It’s not here

I ordered a SilenX 40mm case fan from FrozenCPU.com last week in order to replace the fan in my firewall. The current 40mm fan is very loud. Of course, the device was designed for use in server rooms so quiet operation was not a factor in it’s design.

The fan was shipped via Fed Ex Ground. I checked the Fed Ex site once I got a tracking number and it showed an estimated delivery date of 1/20/2007 (Saturday). That was on Tuesday. I checked it again on Friday afternoon around 3:30 p.m. and it showed that the package was delivered at 2:30 p.m. I was already home and must have not noticed it sitting by the front door.

I check around the front door and find nothing! I went and checked back around the garage door, because they sometimes leave packages there, and didn’t find it there either. Where’s my fan?

I called Fed Ex and they said they would have to put a driver trace on the package. Unfortunately, it will take 24-48 business hours to get a response. My only thought is that the driver delivered it to a street that is similar in name, it’s a Blvd. and my street ends with Court, by mistake. That, or I have some greedy neighbors.

Winning isn’t everything, but wanting to win is. – Vince Lombardi

21.Jan.07 Hardware Comments (0)

Kubuntu on free laptops

The school system I work for replaced out over 200 old Dell Inspiron 4000 laptops with newer models this past fall. Instead of sending them off to be recycled, everyone in the IT department was given the opportunity to take one (or four) for themselves. The rest of them would be held for parts. I decided to take a couple to give to the daughters of some friends of my in-laws.

The machines are decent:

One problem is that I couldn’t leave Windows XP installed because it was licensed to the school system. Windows XP didn’t run very well on the systems anyway. It was usable but somewhat slow. Instead of telling the people I was giving the laptops to that they would need to purchase a license for Windows 2000 (it runs really well on the laptop), I decided to just load it up with Kubuntu 6.10.

I based the decision to load Kubuntu on the fact that the daughters only needed to be able to surf the Internet, a lot, and write school papers. Kubuntu comes with OpenOffice so the school papers were covered. I set the default file extension for saving text documents to Microsoft Word so that they wouldn’t have to remember to change it every time. I also changed Calc to automatically save as an Excel file. Firefox was installed because they already use it at home on their XP system.

The TrueMobile 1150 NIC was removed because it is 802.11b and only supports WEP. They already purchased a couple of MSI 802.11g cardbus NIC’s for two other laptops, they died hence these replacements, so I installed those on the “new” laptops. The MSI cards use a Broadcom BCM4306 chipset. I initially assumed I would need to use NdisWrapper to make the cards work but that wasn’t the case. I found a document in the Ubuntu Community detailing another way to install the drivers. All I had to do was download/install bcm43xx-fwcutter and the Windows drivers for the NIC. I was able to install the program and drivers on the Inspiron 4000 by putting them on a USB drive and following the Edgy instructions. The only thing I had to do different than what the instructions said was to run sudo ifconfig eth0 down and sudo ifconfig eth0 up after step 1.3.2 before the network manager would recognize the NIC. After that, the MSI cards worked perfectly. I also installed KNetworkManager (NetworkManager front-end) to make it easy to switch between wireless networks.

Kubuntu is running really well on the systems. That’s not to say it will stay on there. If they decide to buy a license for Win2K, I’ll load that for them because that’s what they are more comfortable with.

Try not to become a man of success but a man of value. – Albert Einstein

15.Jan.07 Hardware, Operating Systems Comments (2)

Expanding storage on the PowerVault

I was given a Dell PowerVault 705N (NAS) last year that had four Quantum 30 GB hard drives. The drives were setup in a RAID 5 configuration so I had 90 GB of storage. That is quite a bit of storage but it simply wasn’t enough.

I recently came across a really good deal on some 7200 RPM Western Digital 80 GB drives so I decided to upgrade the NAS. Everything that was stored on the NAS was backed up to an external drive before I started working on it.

I removed the four 30 GB drives and installed the new 80 GB WD drives. Everything booted up fine but that’s about all that worked off the bat. I couldn’t access the admin web page for the NAS. Every time I tried, I would receive an error about missing language files. Resetting the NAS did nothing.

The software for the NAS runs on a flash memory chip on the motherboard. Something must have gotten corrupted after I swapped out the drives. I downloaded the software update package, as well as the PowerVault Assist program, from Dell in order to reload the system. The system worked fine after the reload.

The NAS automatically formatted the disk upon first boot since they were blank. I used the admin page to setup the disk configuration (RAID 5) and that took about 3 hours to complete. It took that long because it had to setup the RAID and build the backup disk. I now have 240 GB of storage for all the files I need to keep backed up.

Success does not consist in never making blunders, but in never making the same one a second time. – Josh Billings

10.Jan.07 Hardware, Networking Comments (5)

My iPod won’t turn off

It started a couple of days ago. When I tried to turn my iPod (60 GB) off, the screen went black but then it came back on. I thought that I may have accidentally clicked the wheel so I tried to shut it down again. It did the same thing.

The battery didn’t have a lot of charge so I just let it drain out. I recharged it today so I could listen to it while working in the garage. When it came time to shut it down, it didn’t want to turn off. In order to fix it, I had to reset it. It came on after the reset, all my music was still there, and I was able to shut it down properly.

While I’m on the subject of iPod, if you have one and a Linux/BSD machine, you should check out gtkpod (if you haven’t already). It’s not an iTunes clone. It is a GUI interface that allows you to manage songs/playlist on your iPod. The latest release (0.99.8) even supports phones like the Motorola RAZR V3i that run iTunes.

Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so too. – Voltaire

30.Dec.06 Hardware Comments (0)

Yet another motherboard

I moved my desk at work so that the outside door was no longer at my back. This involved having to disconnect my workstation and set it back up once my desk was turned around. Once everything was connected, I booted my system (Dell Precision 380) but it wouldn’t connect to the network.

It wasn’t a problem with the network cable or jacks because:

  1. It wouldn’t work on any jacks.
  2. It wouldn’t work with different cables.
  3. My laptop worked fine connected to the jacks at my desk.

In order to test the NIC, I downloaded the Broadcom diagnostic utility from the Dell support site. All test passed except the one for EEPROM. The status for it always showed “EEPROM is corrupted”.

Great. A new motherboard has been ordered, the NIC is integrated, but it won’t be at my office until Thursday. I just replaced the motherboard two or three months ago because the PCI-E slot was failing. Good thing we have the 3 year warranty on it because the original warranty expired last month.

A woman drove me to drink and I never even had the courtesy to thank her. – W.C. Fields

17.Oct.06 Hardware, Networking Comment (1)

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