Category: Hardware

О “железе” и программах

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Hardware

Hardware bug 🐞

Today I was suddenly bitten by a hardware bug, and decided to install two additional Noctua coolers I had stashed for a year or two on the sidepanel of my BeQuiet case

After all, it’s a full tower, should have plenty of space for that. Took me an hour, and ended in a failure.

First, I installed the coolers on the sidepanel where the motherboard is. But there’s clearly no space for them to fit. And when I tried to install them on the opposite side, first the cables to the motherboard make opening the case very precarious, and then I also discovered I have to move some of the HDD cages up to free that space, and maybe that will stretch the cables too much 🤦‍♂️

Also, since the panel is so heavy, it almost tore one of the fan power supplies out of the motherboard and bend it badly when the panel fell out.

So I ended up just opening the ventilation windows a bit, and returned everything else to where it was 🤷‍♂️

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Hardware

Kingston DataTraveler Max

Got a bit tired of my SanDisk flash drive drops writes to 0 after a couple of minutes, and got myself Kingston DataTraveler Max this time.

It’s huge, 3 times bigger than any other flash drive. But I hope that it means that there’s more cooling for the chips.

Writes are nowhere near 900MB/s, of course. Closer to 100MB/s, though, starting with 300MB/s, then dropping.

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Hardware

Garmin vivoactive 4

Garmin disappointed me with the fact they can’t connect to two phones simultaneously.
For me it’s important, because I have messengers on one phone, and work emails and Slack on the other. And I asked for a work phone so I wouldn’t need to mess with an Android work profile, which I knew wouldn’t allow me to receive both simultaneously.
What Garmin means by saying that you can connect two devices, is that you can pair both, then disable Bluetooth in the one you don’t want to sync at that time 🤡

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Hardware

iPhone SE

Was delighted to find out that iPhone SE supports wireless charging out of the box. Now I don’t need to mess with clunky Lightning cable, or whatever it’s called.

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Hardware

Razer Gigantus V2

Generally I like fabric and foam mouse mats. And for years I’ve been using Razer Goliathus mouse mat. But I decided it’s finally time to replace it. The problem is, though, that the fashion has moved on, and now all mouse mats are huge. My Goliathus was 26×21. The Gigantus Medium is 36×28. And the Pro Type mat is the same, just in different color, as far as I can understand. It’s twice the size I need.
I don’t want RGB, I don’t want a mat that covers my entire desk, I just want a small mouse mat. How hard can it be?!

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Hardware

Keychron Q0

Although I’m not sure I’m gonna try it, I think that Keychron Q0 may be a better solution than Razer OrbWeaver/Tartarus.

https://www.keychron.com/pages/keychron-q0-customizable-mechanical-number-pad

Tartarus has 4 rows of keys, while I think that 6 rows, as the regular keyboard, is the most comfortable.

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Hardware History

Atari Jaguar – What Happened?

The most intersting bit in this video is that Atari Jaguar was marketed as a 64bit system, because it had 2 32bit processors.

32+32=64 🤦‍♂️

It also had a third CPU, Motorola 68000, same as Sega Genesis. Some developers didn’t care much about learning a new architecture, so the entire game was running on the CPU, which explains why many games on Jaguar looked like they were running on Genesis.

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Hardware

Neo Geo MVS

Some random notes:
You can have both English version of Metal Slug and red blood. Just need to enable blood using Soft DIP Switches. To access them, press B+C+D
161-in-1 cartridge is weird. There’s Shock Troopers 2, but not Shock Troopers 1. There’s Sengoku and Sengoku 3, but not Sengoku 2.
Aero Fighters 3 is buggy. Not sure if it’s the ROM that was put on the cartridge or the game itself, but sometimes both you and the enemies become invincible.

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Hardware

Music to my ears

For years I’ve beet trying to hear the difference between lossy and lossless audio using one of the ABX tests.
I thought that I can’t tell the difference because even the SoundBlaster AE-9 is not “professional” enough.
So I got USBPre 2 for a time. And guess what? I still don’t hear the difference 🤷‍♂️

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Hardware

Fan noise

For two weeks I was bothered by my RTX 2070 fans starting and stopping.
At first I was blaming driver updates.
But then I ended up opening the case and noticing that just one of the three fans does that.
A little vacuuming helped. And I also bought a bottle of air duster though, just in case.

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*.BAK Hardware

Sage Precision Brewer

A couple of weeks ago we replaced our rather simple Russel Hobbs filter machine with a more sophisticated Sage Precision Brewer.

And boy, does it make a difference.
It doesn’t just pour boiling water, as some other brewers do. It controls water temperature using PID, like the higher-end espresso machines. The quality of coffee I get is comparable to filter coffee from Black Sheep. And it’s also easier to clean.

Potentially, it doesn’t even require paper filters. There’s a plastic basket that comes with it as well. But I got a stock of those paper filters during COVID, so I’m not sure if it’s worth to test the basket.

The downsides are that it’s huge. The tank is 1.7L, and it’s 1.7L of coffee. While we drink around 0.5L in the morning. So the pitcher always feels almost empty. I wish they had a smaller model for such cases.

