Raspi 1

Note: Raspi = Raspberry Pi

I'm surprised I haven't even posted a thing about my Raspi... Anyway....

It's not horribly powerful, though it's supposed to be able to stream 1080p video... Chrome kicks the SoC to 100%... so yeah, idk :/

I plan on doing a few tests with Transmission (BitTorrent program) to see how it works out... Otherwise, I'll have to drop the idea of holding openSUSE torrents, which would be a bit of a bummer.

I made a "case" for the Raspi... it's quite crude and actually doesn't hold the Raspi 100% securly. BUT! It does have a fan! XDDDD

Just a fan that blows on the ARM chip, none of the funny heat-sinks that I've seen... too much drilling XD

The case is made from a optical disk drive shell, a 5.25" bay tear-off cover, and some tear-off PCI covers XP



You can see the SD card sticking out and the anti-static foam that the Raspi sits on (rather have any ESD from the case go to the Raspi power cable that's not plugged in for the picture, not to mention, it needs to sit on something anyway). The fan is on, it was the stock fan from Ziggy's CPU cooler, and you can also see the fan controller I added so it's not blasting at full speed. All the "case" parts are from computer parts as previously stated XP

The ARM chip stays relatively cool even though I keep the fan speed at lowest. Funny thing is that when I plug the fan in, I have to kinda turn the knob a smidge higher (enough to where it "bounces" back like when you turn the key of a car to start the engine, which is about 1-2 degrees on the knob) spin the fan with a finger and then let go. At worst though, I just turn it up and then ease it down.

The "shroud" has a spring underneath with some rubber pads and mounts to the case with a couple motherboard stand-off screws.

There are three screws in a triangular formation that make up the feet (since the motherboard stand-off screws protrude from the bottom).

Two of the fan's mounting brackets are screwed into the case to make sure it doesn't decide to fly away or something XD

I think I'm done now.

Upgrades (Round 2) Part 1

I realized yesterday that I haven't written about some of things that happened recently.

I was going to upgrade the Dell computer I acquired to a dual core, but after ordering the parts, I found out that the BIOS is locked to certain processors (which is one of the main reasons why I never buy desktops and build them instead). So I ended up doing a build for it, which I'm not really going to go into.

I found that the Zalman CNPS9700 that I installed for Lie-chan was not plugged in... Oops. Luckily, it wasn't a problem, and I just plugged it in and toyed with some settings in BIOS to spin it down some.

After the Intel build, I decided to poke around Mei-chan a bit and I found the reason why she was loud was the 9700, so I ordered a Zalman CNPS9900 Max and put in the old fan controller that was originally for Ziggy (back when I had the 92mm Vantec Tornado in the case) while I was waiting for it to arrive. Installation was a bit difficult, since the tool supplied with that specific one was a bit short in the nib and lacking the bevel, which ended up stripping enough of the screw head to make it annoying... I had to use the short end to finish mounting it. It also warped the motherboard slightly, but not nearly as much as the stock 775 cooler on the Intel build...

For the Intel build, I removed the stock cooler and put in the 9700 from Mei-chan, along with Zalman's Fan Mate 2 fan-controller on the front of the case, which cooled the processor down about 10C compared to the stock cooler.

Mei-chan isn't nearly as loud as she used to be, but she's not dead silent either.

Oh, I found that if I discharge a large amount of electro-static to Mei-chan's case, the voltage leak noise stops until I turn her off after booting, but it's less annoying than the PSU power switch I think *shrugs*

I also cut the mouse from the VAIO in half to use the scroll wheel since the Marble Mouse doesn't have a scroll wheel and the scroll ring on the Wacom tablet is too far when I need a quick scroll. I just need to get used to it now.

I recently upgraded Melty from the AMD FX 8120 to the AMD FX 8320 and noticed the improvement that the other Newegg reviewers noticed that did the same upgrade. I'm also going to upgrade the keyboard for Melty as well from the Logitech Illuminated Keyboard to the G710+ mechanical gaming keyboard.

