The AC adapter for the cable box in my game/vintage electronics room has died. A couple days ago when I wanted to test the recording capability of my newly acquired Mitsubishi S-VHS VCR, the cable box kept looping "8888" on its clock display and static was on my CRT TV's RF input. When I plugged it back in after a few minutes, it steadily said "8888" but it was flashing in a terrifying fashion, I thought "oh, crap" because that was a DVR which had some shows that I hadn't gotten a chance to watch yet, not to mention it was one of those non-X1 Comcast boxes (with MPEG4 capability) so I'm hoping it's just the AC adapter and not the box.

I did test the AC adapter with both a multi-meter and my portable Magnavox 5" CRT TV, the multi-meter's ratings didn't look good and it caused the portable TV's screen to be dim. I tested the TV again with the originally used AC adapter and it still works normally. Also, I tested the cable box with another 12V adapter just to make sure it wasn't the box, despite the testing adapter having weaker ratings (0.8A and less than 32W), it's result looked healthier than the now-dead original AC adapter, but it kept cycling upon fan spin-up because it's not adequate enough to power some of the box's components (i.e. the cooling fan and the hard drive), so at least there's still hope. We'll find out by Friday when the replacement AC adapter comes.

On Monday, my dad and I replaced the thermostat on my car to solve the overheating issues on my car, and that didn't work. Yesterday, my dad took my car to my friend's landscaping company (they have a garage), got the coolant flushed, and they discovered that the upper hose was crimped (I didn't realize that when my friend and I changed the spark plugs a couple of weeks ago on my car), and that solved the issue. Now my alternator needs to get replaced since the coolant soaked the alternator and I'm going to get a new battery as well to be on the safe side. I'll test the voltage on both the battery and alternator to see which one is acting up.

Edit: voltage on both the battery and alternator are still good. Going to clean the MAF sensor, IAC Valve, replace the fuel cap, and get the rest of the exhaust fixed (sounds better).

KCompRoom2000 wrote:

We'll find out by Friday when the replacement AC adapter comes.

Yesterday, the replacement AC adapter for my game room cable box arrived. I plugged it in and it works now with no interruptions. I also tested the AC adapter for our living room's X1 DVR and that worked too, so now my cable box is back to working order.

Also, I've been working on restoring my Skylake Dell camouflage build for video editing use. I've installed my dad's old GTX 970 graphics card and a new Samsung 970 EVO M.2 SSD, so all that's left to do now is reinstall Windows 10 and give the trial version of PowerDirector a whirl before I decide to buy it.

Switched back to my Lian Li A04.

I5-7600
Asus B250M-C
16GBs DDR4 2400
1050Ti 4GB
Audigy 2 ZS (not pictured)
256GB WD Black nvme
500GB WD Blue

Ignore the dust, i need to take the air compressor to it.

Currently running Windows 7. Thats an ordeal trying to get it onto an nvme drive. Had to install to the spinner and clone it over. Also cant resolve a couple minor driver issues (smbus, ext...). Seems to work fine though. I'm tossing the idea of just going back to Win 10 LTSB.

Updated Google Groan on 2 laptops: my mom's red plague Dell Inspiron 1525 and my Compaq Presario C700 to the latest version and reverted back to the old theme since the new one gives me issues with my eyesight. I also attempted to fit an SSD in the Dell laptop and it won't get socketed in there (I hate Dell's HDD caddy designs) or detected until I moved the screws to the bottom of the caddy and the drive got detected. Why Dell designed the HDD caddy poorly is beyond me and the standard HDD takes a lot of power and drains the battery fast.

Not sure if this counts or not. However, my parents and I moved stuff around to move the couches, the TV stand, record shelf, futon mattress, and the computer desks in order to put the rug in the center. My plan is to move my main desktop to my desk along with three LCD monitors that are presently in my room and my car, keyboard, mouse, gamepad (USB), and all that other stuff. I'm also going to be installing the SSHD inside my computer as well for one of the partitions that's on my 1TB HDD for games and stuff (I need to look and see which partition has the games installed on it that were installed via Steam).

Installed the new external USB Sound Blaster Surround 5.1 Pro sound card on my desktop with the software and drivers, as well as upgrading the drivers to the latest to be on the safe side and it works great!

Fixed the toilet with a new flapper since the old one was a hit and miss. Took a few attempts for a good slack for the chain and it's working without issues.

Setup my mutlipurpose retro/modern box. Handles 86Box, PCem, VMWare, soundfonts, and XP games perfectly. Also has PS/2, serial, and parallel ports.

Intel i7 3770 3.4GHz quad core processor
8GB DDR3 RAM (4x2GB)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 745 4GB PCIe video card
DVDRW drive
Intel Pro 1500 180GB SSD
Western Digital 640GB 7200RPM 3.5" hard drive
Windows XP on HD
Windows 7 64 on SSD
PS/2 ports
2xUSB 2.0 ports rear
4xUSB 2.0 ports front
4xUSB 3.0 ports rear
Audio jacks front/rear
Parallel port
Serial port
Ethernet
DVI
HDMI
VGA
New thermal paste
Clean inside and out
Case has minor scratches and scuffs

Side

Rear

help me, I've torn apart my insides

closeup of heatsink

slots

BIOS screen

Windows XP desktop

Programs + specs

Windows 7 desktop

specs

HP Compaq LA2405wg 24" 1920x1200 monitor with DVI, VGA, DisplayPort

Changed the motherboard in my main PC with a new ASUS M5A97 R2.0 from the dreaded Gigabyte GA-78LMT-USB3 board due to USB port issues and other issues. However, my desktop is giving me the IRQL NOT LESS OR EQUAL BSoD for no reason. I checked all of the drivers and they are up-to-date and the memory passed. Now it has the NTFS File System BSoD that I'm fixing right now.

