07 August 2014
VAIO 2
I tried to use it to pull off the things from the Performa 550's floppy disks, but it didn't work very well. I also found that for whatever reason, I was unable to write to the floppy disks that were formatted in whatever MS-DOS format, even making sure the write-lock switch was in the unlock position. I may have to install Windows XP on it to get more functionality from the floppy drive whenever it comes time to pair it with the Yamaha keyboard.
Ziggy 4
Sometime ago, I pulled Ziggy out to make a fan duct out of cardboard to direct the airflow from the GPU heat-sink into the exhaust blower fan two spaces under it. While I really wanted to have the blower fan directly underneath the video card, the 6-pin video card power was put toward the front of the card and coming perpendicularly off of the board which makes the space just small enough to where the fan doesn't fit.
When I booted Ziggy, I had the problem where the screen was black and wouldn't POST. Eventually it posted and so I thought it was just some sort of static discharge when I was dragging Ziggy across the carpet to get him out of the corner enough to pick up.
I was in my other room last night and saw an old MacBook Pro remote and decided to open the battery compartment to see what it used out of curiosity, and I was pretty ecstatic when I saw the "CR2032" size printed on the battery. I set it aside since I didn't feel like dragging Ziggy across the house to check the voltage on his battery, but I did check the battery I pulled, which read 3.1 volts.
I opened Ziggy up not too long ago and pulled the battery for a reading, which at first I had trouble getting, but it was definitely dead. I plopped the new battery in and set the BIOS settings back to how I remembered them being before booting into openSUSE to shut down. After putting Ziggy away, I did another reading of the old battery, which gave me a value of .075 volts. I've never seen a battery that dead, but I'm assuming it's what the problem was back when I thought Ziggy's CPU was dead; I never thought back then to check the battery, but at least now I know to make it part of non-POST diagnostics.
Sadly, no ideas on a use for Ziggy yet. Well, I need more Wifi cards before I figure a use for him, as I need two more - one for the VAIO and one for the Dell (which is using the one Ziggy will eventually have).
When I booted Ziggy, I had the problem where the screen was black and wouldn't POST. Eventually it posted and so I thought it was just some sort of static discharge when I was dragging Ziggy across the carpet to get him out of the corner enough to pick up.
I was in my other room last night and saw an old MacBook Pro remote and decided to open the battery compartment to see what it used out of curiosity, and I was pretty ecstatic when I saw the "CR2032" size printed on the battery. I set it aside since I didn't feel like dragging Ziggy across the house to check the voltage on his battery, but I did check the battery I pulled, which read 3.1 volts.
I opened Ziggy up not too long ago and pulled the battery for a reading, which at first I had trouble getting, but it was definitely dead. I plopped the new battery in and set the BIOS settings back to how I remembered them being before booting into openSUSE to shut down. After putting Ziggy away, I did another reading of the old battery, which gave me a value of .075 volts. I've never seen a battery that dead, but I'm assuming it's what the problem was back when I thought Ziggy's CPU was dead; I never thought back then to check the battery, but at least now I know to make it part of non-POST diagnostics.
Sadly, no ideas on a use for Ziggy yet. Well, I need more Wifi cards before I figure a use for him, as I need two more - one for the VAIO and one for the Dell (which is using the one Ziggy will eventually have).
01 July 2014
Sony DVD-RW
One of the optical drives that was removed from the VAIO. It isn't compatible with +RW media -- if I remember correctly -- which is weird since my understanding of Sony is future-proofing (i.e. PlayStation 2), so maybe it was made by a 3rd party under Sony, I don't know.
I don't remember anything about this drive between when I received the VAIO from my parents and yesterday, so I'll just leave it out.
Yesterday, I tried to use it to boot from disk to install openSUSE 13.1 from DVD, but it wouldn't read it. I've tried it in the Dell with same results, though I found that the Parted Magic CD worked just fine. I opened it up and saw nothing wrong (not that it would've solved anything anyway), and at least saw why the thing is heavy -- the inside frame is metal!
Not too long ago, I ran some more tests with it in the Dell and found that it won't read DVDs at all, bootable or not, +R or -R. What I'm thinking is that the laser diode is probably slowly dying (or maybe the lens-focusing mechanism, but I highly doubt that) as I remember the external CD-RW drive I used to have did something similar before it died (it wouldn't burn reliably, then would only read, then stopped reading). So right now, it's only able to read CDs, which is unfortunate since some live distros are barely over 700MB if not about 900MB. While it might be able to burn CDs, but it'd be a bit pointless to.
I don't remember anything about this drive between when I received the VAIO from my parents and yesterday, so I'll just leave it out.
Yesterday, I tried to use it to boot from disk to install openSUSE 13.1 from DVD, but it wouldn't read it. I've tried it in the Dell with same results, though I found that the Parted Magic CD worked just fine. I opened it up and saw nothing wrong (not that it would've solved anything anyway), and at least saw why the thing is heavy -- the inside frame is metal!
