Archive for the ‘Tech’ Category

Networking is always fun. Yesterday we wired up the house ready for media sharing, LAN gaming and internet surfing. All the gear having arrived on Friday and the cables having been put in already it was now just a case of unpacking, plugging in, configuring and troubleshooting.

We now have a switch on every floor, a pair of routers for the house network and my sub-network, a gigabit network to link my computers, we’re pretty much plugged in ready to go in terms of internet and last night we got some testing done on getting LAN games working. We struggled to get anything going due to problems with the games themselves but the network works fine – myself and Norm were kicking Si’s ass for a good 30 minutes on Unreal Tournament 2004.

Science I love deliveries! (Lol, guess which episode of South Park I finally got round to seeing recently). I got two today. First of all, my long awaited pair of 320gb external hard drives. They are the Western Digital MyBook Essential ones which had a fair amount of critics but no more than any other manufacturer and model including my own LaCie hard drive which I haven’t had any problems with in the 3-4 years I have had it.

So far they seem to be doing alright, I plugged in one of them at about 11ish this morning and began copying all my music over to it. It is up to P at the moment (after 4 hours) which isn’t too bad. It’s still going to take a while to finish and come in with a slower time than the last external hard drive I did this with but building in time for the fact my music collection has increased in size since then it’s not going to come in with a much slower time.

The second delivery I got was the networking gear for my new house. We’re wiring it all in which means a switch for every floor including my upgrade to gigabit networking plus a pair of routers, a modem for our soon (touch wood) to be connected broadband and a few other bits and pieces. I haven’t played around with my routers’ config options yet as I want to save some of the excitement for tomorrow (lol, that is probably really sad but I feel I’m perhaps loosing my edge as the ultimate nerd). I can’t wait though as it’s going to be pretty sorted because I picked up some rather good ones.

I really miss having a portable music device since my 3rd one broke. So it’s time I got myself a new one. At the moment I have one of these.

The iRiver iFP-795. It’s a flash based one with 512mb memory, light as hell, about the size of an AA battery in length, and I love it because the battery lasts for about a month without me needing to replace it.

I’m toying with going hard drive based though. I’ve laid out the case for why flash memory based players are superior which I still fully stand behind it. But I won’t discount the hassle of having a limited amount of storage – not that this is solved by getting a hard drive based player, I still can’t sync my entire collection which is very annoying (unless I get a really, really big MP3 player) but it would reduce the problem at least.

I’ve not really done much product research into MP3 players recently though. So with that in mind, if anyone has, yell out you’re suggestions now. My specification is fairly open, hard drive or flash will be considered, battery life is important, I have quite a decent budget, my only one must have requirement is that it must be UMS – I’m not using any software and it needs to work on Windows and Linux so I need it UMS. It also needs to be able to take a bit of a beating as I put my electronics through their paces. Finally if anyone has suggestions as to how I can huck them up to my car stereo (the radio transmitters look quite a good option) those are also welcome too.

Yesterday saw me begin my hospital management summer internship.

It all started when I was wandering through Game Station to look at retro consoles when I saw Theme Hospital for £4. I had no real option but to buy it. Especially as it’s multi-player so we can do some LAN parties with it. Having been discussing this several days earlier it would have been a missed opportunity not to buy it.

I started playing in the late afternoon evening time and soon found myself engrossed in the game. Next thing I know it’s 2am and I’m all but screaming at my computer screen. Machine after machine blowing up, 2-3 epidemics per minute – what am I doing wrong? Why are my handmen useless? There are 30 of them on staff for smeg’s sake.

The last thing I need at this time of year is more stress. But all I want to do is start playing again.

My laptop arrived back yesterday. I actually seem to be able to touch it without it breaking once again though I couldn’t get the wireless working last night. Haven’t tried it again yet though. I’m really hoping it doesn’t have to go back again.

Still haven’t sorted my server out either as I’m not entirely sure what route I want to go with it now.

On the plus side my fan is working perfectly. You can’t beat the good old fashioned reliable technology of a desk fan.

