Category: Hardware news


News for this month

Need to clear my news buffer.

Built and sold a PC.
Too lazy to write full specs, but it’s based on a quad core Athlon 2, 4GB RAM and HD4670 video.

Also got some new hardware:
Bought a new MP3 player (an old stock Sandisk Sansa Fuze) to replace my previous one (also a Sandisk, with a broken dock connector (the cable is fine though)).
Installed Rockbox on it. Everything works fine. Too bad the battery life is kinda low for a new player. Maybe because it’s old stock.
Also bought a Wireless N USB stick. It works fine (even has an antenna). It is a rebranded (TP-LINK) Atheros Wireless N USB stick based on AR9271 chipset.
It works fine but driver installer does not install Atheros wireless extension DLL (athext.dll) which is required for automatic wireless configuration after a system restart.
I have to disable and enable (or unplug and re-plug) the wireless adapter for it to work again after a restart.

Also, got an Acer laptop for repair. Bad video card, a GeForce 8600M GS.
Red stripes in BIOS during boot. Windows boots and runs fine until I install the video card drivers.
After that, in Windows 7 the system freezes on Windows logo while booting, in XP I get a corrupted BSOD after the Windows logo and the system restarts.
The drivers are fine as the system worked fine with the same drivers before.
The good thing that the card is a MXM (Mobile PCI Express Module), so it should be replaceable.
Now I need to find a compatible MXM card to replace the dead card with.

My 8800GTX in my main system also seems to have a potentially bad GPU. But it’s well cooled and is running fine for 3 years already so it should be fine until I decide to upgrade the video card.

That’s all for now.

Network server

I’ve recently replaced my virtual server with a physical machine.
I’ve used an old Pentium 3 PC as a server. It cost me nothing to build because I already had all the needed parts in my junk pile.
Now, the specs:
CPU: P3 1 GHz cD0
MB: Intel Easton (D815EEA, i815 based)
RAM: 512MB (2×128,1×256)
HDD: 40GB Samsung
CD/DVD: an old LiteOn DVD burner
LAN: 4 NICs (2 in use).
PSU: 230W Hipro
OS: Win2003

The new server does everything my virtual server did (DNS, DHCP, Torrents) plus it also serves as a IPTV to HTTP proxy (like udpxy, I’ve previously used, or, if exactly, tried to use). This also solves my IPTV problem. The new server runs fine. It could use more RAM though, as it only has 512MB and often runs out of memory. Too bad, i815 only supports 512MB (Intel did this because some older P3s were actually better than early P4s).

But I’ve recently (in fact, while writing this post) experienced some strange issues with IPTV connections dropping. I wonder if this is related to the proxy software, server itself, or it’s just a bad IPTV signal (happens sometimes too).
(the error message in IPTV proxy’s logs said something about too many dropped packets).

Will update, when I will have more news.

Bought some new hardware for my secondary PC.
Installed additional 2 TB (a Samsung HD204UI) hard drive and replaced 2x1GB (so 2GB) Kingston RAM with 2x2GB (4GB) Kingston RAM.
Old 2x1GB modules went back to my primary system, from which they were removed about a year ago.

Hard drive is working fine so far. Shows 1.86 TB in Windows.
RAM is a different story. No, the RAM modules are OK, but my 32 bit Windows (Windows 7 to be exact) only shows 3.25GB of RAM instead of 4GB.

Because it would be too much work to reinstall all my stuff on 64 bit OS, I’ve decided to Google for a solution on how make all of my 4 GB RAM usable in 32 bit Windows.
And I have found it. I have found a kernel patch which allows 32 bit Windows to use more than 4 GB RAM.
In fact, even Microsoft themselves have admitted that 32 bit Windows can use more than 4 GB RAM when using PAE (Physical Address Extension) but they artificially limited the maximum amount of memory in 32 bit client systems to 4GB. 32 bit server systems can support up to 128 GB.

I won’t post the patch here. You can find it by googling for “windows pae patch wj32”. Patches are available for Vista and 7.
Be warned that this is a kernel patch. Use with caution.