I technically don't need the extra gaming features on the G710+ (in fact, a mechanical keyboard would have worked just fine, but I'm a Logitech loyalist), but hey, I can't really complain about more macro buttons XP

Main reason why I'm replacing the keyboard is that it's getting annoying to use sometimes... I think I pressed pause/play when I didn't press it down enough... and sometimes if I want it to go to the next song, it'll ghost press it for me, so it skips a song -_-;; not to mention that sometimes when I hit say Shift+F5, it doesn't respond, so either I have to hit it again or I have to hold it down -_-;;

I'm sure the contact sheets just need a cleaning, but I don't want to turn it into a periodic maintenance when I can get a keyboard that I won't have to worry about for a long, long while.

Well, within a couple months I'll have my own internet, so hopefully that works out better than the internet my parents are using... and have my own computer network complete with NAS! I'm so stoked!

Well, I think I'm done for now - building computers that is. There won't be a need to replace/upgrade any of the compies for a long while... Well, the BD-RW drive upgrade maybe, but that's pretty minor. I don't use Triela all that much, so she works well as a laptop (sometimes I use Momiji Sae-chan, but that's a bit different).

Ziggy 1

So I decided to dig Ziggy out as a refresher that the CPU was dead and not the PSU...

After plugging him in and turning him on... Ziggy booted!

There was some sort of CMOS error that popped up, so I guess that's all it was... Something probably happened to the CMOS, which caused it to lock up on boot.

Good news is that Ziggy's not dead, bad news is that I dunno what to use Ziggy for now :/

openSUSE 12.2 Revival Part 5

I guess there was an update that fixed it, so the theme doesn't disappear. Yay!

openSUSE 12.2 Revival Part 4

The window theme goes away eventually... Oh well... I guess I'll just deal with it. (:/)

openSUSE 12.2 Revival Part 3

Found a bit of a fix... But it breaks again if I switch between them or possibly logout. luckily, the fix for that is to just reboot. (XP)

In other words, I don't touch it or log out, and I'll be fine. (XD)

If I care enough later, I'll find a real fix.

openSUSE 12.2 Revival Part 2

Installing 12.2 to a USB hard drive worked well, and I got it to not break (installed FGLRX), so I installed it over Sabayon on the main drive, and did the same, but the problem was still there; I had to switch between GNOME and IceWM.

Well, I got almost everything to work, though the window theme isn't working right, but maybe I can find another window theme that will?

I had to look at the X error logs and installed stuff that it said it couldn't find, which helped out most of it, but then it went back to the "something went wrong" screen, so I had to go back into IceWM to install more things and decided to install LXDE as well.

GNOME was still broken, so I decided to switch to LXDE, which was a bad idea, as I wasn't able to do anything - it was just a black screen and a cursor. So after some run-arounds... I popped in the LM11 disk to edit the display manager file to disable the auto login (it kept booting me into LXDE) so I can get to IceWM to read the log file...

After rebooting, I got to the login screen and the background was there! So instead of booting into IceWM, I booted into GNOME instead, and had no problems!

Well, minus the fact that the window part of the theme isn't working, but oh well. I'll have to see if I can fix that since it seems that it might be the CSS sheets in the theme that's causing it to not work (there's a whole slew of errors from the CSS sheets in the X session errors log).

Needless to say, I'm back with openSUSE completely.

Oh, setting up dual screen was funny. I had to set it up in Catalyst Control Center first, reboot, then set it up in the regular display setting in the control panel. Whatever works I guess XD

I think Melty has definitely earned her worth as a tsundere. (XP)

openSUSE 12.2 Revival Part 1, Sabayon 9 Revival, Mandriva, and Mageia 3

So after sticking the 12.2 disk in Mei-chan, I noticed there wasn't a problem at all with the background (meaning it's not the GPU causing the problem). So I swapped out the hard drive to test out GRUB2 (I installed LM10 before installing 12.2), and it worked like it was supposed to. Yay!

