Ask MetaFilter posts tagged with hardware

LCDs without bezels.

godidog — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 05:11:21 -0800

Could an LCD display be made without a bezel ? Could an LCD be manufactured without a bezel, even along only one side, which would mean we could buy smaller, cheaper ones and stick them together ?

I suspect they could ( and the manufacturers don't produce them like this because they would make less profit ), but maybe there is a technical reason they could not.

Wanted: Multitouch hardware and software solutions

Mister_A — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 11:25:37 -0800

Looking for robust multitouch hardware and programming. I'm working on a sort of puzzle, more or less, and I want to create it on a tabletop multitouch monitor that will stand up to the rigors of a convention floor. Participants will be able to manipulate multiple pieces simultaneously, rotate pieces, zap pieces into the land of wind and ghosts, etc. Bonus points for insights and recommendations on programming the thing(s).

Competition for Belarc Advisor/Manager?

bartleby — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 12:36:05 -0800

Competition for Belarc Advisor? For a whole network? Mefite reviews? I'm looking for a hardware/software audit & inventory package for a whole WAN network - if it does patches& vulnerabilities, bonus!

After trying the free-for-home Belarc Advisor, I'm looking at a Small Network Option for the whole operation.

I've only been playing with the demo for a day, but I like pretty much everything - I'm not so in love with the format of the reports, but more information is better than none.

So anyone have any love or hate stories?

Anyone use a different/competing product?

I found Belarc early and liked it - the only competitor I found before it was Hyena, but I was scared off by the "Fully Y2K compliant" section of the website.

How can I get data off a bad hard drive?

deafmute — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 23:28:11 -0800

I am having a very unusual problem with my hard drive and CANNOT recover any data from it after trying numerous methods. Please help me with your technical expertise. A few weeks ago the hard drive for my Dell Inspiron 1520 became unable to boot into Vista after freezing suddenly. When trying to boot, I get a BSOD with the error message "Stop: c000142{DLL Initialization Failed} Initialization of the dynamic link library winsrv failed. The process is terminating abnormally." When attempting to launch startup repair, boot into safe mode, or boot off of several different Vista DVDs I am greeted with a cursor (that I can control) on a black screen that never goes anywhere.

I ran Dell's built-in diagnostic program, and after being given several hard drive related errors, Dell (very quickly) sent me a new hard drive. Now I need to send them the old one, and I would like to recover my data from it before wiping it and sending it back.

I first put it in an enclosure and connected it to Vista, but Vista does nothing more than prompt me to format the drive.

I then ran Spinrite, which, after 27 hours(!) of operation returned no bad sectors or errors of any kind. What's unusual, however, is that my old drive does not exactly match my new drive in terms of partitions. The data partition is flagged as being too large for the size of the drive, and I am advised to change my BIOS's "understanding" of the drive (which I can't do). It is also missing a partition labeled as "hidden CTOS memory dump". I have no idea what this means.

I then booted off of a Knoppix cd and attempted to mount the drive there. I was able to mount the two partitions containing Dell's hidden diagnostic and recovery data, but Knoppix was unable to recognize the existence of a third partition containing my data.

Google searches have proved inconclusive (particularly in the case of my BSOD error message). Please help me get my data!

How to power a Canon EOS from the grid?

lord_yo — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 01:09:45 -0800

Where can I find a AC power adapter (not battery charger!) for the Canon EOS / Digital Rebel series? I've built an intervalometer to shoot time-lapse series with my Canon EOS 400D (Digital Rebel XTi in the US); it works great, but my camera battery goes dead a long way before my memory card is full. Now I'm looking for a way to power the camera via an AC adapter. USB via the digital plug doesn't seem to work, as it blocks the camera's OS.

Are there any AC adapters for the EOS series? Not a battery charger - but a device to plug the camera into the power grid?

DIY solutions are fine too - I just don't want to solder anything into my camera.

MioMore Frustration

magnoliasouth — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 10:16:44 -0800

How can I force MioMore Desktop to work on a Vista computer? I know there just has to be a way. I understand that it's not supported, but give me a break. Vista has been out for how long and it's still not supported? Surely someone has figured it out by now.

I've tried Googling it, but to no avail.

How difficult is a water softener install?

hijinx — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 10:37:16 -0800

Much like my last question posted here four years ago about OS9, I am being flummoxed by hard water. Or more specifically, the level of difficulty wrt installing a water softener. How hard is it? This is all before I RTFM which came with the softener, but I want to get a feel for what I'm getting involved in... hopefully from someone else who has done this.

