Well, I’ve officially decided to move the last two remaining Seagate-drives from my server to my workstation. This sucks, but I’m going to have to be pragmatic about this - they were (for whatever reasons) causing the machine to be unstable, and an unstable server is simply unacceptable.

Supposedly there are a lot of people out there who are perfectly happy with Seagate-drives, but my patience is at an end. I wrote about this back in June (in Swedish) and even though I started to become very disenchanted with Seagate then I felt that maybe things would be sorted out in the future. Thus, I left them unplugged in the server, awaiting a chassi-change.

That chassi-change happened a month ago, yet the problems persist. The only conclusion I can draw is that Seagate-drives are somehow flawed when it comes to being in my server. My workstation currently runs all Seagate-drives, and some of the problems persist, but the difference is that my workstation is not mission-critical. I’m fine with rebooting it every few days. The server however, I cannot accept. I also cannot accept the lockups, DMA-errors and general weirdness that follows in the wake of the Seagate-drives. I cannot accept that whenever the Seagate-drives are attached the server will lockup if the load-average goes above 0.50 since under that load the Seagate-drives for whatever reason decide to squeeze their brains out through the IDE-channel. Unplug them and the machine will run happily under whatever load-average it gets.

I don’t know the causes for the problems, but I do know that a lot of people are experiencing similar problems. The symptom is always the same. The constant culprit is Seagate-drives. I no longer have the time or patience trying to find out why my drives are acting funky, and instead moving them to a less vital computer. After a lot of troubleshooting the problems persist, and while it would be easy for someone else to write off my server as temperamental and fussy about drives that is not the case - virtually every other brand of drives work fine in it, even the old Maxtor 80 gigabyte-drives that I always assumed would fail within the first year. I shrugged at it, since they’d been a free gift, but they’ve been ticking along steadily for more than four years now. This is unlike the Seagate-drives, who have all been causes for more or less intense degrees of grief.

No more of that now.

The days of Seagate-drives in my computers is once again numbered - and this time I’m not going to question my own judgment. Instead, the two drives will be moved into my workstation, and in time all Seagate-drives will be phased out of my life. Whether that phasing will come from them failing and getting junked or from me buying newer drives is really something that doesn’t concern me.

I recently turned 30 years old. Supposedly it’s a milestone, but I feel just as silly as ever. In most cases, as far as I’m concerned age is yet another bogus measure of a human beings worth.

Anyhoo, one of my oldest friends, Magnus Lindholm (the same bloke who recently welcomed his first child) recently gave me the nerdiest gift ever. I was in shock for several minutes after being presented with it. I had planned to keep it a secret for a few weeks longer but I just can’t control myself any longer.

Without further ado:

“What the heck is that?” you might ask. Well, he’d found one of my old motherboards complete with shipping-label and slapped it inside a frame as a kind of monument or reward of some kind. The motherboard in question is my first 32-bit computer, an AM386SX-40 that I bought to upgrade my then-computer which consisted of an ancient 286. I can’t remember how long ago this was. We’re not quite sure that the shipping label is the right one, but it’s neat none the less. This thing dates from the early nineties, probably around 1992 or so.

How he got possession of this piece of computer history is rather convoluted. Apparently I gave it to a mutual friend at some point in time, which in turn passed it into his mothers computer for a cheap upgrade, and served there for several years until it transferred somewhere else and then somewhere else and somehow ended up in Magnus’ hands where it lay dormant for several years until he discovered it in an old box of stuff not too long ago. He then framed it with the supposed shipping-label and provided a helluva laugh for me.

This motherboard provided a lot of fun for me and my nerdy friends. Among other milestones, this was the motherboard that allowed us to try Doom for the first time.

I previously mentioned my dissatisfaction with the HX08 that was housing my computer, and yesterday when me and Ash went downtown I decided to buy the NSK-6580 and replace it with. I waltzed into one of the local computer stores, decided that the price was acceptable and bought it.

When lugging the thing home I decided that I would make an attempt at writing a proper review of it. Not that any of the already existing reviews are crap or anything, I just felt like taking a stab at doing this. Also, this is a fairly image-intensive entry, so apologies to any modem-users. Full-size versions of the images in this review is available in my gallery.

