Captain’s Log

Rimuru Restoration – With a screwdriver, I stab at thee

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Despite it only being only a few years old, motherboards compatible with Rimuru’s processor are largely gone and needless to say, my AsRock isn’t re-obtainable as far as local resources go. That’s been the sad trend IMHO, that yes, desktops are still pretty modular, no the parts won’t be worth a fart tomorrow. But alas, that’s a different issue.

Deciding that the motherboard is the root of the problem based on my multimeter readings and the screwed up power behavior, I debated two courses of action: decommission Rimuru in favor of a laptop, as it was already expected to be my last desktop build; or attempt to fix things with replacement parts. The upside of the later is that it is the minimal cost option, the former that it’s the less likely to piss me off.

Rimuru is now rocking an Asus motherboard a generation forward. A small fortune and the better part of my day later, everything seems to be operational. Fortunately, re-activating Windows licenses purchased from Microsoft’s own store are still not too terrible to deal with motherboard replacement.

In the process, I’ve also decided to ditch the humongous air cooler and get a liquid cooler, cue kraken, stage left. When I originally designed Rimuru, I had considered liquid cooling and decided to stick with what I know. Well, I decided if I was going to be replacing a motherboard, there was going to be something a lot smaller hovering over the processor getting int he way of my hands, or I was going to drive a spike through the board. So, liquid cooler it be.

Now if there was just a solution for the raging headache ^_^.

Rimuru facing decommissioning

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Before the holidays, I had the problem that Rimuru would power on in a brain dead state — fans would spin up, most buses would power their components, and so on. But it wouldn’t POST or reach BIOS. Just brain dead. The only way to turn it on or off was the cord and kill switch on the PSU, and trying to hold the power switch on the case would just act like a reset and then total brain death with running fans.

Tried all the good jumping off points: trying to boot off integrated graphics, reseating and walking RAM sticks, etc. Then I took my multimeter to the power supply’s ATX main and CPU power pins, and that seemed to be fine.
At that point the only thing I hadn’t reseated was the CPU, and I’d have to go to Micro Center for fresh thermal gloop anyway if I did that. So, I decided to drop it off and see what they could figure out. Today, I got my machine back. Reseated memory, POSTS. Well, I hoped their touch was more magical than mine. But no dice.
When I had asked, it was unknown if it fresh thermal paste was used, since the guy doing initial processing had tried reseating the CPU and swapping in another of the same model with no luck. Reseated the processor with fresh thermal gloop, and I’ve decided that I am taking a new policy on this. If the CPU cooler is connected and it don’t catch fire, I’m not effing remounting CPU coolers for this–it’s just to much of a pain in the ass in such cramped spaces, and my hands ain’t gettin’ tinier. If I ever build another desktop, there better not be a huge ass heatsinkage over the processor or I think I’m outsourcing to someone fitting that description.
Anyhow, the machine wouldn’t boot and was doing the same thing as when I dropped it off. Gave it a kick and numerous elevated heart rate notifications later while choking on my urge to go Incredible Hulk on the decommissioning, I eventually came back to try a few things.
Tried loading a single RAM channel up and with some fiddly, I got into the OS. To do so, I had to pull the front panel header and rub a nail clipper on the pins. Eventually, I put in the other RAM channel but it didn’t seem to make a difference what I did with the memory.
Depending on how I manually short the reset and power switch pins, the system either hangs as before, goes into brain death, or does a sorta reset and may boot or die.
Fiddling around, I noticed that USB ports may or may not have power. I.e., plug in a keyboard while in BIOS, walk it through the ports toggling num lock, cycle back and what the fuck there’s no power, and then again and now it works. Stuff like that. In some cases the keyboard would draw power enough to light the num lock LED but wouldn’t toggle, and then in some cases it would just be flashing all three LEDs at the top for a while and then go dead.
Anything resembling a “Proper” shutdown like the OS would do leaves the machine brain dead. Have to pull the power and fiddle pins trying to find the right fiddling and timing to boot. Trip the right way and the processor fan cranks and the case fan turns off, and it’s total death until power pull.
So at this point, I think a technician who’s able to test piece by piece and determine what is failed would be needed. That’s beyond my skill without a schematic, and the tiny as hell components to desolder and resolder would make the repair work beyond my ability even if I did have a schematic to work off.
Based on its behavior, I’m inclined to believe the power management chip is screwed up or something has gone awry with the path of power causing it to just “Leak” into systems that should remain unpowered until initialized properly.
To garner a second opinion, I think I may buy one of those PSU tester things to double check my power supply’s readings vs my multimeter. Which basically means, motherboard if it’s not the power supply. If that’s the case, given how much issue it is to get ahold of another motherboard of that model; I may opt to decommission  Rimuru.
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So far, my evil desk replacement plan has gone relatively well.