Our house has an old (10 year old? maybe?) water softener that is rented. Thus, all of the hardware is in place for such a device. We went ahead and bought a new water softener outright, so once the rented one is gone we'll be putting in the new one.

My skill level with plumbing is low. I've replaced a gasket on a bathroom faucet handle once, I've removed and cleaned pipes under the sink once or twice, I've jiggled toilet handles 50 times, but that's it.

With my skill set and the existing hardware seemingly in place, can anyone provide a feel for how difficult a task this is? If it's too hard, we'll get a handyman. But I wouldn't mind avoiding that cost.

Computer hardware review sites?

ErWenn — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 18:25:56 -0800

Is there a website that tests computer hardware like Tom's Hardware does, but publishes comprehensive comparison artilces more regularly? I'm looking to do some serious upgrades to my system, but I've been out of the loop for awhile, so I need good information that compares the latest CPUs, video cards, etc. Tom's Hardware does excellent tests, but it's pretty rare (maybe once a year, at the most) that they'll do a comprehensive comparison of the various options that are available, taking into account performance, cost, etc. That makes it hard for me to use the site without reading through tons of articles. I'm looking for a site that publishes comparison articles for computer components regularly (maybe four times a year?). CNET's not terrible for full systems, laptops, PDAs, etc., but there's not much info on individual components.

Which of these computer components is faulty?

Who_Am_I — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 06:37:41 -0800

I bought a new motherboard and a new video card, and now my computer beeps and won't boot to Windows. Which one is to blame? I've just combined this motherboard and this video card to build myself a new computer. When I power on I get one long beep and then three short beeps, which is code for "No video card or bad video RAM" according to BiosCentral (no beep codes in the mobo manual, thanks Asus). Ok so bad video card right? Except that after about 30 seconds the monitor does come on and it attempts to boot: POST screens come up, I can get into the BIOS, etc. If I let it continue to boot I get the "Safe Mode, Boot Normally, ..." screen, and then it bluescreens no matter which I choose. Also I was able to fully boot into an Ultimate Boot CD which contained a Windows environment. If the video card were actually bad, I wouldn't be able to do any of this right?

All this makes me think faulty motherboard. I flashed the BIOS to the newest version, and changed the setting for "default video device" from PCI to PCIe, neither of which made any difference. I don't have any spare compatible components to test anything separately, and the board has no onboard video. I'm pretty handy with computers, but this is my first time working with stuff like PCIe. Is there something obvious I'm missing? I bought through Newegg so I assume I'll be able to RMA anything I need to.

Is there a resource for matching motherboards with their appropriate rackmount chassis?

Caviar — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 10:48:50 -0800

Is there a resource for matching motherboards with their appropriate rackmount chassis? I've recently had the experience of trying to match a server motherboard with a chassis. And it went like this: A motherboard didn't fit in A case because the heatsinks on the cpus blocked the sata riser board. Didn't fit in the B case because the 8-pin power connector was three inches too short. Wouldn't work with C case because the SuperMicro chassis uses a proprietary front-panel connector and doesn't include the $3 adapter in the box even though that's required to use it with any other brand of motherboard. B motherboard was 1 inch too long for A case (ATX vs. EATX), and so on. Three cases, two motherboards, not one working machine. Many of the things which are supposed to be "standard", seem to no longer be. There are a few people involved, and we've never had this level of frustration with matching components before. So now I'm looking for known good configurations.

Is there any place I can look up, given a motherboard or chassis, some of the others that are known to work? Trolling through reviews on newegg has not been helpful.

Alternately, is there anywhere I can find listings of known motherboard/chassis combinations in various xU configurations? If they're sold together, that's fine, though we're perfectly capable of the actual assembly.

In this particular case, I'm interested in dual quad-core xeons (5300/5400), but a more general resource would be helpful too.

Save my data before the disk asplode

djgh — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 13:21:04 -0800

My external hard-drive's on the fritz. What can I do to make sure I get all my data off it before it goes? I've got a 250GB hard drive which I put in an enclosure (cheap CompUSA one). It's got a red light and a green light. Recently, the red light will come on after a little bit and stay on (so not the blinking "transferring data" signal).

