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Steven Hanley hackergotchi picture Steven
Hanley
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email: sjh@svana.org

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Aaron Broughton,
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Chris Yeoh,
Martijn van Oosterhout,
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Tony Breeds,

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Thu, 15 Dec 2005

I have new feet! - 16:12
3M Rubber Stick on Feet
3M Stick on Rubber Feet (Full Size) 		See my shoes did not fit, so I thought it might be easier to get new feet than new sho.... ahh who am I kidding it is not even a amusing attempt at being humorous, the title of course refers to my missing laptop feet.

This is largely to remind me where I got them, I first went to office works and they did not have them, I later found them for sale at the hardware store Bunnings. Now I think of it I recall buying the feet for my Pismo there also years ago. I got black rather than clear as they are cheaper, and really who wants to sit around admiring the see through feet on a laptop anyway?

[/comp/hardware] link

Thu, 01 Dec 2005

Laptop feet go bye bye - 17:36
I just noticed a few hours ago that my laptop (dell x300) is missing two of the rubber stabilising feet on its base. When this happened to my pismo powerbook a few years ago I was able to purchase basic round rubber stick on feet and they worked. The feet on this dell are long thin bits of rubber. I need to have a bit of a look around OfficeWorks or similar to see if they sell feet that will work.

The laptop rattles a bit when I type now unless I have my palms resting next to the touchpad while typing, which is a slightly inefficient typing position and possibly damaging long term. I noticed the missing feet as one of them fell off, however somehow I lost it as I flicked it away before realising what I had just flicked away.

[/comp/hardware] link

Sat, 25 Jun 2005

Strange breakage - 23:33
I changed the machine I am using as the gateway/firewall at home finally today. The old machine has been problematic for about two years, for some reason it would not cleanly boot up a more recent kernel, nor would it reboot cleanly, also it would sometimes panic when high memory use processes were running such as large rsyncs. It appeared it may have been a memory problem however after testing that it appeared it was something in the motherboard.

Anyway the new machine does not display the problem and is a fresh install of the new debian stable with the 2.6.8 kernel from that. This means I can finally do load balancing and priority for ssh and things like that on the gateway so bulk transfers will not make everything slow. (My flatmates all seem to be bittorrent or kazaa or whatever addicts)

When I first booted the box up and put in place I could ping machines the Big Bad Internet, however I was unable to make a tcp connection, tcpdump would see packets returning but they never seemed to get up to the application. This really had me stumped for a while, eventually I tried swapping the NIC hooked up to the ADSL modem with the NIC hooked up to the house LAN, to my surprise I found I was now unable to make tcp connections with machines in the house.

So it appears this NIC could process some packets such as ICMP, however did not fully process, or caused some other problem with TCP packets at least. I pulled the rather lovely DEC Tulip (one of two I purchased in 1999 because I wanted some real DEC Tulip cards before they ceased to exist) out of the old box and put it in in place of the card with the strange behaviour. Once the machine had booted with the Tulip everything worked perfectly.

The card with the strange behaviour is an older Tulip, a 21041 (10 MBit with a coax connector and cat5) rather than the 21141 now in there, both of them are using the de4x5 driver so it does not sound like a problem with the driver. Anyway, this is a really strange hardware problem.

[/comp/hardware] link

Thu, 02 Jun 2005

Kernel upgrade time - 14:15
So I tested the new toy yesterday with an older 20 GB drive lying around at work and all seemed fine. I went and ordered a 200GB WD 8MB Buffer IDE drive to use as storage for backups and other not particularly frequently accessed data at home, I thought 200 GB because, heck this stiff is cheap now days, the drive was about AUD $160, with AUD $12 shipping, comparing this to spending over AUD $500 on a 12 GB drive just 6 years ago it really begins to freak you out a bit.