The riser that came with my new desk places the monitor too high for my tastes, and was kind of edge to edge. To compensate, I’ve replaced it with a decent monitor arm. In general: I tend to prefer my monitors lower when they’re larger / further away and high up there when they’re smaller / closer. My goal was to open room under neath for a laptop to be docked not change the monitor positioning.

On the flip side, my LG was pretty darn painless to replace its integrated stand with the arm. Using the arm also gives me better cable management and unlike the un-adjustable one my monitor came with; I could always add binder clips to it. Hehe.

Speaking of binder clips: since I had to rewire all the things, I added a pair to the back of my desk. One to the left to keep the monitor’s power brick from moving around and one to the right to retain the incoming Ethernet cable. I also fed my mouse and probably speaker data cables through it before routing accordingly.

To facilitate fast swapping between Rimuru and a laptop, I got myself a fancy USB-C hub. The USB-A hub affixed to monitor via velcro is now connected to one of its USB-A ports and my speaker is in its USB-C data port. Mouse, web camera, and Xbox adapter are in the USB-A hub on the monitor. Pretty much fetch an HDMI cable and network cable out of the closet and it’s a one cable swap to my work MBP, and a second cable for its charger. 

Because the hub’s cable can’t reach Rimuru’s 10 Gbit/s USB-C card and the 5 Gbit/s hub on the monitor was barely reaching one of Rimuru’s motherboard USB-A ports, the solution was a 10 Gbit/s USB-C extension cable running from his expansion card to the hub. That extension cable is retained by the same binder clip as the monitor’s power supply, so it won’t fall off between the narrow gap between desk and wall when swapping cables. ‘Cuz I know how that goes ;).

To facilitate this “All the things follow one cable” plan creates a bottle neck but considering that this bottle neck is a 10 Gbit/s, I don’t really mind. Most of my USB-A peripherals have limited power and data requirements. We’re talking about whether the 1080p web cam or the simple speakers draw more juice. Not trying to power a spinning hard drive and a desk lamp.

An added benefit of this novel approach is I’ve worked around an annoying problem.

Back when my first USB floppy drive went bork-bork, I had a spell where some of Rimuru’s USB-A ports seemed dead, then went back to working. In the months (~year) since then most of his ports behave in a way that makes me believe that most of the fuses are blown. As a consequence, peripherals have generally been moved to the USB-A hub on the monitor and it connected to one of the still good ports on the motherboard’s I/O panel.

Given that whatever the warranty status and pain in the assery of that might be, it’s probably a good thing my Real Focus on connectivity has been USB-C stuff, it’s probably a good thing that I bought that 10 Gbit/s expansion card for two more C ports. Considering the fuses are probably under the big ass heat sinkage and tiny as !@#$ to desoldier and replace, I’m going with definitely was a good plan to buy that expansion card.

Moving things to my one cable swap all the equipment plan kind of removes this problem. But to cope with it, I’m thinking of two more changes. Another hub on the back of the monitor that keeps the mouse/camera from sticking out the side, and a 5 Gbit/s expansion card to put some A ports where my motherboard’s PCI-E x1 slot is available. Since 10 Gbit/s requires an x4 slot, that’s already consumed by my USB-C expansion card.

Ahh, the joy of computers. Fuck them all.