Here’s the specs for the thing, borrowed from Antecs webpage about it:

* Quiet and highly efficient 80 PLUS® Certified EarthWatts 430 Watt power supply
- Universal input
- Active PFC and high-efficiency design for superior environmentally-friendly operation
- 80PLUS® Certification means you’ll save money on your power bills
* Advanced cooling system:
- 1 Rear 120mm TriCool™ 3-speed fan
- 2 Front mounts for optional 92mm fans
- 1 Advanced Chassis Air Guide, with mount for optional 80mm fan
- VGA vent
* 9 Drive Bays
- Front Accessible: 4 x 5.25″ (with one 5.25″ to 3.5″ adapter)
- Internal: 5 x 3.5″ removable HDD trays with silicone grommets in a removable HDD cage to isolate drive vibrations
* 7 Expansion Slots
* Front-mounted ports for easy multimedia connections
- 2 x USB 2.0
- 1 x IEEE 1394 (FireWire®, i.Link®)
- Audio In and Out
* 0.8mm cold-rolled steel construction
* Motherboard: Fits micro and standard ATX
* Dimensions:
- 18.3″ (H) x 8.25″ (W) x 18.6″ (D)
- 46.5cm (H) x 21cm (W) x 47.2cm (D)

First impressions are nice. The box containing the case is sturdy, and people passing by would give me a lot of curious glances while carrying the thing home. It’s very glossy, and does a great job at advertising what’s inside. Specs are listed on the box, and overall the packing is top-notch. No complaints here.

When opening it this is what you’re greeted with:

The manual is taped nicely to the wrap of the case, but not too tightly. This is nice, otherwise it would be sloshing around in the box during shipping. The manual itself is of the usual standard, it gives the information needed (in five languages, complete with illustrations) but isn’t overtly detailed. No need to either, anyone who’s built their computer before need only to glance in this thing occasionally. I only browsed through it and after that put it aside to never open it again.

Here’s a shot of the case out of the box, but still in it’s protective wrapping:

And one where I removed it:

Clearly visible here is the back of the case. The fit and finish of this case is excellent, there’s no obvious visual deformations. Visible is the rear (included) 120mm tri-cool fan.

And the front of the case:

I must say, I really like the design of this case. It’s a bit understated and elegant, while remaining focused on functioning. I’ve never like the horribly overblown pre-modded cases that are popular with the younger crowd. I’ve modded a few cases, but always with the priority of adding function, not useless flair.

Again, the packing of the case is excellent. Not overblown, but protecting everything that needs protecting. Visible in the above photo is the protective tape on the top and bottom of the front, very nice. Easily removed without leaving a bunch of sticky gunk.

Here’s a shot of the side-vents and handles. There’s two thumb-screws in the back keeping the side firmly on, and after you’ve unscrewed them the side comes off easily after pulling the handles. The top of the vents is an “air-guide” for the CPU, containing a plastic tube you’ll see pictured below. It can be unscrewed and replaced with an 80mm fan if the inclination is there. The bottom vent is simply just a vent, there’s no holes to attach anything to it.

The quality of these vents are very high. Same goes for the rear fanvent as well as the intakes for the two (optional) front fans. They’re honeycombed and look like they’re cut out the metal rather than stamped. They allow for excellent airflow, which in turn minimizes noise from turbulence.

Here’s a better shot of the rear, with the aforementioned excellent vent. Other than that, it’s a completely normal case. No big surprises. The ATX-plate is completely bog-standard, and is useless to most motherboards who have additional connections. No big deal, most mobos ship with their own back-plate to replace this.

A nice touch was that Antec had taped the little bag of screws and miscellaneous stuff to one of the drivebays. This is nice rather than having it slosh around freely inside the case. The devil is in the details and all that.

Speaking of the insides, here’s a shot of what the case looks like with the side removed:

Nothing too crazy, but it’s a very well-built case. No sharp edges, and everything just breathes quality. This is not an aluminium case either, so it’s rolled steel. The structure is somewhat weaker than my old HX08 (which is a tank, in comparison) and this means that the NSK doesn’t make as good a butt-to-ground adapter as my previous case. In other words, don’t attempt to sit on this thing.