There's a GUI interface to configure GRUB2 with 12.2, which is really nice... Well, a bit expected seeing that it was in the same "place" as the GRUB1 configuration tool.

So I've forgone the installation for Triela, Mei-chan, and Lie-chan.

I've also tried Mandriva, which wasn't all that great... it was really slow compared to Mageia.

I reinstalled Mageia, and used the Cauldron repository to attempt to install Firefox 15, but it kept doing weird errors (saying I need such and such packages), and I somehow got it to install; I was attempting to install something else, but it did the same thing, so I said screw it and went back to Sabayon.

Well, I think I kept looking at other distributions before giving up and going back to Sabayon. Regardless, it's installed now.

I've tinkered with xorg.conf without much success, and at the moment, I've got the other monitor turned off by settings. I managed to obtain the xorg.conf file from Mei-chan before installing 12.2. I've tweaked it a bit, and tried it without avail. (:/)

Well, I do know now that the problem is not the GPU since Mei-chan and Melty have the same GPU... So it's either the AMD FX chip that's causing problems, or openSUSE isn't properly setting something.

What I'd like to try is a test install of 12.2 to see what video driver it's using with whatever is similar to eselect opengl list. The only problem is that I've already settled into Sabayon a bit, so the only other real option is to install it onto a USB hard drive, and hope it'll boot properly (if I remember right, last time I attempted it, it didn't work well).

If my suspicions are correct, openSUSE might be setting my video mode to the wrong driver, so it breaks as soon as it gets to the desktop. It's really the only plausible explanation, since I really don't think the FX chip has anything to do with it.

Well, at the very least, it's nice to know that I don't have to abandon openSUSE altogether. Hopefully I figure out a fix for Melty...

Oh, I tried Mageia 3 alpha 1, and it hung while booting (:/)

An Entry of My Recent Journey

After Mageia, I went back to Sabayon against my better judgement. Sabayon has come a long way since I originally downloaded it for an "out of the box" solution.

However, while attempting to get dual-screening to work, I killed the video driver, so it doesn't boot into Sabayon (GRUB2 is unaffected however). What I remember from the install slides for Sabayon was "extreme this, and extreme that", so in an attempt of (possibly) bad humour... Extreme breaking! (XD)

Anyway, as a suggestion from Rei (the owner/coder of ACDB) I downloaded PureOS. After booting the live CD, it notified me that my video card might be outdated and that it has reverted to classic GNOME.

There is no f*ing way that a AMD Radeon HD 6770 is outdated!


If I had an incinerator, that would be where the disk is headed.

Anyway, I've just downloaded a net-install version of Arch Linux (the full ISO itself is almost a full DVD), and may try it tomorrow.

But it is another interesting journey to find another distribution, since I don't feel like waiting for openSUSE 12.2 to fully mature or to wait for 12.3 to see if they fixed the problem.

Well, from DistroWatch's list, 12.2 is a tad bit behind the package versions.... Sure I could use Factory, but I'd like to stay decently stable, since I don't want things to come crashing down like Mageia did.

Perhaps I just need to find a filler and wait to see what Mageia becomes, or find a fix to make dual-screen work. I am unsure.

I do know that I would like to find something decently quick. I don't want to spend the entire month downloading, installing, testing, and tossing distributions left and right.

Mageia 2 Part 4

Well, after fiddling around with SCIM and other things... I got it to work in LibreOffice... Which I thought was good enough, since it's better to copy/paste than not have it at all.

But sometime after syncing my Firefox and attempting to install Adblock Plus, Firefox closed and segmentation faulted. (-_-;;)

Mageia 3 alpha 1 is out, so it should probably be a couple months or so before the final release.

I had a feeling I was a bit premature with Mageia, but at least I know Mageia is more than likely viable. I'm gonna wait for 3 and do what I did here and see what happens.

For now, I'm downloading Sabayon 9, since it's the next similar thing (kernel 3.x and GNOME 3.x) that I can easily find.