Desk Plans

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For the first time in quite a few years, I’m planning on a different desk setup at home. Actually, for the first time in about 16 years, I’m buying a new desk as part of the plan.

The small desk that I use has been slighted modified to suit my preference for keyboard on slab over its slide out keyboard tray. But otherwise, it’s about the same desk my mom bought about 20 years ago when we got a Pentium 4. Making the migration away from keyboard trays, and frankly having held up much better, is why it replaced my desk that I bought about 16 years ago when I got my own personal computer.

Here’s what I’m envisioning:

  1. A slab style desk about 40″ wide.
  2. Monitor riser to hold the big ass monitor.
  3. Laptop docked under the riser.
  4. Speakers to either side.
  5. Some means of swapping between tower and laptop.
For the desk part of this equation, I’m looking at this gaming desk. It’s close enough in dimensions to my mom’s old desk that I don’t think Corky will notice it encourching on his beloved bedside corner unless the cupholder falls off and hits him in the snoop or I spill a drink on his head. The included riser should be just enough to handle my monitor’s stand, and I could probably go with one of those arms if that doesn’t work out.
This should allow sliding my development Latitude or my work MacBook Pro under the riser, and in theory, maybe I can get away from the annoyance of the monitor leg being under my mouse pad 😂.
Having a slab of comparable dimension should maintain the benefit of having the room to the side for my laptop / phone / whatever the crap I’m working on but put it at the same height as my desk instead of being a “Lowered” shelf the size of a PC shelf. The lack of a place to stow my PC other than on the slab means that Rimuru will probably end up on a little rolly stand of his own, or that I’ll duct tape some cardboard together to make one.
The part that I haven’t quite figured out is device swapping.
On the back of my monitor there are strips of Velcro affixing a Gigabit switch and a USB hub. On the top is my webcam and behind are my speakers jacked into one of the dual USB-C 10 GBit/s ports on Rimuru’s expansion card.
Stack has a Dell docking station that solves most problems of interfacing if it fits but won’t be able to share much. Whether I replace it with a shiny XPS or a Mac someday, my next laptop is going to have USB-C ports much as this was a design requirement when I built Rimuru! Since most of my gear is either Bluetooth (keyboard, headphones) or USB-A (mouse, webcam, USB-A hub, Xbox controller adapter) it would be relatively easy to swap from desktop to laptop as desired by using a USB-C hub because the only Bluetooth device switching around is one with multiple device pairings. The sticky one is that my speakers require a USB-C for their data connection to actually work. The only solution I’ve been able to figure on so far, is one of the few hubs readily available that has both USB-A and USB-C ports. I figure that most connections of interest can be routed to such a hub, along with display/network for the laptop. Personally, I would prefer something like the 4-port USB-A hub on my monitor but as a 4-port USB-C hub, but those are still harder to find as most vendors are C-to-A style hubs and most have short cable lengths. The alternative would be having to switch my speakers between USB-C input and Bluetooth mode, which isn’t totally convenient since they would still need Rimuru to be powered on, making USB the better deal for toggling between devices.
A tricky part of this is the cable length such a hub. That effectively means that cable swaps would require running a USB-C to C extension cable from Rimuru to the hub and swapping the hub between that extension cable and whatever Stark’s successor is. And probably hoping that the new desk or riser lets me put binder clips on the back for cable retention, to keep the cable for falling off, lol.
Well, at least that is my concept for right now.

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So, I’ve finally decided to give it a shot. For a while I’ve had some interest in the various sensors Apple Watches have, and due to recent affairs, I pretty much find myself with greater need to be aware of what time it happens to be and whether or not there is a meeting on the agenda. Frankly, I’m tired of walking to the head or the snack bar and checking my phone for the time.