None the less, the engineering is good. The drive cage holds five drives, each attach to a removable sled. Each sled has nice silicone-dampened grommets to reduce the vibration. This is good, since vibrations reverberate to the case and cause resonance, which in turn means noise. Less vibrations, less noise.

Here’s a better show of the drive-cages and me holding on of the removable sleds. Note the silicone grommets mentioned.

Note also that Antec included a nice little bonus hidden inside the 5 1/4″ drive bays. An actual power-chord! Most cases I’ve seen never includes one of these, and even though I already have about fifty of them it’s still nice to see one included.

Speaking of power, the included PSU is one of Antecs own. I have good experiences with them, they’re quiet and actually deliver the power they promise without a bunch of inflated ratings. This one is no exception. It looks rather plain, but as far as I can tell the numbers on it add up to what it claims to be, i.e. a 430 watt PSU that does the job without too many frills. One frill it does have though is generous length of cables. Sure, it can’t compete with my old Enermax, but the cables are easily long enough for anything that goes inside this case. See for yourself:

There’s plenty of outlets as well. I counted to six regular “molex” style plugs and four SATA-plugs split over two leads. More than enough for most people, and giving no problem to fill every drive bay in this case if so inclined. Of course the usual plugs for P4-connectors, PCI Express and such are included. Thankfully though, Antec has not included the useless serverplug that’s never used. This is an ATX 2.0-compatible PSU, which means the motherboard-plug is of the 24-pin persuasion. A nice touch again is however the option for people like me with older equipment to simply unhook the additional four connectors and turning it into an old-style ATX 1.2 with 20 connectors. Very nice, even though it’s a very minor feature for people putting a brand-new computer into this case. It’s also 80 Plus-certified, which supposedly means it’s more power-efficient and won’t waste as much of your precious juice. Antec claims it’ll save you money on your electricity-bill, but I’m not as convinced about that as they are.

Here’s a better closeup of the PSU in question:

The back is a mesh to allow for better ventilation, but like most PSU’s these days there’s only the one fan in it to vent the PSU itself. It’s not expected to vent the rest of the case since that’s the job of the rear fan. The cooling in this case consists of the rear included 120mm fan and two optional 92mm in the front. Those, being optional, are not included and you’ll have to provide them yourself. For most boxes the rear will probably be enough, but I went ahead and put two Zalman 92mm in the front to aid cooling.

The rear tri-cool fan. Tri-cool meaning it takes it’s power from a molex-connector, and has a small switch with three settings for speed. On it’s fastest setting the noise is unbearable, on the slowest it’s virtually silent. 120mm fans are nice, they shovel more air yet are quieter than an 80mm moving the same amount of air.

These are the front intakes. They’re as well-made as the other vents on this case. The drive-bay for the harddrives is easily removed using two thumb-screws, and is very well-made. It slides out on two plastic rails, and this allows you access to attach the fans to these vents.

If you’re dumb like me you assume that you’ll have to remove the front bezel to attach these fans. This rewards you with feeling incredibly dumb when you discover Antec has included eight nice screws to attach the fans from the inside. It also rewards you with a frustrating half-hour trying to get the front back on, which sounds easy but turned out to be incredibly tricky and frustrating. So don’t be stupid like me, and realize that the absurdly long screws marked “9mm Fan Screws” are there for a reason. This is not mentioned in the tiny manual, by the way.

Assembly inside this case was a mostly painless affair. Take your time, do things the right way. There’s no nice slide-out motherboard tray like in my old HX-08, but this is a non-issue really. Installing any motherboard in this case is painless since all the edges are either rolled or smoothed out. You will not get a bunch of cuts and nicks from this case.

Installing harddrives is painless as well. Screw it to the sled with the provided special screws, slide the sled into the rack and it locks nicely into place. This is not the case with CD/DVD-drives, and this brings me to the only really big complaint with this case.

Installing CD/DVD-drives is done the traiditonal way, slide it in and screw it into place. And this is where one annoyance appeared. See, Antec rather rudely assumes that the only use for these drive-bays is a CD/DVD. They’re supposed to be slid into place and attached to one side. You’re not expected to remove the other side of the case.