Anyway I went to plug the drive into my laptop and found it did not work with my 2.6.7 based kernel. Tony was around, and as he recently upgraded his laptop kernel (his permalinks are currently broken though) we plugged the device in there to see if it would work with the new larger drive. It did, thus it appears the usb-storage upgrade that happened around 2.6.9 is indeed better, or at least better for this specific hardware combination. I guess I should finally put the time in and upgrade my laptop kernel, what fun I have to look forward to</tic>, ACPI DSDT patches, a few other patches, SWSUSP, etc.

[/comp/hardware] link

Wed, 01 Jun 2005

IDE to USB2 bare adapter. - 16:37

R-Driver II USB 2.0 to IDE Adapter (full size) 		I saw this item reviewed on dansdata a while ago and it appealed to me as a rather neat toy. Thinking about external drives a bit recently and I thought what the heck I want to have one of these. They ship from the US for USD $38 ($3 shipping worldwide for anything sold on that site), I ordered it on Friday afternoon and it arrived on my doorstep at home (though I put work as the delivery address) this morning.

Unlike Dan I have not done any transfer speed tests or anything, I have plugged a 20 GB drive lying around at work in to test and it worked fine. The Power adapter is only needed for 3.5" drives, laptop drives are powered by the USB connection itself. Due to the US source the power plug (not pictured) was available with vertical flat, round, or the square British plugs, Dan suggests bending the US flat plugs to the Australian angle, however the thing works fine with any standard computer/kettle/etc power cable so there is no need for that.

Something I like about this is it is very compact, geeky and bear metal. If you happen to have a bunch of drives around you need to check out, or put stuff on you need not mount them in anything, simply plug it in and away you go. This has interesting implications for JBOD solutions (possibly slow of course) too as you can put a bunch of disks in some case with a few fans, and usb leads coming out of the case to another computer. Anyway I think it is a rather neat geek toy.

Update: Mikal complained I had not linked to either USBGEEK.COM or more specifically to the R-Driver II Product page (which was on the cables page (which has a few variations of this product and some other cool stuff, though the version 1 of this device is possibly dodgy, and is not double sided anyway)). I am sure Mikal is far more interested in some of the other products sold here, such as the Cafe Pad or Vacuum.

[/comp/hardware] link

Fri, 25 Feb 2005

Our experience with Dell Thermal Event error - 22:18
Late last week some of the Dell Optiplex gx270 desktops in the department started spontaneously shutting down. Upon restart we saw the error "Previous shutdown due to thermal event.".

This suggests something like fan failure allowing the case to become too hot, so last Friday I looked closer and noticed the power supply fan in one of the systems was indeed dead. We replaced the power supply and the machine appeared to work, at least initially. Ringing Dell we requested they rectify this problem with a few replacement power supplies (4 machines had failed at this point).

On Monday we discovered the machine with the replacement power supply dead again, and it would not stay up for more than 5 minutes after booting due to over heating for some reason. All this time I had been googling around a fair bit trying to find if anyone had any real suggestions about what could cause this (happening to more than one machine in so short a time was unlikely to be a simple hardware failure, too much of a coincidence).

Google showed some Dell support pages which were no real help, if you see the error "Previous shutdown due to thermal event." check that both fans are operating. Well yeah, they were not, but replacing them did not permanently fix it, and we had already been through that. A few comments in various user forums suggested some sort of mother board problem, however were not more specific and only said in some instances Dell had replaced the boards and the problem had gone away.

Dell phone support said they would send a few power supplies, and new CPU's with new fan units, this was their suggestion to us, so they had lined up a tech to come over (a day or two later than our support contract stipulated they should have fixed the problem by).

The tech rocked up with one replacement power supply and fortunately a replacement motherboard (just in case), even though we had reported 4 failures at this point. As soon as we described what was happening to the tech he said "Oh the capacitors on the board near the CPU have failed, they will be leaking or bloated". Apparently this has been happening with a large number of these Dell machines and other similar models. A worrying thing to find out when we remember we have approximately 120 Dell Optiplex gx270's in the department.

