Author Topic: Fettled any computer stuff today?  (Read 214217 times)

CommuteTooFar

  • Inadequate Randonneur
Re: Fettled any computer stuff today?
« Reply #1050 on: 05 June, 2019, 03:14:57 pm »
More ssd installations. Add two more ssds to my system.  Music now has its own ssd,  Other "Your Documents" live on the other. Spinning Rust drive is now empty. I wonder what I could use it for.

I have now used all the drive connections on my power supply. All the sata connectors on the motherboard are used too.  This surprised me, I thought I had more. I had to use the multi head sata power cable even though I have individual ones.
 

CommuteTooFar

  • Inadequate Randonneur
Re: Fettled any computer stuff today?
« Reply #1051 on: 05 June, 2019, 06:17:47 pm »
I upgraded my version of windows 10 to 1903. Version   10.0.18362 Build 18362

Nothing seems straight forward any more. It failed first time.  So I removed the blue tooth dongle for fitbit and turned off my DAC. It then installed and the drivers for fitbit base station and AudioLab 8200 was installed when I plugged them back in.

Re: Fettled any computer stuff today?
« Reply #1052 on: 05 June, 2019, 06:30:20 pm »
Windows upgrades don't like anything connected to USB at all.

vorsprung

  • Opposites Attract
    • Audaxing
Re: Fettled any computer stuff today?
« Reply #1053 on: 21 June, 2019, 02:44:03 pm »
Recipe for installing GPU drivers on a slightly out of date Ubuntu LTS

apt remove nvidia-*
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa
apt install ubuntu-drivers-common
apt-get install --install-recommends linux-generic-hwe-16.04

Reboot

apt install -y nvidia-396

Reboot

Mr Larrington

  • A bit ov a lyv wyr by slof standirds
  • Custard Wallah
    • Mr Larrington's Automatic Diary
Re: Fettled any computer stuff today?
« Reply #1054 on: 21 June, 2019, 08:28:15 pm »
Gotta love that snappy Un*x syntax, eh :demon:
External Transparent Wall Inspection Operative & Mayor of Mortagne-au-Perche
Satisfying the Bloodlust of the Masses in Peacetime

Maverick

  • One of the rural idle
    • Twoberries
Re: Fettled any computer stuff today?
« Reply #1055 on: 22 June, 2019, 07:06:25 pm »
Installed the mirrored zfs file system on 4 x 6TB drives from the dead freenas microserver to the functioning Ubuntu 18.04 server running on a newish Gen 10 microserver. After some head scratching the magic incantation was
'zpool import -a -N -R /mnt/zfs'
to import the file system, then
'zfs mount media'
and the file system was readable.

Now need to change the permissions on everything and set up samba so my media library can be accessed again (currently media players are using my backups)

Re: Fettled any computer stuff today?
« Reply #1056 on: 24 June, 2019, 04:54:46 pm »
Windows upgrades don't like anything connected to USB at all.

Window 10 upgrades just don't like anything.  :( :-\ >:(

If I leave my tiny laptop too long between the upgrades, it often refuses to install them altogether, since Windows has to sit on the 32GB internal SSD (C:) and that's somewhat limited in size.  I've got a 128GB Micro-SD card permanently installed, which has almost everything else on it, but that rarely seems to help with upgrades.  It can still take me a couple of days and I don't know how many reboots, before I manage to convince updates to install adequately.  ::-)
Actually, it is rocket science.
 

Re: Fettled any computer stuff today?
« Reply #1057 on: 22 July, 2019, 05:35:19 pm »
Intermittent problems with one of the SATA drives disappearing on the PC I use for backups, usually at the most inopportune moment.

Most results when Googling the problem were of the "just get used to it" type, but I came across one that said re-seating the RAM sometimes cured the problem.

Sure enough, it seemed to do - it remains to be seen whether it's a lasting fix.

vorsprung

  • Opposites Attract
    • Audaxing
Re: Fettled any computer stuff today?
« Reply #1058 on: 22 July, 2019, 07:13:02 pm »
my nice laptop - a Toshiba Z30 - has been playing up for a few months with the mouse cursor whizzing under it's own control to the top right or bottom left of the screen.  Once it starts doing this the laptop becomes unusable.  It is - or was - an intermittent problem but the last few days it does it all the time

Previous attempts to fix it have been software-based but a google today showed exactly this problem with Z30 laptops as a "known issue" and with a fix.  A hardware fix that was a bit odd.  I had to remove the header for the trackpad and cut off a small amount of surplus insulation