Mageia 2 Part 3

Got the dual-screen to work... I switched from the FGLRX HD 6200-6400 driver to the HD 6400+ driver (my card's an AMD Radeon HD 6770), which actually didn't do anything. After getting all the updates and restarting, FGLRX no longer worked (for whatever reason), so it switched to ati-radeon... Which allowed for my dual-scren to work. (:D)

My media keys control Rhythmbox like it used to in openSUSE 11.3, so that's also another plus. Though, for some reason, some of the songs get cut off early and it goes to the next one... not sure exactly sure what the problem might be, but it could become a problem... It seems to only be when I use the updater... (>_>)

CPU fan went back up... so something in 3.3.8 is causing it to kick it to 100%. luckily, after shutting my parent's bedroom door, it's inaudible from the pillows on the bed, so it's the least of my worries.

To edit fstab, I had to do it the copy/edit/overwrite way... I was unable to log into root or use gedit via su.

Well, it seems like the connection is being closed for certain songs... so it's erring out for whatever reason... if anything, I'll have to make a copy of my music somewhere and edit the XML preferences to reflect that.

I was forced to install GRUB 1, and I re-installed LM11 to get GRUB 2, but it just messed up Mageia... But! Windows is detected, and that's really all I was after... If I remember, there's a way to chain-load GRUB 1 and 2, I just don't remember the order... and I'm not sure how to do it.

I didn't find the scanner program, even though it's technically installed, and if it's like 12.2 RC1, I'm gonna have to use LM... And with the above problem, I'm probably gonna have to use it live (I'm pretty sure that SANE is usable on the live CD).

VLC was installable (after selecting the non-free repository), and it works just fine. Nothing really more to say there.

Oh! I realized that I haven't installed SCIM. I'll do that now XD

Hmm... having problems with SCIM.. I think I'll end it here for now

Mageia 2 Part 2

Well, from the live version, it seems to be pretty good... I think it's what openSUSE 12.x was supposed to be... before something went horribly wrong.

I couldn't get dual-monitors to work... but perhaps installing it might work... I'll have to hope for the best.

I got my window theme to work, so that's also another good thing. The background also isn't broken as well (:D)

I can't install things from the live CD, since the install/remove software is limited to what's on the CD itself... So I'm not exactly sure what packages are there, though I'm sure there will be support for what I want.

My CPU fan isn't going nuts for no reason (:D)

Everything feels snappy for a Live CD, which is something I'm not used to. Ah, okay, I just checked the system monitor, and there's about 630MB of ram used... so I'm guessing it dumped the Live CD to the RAM. Though it did this, I'm still expecting it to be relatively quick when installed.

Hmm... there's NTP support, though I'm probably going to have to configure it via command line :/

According to DistroWatch, it uses GRUB 1, but I might do a test install on a separate disk to see if it detects other OS's... (:/) Screw it, I'll stay with LM and GRUB2. (LOL)

There seems to be a file-sharing type thing (partition sharer I think it was called), so maybe it's like an FTP? If so, and it works well, then it will make sharing files easy again (instead of awkwardly doing it with Filezilla.

Terminal feels the same in terms of su. Sudo doesn't exist apparently, but at least it's not clunky like Fedora where I use su, then use sudo. (-_-;;)

I'm liking it so far, just gotta install and test it out (just gotta remember to backup the themes and Rhythmbox preferences beforehand XD).

Mageia 2 Part 1

So I was poking around DistroWatch out of boredom... and saw that in the past 6 months, Mageia had taken #2 spot in page hit rankings (dethroning everything except Linux Mint).

It's a fork of Mandriva, but I'm willing to try it, since I'm kinda upset with openSUSE 12.2.

Maybe it's time for me to move on again (:/) If Mageia works out well, I may say goodbye to openSUSE, since Radeon/FGLRX is no longer a problem with the 3.x kernel.

Well, I won't abandon the openSUSE 11.3 installations I currently have though, that's just stupid. (XD)

openSUSE 12.2

Well, it was finally released yesterday. I finally got around to downloading it today and burning it...

