My A4Tech X7 (X750) mouse also started to doubleclick in the past couple of days. I'm thinking if I should get a new one or replace the switch. It served me well in the past 6 or 7 years and when I looked it up if it's still sold, it seems to be got a little rare. I could get the X710 series, but it costs twice as much as my 750 did back then. I think I should also consider 3 or 4 so I don't have to worry about it for a time.

Last week I got a new (used) SMT1000I. Today I upgraded it with 18Ah batteries and started testing. Seems to be working so far. If it behaves well in the next couple of days it'll be serving my entertainment corner (NAS, Hifi, BD player, speaker set, TV, gaming consoles and media center).

The batteries I had at hand were pretty old and it doesn't seem to like them, I used them with my old SUA1000I which have died in a really brutal way. A large puffer cap blew and spit its insides on the inverter mosfets which also blew and a lot of other components also got shorted and died. Tried to fix it, but gave up on it after more and more parts turned out to be dead.

Well I would wish you luck with that, but you want someone else's UPS luck, not mine.

I also just grabbed a used UPS, BN900M, now I know every UPS in the thrift is probably dead as a dodo, but with ppl still clearing out their covid home offices, I thought there was a chance some stuff like that is getting there with some life left in it. Anyway, tried to test this thing at the thrift, and their tester power bar is a surge protected one, and it's sockets are worn, so it's got another surge protector socket ziptied on top of it. Plug the UPS in and it's giving me the bad power light, great, hit the button and I've got a low battery flashing green.. hokay.. things sit around a bit... and then it goes red with a beep and shuts off... now not quite deciphering exactly what is happening, since thrift store testing power is potentially screwed up by worn out surge suppressor behind worn out surge suppressor. So plug it in for 5 mins and then turn it on and yank the plug out... well the power out alarm went off loud and long enough that everyone in the store stared at me until I mashed the button and shut it up... well whatever, there seems to be some life in this battery, I'll give it a chance.

Okay so get it home and plug it, and it's still doing the charge battery and the red green flash for replace battery... ah well let's pop that sucker out and see how bad it is... 12.79V... well that's not too bad... put it on an "automatic" charger with only idiot lights and that says It's got 9 out of 10 bars and charges it for half an hour or so, then shuts off, measure it, 12.82... okay so according to all SLA voltage charts I can dig up, that's about 95% battery life, seems okay.... put it back in UPS... green blinky and red/green blinky again. Okay you dumbass thing, what specifically is it you don't like about this battery???? They're meant to fault at like 80%, not like "few months old" level of wear.

Just tried it again now, after supposedly doing it's own charge for 24 hours, yup same faults. Seems like I am going to have to blow it's tiny little brain out, by pulling everything out and shorting it, to make sure it's reset, then try again. Might want to cycle the battery down to about 30% and charge it back up with my charger that's meant to have a desulfation program to try to make it seem fresher... though wondering if I'm gonna have to completely disassemble and start examining for signs of overload and tired caps.

Anyway, that's my recent luck with UPS units so hope you do better.

I just want something to keep my network up a while really. I hear of guys just getting pissed with the whole SLA battery racket and wiring them up to car batteries, hah, 100Ah, die now you bastard.

Bought a PS3 (the legendary BC unit) and a "Jasper" 360.

The PS3 was too far gone (nicotine dust galore and dead GPU), while the 360 had a lot of corrosion, yet it booted. Transplanted a few parts of the 360 into some "uncorroded" shell I had as spare, and managed to put it back together.

It still needs work as I am short of a HDD controller and the whole faceplate.

Coding some SwiftUI apps for macOS... one is a RSS Feed Reader

BitWrangler wrote on 2024-08-04, 18:24:

Well I would wish you luck with that, but you want someone else's UPS luck, not mine. […]
Show full quote

Well I would wish you luck with that, but you want someone else's UPS luck, not mine.

I also just grabbed a used UPS, BN900M, now I know every UPS in the thrift is probably dead as a dodo, but with ppl still clearing out their covid home offices, I thought there was a chance some stuff like that is getting there with some life left in it. Anyway, tried to test this thing at the thrift, and their tester power bar is a surge protected one, and it's sockets are worn, so it's got another surge protector socket ziptied on top of it. Plug the UPS in and it's giving me the bad power light, great, hit the button and I've got a low battery flashing green.. hokay.. things sit around a bit... and then it goes red with a beep and shuts off... now not quite deciphering exactly what is happening, since thrift store testing power is potentially screwed up by worn out surge suppressor behind worn out surge suppressor. So plug it in for 5 mins and then turn it on and yank the plug out... well the power out alarm went off loud and long enough that everyone in the store stared at me until I mashed the button and shut it up... well whatever, there seems to be some life in this battery, I'll give it a chance.