I arrived home to check up on the backing up process of my laptop to find everything in my room (save my laptop) dead. The power was off. Not to the rest of the hall. Or my lights. Just my power sockets (and wall lights) apparently. All my computer equipment was dead, my UPS was drained and that five hour backup process that was running – cancelled half way through. Awesome.

They finally got the power back on about 30 minutes ago Everything seems ok though I’ve lost everything I had open on my desktop (which is always a lot because I have stuff like web browsers with a dozen tabs open as well as notes in text documents (most of those are saved though).

I don’t know what went wrong really. I didn’t have that much running and it’s not like I suddenly turned something on and that tripped it as it happened when I was out. I had a really small load running at the time as well, it can only have been a few hundred watts at most.

It has propper messed up my schedule though. I need to get my laptop backups completed today and I’m supposed to be going to Kieran’s garden party this afternoon.

it’s going on 3am. I have to be up reasonably early tommorow so I was hoping to be in bed by midnight. Why am I still up at this time then? Trying to get my new computer working, that’s why. Yet it seems no matter what I do, it refuses to work.

As soon as I enable RAID then it refuses to boot as it just hangs at “verifying DMI pool data.” Yet if I turn it off, it boots fine I think. I managed to narrow down the problem as when I removed my RAID-1 and just had all the disks as non-raid entities though still controlled by the RAID controller it booted. Fully and everything, it normally hangs at GRUB when RAID is disabled but this booted Ubuntu and everything.

However when I tried to stick my DVD-ROM back in it refused to verify the DMI pool data again so basically I cannot re-create the problem with any degree of certainty, it just won’t work no matter what I do.

What is more annoying is that I shouldn’t be troubleshooting this pile of crap. Because I have a pile of crap laptop on the desk next to me that I need to back up all the data on before it goes back because it’s packed in working. Not that it will be going back any time soon because my pile of crap phone refuses to call DHL. It just ends the call as soon as a dial. Erm, WTF?

Basically I hope the people who made all this technology burn in the fiery depths of hell. I hate computers.

It’s often not until you loose something that you actually realise the value of what you have. That seems to be true of Windows. Having got Ubuntu running on my new server it really makes me appreciate just how well Windows works straight out of the box.

The stability as well. Ubuntu keeps crashing on boot up. It’s also very slow compared to Windows, it needs time to think to do everything and this is a brand new machine. It’s configuration also leaves a lot to be desired, not only is it simply missing the resolution I want (it’s not a problem with the monitor as I’m running the resolution on my Windows box, could be the graphics card though so I don’t want to point the finger too sharply at Ubuntu) but it has also misaligned the screen so that it’s too far to the right leaving me with a black strip down the left hand side and my shut down button missing off the right side of the screen.

As for configuration, I’m not taking to the Linux file structure. It wasn’t really a problem in my test box when I only had one hard drive but this whole unified file system doesn’t make much logical sense to me. I can see why it would be good but I much prefer having my hard drives and optical drives are separate entities. Not that it’s much of a problem as Ubuntu is blissfully unaware of my other two hard drives. I know I have to mount them but the point is, Windows would just do this for me. Ubuntu doesn’t even seem to have any kind of device manager to let me set these things up.

In my quest to get RAID working I re-install a DVD drive into the machine and stick the Ubuntu install CD in. It takes a good 10 minutes to boot LiveCD up because of the endless string of Buffer I/O errors that appear. Once it finally loads I decided GParted might do what I need. I’m wrong of course, it can’t detect any devices. Any. So I decided to try a re-install. Same thing.

Giving up on that I decide to play around with the BIOS some more. I eventually manage to find the option to enable RAID (it’s disabled by default) and now there is a RAID screen that appears for literally no more than a second with instructions on how to set up RAID. My manual for my motherboard hasn’t heard of any of this btw. In fact I’m not even sure what does it as I changed two settings from SATA mode to RAID mode (apparently if you use RAID you aren’t using SATA).

Out of interest when I first got back in after my break the machine wouldn’t do anything. I would turn it on but no output to the monitor or beeping. Now when I try to boot it stops at verifying DMI data pool. This is after the JMicro stuff spends a minute or two detecting my DVD-ROM every time I turn it on. So I insert the Edgy release and see if that will work. That takes me to the boot screen which locked the first time. Second time lucky maybe?

