Netgear AC750 Wifi Range Extender (EX3700)
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3Com OfficeConnect ADSL Wireless 54 Mbps 11g Firewall Router This 3Com product has many functions: router, firewall, adsl modem, wireless access point, 4 port switch. 3Com chose to give two names to its products: a name for the market (as the long name in the title), which identifies the purpose of the product and is not changed when a new model replaces the older one, and a model name, a number which identifies the specific model.
The "ADSL" term in the name is particularly useful to specify that it's a adsl modem too, with a RJ-11 port that would connect the router directly to the phone line, through a RJ-11 cable, just like any adsl modem; in fact I found several routers that were capable of routing the adsl signal but were equipped with a RJ-45 port instead of a RJ-11 port: they were not DSL modems and needed to be connected to an external DSL modem. Checking the rear of the product, maybe on the user guide, can help making sure the router is a DSL modem too.
I will review two 3Com OfficeConnect ADSL Wireless 54 Mbps 11g Firewall Router models, the older 3CRWDR100A-72 and the newer 3CRWDR101A-75.
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Opening notebook Toshiba Satellite Pro SP4270
(Updated Aug 12 2012)
(Updated Aug 29 2013)
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Hard disk suspension in an Antec SLK3000B
The main problem of the Antec SLK3000B case is it converts hard disk vibrations to noise, and this is the most annoying noise coming from my pc when the fans are set at the lowest speed. In the SLK3000B the hard disks lay in a cage with grommets that are supposed to dampen the vibrations of the 7200 and more rpm hard disks.
The trend spreading amongst silencing modders is to suspend the hard disks in the air to avoid contact between the case and the hard disks.
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Asus MyPal A686 PDA with GPS
(Updated Jul 24 2011)
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Motherboard Gigabyte GA-MA790FX-DS5
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Recover "Logical sector size is 0" with dd
A few hours ago while I was using my pc suddenly Windows froze completely (mouse was stuck and Ctrl+Alt+Del did nothing). It's not astonishing but I was quite surprised because such a freeze never happened since I began using Windows XP on my new pc.
The problem appeared at the reboot: grub, the bootloader on /dev/sda, showed this error message:
I have a dual boot configuration with Windows XP booting from a EIDE disk and Ubuntu booting from a SATA disk, so I entered Ubuntu, successfully; /dev/hda1 (the Windows partition) was not mounted while /dev/hda5 and /dev/hda6 were; attempting to mount it resulted in
At reboot I started Windows XP Recovery Console from the Windows CD and tried CHKDSK.EXE, and this was the outcome:
I booted again linux to launch fsck and see it fail:
Then I found the solution in ubuntu forum:
root@am2:/home/z24# dd if=/dev/hda1 of=/defmedia/bkup_fat32_hda1.img bs=512 count=2048000 conv=noerror,sync 2048000+0 records in 2048000+0 records out 1048576000 bytes (1.0 GB) copied, 43.61 seconds, 24.0 MB/s root@am2:/home/z24# dd if=/defmedia/bkup_fat32_hda1.img of=/home/z24/sector6.bin bs=512 count=1 skip=6 conv=noerror,sync 1+0 records in 1+0 records out 512 bytes (512 B) copied, 0.011544 seconds, 44.4 kB/s root@am2:/home/z24# dd if=/home/z24/sector6.bin of=/dev/hda1 bs=512 count=1 conv=noerror,sync,notrunc 1+0 records in 1+0 records out 512 bytes (512 B) copied, 0.030644 seconds, 16.7 kB/sExplanation:
dd copies the extracted sector 6 to sector 0 of /dev/hda1.dd was also checked with losetup and mount. Thanks a lot to the ubuntuforums user Onlymee for his post!
mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /mnt):
dmesg | grep sda1
But fdisk -l /dev/sda shows the partition table.fsck.vfat /dev/sda1 (executed from Ubuntu 8.04 alternate cd)
The solution was exactly the same: copy the sixth sector back to the first. And voilà, it booted.
Mounting a second fan on the back of the case (Antec SLK3000B)
With the summer approaching, I am making some experiments trying to cool my pc as much as possible while keeping it quiet. Now, airflow in the case is made by 2 fans: the intake fan, a Papst 4412 F/2GLL, pulls air inside the case from the front, the exhaust fan, a Antec Tricool coming with the SLK3000B, pushes air out to the back; in addition, the psu fan pulls air from the top of the motherboard through the psu to the back.
Since I bought a second Papst 4412 F/2GLL, I tried positioning this fan in different locations to see which one conributes the best to the cooling. One of these is the back of the case, in the bottom, where there would be additional cards: it pushes air out of the case through the back slots.
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Zalman ZM-MFC1 fan controller
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Scythe Ninja Plus rev. B
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Noctua NH-U12F
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