Author Topic: A random thread for small computing things that don't really warrant a thread of their own (Read 299261 times)

hulver · « **Reply #975 on:** 13 February, 2018, 04:09:27 pm »

Quote from: T42 on 13 February, 2018, 02:09:20 pm

Back from El Prez's. Laptop is totally unresponsive. Well, the power lights come on, but they don't flicker and there are no beeps. We did have a gander under the keyboard, but nothing was apparent - no surprise, given my lack of knowledge. Even a swift anointing with El P's espresso had no effect.

He's left with a creaky old mini-tower PC. It's a Pentium 4 and the clock resets to 2002 when it's unplugged because etc. It has a mix of RAM card frequencies and capacities to a total of 4 Gb. He has W7 Pro on it, and it crawls. Performance Index is 2.7. It must be paging like buggery at the speed of a dead snail. The motherboard'll probably take 4 Gb but I doubt if that'd make much difference. Heigh ho.

I have seen that before when the battery is completely toasted. Taking the battery out and running it just from the mains adaptor made it work.

Ham · « **Reply #976 on:** 14 February, 2018, 12:06:36 pm »

Another one from the "playing with the big boys" box. I just got to poke a finger at an Ethernet network card. One that runs without switches. At speeds greater than 600Gb/s. (yes, that's 60x what you might have thought was the maximum speed)

Beardy · « **Reply #977 on:** 14 February, 2018, 12:24:08 pm »

Quote from: Ham on 14 February, 2018, 12:06:36 pm

Another one from the "playing with the big boys" box. I just got to poke a finger at an Ethernet network card. One that runs without switches. At speeds greater than 600Gb/s. (yes, that's 60x what you might have thought was the maximum speed)

Sheesh. In only 2001 I remember putting in a 20Gb/s WAN in and we only managed that dizzying headline speed by cheating and have two routes^[1] between each node. Admittedly the fibre between major nodes was carrying multiples of that by the use of different colours over the fibre

1. The two routes were totally diverse^[2] from end to end for redundancy reasons, but that didn't stop us making the double speed claim

2. this required lots of hole and trench digging and occasioned this (then) IT PM visiting site to check that cables had actually been laid as I was being told.

T42 · « **Reply #978 on:** 18 February, 2018, 01:23:29 pm »

Just noticed that our LAN disk had its 10th birthday last week. It's runs about 10 hrs/day and maybe 350 days/year. That's 35,000 hours so far.

Now that I've mentioned it, it'll probably crash.

Ham · « **Reply #979 on:** 20 February, 2018, 06:01:17 pm »

Maplins is circling the plughole https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/02/20/crunch_time_maplin_in_talks_to_sell_the_business/

Kim · « **Reply #980 on:** 20 February, 2018, 06:09:10 pm »

Quote from: Ham on 20 February, 2018, 06:01:17 pm

Maplins is circling the plughole https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/02/20/crunch_time_maplin_in_talks_to_sell_the_business/

This is what they get for not selling battery holders.

Feanor · « **Reply #981 on:** 20 February, 2018, 09:34:58 pm »

I was down in Emba at Feanor Outposts last weekend, and I had need of a laptop for Garmin fettling.

We do have several here, but they all belong to other family members.
I do have a couple of old ones, so I dug one out and charged it up.
It booted up, into Windows Vista!

That would be OK for what I needed.
It had a PCMCIA WiFi card ( an old Cisco A/B/G one ).

Only it had *no* USB ports!

Bah!
So I stole one of the kids laptops for the weekend.

woollypigs · « **Reply #982 on:** 24 February, 2018, 04:23:48 pm »

Hmm not sure what is going but over the last week or so, we have had at least 5 different companies we get emails from. Banks, pet insurance etc. Sending out emails to their list to only come back a few minutes later saying oops. All ranging from a merry crimbo email in Feb (not sure if they are late or early) to using "Dear wrong name".

Paul H · « **Reply #983 on:** 24 February, 2018, 04:47:22 pm »

Quote from: Ham on 20 February, 2018, 06:01:17 pm

Maplins is circling the plughole https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/02/20/crunch_time_maplin_in_talks_to_sell_the_business/

Useful to know, I have some money on one of their cards, might be worth finding something to spend it on while there's still the chance.

Afasoas · « **Reply #984 on:** 25 February, 2018, 12:52:47 am »

Finally getting some monitoring and visbility around the state of my sprawling home network:

UPS battery is a bit cold

On Edit: That second graph is shrivelled down to a size that makes it almost imperceptible. It shows the UPS battery temperature dipping down to 5°C.

TimO · « **Reply #985 on:** 25 February, 2018, 12:36:10 pm »

Quote from: Ham on 20 February, 2018, 06:01:17 pm

Maplins is circling the plughole https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/02/20/crunch_time_maplin_in_talks_to_sell_the_business/

Many <cough> many years ago, I used to get the Maplins catalogue, for the data that was available in it, and to drool over semiconductors that I couldn't afford !

With the Internet, electronics data is easily available, as are all the exotic components, which I suppose is why Maplins went away from components, into more macroscopic items; PC, gadgets etc, which was originally a small part of their stock.

Of course, they're still competing with the online distributors, and I've only been into Maplins 2 or 3 times in the last decade, looking for stuff that I wanted to buy now. Unless they change their business model, they're not going to survive. If they hadn't existed, I would just have waited a few days, for delivery from elsewhere.