But see, I had to do that. I have a Zalman rheobus for controlling fanspeed, and I wanted to use this in this case as well. The problem appeared when I tried to screw it in. The problem is that on the opposite side there are no screwholes!

See?

Where a screwhole would’ve been excellent there’s this tiny bit of metal preventing a screw to be used. I found this very annoying, and had to spend an additional twenty minutes modifying this piece of metal so I could attach my Zalman-rheobus. It still doesn’t sit very tight, but at least it’s now attached to the case.

But other than that, assemby is painless. It’s the same process as with any computer and case, and will take an hour or two if you do it properly. At least this case won’t slice you to bits while doing it, like some cheaper cases I’ve encountered over the years. Bang for the buck is very good with this case, it’s excellent value for money. Sure, there are tons of cheap non-name cases out there, some that cost as little as a third of this one - but they will be a long-term pain to use. They will cut your hands to ribbons when installing stuff into it, will have poorly laid out drive-bays and ventilation will be below sub-par. They will have thin sheets of metal that will give very little stability to your system, and if they include a PSU it will be an overrated piece of junk that’ll have problems supplying your computer with power.

The Antec NSK-6580 is not such a case. It’s not the most expensive case out there, but it’s excellent value for money. You could build any computer into this, it’s ventilation is excellent for any machine. There’s place for five harddrives, with plenty of space between them for ventilation. Add two 92mm fans in the front and even the fastest of 10krpm drives will be happy with the cooling. Nice touches include the excellent ventilation and the good quality of components - even the power-button feels like it’s a quality component giving a nice solid feel instead of some flimsy plastic. There’s connectors for front USB, Audio and Firewire. I connected the USB-ports to my motherboard and the Firewire to my Soundblaster Audigy2 ZS while leaving the audio-connectors unplugged. Speaking of audio-connectors, they follow both AC’97 and HD Audio-standards and will most likely plug into any motherboard following those standards.

Definitely recommended.

Pros:

* Excellent value for money.
* Great looks.
* Solid built, nothing sharp here. Hinged sidepanel on one side.
* Easy access using thumbscrews.
* Decent manual detailing everything you need to know.
* Front ports for both USB 2.0 and Firewire, as well as AC’97 and HD Audio audio.
* Rear 120mm fan is included and is quiet.
* Plenty of space for harddrives and hiding cables.
* Sidemounted airduct that can also be replaced with optional 80mm fan.
* Very quiet depending on components put into it.

Cons:

* Difficult to mount anything except CD/DVD drives in the 5 1/4″ drive bays.
* If you remove the front bezel it’s very difficult getting it back in place.

And finally, two shots of my finished product:

No funny comments on the cabling! I got a bit tired towards the end of the build, and later today I’m planning on restructuring them as well as fixing a few things I was too lazy to do yesterday, such as putting the Power-Led the right way.

As for noise this case is a lot quieter. Temperatures are roughly the same for the motherboard and CPU, but harddrives are a whopping ten degrees cooler (29 degrees) than the previous case. This is likely due to being right in the airflow of the two front-mounted 92mm fans. I also removed the fan from my graphics-adapter, which has one of those Zalman passive cooling units on it. Previously it was cooled by an 80mm fan, but that just felt redundant in this case.

Update/Edit: I originally wrote that the PSU had two SATA-plugs. This is wrong, I discovered my error when I sat down the other day and optimized cabling. The PSU actually has four SATA-connectors, split on two leads - i.e. two leads with two SATA-plugs each. My bad.

Yeah, this is yet another why-linux-rules-post but whatever…

Back in spring me and Ann-Sofie inherited a printer. The previous printer we’d had was a low-end Epson that came as part of the computer package Ash bought before I met her. It did the job, but like all inkjet printers it was temperamental, wasteful and the printer was very vulnerable to dust. I don’t know how much paper we wasted having to clean the heads of that thing over and over, and it gobbled ink as if it was powered by a gas-turbine. Also, like all inkjets it was expensive to maintain in the long run since ink is more expensive than gasoline and even human blood.

