Tag Archives: hard drive

forced upgrade cycle, how bored must I be?

2008.02.01 – 2:13 pm PST

R.I.P 2006-2008 - 2nd hand Pentium 4 2.4Ghz CPU and ASUS Motherboard.

This morning I awoke to the peculiar sounds of my home server turning on and off rapidly. I didn’t have time to do any digging into the issue before physical therapy so I just flipped the power switch off. When I got home, fearing that my somewhat new and very expensive Antec super efficient power supply had failed, I got out my trusty power supply tester. Luckily the tester showed everything was fine, which means it’s the motherboard. *sigh* more rubbish. I guess I need to start shopping for a new(to me) one. It is about that time when all my computers start to walk off the cliff like lemmings. Hopefully I can salvage the RAM to sell and or determine if the CPU is still good and reincarnate the system again. Maybe it’s time I round up all the hardware I have and just get rid of it all in order to buy brand new stuff and make it a complete upgrade cycle. With hard drive density soaring and Moore’s law continuing to show no mercy, my aged technology is whooping my ass. The most rugged piece of technology I own is a 15″ Mag Technology DX1595 Color Monitor which I purchased in 1996. 12 years isn’t bad. Hopefully this year I will replace it with a LCD.  Who can say they’ve had a piece of technology for that long which still works.  I’d like to know.

By px | Posted in hardware, personal | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

a switch to ubuntu.

2007.10.23 – 2:31 pm PDT

A couple days ago I accidentally(and I did the first step of it on accident, truthfully. ) switched the [tag]Operating System[/tag] on my [tag]dad[/tag]’s laptop from Windows XP Home*barf*, to [tag]Ubuntu[/tag]. In that process I later decided to try out the encrypted drive option on the alternative install CD. With little hesitation after I decided on moving my ~/ stuff over from my [tag]Gentoo[/tag] system running on a [tag]laptop[/tag] [tag]hard drive[/tag] to the new Ubuntu system I easily setup for my dad. I was running a drive over usb which is only practical for so long, it really makes the drive feel slower to me. The only major configuration issue I had with the move was that not all my [tag]Microsoft Intelimouse[/tag] buttons were working the way I like them to. With a quick edit, by adding a new Input Device section to my xorg.conf, I was content.

Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier     "USBMouse0"
    Driver         "mouse"
    Option         "SendCoreEvents" "true"
    Option         "Protocol" "auto"
    Option         "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
    Option         "ZAxisMapping" "4 5 8 9"
    Option         "ButtonMapping" "1 2 3 6 7 10 11"
EndSection

I wonder why this isn’t standard info for the Microsoft Intelimouse Optical USB/PS2 when it’s found plugged into my system.
I also gave him the Windows XP Home in a innotek virtualbox so he can run a certain proprietary piece of software which he needs.

By px | Posted in Gentoo, Ubuntu, hardware | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

a friends’ “dead” laptop

2006.05.28 – 1:44 am PDT

Using UBCD Insert is INSERT Version 1.2.14 modified for Ultimate Boot CD I was able to read an NTFS partition on a hard drive that was locked using Compaq DriveLock.

The newer version of INSERT 1.3.6 cannot boot the kernel without locking up, unless you use the failsafe.

Now if only I could wipe the whole drive.

all this leads me to belive that the linux 2.4.x kernel series can override the disklock somehow.

update:
ok so i got the drive wiped nicely. drivelock is still in effect so we have to hit enter a few times every power up/reboot. but atleast the laptop allows the HDD to be booted.
Ubuntu installs OK. Microsoft XP installed OK.

By px | Posted in Linux, hardware, technology | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Bad Behavior has blocked 800 access attempts in the last 7 days.

>>>>>>> .r246