Combining these factors, along with the Xbox Series X continuing to be more Unicorn than not as far as budgeted upgrade paths go, I did something I rarely do: I bought myself an expensive birthday present! With my birthday coming up soon, I decided to pull the trigger and just do it. Something that’s not a unicorn always taps that earmarked piece of my savings anyway. Actually, thinking about it, if you discount that time I ended up needing a car near Christmas time, buying a Apple Watch Series 7 is probably the second or the most expensive ‘gift’ I’ve ever picked for myself 😃😄😂. In retrospect, it’s also the first time I’ve ever been to an Apple Store, and probably the first time I’ve gone to a certain nearby mall in a about a decade.

My choice between the SE and S7 is mainly about the sensors; for all other factors I’d rather save on price. Of course, in September there will probably be nice sales if Series 8 lands at the usual time frame but I’m not a Virgo or a Libra. In terms of style being the bland sort, a nice black case and a dark green leather band in 45 mm. Something that fits both my taste and will blend in whether at work or out and about. Might investigate some of the NATO nylon straps and stainless-steel bands on Amazon for variety, but so far, so happy. The leather link uses a magnet clasp that’s as easy as Velcro, and more comfortable than the regular sports and leather bands with the usual through hole buckle that I’ve worn over the years.

This makes the third watch I’ve owned since about 1999, and the second that I’ve bought for myself. Remarkably, it’s also the most expensive. Back around ’99 is when I bought the watch that I used most in my life, for a whole remarkable ten bucks at Walmart. The only other watch I’ve used since then was a really, really slick hand me down. Until about 2010, I had intermixed between watch and watch less and set it aside sometime after adapting to phones in 2010. I can say that my desire for phones likely peaked somewhere in the middle and has long since waned in favor of tablets.

On the flipside, maybe the three rings will convince me to move my lazy fat ass more often ^_^.

Ahh, it’s been a busy few weeks.

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As such I mainly have two core objectives right now.

First is what I refer to as “Drool on the couch”. Rest and relaxation in the manner of Home Simpson. Except for me that tends to look more like Netflix or video games than a beer.

Second is to catch up on my backlog. Things that need to get sorted but don’t always make it into the week. Not to mention trying to get a headstart.

Actually, I find it kind of bemusing that grocery shopping is usually scheduled in terms of when the dogs food and snacks are getting due for refill, or when my own snack pool thins out 😋

Reflections upon my career

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For the most part, I’ve never been a big believer in bucket lists. At least not the kind you wait until you’re dying to start checking off. In thinking recently, I’ve come to realize that the work I’ve done over the years probably checks those kinds of boxes on my career in software engineering.

Over the past 16½ years of programming: I’ve …
Followed as part of a larger group where the big picture issues were someone else’s problem, been the mythical programmer doing it all, led small groups where the big picture is my domain, and been the contact point for small groups.
Learned that I like design and architecture. Both creating them anew and studying existing projects.
Somehow ended up the guy everyone asks when they don’t know the answers.
Gotten to enjoy coffee machines that may have had more moving parts than my car.
Worked on traditional application and system level software, but also many other pieces that were off the beaten path. Kernel level drivers that needed porting, microcontrollers that drive hardware interfaces, developed libraries, tools, and frameworks.
Discovered those are all less magical than you think when you’re a young padawan. It’s less that it’s drastically different from normal software development and more that it’s important that you not screw up, explode, or paint yourself into a corner.
At times been both the smarted and the stupidest person in the room.
Made features people loved that were based off my ideas. Especially the curious ones when I wanted to know how something worked, and then found an imaginative use case for what was learned.
Made features people loved that we based off other people’s ideas. Especially the ones that made the product better for the customer.
Been one of the engineers that gets called when a customer goes down on a Sunday.
Been deemed the expert on some problem domain. Actually, I don’t want to know how many times that’s happened.
Seen code that I worked on make the magic happen and seen the results on a scope, even though I’ll never be able to spell oscilloscope from memory!
Been grateful for hardware engineers and technicians and their skill sets. As well as gladly working alongside them.
Had my hands in more than pieces of internal infrastructure than I can count. As a coworker recently pointed out, while “IT guy” has never been my job title at any of the places that I’ve worked, he noted that I could probably run an IT dept it I had to. The part of that bugs me, is he was serious, and others agreed.
Been a webmaster, not that I miss that job.
Gotten to work with equipment that I always thought was so expensive that I would never be allowed to touch it.
Seen more than one 8-inch floppy diskette.
Oh wow, satellites!
Been one of the guys who knows too much about what needs doing after the power comes back on.
Both saved the day like Mr. Scott and reminded people that I am not in fact Scotty.
Quoted Jurassic Park more times than I ever thought possible.
Had to wear both my red shirt and my brown pants.
Kept working on a problem everyone else gave up on, and actually found a solution.
Written code to handle parsing existing formats and data streams, including at least one parser of MPEG2 Transport Streams and various propriety things.
Written code, specifications, and documentation for formats and data streams I’ve created. Sadly, more often for propriety things.
Debugged more than a few weird problems.
Been the guy that gets to solve a problem because the team that should fix it in their project decided it’s too much work to do the right thing.
Solved problems at both ends so a system is tolerant if only upgraded one end.
Will probably forget more about the X Windows system as I get older than younger folk will ever learn.
Will never forget there was a character encoding named EBCDIC because test equipment was so much older than I was, defaulting to EBCDIC rather than ASCII made sense when it was manufactured.
Worked on existing and developed new products that actually get used and deployed.
Never got to go to tradeshows and conferences related to my fields but was the chief code monkey on a product that got an award at one.
There will probably be at least letter from a customer in my keepsake box.
Ahh. I’ve got to admit, it hasn’t been a dull career to date.
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One of the reasons that I love choice-based adventure games is that it offers opportunities for both introspection and escape. Will you put yourself into context, or will you role-play a part? Games like Detroit: Become Human and House of Ashes offer much opportunity for both.