The "firefly" loading screen is refreshing and nice to look at. But the background is still screwed up... So it seems that I won't be installing it anytime soon... What I'm gonna have to do is to just stay with what I have now and upgrade certain packages manually... *sigh*

Another annoying thing I've noticed with the 3.x kernel is that the CPU fan is kicked up to max. :/

Well, there's really not much more to say.

openSUSE 12.2 RC1

Well, so far it seems like all the problems I had from B1 was carried over.

The background isn't blank though, it appears as a broken picture instead. I still didn't have luck with the dual displays either.

Well, looks like I'm stuck with M2 until the official release of 12.2.

openSUSE 12.2 Beta 1 Part 2

Well, I gave up on B1 and decided to revert to M2...

One thing I found was that M2 has the correct 12.2 repositories (ones that belong to 12.2) so I suppose I actually could just use M2.

As for GRUB2 testing... well, i'm gonna have to wait on that... or whenever I burn B1 again with K3b (with Melty)

AMD FX 3

Okay, so I stuck that new PSU with Lie-chan and no problems. So my assumption is that the rail for the extra 4 pins of the 8-pin CPU connector is faulty, since Lie-chan only needs the original 4 pins. So I think I'm just gonna save myself the trouble of contacting them and waiting for a replacement and sending that back.

Anyway, onto the main reason why I came to type (hopefully I can finish quickly). She finally has a name! Melty Do Granite from Shining Hearts. I went through about 17000 characters on ACDB, came up with 9 candidates, narrowed it down to 3 and did a 17-round elimination where Melty would generate a number between 1 and 99...

Well, I'll finish up later... In a thunderstorm and the internet went out...

2014 update: I actually forgot to finish this comment/post (v1/v2), and now it's way too late to remember what I was going to write.

openSUSE 12.2 Beta 1 Part 1

Well, so far my experience isn't very good. First the background isn't working, second I can't get the other monitor to extend the desktop, third everything in Yast is broken.

Now I know the ISO itself is good, but it also could have been a bad burn maybe... I dunno....

Well, if I'm up to it later I may turn Mei-chan on and burn it with K3B and not Brasero.

AMD FX 2

Well, got the case yesterday and transferred everything over except the PSU. I saw that the new PSU had a built in PCIe rail and decided to use that instead of the one that was in the old case that didn't have one. Got everything good to go and whatnot and then went to sleep then work.

So after I come home, I decided to install Linux Mint 13 (after burning it while in LM 11)... Which for some reason installed a broken GRUB2... So I had to reinstall LM11...

After that, decided to boot into Windows and right before the login screen, the computer shuts off. I tinkered a bit, tried again (doing this for several times; dragging the computer back and forth in the process) before finally coming to the conclusion it was the new PSU that was faulty.

Sometime during those attempts (I think toward the end), I pulled the PSU I was using out and noticed something was catching... Holy friggin' crap! There's the built in PCIe rail that I thought wasn't there. I must have hidden it so well from myself that I forgot about it... Then again, I didn't need it for Lie-chan since there was a molex connector on the motherboard for the PCIe slot.

Anyway, after swapping the PSUs (and just lazily reconnecting everything and not undoing some of my tinkering), I turned it on, got into Windows and started doing stuff... while expecting for something to happen. Luckily nothing so far (I'm typing this on the first boot XD).

I may return the fans (except the side fan and front fan) to the motherboard and see if that does anything (not to mention it makes it a bit neater.... sorta anyway).

One of the other hypotheses I had was that the 8-pin CPU plug extension cable I used to route it behind the mobo may have been the culprit... Nope, I was wrong, but I think I'll leave it as is. I really don't feel like messing with it any more for at least the first half of this month. I will also try that with the fans as well.

Well time to do a quick "stress test" to make sure everything's fine and dandy now... Hopefully I remember to write XClio an email sometime.