After the light comes on, the USB connection freaks out - if it's connected, it freezes, if it's not connected and I plug it in, it refuses to connect. (Disk Utility will show the drive, but not the partition. The partition refuses to mount, and the icon doesn't show up on the desktop).

What steps should I take to make sure I don't lose everything (it's my main music'n'movies drive...)?

I'm assuming that at some point it will be beneficial to pop the drive out and test in another enclosure, but assuming that doesn't work (worst case scenario and all), what should I do? i.e., the disk itself is suffering issues (plus, it's probably very good to have a backup anyway...).

I'm on OSX Tiger, if it helps, and have access to another 40GB or so (another external drive). The drive is currently sat disconnected on my shelf, not even powered.

Vaio gives "system timer error"

daksya — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 07:58:44 -0800

My laptop gives a "system timer error" and so I probably need some guidance in replacing my laptop's CMOS battery I've an 8 yr old Sony Vaio laptop, model PCG-F590 (a.k.a PCG-9201), which for practical purposes, stopped working 3 weeks ago. The computer boots into XP, but during the login screen, or shortly after logging in, freezes altogether, not responding to any input. Occasionally, it gets stuck during POST itself, displaying "KEYBOARD ERROR" and "SYSTEM TIMER ERROR". Some web browsing tells me that it's likely that the CMOS battery has a lifespan of around 10 years and that could be the issue here.

Before I replace the battery, is there something else I should look into? There was no physical trauma inflicted on the laptop, and I guess the system timer hardware itself hasn't gone kaput. This initially happened all of a sudden while watching a video (the sole purpose of the laptop) 3 weeks ago.

I searched online and this store indicates that the battery is NiMH 2 cells with a mainboard connector. How specific do I have to be with the battery purchase besides the voltage and the connector type?

Most importantly, before I open my laptop, I'd like to know where the battery is located and how I should go on about replacing it? Despite my best efforts, I can't find a motherboard schematic for this laptop. The laptop's way past warranty and besides I'm not the original owner. Repair businesses here charge exorbitantly, so I'd like to do it myself.

Major crashes with OS X 10.4 (on a G5 iMac). Bad hardware?

AmbroseChapel — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 15:49:18 -0800

Major crashes with OS X 10.4 (on a G5 iMac). Bad hardware? It looks like I'll have to take it in for repairs, but maybe there's a software fix? My iMac G5 crashes: not the nice multilingual Mac Screen Of Death but really serious crashes -- the screen turns into regular patterns of noise and I have to reboot. When this began happening it would boot up, run for five minutes and then it would happen again. Then it got worse.

I looked into the system.log and the panic.log and there were messages there about Graphics Card errors, mentions of Frames, and the messages were coming from kernel level (I wish I could post them here but it won't even boot any more).

I did all the obvious things I could think of, zapped the PRAM, fixed permissions, verified the disk, and I even reinstalled the whole OS.

I'm assuming that I have some hardware problem, i.e. a bad graphics card.

But one thing's nagging at me. During the reinstall of the OS, which took a good twenty minutes to half an hour, the computer stayed up and running just fine, when it was working off the kernel/drivers on the DVD.

So, is that a clue that there could still be a software fix? Something to do with the drivers that I could fix without taking it in to a shop to repair?

Grateful for any suggestions.

Why do my DVD drives crap out so quickly?

chrisamiller — Thu, 29 May 2008 14:41:10 -0800

Between the 4 desktops that my immediate family owns, we've probably been through 6 or 7 DVD burners in the last few years. Does everyone else have this kind of failure rate? Any recommendations on reasonably priced, quality drives, so that I don't have to keep replacing them? These drives aren't in heavy use - watching DVDs occasionally, burning a CD or DVD once a week or so. That's why it's so annoying when they go out after a year or so of use.

I've been replacing them with whatever's on sale at the big box electronics store, but I'm beginning to wonder if the high failure rate is because I'm buying cheap brands, or whether I'm just unlucky.

Any other data points out there? Any recommendations for a decent CD-RW/DVD-RW drive at a decent price?

Manual for obsolete test equipment wanted.

kc8nod — Thu, 29 May 2008 08:20:28 -0800

I need a manual for a Panasonic VP-8121B AM-FM Stereo Signal Generator. This is an obsolete piece of test equipment that Panasonic doesn't support anymore. Apparently, they're out of the test equipment business altogether.
There are a few used equipment dealers like http://www.testequipmenthq.com/ and http://www.alternativetest.co.uk/ who will sell me a (like) new unit, but won't sell me just the manual.
I have also tried:

http://www.manualsplus.com/

http://www.ebaman.com/

http://bama.sbc.edu/

http://www.consolidatedsurplus.com/

I would hate to have to replace this thing only for the lack of a manual. Help!