We had not even thought to look at the capacitors or anything, fan failure and overheating did not suggest to us that this could be the problem, of course that google searches and Dell tech support also did not suggest this as a possible cause is why I am writing this now (in the hopes, that if it happens to someone else, they can read this account of what a possible cause for the error "Previous shutdown due to thermal event." in Dell desktop machines and other similar hardware.

I suppose, possibly, it should have occurred to us to look at the capacitors, we have had large scale capacitor failure in the past as many nodes of our 192 CPU Bunyip Beowulf Cluster. The capacitors in many boards blew up, leaving large black holes around where they were mounted on the mother board. (Bob has some photos, I can not find them just now after a quick search though)

The failures in the cluster were after prolonged periods of running nothing but sse2 instructions (by prolonged I mean a few days or even weeks at a time), that sort of constant current load was not initially factored into the boards by the manufacturer (Epox). Fortunately in that case Epox replaced all the mother boards with boards that could handle the high current for sustained periods.

In the case of these Dell desktops, most of them have not been working too heavily, sure many run intensive integer stuff for one of our researches (a computer farm) in out of hours time, and they are all turned on 24/7, but this is not particularly high usage. It has been suggested by some other people on campus that

Dell is only the latest in a long line of affected electronics manufactures. MSI (used by Protech), Gigabyte, ABIT, ASUS have been affected over the past 2 years. Motherboards, video cards, TV tuners, apparently even some stand alone DVD players and other home electronics - anything these capacitors have been used in - have been playing up as well.

References: 1, 2, 3.

Since the Dell tech mentioned it had been happening a lot, we have started opening up a large number of the computers in the department and found many capacitors bloated or leaking, just waiting to fail. If you have a Optiplex gx270 maybe you want to have a look at the mother board, the large capacitors near the CPU are the main culprit.

[/comp/hardware] link

Tue, 22 Feb 2005

Damn noisy machines - 22:09
One of the controlling nodes for the large Beowulf cluster here (the machine bunyip.anu.edu.au) just started making a racket (the power supply fan failing) as it is across the other side of the TSG area here I can hear it. I should wait for Bob before doing anything like shutting it down and replacing bits, so I think maybe it is time to go home, not everything I was trying to get done is finished, but hey it is after 10pm.

On a side note, I got the Jodi Martin album Twenty One Stairs today (as kind of recommended by BCG and the order placement mentioned here), I had to put a cheque in the mail and send off for it, and as it appears the retailer linked from the Jodi Martin website is out of stock of her studio album "Water and Wood", I am trying the postal request and delivery method for that album also. Once I have listened to Twenty One Stairs some more I will probably talk about it more in the correct category (this post is yet more evidence of why I want multiple category post capability in blosxom).

Oh and yeah I notice Hugh mentioned buying and using some white lightning lube on his recumbent. I agree the wax based lubes are good as you have a nice not messy drive train, however the thing I notice is they do not last very long before reapplication is necessary. I use dry lubes on my mtb usually, and have to relube once every 40 to 100 KM most of the time (so often more than once a day, and in endurance races usually once per lap or every two laps), on the road bike I tend to use wet lube (tri-flow being the standard) as it lasts a lot longer between reapplication, and the lack of dust to gunk it up means the drive train can stay cleaner. Of course for Hugh, YMMV.

[/comp/hardware] link

Wed, 12 Jan 2005

Cute but overpriced - 14:59
So in the keynote at Macworld one of the items announced was a cheaper Mac with no screen, keyboard, mouse, etc. Just the box. Sure I can see this can be cool for people who want a Mac but have the other stuff already. Personally I just am not interested (I suppose to some extent because I am not stuck in the world of windows). The new computer, MacMini is a good size, about that of a cd drive by the looks of things. Definitely cheaper for the grunt available than the briQ (though not quite as rackable), however as this is not aimed at the rackable or smaller, market for servers, I would be far more likely to go for an x86-64 box and run Linux on it.