Overall I’ve never really been a fan of inkjet printers. Sure, they’ve come a long way from their humble beginnings in the early 90’s, but they’re still a very poor excuse for printers. There are few peripherals that can cause such extreme irritations as printers, and since inkjet printers are squarely aimed at the Joe Schmoe market-segment they’re of course the ones that are the least properly engineered. The software and drivers are usually alpha-quality and as such it’s usually a bit of an adventure operating a consumer-grade inkjet printer, regardless of how “userfriendly” the manufacturer claims it to be.

Lasers however have usually been the opposite way. Since laserprinters historically get aimed at offices and businesses they usually receive somewhat more polish on the engineering of hardware and software. This is also reflected on the price - lasers ain’t the cheapest printer around. At least not on the initial purchase, but they weigh it up by being more reliable and more economic in the long run.

Color-lasers however were the domain of nerds wet dreams up until maybe a year or two ago. Hell, I remember when I worked in the US back in ‘99 and a customer special-ordered a color-laser. I can’t remember the exact model, but I’m pretty sure it was a Xerox and costed somewhere around US$80.000. The size is something I am sure about, it was about the size of any average house. Of course, this was the absolute top of the line, spare no expenses-class of printers, and the office that ordered it had some pretty crazy printing-needs. None the less, a lot of fan-photos were taken of the staff with that printer when it arrived.

Today even color-lasers have come down a bit and are readily available to anyone who wants something better-than-average when it comes to printing. Sure, they’re still several magnitudes more expensive than a cheapo inkjet, but you’ll get a really decent color-laser for around 600 US bucks these days. That’s a lot cheaper than 80 grand.

Our laser-printer is of the color-persuasion. We inherited from acquaintances of Ann-Sofies parents, with the provision that the toner was more or less empty and that we’d probably have to replace it pretty soon. Fine, it’s still a functioning laserprinter! And in color! Give it here, right now. Never look a gift-horse in the mouth, especially when it’s a colorlaser.

The printer turned out to be a Konica-Minolta 2300w. No frills whatsoever, but I knew it was a laser and thus was an arm and a leg (plus various other bodyparts) above anything that any inkjet could offer. It turned out to be a bit temperamental, when we first tried installing it under Windows it sometimes refused to acknowledge itself. After some tickling and general prodding it started to behave, but after both me and Ash switched to Ubuntu it got relegated to the corner since it seemed to lack support under Ubuntu - which I found a bit weird since it was a very capable printer and as pretty much any decent laserprinter was postscript-compatible. It was additionally weird since I’d found a Linux-driver and since it showed up just fine in among all the other USB-devices.

None the less, neither of us had much interest in fiddling with it, and for the bare printing needs we had the old Epson worked fine under Ubuntu. Of course with all the annoyances of a cheap inkjet, but par for the course.

Earlier tonight I decided to have a go at it again. Gutsy had supposedly a much improved printing-system over Feisty, so I decided to try it out. Same thing. Printer plugged in just fine, but printings just never happened no matter how much you clicked the “print” button. So I hit the forums, and found this thread which suggested that installing the m2300w-wrapper package from the repos made everything worked. Thus, I installed that package, restarted the printer and presto - IT PRINTS!

About the only complaint I now have about this thing is that it’s virtually impossible to place anywhere sane. All but one side of it has some panel which either needs free access or has some hatch that might need opening for jammed papers or change of toner. The only workable place to put it is literally in the middle of the room with nothing around it.

Här är ett stycke hårdvara som för flera år sen förpassades in i historiens garderob, men som inte blivit såpass gammal att den kan klassas som kult eller retro.

Det här är min gamla Athlon. Den köpte jag i Juni 2000. Jag minns inte prislappen, men den var absolut top of the line och fick specialbeställas. Den ingick i en dator som jag betalade ganska precis 30 lakan för. Hastigheten är 800 Mhz, och såna här Slot A-processorer börjar bli lite smått sällsynta nu. Flera år sen jag såg en senast.

Moderkortet som det här monstret passade till dog för massor med år sen, och jag har inte lyckats hitta en ersättare. Mest troligt kommer den här aldrig att tjänstgöra i en dator igen, utan hamna på väggen som ett slags trofé från svurna tider.