AMD FX 1

Well, I decided it was time to retire Lie-chan from the "wor-khorse" computer spot and "build" a new computer (Lie-chan's Phantasy Star Online 2 benchmark score was below 2000).

So I decided on building my scaled-down bulldozer (AMD FX) build from my Newegg list.... Unfortunately, when I got around to buying it, I had to make a couple revisions before I could buy it. The revision to the DVD burners is not worth mentioning, and so I'll be focusing on the GPU.

I wanted the Sapphire Radeon HD 6770 I had bought for Mei-chan, but Newegg discontinued that one, so I picked out another Sapphire 6770.... When I was going to buy it, Newegg also discontinued that as well, and so out of desperation, I just went with a HIS Radeon HD 6770.

Not to much longer after that, I found that the Sapphire Radeon HD 7750s would have also worked (though I would be concerned about only having one DVI out instead of the two I need... Seeing that neither of my monitors have HDMI or DP in), for a bit less power... After looking at some of the shroud designs, I didn't really like any of them... So I looked at the Sapphire Radeon HD 7770s and the only real problem is that the driver is too new.

So I am deciding on staying with the 6770 for now since it's working decently for me. I get a score within the 3000 range for full-graphic settings in PSO2 benchmark (with Firefox open on the other screen and MediaMonkey playing music in the background), and within the 7000 range for mid-graphics settings (Firefox and MediaMonkey also apply here as well). Can't complain with those scores.

Anyway, with the FX chip (or it's codename "Bulldozer"), it's the 8120 chip... I really don't think I need to go into detail about the CPU itself... It does load up faster than the Athlon 64 x2 (obviously), though Windows still provides an ample amount of unknown slowdown. In Linux Mint 11 (I think it's 11), it only uses 4 cores. I read that most programs in Linux (though I wouldn't also doubt the kernel as well) isn't written to use more than 4 cores. BUT LM11 does use the slightly older 2.x kernel and not the new 3.x kernel, so maybe that has been already addressed. I can pop in any 12.x openSUSE disk I have and see.

16GB of ram.... Which I highly doubt I'll even be using more than 20% of as a rough estimate

All in the slightly crappy "budget" full-tower case that Lie-chan was in (Lie-chan got moved to Mei-chan's old Raidmax case after swapping her CPU cooler from the ASUS Triton to the Zalman CNPS9700 btw)... which was a pretty cramped fit due to the 6770 card. Luckily, I did make it fit (mainly had to move one of the hard drives down) and cable managed decently. Also what was lucky (maybe not really "lucky") was that the Zalman CNPS9900 Max also fit just fine in the case, even with the fan that I mounted on the side panel (though I took it off to reduce airflow interference) which was surprising.

Sadly, the 9900 Max seemed easier to install than the 9700 (I did the 9900 Max first), especially since I installed the 9900 Max outside of the case (before I secured the motherboard to the case).

I had to take the motherboard out 3 times, which was quite annoying.

I haven't done the Windows score thingy yet and I really should. I know I'm going to get dinged on HD, but doesn't everyone? (Well, except those that can afford multiple large SSDs)

I'm planning on getting a Cooler Master HAF X pretty soon to give this build more room and cooling.... Though I'm partially concerned, since on the PSU calculator site I use, at full system load, it will use almost exactly 550 watts if I turn off the LED for the front fan, which is crazy (my PSU is 550w and I really don't want to bump it up any).

I have yet to name this build, and haven't looked at any possibilities either... I really should start doing that.

Phantasy Star Online 2 Character Creator

The Phantasy Star Online 2 Character Creator is fun to play with as amazing as it is. Unfortunately, I don't have a computer powerful enough to run it at full graphics. Oh well.

PSO2 comes out sometime in 2013 and I'm hoping it doesn't just stay in Japan. Otherwise I'd probably be kinda sad.

