What have you repaired lately?

[Farm Boy]

Best of luck!

 

[Quintillus]

I attempted to repair my "office" keyboard, on which a number of keys stopped working on Friday. I fixed the "L" key. Unfortunately, some other important keys such as Backspace, j, semicolon, and End are not working; thus I'm using my backup "home" keyboard of the same model again.

It wasn't all for naught, though. In addition to learning some things about membrane keyboard construction and narrowing down the potential causes, I was able to switch the integrated palmrests, so the older, working keyboard now has the newer, better-condition palmrests. And while I doubt I'll be able to find replacement parts to get the other one working, I now am confident I can swap out parts to repair the remaining one if need be.

 

[Zkribbler]

We don't have sewers here on Bohol. We have sceptic tanks. After a dozen years, mine is full. The guy is coming tomorrow to empty it. He expects about three truckloads.

 

[Zardnaar]

We don't have sewers here on Bohol. We have sceptic tanks. After a dozen years, mine is full. The guy is coming tomorrow to empty it. He expects about three truckloads.

Gross.
Rural places have them here.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Gross....

Sewers just let you crap and not worry about it as it becomes someone else's problem. A septic tank keeps you connected to waste you produce.

 

[GinandTonic]

Replaced the screen on my laptop. Touch recognition not perfect, but getting the webcam and ir cam to work at the same time was something of a struggle.

 

[Zkribbler]

We don't have sewers here on Bohol. We have sceptic tanks. After a dozen years, mine is full. The guy is coming tomorrow to empty it. He expects about three truckloads.

The guys showed up at 7:30/19:30 last night. In retrospect, this make sense. Less road traffic; cooler temperatures. They figured out the volume of poop, and charged me P12,000 [US$240].

Edit: Finished `after midnight. We had to destroy the concrete manhole cover in order to get it open. We've built a replacement

Instead of refilling the hole with limestone, we will use sand instead. It will be an outdoor cat box and will pinpoint the spot whenever need to dig next time.

 

[Zkribbler]

When one enters my property via the main gate, the view is across the carport, the orchid garden, and the seawall. Atop the seawall, is a wooden fence. The boards of this fence are not parallel to the seawall but perpendicular to it. This allows visitors an immediate panorama of the sea. The reason for this fence is because, just to the left of it are the bleachers to the basketball court. When the fence was first built, spectators could gaze right into my living room. Years ago. I took out that window and replaced it with a structure to hold my TV, flanked by two large brick vents.

Meanwhile. years of exposure to sea air, wind, rain, and sun have caused the wooden wall to go rotten. My carpenter Fredo is coming today to rip it out and replace it...with exactly what, I don't know.

 

[Birdjaguar]

We drained and re pressurized our under the sink RO water filter system and replaced the filters.

 

[Gorbles]

I got a new computer. Had to use some parts of the old one, because a new graphics card apparently costs as much as everything else I spent combined at the moment. Frigging cryptocurrency nonsense.

I had to fix it a couple of times while building it I don't do this often (been about eight years since my last), and tech keeps ramping up all the while. So here's the hardware fun:

• I originally didn't put the CPU cooler on until everything else was in the case. That was a mistake. It has a backplate that I wasn't expecting hahaha. So I had to disconnect everything, pull the motherboard out, mount the cooler, and then put everything back in. Lots of silent swearing (it was late at night at this point).
• I massacred the cabling, so I had to swap the orientation of my (2.5") SSD so I could get the SATA and power cables into it.
• I'm surprised the power cables for the CPU even reached (the sockets are on a very awkward part of the motherboard, relative to the PSU).
• My CPU cooler is, uh, gently resting on my new RAM. Google says this shouldn't be a problem, so long as it isn't pressing down (everything seems to be fine at least).

My real problems started with software. I started the PC up and it booted to BIOS. It didn't boot to Windows. I was using my existing boot drive (SSD) with a valid copy of Windows. I was expecting activation hell (which I did get, in the end), but I wasn't expecting "beep boop no drive".

The BIOS recognised all my SATA connections. Even my new NVMe drive. But I couldn't set boot priority.

I was frustrated as heck by this point (sweating over a PC case for hours after the kids have gone to bed, trying to not make much noise is stressful, yo), and I only had my phone available to me. So I dug through the web. All sorts of search results, different potential issues with the motherboard, BIOS, whatever. I asked for help from friends online. "reinstall Windows" seemed to be the common advice.

1. I played with the BIOS settings. I tested Fast Boot. I setup Secure Boot fully from inside the BIOS. I tried disabling all non-boot drives.
2. Finally, I switched from UEFI (BIOS) to CSM (legacy), and woah! It booted! I had Windows! But I didn't have Internet, and various other problems (for example, I didn't want to be in CSM mode).
3. After a bit more Googling, I worked out my boot drive was actually the old MBR (Master Boot Record) configuration. It needed to be GPT (GUID Partition Table). I could remember this from when I sorted my 3TB storage drives a few years back. Turns out I never sorted my boot drive (probably because it told me I had to reinstall Windows and I didn't want that).
4. I found out how to apparently convert an MBR drive to GPT while keeping all my data. Seemed too good to be true - but it worked without a hitch.
5. Reboot into UEFI, format my NVMe drive, and bang, I'm mostly where I want to be.