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Hardware

Going wireless

Must admit that until few months ago, I was worried about switching my keyboard and mouse to wireless. But it’s actually not a big deal. I get to charge the keyboard maybe every month, and it’s just for an hour, while it still works. Same for the mouse. And I don’t feel any delays, at least when the mouse is connected to the dedicated receiver. So overall, positive experience, not only for work, but also for gaming.

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Hardware

Neo Geo Misadventures

Can’t make this stuff up. A day after I put together my SuperGun Neo Geo setup, my consolized Neo Geo lost by Royal Mail arrives back. It was in transit since 29th of July, almost 2 months, and the Royal Mail itself admitted it was simply lost. At least that resolves my issue of not having a proper shell for my board.
Just for the fun of it, I decided to see if it boots. The reason I sent it back was that it wasn’t even showing the boot screen. And it does!
Look what 5 months in Spanish Inquisition does to you. Anyway, it shows the 00D00000x555 error:

Neo Geo MV1FZS Battery and Backup RAM Error Fix

I managed to get the malfunctioning motherboard out of the shell, and put the working motherboard inside. So now I have a fully working consolized MVS, it seems.

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Hardware

Neo Geo Misadventures

Attempt to get a shell for the motherboard turned out to be a fail. Bought MV1-B shell for MV1-A board, because there were no MV1-A shells available, and those look very similar with their parallel card slot. But MV1-B shell is slightly narrower, so MV1-A board doesn’t fit in.

But other than that: it’s alive!
The board, the card, SuperGun, PSU, gamepad – everything put together and working.
And the graphic issues are gone. This is beyond awesome.

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Hardware

Razer DeathAdder V2 Pro

Got myself a new mouse. Wanted something that could be connected wired as well as wirelessly, so I could control multiple devices using the same mouse. I like DeathAdder shape, and I dislike the separate buttons on V3. So, I went for DeathAdder V2 Pro.
After DeathAdder Chroma I owned for years, Razer DeathAdder V2 Pro feels surprisingly cheap: it’s lighter and the plastic is not soft-touch. Funny how 10 years ago you had customizable weights you could put in your mouse to make it heavier, while now every mouse makes competes how light they can make their mouse.

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Hardware

Neo Geo MVS misadventures

Royal Mail admitted that they’ve lost the package that was shipped back more than a month ago from Spain, with my non-functioning Neo Geo MVS.
The good news is that I received a refund, and it took me just a couple of days.
The bad news is that the maximum refund is 65GBP, while I paid around 200GBP for the console.
The good news is that the seller already shipped me a replacement board, free of charge, which is very generous of him.
The bad news is that this is a naked board. No video output, no gamepad ports, no power supply, no enclosure. Now I’ll have to source everything by myself.

The board I received is MV1A. It comes as two separate boards, that you connect at a right angle. So your cartridge is put parallel to the motherboard.
There’s also a newer MV1C board, which looks smaller at least on photos, and consists from a single board, so the cartridge slot is on the motherboard, and the cartridge is put in a vertical position.
https://wiki.neogeodev.org/index.php?title=MVS_board_types
https://www.arcade-projects.com/threads/neo-geo-mvs-motherboard-pcb-comparison-chart-for-consolization.5904/

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Hardware History

NES Advantage

Discovered that there was an official arcade stick made for NES.

People say, though, that for many games, it was more of a disadvantage.

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Hardware

Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra

The really groundbreaking feature of this phone is its camera.
At first I wasn’t impressed. Yes, it takes rather bright photos at night, but that’s it.
But then I zoomed to see the moon, and… wow:

And this one was taken from some 50 meters away, across the canal.

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Hardware

Neo Geo MVS misadventures

My misadventures with Neo Geo console continue.
I bought it back in May, from Spain.
For the first day or so it had a distorted image, which is a known problem.
Then the image disappeared completely, showing just a bit of garbage.
I’ve sent it for repairs, and it got stuck in Spanish customs from 5th of June, until the 29th of July, when they decided that they don’t want to accept my customs declaration, and shipped it back.
Now it’s still on its way back, and I was told that it should arrive “in a week or two”.
Yes, a single day of happiness, three months of waiting. And when I finally receive it, it will still be the same malfunctioning console, which I’ll have to find a way to fix myself now.

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Hardware

Keychron K1

I decided to replace Keychron K8 with a low-profile Keychron, and stay with TKL.
Between K1 and K1 SE I decided to go with the original K1, because I like to keep my keyboard flat, and for some reason I’m more attracted to the aluminium body, and not a plastic one.
Keychron K1 gets everything right. It’s a total joy to work with. I went for the red switches, and they are pleasantly quiet. Also, the charging port is at the right place, on the back of the keyboard, and not on the left side.
I was surprised by the amount of lighting effects this keyboard has. Especially because I tend not to use lighting effects at all.
Maybe later I’ll replace ABS keycaps with PBT ones. But in the meantime, I like the smooth feel of ABS’s.