Dunno if it will work but first impressions are good - it hasn't shown the problem at all yet

woollypigs

  • Mr Peli
    • woollypigs
Re: Fettled any computer stuff today?
« Reply #1059 on: 22 July, 2019, 07:50:54 pm »
Friend had an issue with the track pad on a DELL and it turned out that the battery had started to expand and pressed from below, dunno if that is what you are experiencing
Current mood: AARRRGGGGHHHHH !!! #bollockstobrexit

Re: Fettled any computer stuff today?
« Reply #1060 on: 23 July, 2019, 10:00:50 am »
All yesterday afternoon trying to sort out BGP routing loop issues. Never forget iBGP uses recursive lookups folks and if the next hop for the AS isn't in you IGP the route isn't going in the routing table. Would have taken 10 minutes if I had remote access but was doing it via Email so it took forever.
I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that.

vorsprung

  • Opposites Attract
    • Audaxing
Re: Fettled any computer stuff today?
« Reply #1061 on: 25 July, 2019, 12:09:05 pm »
just wrote a script in python to update various software controlled infrastructure doohickeys

 - I haven't written any python for months and kept having to look everything up
 - It has 70 lines of code and 35 of tests
 - fixing pep8 took ages, it seems that xcode doesn't do it as you go.  Yes, I have autopep8
 - You can tell I was for many years a perl programmer, check out this line

found = re.compile(r'(\w*?)_?enabled\s*=\s*(\w+)')


Mr Larrington

  • A bit ov a lyv wyr by slof standirds
  • Custard Wallah
    • Mr Larrington's Automatic Diary
Re: Fettled any computer stuff today?
« Reply #1062 on: 29 July, 2019, 09:42:57 pm »
Deep skogTM excavation with cotton buds has restored functionality to my Microsith trackball, which means I now have no excuse for not updating the laptop for the first time since Advent.  This could take a while.
External Transparent Wall Inspection Operative & Mayor of Mortagne-au-Perche
Satisfying the Bloodlust of the Masses in Peacetime

fuaran

  • rothair gasta
Re: Fettled any computer stuff today?
« Reply #1063 on: 25 August, 2019, 04:12:08 pm »
Took the DVD drive out of my old PC to put into the new one. Then realised it uses an IDE connection, which the new PC doesn't have.
Not sure if it is really worth buying a new drive. Could get a DVD writer for £10, or Bluray for £50. But can't remember when I last needed a CD/DVD anyway.

Chris S

Re: Fettled any computer stuff today?
« Reply #1064 on: 25 August, 2019, 05:05:43 pm »
Took the DVD drive out of my old PC to put into the new one. Then realised it uses an IDE connection, which the new PC doesn't have.
Not sure if it is really worth buying a new drive. Could get a DVD writer for £10, or Bluray for £50. But can't remember when I last needed a CD/DVD anyway.

I've got a plug-in USB DVD drive for the very rare occasions I need one. Handy as it works on all the PCs/laptops in the place.

ian

Re: Fettled any computer stuff today?
« Reply #1065 on: 27 August, 2019, 09:29:39 am »
I had to figure out how to burn a CD the other day, that was recovered knowledge and involved a secondary figuring out our to do so on the computer remotely located under the stairs, the only one in the house with a drive. There was a thirdly figuring out of where precisely the five million CD-Rs that I somehow one thought were a budget purchase had been dumped then the discarding of the ones that had turned a funny colour.

In-laws, my wife sends them mp3 files but they refuse to click on them even when they manage to download one of the batch from dropbox.

fuaran

  • rothair gasta
Re: Fettled any computer stuff today?
« Reply #1066 on: 27 August, 2019, 09:52:26 am »
A USB drive is another thing to have lying around, and get lost when you need it. At least an internal drive doesn't take up any extra physical space. I am trying to declutter...

Kim

  • Timelord
    • Fediverse
Re: Fettled any computer stuff today?
« Reply #1067 on: 27 August, 2019, 10:52:28 am »
There was a thirdly figuring out of where precisely the five million CD-Rs that I somehow one thought were a budget purchase had been dumped then the discarding of the ones that had turned a funny colour.

There's a recently-unearthed box of 10, in jewel cases, kicking around our living room.

Plus a couple of inches worth of blanks in a bulk pack on the shelf behind me.

There's a DVD-something drive in my desktop, but no idea if it actually works.  For some reason - and one which was really fucking annoying in the early noughties - I emit bogons on a frequency tuned to resonate with optical drives.  It's the one form of technology that I'm a complete liability with.  I used to get barakta to stare at progress bars for me to reduce the coaster rate.