Not too long ago, I ran some more tests with it in the Dell and found that it won't read DVDs at all, bootable or not, +R or -R. What I'm thinking is that the laser diode is probably slowly dying (or maybe the lens-focusing mechanism, but I highly doubt that) as I remember the external CD-RW drive I used to have did something similar before it died (it wouldn't burn reliably, then would only read, then stopped reading). So right now, it's only able to read CDs, which is unfortunate since some live distros are barely over 700MB if not about 900MB. While it might be able to burn CDs, but it'd be a bit pointless to.
30 June 2014
VAIO 1
I think it was before Ziggy's plastic 478 heatsink/fan bracket broke when I put the old full-copper Thermaltake heatsink Ziggy used to use into the VAIO to make the cooling a bit better (least I think it's better). The mobo gave me trouble though because the fan was spinning under 1000 RPM and the mobo kept giving me the "Plug in CPU fan" error even though it was plugged in. What I did to solve that was to modify the fan from the stock heatsink (of the VAIO) to stand at an angle and use an extension cord to plug it into the CPU fan jack; the stock fan blows on the Radeon 9550 SE card (fanless, and used to be Ziggy's original card), so it works out. I connected the Thermaltake fan to the remaining fan controller (the Zalman 9700s are the only ones with them) so I could tweak the fan speed better so it's not as noisy, but also efficient at cooling.
I removed the DVD-RW (it's not compatible with +RW), DVD-ROM, and floppy drives as they were kinda useless (especially the DVD-ROM and floppy), and it sat for a long while.
When I wanted to test out 32-bit openSUSE 13.1, I decided to use the VAIO as a testbed, but for some reason, the installation hung on bootloader installation, forcing me to pull the plug. Ziggy turned out just fine, so I figured it's probably the crappy proc or something (it's a 3.2Ghz Pentium 4, but has a smaller cache and slower bus speed than Ziggy's P4, which is a bit funny because Ziggy's P4 is only 2.8Ghz).
A couple days ago, I decided to get the installation DVD image of 32-bit 13.1 to see if it would make any different (and to just possess), and finished downloading it yesterday.
When I tried installing this morning, the hardware probing hung on the Linux partition search, and when I tried using Gparted in Parted Magic, it also hung. I opened up a SMART utility and saw some unknown drive, which I thought to be the front-panel card reader, so I unplugged it and rebooted back into PMagic with the same results. At a closer look, I noticed the "fd0" designation and realized it was actually the floppy drive I took out, so I painstakingly put it back in (after checking that it was impossible to disable the floppy), then rebooted into PMagic again. This time, I was able to get into Gparted just fine, so I reboot into the installation DVD of 32-bit 13.1, and the probe didn't hang at all. When it was installing the bootloader, I was watching closely, since I was worried that it might hang again, but it didn't. After finishing the installation, 13.1 seemed to work just fine, so I shut it down and put the DVD+RW drive back into the Dell before cleaning up the VAIO to put away.
While I was thinking to use it in place of Sae-chan for writing, I'm thinking it would be a better idea to pair it with the Yamaha keyboard, as the keyboard has a floppy drive. The only thing is that the keyboard use is very seldom as well. Now that I think about it, I can also use it to pull things off of the floppies I was using for the ancient Performa 550, but we'll see what happens.
I removed the DVD-RW (it's not compatible with +RW), DVD-ROM, and floppy drives as they were kinda useless (especially the DVD-ROM and floppy), and it sat for a long while.
When I wanted to test out 32-bit openSUSE 13.1, I decided to use the VAIO as a testbed, but for some reason, the installation hung on bootloader installation, forcing me to pull the plug. Ziggy turned out just fine, so I figured it's probably the crappy proc or something (it's a 3.2Ghz Pentium 4, but has a smaller cache and slower bus speed than Ziggy's P4, which is a bit funny because Ziggy's P4 is only 2.8Ghz).
A couple days ago, I decided to get the installation DVD image of 32-bit 13.1 to see if it would make any different (and to just possess), and finished downloading it yesterday.
When I tried installing this morning, the hardware probing hung on the Linux partition search, and when I tried using Gparted in Parted Magic, it also hung. I opened up a SMART utility and saw some unknown drive, which I thought to be the front-panel card reader, so I unplugged it and rebooted back into PMagic with the same results. At a closer look, I noticed the "fd0" designation and realized it was actually the floppy drive I took out, so I painstakingly put it back in (after checking that it was impossible to disable the floppy), then rebooted into PMagic again. This time, I was able to get into Gparted just fine, so I reboot into the installation DVD of 32-bit 13.1, and the probe didn't hang at all. When it was installing the bootloader, I was watching closely, since I was worried that it might hang again, but it didn't. After finishing the installation, 13.1 seemed to work just fine, so I shut it down and put the DVD+RW drive back into the Dell before cleaning up the VAIO to put away.