Okay so get it home and plug it, and it's still doing the charge battery and the red green flash for replace battery... ah well let's pop that sucker out and see how bad it is... 12.79V... well that's not too bad... put it on an "automatic" charger with only idiot lights and that says It's got 9 out of 10 bars and charges it for half an hour or so, then shuts off, measure it, 12.82... okay so according to all SLA voltage charts I can dig up, that's about 95% battery life, seems okay.... put it back in UPS... green blinky and red/green blinky again. Okay you dumbass thing, what specifically is it you don't like about this battery???? They're meant to fault at like 80%, not like "few months old" level of wear.

Just tried it again now, after supposedly doing it's own charge for 24 hours, yup same faults. Seems like I am going to have to blow it's tiny little brain out, by pulling everything out and shorting it, to make sure it's reset, then try again. Might want to cycle the battery down to about 30% and charge it back up with my charger that's meant to have a desulfation program to try to make it seem fresher... though wondering if I'm gonna have to completely disassemble and start examining for signs of overload and tired caps.

Anyway, that's my recent luck with UPS units so hope you do better.

I just want something to keep my network up a while really. I hear of guys just getting pissed with the whole SLA battery racket and wiring them up to car batteries, hah, 100Ah, die now you bastard.

That's why I prefer getting stuff from a higher price points APC Smarts are much more robust and reliable than APC Backs. I don't understand people. They buy this $700-750 UPS and once the batteries they shipped with dies, they resell them for $100-150. In some of the newer BackUPS models you can't even replace the battery (you can, but you aren't meant to https://youtu.be/vO_JqeizMso ).

The Smart series are a completely different animal. They often has connectors for external battery packs. And in case of the Smart1000 series, they have the same case as the 1500VA (and maybe 2000VA?) models, so you can just put in them 2×18Ah batteries instead of the 2×14Ah they come with. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O06PLCh8tD4 It also looks like APC/Schneider fixed some of the issues I had with the SUA series.

Anyway, I left it charging the batteries for the night and it seems OK for now. The afternoon I'll leave it on and do some battery/load tests to see if the batteries I had are still up to the task.

Drastically improved network connectivity in a two-storey apartment using a combination of MoCA adapters and Wi-Fi extenders:

The work was actually done over a couple of days last month, but only now I got around to document it.
https://cloakedthargoid.wordpress.com/ethernet-moca-wifi/

PcBytes wrote on 2024-08-04, 20:35:

Bought a PS3 (the legendary BC unit) and a "Jasper" 360. […]
Show full quote

Bought a PS3 (the legendary BC unit) and a "Jasper" 360.

The PS3 was too far gone (nicotine dust galore and dead GPU), while the 360 had a lot of corrosion, yet it booted. Transplanted a few parts of the 360 into some "uncorroded" shell I had as spare, and managed to put it back together.

It still needs work as I am short of a HDD controller and the whole faceplate.

Yeah, those PS3s are all just ticking timebombs. Luckily, with some effort, you can just get the PS2 booting most games off of a Samba share. I can also recommend looking for speicifcally 120GB PS3 slims, as they were out of production as a model before the full cfw cutoff point.

I have 3 slims already 🤣 - 2003A,2504B and a 3004B.

Updated the UEFI BIOS and "fixed" the touchpad of an Acer Aspire 5 A515-52G-52K9 for the son of my former coworker; learned a few "new tricks" previously unknown to me:

1. Unlike most standard UEFI BIOS update procedures (i.e. download a .zip file, decompress it to a small USB flash drive, restart system and enter BIOS, locate the new BIOS file and initiate flashing procedure, restart the system again), Acer has the entire process scripted into an executable file: a user only has to download the 7-Zip-compressed self-extracting file on desktop, confirm that all other programs have been closed and documents saved, then everything afterwards is automated. Just sit back and wait. This is very user-friendly for novice users (reminds me its first generation of dark green Aspire desktops) but offers zero control for experienced users.
2. That specific model of Aspire 5 has two touchpad suppliers: Elan and Synaptic. User must navigate through "Control Panel > Device Manager > Human Interface Devices > HID-compliant device > Properties > Details" in order to confirm the correct supplier. This is way too complex for novice users; a sharp contrast from its BIOS update procedures.
3. Unlike Function Keys (F1 to F12) on desktop or more traditional laptop keyboards, the default functions of those keys on newer laptops are respective "special" functions like volume control, LCD brightness, Wi-Fi toggle, etc. If user wants to use Function Keys in the traditional manner s/he must press Fn key together. This is just the opposite of my older laptops of XP or Win7 eras. Guess that many users of the newer generation don't even know the purpose of F1-F12; I wonder how many have even seen SysRq key.

dormcat wrote on 2024-08-06, 23:54:

Unlike most standard UEFI BIOS update procedures (i.e. download a .zip file, decompress it to a small USB flash drive, restart system and enter BIOS, locate the new BIOS file and initiate flashing procedure, restart the system again), Acer has the entire process scripted into an executable file: a user only has to download the 7-Zip-compressed self-extracting file on desktop, confirm that all other programs have been closed and documents saved, then everything afterwards is automated. Just sit back and wait. This is very user-friendly for novice users (reminds me its first generation of dark green Aspire desktops) but offers zero control for experienced users.

