Author Topic: A random thread for small computing things that don't really warrant a thread of their own (Read 298994 times)

Kim · « **Reply #1300 on:** 14 August, 2019, 12:05:28 pm »

Quote from: Mr Larrington on 14 August, 2019, 12:00:17 pm

With Kim having solved the mystery, the observation that my laptop, when hibernating, emits a series of barely-audible high-pitched"eeeeee" noises is offered solely as anecdata. It should't be making any noise while it's asleep. If I unplug the power cable the noise stops

Probably a whistling (ie. physically vibrating) inductor in a switching power regulator when the power consumption is just so for causing it to resonate. Tediously common in switching power supplies of all types, and makes up for the demise of CRT monitors with flyback transformers.

The best solution appears to be age-related sensorineural hearing loss.

Mr Larrington · « **Reply #1301 on:** 14 August, 2019, 12:44:26 pm »

Even forty years of listening to Motörhead has not filtered this out, though it's on the very edge of audibility. In another decade it'll probably have gone out of range, but then so will the laptop in question.

TheLurker · « **Reply #1302 on:** 14 August, 2019, 07:05:24 pm »

Quote from: Kim

Quote from: Mr Larrington
With Kim having solved the mystery, the observation that my laptop, when hibernating, emits a series of barely-audible high-pitched"eeeeee" noises is offered solely as anecdata. {snip}

Probably a whistling (ie. physically vibrating) inductor in a switching power regulator when the power consumption is just so for causing it to resonate. {snip}

And there was me thinking it was a mouse hopping from foot to foot (feet to feet?) cos it was standing on a hot resistor.

Kim · « **Reply #1303 on:** 14 August, 2019, 07:08:01 pm »

Quote from: TheLurker on 14 August, 2019, 07:05:24 pm

Quote from: Kim
Quote from: Mr Larrington
With Kim having solved the mystery, the observation that my laptop, when hibernating, emits a series of barely-audible high-pitched"eeeeee" noises is offered solely as anecdata. {snip}

Probably a whistling (ie. physically vibrating) inductor in a switching power regulator when the power consumption is just so for causing it to resonate. {snip}
And there was me thinking it was a mouse hopping from foot to foot (feet to feet?) cos it was standing on a hot resistor.

I used to have a computer mouse (early optical era) that would do just that when exposed to direct sunlight. The pointer would act drunk until it cooled down a bit.

T42 · « **Reply #1304 on:** 15 August, 2019, 10:42:42 am »

Anent resonance, my PC power-supply has started going zzzzeeezzzzezeezeeezzzzzezzzezzzezzzezzz etc lately. About 10 minutes in the pitch gradually descends, then it dies away. It's silent now, but the streamer I taped just above it is still floating gently on the breeze. Long may it fly.

If it does croak I can get the same model of PS again for 30€, but swapping it out? Eugh, work.

ian · « **Reply #1305 on:** 15 August, 2019, 10:51:16 am »

I did get a cheap charger for my ancient Macbook (I would have bought the Apple one, but they're expensive and it was guess work the computer wasn't just dead, and I'd already sunk £70 into a replacement battery, and it's a mid-2011 vintage) – anyway, the new battery I put in charges again, but now when it's powered by the charger, the trackpad goes increasingly more manic sending the cursor scuttling around the screen. (The mouse is fine.)

I presume this is a 'Chinese earthing' problem.

Kim · « **Reply #1306 on:** 15 August, 2019, 11:23:13 am »

Quote from: ian on 15 August, 2019, 10:51:16 am

I did get a cheap charger for my ancient Macbook (I would have bought the Apple one, but they're expensive and it was guess work the computer wasn't just dead, and I'd already sunk £70 into a replacement battery, and it's a mid-2011 vintage) – anyway, the new battery I put in charges again, but now when it's powered by the charger, the trackpad goes increasingly more manic sending the cursor scuttling around the screen. (The mouse is fine.)

I presume this is a 'Chinese earthing' problem.