While I was thinking to use it in place of Sae-chan for writing, I'm thinking it would be a better idea to pair it with the Yamaha keyboard, as the keyboard has a floppy drive. The only thing is that the keyboard use is very seldom as well. Now that I think about it, I can also use it to pull things off of the floppies I was using for the ancient Performa 550, but we'll see what happens.
Dell 1
Besides putting up with it for quite some time now as a test-bed, I feel at a loss trying to fill its history even though it doesn't really have much. It doesn't have a name right now, and I usually refer to it as "the Dell".
A couple days ago, my best friend received some old video cards (nVidia 9960 GT and Radeon X1950 GT) and at first I kinda poked at it a bit before letting him put it away. After a couple hours I realised I could use the X1950 GT for the Dell, seeing the video card that was in the Dell was really basic (Radeon X300 SE; I'll elaborate on this a bit more later) and needed some sort of upgrade. He asked about the old X1650 I had, and reminded him that it went into my parents' computer (Intel build). After taking it home (at about midnight), it was hard for me to sleep because I wanted to tinker so badly, but eventually I got 4 hours of sleep and had to get moving.
I took the Dell's original video card out and plugged in the X1950 and calculated the wattage before continuing, to make sure the PSU wasn't going to be underpowered. I had to choose a slightly random processor since I couldn't remember what was in there, but it worked just fine anyway.
To my surprise, the long delay between when I pressed the power button to when it actually booted was a lot shorter than I was accustomed to. With the X300, I had to wait at least a couple minutes (I thought the PSU was on its way out and had to charge the capacitors or something) and this became commonplace, so I just dealt with it.
But after that, everything seemed to be faster... Maybe it was just an illusion, but at the least the Dell became that much more reliable.
While I was trying to get to sleep after getting the card from my friend, I poked around on the net to see if the socket 775 processor that my friend had was going to be compatible, and after testing out the X1950, I double-checked my results, as browsing the net on a phone can get kinda awkward and/or frustrating. I'm not able to as the processor that he has is a Core 2 Duo and the Dell can't handle anything more than a Pentium D.
This kinda leads back to when I was going to upgrade the Dell to give to my parents. Back then, I only found that it wasn't compatible as the BIOS was locked to certain processors. When I did my research yesterday (which feels hard for me to believe), I learned that it was because one of the pins for the socket doesn't output enough power for the socket 775 series Core 2 processors.
Eventually, I decided that I wanted to upgrade the Dell a bit to serve as a better test-bed and maybe find a use for it. I researched what the possible processor upgrades are, and I found the Pentium D 960 to be the highest, but with the power supply calculator's results, I'm better off sticking with the Pentium D 945, which I found surprisingly cheap on Amazon (after skimming the reviews, it's a refurbished processor).
The only thing was that I'd have to upgrade the BIOS for it to allow the processor to work, and luckily, I found the highest revision on Dell's support site. The only problem was that windows wasn't installed, there wasn't a floppy drive, and that I didn't have a working external floppy drive to use. After a tad bit of searching, I found Rufus which was a USB-bootable DOS that I can use to run the BIOS update program (.exe). While the update process was in progress I was a bit edgy the entire time as sometimes BIOS updates fail and/or kill the chip, but everything turned out fine.
But now as I think about it, I'm not entirely sure if it's necessary to upgrade the processor. I'm sure as I use the Dell for more testing I'll find the answer.
While I was making sure the new video card was okay to use, I looked up the part number to the X300, as I couldn't remember what it was when I did it a long while back, and the results looked familiar. When I originally got the Dell, the video card seemed to be fine, but over time, I had the problem of it causing a long boot time. If that wasn't bad enough, at some point while I was testing, the screen locked up and the on-board speaker started screeching. I don't remember how I narrowed it down to the X300, but eventually I put an exhaust slot fan above the X300 (Dell's motherboards are backwards, so the heat-sink is on top of the video card instead of the bottom) to pull the air off of the dinky little heat-sink and immediately blowing it out. While the intake to the slot fan only covered half the heat-sink, it seemed to have worked well enough.
I may upgrade the ram from 2gb to four, but again, I'm unsure if I really need to.
A couple days ago, my best friend received some old video cards (nVidia 9960 GT and Radeon X1950 GT) and at first I kinda poked at it a bit before letting him put it away. After a couple hours I realised I could use the X1950 GT for the Dell, seeing the video card that was in the Dell was really basic (Radeon X300 SE; I'll elaborate on this a bit more later) and needed some sort of upgrade. He asked about the old X1650 I had, and reminded him that it went into my parents' computer (Intel build). After taking it home (at about midnight), it was hard for me to sleep because I wanted to tinker so badly, but eventually I got 4 hours of sleep and had to get moving.