Would that be the new 'capsule update', where the BIOS, together with the flash procedures are downloaded, have their signatures verified, by the OS and then the update is executed at next reboot?

dormcat wrote on 2024-08-06, 23:54:

That specific model of Aspire 5 has two touchpad suppliers: Elan and Synaptic. User must navigate through "Control Panel > Device Manager > Human Interface Devices > HID-compliant device > Properties > Details" in order to confirm the correct supplier. This is way too complex for novice users; a sharp contrast from its BIOS update procedures.

It's like this on some other laptops as well, including some Thinkpads.

dormcat wrote on 2024-08-06, 23:54:

Unlike Function Keys (F1 to F12) on desktop or more traditional laptop keyboards, the default functions of those keys on newer laptops are respective "special" functions like volume control, LCD brightness, Wi-Fi toggle, etc. If user wants to use Function Keys in the traditional manner s/he must press Fn key together. This is just the opposite of my older laptops of XP or Win7 eras. Guess that many users of the newer generation don't even know the purpose of F1-F12; I wonder how many have even seen SysRq key.

Yes, that is true. One of the more annoying things to power users. Many laptops have an Fn-lock function, where you can hit Fn+Esc or some equivalent, and this would temporary reverse the behavior. Business-grade laptops, like Thinkpads, have an option to reverse the default behavior in the BIOS.

dr_st wrote on 2024-08-07, 14:04:

Yes, that is true. One of the more annoying things to power users. Many laptops have an Fn-lock function, where you can hit Fn+Esc or some equivalent, and this would temporary reverse the behavior. Business-grade laptops, like Thinkpads, have an option to reverse the default behavior in the BIOS.

This is a thing for desktop keyboards now as well. Mine needs half a gigabyte software installed that always runs in the background just to adjust the F keys behavior.

Ugh, what brand so I never buy one?

BitWrangler wrote on 2024-08-07, 16:06:

Ugh, what brand so I never buy one?

heh, both Dell and Microsoft so I'd say there are many more. It's those slim "design" short travel keyboards thought.
(The MS one had the added bonus of a dedicated 365 key that you accidentally press and some office application launches)

konc wrote on 2024-08-07, 16:26:

BitWrangler wrote on 2024-08-07, 16:06:

Ugh, what brand so I never buy one?

heh, both Dell and Microsoft so I'd say there are many more. It's those slim "design" short travel keyboards thought.
(The MS one had the added bonus of a dedicated 365 key that you accidentally press and some office application launches)

Just double checked my dumpster-found Microsoft Designer Bluetooth Desktop. Yes, it has special functions by default; traditional F-keys need Fn and printed in smaller font with very faint violet-grey.

Been playing with a GPDWIN4 (2023), which I shoehorned SteamOS onto.
Unlike the *actual* steamdeck, it has a neatly hidden slider keyboard, and an IR finger tracking mouse. (still has touch screen).

Been relegated to using Flatpak (groan), because Valve read-only-ified the root filesystem (which neuters pacman, arch's native package manager).

Even then, I am VERY pleased that you can define a Lutris command line invocation as a non-steam game, and the deckmode launcher will happily launch it. I am going to spend a few days just setting up everything to get launched this way, so it's neat, clean and tidy. (Use Lutris in Desktop mode to set up all the buttons and knobs for each item added.)

I went ahead and got one of these after my PSP2001 finally died.

PcBytes wrote on 2024-08-04, 20:35:

Bought a PS3 (the legendary BC unit) and a "Jasper" 360. […]
Show full quote

Bought a PS3 (the legendary BC unit) and a "Jasper" 360.

The PS3 was too far gone (nicotine dust galore and dead GPU), while the 360 had a lot of corrosion, yet it booted. Transplanted a few parts of the 360 into some "uncorroded" shell I had as spare, and managed to put it back together.

It still needs work as I am short of a HDD controller and the whole faceplate.

If it werent for the fact that you live in Romania, I'd offer to send you my old drive caddy, and the Datel X-Port I have that goes with it.
My Jasper died, and I replaced it with a 360S.

The X-Port is basically just a USB2 adapter for the special SATA connector those caddies use. Works great for imaging the drive inside, and the like.

Printed these things for my 286

My intercom stopped working, door switch won't work and buzzer isn't buzzing.
Strange thing is that I can hear and talk after picking up, when someone rings it.
I checked it thoroughly but nothing.

It never worked well. 🙁

If it's vaguely similar to a phone system it maybe uses a higher voltage to ring, the ring current/voltage being used for the buzzer at your end and the lock at the other end. While the simple mic and amplifier part runs off only 6-12V