Fettled any computer stuff today?

[Kim]

Put a dodgy graphics card from the spare parts box into my computer, which was in advanced stages of denial over its VGA capabilities when I got home earlier.  I've not seen one fail like that before.  (Putting up a very basic POST screen, a low-resolution GRUB screen with a message that it was going to boot blindly, and then a static screen with nonsense characters.  The Linux system was working fine, but claimed not to have a display adaptor.  Any attempt to enter the BIOS settings screen caused the machine to lock up, presumably because it involved graphics.)

Naturally I assumed that I was going to be in for some sort of update-related UEFI^[1] BIOS nightmare, so the "your graphics card is fucked" blinkenlight^[2] came as something of a relief.


_{[1] Football is the natural opposite of computers, and nothing good can come of mixing them.
[2] Yay for over-specced g4m3r d00d motherboards.  It's got ones for CPU and RAM, too.}

[Phil W]

Rooted my phone and went from Android 4 to Android 7. All done so I could install the latest Polar Beat App so I could upgrade the firmware on my Polar H10 HR to support Ant+ as well as Bluetooth 4.0. All working great with HR strap talking to three devices at once (as a test)

[Kim]

Fettled the wiring to the bedroom telephone to liberate all four pairs for PoE porpoises, and replaced the analogue BT rubbishphone with a Snom300 with Sarabec handset amplifier^[1].  Then spent a substantial amount of time renumbering extensions and tidying up / de-crufting the Asterisk configuration.  (Fax, what's that?)


_{[1] This seems to be the closest approximation to a SIP version of a Geemarc Screenphone^[2] that I can find.  Everyone just seems to use amplified phones with ATAs, and ATAs are a work of Stan.  Doro used to do a SIP phone with big buttons and amplification for use in nursing homes, but that's obviously been discontinued on account of it being useful.
[2] Barakta's preferred phone for audio^[3] reasons, the text mode is pants.  They're also discontinued and not particularly reliable, so we need a plan for when it eventually dies.
[3] She'll what her way through audio phone calls with her mother, me in emergencies, and a couple of close friends who are too blind/dyslexic to do text-based communication.  The Screenphone goes to 11 and has a decent tone control.}

[CommuteTooFar]

I added a blue tooth dongle to my desktop.  I want to connect a Fitbit to it. No success yet.

[T42]

After its 6th unsuccessful attempt to boot Ubuntu, hauled MrsT's machine over to the workshop and blasted enough dust out of it to supply the Okie FX for Interstellar.  Very glad I did it in the doorway with a fan behind me blowing out, and wore a complete face-mask.

Machine booted up like a wee angel afterwards.

I reckon that if folk invested £80 in an electric air compressor when they bought a computer and used it every 6 months, new-computer sales would drop like a stone.

Neighbours are still coughing.

[Polar Bear]

After its 6th unsuccessful attempt to boot Ubuntu, hauled MrsT's machine over to the workshop and blasted enough dust out of it to supply the Okie FX for Interstellar.  Very glad I did it in the doorway with a fan behind me blowing out, and wore a complete face-mask.

Machine booted up like a wee angel afterwards.

I reckon that if folk invested £80 in an electric air compressor when they bought a computer and used it every 6 months, new-computer sales would drop like a stone.

Neighbours are still coughing.

Some pros use a leaf blower.

[T42]

Yebbut you can't do your car tyres with a leaf blower.

[ian]

I put a new battery in the ancient Macbook Air (there was very little dust inside it, but the fan in a Macbook only spins when you dare it to use Flash).

It didn't work. Well, the battery does, the charger less so.

After some Googling the internet suggests, and I feel this must be some sort of joke, warming up the charger to body temperature. By sitting on it.

So at the moment, I'm incubating one Macbook charger, like a rather peculiar chicken.

[Kim]

Do let us know if it hatches...

[Ham]

If, instead of blowing dust from the data connectivity path in your computer, you use a vacuum cleaner, does that make you a succubus?

OK, ok, I know I need to get out more. With my coat.

[ian]

Do let us know if it hatches...

It didn't, but perhaps I didn't sit on it long enough. The internet wasn't very prescriptive on the incubation time.

A bit narked, as the new battery seems fine, the system management recognizes it and it supplies juice (and the old battery was giving health warnings for a good several months until it hit zero and didn't wake up again). The charger looks fine, the cable intact (and of course, my Macbook Pro users the later iteration of Magsafe connector). Of course, if I buy another charger, it'll be the connector, or the logic board etc. Le sigh.

[Jaded]

Reset the PMC?

[ian]

I did try a reset, but I need to poke and prod it some more this evening. I may use some heavy duty expletives. I do have a multimeter somewhere so should be able to confirm there's actual electricity coming out the damn charger and that the pins aren't wodged.

[Kim]

My money would usually be on one of those expensive problems that's diagnosed using a Dremel and an ESR meter.  But since I rate the Mega-Global Fruit Corporation of Cupertino, USAnia's ability to specify decent power supply capacitors as well above average, it's probably the weedy DC cable dying from excessive flexing (and optionally taking out a fuse) instead.

Or the pins are wodged.

[Feanor]

Can't you just plug another known-good charger in and see if that one works?

[ian]

Alas my other charger is a terminally incompatible Magsafe 2. Didn’t have time to poke as I remembered I needed to be on an aeroplane today.

[Pingu]

Just started an upgrade from Ubuntu 14.04 to 16.04. There may be BAD SWEARS^TM later.

[Jaded]

Just migrating my hosting account to a new server. The difficulty is know what settings each user has, and that some settings only work with the old server...

[Pingu]

Just started an upgrade from Ubuntu 14.04 to 16.04. There may be BAD SWEARS^TM later.

Ruddy Nora, that seems to have JUST WORKED  At least, the Squeezbox server is still working 

[Feanor]

That's because you kicked off the process early enough in the day.
Never attempt these things in the evening, if you want to go to bed.

[Kim]

Fettled timings for today's BHPC racing without adult supervision.  I appear not to have cocked it up.

[Pingu]

That's because you kicked off the process early enough in the day.
Never attempt these things in the evening, if you want to go to bed.

Yeah, I learnt that after 8.04 

[Mr Larrington]

Fettled timings for today's BHPC racing without adult supervision.  I appear not to have cocked it up.

You’re not Barney Harle.  Barney's got a beard.

[Kim]

Fettled timings for today's BHPC racing without adult supervision.  I appear not to have cocked it up.

You’re not Barney Harle.  Barney's got a beard.

I'm the timelord, not the bearded sadist organiser.  These things are important, vis attribution of blame:  If the timing system's decided to infer that Slash has done two laps at supersonic speed rather than a leisurely stop halfway round to put his chain back on, that's my fault.  If there's a pile-up because someone thought it was a good idea to do a mass start trolley-dash downhill into a mossy corner, that's his...

[CommuteTooFar]

I fitted an Adata SU800 SSD into a Startech USB 3 to sata hard drive enclosure.

I plugged it in expecting it to be recognised as a drive. It was not.

Eventually I looked at the drive from device manager where I was able to initialise the drive.

Now I could format it and it is ready for its purpose.

Not very friendly for a typical user.

I intend to use this as a backup device. My original plan was to use free cloud storage for my backed up data. I noticed that the free allowance is capped at 5GB enough for family photos but nowhere near enough for music or video.  In my case my small music collection takes up just over 25GB.  960GB on the SSD should keep me happy for a long time.