This is the fanspeed reported by i8k on my recently inherited free second-hand laptop running Ubuntu. Notice anything?
The speed reported is… well… slightly exaggerated. 70k plus revs per minute? A jet engine powering a jumbojet doesn’t spin that fast. Methinks the speed is erroneously reported…
The last two years or so I’ve had really bad luck with harddrives. I’ve had a whole bunch of them fail me, and most of them weren’t even that old. Ironically enough the drives that keep chugging along most peacefully are in my server – and they’re of a brand I never trusted (Maxtor) as well as going on six years of age. Keep in mind as well that they’re in my server and thus is rarely if ever turned off. I think I’m going to max out the MTBF on those bad boys some day.
But as for most other drives, great misfortune. I’ve had about 600 gigabyte of Seagate-drives die on me. Even the mighty Western Digital have fallen for my curse, and my current 640-gigabyte Western Digital started having minor issues this spring. A while back I ran some tests on it and sure enough, it was having bad sectors and they were slowly but surely multiplying.
I say “my current” but as of the time of writing this it’s my previous. I rifled through my mattress and text-link money and managed to scrounge up enough cash to buy a new drive. This time I went for a 1TB Western Digital instead. It just seemed uneconomical to buy a smaller drive for almost the same price. I’m also constantly amazed at how much space they squeeze into the same formfactor. I grew up in the era when it was considered spectacular to have a 3.5″ drive with a whopping 2 (TWO!!) gigabytes of space on it, so 1TB is even more impressive.
Anyhoo, this also called for a reinstall of my OS. Since early 2007 I’ve been an Ubuntu-man and I saw no reason to change this. This time I decided to be adventurous and went for the as-yet unreleased Ubuntu 9.10, aka the Karmic Koala. It’s currently in Alpha4, but I felt bold and since it’s going to be released in another two months I just didn’t see the point in installing 9.04 (aka Jaunty Jackal) and then upgrade later. Plus, I was really curious about some of the new things.
So, some first impressions. I’ve run this for less than 24 hours, keep that in mind.
* It’s fast. I installed it with the default filesystem, which previously was EXT3 but since Koala has become the new and shiny EXT4 on new installations. I was a bit skeptical to the claims I’ve read, but boot-up on my machine is very quick. There’s obviously been a lot of optimizations to bootup and I’m sure EXT4 helps out a lot. I have yet to enable concurrent booting as well, so maybe that’ll help too.
* It’s fast. Yeah, I know. Technically these things are the same, but I felt it warranted two mentions. It not only boots fast, it logs in fast too. I didn’t install preload until an hour ago, but it never bothered me. Everything just starts up virtually immediately. With preload I suppose it might be even a little quicker. Even slow hogs like Firefox start up much more rapidly.
* It’s unstable. Yup. It’s Alpha 4 after all, so there’s bound to be a lot of quirks. Up until just an hour ago for example I was unable to listen to music, since Rhythmbox would crash after 5 seconds of play, and bring the whole soundsystem (PulseAudio, whatever) with it and turn my box into a deaf-mute until I rebooted. An update seems to have fixed this. There’s plenty other quirks, applications that crash without notice. So there be dragons here.
* Liferea STILL segfaults with signal 11 for me. This is messed-up. A brand-new install, with Liferea from the repos, and it still segfaults? Now it doesn’t even start, it just pukes out a segfault when you try to start it.
* Lots of nice minor touches, visually. The Karmic login-screen is so much nicer than the default in Jaunty. I might actually keep it, instead of replacing it with something slicker from Gnome-Look. There’s been improvements to function as well, the default login looks and acts professional, while being somewhat pretty. Additionally, it fades away nicely to reveal the desktop in a very MacOS X-like fashion. With Compiz Fusion enabled it also does blur and fades and all kinds of other snaziness.
* More control over Rhythmbox’s notifications. Yeah, this one might seem trivial but for me it’s a big deal. I tend to keep Rhythmbox running maximized on another desktop, since I have eight of them. I don’t see any reason to minimize it. This meant however that Rhythmbox didn’t notify on song-changes, which in turn meant I had to change to that desktop if I wanted to see the name of the next tune. This has now been corrected, you can tell Rhythmbox to ALWAYS notify on song-changes. To quote Jamie Oliver: “Lovely!”
