PSU is fine
OK, so I had to learn details about ATX power supplies the hard way, didn’t I. ATX PSUs do not power up if there is something fishy with the motherboard. In this case, it included an extra USB connector from the case. Turns out that it’s not enough that pin diagrams match, they also have to match reality.
My PC now works fine, it’s considerably quieter and cooler than before. Restoring stuff to a state resembling the way it was before the hard drive crash will take weeks. I will have to get some dedicated hardware for backups in the future, the ones I had were broken or incomplete. The Buffalo Terastation looks like an interesting candidate. 750 GB of RAID5 on a gigabit NAS unit.
[/computing/hardware] permanent link
2005-04-25Broken hardware
Last year, I had the dubious pleasure of losing five hard drives. Three I owned, two others I used. I thought I had used up my quota of broken drives for a while. Last weekend, my PC hung completely on shutdown, which is not unheard of. When I rebooted, Windows failed to boot because of a broken system registry. After digging around a bit, I realized that the drive was failing - fast. Managed to grab some kind of an image of the remaining file system, though. Eventually even the S.M.A.R.T. status of the drive went to critical, but boy was it late!
Last year, I suspected that one failure was heat-related, so I considered upgrading my PC enclosure. Never got around to it, but now I bought a new one when I grabbed a new 200 GB hard drive for a system drive. Turns out the 200 GB ones have the best price per GB these days.
I installed the new hard drive, partitioned it, installed XP, recovered some data. I even went on to install some critical software (read: Battlefield Vietnam), before I decided to play it safe. That is, I went on to swap enclosures before I had spent hours installing all the stuff I need and want. Good thing I did it, because now the bloody thing won't power up. Even worse, it won't even give me an ATX activity light.
I hope I just have a dud power supply, but with my luck, I have blown the motherboard as well. Stay tuned for more sad details as they unravel.
PS. I got the Antec Sonata.
[/computing/hardware] permanent link
2005-04-13Risks of Biometric Passwords
EPIC has released a good analysis of the security of RFID-equipped biometric passports. It seems that the american authorities continue on their blatantly incompetent course on privacy matters.
Let’s hope that biometric passports issued in the EU are better.
2005-04-06Topfield TF5100CoC
I just recived my ProCaster PVR5101C, which essentially is a rebranded Topfield PVR. After just a couple of evenings’ use, I am pretty sure it will change the way I watch television. In addition to “just recording” programs like I did with my VCR, the PVR actually keeps recording everything I watch. This means that I can instantly jump back if I happen to miss something – which happens a lot because of our two kids. No hassle with changing tapes or figuring out where I have space left on a tape. No winding and rewiding tapes. And if I by chance want to archive someting, I can copy the stuff to my PC using USB and burn a DVD for my archives.