It turned out that the software I wanted to use to redirect IPTV traffic does not work as expected. Some packets are dropped due to insufficient cache size (which is only 64KB) resulting corrupted video. There was an option to change the cache size but it did not work. The version of UDPXY I’m using cannot sustain re-broadcasting a 4.5Mbit/s stream through HTTP without corruption. I need to significantly increase the minimum cache size. This can be done only by recompiling the application. I can recompile UDPXY from the sources on the router directly but I need to install Optware and the development tools. They can only be installed in a SD card or a network share. Because my router does not have an SD card mod, network drive is the only option.
But the problem is that Windows LANMAN Server (the one used to host network shares) drops connections too often, resulting in failed installations.
So far I’ve been able to install Optware, but was not able to successfully install the development tools yet.
In case I won’t find a way to install the dev tools on the router, I guess I’ll have to use Linux running in a VM to cross-compile UDPXY and then upload it to the router.
Will post when I will have more news.

IPTV and VLANs: Problem Solved

I have a Linksys WRT150N router running DD-WRT (Linux based router OS, original Linksys OS was crap). Because my ISP uses separate networks for IPTV and Internet, I had to connect IPTV network cable to a LAN port on my router for IPTV to work. But that created a major problem. My wireless and LAN was constantly being flooded with IPTV multicast data (at ~4.5Mbits), regardless if the IPTV player program on my PC was running or not.
This flood of IPTV data rendered my Wireless network useless because it could not serve the Internet properly due to being constantly flooded with data (it was nearly impossible to connect and the speed was < 10KB/s).
I’ve found a solution on Google. It suggested creating separate VLANs (Virtual LANs) for IPTV and the rest of the network, thus separating IPTV port from the rest of the network, and redirecting data from IPTV port to the rest of the network through HTTP.

I thought I would create a separate VLAN for IPTV . But on DD-WRT site, they say that my router does not support VLAN.
But when searching the forums I’ve found out that my router does indeed support VLAN (I have a newer hardware revision), but I need to update to the latest SVN (subversion) build of DD-WRT and I need to enable VLAN function from the shell.
I’ve successfully created two separate VLANs, one for IPTV port and one for all other ports and blocked multicast data from going outside IPTV VLAN.
I’ve loaded udpxy to my router to forward IPTV data from IPTV VLAN to main VLAN through http.
Now when I watch TV on my PC, IPTV data only goes to the PC on which I’m watching TV.
Now my wireless and LAN is no longer being flooded with IPTV data. I guess wireless should now work fine too, but I have no laptop or a working wireless card to test it.

Another stone dead PC

Got another PC for repair.
This one stopped working after a sudden power failure.
Specs are:
CPU: AMD Sempron (unknown, was too lazy to take the heatsink off), Socket 754
MB: ASRock KBNF4G-SATA2 (Or K8BNF4) (nForce, with built in GF6100 GPU)
RAM: AM1 512MB DDR
HDD: Excelstor 80GB IDE
PSU: Codegen 300W

Totally stone dead, no beeps (even without RAM). Fans run, but nothing more.
Tried clearing CMOS, swapping PSUs, tried running with only RAM & CPU (& built in VGA) but the system remained totally dead.
Probably the crappy Codegen PSU did not like the sudden power failure or maybe a power surge went through it and killed something on the board. The PSU still works through, voltages seem to be in spec.

Another system bites the dust. Good for parts only.

Ordered myself a USB 3.0 expansion card and a 500GB 2.5″ USB 3.0 external hard disk.
From the benchmarks, USB 3.0 looks at least 3x faster when it comes to external hard disks (70-80 MB/s vs 20-30 MB/s for a 2.5″ drive).

USB 3.0 hasn’t hit the mainstream yet.
But there are already USB 3.0 flash drives, external HDDs and external HDD boxes available. USB 3.0 will definitely replace USB 2.0, probably just like 2.0 replaced 1.0.

Will update the blog when my new hardware arrives.

Two dead laptops

At last I’ve found some time to update my blog.

A week ago, I got two laptops for repair.
Laptop 1 was a custom build based on Asus board. It had a Core Duo CPU with ATI video (pre HD Radeon) This one was stone dead. Even running with only RAM and CPU did not work.
The strange thing is that the CPU was getting hot as if the system was working but there was no disk activity and the screen was blank.
Either way, I did not bother trying to repair this system. My suspicions are that either the processor or the mainboard is toast and the system is not worth fixing.