* Firefox 3.5 has really, really crappy visual integration into Gnome, for some reason. I’ve gone back to the 3.0.x-series instead. I like using the bitmap Artwiz fonts for visuals, and FF3.5 completely ignores these and apply it’s own philosophy of butt-ugly fonts in menus instead. No thanks. FF3.0.x doesn’t have this hubris and instead decides to fit in. So it’s my browser until Ubuntu/Whomever fixes the visual integration. This kinda sucks, since FF3.5 is stunningly fast.
* The bug in the kernel affecting us with an AMD/ATI-chipset is still there. Details on this are fuzzy, and it’s plagued me for more than a year. Essentially it causes really high load (and slow speeds) while copying to USB-devices. At least for me, many others have other problems such as slow SATA-speeds, but that has for some reason not affected me. Also, maybe it’s not related to AMD/ATI since I remember reading about people with Intel-chipsets on Asus-boards also having similar problems. Which in turn makes it more difficult for kernel-devs to figure out.
Occasionally I do freelance computer work for friends and family. More often than not I find a dust-filled computer that is choking trying to maintain it’s cool while slowly filling with crud. Often these computers require some minor care, and one of my routine procedures is to blow them clear of the crud. It’s almost fascinating how such a simple act can bring back an almost dead computer to life.
Now, I’ve seen some pretty bad horror-shows in my days, but this has got to be the top five at least. Sadly this machine was beyond rescue as it had been zapped by lightning, but it still serves as a good example as to why you should occasionally spend some time keeping your electronic pal clean.
Computers rely on fans to stay cool. Unfortunately many of these fans also suck in dust-particles, and after a while these tend to collect in nasty layers. When your computer looks like the one below, it’s really struggling to stay cool and functional. Imagine yourself trying to breathe through a layer of crud like this. It’s not a pleasant thought.
So spend some time occasionally lifting the cover off your electronic buddy and giving him a good clean. You can buy canned air at most any electronics shop or photo-outlet. It’s a simple tip to keep your machine running smoothly.
If you want more photos of this sorry machine, have a look in my gallery.
… there was some kind of technology that would allow me to literally slap applications. I’m very tired and frustrated right now, and software that takes time to respond annoys the living bejeezus out of me. So I wish I could just SLAP the lazy-ass piece of crap. Give that application a traditional whooping and maybe it’ll wake up out of it’s coma.
Update: Oh, and for the record – Thunderbird might be a kick-ass email application but IT SUCKS ASS at being a news-reader. My regular old Liferea is segfaulting for unknown reasons and no-one seems to have any clue why, even though I’m not alone in this.
Before my reboot of this blog, I had a posting where I waxed nostalgic about the progress of mobile storage, in the form of USB thumbdrives. Essentially I had a “I remember when I was young…” kind of thing. I also had a photo of my then current crop of USB thumbdrives. Here it is again, in case you forgot it:
From left to right: 128MB that I got as a christmas present back in ’04, then two 512MB units, the grey one is a 1GB unit and the black farthest to the right is a 4GB unit which at the time was bought dirt-cheap.
That was almost a year ago, and just a few minutes ago I felt an update was needed so I whipped out some memory and took a photo of it.
From left to right: A 1GB Micro-SD that I have very little use for. It used to be in my R4DS but I replaced that with a 2GB unit instead. The 16MB Nikon Compact Flash is just for laughs. Then there’s the 128MB PNY-stick and the two 512MB units. The 1GB is missing since I gave it to a friend. Then the black 4GB Kingston, a 4GB SanDisk and finally a whopping 16GB Kingston which is my newest addition.
Fun fact: The neckstrap attached to the 4GB Kingston Datatraveller is the same strap that I got with the 128MB PNY. It’s even labeled PNY but has survived numerous sticks.
I bought a new webcam today. Spontaneously I bought a cheap Creative Webcam Vista or whatever the heck it was called. It was dirt-cheap, I just couldn’t stop myself despite my official loathing for most everything from that hell-spawned corporation named Creative.
On the bus home I figured I’d be very surprised if it worked in Ubuntu, since the whole freakin’ package was smeared with “Vista Compatible” everywhere.
Turns out if works just fine in 8.10. In fact, it was easier to install in Ubuntu than in Windows XP.
Here’s the steps required to make it work automagically in Ubuntu 8.10:
* Plug the damn thing in.
* Wait four seconds. Or something, I wasn’t exactly using a stopwatch.
* Done!
Here’s the steps required when I decided I wanted to use it in my virtualized Windows XP-machine:
* Plug the damn thing in.