Edit: got the system to boot. Had to use the Windows 10 Recovery Boot CD to repair the drive using the chkdsk /f /r command and chkdsk /f command to make sure it was clear.

Spent some time looking into NAS appliance software to re-purpose some rack mount hardware as a centralized file store.

Did some benchmarking with the new motherboard I bought off of eBay that has SATA3.

The benchmarks are a lot faster than the old board I had installed, which is rather nice.

I have a 2nd 640GB 7200RPM so I tossed that in the Elite 8300 and put macOS 10.13 on it. https://imgur.com/a/Py1ZWpn

In my never ending quest to constantly change my computer and operating system, I installed Ubuntu 18.10 again on my 3770 machine a couple weeks ago, and shortly after, reinstalled my recently RMA replaced RX 480, which just “feels” better than running a GTX 960 with proprietary drivers. Once again, on ZFS root.

Well, that barely lasted two weeks. I blew that away and installed Arch, on a sensible ext4 root, using systemd-boot, and my board’s “Windows 8 function” that replaces the dorky “military class” badge boot screen with a plain white MSI logo, and even opens the POST codes on the first monitor in its native resolution.

I have the boot loader carrying the logo over, and supporting resume from the swap partition, which I verified works. (Lol it resets the uptime, but my apps keep their state.)

Then I set up Wayland and GNOME, with an AUR workaround flavor of mutter. I’ll need Wayland for what’s coming soon: different DPI scale factors for different displays, because I’m getting a 4k monitor. It will even support FreeSync some day, I hope.

Oh, and unlike Ubuntu, Steam Proton on Arch is able to play Castle of Illusion, mostly without rendering artifacts, so yay, I guess.

Cloned my hackintosh install to a 180GB Intel 520 SSD. Much much faster now... used Carbon Copy Cloner then copied the EFI partition manually to restore Clover. Easy.

Tested how much CPU b'necks old-ish GPU on 3DMark 03.

On stock settings this card should be getting ~150k+ points score (when used with proper CPU).

Changed the battery in my younger sister's ASUS X555DA laptop. There was an earlier conversation that took place before even ordering the battery in the first place:

*random chatter that I no longer remember, probably to do with her gaming 'cube' desktop, among other things, then...*

Me: ...yeah. Also, your laptop will need a battery replacement in about a year. I suspect it is expanding.
Sis: *shows the front palmrest area where the touchpad is bulging out* That explains this, right?
Me: *incredulous, silent for a few seconds* ...Yeah. Yeah, it does.

Ordered the battery Wednesday, shipped Thursday, showed up Saturday (today). Quite quick, since it was from the other side of the USA. After replacing the battery, she joked, "Now I don't have to smash the touchpad to press the button!"

Here are the photos of the old battery [Good batteries are flat, of course]:

I'm the guy here who's more into the retro games than the retro hardware. So I'm usually playing retro games (typically I play an RPG and FPS at the same time). After I beat the last pair of games (Stonekeep and Medal of Honor: Allied Assault), I picked my next pair, and for the first time they are both MODERN games! So my modern activity is sinking a couple of hours into Pillars of Eternity this morning. I just finished Act I, which has taken me 30 hrs over the course of 22 days. Not sure how much is left in this game, but I'm seeing playtimes anywhere between 40-100 hrs, depending on how many side quests you take on and how much you get into developing and maintaining your Stronghold. And later today, I will spend some time in Metro 2033. I actually really like the exploring and conversing aspects of this game more than the shooting parts, but it's been overall super fun so far. I'm near the end of Chapter 3 and have invested about 6 hrs into this game.

My girlfriend has her friend over to visit for the weekend. They wanted to play Lego Harry Potter splitscreen, which means my laptop is connected to our new TV. They're now playing it in 4K on the TV - I am amazed my 4 year old laptop can do it tbh! It's an ivy bridge i7 with 8GB of RAM and an Nvidia 650m. But it is running at 25-30fps, and I am slightly jealous they're playing in 4K on my laptop whilst I...

...I am trying to "play" on my netbook and tablet. I have a USB DVD drive and I'm installing Oblivion from the disk onto the tablet. This has a data usb connection and power usb connection. To ensure the dvd drive gets enough power I've got the power cable connected to the netbook and the data connected to the tablet :p

it probably won't even run (but COD2 might)

Today I checked out the Palemoon browser, as it seems to be the only fairly recent browser still available for my older Mac. I had to go to the forums to find the semi-official Mac version, installed it, and started it. Seemed to work fine. However, the interface was rather ancient-looking - very Netscape 4.x.

Then I attempted to install a few add-ons (Ghostery, uBlock origin), which failed.
Then I checked out the Palemoon add-on page, which was rather impractical to use and did not provide enough information on the add-ons available to understand whether or not they were equivalent to more mainstream add-ons.
Then I went to the Add-on forum, and tried to find the information I needed. Another failure.

However, there I did notice the two main devs reacting like complete douches to very sensible questions and requests, even going as far as threatening users of their own browser with banning and deletion of accounts. 😳 What the flying F***?!?

Typical rockstar developers.

And so Palemoon was dragged to the trash. I refuse to support abusive douchebags...

Well, guess I'll keep to my 1.0 beta version of Vivaldi, whose developers do understand how to market a product towards power users.