Varför såg processorer ut så här då? Det är ju en “vanlig” processor inuti, men den sitter på ett slags dotterkort. Man gjorde detta eftersom teknologin i slutet av 90-talet hade begränsningar för hur snabba cache-minnen man kunde sätta på moderkortet, och om man istället satte cachen på samma plats som processorn kunde man nå högre hastigheter. Numera integreras cachen i processorkärnan, och såna här munspel dog ut omkring 2001.

I ren macho-faktor tror jag inte den här processorn kan bli slagen. Det var en mäktig syn att se detta monster med sin tillhörande gigantiska kylare trona inuti datorn. Det snabbaste munspelsprocessorerna blev har jag för mig var 1 Ghz, sen återgick branschen till att göra Socket-processorer. Inte riktigt lika visuellt imponerande. En kompis till mig hade två Pentium III-munspel i en SMP-konfiguration. Man såg inte ens moderkortet, bara två kolsvarta torn. Häftigt.

Technorati Tags: hårdvara, datorer, processor, retro, nostalgi

Från och med nu är Seagate ett dött märke inom hårddiskar för min del. För några månader sen började en av Seagate-hårddiskarna i servern strula, och nu börjar även den ena Seagate-disken i min arbetsstation att klicka och sluta fungera emellanåt.

Därmed kommer jag aldrig mer att köpa hårddiskar från Seagate. Seagate var det ena av två företag som jag hade förtroende för, men nu är det slut för Seagates del. Jag känner inget förtroende för hårddiskar som börjar ticka, klicka och vägra fungera med somliga datorer utan någon som helst uppenbar orsak.

Hädanefter blir det bara Western Digital-diskar för mig. Inget annat företag har kvar mitt förtroende vad gäller hårddiskar.

Under mina 29 år som datornörd har jag sett en hel del mer eller mindre meningslösa datortillbehör. Speciellt när USB började bli poppis dök det upp en hel del skrattretande “tillbehör”, jag har fnissat åt allt från USB-julgranar till USB-koppvärmare och liknande.

Men det här måste vara det absolut mest meningslösa tillbehör jag sett, och faktum är att det är så patetiskt hjärndött att jag inte ens skrattar åt det. Jag bara höjer mina ögonbryn och känner mig extremt förvånad över att någon ens kan komma på den här idén.

Så, utan att dröja mer, låt mig presentera: The Mouse Jiggler.

Den här prylen är en liten USB-dongel som ser väldigt diskret ut i sitt utseende. Inga tydliga tecken på vad den gör, inga blinkande lysen eller roterande hjul. Nej, den här har en mycket, mycket mer subtil funktion. Håll i er, för här är det:

Den får din muspekare att röra sig lite, och därmed förhindra att skärmsläckaren går igång.

Jepp, jag försöker fortfarande linda mitt huvud kring detta koncept. Tydligen kostar grejen US$30 också, och den går att köpa här. Först trodde jag det här var ett försenat aprilskämt, men tydligen icke. Tydligen finns det en marknad för människor som vill spendera 30 bucks hellre än klicka sig in i operativsystemets inställningar för skärmsläckare och stänga av skärmsläckarfunktionen.

Jag gillar den här lilla säljblänkaren från företaget som säljer prylen:

“Prevents a computer from going to sleep while you work or play!”

Hur dum måste man vara för att gå på det? Räcker inte det faktum att man, vahetere… ANVÄNDER datorn just då för att förhindra detta? Tydligen inte. Det här är som alla de spam-meddelanden man fick på ICQ för några år sen, som påstod att det var ett meddelande från ICQ själva för att verifiera att konton används, och att man skulle svara på det för att verifiera att ens konto existerade.

Hemsidan har också lite vagt övertygande argument till olika användningsområden, t.ex. “Computer Forensics Investigators use Mouse Jiggler to prevent password dialog boxes due to screen savers or sleep mode” eller “IT professionals or office workers use Mouse Jiggler when downloading/installing programs to keep overactive screen savers from interfering“.

Ingen information på hemsidan om den är Linux-kompatibel, så därmed kan de räkna bort ett köp från mig.

