Good progress! It's getting close now.
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Post by jhornbr225 on May 21, 2018 12:23:26 GMT -5
I spent Saturday working in the car. I finally broke down and removed the center console. I'll need it out to run the wires to the back.
I got the Sub Amp installed. Running wires to it was much easier than the old amp, as now all the wires come out the same side of the amp. I have all the wires attached to the amps, but the other ends are hanging for now. I ran the speaker wires into the trunk for the rear speakers and subs, but did't land them yet. I also ran the remote turn on wires into the trunk, as those will be hooked to the rear circuit box to turn to the amps on. I ran the RCA cables from the amps back into the the trunk, so they are ready to hook to the crossover after it's mounted. I tinned all the conductors that are not lugs, (Speaker Wires, and Remote Turn On), to give them some durability. I landed the ground wires for the amps. I've learned through experience, that it's best to land the ground wire first. That way, if there is any current flow through the device when you hook up the positive wire, the current flows through where it was designed to, not any un-intentional current paths. Those could be higher resistance, and a smaller wire gauge, and could burn up.
I did a little soldering on the rear circuit. I soldered the audio signal wires from the Optical to RCA converter into my board, and soldered the 5V power for the Optical converter into my board. It's going to be a challenge soldering the Audio signal output to the board, because the one hole is buried under the Audio input wire. I'm not going to do that yet, as I don't know exactly how far this box is going to be from the electronic crossover, hence how long the RCA cable will need to be. Also I'm going to run it into the rear circuit box through a rubber grommet, so I can't just push the RCA plugs out through the grommet from the inside.
So I suppose the next step is to mount the crossover and a find a place to mount this rear box. At the moment, however, the trunk is completely full of all the interior pieces. I'll have to empty it, and find a place to set that stuff while I fabricate some brackets for the crossover and rear circuit box.
I also researched hooking up a rear view camera. I identified the left tail light wire for reverse, to power the camera. I will pull a single RCA cable to the front for the video. I found the connection under the dash that is the same wire as the reverse light, so that I won't have to run a power cable to the front from the tail light to power the screen for the reverse cam. I think I'm going to use a Lilliput screen that I have that automatically goes to the Video 1 input if there is a signal there, say from a reverse camera. I will run the power from that connection I found under the dash to a diode so that the screen will come on when I put it in reverse, even if the computer is off. Another diode will be put in series with the power coming from the M2-ATX, so that the two power sources don't interfere with each other. The only problem with this whole setup is that I have not made the final decision on installing the rear view camera. I have one that bolts to your license plate, but it's hokey looking. I have a nice frame on my plate, so I'm hesitant to muck it up with a hokey aftermarket camera. I'm still going to run the video cable while the car is all apart though, as that's the only cable that needs to go from front to back for the camera to work.
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Post by jhornbr225 on Jul 7, 2018 21:38:53 GMT -5
Finally got a chance to get back into the car. It's been crazy working for the last 6 weeks. I had some big projects that I could not get away from, and then once I got those to a stable point, I had two rush jobs come in. I was basically told to work 12 Hours a day, 7 days a week to get those rush jobs done. And the invoices I sent for that last month of work were going to sit on the Boss's desk, unprocessed and unpaid, until I finished the two rush jobs. As I said, the trunk was entirely full of interior pieces, and I needed a place to put them so I could continue the work in the trunk. I spent the days Thursday and Friday building a couple workbenches. I used to work at Chuck E Cheese, many moons ago. During a remodel, I grabbed a couple of tabletops that were in decent shape that were being thrown away. I've had them since the mid 90's. Years back, I took the biggest one, a 5' x 30", and made a workbench. I decided to copy that design, and make a couple more, as I still had 4 of the 4 foot tabletops left sitting around. I had enough scrap treated 4x4's to make 2 sets of legs. I went to the local Menard's and got 2 1x8's, 7 2x4's and a sheet of 3/4" MDF. I had enough screws around that I didn't need to buy any. With