But I still don't have Internet . . .

1. ipconfig? No connection, no adapter, do not pass Go, do not collect £200.
2. Network manager? It was still talking about my old Realtek adapter. It was on the software, but physically "didn't exist". Hmm.
3. So I look up the LAN chipset in my motherboard manual. An Intel I225V Ethernet Controller.
4. I tried to find it in the existing driver list. No dice.
5. Thankfully my new PC has a USB-C port, so I can plug my phone straight into it.
6. I Google the driver on the phone, download it there, and copy it over. Installed, and voila, Internet.

The time was at this point 1.10am. We had a visit to a Covid testing centre at 8am sharp to test the toddler. It's now a bit after 11am. I feel a bit rough

 

[hobbsyoyo]

That does not sound like fun but good job nonetheless!

I tried to buy the parts to build a new computer back in January but yeah, cryptomining has screwed the prices of GPUs and made them stupid expensive, if you can find them at all.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

@Gorbles, hopefully you can scoop up one of these bad boys.

I feel like the last time @Lemon Merchant built a PC, she installed one.

It only takes 4 PCI slots!

Spoiler :

 

[Gorbles]

That does not sound like fun but good job nonetheless!

I tried to buy the parts to build a new computer back in January but yeah, cryptomining has screwed the prices of GPUs and made them stupid expensive, if you can find them at all.

I don't know if this'll help you, but I was surprised at how much of a boost I got. I replaced a lot of parts for sure, but left my existing HDDs and my GPU (a 1070 GTX from 2016 - a great card, but five years old at this point). I'm seeing massive gains across the board, for both work and gaming.

It's partially because I wait for so long before upgrading my PC (I would usually wait even longer, around a solid decade or so between builds), but work has been good to me so I had disposable for the first time in a long time. Let me get high-end components instead of just the best value for a budget. It's been eight years, I went from an Intel i5-3570k to a brand-spanking-new Intel i7-11700k (it came out on Tuesday). As Intel have a decent and understandable numbering convention, that's a solid eight generations! I got new RAM as well, and various other bits.

I went from 60FPS (at best) to 120FPS in Borderlands 3 (my benchmark for a game that requires a lot of juice). My Tomcat build times were reduced to a third. Docker starts up a heckuva lot faster (didn't time it). I'm seeing significant to massive reductions across the board, even in stuff that I'd expect the GPU to do heavy lifting.

Honestly, if you have a working GPU, give a CPU upgrade some thought. It might be enough by itself.

EDIT

Holy cow that's the size of a bus

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I don't have a GPU as I recycled my last PC at the end of its life since it was covered in tar from when I was a smoker.

Unsurprisingly, it had an odor when you turned it on. Surprisingly, the odor actually wasn't bad; people who didn't know what it was would assume I was burning a scented candle and remark that they liked it. I tried to clean the tar off but it was impossible given how sticky it is.

 

[Gorbles]

I'd actually forgotten 11th-gen Intel comes with apparently fantastic integrated graphics (link is about laptops, but it should be in desktop chipsets too):

https://gizmodo.com/intels-11th-gen-processor-with-iris-xe-graphics-is-real-1845076046

Maybe when they come down in price (if they do), they could be worth a look at. Then again maybe AMD does just as well, I didn't look too closely at what their Ryzen line can do at the moment.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

AMD is kicking Intel's ass on basically all fronts right now. Intel sort of went down a dead end while trying to reach the next level of miniaturization and has basically been forced to sit out the current generation. IIRC, AMD is at a 7 nm process while Intel is still at 15nm. This means AMD chips are faster and less power hungry, and they've continued building on their multi thread strength relative to Intel as well.

A 'nm process' basically means how small they can make the transistors, measured in nanometers. Smaller = better

 

[Lemon Merchant]

@Gorbles, hopefully you can scoop up one of these bad boys.

I feel like the last time @Lemon Merchant built a PC, she installed one.

It only takes 4 PCI slots!

Spoiler :

I can't even get a 3090, much less a 4090. It's time for an upgrade, but graphics cards are currently unobtanium. I'm stuck with my pair of Radeon Vega 64s for now.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

How do you feel about paired GPU's? I had some mid-range crossfire-configured cards on my last computer and I felt it did not really give me any big performance boost relative to one card. I definitely wished I had spent twice as much money on a single card rather than half as much on each of two cards.

 

[Birdjaguar]

@Gorbles, hopefully you can scoop up one of these bad boys.

I feel like the last time @Lemon Merchant built a PC, she installed one.

It only takes 4 PCI slots!

And it's April 1 too!

 

[Birdjaguar]

I am running a Nvidia 1080 Ti and it does everything I need it to. It is old tech now, but handles the massive graphics demands of POE easily on a 28" 4k monitor.