hardcore techy thread

kalmar · **Posted:** Sat Feb 07, 2009 16:11

I shall start this off in a not very hardcore fashion: upgrading my iMac to a 1 Terabyte hard disc.

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It's now installing Leopard (about 50 minutes remaining). I decided to install it from scratch and just copy over my applications and files from the backup of the Tiger disc. This will no doubt turn out to be a horribly wrong decision.

Post your ill-advised hardware modification adventures here!

DBSnappa · **Posted:** Sat Feb 07, 2009 16:13

What iMac is that? I have a 20" iG5 I'd quite like to whack a bigger HDD in - is it easy?

kalmar · **Posted:** Sat Feb 07, 2009 16:21

DBSnappa wrote:

What iMac is that? I have a 20" iG5 I'd quite like to whack a bigger HDD in - is it easy?

This is a 17" Intel, but I believe the G5s are fairly similar. It's not actually difficult, just a bit fiddly.
Remove all the torx screws from underneath (you won't have the right size driver), then take off the bezel. My one has a tricky metal clip at the top, so don't force it if yours has that, unhook it with a credit card or similar.

Then carefully peel the RF sheilding away from the edges of the screen, unscrew it and lift it out and rest it as shown in my photo (don't bother disconnecting the cables). The HD has a big plastic lever bolted to it, unlatch that to take it out and unplug the HD cables. Then unscrew the lever and the two "pins" at the other side and transfer them to the new drive. Also, remove the temperature sensor which is glued on and transfer that.

Then "the reverse" to put it back together. Clean out the fans while you're in there.

There's a variety of ways to transfer the data over to the new drive, easiest is probably to do a backup and then restore from it (boot from your install DVD to partition the new drive and restore). Or boot from the external drive if it's firewire.

I used a Western Digital Caviar Greenpower (or something) 1TB drive. About 68 quid plus vat on ebuyer. It's a lot quieter than the old one.

Question - does the Apple logo on the front of yours light up? There's either a sensor or an LED behind mine but I'm not sure what it's for.

Da5e · **Posted:** Sat Feb 07, 2009 17:26

I read that as 'hardcore techno thread' and was seriously looking forward to lengthy conversations about Loftgroover.

Doctor Glyndwr · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 32624

kalmar wrote:

I used a Western Digital Caviar Greenpower (or something) 1TB drive. About 68 quid plus vat on ebuyer. It's a lot quieter than the old one.

I am hearing tremendous things about these drives, they are supposed to be essentially silent.

tossrStu · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 1326

Doctor Glyndwr wrote:

kalmar wrote:

I used a Western Digital Caviar Greenpower (or something) 1TB drive. About 68 quid plus vat on ebuyer. It's a lot quieter than the old one.

I am hearing tremendous things about these drives, they are supposed to be essentially silent.

They're lovely drives indeed but from what I've read, the Samsung F1 drives are almost as quiet and perform better too (7200 RPM vs 5400 RPM).

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article843-page1.html

Doctor Glyndwr · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 32624

Hmm, good stuff, thanks for the link. Although in my NAS I think I'd actually prefer 5400 rpm for reduced heat generation; the disks are never pushed that hard doing media streaming.

kalmar · **Posted:** Sat Feb 07, 2009 18:37

Yep, I think the thing with this one is it's supposedly cooler running. I was slightly worried about putting something too hot in the back of the imac since it's not quite as well ventilated as a normal PC case, but so far I haven't heard the fan kick in so hopefully it's OK.

This thing's on all the time as a server for various things so the power consumption is important too.

Leopard on this thing is quite nice actually, new lease of life for it really.

sinister agent · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 7046

I can't find the thread on it, so sorry, but a quick question: Is a new Radeon HD 4350 graphics card a good deal for £42? It certainly seems to be to me.

MrD · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 2139

Quote:

Post your ill-advised hardware modification adventures here!

Just plug it all in any which way, who cares!

DBSnappa · **Posted:** Sat Feb 28, 2009 12:35

kalmar wrote:

DBSnappa wrote:

What iMac is that? I have a 20" iG5 I'd quite like to whack a bigger HDD in - is it easy?

