Me and my Mac

Posts Tagged ‘broken’

2008 Wrecklist!

All the things that are computer/electronics related in random order and broke this year.
Everything on the list is/was owned by me and either needed to be repaired or thrown away. Most things i had to throw away and replace.

It seems this year so far is quite disastrous if not crap for my electronics, computer gear mostly.
I cannot recall so many things broke the year before… In fact, i doubt anything broke that year. Aside for some minor things.

The actual list of wrecked stuff:

• iPod touch - due to a short in the headphones.
• Lacie Edmini Ethernet disk - Broke twice actually, once due to a broken partition table.
• Macbook pro - on 4 different occasions: Superdrive, Sound I/O board, Memory and Topcase.
• 160GB Harddisk - Bad blocks.
• Netgear 8 port switch - Power adapter blew up the internal power thingy.
• 320GB Harddisk - Ruined drive heads.
• DSL Modem - Faulty firmware.
• Logitech MX1000 mouse - Fell of a table.
• AMD3000+ CPU - High pitched noise, resulted in unstable systems.
• AMD1500+ and Mainboard - CPU just died, condensators blew due to heating on the mainboard.
• 17″ Fan - Started leaking oil and the motor jammed.
• PC Powersupply 350W - Unstable DC output.
• Sony Ericsson W850I Cellphone - Bad signal all the time or no signal at all.
• Microsoft Comfort Curve keyboard - Non responsive keys.
• Stereo headset - Earpiece fell off.
• Blade saw - Broke whilst attempting to cut a beam.
• Macbook Pro battery - Just in time for warranty, would no longer charge.
• ATI Radeon 1650 512MB VGA - Just died with no explanation.

Let’s hope not too much breaks in the remainder of this year.

So i bought a Netbook 10″ today…

And returned it…

This one. I bought it from a colleague for a mere 150 euros. And was really happy about it. Reason for selling: “We melted the control key on the right and it’s too small”. No big deal i thought. So i forked over the 150 euros almost instantly after seeing it boot.
The happiness continued for a while but lessened when i noticed the “backspace” and “1″ keys didn’t respond. At first i blamed Ubuntu for picking the wrong keyboard layout. But no… It appears that some keys just didn’t work. I blame the melting of the control key since the keyboard connector i directly under it. Yes i took apart the laptop to fix it. And so did a colleague who tried the same.

To no avail. So, i need to save a bunch more money to buy me another .

An amazing discovery…

So here i was again. Installed a new harddisk, SATAII, in my server and went on with installing Ubuntu, since that still is a bit the distro of choice for some reason. I keep coming back to it…

Anyway, installed the whole thing. Ran updates and all seemed fine. Were it not that i can not log in in the regular Gnome session. I have to use the failsafe one. Which obviously omits some packages.
Further investigation shows me that my videocard is problematic due to a bug in Xorg (the app that handles visual output and basically governs the desktop). Ultrabummer! The video card is onboard and i thought it would be well suited for server use… And it would be if Xorg would support the thing.
This very well explains why Fedora kept screwing up after updates… Since Xorg was updated too. *sigh*.

So i have 4 options at the moment:
1. Install the *actual* server version of Ubuntu which does not use a desktop and with that go back in time 20 years with terminal.

or

2. Install the server version of ubuntu and somehow make Gnome work with it on some basic level comparable with the failsafe mode from Ubuntu.

or

3. Find another working PCI / PCI-express video card and use that for my desktop installation.

or

4. Use Windows. Which in my idea is no real option since i want a proper and secure webserver (with a system of which i know how it works) that has SSH and more of those things. In my experience it does not run well (if at all) on Windows.

My goal was to install a small server with a desktop and not use terminal at all, or limit it to an absolute minimum if possible. I’m not too fond of terminal/shell since i find it limiting, chaotic and inefficient. However, it works well otherwise. I’m spoiled with mice, colors, admin apps and remote desktop.

Ubuntu 8.04 LTS… Heck no!

Geez, all night i’ve been trying to figure out what’s wrong. The liveCD won’t book properly. It logs me in, hangs and again requires me to login. It’s a loop.
When i install Ubuntu directly it seems fine, installs. And on first boot requires me to log in, hangs, and asks again for my login.

Fine, broken distro/download… reassuring, but fret not! I still had Ubuntu 7.04. So i installed that. It booted fine. 224 updates. Installed those with the intention to run “apt-get dist-upgrade” (or whatever upgrades the distro these days) right after it. All went fine until the kernel updates were done. I had to reboot for that, naturally, and Ubuntu wouldn’t boot because my harddrive had bad blocks. Running fsck failed because of all he badness on my disk.

Further examination of the disk in another computer told me there are NO bad blocks and linux lied to me… Anyway, putting the disk back in it’s own case i tried to boot again, it booted. Miraculously. But since all updates were now installed it would not let me log in… Turns out Fedora died on me because of bad blocks a few days ago… I am investigating things here.

Linux, again, turns out to be utter rubbish!