In my experience, choices in games tend to reflect me. Not purely the role of the character or an artificial mentality. Actually, I think it would be neat to see statistics about how players respond to such games.
Become Human is even more thoughtful than most because of the issue of Android rights and revolution. I love that the story keeps making you evaluate this. Do you thrash the square, or do you send a message of civil disobedience? Do you respond to violence and injustice with justice and violence, or do you believe an eye for an eye is how the world goes blind? When things heat up will you stick to what you believe or evaluate. Where will you draw the point of no return? I found the point following the fall of Jericho especially pointed.
Thinking about my play through, I do think that as I get older that I am becoming more of a pacifist at heart. I believe that conflict will exist as long as humanity does, but I also see there is so much protentional in our species. Hopefully, if someday our creations become alive as we are, they will learn the right things from us.
Note: Spoilers below.
An earlier version of myself would likely have opted for revolution after the fall of Jericho. On the notion of social justice, it’s certainly a difficult point where you need to decide which side of the line you’ll land on. Even for peaceful people, turning it into an android revolution may be a valid response to the situation. Of all the choices in the game, I found that probably the hardest to make.
Choosing to march the Androids down to the recall camps and sit, demanding freedom wasn’t something that I would have imagined. Choosing to sing at the Android’s last stand as execution closes in lead to a beautiful ending. I love that the game doesn’t necessarily turn it into a brutal moment rather than one of hope and humanity. A path that says much about both mankind and the androids.
On the prospect that someday our machines could one day become alive rather than simply automatons, I kind of hope whatever our creations learn from mankind: it’ll be a lesson of hope. That, and for us humans to be wise enough not to repeat our own mistakes instead of rise above them.
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There as a thing my mother used to mention every now and then, I loosely remember it as 

They’re coming to take me away,
Haha, they’re coming to take me away,
Ho ho, hee hee, ha ha,
To the Happy Home with Trees and Flowers
And Chirping Birds, …

I always figured this was a poem or a limerick from her youth. Except I could swear there was a mention of cows and chickens somewhere. In looking it up, I’m just going to guess she had a LP of Napoleon XIV somewhere.

Actually, that would make some sense if its circa ’66. Perhaps in more ways than one.

PowerBook Duo 230

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So, I kind of lost my marbles and decided to work on a nearly 30 year old computer as a project. Growing up in a PC family: my knowledge of the classic Mac operating system is quite limited compared to modern anything, or even ye ol’ MS-DOS. I’ve also never been as fond of emulators as actual hardware.