This is a 17" Intel, but I believe the G5s are fairly similar. It's not actually difficult, just a bit fiddly.
Remove all the torx screws from underneath (you won't have the right size driver), then take off the bezel. My one has a tricky metal clip at the top, so don't force it if yours has that, unhook it with a credit card or similar.

Then carefully peel the RF sheilding away from the edges of the screen, unscrew it and lift it out and rest it as shown in my photo (don't bother disconnecting the cables). The HD has a big plastic lever bolted to it, unlatch that to take it out and unplug the HD cables. Then unscrew the lever and the two "pins" at the other side and transfer them to the new drive. Also, remove the temperature sensor which is glued on and transfer that.

Then "the reverse" to put it back together. Clean out the fans while you're in there.

There's a variety of ways to transfer the data over to the new drive, easiest is probably to do a backup and then restore from it (boot from your install DVD to partition the new drive and restore). Or boot from the external drive if it's firewire.

I used a Western Digital Caviar Greenpower (or something) 1TB drive. About 68 quid plus vat on ebuyer. It's a lot quieter than the old one.

Question - does the Apple logo on the front of yours light up? There's either a sensor or an LED behind mine but I'm not sure what it's for.

Thanks for that, I may well have a go at that as I already run superduper and have cloned all the HDDs on the various Macs in the house. The screws at the base of mine don't actually come out and they're not torx either I don't think, as I've had the back off a few times for various upgrades (RAM and wifi)

Is that sensor a brightness thing - there was a sensor adjustment regarding the pulsing sleep light as they used to be so bright that it could keep people awake if they slept near their iMacs - either that or it's an ambient screen brightness adjuster possibly.

kalmar · **Posted:** Sat Feb 28, 2009 15:26

I figured it out, it's the remote control receiver

The ambient light sensor is on the underside.

I am doing stuff today which is unfortunately too techy for this thread :nerd:

LewieP · **Joined:** 29th Apr, 2008 **Posts:** 7600

Does anyone know of a way to completely break a computer that has similar symptoms to an accidental/random breakage?

kalmar · **Posted:** Sat Feb 28, 2009 16:21

Hmm, hardware breakage you mean?

I should probably ask why..

But wrapping tin foil around the edge connector on one of the PCI cards and then plugging it back in will probably cause permanent breakage.

My mission today is to fix this:

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sinister agent · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 7046

Drop a magnet in and rattle it about a bit.

Cras · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 49244

I've done some wiring! And I didn't kill myself!

RBR2 · **Posted:** Sat Feb 28, 2009 20:00

kalmar · **Posted:** Sat Feb 28, 2009 20:03

Attachment:

Stouffer.jpg.thumb.jpg

RESPECT IS DUUUUE.

Did you do the glass of water trick, or did you just guess?
By the way, I can't see your twitpic here, only on Twitter..

@mrak: any UPS will do, won't it?
Or do you mean one that will also shut the computer down gracefully before the battery runs out? Does that actually matter for Macs?

RBR2 · **Posted:** Sat Feb 28, 2009 20:12

Cras · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 49244

kalmar wrote:

RESPECT IS DUUUUE.

Did you do the glass of water trick, or did you just guess?

I bottled it and went out and bought a multimeter

kalmar · **Posted:** Sat Feb 28, 2009 21:31

mrak wrote:

Ooh, UPSes can do that? That kind of thing would be nice, but I dunno if you'd need a Mac specific one or something. Apple have got to be using some kind of crazy non-standard power cable, right?

Not really, no.

Maybe the minis have laptop supplies/cables though.

Since this is the techy thread, what you'd want to do there is get an IEC computer extension lead (like the kind which used to go from the PC power supply to the monitor, has a plug at one end and a socket at the other), cut the plug end off it and join it on to a british 4 way extension strip (or a single socket, whatever). Then plug your Mac into that.

Malc · **Posted:** Sat Feb 28, 2009 22:17

kalmar wrote:

mrak wrote:

Ooh, UPSes can do that? That kind of thing would be nice, but I dunno if you'd need a Mac specific one or something. Apple have got to be using some kind of crazy non-standard power cable, right?