Earlier, when i was still using this thing for a PC (well over 8 months ago) i ran Ubuntu 7.04 just fine on it. And Fedora too. Well, if some updates in Ubuntu break everything. Fuck all! It’s another distribution for me. Fedora being the logical choice since i know that one also.

A bunch of zeros

So after last weeks datadisaster i managed to recover many data using “data rescue II” at work. I decided to save office things only and loose any films, music and other data as i was not up for sorting through that again only to see it’s broken anyway, outdated or otherwise unnecessary to keep. Yea i had a lot of junk!

Anyway, i finally have a lazy day again and decided to put the “broken” 320GB disk back to work. But before i do that i’m writing it full of zeros to find if there are any bad blocks/sectors or whatever. I expect just that partition table to be broken so it’s another external drive for me if it works. So many disks lately… rating up to 4TB in total lately… Yea, it’s nuts.

An awfull start of the day :(

I wanted to look up some data today from my Ethernet disk and it didn’t respond, this is not so weird since it’s a bit sluggish at times… So i tried my imac which connectes automatically instead of via Finder… It came up with the error that the user was unknown or the drive not responding.

*sigh*

I climbed up to the attic to reboot the disk and heard a scratching noise coming from it. No wonder it won’t respond. It had died that night. Why do these things always happen to me!?

Remembering from last time when it broke i remembered that Lacie under warrantly kindly formatted my drive and swapped the casing and controller board. So in order to save my data (or try to) i needed some other sollution. So i bought an external casing and took apart the Lacie casing in order to retrieve my data. Set up some software to make Mac OS read “Linux partitions” via FUSE. But all it could come up with is that “a drive is present with 7 unreadable partitions”. And any attempt to even mount the drive turned out to be a huge clusterfuck!

Damage assessment at this moment?
I lost over 200GB of movies and tv shows
I lost my companies administration (which i have to keep for another 4 years)
I lost all of my disk images, imaged games and other applications i store for easy access
I lost a whole bunch of photos
All in all maybe 280GB of data.

maybe the guys at work can do some magic on the drive… but i have low hopes since all their tools and stuff are for repairing mac drives. This is linux…
Luckily i put my backups on Firewire disks these days. So those are not lost, phew!

Distractions are my excuse! Events is broken…

So with version 1.5.3 and probably 1.5.2 and even 1.5.1 a bug was introduced that the ending time wasn’t calculated properly.

Cleverly found and reported in this thread: http://forum.at.meandmymac.net/topic/endtime-returns-start-time-fix-included

Apologies! The error is corrected and you can redownload the version 1.5.3 and replace wp-events-functions.php with the new file. Just overwrite the thing, you don’t even have to disable the plugin or anything, just FTP it over the existing file.

Lately i’m a bit sloppy and slow on following up with updates. New job opportunities are the main reason. I have a lot on my mind because of it. Also some changes on my current job do not make my life easier… So viola!

Anyway, to fix the endtime issue, redownload the plugin. This is such a minot fix i made no new version out of it.

iPhone buggery!

Some thing weird just happened, i made a photo of a plate on my desk (don’t ask me why!)

And this is how it ended up looking:

Makes sense? No? No i didn’t photoshop it! Honestly…

i can haz blootooth mouze?

Why are they extinct? It’s so unfair! i don’t want a RF dongle on my precious laptop!!
Give me back my Logitech MX1000 Bluetooth!

GRRRR!

so yea… The damn thing finally broke last night. I tossed it of the table and wouldn’t lit it’s led or charge. That combined with the lousy charger which almost never worked i decided not even to bother and throw the mouse away, it was aging anyway. And went on to buy a new Bluetooth mouse today. No such luck would come to me.

People seem to be obsessed with RF and it’s stupid sluggish slow way of working. RF is sooooo 1991. Why not use a proper Bluetooth connection. Something a computer actually has built-in these days, well macs anyway, and some PC laptops do, sometimes…

The only bluetooth mouse i found was one from Trust. A cheap brand i won’t even touch the packaging of. It was a whopping 29 euros and has “laser technology with precision pointing array for extra high definition positioning” or some other high tech rubbish. Also it was very small, not even covering the palm of my hand…

All other mice were just “wireless” which practically means RF on “fast 2.4Ghz frequencies for noise free connections”. I don’t know about you, but 2.4Ghz is bound the be trouble… Wifi uses it, DECT phones do too, Wireless TV receivers and even Microwaves all mess about with that frequency and thus most likely will interfere with each other at some point. Especially since everyone uses it…

My search continues!
Any “formed-to-your-hand” Bluetooth mouse that is larger than average. Like the Logitech MX1000 or MX510 is good to consider i guess.

The forums

As many of you have seen i have a forum for general support and random topics (if you want).

Obviously there are some hitches in usage, some have notified me that the registration mail is not arriving or very slow. Please if you run into trouble… do not hesitate to contact me about it. If i don’t know the problem i cannot fix it… So contact me!

The register email should work now… this was caused by a plugin.