Geek: IT day
Being self employed I get the rewards of doing all my own IT and tech support, yesterday was a busy day in the IT department.
Vaccumed the many parts collecting dust like crazy. Where does this stuff come from so quickly!? and why do air filters do such a bad job at collecting it first? I think they should make the PC's into giant monoliths that are easy to wipe down, and no cracks as the dust is like electrostatic snow, and evenly blankets pretty much everything with electrons running through it. It sometimes feels like I have a cotton candy maker, despite not having any pets, other than myself and being a relatively short hair at that.
Removed the (now ancient) Hauppauge Tivoish MPEG2/TV Card. Hardly ever used it, sadly it was hardly ever worth using (maybe 10 hours of capture? making the digitized versions about the price of DVD these days), the MPEG capture took a while to start, then would drop a 1 seconds frames like every 3-10 seconds, despite new machine, fast drive, spending hours etc. It's one of those things like green bananas, had promise but never fully ripened then had to be tossed out, as it's not worth anything.
Installed the PCI dual head video card in prep for the new monitors arriving soon. Now have 1.5 monitors as in the second temp monitor doesn't have a stand so is partly obscured, I call it MiniMonitor *curls pinky by mouth*. The other lead is going to the projector which is kinda fun mousing between a desktop spread on opposite walls, *spins on chair whee!!*
Discovered switching the M-Audio sound card from the PCI Studio board's firewire port to the lead firewire port off the motherboard keeps the sound card from disconnecting when the machine pauses momentarily, as it has been again with increasing severity (bleh). I have been still working on the premise that the power supply is failing, as removing drives extends the life, but now have evidence it's not. Sometimes these issues are like a chinese puzzle box, things seem connected but they are really two different things or something completly different.
The machine hanging seems to be a badish 120GB harddrive, which is weird. Normally harddrives fail they give all sorts of problems centering around making excess noise (scratching) or corrupting data. In this case no problems reading or writing, other than the fact it beeps and temporarily hangs the machine in the process, which I suppose is like the machine having Narcolepsy. No biggie though, all the data (installs and media) was copied off to the other 320GB hard drive intact, and drives are pretty cheap. It's entirely possible though the power supply is going bad, and the other drives just aren't as vocal about it, and it's entirely possible the old drive truly did (or is going bad) due to the shoddy power. We'll see.
As soon as I rebooted with the old drive taken out to verify the fix, the new video card is no longer outputting a signal. *sigh*. Then I started worrying as plugging in the main 320GB data drive as it first didn't show up, thankfully it was easy to fix, just had to mount it with the computer disk admin tool, which I've never recall having to do before.
Hooked up the various sound modules of the 3 synths, and audio card together for the housemate to use when I'm out and about. Now my 88 key controller can play hold music, when I'm on hold :) metaeducation gave a nice jam, and performance, knowing his gear so well.
Now hopefully I can get back to work.
Vaccumed the many parts collecting dust like crazy. Where does this stuff come from so quickly!? and why do air filters do such a bad job at collecting it first? I think they should make the PC's into giant monoliths that are easy to wipe down, and no cracks as the dust is like electrostatic snow, and evenly blankets pretty much everything with electrons running through it. It sometimes feels like I have a cotton candy maker, despite not having any pets, other than myself and being a relatively short hair at that.
Removed the (now ancient) Hauppauge Tivoish MPEG2/TV Card. Hardly ever used it, sadly it was hardly ever worth using (maybe 10 hours of capture? making the digitized versions about the price of DVD these days), the MPEG capture took a while to start, then would drop a 1 seconds frames like every 3-10 seconds, despite new machine, fast drive, spending hours etc. It's one of those things like green bananas, had promise but never fully ripened then had to be tossed out, as it's not worth anything.
Installed the PCI dual head video card in prep for the new monitors arriving soon. Now have 1.5 monitors as in the second temp monitor doesn't have a stand so is partly obscured, I call it MiniMonitor *curls pinky by mouth*. The other lead is going to the projector which is kinda fun mousing between a desktop spread on opposite walls, *spins on chair whee!!*
Discovered switching the M-Audio sound card from the PCI Studio board's firewire port to the lead firewire port off the motherboard keeps the sound card from disconnecting when the machine pauses momentarily, as it has been again with increasing severity (bleh). I have been still working on the premise that the power supply is failing, as removing drives extends the life, but now have evidence it's not. Sometimes these issues are like a chinese puzzle box, things seem connected but they are really two different things or something completly different.
The machine hanging seems to be a badish 120GB harddrive, which is weird. Normally harddrives fail they give all sorts of problems centering around making excess noise (scratching) or corrupting data. In this case no problems reading or writing, other than the fact it beeps and temporarily hangs the machine in the process, which I suppose is like the machine having Narcolepsy. No biggie though, all the data (installs and media) was copied off to the other 320GB hard drive intact, and drives are pretty cheap. It's entirely possible though the power supply is going bad, and the other drives just aren't as vocal about it, and it's entirely possible the old drive truly did (or is going bad) due to the shoddy power. We'll see.
As soon as I rebooted with the old drive taken out to verify the fix, the new video card is no longer outputting a signal. *sigh*. Then I started worrying as plugging in the main 320GB data drive as it first didn't show up, thankfully it was easy to fix, just had to mount it with the computer disk admin tool, which I've never recall having to do before.
Hooked up the various sound modules of the 3 synths, and audio card together for the housemate to use when I'm out and about. Now my 88 key controller can play hold music, when I'm on hold :) metaeducation gave a nice jam, and performance, knowing his gear so well.
Now hopefully I can get back to work.