Not really, no.

Maybe the minis have laptop supplies/cables though.

Since this is the techy thread, what you'd want to do there is get an IEC computer extension lead (like the kind which used to go from the PC power supply to the monitor, has a plug at one end and a socket at the other), cut the plug end off it and join it on to a british 4 way extension strip (or a single socket, whatever). Then plug your Mac into that.

That's what we do at work...

In my first week at work I was introduced to the person who makes them up for us. That's all he does makes them up. I made about 10 for him that day. Just so I knew what his job was all about. Great thing induction weeks...

Malc

Grim... · **Posted:** Wed Mar 04, 2009 14:43

Hello, fellow techy people!
I have just written this, who can tell me what it does?

Code:

/^(LE[1-6]|OX([1-4]|1[5-7]|33|44)|WD([3,6,7]|1[7-9]|2[4-5]))[ ]*[0-9][A-Z]{2}$/

Doctor Glyndwr · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 32624

Grim... wrote:

I have just written this, who can tell me what it does?

Me, as I just IMd you, but I won't say any more here to let other people do it.

Cras · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 49244

Doctor Glyndwr wrote:

Me

Colour me fucking astonished.

regexps are for dullards.

Grim... · **Posted:** Wed Mar 04, 2009 14:49

Craster wrote:

I can't do regex

Truth-feex

Malc · **Posted:** Wed Mar 04, 2009 14:49

Grim... wrote:

Hello, fellow techy people!
I have just written this, who can tell me what it does?

Code:

/^(LE[1-6]|OX([1-4]|1[5-7]|33|44)|WD([3,6,7]|1[7-9]|2[4-5]))[ ]*[0-9][A-Z]{2}$/

reverses some text given to it in a string?

Malc

Doctor Glyndwr · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 32624

Craster wrote:

regexps are for dullards.

You're right, the HUNDREDS OF CHARACTERS OF SUBSTR() calls in your MafiaCounter code are far more readable.

Cras · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 49244

Fuck yeah!

Zio · **Joined:** 31st Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 6093

While we're having some hardcore techy-techy here - how would I know if the PSU I was using in my self-built PC was insuficient for it's power needs? I say this, as I think I may possibly need to get something with more juice.

My PC is:
Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 2.66GHz, overclocked to 3.40GHz
4GB PC-6400 DDR2 RAM
1 x PCI-E Nvidia GeForce 8800GT 512MB
1 x 500GB SATA HDD
1 x SATA DVD dual-layer burner
Integrated audio
PCI WiFi card
PCI Firewire card

all powered by a Corsair 520W HX modular PSU.

It works just fine like this, but if I try and boot it with an external, bus-powered USB HDD plugged in, it occasionaly fails to POST unless I shove everything down to non-overclocked default settings. Also, I'm using Corsair RAM sticks which are meant to be able to achieve lower latency if you up the memory voltage to 2.1V - doing this also causes it to fail to POST.

So is it that I need a juicier PSU then? I would've thought 520W was enough for one graphics card, one hard drive and one optical drive?

kalmar · **Posted:** Wed Mar 04, 2009 15:52

There's no way to say for sure without measuring - one can only guess as you have done.

Stick a scope on the supply rails and see if it's folding back at startup. That would confirm if it's overloaded.

Sounds a bit like it though.

Doctor Glyndwr · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 32624

kalmar wrote:

Stick a scope

I suddenly want to own an oscilloscope.

markg · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 16636

In case you needed further convincing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1eNjUgaB-g

Doctor Glyndwr · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 32624

markg wrote:

In case you needed further convincing:

Piffle.

He made the old Vectrex MAME games (Star Wars and Asteroids, notably) output to a sound card, then hooked a mic up to the output and connected it to the 'scope, and ended up with a working game.

Video:

JohnCoffey · **Posted:** Wed Mar 04, 2009 16:03

Sounds like it. IIRC you need a min 450w just to get the 8800gt to spring to life.

As for the ram uppage causing the machine to fail post that could, possibly, be the PSU. But I have played with voltages recently and got the same and I use a 1kw psu.