Why isn't newer firmware better?

hAndrew — Mon, 26 May 2008 01:13:49 -0800

Quite often when debugging hardware, such as a router, a recommended solution is to downgrade the firmware to a version that is generally agreed to be the most "stable". What is it about firmware that often leads to the latest released firmware not being the best firmware? This also happens with hardware drivers. Sometimes the recommended solution to a video problem in a game is to downgrade the video card driver to a previous version. I have always assumed that this is due to a lack of widespread compliance with some standardised interface. That is, one game might rely on a certain non-standard behaviour of a video card, while another game might rely on the opposite, "correct" behaviour. Does something similar happen with firmware, or are there other reasons?

I appreciate that this sometimes happens with general software too, but I feel like it's significantly more common with firmware. Am I wrong about that?

What IT systems would Jesus use?

allkindsoftime — Fri, 23 May 2008 12:50:28 -0800

Looking for a IT consultant for a largish-church in NYC - please help? Asking for a friend, who manages media / communications for a large church in NYC. They need to conduct and evaluation of their current hardware / software environment for:

1) Church office internal systems
2) Church website hosting / management / design (site already exists but they want to pursue some new direction as well as plan an intranet)
3) Data storage / security / etc.

Further, they need to develop a strategy / vision for where their systems need to be in the future for more optimized operations.

The church currently has ~15,000 "clients" (for lack of a better word) that it communicates with regularly through snail and virtual methods, and does not feel their systems are up to speed with what they need for management of information exchange (church communications, demographic surveys of the clients, etc.). The data in its current state is fragmented, with some departments having certain information but others not having access to it, etc..

The church is looking to contract an IT Consultant that can help them with this evaluation and strategy development. I work in consulting but my firm deals primarily with large (for-profit) clients, so what we're looking here for specifically is a consultancy / firm that works with smaller clients, and (if possible) for non-profits in particular.

There's no formal RFP in process yet, they're just currently looking for someone capable for this effort before confirming scope / budget / scheduling. Any ideas?

TIA.

One-off Hanging Stemware

Ambrosia Voyeur — Sun, 04 May 2008 22:39:46 -0800

I want to hang stemware upside down under a shelf in my kitchen, but it isn't a deep enough shelf for the racks I've used before, or really for more than one glass. What can I use? Hanging them in a track that runs lengthwise under the shelf is an option. Does that track exist?

The X is NOT for Express!

dmd — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 14:06:46 -0800

Is there such thing as a PCI-X video card that will work in a Mac G5 tower? We need to drive 4 monitors off of this machine. It has 1 AGP slot and 3 PCI-X slots. We've bought something like 5 cards already, 4 of which were "guaranteed" (by Apple in 2 cases) to be the right one. All of them turned out to be PCI Express cards, even the ones that said PCI-X on the box.

Does there exist a video card that (a) will work in a PCI-X slot, and (b) can drive two monitors?

Retail hardware filter

Coventry — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 10:44:41 -0800

My new boss has allotted me US$3000 and US$1500 for a new desktop and laptop machine, respectively. I'd appreciate some suggestions about what to buy. I do a lot of scientific computation, so beefy machines are a plus. On the other hand, I'd like to have a fairly small and light laptop, because I'm pretty dependent on having it around me, these days. I'm pretty much married to Debian/Ubuntu, so linux compatibility is important to me. (It took days to install Debian on the machine they gave me for my current job, because the hard drive and video interfaces were so bleeding edge. For the laptop they gave me, I just gave up, and use debian in a VMWare instance.)

A laptop I can play DVDs on is pretty important, since I don't have a TV, and depend on my laptop for watching movies. But maybe a small laptop screen wouldn't be too bad, if I can hook it up to a decent-sized external monitor. The desktop monitor, on the other hand, should be huge.

Linux-compatible very slender PCI vid card?

everichon — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 08:40:17 -0800

I need a skinny, possibly fanless video card for a 1 U server. Linux drivers, PCI Express, very little room for it to live. Currently, we are using a Palit 8500gt (pic), and the fan is big enough that it is pressing against one of the server's CPU heat sinks. It can spin, and so far no disasters, but we want something else.

