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General Computer Thread

A quick question about Extenders.

I recently purchased an extender for my WiFi. I moved the Jet Pack closer to a stronger signal and the Extender is right out of the room. I used it earlier and it worked perfectly for about ten minutes before I was disconnected from the Extender.

LinkSys walked me through the set up and helped me get it going.

The Extender shows up in my available networks but every time I try and connect to it, I get the "Can't Connect To This Network" error.

Does anyone know what the problem with the Extender might be?
 
A quick question about Extenders.

I recently purchased an extender for my WiFi. I moved the Jet Pack closer to a stronger signal and the Extender is right out of the room. I used it earlier and it worked perfectly for about ten minutes before I was disconnected from the Extender.

LinkSys walked me through the set up and helped me get it going.

The Extender shows up in my available networks but every time I try and connect to it, I get the "Can't Connect To This Network" error.

Does anyone know what the problem with the Extender might be?

http://letmegooglethat.com/?q=How+do+I+troubleshoot+a+"Can't+Connect+To+This+Network"+error?
 
Well done there @John Clark
Just out of interest how easy was the screen swapping?

Relatively easy. The two slightly trickier bits were getting the screw covers off and the bezel. (Getting the bezel off was made significantly easier with a guitar pick off all things).

Two screws for the bezel, four for the lcd and being careful with the lead. Probably took about ten minutes all in:)
 
In December i finally had it with my old PC, so many small glitches (it was 4 or 5 years old at the time). I had saved up some money and got a sizeable Christmas/Covid bonus so i decided to do a complete IT upgrade at home (new PC, Monitor, wireless Keyboad and Mouse).

I built the PC myself out of the components i ordered and for the most part was amazed (and glad) how easy it actually is when you take it slow and methodical.
Many components like RAM can only fit a certain way and require very little pressure. Nearly destroyed the most expensive part of it though - the graphics card. I didn't realize the contacts for the mainboard slot were covered with a plastic protector and i was wondering why the card wouldn't slot in - fortunately i didn't really lean into it but it was a kinda d'oh moment :)

Cable management was a bitch though in the back - there are quite a few thick power cables for the mainboard and the graphics card so it took a bit of pushing and repositioning to be able to close the case.

Powering up the PC for the first time felt like defusing a bomb though - will it work on the first try or will it fry the whole system ( it did work on the first try fortunately).
 
I am a little late to the storage game (still use a 120 GB external HDD from 12 years ago! :alienblush:)

Been thinking of upgrading to an SSD (the Samsung T5 caught my eye) for backup external storage. I am seeing some downsides to SSDs as well though. Like they have a P/E cycle limit or a TBW limit. So just wanted to know, for backup use or casual use will it last long enough (at least 10 years if not more?).

What have been people's experiences with SSDs? Do they have other issues that can crop up?

Advise away!
 
Modern SSD's have low P/E cycles because their increasing their data density by cramming in more bits per cell.

We're currently at 4 bits per cel with QLC and PLC with 5-bits per cell is coming.

That's why you see such low P/E cycles, the race for the lowest cost / GB is driving that at the expense of product longevity.

If you understand that fact and treat HDD's as long term storage and modern QLC based SSD's as Fast but low endurance storage, you should be fine.
 
^^ Yup and going down node wise doesn't improve things either, the smaller the node the faster the cells break down.

As for personal experience, I've got an Intel 120 GB SSD (MLC) as boot drive for mt gaming rigm it is 4 years old and still at 99.999% of it's projected health, I've got a OCS TR150 series 250GB (TLC) which has been my game data drive, it is 3 years old and also at 99.999% because not much happens on that thing, and i've got a Kingston SA400 (TLC 480GB) drive as boot/data drive for my general use desktop machine, can't say much about it at the moment because it is only two months ago that I've bought it.

I you're running Linux you might want to read the information in this link, it is how to properly setup a SSD for maximum perfomance and endurance when using Linux.
https://easylinuxtipsproject.blogspot.com/p/ssd.html
 
Found something new today.

When your PC or laptop suddenly shuts down, completely, while trying to access a web page that keeps loading and loading, your HDD is over heating.

My laptop has been doing just that, being slow and shutting down every time I tried to use any Internet browser. I took the cover off of the back, messed with the fan blade, cleaned the pinion off, some dust had made its way into the stator area, closed it back up and, voila. The Fan is pushing cool air again and no more shut downs while trying to load Google.

The first component to check when your PC or laptop begins to slow down is always the fan.
 
Found something new today.