It's a long time since I used an optical disc for anything other than  a) buying unadulterated PCM audio on  or  b) running low-level diagnostic tools or kicking off a an OS install on a machine that I couldn't readily persuade to boot from a USB flash drive.

ian

Re: Fettled any computer stuff today?
« Reply #1068 on: 27 August, 2019, 11:59:03 am »
Well, at least they seem to play as PCM audio (not sure how long they'll last considering the number of blanks that had gone funny coloured, they've been sitting in the summer house for at least five years) – I remembered the Blu-Ray player plays CDs, otherwise we don't have an actual audio-only CD player. Anyway, it was about three hours work because they won't download the bloody things and double-click on them (why, who knows).

Kim

  • Timelord
    • Fediverse
Re: Fettled any computer stuff today?
« Reply #1069 on: 27 August, 2019, 12:21:59 pm »
Anyway, it was about three hours work because they won't download the bloody things and double-click on them (why, who knows).

That may be a net win, compared to the likely effects of downloading and clicking on All The Things!

ian

Re: Fettled any computer stuff today?
« Reply #1070 on: 27 August, 2019, 12:40:58 pm »
My FiL for some reason refuses to use dropbox, he gets peculiar ideas about the internet. And I think the issue with double-clicking is that they .mp4 files which they refuse to believe are actually MP3s (ok, they're not really, but I'm really not about to try and explain codecs to him), but still double-clicking them will fire up whatever media app they have installed.

It is nice that, unlike my father, they don't click everything that appears in their inbox, but for god's sake, my wife is sending them the links directly via Messages so she's obviously her (or a very cunning AI).

TheLurker

  • Goes well with magnolia.
Re: Fettled any computer stuff today?
« Reply #1071 on: 27 August, 2019, 08:21:28 pm »
New router* occasioned by a lightning strike within a couple of dozen yards of the house.
Like a bloody bomb going off.  Thought the local sub-station had gone up.

New router set up?  Fifteen minutes.  Wireless printer?  Nigh on an hour and a half.  Canon you are bunch of idiots.  It should not require a reinstall from scratch with 3 reboots because "more up to date" driver. Feh!

*70 notes from PC World. Ouch, but that or work from the office.  Worth it a twice the price. :)
Τα πιο όμορφα ταξίδια γίνονται με τις δικές μας δυνάμεις - Φίλοι του Ποδήλατου

CommuteTooFar

  • Inadequate Randonneur
Re: Fettled any computer stuff today?
« Reply #1072 on: 11 September, 2019, 11:42:40 am »
Processor 2600 -> 3700,
Motherboard MSI B350 Tomahawk Arctic -> MSI B450 Tomahawk Max
Memory 16GB PC4-23466 2933MHz CL-18  -> 32GB PC4-25600 3200Hz CL-16 (Ballistix Sport LT, red heat spreader)
Graphics card MSI Armor Radeon RX 570 OC - MSI Mech 5700 OC.

I fitted a Bequiet Dark Rock 4 cpu cooler.  I was worried that I had made a mistake after watching Carey Holzman's review of it on Youtube.
He criticised the back plate. AM4 installations use the motherboards backplate. So that was not an issue.
He criticised the amount of thermal paste.  It was not enough to apply it the way he normally does. It was enough for me.
He criticised the fan overhanging the ram slots.  I do not use the first slot and use ram without decorative rgb heat spreaders. So they are just 35mm high.

 

CommuteTooFar

  • Inadequate Randonneur
Re: Fettled any computer stuff today?
« Reply #1073 on: 15 September, 2019, 12:15:39 pm »
I place a screwdriver through the warranty void sticker and unscrewed one of four screws holding the fans to my one week old MSI Mech 5700 OC graphics card.  As seen online MSI have been scrimping on themal pads.  The gddr chips were not properly covered. So I cleaned the old pads off and the disturbed themal compound from the gpu chip.  Cut themal compound of the required size placed them where the part sized pads had been. Added new thermal compound for the gpu and replaced the fans. My graphics card should run a little bit cooler and occasionally quieter.

For my next improvement trick. Wait for an update for a new bios of the MSI Mech 5700 XC OC to appear.  Use the generic ATI/AMD tool to update my MSI Mech 5700 OC which will magically become an MSI Mech 5700 XT OC.  The difference between the current Navi 5700 and 5700 XT is just software saying how fast it is.


 
 

CommuteTooFar

  • Inadequate Randonneur
Re: Fettled any computer stuff today?
« Reply #1074 on: 15 September, 2019, 12:27:39 pm »
I ran the heaven benchmark as a sanity check. According to cpuid hardware monitor it peaked at 73C. Previously I have seen 75C but that could simply be environmental issues so I can not claim improvement.