* Nothing happens except for Windows popping up it’s usual “What the hell is this? Give me drivers!”-box.
* Remember that you most likely have to install drivers before plugging it in. Stupid! Stupid!
* Unplug the damn thing.
* Download drivers and additional software from the maze that acts as Creatives website.
* Install drivers and additional software.
* Reboot.
* Plug the damn thing in again.
* Done!
Previous to buying this camera I’d been using an ancient Logitech QuickCam Web, made some time in 2001 I think. Worked fine for most purposes, except after upgrading to 8.10 it had stopped working in a majority of applications – most likely due to Video4Linux going through some heavy changes. It had never worked in Skype under Linux, and had enjoyed spotty support in general. For example, Cheese had never recognized it previously despite my many attempts at tickling it into service. No go.
This new one however, despite being Vista-branded up the wazoo, worked fine in all these applications. Skype? No problem. Cheese? Like a charm. Amsn? You betcha.
So I played around a bit with Cheese. Owners of gilded cages know what Photobooth is. Cheese is an open-source kind of clone of Photobooth. Cheese works in a similar way. You see yourself in the webcam, you push a button, it takes a photo. You can also apply cheesy effects. The effects are built-in and perform various oddities such as making you green and purple like the Hulk, or flipping you upside down, or making wobbly effects. Fun for about five seconds – until I discovered that it was possible to layer multiple effects. So after playing around with various combinations I activated ALL the effects, and here’s the result:
I assure you, that’s my face. Here’s one without any effects applied, just for comparison.
And just because I love uploading photos, here’s a screenshot of the interface:
I know, I don’t write even remotely as much as I’d like to here. I’m in a bit of a writers slump, I just don’t have the blogging spirit right now. It’ll probably return after I’ve moved house in a month or two. Right now I’m more content with enjoying the cool summer and not worrying about entertaining a bunch of strangers on the Internet.
However, I have two new neat things. The first one is a Logitech Wave keyboard, which I purchased recently and thanks to my aunts generous sponsorship of it. Thank you! It is a bit weird since my previous keyboard was more than eight (!) years old and well worn and used to. But I’m adjusting to it, and it’s quite nice. If you’re looking for a decent, corded keyboard then this is an excellent choice. It’s not a Das Keyboard, but it’s okay. The only major gripe I have with it is that most of the extra-keys only function in Windows using Logitechs proprietary driver. Media control and volume work fine in Linux though.
The other and much neater gadget is also thanks to a generous donation. A few days ago I discovered someone had actually used the Paypal-button to deposit approximately ~500 swedish kronor. I used this to buy a new toy that I’ve been lusting after for a few months.
Previously I had a Zalman ZM-MFC1 to control my fans in my computer. I’ve had this for several years, probably since pre-2004 and it’s not a bad piece of equipment. Sure, it won’t set the world on fire, but it’s a nice way to control the speed (and by extension noise) of fans in your computer.
About two months back I discovered Zalman had produced a new version of this fancontroller – the ZM-MFC2. I knew I had to have this, and thanks to the anonymous donation I now do.
While the MFC1 has a certain geek-appeal having lots of knobs, switches and LEDs the MFC2 is so much sexier. Gone are the knobs and LEDs and instead you get a display with a readout, and a nifty jog-wheel to set fanspeeds. A new trick up it’s sleeve is also that it can measure the power-consumption of your computer, using an included external dongle. Another new trick is that it measures temperatures using four included sensors that you’re free to place anywhere within reach. Mine currently measure the temperature of my CPU-heatsink, memory, chipset-cooler and inside the harddrive cage.
It does the same things as the MFC1, but it does it in a much cooler and more sophisticated way. It also has the added functionality of measuring power-draw and temperature. Currently my computer eats about 200w, and when I fire up Seti@home on three cores this goes up to 220w.
All in all this is a very neat little addition to any enthusiast-computer, and I want to thank whoever donated the money. I have no idea who you are, since there was no message and none of my friends have confessed to doing it. So thank you, whoever you are. Hope you feel I used your donation in a frivolous and unnecessary manner 
The only complaint I have about this thing is that the display could have better contrast between inactive parts and active. But it’s a minor concern, and either way it’s not like you’re going to have your eyes glued to this thing much per day. This phenomenon is visible even in my crappy photos below.
Here’s three crappy photos, taken with my phone since I no longer have access to a decent digital camera.
(This is a repost from before the reboot of this blog. Apologies for any inconvenience)
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.