Laptop 2 was a Dell Latitude D620.
This one was semi-working but had video problems. The system did work and boot (there was disk activity) but the screen was blank.
I’ve managed to get the video to work (sort of) by using an external monitor but the video was corrupted (Windows XP boot screen was all messed up. Even the BIOS setup screen was slightly corrupted).
Then I’ve tried disconnecting the external monitor and the internal screen suddenly started working but the video was unstable (the screen was turning itself on and off like crazy)
and had artifacts. After some time the video stopped working at all (both external and internal monitors).

It seems this is a common problem with some laptops. The graphics chip (mostly nVidia chips) BGA (ball grid array) soldering cracks and stops making contact.
The system still works (sort of) but the video is dead or unstable.
This problem can be fixed by replacing the graphics chip but it is usually not worth it because this requires special tools for working with BGA chips and, of course, a new graphics chip which is expensive.

The owner has asked me to backup all data on the hard disk. Fortunately, the HDD was SATA so I have connected it to one of my desktop systems and backed up all data to DVDs.
After the backup was complete, I’ve returned the system and backup DVDs to the system owner.

This ends today’s story.

Stone dead IBM desktop

Yesterday, I was trying to fix a P4 era IBM desktop.
This one has a P4 3Ghz HT CPU, 768MB RAM (512MB + 256MB upgrade), some AGP video card, 2 hard disks (one SATA and one IDE) and 2 optical drives. The motherboard is some IBM rebranded Intel (Foxconn) board.
The case and PSU are proprietary (but PSU uses a standard ATX plug). PSU is Hipro 230W (?) with a dead fan.

Now the problem:
The title says it all. The system is stone dead. It does nothing except turning on and off. Tried clearing CMOS, running with a different PSU, swapping video cards, running on integrated VGA, running with only one RAM module, running without any RAM at all (no beeps).
This system does not show any signs of life. No beeps and nothing on display. The hardware shutdown (hold power button for a few seconds) works though. I suspect that the BIOS might be corrupt (and there’s no way to restore it because the BIOS chip is soldered in). Too bad I don’t have a POST card…

None of my s478 boards fit in this proprietary IBM case so I cannot just rebuild the PC using one of my s478 boards.
So this system is probably good for parts only (CPU, RAM, VGA, HDDs, etc.) unless the system owner would find a compatible board that would fit.

Fixing yet another PC

The title says it all. Fixing yet another PC.
This time, it’s a P3 era PC with a 1 Ghz Celeron Coppermine cD0
But the PC is in a really bad condition. I’ve had to do a nearly complete rebuild to return this system to a working state.
1. Motherboard (branded Manli) had some bad capacitors near CPU socket (8 identical caps, one leaking)
2. The system had a really crappy power supply (very light and specs overrated)
3. One of 2 PCI133 RAM modules was bad
4. (on the software side) Windows install was corrupted (not even safe mode worked)

Here’s what I did:
1. Replaced the motherboard with Intel D815EEA (nearly a complete system rebuild)
2. Replaced the bad Samsung 256MB RAM module with 256MB Micron (Nanya OEM)
3. Replaced the power supply with a 350W Codegen I had laying around (not the best PSU, but much better than the one it replaced)
4. Added another hard drive (a ye olde Samsung 10GB)
5. Reinstalled XP

Now, some more details.
I could not install XP on this system. The setup always stopped with “Could not copy file x” or “File x was not copied correcly”. Attempting to retry the file copy had no effect or resulted in some random BSOD. Sometimes, the setup would just crash with a BSOD during file copy.
I’ve tried using my UBCD to scan the hard disk, but WinPE always crashed with some BSOD soon after booting to desktop.
I’ve spent a few hours trying to figure out what was wrong. It turned out that one of the RAM modules was bad (the system had one Samsung 256MB module and one 128MB RAM module branded Exram, 256MB Samsung was bad).
Replacing it with a 256MB Micron solved the problem.

Now I need to:
1. Install all the needed software (Office suite, media players, video codecs, etc.)
2. Restore the owner’s old data from a HDD backup.

I hope I will have no more problems with this system.

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