I suspect that's going to be true progressively more and more with many more high street stores, even more than is happening already. I buy a lot of items online now, with delivery typically being anywhere from an hour to a week. Even with stuff sent for a tiny cost from China, it frequently arrives in a couple of weeks.

Kim · « **Reply #986 on:** 25 February, 2018, 01:04:44 pm »

Maplin hasn't been the same since they stopped posting you items free of charge when you turned up and they didn't have stock. The rot really set in when they sacked the old beardy guy at the components counter and filled the shop with DJ kit and RC toys. It became even worse when you couldn't even rely on them for the sort of components you might use for wiring up hi-fi systems or installing pretty LEDs on things.

Distress purchases aren't enough to run a business, and the consumer tat they've made the cornerstone of their sales is now readily available elsewhere.

Mr Larrington · « **Reply #987 on:** 25 February, 2018, 02:04:29 pm »

I did buy a reel of speaker cable from them last year, but why does a 20m reel of 2-core wire cost twice as much as a 20m Cat 6 network cable?

Jurek · « **Reply #988 on:** 25 February, 2018, 02:19:19 pm »

Yesterday, I bought £15.00 worth of cable ties (black, in three different sizes, seeing as you are asking) from my local Maplins.
I must confess, if they fold, I'll be crestfallen.
It's has been damned handy on numerous occasions to saunter all of five minutes before reaching my local one.
If I need bits for electrics at four on a Sunday afternoon, to fill my Sunday evening with unbridled soldering, there aren't too many other places that are likely to be able to help.
Oh, and up until around a year ago, my local branch had A Woman working in it.
Since then, they've reduced their staff from around six or seven, to two.

Oh, while flicking through the Sunday rag in the cafe this morning, I read that it looks like a buyer may've been found.

TheLurker · « **Reply #989 on:** 25 February, 2018, 04:33:35 pm »

Quote from: TimO on 25 February, 2018, 12:36:10 pm

Many <cough> many years ago, I used to get the Maplins catalogue, for the data that was available in it, and to drool over semiconductors that I couldn't afford !

+1 Cheapest pin-out manual on the market. I used to tear out and keep the transistor and IC pages.

These days the only things I buy there are Ag conductive paint; dodgy TV zappers, repairing; for the use of and their spray silicone grease for lubricating rubber motors.

Ham · « **Reply #990 on:** 01 March, 2018, 02:12:00 pm »

Mobile phone "always on" is creepy. But cool.

Signed,

A Google Fanboi

ETA: Not that cool that I haven't switched it off now.

Tim Hall · « **Reply #991 on:** 07 March, 2018, 01:10:46 pm »

My Pi based Kodi refused to play any videos or music last night, claiming items were removed from the library. Prime suspect was the external HDD had died but plugging that in elsewhere showed it worked.
Delving further showed it wasn't mounted. Much reading of t'internet to find out where it should mount, trying to remember where i'd told it to mount, what tweaks I'd done etc and I was no further forward.

Then I swapped the USB port on the Pi and lo! it mounted all by itself. Next time, try the obvious.

spesh · « **Reply #992 on:** 08 March, 2018, 02:25:13 pm »

I for one welcome our robot overlords.

https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2018/3/7/17092334/amazon-alexa-devices-strange-laughter

TheLurker · « **Reply #993 on:** 19 March, 2018, 09:31:14 pm »

I awarded Visual Studio's Intellisenesence* a gold star today. A rare, a very very very rare, event. It suggested {mumble}Schemata as the correct name for a function returning a List of type {mumble}Schema.

*I know whereof I speak.

hellymedic · « **Reply #994 on:** 22 March, 2018, 12:03:01 pm »

First I can't get Flickr, now I can't get my bank GGRRR!

TheLurker · « **Reply #995 on:** 22 March, 2018, 08:07:37 pm »

Oh I do so like Microsoft maths. Today we have the 15.6.3 update, but given the issues M$ have with counting it could very well be the 15.7.9 upgrade. Who can tell?

LurkOnnaBike/flickr

hellymedic · « **Reply #996 on:** 30 March, 2018, 02:18:25 pm »

The 'Down' cursor key on my MacBook Air seems dead.
Everything else works OK.
Suggestions?

David thinks there could be dirt in the contacts. I don't really want him to attempt to dismantlethis...

Kim · « **Reply #997 on:** 30 March, 2018, 02:37:58 pm »

If the key travel feels fine, dirt or broken/corroded tracks on the membrane, at a guess.

This sort of thing is frustrating to try to fix when its an easily dismantled and trivially easy to replace desktop keyboard. Repairing anything on an laptop, especially a Mega-Global Fruit Corporation one is going to be a much more expensive circle of hell.

You may have to replace the whole keyboard unit.

SteveC · « **Reply #998 on:** 30 March, 2018, 02:44:14 pm »

MrsC poured Kir into her MacBook a few years ago. I think there was only one key affected. Cost was about £120 from the Apple Store to get it fixed.

ScumOfTheRoad · « **Reply #999 on:** 30 March, 2018, 02:45:37 pm »

I would agree with dirt in the contacts.
I have never done this with laptop keys, but I would suggest getting some screen cleaning spray.
Saturate the key with a good few squirts of the cleaning fluid. Leave for a bit.
Then press the key a good few times. I guess ispropyl alcohol would do the job too.

I guess further that cleaning spray with a water base should not be allowed to soak into a laptop circuit board.
SO maybe alcohol would be a better bet.

Author Topic: A random thread for small computing things that don't really warrant a thread of their own (Read 299261 times)

Afasoas