Seems likely. It's the usual tradeoff between having the class Y filtering capacitors between mains and earth to reduce RF emissions, and having leakage current through the capacitors bring the chassis up to half the mains voltage. (Because, in spite of insisting on those stupid cloverleaf power leads, actually earth-referencing the PSU's output would be letting the terrorists win, or something.) I suppose either condition could mess up the trackpad, which operates on an advanced form of voodoo that doesn't work well in the presence of stray voltages.

Steph · « **Reply #1307 on:** 20 August, 2019, 01:18:24 pm »

A Thing started yesterday on my laptop, which is an HP on Windows 10. I have a mail icon, which opens up a window with my various accounts all listed as option. Press 'button', new window. Usual switching between inbox and sent, etc, plus switching from account to account. Nice and easy.

Yesterday, the Thing started. I press the button, and the window opens up. It stays there for about three seconds before closing completely. Bish, bosh, back to whatever window I was on before. I am able to read my mail by going to my account and hitting 'open inbox', but I can't run it as I have been doing. Any ideas as to why it is just disappearing after three seconds of visibility?

dave r · « **Reply #1308 on:** 21 August, 2019, 09:24:43 am »

Thats strange! My tablet, a Lenovo tab 4, has developed the habit of closing some app's as soon as I open them, meaning I have to tap the icon three or four times before it will open, highly annoying, and I haven't a clue why.

woollypigs · « **Reply #1309 on:** 21 August, 2019, 09:59:16 am »

Should kinda also be in a politics thread

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/20/world/europe/denmark-cellphone-data-courts.html

10000 court cases needs to be checked cause phone location data.

Mr Larrington · « **Reply #1310 on:** 27 August, 2019, 11:31:30 pm »

Sorry, CoreTemp, but I don't believe that the CPU in that box over there ^^^^ is running at 15 deg. C when it's about 30 in here.

Kim · « **Reply #1311 on:** 27 August, 2019, 11:32:10 pm »

Quote from: Mr Larrington on 27 August, 2019, 11:31:30 pm

Sorry, CoreTemp, but I don't believe that the CPU in that box over there ^^^^ is running at 15 deg. C when it's about 30 in here.

Has someone set it to Gas Marks by mistake?

Beardy · « **Reply #1312 on:** 01 September, 2019, 03:27:38 pm »

Wading into the morass that is networking protocols, made more complicate by the need to access and configure the external drives using OSX. Wish me luck.

Greenbank · « **Reply #1313 on:** 03 September, 2019, 03:55:59 pm »

Wondering how to get more space into my ESXi server:-

Code: [Select]

Filesystem   Size   Used Available Use% Mounted on
VMFS-5       1.8T   1.0T    837.8G  55% /vmfs/volumes/datastore2
VMFS-5       1.8T   1.0T    813.9G  56% /vmfs/volumes/datastore1
VMFS-5     111.8G  39.7G     72.1G  35% /vmfs/volumes/datastore2ssd
VMFS-5     111.8G  37.7G     74.0G  34% /vmfs/volumes/datastore1ssd

Ideally I'd like to add two 4TB drives but there are not enough SATA ports or 3.5" HDD bays internally so I'd need to find an ESXi friendly SATA card and then use brackets to mount the 3.5" drives in the empty 5.25" drive bays.

But wondering since most of this would be for backup purposes (not storage I need under ESXi itself) whether I should go for a 4 bay NAS (or something like an HP Microserver) and do it that way.

Cudzoziemiec · « **Reply #1314 on:** 05 September, 2019, 07:54:31 am »

Is Yahoo mail working for anyone? Everything else is working fine for me, just not that. Oh well, I'm not working today anyway!

ian · « **Reply #1315 on:** 05 September, 2019, 09:15:24 am »

BT's mail server seems to be down also (I think that used to be provided by Yahoo, but I thought wasn't any more). Anyway, it's not there. I will survive, Gloria, I truly will.

