shamino wrote on 2024-02-10, 06:53:

I have a Gigabyte "Ultra Durable" AM3 Phenom2 board that I've owned since new. It's never been very good as far as reliability […]
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I have a Gigabyte "Ultra Durable" AM3 Phenom2 board that I've owned since new. It's never been very good as far as reliability and things working correctly.
Out of necessity I started using it as my office PC. It's a terrible choice for that, but I don't have anything better handy.
A few days ago it started giving beep codes about the video card instead of booting.
Even after reseating and then swapping video cards it was still giving the same code. The edge connector looked clean, and it was just sitting there for the last few months so no idea how it managed to lose contact.
After Deoxit though, it started working again.
I didn't think I needed to Deoxit a connector on something this young, that was already in functional contact with a card.

Just one more act of this machine trying to frustrate me. It likes attention.

Do you live in a humid or salty environment? Cause areas like that things can start corroding quite quickly. You can also get a reaction between the card edge and the slot contacts if the gold plating isn't all that good.

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2024-02-10, 14:29:

Do you live in a humid or salty environment? Cause areas like that things can start corroding quite quickly. You can also get a reaction between the card edge and the slot contacts if the gold plating isn't all that good.

I had that with 2 boards. The guy has his house 100m from the sea (lucky chap).
They needed a thorough wash and some deoxit. Gold plating isn't like 40 years ago I guess 😀

Pic of the cpu cap I had issues with + a socket 1155 pin that broke and I repaired.

Basically I put a copper wire and soldered it to the stump (the head of the pin broke and wasn't making contact; it was already broken but it broke even more, still making contact though).
I then added some solder to strengthen it a bit. It isn't that elastic anymore but "springy" enough to stay in place.

Edit: the cpu, i3, I desoldered the cap from, became very hot vey fast. The I5 I have get warm and can even boot without getting as hot. I'm sure it died and is now useless.
I'll make a keychain with the ihs.

I tried to troubleshoot a video problem on my desktop (certain videos were stretched too wide), but as soon as I got my laptop out to rule out a driver problem (different hardware), it fixed itself.

On the laptop, Windows switched the email client from Mail to "Outlook (new)," which contains ads disguised as unread emails in your inbox unless you pay $1.99/month (and as an extension to enshittification, the ad-free option will inevitably become ad-reduced). I switched to Thunderbird, which seems pretty bloated for an email client, but it doesn't have always-on background processes to disguise its RAM usage like the Microsoft email software (their RAM usage is incorporated into the idle RAM usage for Windows). I might look for something lighter, but it isn't a big deal with 16GB of RAM.

I still haven't switched to Linux. I'm still looking for video capture software that works, but aside from that, I think I can go entirely to Linux. My two Microsoft Office licenses (one 2016 and one 2019 - no subscriptions) are going to go to waste, but maybe I'll keep Windows in a VM or have a dedicated Windows box. I've been told that if you try to dual-boot Linux with Windows 10 or 11, some Windows updates will remove GRUB and replace it with the Microsoft bootloader, so only Windows will boot.

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2024-02-10, 14:29:

shamino wrote on 2024-02-10, 06:53:

I have a Gigabyte "Ultra Durable" AM3 Phenom2 board that I've owned since new. It's never been very good as far as reliability […]
Show full quote

I have a Gigabyte "Ultra Durable" AM3 Phenom2 board that I've owned since new. It's never been very good as far as reliability and things working correctly.
Out of necessity I started using it as my office PC. It's a terrible choice for that, but I don't have anything better handy.
A few days ago it started giving beep codes about the video card instead of booting.
Even after reseating and then swapping video cards it was still giving the same code. The edge connector looked clean, and it was just sitting there for the last few months so no idea how it managed to lose contact.
After Deoxit though, it started working again.
I didn't think I needed to Deoxit a connector on something this young, that was already in functional contact with a card.

Just one more act of this machine trying to frustrate me. It likes attention.

Do you live in a humid or salty environment? Cause areas like that things can start corroding quite quickly.

Up until 3 yrs ago I had the board in forest fire territory, very dry and not salty. Now I'm in central FL, but not near the coast so I don't think it's salty. It's way, way, way more humid here, but indoor humidity is constantly 50-55% (according to the thermostat anyway). I also have some of those humidity indicator cards (with the dots that change color) laying around, the 60% marking always says it's less than 60%.

