Hardware

One of my local servers died a quiet death last week. Much as I tried to revive the li'l bitch, she refused to accede to my plaintive entreaties. She is now consigned to a forlorn corner and I am yet to see to her last rites. In the meantime, I have recently introduced a new addition to my family of servers through the cannibalisation of older (and now retired) members of the same. So, I settled on trying to see if I could save the soul of my now recently defunct Kubuntu box by simply transferring its hard drive to this new server. When I tried to do so, this is what transpired:

Last week, I noticed that my computer was becoming really sluggish and the fans, extremely noisy. Seeing as to how I had an inkling that this was due to my CPU heating up or rather, not being cooled enough, and the fact that Windows wasn't telling me what the temperature was, I was in the hunt for a utility to report CPU temperatures in real time. I could, of course, check it via my BIOS. But I wanted a utility to be able to run under load.

Today, I purchased and installed the Edimax EW-7316Ug wireless 802.11b/g USB Adapter. While I usually approach the purchase of hardware for Linux - especially for non-mainstream products - with a certain degree of trepidation, I was heartened to note during my pre-purchase exercise that the Edimax page specifically mentioned Linux compatibility and even provided a source code download. How rare is that?!

If you are experiencing speed issues with your CD or DVD drive, here are some tips that might help:

1. Make sure that you use an 80-conductor data cable and that it is fine.

I had an issue earlier today where my microphone was not being detected on my semi-new Windows box. The system uses a Gigabyte motherboard with onboard Realtek audio. All drivers from the driver CD had been installed. But my microphone and front panel input options in the Windows Volume Control were all greyed out.

I am not sure what the exact solution was, but I did all the following things:

Unlike Linux where updates for both your hardware and software are taken care of neatly, Windows usually requires some manual labour when it comes to keeping drivers for your hardware up to date. This niche can be filled through the use of Driveragent, a service that checks your present hardware setup and recommends appropriate updates.

I had an issue today where I was stuck with a non-functioning board and 3 power supplies. I couldn't get any response from the board regardless of which power supply unit I was using. However, while the board was new, the power supplies weren't and I really had no way to isolate the issue between the two. Rather than messing with any of my working systems, I wanted to test the PSUs without having to connect them to a motherboard.