I took the Dell's original video card out and plugged in the X1950 and calculated the wattage before continuing, to make sure the PSU wasn't going to be underpowered. I had to choose a slightly random processor since I couldn't remember what was in there, but it worked just fine anyway.
To my surprise, the long delay between when I pressed the power button to when it actually booted was a lot shorter than I was accustomed to. With the X300, I had to wait at least a couple minutes (I thought the PSU was on its way out and had to charge the capacitors or something) and this became commonplace, so I just dealt with it.
But after that, everything seemed to be faster... Maybe it was just an illusion, but at the least the Dell became that much more reliable.
While I was trying to get to sleep after getting the card from my friend, I poked around on the net to see if the socket 775 processor that my friend had was going to be compatible, and after testing out the X1950, I double-checked my results, as browsing the net on a phone can get kinda awkward and/or frustrating. I'm not able to as the processor that he has is a Core 2 Duo and the Dell can't handle anything more than a Pentium D.
This kinda leads back to when I was going to upgrade the Dell to give to my parents. Back then, I only found that it wasn't compatible as the BIOS was locked to certain processors. When I did my research yesterday (which feels hard for me to believe), I learned that it was because one of the pins for the socket doesn't output enough power for the socket 775 series Core 2 processors.
Eventually, I decided that I wanted to upgrade the Dell a bit to serve as a better test-bed and maybe find a use for it. I researched what the possible processor upgrades are, and I found the Pentium D 960 to be the highest, but with the power supply calculator's results, I'm better off sticking with the Pentium D 945, which I found surprisingly cheap on Amazon (after skimming the reviews, it's a refurbished processor).
The only thing was that I'd have to upgrade the BIOS for it to allow the processor to work, and luckily, I found the highest revision on Dell's support site. The only problem was that windows wasn't installed, there wasn't a floppy drive, and that I didn't have a working external floppy drive to use. After a tad bit of searching, I found Rufus which was a USB-bootable DOS that I can use to run the BIOS update program (.exe). While the update process was in progress I was a bit edgy the entire time as sometimes BIOS updates fail and/or kill the chip, but everything turned out fine.
But now as I think about it, I'm not entirely sure if it's necessary to upgrade the processor. I'm sure as I use the Dell for more testing I'll find the answer.
While I was making sure the new video card was okay to use, I looked up the part number to the X300, as I couldn't remember what it was when I did it a long while back, and the results looked familiar. When I originally got the Dell, the video card seemed to be fine, but over time, I had the problem of it causing a long boot time. If that wasn't bad enough, at some point while I was testing, the screen locked up and the on-board speaker started screeching. I don't remember how I narrowed it down to the X300, but eventually I put an exhaust slot fan above the X300 (Dell's motherboards are backwards, so the heat-sink is on top of the video card instead of the bottom) to pull the air off of the dinky little heat-sink and immediately blowing it out. While the intake to the slot fan only covered half the heat-sink, it seemed to have worked well enough.
I may upgrade the ram from 2gb to four, but again, I'm unsure if I really need to.
Mei-chan 6
Actually I found that I did write about the case swap, which was hidden in the first round of upgrades, but nothing new if you know me in real life, as I have a slight tendency to repeat myself (though I'll ask first if I feel funny about it).
Well, now that I read the beginning, I didn't really go into too much depth during the "Updates" post, so I guess it's okay.
Also, I permanently solved the voltage leak noise problem. The USB ports are always on even if the computer's off, so that might have caused it (PSU might not have been designed for it maybe?). What I did was plug my old Nexus 1 phone into the rear USB port to stay powered and also ran an extension cord to charge my Galaxy Nexus. That's it, nothing else. [Awkward silence]
Well, now that I read the beginning, I didn't really go into too much depth during the "Updates" post, so I guess it's okay.
Also, I permanently solved the voltage leak noise problem. The USB ports are always on even if the computer's off, so that might have caused it (PSU might not have been designed for it maybe?). What I did was plug my old Nexus 1 phone into the rear USB port to stay powered and also ran an extension cord to charge my Galaxy Nexus. That's it, nothing else. [Awkward silence]
Sae-chan 2
I got around a couple weeks or so ago to take better shots of Sae-chan's light mod. Yes the shell looks yellow, but it's probably from the reflection of the sandy colour of the wall paint (you can see that the mouse is just fine) and the colours actually look correct now.
Also, I ended up finding a use for her, which is for typing as the most updated LibreOffice for her works quite flawlessly (the save time's a bit slower than I'm used to, but it doesn't bother me that much).
Light off and light on.
Also, I ended up finding a use for her, which is for typing as the most updated LibreOffice for her works quite flawlessly (the save time's a bit slower than I'm used to, but it doesn't bother me that much).
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