Bits & Pieces
From different sources:
  • PowerBook Duo 230 /w charger and dead battery
  • MiniDock with the modem, HDI and mDIN connectors
  • External HDI-20 floppy
  • 20 MB RAM module (not pictured)
The laptop is known to have a dead SCIS drive, so it’s a bit of a project out the barn door. One that I hope to solve with a RaSCSI in the long run. Powering it on stand alone with the charger for a quick test, I’ve actually never heard a drive sound that so bad. I’m guessing the head must be glued wherever it is parked. 
But it still booted to the old GUI BIOS like ROM with its floppy icon of sadness, as expected. Trying to connect it to the dock and power up, I was only able to get an odd chime and then couldn’t get anything to power on.

Partial disassembly

Unfortunately while I was getting some tools to begin disassembly: the charger went POOF and lovely smoke. I’m going to take a guess that it blew a capacitor, and trying to power the dock was the final nail in its coffin. Fortunately it was only plugged into the wall at the time, and didn’t scorch my secondary desk — which is conveniently located near windows.
On a positive side: I managed to disassemble the Duo without breaking the tabs on the upper frame nor miraculously the ones on the center clutch cover. I found the 250 video at Jason’s Macintosh Museum a superb example of the process. I’ve no interest in complete tear down, so I stopped at detaching the screen and hard drive.
Forgot how much the smell of rubbing alcohol sucks, but with plenty of that and some gauging with a take out plastic knife, I removed the turned-to-goo rubber feet from the bottom frame and screen bezel. At first I didn’t care, since it was just sticking a bit. Then I noticed the grey goo was coming off on my desk, and then they had to die.
Aside from Apple’s fondness for little plastic bezels, the Duo 200 series is actually easier to take apart than my old ThinkPad X61/T61 series. The Duo’s plastic seems a little less terrifying than I expected, but to my understanding how brittle the plastic has become is a major problem in such old PowerBooks. Therefore, I am taking great care.
Much to my surprise it looks like the unit has a memory module installed. Size unknown, can’t find enough indications on the chips to tell. In any case, if I get her operational whichever module is larger will be the one fitted.
Problems to be solved:
  1. Power
  2. Storage
  3. Software
Not sure that any third party replacement chargers exist at this point. It’s old enough that it’s hard to even look for a replacement. Best plan is probably take the charger to work, crack it open, and see what can be done with the remains of the adapter. As far as I can tell the 24V chargers from the old G3/G4 models have a smaller tip. May be better off digging up a suitable 24V charger, cutting the tips, splicing the old one to a younger adapter, and borrowing some heat shrink.
I assume it’s possible to split and replace the cells in the NiMH battery pack, but that’s not really a priority to me. I’ve heard that Battery’s Plus does that, but the ones near me don’t.
Storage wise I would like to fit a RaSCSI with a Pi Zero in place of the internal drive if possible. By being careful not to fubar the ribbon cable to the old 320M Quantum drive, I think that should be fairly painless aside from making sure the headers are on the right side of the board. Pre-emptively, I’ve resurrected my old Pi 2 Model B. When kits or assembled boards are available, RaSCSI is my plan.
I just don’t see a point to buying a 30 year old hard drive. They’re expensive time bombs, and it’s probably cheaper to buy a few PowerBook 100/200 series for parts than acquire a drive on its own. No one has made this kind of drive since the mid ’90s or so.
Software is fairly easier a solution. My plan is a boot floppy, but it may be possible to just setup an image in an emulator and load it on a RaSCSI. The hardware pickles need solving first. I’d like to get System 7.5.x or 7.6 operational. Preferably on something NOT a 30-year old hard drive. On my OpenBSD machine, I’ve setup Basilisk II but had no luck installing system 7.x there. Hopefully, I’ll have the opportunity to try on the Duo itself.
Also, I should probably try and crack open that floppy drive and see what parts may need lubrication.