Computer Cooling Mod

Finally fixed the massive overheating issue on my main computer, I hope. I took a small high speed fan and added it to the side. Some things to note: First I had no easy way to cut a hole, or series of even small holes and ended up using a large circular drill bit with teeth(Like the router bits for making wheels). The case was insanely thick and had a layer of thin sheet metal, what looked like graphite in the middle, and an aluminum coating on the outside. Very tough to get through, but thankfully I have a really powerful drill. Secondly I had no room in the case, so had to make room by using a dremel to cut off part of what holds the drives. Below is a picture of the uncut side followed by the cut side:

Here's the drilled holes, I added the second smaller hole for the potentiometer on the fan, which I borke trying to put it in the case :( I think I will add a nice one with a knob when I feel up to scrounging for parts and opening my computer again.

One final irritation, was I didn't want to mess with trying to put in screws to hold the fan(I decided for several reasons to put the grill on the inside too), so I ended up screwing fencing wire into the fan itself and then securing the wire with good old fashioned duct tape, I forgot to take a picture unfortunately. Here's a couple pics of the finished product, no noticable heat problems yet.

Also note to self: I had to after playing around with it reset the FSB speed, and of course my dumbass self set it wrong and had bizarre errors since the memory and bus from the processor were going at different speeds ;-D

Satan Uses a Dell

A Dell Latitude CPi to be exact, I have been struggling for over a week to get a few basic things working on it. It is finally finished, though, and seems to work pretty good. Here's a picture of the machine:

Before I begin my anti-Dell, anti-Debian, anti-Computer, and probably somehow anti-semetic rant to remind my future self not to FSCKING touch the goddamn kernel no matter how pathetic it seems, a quick backstory on it. My dad bought 2 of the exact same laptops for about $50 two years ago at a military auction. They sport a whopping 300mhz processor, and one of the harddrives died shortly after. Ever since I have used the remaining one for various things, without major problems...except the sound never worked ever. Well my wife has been wanting a computer to type recipes and play old SNES games on(No way she's using mine ;), what better use for a semi-portable laptop than that. I currently have it set up to be able to do almost any normal task, albeit it slower.

So let me come out and say it...I used...that is...it's kinda embarrassing...but...
I used knoppix-installer set to beginner :( Their I said it!
This wasn't from lack of trying the right way, and all stems from the god forsaken built-in soundcard, that I can only guess was built at the NSA in an elaborate scheme to break RSA encryption using the power of my seething hatred against it. How I hate CS4237B, let me count the ways:

• First off it's considered an ISA card...umm WTF. I would have never guessed to turn on a non-existant ISA bus had I not looked it up on the net.
• Gentoo Install -- Worked fine, the soundcard seemed to initialize and when I restarted the computer after adding alsa to the default run-level...everything in /dev/ related to sound went missing! I tried *FOREVER* to get something back, to no avail. I have no clue what happened, and don't give a shit anymore, I spent too long on that!
• Debian Install -- Debian has never worked for me, this is the 3rd earnest attempt in my lifetime to install Debian. Regardless of whether it's the 2.4 or 2.6 kernel it just goes tits up when it starts copying files from the CD, it complains there is no CD in the drive, even though it just fucking booted and configured itself from the CD. Another fun 'feature' of Debian, is no checksum with the CD, so after downloading and burning it several times to make sure it wasn't my computer, burner, or CDRs. I concluded Debian's install software was written by piping NetTalk's output into NASM and then making an ISO of the result. Actually I think the problem is poor choice of picking kernel modules and such to load.
• Knoppix-Installer(Standard Debian System) -- I figured out that running alsaconf in Knoppix actually made the soundcard work! So decided why not try to have Knoppix install Debian, since surely if it works off live-cd it'll work on the hard-drive. Nope, almost the same problem as in Gentoo, except it never made any of the entries for sound in /dev, whereas Gentoo did and deleted them somehow. The weird thing is that loading the kernel modules caused the soundcards to pop, but still wouldn't detect it.
• Knoppix-Installer(Knoppix) -- Same as with standard Debian from knoppix-installer
• Knoppix-Installer(Beginner) -- Same exact problem the first time...running alsaconf bitched and moaned that there was no soundcard, all the while the speakers are making a ton of noise...after screens of errors it worked! No clue why. Ever since it works absolutely fine, no hang ups...so I'm not touching it.

After that is was smooth sailing, I used Fluxbox, since I wanted some sort of WM, but nothing to eat up the CPU(There is no GPU). The only other qualm is that I had to set the resolution on ZSNES to the lowest possible to get it to not lag. Ohh and the one and only USB port, somehow got it's pins bent. My dumb self, fixed it with surgical tweazers without removing the battery. So after a handful of small sparks and worrying that I screwed up the only port to use a gamepad on, I was relieved when /dev/input/js0 worked without a hitch, even though I can now insert a USB plug either way into the slot.

Screenshot of fluxbox running:

Back From The Dead

I have been out of commission for nearly a month, due to moving, computer problems, and just not being near my stuff. The main thing is that I have little to do on my main computer, most of my computer projects have been involving my laptop.

A brief rundown of my last month:
For X-Mas my wife got a pasta machine. When trying to make noodles they didn't dry properly, due to inadequate hanging(They were on hangers and kept sliding off), so ever the dutifull husband I went to Lowes to buy lumber to rectify her drying quandry. I ended up getting two 4'x2"x1" boards and two 1/4" dowel rods for under $4. Unfortunately my tool selection is lacking to say the least, but I was able to make something decent using just wood glue, my new ridiculously overpowered hand drill, and a hand circular saw. The saw was borrowed from my dad, and seems to be crap: no cutting table, so near impossible to get a straight cut, and about as sharp as a banana so it chews the wood on entrance and exit. Also obviously I don't have a router or anything to make good joints with, so I just drilled holes and used dowel rod pieces, which worked pretty well. Here is the finished thing, it's actually suprisingly sturdy, I set a whole bunch of books on it while the glue was drying with no problems, my wife stained and painted it:

Also I bought some stuff to make a small bunny travel cage, which I will talk about more when I start building it. Another thing that took some time was sorting through old computer equipment at my parents' house. Out of four I found only one good computer(200 MhZ Pentium with MMX :-), which does seem suprisingly fast. I stripped the rest of anything usefull and threw the rest away. Here's a picture of my wife helping 'fix' a broken motherboard the engineer way:

Also been doing some AI programs, as always. I deleted some stuff by semi-accident, and will probably make a separate AI post when I remake it. Another thing has been the laptop from hell, which gets it's own post after this. Fixed an old microphone and modified it to plug into my computer, which works since my soundcard has a mic pre-amp, which is pretty cool. Also, setting up all my electronic equipment and bunny-proofing it has taken a long time. Ohh and I've been having massive heating issues with my computer since I moved, since it's kept warmer here than my old house, I think I have a solution involving a drill and a fan I had bought a long time ago for this purpose, more on that when it's fixed/hopeless.