the new workbenches in place, I now have a nice place to put all these pieces, so they don't get damaged while they are out of the car. Also in the meantime, I had ordered a couple Noctua fans for a couple Raspberry Pi's that I use on the upstairs and downstairs TV's running OSMC as a media center. I had bought a couple cases that had a small fan a few years ago. I found that the little fan was so noisy, it was bothering me while watching TV. I ordered a couple of 40x20mm Noctua fans. And although they were larger than the little dinky fans I took out, there was plenty of room on the top of the case to put a larger fan. I drilled a couple mounting holes in the very brittle acrylic case, and drilled a series of holes to make the hole for the fan's air to get into the case bigger. Now they are silent. If anyone is looking for a quiet fan with lots of airflow, and you have not tried Noctua, give them a shot. They are a little pricey, but IMHO, worth it. Last year I replaced the 6 fans in my desktop PC with Noctua fans. I didn't even realize that the old fans were giving out a dull roar. Now my desktop is nearly silent, and I'm loving it. So I spent the rest of the afternoon/evening in the backseat of the car, making brackets for the crossover and rear control circuit. I was dreading it, as under the package shelf is not a flat surface, and there are some cables running through there. I also didn't just want screws sticking up and pushing up on the rear deck cover. Here is what I ended up with. It's a little deceiving. The channel to the right that has screws sticking down to hold the right side of the two aluminium strips is a mostly closed channel. And it's not very deep. Those are 1" long screws. The one further away was not bad, it's toward the end of the channel, and that end is open. The one closest is a new hole, as that's the size of the crossover. Those existing holes are too small for fingers. I had to drill a 3/8" hole, then feed a piece of wire into it, and out the bigger hole. I then taped the screw to the wire, and pulled the wire back, then fanagled it with needlenose pliers to get it though the hole. Needless to say, I'm not taking it back out. I'll take off that existing regular nut and use a Nyloc nut on it to make sure it does not come loose. But since I can't reach the head of the screw with any tools, I'll have to jam two nuts together to be able to tighten the Nyloc nut. The two aluminium pieces are parallel to one another, even though the pic looks like they are not. The left sides float down from the shelf about 1/2". I'll put a spacer behind those to hold them level. I still have to make the proper mounting holes for the left side of the crossover, and the holes to mount the rear control circuit. With all the interior pieces out, the trunk is not a comfortable place to lay down. That raised bar across the opening into the car is where I would lay to work, with it running right under my shoulder blades. I suppose I should have put some kind of padding down. And I had to hold my head up the whole time, as my head was over the empty spare tire well, behind that silver cover for the fuel pump. With those brackets in position, I can finalize the wiring. I'll have to put some longer screws to hold the circuit board in the enclosure for the rear control circuit, as they will have to go through the new brackets. On second thought, I should drill some relief holes for the heads of those screws to fit into, so the enclosure will sit flush to the bracket, then use some "L" brackets on the sides of the enclosure. If I ever have to take the rear control circuit out to work on it, I don't want to have to remove these brackets I made today. Oh well, tomorrow is another day.
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Post by jhornbr225 on Jul 9, 2018 19:37:03 GMT -5
Sunday, worked on the brackets a little. Ran to the hardware store and got some small aluminum angle material 1/2' x 1/2". I cut a few pieces, and mounted them to the sides of the rear control circuit's enclosure. I also drilled holes for the left side of the crossover. I'll need to get a couple of longer #10 screws for the left side of the brackets. The longest I have now is 1". I know that the space under the bracket is going to be at least 1/2", the aluminium bracket is 1/8", and I'm going to use Nyloc nuts, which are thicker than normal nuts. Then the angle attached to the enclosure is on top of that, and it will also get mounted with a Nyloc nut. So I'm sure that entire sandwich is going to require a longer screw. I usually go to the Nut House (a local place called Zeigler's Bolt and Nut House). They sell to anyone, and if you are buying quantity, it's MUCH cheaper to go there. In this case, I'll only need 2, and I probably won't need a quantity of those longer ones for anything else.
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