Preparing for October

The countdown to the end of support for Windows 10 continues (although as expected it has been extended to 2026) and although I have converted three of our daily machines (my laptop and two streaming boxes) to Linux mint we are retaining two gaming machines (and their respective backup machines) and converting all four to run a legal, supported, Windows 11. 

The CPU and motherboard on the converted machines have to be supported, so anything not on the Microsoft list can only run an unsupported (rufus) type win11 installation or an alternative OS such as Linux. There are complexities involved in both directions, linux in particular if you have had a lifetime running Microsoft, but I should add, there are certain irritants with the "new and improved" version of windows, the main one being we were very happy ticking along using the almost obsolete version. 

This is an Asus Prime H470-Plus with an Intel i3-10100 CPU which used, cost me $100 on marketplace. It replaces the previous Asus Z170-Pro with Intel i5-6600K in the backup machine. Online the "obsolete" i5-6600k scores Multithread 6307 with single thread 2316 and the i3-10100 Multithread 8551 and single thread 2596 which are just numbers that indicate that the old one is capable of running my game and the replacement will also be fine. The only critical difference is that the old one is not supported.

In the last five years, since Windows 7 (a perfectly fine operating system) was switched for 8.0 and 8.1 and then 10, my life has been a constant game of musical chairs and at times, even though I owned licenses, I had to buy keys to purchase new versions, that is the way the industry wants to do it, sell the same thing to the consumer, over and over.

This is number four and I admit, having been "in the business" now for over thirty years, the hurdles required to transfer license ownership have become taller and frustrating, and of course, the technical hurdles have also increased in size since both Intel and Microsoft decided that they would phase out old hardware if you wanted to use the latest and greatest version of the OS. That is the aspect of all of this that annoys me most, mainly as the phased out hardware is extremely capable of performing the mundane tasks of a daily driver and the business want to send good electronics to the landfill.

Out with the old, in with the new.

No more MBR, in with GPT, now TPM 2.0 and embedded, now secure boot and "keys" that will somehow keep us all safe (which they will not) and then of course, two more final hurdles involving convincing your Microsoft account that you deserve the so called "upgrade" and then of course, waiting for your system to take it's sweet time to give you the Windows 11 update.

That's where I am today. 

Waiting.

Refreshing old Skills

One of the current things in the life of the OTG is refreshing the brain matter, I am writing another book and the process of transcribing and adapting old diary entries into some sort of readable, enjoyable form is triggering many memories of old tech, and in turn, having excess money floating around I am enjoying buying some old and familiar items like calculators and more recently, pocket computers.

This is a pocket computer I have never had, but now I do. One reason why I could never have it is that it was only released in Japan, but operates in English. The PC-G801 is quite popular on eBay and sells for less that would be expected, I suspect the main reason for that is there appears to be no English language manual available, I have searched, and will continue to search, but up to now, nothing.

They called this a pocket computer and it must have fit in pockets back then, they would have been quite large pockets back in the day.

Online, there is a Japanese manual and in addition, a translated PC-G850V manual available, and the operation of that other model is quite similar, so I have been able to program some silly stuff on the PC-G801 and since obtaining this item I have had quite a few hours down memory lane, playing with BASIC programming, a way of justifying the purchase, keeping my mind active.

The programming part of my brain has been neglected now for most of the time I have been retired, so seventeen years, but like riding a bike, it is easy to get back into the saddle so to speak. The little program I wrote here examines the character set and prints it out on the screen based on input limits, I will enter it here for future reference as I intend to write an English manual for the little computer:

10:INPUT "START =";B,"FINISH =";C

15:FOR A=B TO C

20:PRINT CHR$(A);

30:WAIT 10

35:NEXT A

40:END

I have also bought myself a Casio PB-700 which is a "pocket computer" that I did own back in the 1980's so I will report on that one when it arrives, I know there is an English manual for that one.

Prepping for the Zombie Apocalypse

On the subject of hammers, it is always wise to keep your growing collection in good shape for the inevitable zombie apocalypse.  It is a continuing debate if that is actually going to happen, however, better to be safe than sorry as they say.

In addition, I consider that this sort of activity helps to maintain a healthy marriage, with the good lady feeling safe and secure knowing that her good man is in his happy place, dutifully polishing his hammer.

Great find at the swap and shop

In these days of irritating, expensive, rechargable tools it is not often that one of these traditional beauties comes up for sale, especially in this condition, a great addition to my electronics toolbox, especially for detailed work

Typically, I was excited and bought the electric hammer in a rush without noticing that it was a left handed unit, but that is not the end of the world, I am looking for an adapter so if anyone has one for sale, let me know.

The state of selling off the oldies, July 2024

This might be a regular thing to post, here we are in the seventh month of the year and the specifications of the machines that I am building to sell on Marketplace are increasing to the point when I am sad to see them go, this one is no exception.

 It is a seventh generation intel, an i7-7700 which is a four core, eight thread processor.