You can also get a reaction between the card edge and the slot contacts if the gold plating isn't all that good.

Given my poor opinion of Gigabyte boards of that era (4/4 bad in some way) it would be easy for me to blame the quality of the connector. 😀 But I don't know.
I'm taking it as a reminder that this gamer system has no business being used for business. For years I've meant to retire it to WinXP gaming/whatever, but I keep running into reasons to use it for something else.

That's probably your issue. Florida humidity and salt air. It doesn't matter where in Florida you air there's salt in the air. My in-laws have found out the hard way that Florida's environment isn't very forgiving.

shamino wrote on 2024-02-11, 11:59:

Given my poor opinion of Gigabyte boards of that era (4/4 bad in some way) it would be easy for me to blame the quality of the connector. 😀 But I don't know.

Yeah I don't like Gigabyte stuff made since 2001 either. Hard to resist saying it don't work now because it was a pile of crap in the first place.

shamino wrote on 2024-02-11, 11:59:

Given my poor opinion of Gigabyte boards of that era (4/4 bad in some way) it would be easy for me to blame the quality of the connector. 😀

I think I already posted my experience with the PCIe slots becoming loose on a newer Gigabyte motherboard (H370 HD3) after only two insertion/removal cycles (it was loose on the third card insertion attempt). That motherboard is still in my main computer and running with no other problems besides the BIOS bugs that led to me swapping cards around like that.

Gave my almost 12-year-old laptop Windows 10 Pro x64 back on the system since Linux was a bit of an issue and I needed a Windows system again to archive games, ROMs, and so on since MacOS has limited options.

Which reminds me, I need to fix the trackpad buttons since they need to be pressed very hard to get them to work.

bjwil1991 wrote on 2024-02-13, 05:36:

Gave my almost 12-year-old laptop Windows 10 Pro x64 back on the system since Linux was a bit of an issue and I needed a Windows system again to archive games, ROMs, and so on since MacOS has limited options.

Which reminds me, I need to fix the trackpad buttons since they need to be pressed very hard to get them to work.

I have a Latitude E5510 here with Windows 10 and partially dead keyboard.

Installed my first AIO for my Ryzen system (see sig). Took two attempts, had a hard time orienting the cpu block so the MSI
logo was right. Ended up having to secure the cpu block first THEN screw the radiator in. Testing showed it being 4-5 degrees
cooler than the Ventroo air cooler that was on there. Oh well it looks nice anyway and didn't cost an arm and a leg. My next build
though will not be RGB laden, too many cables to deal with and I suck when it comes to cable management.

Published a novel.

bjwil1991 wrote on 2024-02-20, 08:27:

Published a novel.

💪
I doubt many of us can say they did that today. 😀

I'm reading up on Valve's STEAM Audio API, which has just been made fully public and open-sourced as FOSS. It could be very useful in remastering or revamping old FPS games that used 3D Audio hardware, back when soundcards were a thing.

Redid the fuelling system on one of my classic cars.

Fitting a low pressure lift pump, 1.5 litre swirl tank and a high pressure (260+lph) injection pump.

Previous high pressure pump (an expensive Bosch part) died last year and I am 90% sure that it was due to fuel starvation/cavitation. Had ongoing fuelling issues since restoring the car, so am hoping this fixes the root cause.

I have not been liking Bosch parts made this century at all. In general even if original part was Bosch, do yourself a favor and either take the one that is a quarter the price for probably the exact same performance and durability or get a Denso, Delco, NTK etc equivalent which will probably be better.

In this case the Bosch part is a highly regarded Motorsport-level specification pump (and the recommended unit for high horsepower builds, which this car is)... But I do know what you mean, I suspect the modern ones are not as good as those built 5, 10 or 15 years ago.

Mine probably has only a couple hundred miles on it. So yeah, it hasn't lasted particularly well!

After 5 years of almost continuous read/write on enterprise SAS SSDs (video caches, think Netflix usage) they start to "fail" by reaching their maximum usage threshold. They still work but can die randomly, so I'm changing them. These were the first enterprise-grade SSD we put in production and I'm quite surprised they lasted that long.

...and it's quite funny to see how they are made. Thermal pads on each component (on both sides of the PCB) and 220uF electrolytic capacitors.

That's definitely a very robust and we'll made drive. Not all that surprising it lasted that long.