I love it when what at first appears to be a catastrophe turns out to be no big deal.
Earlier my power went out, just for a minute. Once it came back on I discovered an issue with my file server. It would power up briefly then shut down. It wasn’t even making it into POST, no beeps, no nuthin’. Immediately panic starts to set in as I imagine all of the expensive, time consuming, pain in the ass possibilities. I try it several more times, each with the same result. Then, after I got ahold of myself, I decided maybe it was the power supply, as that seemed the most likely culprit.
So… I retrieved my power supply tester, turned off the power supply, opened up the case and disconnected the 20-pin connector from the motherboard. I plug it into the tester, power it up, and it’s fine. Hmm…
must be the 4 pin connector for the CPU, that’s the only other line I can think of that might keep the computer from POST-ing. Again it tests as good.
Puzzled, I plug the connectors back in and give it another try. Just as before the power LED lights and the fans spin up, but this time, one short beep! Hallelujah! I punch it up on the KVM switch and see this message: CMOS Checksum error. Hmm… could the battery be dead? I pull the battery, grab my multi-meter, and sure enough, it’s dead. Completely, 100%, graveyard dead. Happily, I have a spare battery on hand. I replace the battery and it boots right up, happy as a clam.
Hooray for successful trouble-shooting (and a bit of luck). The “experts” on the internet seem to be split as to whether or not a dead CMOS battery can stop a computer from powering up. Some say yes, some say absolutely not. Well, I now know for a fact that it can. So, if you have a computer that powers up then right back down and isn’t giving any beep codes, test the power supply and the CMOS battery before letting visions of fried CPUs, dead motherboards, or bad RAM dance through your head.
I’ve been thinking about building a PC for use in the car for ages (most likely running some flavor of Linux). Gradually the market is catching up with my desires and it looks as if soon I may be able to buy exactly what I want “off the rack”. Here’s what I want:
1) A touchscreen interface that fits a double DIN dash opening. (common in many late model cars)
2) Provisions for (2) 3.5″ Hard drives. I want all of my Mp3’s in the car.
3) The ability to accept any cell phone’s SIM card and work with a “douche tooth” earpiece.
4) Obviously 3G/4G connectivity, Bluetooth, and WiFi.
5) GPS with turn by turn directions.
6) Alarm System
This is all I can come up with now. I’m sure I’ll be adding to the ‘wish list’ as time goes on.
Does anyone out there have any experience with, or opinions of, these type devices?
Share in the comments.
Click to embiggen.
Here’s a photo of my iPod and the stylus I made for it out of “surplus Russian aerospace titanium tubing”. How cool am I?
The next step will be deciding if I want a brushed or highly polished finish (I’m leaning toward polished) and finishing it accordingly.
A few days ago I saw an article detailing how to make a stylus for an iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch and became enamored with the notion of making a stylus for my iPod out of titanium. Titanium tubing is, of course, rather expensive and you have to buy it at least a foot (or several) at a time. Despite this I pressed on, undeterred. Finally I found a really good price on 6mm OD Ti tubing on eBay. Not just any Ti tubing, this is “surplus Russian aerospace titanium tubing”! From a seller in Latvia, no less.
Shipping from Latvia will take at least 10 days, so it will be a while before I have photos of the finished product to post. That is, if “they” don’t come and haul my ass off in an unmarked van before then.
Does the Spring Fever make one shop compulsively? If so, then that’s probably what I’ve got. In just the last two weeks I’ve bought:
5 new cycling caps (what the Hell, they’re cheap, right?)
1 “new” CPU (another 3.0G/512K/800Mhz Pentium 4)
&
Yet another video card (for a thus-far unsuccessful attempt to run CUDA on Kubuntu).
At least they’re all fairly small (<$50) purchases, so I guess it's not so bad. It’s not like I’m buying new bikes or fancy new wheelsets (yet).
Back on April 1st, I ordered a (warning: nerd content) serial to RJ-45 cable which I need to update the firmware on my new-to-me Belkin 8 port KVM.
Yesterday it still hadn’t come and the seller’s website was showing its status as “processing”, which would imply that it hadn’t shipped yet. Naturally I emailed them to ask what the deal was and, naturally, it arrived today. It just blows my mind how often that exact same scenario plays out.
This is another one of those “hopefully someone having the same problem comes across it and finds it useful” posts.
So my video card has taken to acting wonky, of late. Whenever I’d play a game (COD4 mainly) after a few minutes it would freeze up. My guess was that it was heat related, probably a bad fan on my SAPPHIRE Radeon X700PRO 256MB 128-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card. This was a great “bang for the buck” card when I bought it in August of 2005 and still fulfills my gaming needs just fine today, so I’d really rather not replace it, though I feared that would be necessary. Opening the case I find the fan barely turning at all and I know that I have my culprit.
The stock fan is a proprietary piece that I’m extremely unlikely to find a replacement for (and trust me, I looked), so I’m thinking I’m going to have to buy an third party cooling solution to replace the whole factory heatsink/fan assembly, which seems ridiculous, given the depreciated value of the card today. Before I start throwing money at this thing, I decide to see if it’s fixable. I pull the card out and find that the fan is secured to the heatsink by three very small Phillips-head screws. I get the screws out, remove the fan (which is very stiff and “draggy” and remove the sticker from the bottom covering its insides. Searching for suitable lube I decide upon Boeshield T-9. Developed by Boeing for Aerospace use, sold for cycling use, seems like just the ticket. A few drips later, the fan is spinning quite freely, so I put it all back together, reinstall it and BINGO! The temp never rises near the danger range the fan spins freely and all is (for now) well. And I can get back to the important business of “shooting melon fevers” in COD4.
The moral of this story: don’t give up on “bad” cooling fans. They can almost always be replaced, resurrected (cleaned and lubed) or “upgraded” to third party cooling solutions.
I’ve got a laptop that I’ve had for, I don’t know, maybe 7 years. Anyway, lately I’ve been thinking it’s probably time to upgrade the operating system from Windows 98 (I know! crazy, huh?). A while back I set it up to dual-boot with Kubuntu 8.04, and that really served to highlight just how dated Win98 is.
So, I’ve been seriously debating ditching 98 altogether and just running Linux, or possibly installing XP. Last week I was perusing eBay and came across a pretty sweet little IBM NetVista box for sale; 2Ghz P4, 512M of Ram, a $71 ‘Buy it now’ price (+$20 shipping) and best of all, it came with XP Pro installed. This set the wheels to turning;
I’ve got an XP Pro CD, I could use this computer’s activation key, install XP on the laptop, install Linux on the new ‘puter and add a new member to my computer minions, all for less than I would have paid to buy XP for the laptop (and with no “piracy” issues)!
Done, done, and done!
I just finished installing XP Pro on the laptop, activating it with Micro$oft, and updating it to SP3. The “new” NetVista is contentedly crunching numbers for BOINC, and I feel like a frugal demented genius… or something.
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