I read somewhere that upping voltages on the RAM bus links to the Northbridge (or through it) and also the CPU. Upping any of the voltages puts stress on the Northbridge which is probably what is causing your post fail. Mine goes past post, attempts to load windows and resets.

Have you seperated the RAM's FSB from the CPU's one?

It's so fucking complicated nowdays :nerd:

God only knows where I was supposed to post this. One of them days I guess.

kalmar · **Posted:** Wed Mar 04, 2009 16:08

Doctor Glyndwr wrote:

kalmar wrote:

Stick a scope

I suddenly want to own an oscilloscope.

Mine blew up on Thursday

The repair charge is £250, so I think I'll just buy another one and use it to find the fault in the first one.

Wullie · **Joined:** 27th Jun, 2008 **Posts:** 6183

Doctor Glyndwr wrote:

I suddenly want to own an oscilloscope.

I've wanted one ever since I read this

Orbital in Sound on Sound wrote:

A standard oscilloscope is used essentially for live work, but in a bizarre and ingenious way. "It does sometimes keep us entertained in the studio," recounts Paul, "but what we do live is have a video camera shoved up to it and then we feed that image to a video projector and project the oscilloscope whilst we're playing. We've actually invented a sound that will create our logo -- which is quite amusing -- and we often use it to start the set off.

"It was quite simple really. A pure sine wave will make a sphere, then if you layer a few so that they're oscillating against each other you end up with like four or five ovoids all spinning around at the same time, and it makes a nice representation of our logo.

"Some of the tracks can look bizarre. There's one that starts off with a didgeridoo and it just looks mad; a really weird shape that seems to be moving in 3D space. Another time you'll have this shape that will wobble when the bass drum kicks in, and when you add hi-hat the whole thing gets wiggly round the edges. At times we'll play around with the oscilloscope live rather than with something like the 303."
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/1994_articles/apr94/orbital.html

That and it'd be more convenient than lumping whatever gear I've broke/died of old age up to the college to fault find it.

kalmar · **Posted:** Wed Mar 04, 2009 16:26

Doesn't Aphex Twin allegedly embed all sorts of mad scary images in his tracks? Not going to google image search it at work though, just in case.

Zardoz · **Posted:** Wed Mar 04, 2009 16:29

He has done, yes.

Hang on...

Zardoz · **Posted:** Wed Mar 04, 2009 16:30

Spectrogram of Aphex Twin’s “Mathematical Equation” track from Windowlicker.

Wullie · **Joined:** 27th Jun, 2008 **Posts:** 6183

kalmar wrote:

Doesn't Aphex Twin allegedly embed all sorts of mad scary images in his tracks? Not going to google image search it at work though, just in case.

Aye, that uses a Spectrograph. SFW

Zardoz · **Posted:** Wed Mar 04, 2009 16:39

*cough*

Wullie · **Joined:** 27th Jun, 2008 **Posts:** 6183

Aye, very good, but does your picture have spooky audio generated cats or information on how it's done? My link does because it is made of awesome

Zardoz · **Posted:** Wed Mar 04, 2009 16:46

Don't get tetchy because I BEAT YOU!

markg · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 16636

To be fair Wullie's post was the better and more informative of the two, however it was later, so it's a tough call.

Zardoz · **Posted:** Wed Mar 04, 2009 16:50

My post included a full colour image with a descriptive title and it was first. I'd like to hear what the mods have to say about this.

myp · **Posted:** Wed Mar 04, 2009 16:51

I don't give a shit. I do like Wullie better though, mainly because I can't understand him.

Zardoz · **Posted:** Wed Mar 04, 2009 16:54

This is simply outrageous, I will comfort myself by creating a warped avatar.

Good day.

Wullie · **Joined:** 27th Jun, 2008 **Posts:** 6183

ZOMG, MINOR INNERNEH DRAMAZ!!!
I'm leaving forever to make my own forum "World of funny noises and links to the lovely pictures they make"
KTHXBAI

kalmar · **Posted:** Wed Mar 04, 2009 17:00

/ tries to register on WorldOfWullie

/is rejected

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