I was going to type more, but I guess I got lazy or something lol

The link if you want to download it and tinker with it for yourself. I do forewarn you that it's all in Japanese...

openSUSE 12.2 Milestone 2

The themes thing actually works... It's just that I need to find a GTK+ theme to mod, since the window itself and the contents are separated into two (window border and content). But it makes me happy that I am that much closer to upgrading into a version that hasn't reached end-of-life. ☹ Poor 11.3, I will love you as long as I can. (LOL)

Haven't been able to test the GRUB2 trick (need the DVD or net install disk... preferably the DVD, since I've never been successful with net installs)

Otherwise, the only other differences is all under the hood, so I can't really say a whole lot about them I'll have to do some further testing and see how it is, but not at the moment. I was mainly just curious about the theme thing more than anything.

openSUSE 12.2 News

Holy crap it's already at Milestone 2! I just happened to be going through my G+ Feeds and,bam, 12.2 Milestone 2 news right in my face! (Well, maybe after a bit of scrolling down, but I still wasn't expecting that)

So they finally integrated GRUB2 as the default bootloader (assuming you install from DVD) But in my case, I would need a test-bed hard drive to test it out on. I think I have one... I don't remember, it's been a long, long while since I've done anything (which is probably from all the way back of 12.1).

I am definitely interested in the release and may read more about it tomorrow. I'm hoping the themes get fixed, since I like (not lake; LOL, I'm a bit tired) dark themes (it's not as brutal on the eyes to stare at unlike the default theme). That's one of the reasons I haven't switched yet, despite 11.3 already reaching it's end of life this past January (the other is just migration issues such as getting fstab written up, aesthetics, and other miscellany in the settings and such).

I'll write more when I know more.

Lie-chan and Mei-chan Upgrades 3

I actually found the source of the voltage leak noise. It was actually the PSU all along. But since the PSU is at the bottom of the case, I can't hear it from the bed like I used to (not to mention the room has to be below 20C anyway.

I looked at a modular PSU and since the 24 pin and the +24 are in roughly the same location as the where it is now, I decided to scrap that idea.

So the upgrade stands as the SATA optical drives (either BD or DVD), and a new card reader since the current one is almost 10 years old and can't read SDHC/XC cards. Even though I'm not really worried about it (and openSUSE doesn't support exFAT format anyway), the black bezel would look nicer with the black colour of the case (verses the cream colour of the current card reader bezel). I used to have a black bezel for my current card reader but I have no idea what happened to it, since it was 9 years ago when I got it and built Ziggy. Oh well.

Hard drive noises

Well, Shizuma's HDD started giving some weird noise (it did it twice, so it's not a fluke), so I decided to keep her powered off most of the time now since I don't exactly have the money to buy another and clone it.

My only problem with having her shut off is that I lose my FTP, since OS X 10.6.8 has a easy, built-in FTP server. I can set up an FTP server within openSUSE 11.3 (and I've done it before), but it's just so awkward, and when I had to reinstall on Triela, for some reason, the FTP was very finicky.

I was "forced" to setup Firefox Sync (though I really didn't want to use it) to ease the discomfort of not being able to use Firefox on Shizuma. I kept the sync tabs option unchecked though... I don't want to have to deal with the tab groups opening and closing when I don't really need them.

It would be nice if Firefox Sync also took care of installed addons, but oh well..
Well, I hope I can muster up some money soon and get a new HDD for Shizuma and get that process rolling... Maybe I should check the option to power down the HDD when possible (whatever OS X calls it, if it has it...).

Lie-chan and Mei-chan Upgrades 2

Oh, couple things I forgot, first is the Wifi card and the second is that voltage leak noise.

When I was going to play music and get updates while I do other stuff, I noticed it couldn't access the repositories, and that's when I noticed there was no Wifi. I rebooted with no avail, and tried moving it to the PCIe slot above the graphics card which disabled my graphics... I moved it back and no Wifi, I tried a regular PCI Wifi card and it also disabled my graphics, so I just did a hard wire connection and found some updates, after installing them the Wifi worked. Weird. I want to say it might have been a power issue, but I don't at the same time... The only difference in power is the case fans, since the Raidmax case just had the 80mm and 120mm LED fan, and the CM has the two 140mm and the one 120. Whatever though.

