My latest blog.
Everyone's worst nightmare. You wake up in the morning, press the button to turn on a light to get dressed and..... nothing happens.
Happened to me yesterday morning. Nothing working.
Grabbed a mug of coffee and headed to the control room. No lights on the PC at all. Dead. El Morte.
Out of character for me, I didn't panic at all. Just set to work.
Few, other than those here perhaps, could understand the sinking feeling of the prospect of not having automation any longer.
Took a quick look inside and see a cap on the PS has swollen, "so, it's the power supply". Then on another look, I see six more caps on the mother board about to blow. Oh well, I got ten years out of this mini-ITX fanless board.
Pulled the old Hometroller S3 out of storage. Cloned the PC 240G SSD, plugged it into the HT and booted. HS starts, but XP (yes it was running XP) needs different drivers on this machine. To be expected.
Twelve hours later, after straightening out the serial port mess (The HT actually has six onboard serial ports, most of which had to be disabled in BIOS), getting a few driver updates, etc., rebooting dozens of times, drinking copious amounts of coffee and not eating all day (by this time, I was beginning to panic a bit), the HT was running acceptably. The only thing not functioning is the sound. I can live with that for now.
Off to shopping. Found a new board I can use on Amazon (Intel D2550MUD2) https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B00N50250U/...528420_TE_dp_1
Compatible with my existing DDR3 memory chips so it'll keep the cost lower. Ordered it, and a new power supply. It'll be here Thursday. Total cost, about $90 with priority shipping.
Then over night, I'm thinking... what if I can't get XP drivers for it... perhaps I ought to have searched for a replacement for the original board instead.
Checked this morning... the old board (D525MW) can still be had on eBay, but the price is three times that of the one I've ordered.
Checked Intel's site for XP drivers for the new board. YeeHaa!! They're there; I don't need to buy a copy of Win 7, or worse... 10.
Thinking again... what if this happens to me again.... 10 years life for a board, I'm 60.... hmmm... Ordered a second board to have on hand for a spare... Standard shipping this time, comes in at $50 more. Set for life, provided this works out.
The sound? I think I can live without HS talking to me for a few days, although I do miss it. Meantime, the HT is working hard and makes a great hot plate for my coffee.
Looking at performance this AM. Things are responding much more slowly than I'm accustomed to. Running three times the CPU compared to the old machine, and the HT having only 1G of ram is showing about 500 Meg available where 3 Gig was the norm. I'd dare say this poor thing is doing a lot of disk swapping.
Everyone's worst nightmare. You wake up in the morning, press the button to turn on a light to get dressed and..... nothing happens.
Happened to me yesterday morning. Nothing working.
Grabbed a mug of coffee and headed to the control room. No lights on the PC at all. Dead. El Morte.
Out of character for me, I didn't panic at all. Just set to work.
Few, other than those here perhaps, could understand the sinking feeling of the prospect of not having automation any longer.
Took a quick look inside and see a cap on the PS has swollen, "so, it's the power supply". Then on another look, I see six more caps on the mother board about to blow. Oh well, I got ten years out of this mini-ITX fanless board.
Pulled the old Hometroller S3 out of storage. Cloned the PC 240G SSD, plugged it into the HT and booted. HS starts, but XP (yes it was running XP) needs different drivers on this machine. To be expected.
Twelve hours later, after straightening out the serial port mess (The HT actually has six onboard serial ports, most of which had to be disabled in BIOS), getting a few driver updates, etc., rebooting dozens of times, drinking copious amounts of coffee and not eating all day (by this time, I was beginning to panic a bit), the HT was running acceptably. The only thing not functioning is the sound. I can live with that for now.
Off to shopping. Found a new board I can use on Amazon (Intel D2550MUD2) https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B00N50250U/...528420_TE_dp_1
Compatible with my existing DDR3 memory chips so it'll keep the cost lower. Ordered it, and a new power supply. It'll be here Thursday. Total cost, about $90 with priority shipping.
Then over night, I'm thinking... what if I can't get XP drivers for it... perhaps I ought to have searched for a replacement for the original board instead.
Checked this morning... the old board (D525MW) can still be had on eBay, but the price is three times that of the one I've ordered.
Checked Intel's site for XP drivers for the new board. YeeHaa!! They're there; I don't need to buy a copy of Win 7, or worse... 10.
Thinking again... what if this happens to me again.... 10 years life for a board, I'm 60.... hmmm... Ordered a second board to have on hand for a spare... Standard shipping this time, comes in at $50 more. Set for life, provided this works out.
The sound? I think I can live without HS talking to me for a few days, although I do miss it. Meantime, the HT is working hard and makes a great hot plate for my coffee.
Looking at performance this AM. Things are responding much more slowly than I'm accustomed to. Running three times the CPU compared to the old machine, and the HT having only 1G of ram is showing about 500 Meg available where 3 Gig was the norm. I'd dare say this poor thing is doing a lot of disk swapping.
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