Is there a mid-range video card made that is either fanless or has a very tiny fan, with Linux drivers, and fits a very narrow PCI express slot?

What are the world's most useful dead-tree catalogs?

cadastral — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 09:23:14 -0800

What is the iconic (or just "your favorite") dead-tree product catalog (listing of merchandise for mail-order sale) for your hobby, industry, or trade? I get a lot of inspiration and project ideas from those huge, cinder-block-sized industry-specific catalogs that most every industrial supply company puts out. I really like the feeling of having these things on the shelf for when I need... something to fix a particular problem, but am not sure at all what that something is or what form it might take.

I want more of these catalogs. Hard copies. On my bookshelf. I want to know the inside scoop on all of the thousands of vocations and hobbies about which I know nothing. I want to know what the go-to catalog is for model railroaders, scrapbookers, field geologists, rock-climbers, steamfitters, tailors, hydroponic gardeners, blacksmiths, glaziers, restauranteurs, casino-operators, robotic-arm builders... just, everything.

By way of example, I love love love the Grainger catalog (catalog order form). It's filled with amazing things. I'm not shilling for them whatsoever and I couldn't endorse their product or their service anyway, having never ordered from them (I usually use it to get my ideas, and then I try to buy local from a similar, smaller supplier close by). The B&H photo and video catalog (catalog order) is another favorite (same deal, never spent a cent with them... I'm real big on keeping my money local).

So eager to see what y'all got. I've always been so awed by the disparate fields of knowledge and expertise that are brought together by MeFi. I am very interested in your little corner of experience and interest... and I thank you so much for sharing it with me, if you'd be kind enough to do so.

Diagnose a computer-death, and advise on migrating the dead one to an imac?

gleuschk — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 12:21:40 -0800

My desktop computer is dead dead dead (I think -- can you help me be sure?). I was going to get a new iMac anyway, so now I'll just move those plans up. I understand there's a utility to migrate all my files from the old Windows machine to the new Mac -- how can I make that happen when the old one won't start? We came back from 2 weeks away to find that the desktop Windows 2000 machine a buddy built for me back in 2001 doesn't boot anymore. Nothing. Push the button, all systems are silent. I suppose that means the power supply is dead. (Maybe we had a lightning strike while we were away? Though the cable modem and wireless hub are fine. Anyway.) Any suggestions for a more accurate diagnosis, short of taking it to some people somewhere?

And as for the switch/migrate process, is my best move going to be buying an enclosure for the hard drive(s)?

Building a system on the new AMD 780G chipset....video question...

joshgray — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 09:47:17 -0800

I’m building my first desktop system in many many years now and getting back up to speed on all the hot topics is taking a while. I’m leaning towards getting the GIGABYTE GA-MA78GM-S2H which is based on the 780G northbridge so it has the integrated graphics with the hybrid crossfire feature (and also is miniATX size and has audio optical out, HDMI…). Review here and here continued...
My question is, if I add in one of the $50 low end radeon video cards to utilize the hybrid crossfire, and the performance in gaming is not really what I want – is there anything preventing me from nixing integrated graphics entirely and putting in one of the mid-level cards in the ~$200 range from a performance standpoint? Not totally understanding the details of the NB and SB, and cache and piplines.......i just don’t want to hurt myself by not looking at other boards.

I’m building this machine to be both a home theatre pc able to play bluray, as well as able games at playable framerates with pretty decent settings.

The cpu I’m looking at is either going to be the new 4850e (low power, but only 2.2ghz) or whichever 65w I can find a good deal on in something like 5200 2.7ghz

How do I get terminal services to keep a port connection?

KevinSkomsvold — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 12:49:45 -0800

How do I make a USB port map permanent with terminal services? Here's the situation:

I set up a USB CC reader on a local workstation. This workstation connects to a Point of Sale software package via TS which uses the card reader. I am able to configure the card reader just fine and it will work perfectly. As soon as the user logs out for the day and tries to use it the next morning, the USB card reader isn't recognized in the TS session. The cashier has to run the card reader utility again. I'm guessing its because TS only uses the port mapping on a per session basis. What is the best way to make this connection permanent? Or better, what would be the best way to set it up so that the user can log out and log back in without having to run the card reader config utility each time?

Thanks.