Archive for the ‘Tech’ Category

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.

As I’ve mention before, I’ve pretty much been unable to think about anything other than sound systems for the past few weeks. As such I’ve spent time re-searching them lots and trying to work out what I want if I suddenly find myself with like £3,000 and have to spend it on a sound system for some reason rather than using the money productively.

I say ultimate, it could be even more powerful and I’m sure nightclubs have more powerful systems. However I’m fairly sure that this is more powerful than some bars and indeed even clubs in Leeds have. Not bad for a bedroom system :D. Before I talk about my current design problems, I’ll let you have a look.

First off, the monitor is crap. It’s a floor monitor, a good one but for a DJ booth it’s probably not the best choice. Also, if the monitor is being used for a band, there is only one monitor for everyone rather than one monitor each.

Secondly, this presumes that if you connect two speakers to one amplifier channel, while it reduces the impedance and so increases the power, the power will be split between the speakers. If this is not the case the speakers could be overloaded. It is also the case with the sub-woofers that the amp is actually under powered.

Thirdly, the crossover which is before the sub-woofer amplifiers maybe unnessecarry given the other parts of the audio signal in the crossover are not being used. I don’t know if putting it in will actually have a negative effect as it means the sub-woofers will only be getting fed bass though most of them can do a larger range than that. If taken out the sub-woofers could be done in stereo rather than mono as they currently are.

Other concerns and general notes are there is no digital effects processor. I looked into putting one in but there didn’t really seem much point. Maybe there is, I’m open to the idea. Also there are no microphone pre-amplifiers which isn’t really needed given the mixing deck has mic pre-amps but it might boost quality a little. The equipment on the whole is a bit crap. A better DJ deck with XRL outputs would be good. There is no CD players and while the laptops can play CDs, DJs may prefer seperate CD players.

Finally, in terms of expansion, you could daisy chain several speaker stacks. If you got two distribution amplifiers and sent all the left channels to one and all the right channels to another you could have two identical speaker stacks acting in stereo with each other which would also take the power from 4.2kW to 8.4kW plus whatever the booth monitors output.

I promised a while back that I would post pictures of the PA system I got for Rationalist Week. Now I’ve finally got my phone transfering Bluetooth files again here they are. The first two are obviously one of the speakers (with a 500ml coke bottle for size reference) and the other two are the mixing deck and amplifier.

EMI and Apple have just announced a new edition to their offerings – EMI’s entire catalog will now be offered DRM free. For $.129 a track (opposed to the classic $0.99 which is still available) you get your tracks at 256kbps rather than 128kbps and DRM free though they will still be in AAC format.

This is one step closer to making buying music online a good alternative to buying the actual CD, indeed it’s by far the biggest one. You will now be able to move music between devices which was the major problem and it also solves the licences problem (losing them) as you can back up all your music without any problems.

I need a bigger credit limit! Whenever I want to buy a large purcahse on my credit card I have to move money over to my credit card. Looking back, I should have probably just bought it with my debit card and given up on the cash back. But anyway, it takes 3 working days for the money to clear – let’s count that. Today is Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday and we’re on day one, Tuesday day two, Wednesday it should finally be in there. That’s like a week from now!

If I wasn’t using online banking it would be sooooooooooooo much faster. I would simply go down to my account and draw the money out and go to the other bank or whatever and pay it in and it would be available instantly. But because I’m using debit card payments and electronic fund transfers (more usually) it takes forever to do anything. I mean 3 working days! Why do computers need the weekend off?!?

It actually is a 6 days. I say it’s Friday, it’s currently Thursday night for me but if you don’t get it sorted before 2pm it’s actually 4 working days which is why it’s effectively Friday in terms of timing. But in my time it’s going to be 6 days. I don’t even seem to be able to change my mind about transfering the money now.

Apparently my desktop didn’t take heed when I posted about DST. I thought I was going to get to bed a little after 3 and get in a good 8 hours – I’ve been robbed! My computer hasn’t re-adjusted itself automatically! Windows 95 could do that!

Seriously though, there is something wrong with Dell computers and telling the time. My desktop will sycronise itself and then within a few days it will be a minute or two out again. It’s turned on all the time so it’s not like it’s without power or even turned off but it can’t hold the time. Nor does it apparently know when DST changes happen as it’s set to automatically update with DST changes.