Fractal Design, mid tower ATX. 2 fans with an EVGA 500W 80 Plus power supply, MSI B250M Pro VDH Motherboard, Intel i7-7700 CPU 3.60 GHz, Adata 16GB DDR4 RAM single stick, SSD 256GB M.2 NVMe PCIe Boot Drive, HDD 500GB Data Drive, MSI NVIDIA GTX 1060 GPU 6GB HDMI, 2.4GHz WiFi card with blade antenna and a Lenovo Keyboard and Mouse.

Fresh Windows 10 Pro Activated, Reset, fully updated with all drivers installed. $340

A year ago I would have been buzzed to have this as my gaming machine, and it is true, it is a most powerful machine, but the one thing that is making me sell is that it is not Windows 11 compatible, based on Microsofts recommendations, sure, it can run Windows 11, many are hacking the OS to do that, but that means that Microsoft may not update the security features.

The machines that myself and my primary IT Client (the missus) are running are Windows 11 ready, and perhaps six months before the fourteenth of October next year, we will both be running it. I am sure that will be a blog all to itself as I have not heard great things about Windows 11, however, I did not hear great things about Windows 10 either, but that sort of settled out all right over time.

This machine ended up selling for $250

Note to self, cloning a Linux boot drive (to a larger one)

I was thinking about writing this down on a piece of paper and placing it in a biscuit tin somewhere for the future me, then I remembered that this particular strategy never works, so I shall use the old tech geezer blog approach.

In the streaming box I had a solid state 60GB boot drive (SATA) running Linux Mint Cinnamon and a 120GB data drive with my music files (mSATA) and the music player called Clementine only liked the boot drive (they call that sort of behaviour a feature) so I would use the larger drive as temporary storage and move files about within the small limitations of the boot drive. That all became very annoying, so I wanted to increase the boot drive, but of course I did not want to burn the house down.

An ancient, yet free, OCZ solid state drive was obtained, erased, and after some research, and a lot of internet bullcrap as is the way, the solution was at hand. I navigated a process after connecting "all the drives" and discovered that the 60GB boot (SATA) was /dev/sda the 120GB data drive (mSATA) was /dev/sdb and the 120GB OCZ drive (SATA) was /dev/sdc

That information was discovered using terminal and the command : sudo fdisk -l

The following command was then executed : sudo dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdc conv=noerror, sync

The terminal then sort of goes off and does it's thing of copying everything from sda to sdc and I wandered off and kept myself busy for a while, probably thirty minutes or so, and when I came back the copy had been made and I could swap the boot drive for the bigger unit. There is a method for monitoring the progress of the write for larger drives, but I just left it alone and went off fiddling somewhere else.

That command would be something like : sudo pkill -USR1 -n -x dd and I assume it would be in a second terminal window. I giggle when I read "something like" when it comes to linux commands because users of command line, linux, unix or bash will know that if the syntax is wrong, things just don't work in a very stubborn way, which I completely respect.

The last step after making the bigger drive the boot drive was to expand the partition, as I cloned a 60GB drive onto a 120GB one, it made sense that there was about 60GB of unused space on the target drive. This final step is not that tricky when you know how, I had to boot from a Linux Mint installation USB drive (so that the new boot drive was not mounted) and execute a program called gparted, then simply expand the partition so that all the space could be used.

There you have it future old tech geezer, I hope that helps!

Acura RSX DRL Control relay repair

The DRL light on the RSX had an occasional habit of staying on until I put a bit of amperage through the circuit by switching the main lights on, high beaming or cycling the lights. I had researched the issue and it is a common one, the solution being to remove a little circuit module from under the dash near the steering wheel and check the relay solder points and resoldering as needed. 

In typical fashion, even though I have all the time in the world, it has taken well over a year to actually do the job, various and numerous reasons getting in the way, winter for one, sickness and a healthy reluctance to get my body into the pretzel type position to access the relay. However, in the last week or so, the DRL light has been coming on more, occasionally flickering, being very annoying and I suspected that perhaps my driving lights were doing the same in the daytime, so it was time to pull my finger out and do the responsible thing.

Here is the module :

The problem area can be seen on the flip side of the circuit board :

I inspected the soldered connectors for the relays, and you can see the discoloration of the six main connectors and also the four additional joints. The numerous, very handy, youtube videos online show that reflowing these joints will fix the issue, so that is what I did :

Removing the module was an uncomfortable five minutes or so, but rather easy and accessible depending on your ability to strike the pose of a pretzel in the drivers side pedal bay. Then another five minutes to set up all the tools in the right place, suitable magnification for old eyes and then heat up the thing that burns fingers quite frequently. The reflow of the ten joints, with a little extra solder and flux, took another five minutes.

Installing the module back was equally, if not more so, uncomfortable, but after testing it went back into it's holder without too much of a struggle and the annoying under dash panels were replaced and the job was done in under half an hour. 

This is one of those little repairs that Honda would love to have the opportunity to fix, more than likely they would charge a couple of hours troubleshooting/labour and whatever the price of a new Honda part would cost. The investigations on eBay show that a NOS replacement Dorman 704306 can be had for around $75 shipped from the USA, so it would not be that bad if the module had completely failed and a DIY replacement obtained and installed.

However, my cost was zero and perhaps a week of mild sciatica. A small price to pay for one less irritating, false, warning light on the aging chariot.