UPPDATERING: Efter några minuters klurande kom jag faktiskt på ett nästan legitimt (”legymt“) användningsområde för den här prylen. Det är om man jobbar på ett företag som forcerar användarpolicy att slå på skärmsläckaren efter fem minuter, och sedan kräva återinloggning. Det är irriterande att bli utloggad bara för att man går och fyller på sitt vattenglas, så där kanske, kanske den här prylen skulle fylla nåt slags syfte. Men det är relativt långsökt ändå…

Under julen trodde jag att jag skulle slippa krångla med min server. Darklands levde dock tyvärr upp till sitt namn och orsakade mer mörker än jag hade velat. Massor med downtime under jul/nyår och arbete direkt när jag kom hem. Tyvärr verkar det som att två av hårddiskarna var orsaken bakom allt strul, och efter att ha plockat bort dem rullar burken nu ungefär som normalt igen.

Det är irriterande när hårddiskar dör, speciellt när det är de hårddiskar som innehåller data som man vill behålla. Extra irriterande är det när det är de sista hårddiskarna man trodde skulle faliera. I det här fallet var det två stycken Seagate Barracuda 120giggare som bestämde sig för att ge upp andan. Extra irriterande eftersom de två sunkiga Maxtor-hårddiskarna som jag fick för 3+ år sen var de som jag trodde först skulle dö på mig. Super-extra irriterande eftersom de två IBM-diskarna som i år fyller sju fortfarande puttrar vidare trots dygnetrunt-tjänst.

Det känns också irriterande att det fortfarande finns garanti kvar på Seagate-diskarna, men isf får jag frakta dem till Tyskland el. dyl eftersom Seagate sett till att göra det så bökigt så möjligt att få ut nånting på garantin. En frakt till Tyskland kostar dessutom mer än två nya hårddiskar, vilket känns väldigt Moment 22.

Så, jag får se vad som händer. Det blir en del downtime med servern eftersom jag ikväll ska plocka ner henne igen och stoppa in diskarna igen och se om de magiskt återuppstår. Tro det eller ej, men det har hänt förut (dock med andra hårddiskar). Det här känns surt som sjutton, och Seagate sjunker rejält i min förtroende-omröstning. Jag håller tummarna för en återupplivning, men vi får se…

Goda nyheter är dock att jag och Ann-Sofie har investerat i varsin ny skärm! Japp, jag har numera gett mig in i TFT-världen, och har tillfälligt lämnat dualskärms-världen bakom mig. Det känns lite ovant, och elefant-i-telefonkioskkänslan gör sig påmind, men wow vilka skärmar! Färgen och ljusstyrkan är otrolig, och vi valde skärmar med väldigt låg responstid (enligt mig, och utan att välja orealistiskt låga responstider). Samsung var märket och det blev varsin splitterny nittontummare. Vilket lyft från mina gamla tröskvärk (medveten stavning) till CRT-skärmar.

UPPDATERING: Skrytbild

Tidigare under dagen ställde Ann-Sofie en kartong som råkade blockera två av hårddiskfläktarna i min server. Resultatet blev att ingen frisk luft blåste över fyra av hårddiskarna, och temperaturerna rusade i höjden. En av diskarna gick från 29 grader till 50 grader, en rejäl ökning. Flyttade på den blockerande kartongen och temperaturen sjönk omedelbart… *puh*

Remember kids, det är viktigt med kylning för hårddiskar

I ett försök att pigga upp mitt humör tänker jag skriva och berätta om en nyhet som säkerligen inte kan undgå Apple-nördar: Den nya iMacen med 24″ cinema-display! Yeah, den här vill jag ha.

Thanks Apple, helt underbar maskin verkar det som. Det är trevligt också att Apple sänkt priserna samt introducerat en sjuttontums iMac som är kuslig lik den Mac som säljs till skolorna. Men den är billig, under tio lakan och är säkerligen mycket lockande för familjer som vill ha en enkel men ändå kraftfull dator. Kul som sagt, man sänkte priserna rätt rejält iom den nya tjugofyratummaren - en tjugotummare sjönk till under 15 lakan, vilket är rätt bra pris.

Så, nu ska jag drömma om en tjugofyratums iMac i framtiden. Mums.

(Från vänster: Sjutton tum, Tjugo tum, Tjugofyra tum)