It spends a bit of time loading using the progress bar that goes back and forth. This then goes mental, throws a load of random characters accross the screen, freezes for 30 seconds, goes black with a blinking cursor, goes totally black then loads a blank orange desktop. Oh and guess what, yes, it’s misaligned the screen again. Edgy can’t work out the correct time like version 7 can do apparently. Having entered the settings the partion manager loads. It sees all 3 hard drives despite the fact two are now supposed to be configured in RAID.

I try to boot up the fresh install only for it to hang on the verifying DMI pool data. I go back into the BIOS and set everything back from RAID mode to SATA mode. This time it passes the DMI pool data verification and prints the words GRUB (the boot launcher) underneith before hanging.

I hate computers.

Ok so I unpack everything. I get the case out and take the thumb screws out of the back. After 10 minutes of fiddling I finally get the panels out. My understanding was the motherboard tray came out. It apparently doesn’t. This is after I had, had to unscrew two fans or whatever to get it to. Anyway, time to put the motherboard in.

I screw in my risers (once I’ve found them), and pull out the original back ports plate that came with the case and put my motherboard one in. It doesn’t fit. After 20 minutes of forcing it and bending my brand new case out of shape it goes in. I screw my motherboard in place as best I can with the few screws they provide for said purpose. Next I come to put the power supply in. Except, it won’t go in while the motherboard is on. So I unscrew the motherboard, put the PSU in, put the motherboard back on, screw it back on.

The second set of screws I try are long enough to actually screw in the PSU. Two of the four holes on the back of the case line up with the four screw holes in the PSU. Next for the CPU. I have to tear my way in as the box doesn’t open. I find a CPU fan inside making the one I bought rather redundant. Nice of them to tell me. After working out which bits are supposed to unclip I drop my CPU in place. Thanks to the clever design it doesn’t feel like it’s in right no matter which way you put it in. I eventually decide on a way and lock it into place.

Anyway I come to put my CPU fan in. Guess what? That’s right, the motherboard needs to come out again! I get the backplate in and put the motherboard back in. Now for the thermal paste. I’m a little confused as to why the cap is just metal with no hole for the paste to come out of. Eventually after a phone call with Maths Chris I get it sorted and manage to get the cooler on.

The memory goes in without much problems even though the slots and different styles for no apparent reason. The hard drives also slot in ok although they do move around a little. This seems standard with modern computers though.

Now I need to attach all the power cables. The ATX cable goes in fine. The case fans don’t match the motherboard though. Neither does the speaker / power LED / hhd LED / etc, there is like 10 of them, none of them match what is on the motherboard. Ironically enough, the instructions for the motherboard give something different to both what the case has and what the motherboard has! Not that I can really read much of the motherboard instructions as the writing is almost all in Chinese but it has a few English words to table the components as well as a diagram that doesn’t match up to what they offer.

I also begin to unpack the graphics card. The box has no simple way of opening. I manage to get a flap out only to find the box is divided into two and that everything is in the other seemingly unreachable compartment when keeping the box intact. Not that the card fits anyway.

So currently I need some taller screws because the ones supplied with the case aren’t tall enough to actually screw anything in, I need to work out how to wire my front side USB ports in because there is no English information in the manual and I need to solve the problem that the power LED wire takes 3 pins (even though it only has two wires and the middle pin doesn’t do anything) when there is only 2 on the motherboard as there should be.

This is why our industry has such a high failure rate.

It’s been a long wait. A very long wait. But the wait is finally over as long as I don’t mind skipping this whole revision thing ;). Kieran alerted me to the release of phpBB RC1 which is a major step forward in the road to a stable phpBB 3 as they will now provide upgrade paths and support.

I’m looking forward to having a play around with it as I haven’t pulled a copy down since the very early days when was fairly hard to gauge just how much of it had been improved because most of it didn’t really work yet. The feature list seems fairly promising though. I guess this means I’m going to have to launch some new forums which means I’ll have to buy some more domains. It’s a hard life :D.