I saw a suggestion yesterday (prediction 3) that if Steve Jobs wants to spend some of the money in the bank to entice more people to Apple, he could with this new machine subsidise it by US $100 per unit, the person suggesting that thought the price may end up being around US $350 per unit, now after the announcement we see they cost US $499 per unit. Sure it is still cheap, but unless you have a hungering for MacOSX it is not cheap for the grunt. I am happy to run Linux, the price for a reasonably grunty MacMini in Australia (80 GB disk, 1 GB memory, 1.4 GHz G4) is over AUD $1400, for that in Australia (from eyo as an example) you could purchase a Shuttle Form factor 939 kit (SN95G5) ($440), Athlon 64 3200+ ($313.50), 1 GB Ram (2 512 Apacer chips) ($264) (2 means with the 939 you get much faster memory access), Radeon 9250L 128 MB AGP ($69.50), 200 GB Maxtor IDE HD ($193.60), Pioneer Dual layer capable DVD (all formats) writer (cdr etc also) ($132). AUD $1412.40. Same price, Linux would run a hell of a lot faster on this and it is still a small footprint sitting on your desktop.

I admit there are people out there who use MacOSX, and there are crazies out there who use windows, oh well IMO their loss. I also admit I am suckered a bit by the idea of a cd drive sized desktop to run Linux on, and I always thought the Apple Cube was cute, though overpriced. I also like running Linux on non x86 architecture (sparc, ultra sparc, m68k, powerpc sitting in my house, though turned off now days as I don't actually use the systems any more).

Update: Seen on Kottke just now, a flickr image with instructions on how to convert your iPod to and iPod Shuffle in three easy steps. Cute/Amusing, I agree with Mikal though, the price of the new device is pretty good for its capacity and size.

[/comp/hardware] link

Fri, 07 Jan 2005

Large MMC Card and Card Reader. - 12:39
As mentioned I ordered a large MMC card (512 MB) for my palm pilot. (from Exeltek who appear to be one of the cheapest sources of flash cards and similar in Australia most of the time) The card arrived today, along with a new 9 function usb card reader.

I purchased a usb card reader from Exeltek about a year an a half ago (Transcend brand) and it has never worked properly in Linux (2.4 and 2.6, though I have yet to try 2.6.9 or higher which have a new usb-storage implementation finally). When I purchased that one it was about AUD $70 AFAIR, now the new one I just received was AUD $25. I am pleased to say it works flawlessly, I have tested it with my new MMC card, with the 1 GB CF card from my MP3 player and the 128 MB CF card in my camera. This is all good.

As for the MMC card, I can now use backup to flash software on my palm pilot, and store books and documents and such to read away from a network connection which could be cool. Maybe I should give my old not linux friendly card reader to Brad or Mikal to assist with their scheme to take over the world with more usb gadgets than most usb gadget factories.

[/comp/hardware] link

Wed, 05 Jan 2005

No palm backup bad - 16:38
Fuck. I opened my palm (Tungsten E) to add two entries to the calendar so I remember they are on and found it had run out of batteries. The fun bit of course is I have not been making a backup of my palm for the last two months or maybe longer (I can not find where I was storing the backups the last time I did them regularly from a quick look around). In the world of cheap huge flash storage I think one really neat feature would be a snapshot backup onto flash storage in the device.

I suppose if I put a large MMC card in my tungsten there is probably some way to program something that could copy the contents of memory to the card when asked and restore all the databases from that copy on request if you do lose power. I can understand why the main memory in the palm is not flash storage due to the limited write lifetime, I am annoyed that there is no way to back stuff up (or restore it) without plugging the palm into a computer and syncing it. Snapshots of the entire internal memory by date or something would not even use much space on some of the huge cards available these days.

Now I get the fun of tracking down all the contact details and dates and other things I had loaded if I am unable to find my last backups. Even with the latest backups there will be a lot of missing stuff.

Update: I was googling for this sort of thing and found it, CardBackup or SaveBackup. I am buying a copy of one of them and a large mmc card for my palm now.

[/comp/hardware] link

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