I've left the PSU on and haven't noticed the voltage leak noise, I usually notice it when it is below 20C in the room, but I haven't noticed anything so far. I might have heard it when I woke up in the night, but I could have imagined things, hard to say.

Well, I'm much happier with the new CM case.

Lie-chan and Mei-chan Upgrages 1

Time finally worked it's way around to tax season, and I finally was able to get a 550W power supply for Lie-chan, and a new case for Mei Ren.

The PSU didn't take too long, maybe about 30 minutes. Luckily both the old 750W and the 550W were both modular, and they really mean it when they say modular; I didn't even have to use the cables provided with the 550W, all the cables from the 750W all plugged into the 550W! Now that's modular! That was a nice surprise.

It took me four hours (not including the hour that I had to run and get fans) to get Mei Ren all transferred over. I had both cases open and stripped down in the room to work on it. The new case is a Cooler Master Elite 335U by the way.

Not too many problems occurred, though I did have quite a few hiccups... The metal used for the CM case is stronger than the Raidmax Thunder case, in most areas anyway; overall, it still is sturdier than the Raidmax case.

Seeing how all the PCI and 5.25" bays had the twist/bend off type covers, I took all the 5.25" covers off and a couple of the PCI ones (at first). After transferring the motherboard, I realized I didn't have space to break any of the other PCI ones off, so I put it back in the old case, and took the rest of the PCI covers off. At this time, I realized I had a couple special motherboard stand-offs that held the motherboard in place (so you don't have to worry about aligning the holes), so I rearranged the motherboard stand-off pattern a bit (I originally just screwed them all in lol). After that, transferred the DVD burners and the HDDs over and then left for the local computer store (well, if a 30 minute drive counts as local). I realized that the front and side panels had mounts for 140mm fans, and all I had was the 120 from the Raidmax, thus why I decided to run to the computer store. I made it 5 minutes before it closed (whew), but they were quite low on fans (I luckily snagged some NZXT fans for 14 a piece (there was a couple more fans that I found before I left the section, and they were a dollar more for less CFMs... Yeah, no.). I still have some space between the heatsink (Zalman 9700... I think it's the 9700...) and the upper side fan, but if I want to put a fan there, I'm gonna need a slim fan.... I'll probably just leave it open.

After I got back, I put the front fan in, and to my displeasure, the mounting holes did not line up perfectly... Luckily, the holes were just big enough to where I was still able to mount it. I then ran all the front panel wiring (which wasn't attached to the front panel and was very pleasant) and cable managed them, then I mounted the PSU and started working with those wires... I did the IDE and SATA cables before that though.

Since the PSU isn't modular, cable management and running was very awkward and a bit strange. I did get it decent enough to allow maximum airflow. Anyway sometime after this I thought I was finished... I kept remembering that I didn't disconnect the USB cable for the card reader from when unplugged everything in the old case, and I also remembered that I never really saw the lights for the card reader light up either... I looked and looked for the cable after I got all the PSU cables connected... Then finally, I decided to look a pile of cables and miscellany in the same room, and first found the cable for the card reader that connects the Firewire port to the motherboard (at this point I was relatively ecstatic, seeing that I was that much closer to finding it), and then after a bit more digging, I found the clear cable with shielding I was looking for. Success! I connected it and kinda cable managed it a bit (I didn't want to fuss any more with it since I already spent quite a bit of time doing it and I was quite tired), then put it together and turned it on. I didn't screw anything up which was good. I disconnected it and was about to move it when I remembered that I forgot to check the HDD and power LEDs... So I reconnected it and looked at it. No lights, so I flipped all the plugs and put it back together and moved it back to the room it goes into and reconnected everything. I turned it on just to look at the lights and they look nice (I just got to GRUB and shut it down from there).

So the next couple upgrades for Mei Ren is a couple of SATA DVD burners (or BD whichever comes first), and maybe a modular PSU.

Slept like a rock after I was done. (LOL)