Technology Headaches
My IT related budget is severely constrained of late, that does not seem to affect the rate of breakdown of my computer equipment. Indeed, it seems that the Critical Need Detector* is not only installed in cars and major appliances, but computer equipment also.
We have an HP color Laserjet 4600dn that has been working very well for years. We have replaced most of the toner cartridges twice, that is indeed a long time. Saturday it stopped talking to everything. No idea what the problem is. It also has trouble booting all the way up (it took five tries to get it all the way up.) The thing prints the config and demo pages perfectly, but nothing over the network. I do have a 4650dn in the basement. The duplexer on that printer is broken somehow, it jams every time it tries to print duplex. Fortunately, it uses the same cartridges as the 4600, or I would be really cussing the extra toner I have. I have the basement printer working for now (it did take some doing.)
The graphics card in my computer kept getting sicker. An AGP 7800 GS adapter. It was quite nice some years ago, and was more than adequate for my present needs until about a year back. I was getting persistent green and red pixels in the display, then the text modes stopped being usable due to red and green pixelated fuzz across the display in several lines. The DOS mode was unusable (some of my favorite games are DOS based.) I finally got a replacement Radeon HD 4650 card. The sound level for my system dropped by likely 20 dBs, that is HUGE. The screen hung when starting X, but logging in from a different system and changing the xorg.conf to radeon fixed that. The problem now is the lack of speed in the display, like scrolling web pages are a pain. I likely need radeonfb, but I haven't tried it yet.
I came across a SUN workforce 450 server maxed out on memory and CPU's, but no drives. I can't get an ok prompt on my dumb tube for anything. I am also fixing network issues faster than I can carve out time to work on it.
We have an Epson Workforce 520 Printer/Fax/Scanner/Copier that is an inkjet device. We needed the inkjet stuff for some of Crunch's craft projects. The problem is that the think will not work with linux! If I had known that beforehand, I would not have gotten it, in spite of the 1/3 price special. The trouble now is that the FAX only works with some numbers. I have no idea why it works some places, but not others, but it is positively capricious. Crunch needs the fax capability really often right now, it is a constant annoyance that the thing only works sometimes. It does not work with the numbers that Crunch needs to fax to most often. The constant support issue is not doing well for my peace of marriage. My idea now is to hook a fax/modem up to the Mac and use it for faxing, and the Epson for scanning. Perhaps later today. Stay away from the Epson POS combo devices!
My backup server threw a spanner in the works and will not emerge an update list anymore. (emerge -p --deep world &> world.txt) It can't find ~poppler and I can't unmerge it. It sounds like it is in the world tree by mistake, but I hate editing those config files by hand!
*The Critical Need Detector is the device in major and critical pieces of equipment that causes them to break, irreparably, when your bank account can least bear the cost of repair/replacement.
We have an HP color Laserjet 4600dn that has been working very well for years. We have replaced most of the toner cartridges twice, that is indeed a long time. Saturday it stopped talking to everything. No idea what the problem is. It also has trouble booting all the way up (it took five tries to get it all the way up.) The thing prints the config and demo pages perfectly, but nothing over the network. I do have a 4650dn in the basement. The duplexer on that printer is broken somehow, it jams every time it tries to print duplex. Fortunately, it uses the same cartridges as the 4600, or I would be really cussing the extra toner I have. I have the basement printer working for now (it did take some doing.)
The graphics card in my computer kept getting sicker. An AGP 7800 GS adapter. It was quite nice some years ago, and was more than adequate for my present needs until about a year back. I was getting persistent green and red pixels in the display, then the text modes stopped being usable due to red and green pixelated fuzz across the display in several lines. The DOS mode was unusable (some of my favorite games are DOS based.) I finally got a replacement Radeon HD 4650 card. The sound level for my system dropped by likely 20 dBs, that is HUGE. The screen hung when starting X, but logging in from a different system and changing the xorg.conf to radeon fixed that. The problem now is the lack of speed in the display, like scrolling web pages are a pain. I likely need radeonfb, but I haven't tried it yet.
I came across a SUN workforce 450 server maxed out on memory and CPU's, but no drives. I can't get an ok prompt on my dumb tube for anything. I am also fixing network issues faster than I can carve out time to work on it.
We have an Epson Workforce 520 Printer/Fax/Scanner/Copier that is an inkjet device. We needed the inkjet stuff for some of Crunch's craft projects. The problem is that the think will not work with linux! If I had known that beforehand, I would not have gotten it, in spite of the 1/3 price special. The trouble now is that the FAX only works with some numbers. I have no idea why it works some places, but not others, but it is positively capricious. Crunch needs the fax capability really often right now, it is a constant annoyance that the thing only works sometimes. It does not work with the numbers that Crunch needs to fax to most often. The constant support issue is not doing well for my peace of marriage. My idea now is to hook a fax/modem up to the Mac and use it for faxing, and the Epson for scanning. Perhaps later today. Stay away from the Epson POS combo devices!
My backup server threw a spanner in the works and will not emerge an update list anymore. (emerge -p --deep world &> world.txt) It can't find ~poppler and I can't unmerge it. It sounds like it is in the world tree by mistake, but I hate editing those config files by hand!
*The Critical Need Detector is the device in major and critical pieces of equipment that causes them to break, irreparably, when your bank account can least bear the cost of repair/replacement.