Cudzoziemiec · « **Reply #1316 on:** 05 September, 2019, 10:15:23 am »

It's probably been taken down by the Russians or maybe the Chinese. Or else Boris Johnson, who delegated the job of hacking Corbyn's tweets to Chris Grayling.

TheLurker · « **Reply #1317 on:** 05 September, 2019, 09:00:35 pm »

Quote from: Cudzoziemiec on 05 September, 2019, 07:54:31 am

Is Yahoo mail working for anyone? Everything else is working fine for me, just not that. Oh well, I'm not working today anyway!

Yahoo's server* suffered a more or less world-wide borkage. Details on therregister.co.uk if you're at all interested.

*I think they ran out of coal for it, that or they ran out of shillings for the meter.

Mr Larrington · « **Reply #1318 on:** 06 September, 2019, 04:10:00 am »

Thunderbird! asked! me! for! a! password! for! outgoing! Yahoo! mail! about! four! hours! ago! Which is something it doesn't normally do, but expected incoming Babbage-Post appeared as normal.

In other news, dolt, you will find that your laptop behaves much more sensibly with regard to speed and not shutting the screen down every two minutes if the mains lead is actually plugged in.

Beardy · « **Reply #1319 on:** 08 September, 2019, 11:49:40 am »

Quote from: ian on 05 September, 2019, 09:15:24 am

BT's mail server seems to be down also (I think that used to be provided by Yahoo, but I thought wasn't any more). Anyway, it's not there. I will survive, Gloria, I truly will.

BT were in the process of migrating all its customers emails to Office 365, but I understand that they stopped for some reason when they got about half way through.

spesh · « **Reply #1320 on:** 18 September, 2019, 01:05:41 pm »

Surfing the internet in 2019 - explained via the medium of 'Airplane!'

https://twitter.com/HugdiSpencer/status/1171487383008579584

nicknack · « **Reply #1321 on:** 18 September, 2019, 01:41:29 pm »

Quote from: spesh on 18 September, 2019, 01:05:41 pm

Surfing the internet in 2019 - explained via the medium of 'Airplane!'

https://twitter.com/HugdiSpencer/status/1171487383008579584

Brilliant!

mike · « **Reply #1322 on:** 23 September, 2019, 03:39:30 pm »

The surface coating has started wearing off on the screen on my 5 year old macbook. Apple apparently admitted it was a manufacturing defect and offered free replacement for any machine < 4 years old that had been bought from them. Obviously I missed that offer...

I was walking past the apple store in cambridge this morning on the way back from a meeting and saw they were really quiet, so went in and chatted to someone on the genius bar and showed him my screen. He offered to replace it for free, even though I'd bought it from John Lewis 5.5 years ago, instead of charging me 600 quid. And instead of it taking 7 days like normal, he recons it'll be ready in 3.

Goddam Apple, eh.... Every time I think about switching they go and do something like that.

Beardy · « **Reply #1323 on:** 23 September, 2019, 03:58:09 pm »

Quote from: mike on 23 September, 2019, 03:39:30 pm

Goddam Apple, eh.... Every time I think about switching they go and do something like that.

you pay for the privilege of such customer service, but I’ve always been very pleased the resolution of any product issues I’ve had. I’ve even had an out ow warranty iPhone replaced foc when the problem was a broken screen due to user clumsiness.

The only real complaint people level at Apple is the tight control of their walled garden, with moans about being able,to,do,what you want with ‘your’ own property. Well, yes, it can be restrictive if you want to hack things about but that tight control ensures ‘it just works’ which is all I really want from a phone these days.

Kim · « **Reply #1324 on:** 23 September, 2019, 04:14:48 pm »

As walled gardens go, the Apple one is looking a lot less evil than certain others I could mention: Apple make you pay a premium for proprietary stuff that is a) sometimes functionally limited b) generally well designed and c) tends to work. Moreover, because of their old-fashioned customer-pays-them-money-in-exchange-for-stuff business model, they're substantially less inclined to be spaffing your data to anyone who asks...