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Hi from the UK!

Posted: Fri Apr 14, 2023 11:00 am
by BlueIn2Red
Just thought I'd share my Nabu experiences so far - I live in the UK, and attempted to order a machine last Saturday through eBay, but at the checkout stage was told that the shipper does not ship to my destination. I contacted the seller (James), and he was very helpful, said he'd look into it. As far as he was aware he was using the eBay Global Shipping Program so it should have been no problem to ship to the UK. Turns out however that eBay have recently changed things (I think it's now called International Shipping or something) and James hadn't updated his listings to suit. He did that, and within an hour I had my Nabu ordered!

Within another hour, I'd ordered another! I think the price is a steal really for what you get (even with shipping and taxes to the UK, meaning a total of around 200 GBP), and I plan to keep one machine stock in the box, leaving the other as my "daily" which I can modify freely.

Incredibly, to me at least, both machines arrived at my home yesterday morning, in perfect condition. So less than three working days from Canada, plus the fact that I ordered during the Easter holiday weekend!

Both Nabus work perfectly thankfully, using a step down transformer I bought from Amazon, and a composite video + audio cable to my Sony CRT TV. I'd already made a couple of network adapter cables, one using the "solder-less" connector to the USB thing, one I soldered myself (DB9 to DIN5). The latter took a couple of attempts as I'm very inexperienced at soldering - I managed to partially melt the connector (misaligning the pins as a result) through too much heat, and in another attempt I managed to get a couple of wires mixed up - my brain really struggled with all the "solder side back to front upside down standing on your head" pinout diagrams!

I'm having great fun so far exploring everything. I am finding the relatively large amount of information available quite confusing (but better that than no info!), lots of different sources for different software and hardware combinations, but I'm getting there slowly and I know a number of people are doing great work documenting everything. I do think much of this documentation is suitable only really for expert hackers (especially the GitHub stuff!), so think there's a bit of a gap in the market for a more beginner friendly guide. I might have a crack at this myself if nobody else does/has.

Enough rambling, cheers!

Re: Hi from the UK!

Posted: Fri Apr 14, 2023 11:24 am
by MagnumPEI
BlueIn2Red wrote: Fri Apr 14, 2023 11:00 am Incredibly, to me at least, both machines arrived at my home yesterday morning, in perfect condition. So less than three working days from Canada, plus the fact that I ordered during the Easter holiday weekend!
They're not shipped from Canada. They're in the US. (Massachusetts)

It only took 3 days to go from US to UK?? I'm in Canada, fairly close and it took 13 days. Maybe it would have come faster if I got them to ship to the UK first, then back to Canada.

I would have ordered another NABU, but shipping suddenly went up to a ridiculous $120 CAD.

Re: Hi from the UK!

Posted: Sat Apr 15, 2023 7:54 pm
by LeoBinkowski
Hiya Blue,

I'm glad you found a good deal on a NABU, and in the UK no less. Did you have to do something with the power supply?

Re: Hi from the UK!

Posted: Tue Apr 18, 2023 3:06 pm
by BlueIn2Red
Sorry for the delay Leo (I didn't get a forum notification oddly, even though I ticked the box) - I just use a step down transformer, this one actually:



(EDIT - guess I can't post links, it's a "Cantonape" model from Amazon.)