When your PC or laptop suddenly shuts down, completely, while trying to access a web page that keeps loading and loading, your HDD is over heating.

My laptop has been doing just that, being slow and shutting down every time I tried to use any Internet browser. I took the cover off of the back, messed with the fan blade, cleaned the pinion off, some dust had made its way into the stator area, closed it back up and, voila. The Fan is pushing cool air again and no more shut downs while trying to load Google.

The first component to check when your PC or laptop begins to slow down is always the fan.

The other thing to do if it's a few years old, and if you feel confident is to remove the heatsinks and reapply thermal compound.
 
So I need some advice. I've had a refurbished 2015 MacBook Pro for almost six years, and I've enjoyed it greatly. It's my second MBP and they've both been useful. The battery is starting to get old, and I'm wondering if it would be worthwhile to see about replacing it in the relatively new future so I don't need to invest an entirely new laptop.

I use an app called Coconut Battery to monitor the status, and today I noticed for the first time the overall status dropped below 80% which is apparently yellow territory. I've had a tendency to rely perhaps too much on the power adapter when I've noticed the batteries starting to get old. I admit the thought of losing the battery makes me slightly paranoid. :lol: I don't think it would need to be an immediate repair, but I'd welcome some thoughts and advice on the best option. :)

yerYScI.png


In general, I think the only charge being used up is when the computer shuts on or off, since I keep it plugged in generally. But if the battery is losing a small percentage each time, then I might need to keep an eye on that.
 
The Next Generation of PC's, Laptops and Gaming Consoles.

Possible new method to cool down Processors, Graphics Cards and Network Connectors.

Everyone knows that overheating in a PC or Console slows down performance. Incoherent light from the sun or from an LED could cool a small object, according to two theory papers.

How Incoherent Light would work is rather simple. LED's emitting Incoherent Light would help cool down the inside of the PC or Console.
Components of the PC or Gaming Console that are kept cooler then they are now means faster and more powerful Processors, Graphics Cards and Network Adapters can be designed that would otherwise burn out due to overclocking.

I would even go so far as to say that the method described below could turn into cool, warm and hot logic gates that would create an increase in processing speed based on temperature of the current passing through the logic gate.

Soaking up energy. When an incoherent light beam with frequency ωb (coming from an LED or other source) strikes a mirror oscillating at frequency ωc, the interaction can remove heat from the mirror in the form of light at frequency ωa, the sum of the other two frequencies. Show Less
Lasers can cool atoms in part because their photons are “coherent,” meaning they are synchronized and orderly. Two theoretical papers in Physical Review Letters now show explicitly how to use disorderly, incoherent light to cool a small object. The papers employ different principles: in one, the heat is carried away by electrons, while in the other, the heat radiates away as light. But both refrigeration schemes use the energy levels of tailored quantum systems. This is part of a growing body of work showing that quantum machines should perform better than their classical analogs. The new schemes could be good news for researchers trying to cool down precision force meters or bits of a quantum computer.

Cooling with heat is not new. An absorption refrigerator uses heat from a small burner or other source to drive an evaporation-condensation cycle that is similar to the one in a normal refrigerator compressor. Light can be used as the heat source, but the cooling power is not very strong. Much better performance is obtained when laser light is used to cool clouds of atoms and other small objects to near absolute zero. Ideally, researchers would like to cool a small, solid object, such as the tip of an atomic force microscope, to its quantum ground state, the lowest possible temperature. These systems could be used to study quantum gravity or the quantum wave function of a macroscopic object.

https://physics.aps.org/articles/v5/36
 
So I need some advice. I've had a refurbished 2015 MacBook Pro for almost six years, and I've enjoyed it greatly. It's my second MBP and they've both been useful. The battery is starting to get old, and I'm wondering if it would be worthwhile to see about replacing it in the relatively new future so I don't need to invest an entirely new laptop.

I use an app called Coconut Battery to monitor the status, and today I noticed for the first time the overall status dropped below 80% which is apparently yellow territory. I've had a tendency to rely perhaps too much on the power adapter when I've noticed the batteries starting to get old. I admit the thought of losing the battery makes me slightly paranoid. :lol: I don't think it would need to be an immediate repair, but I'd welcome some thoughts and advice on the best option. :)

yerYScI.png


In general, I think the only charge being used up is when the computer shuts on or off, since I keep it plugged in generally. But if the battery is losing a small percentage each time, then I might need to keep an eye on that.

Depends on how much they'll ask for it, it's an Apple, so everything is glued and soldered into place so it will take eons to replace anything, add the usual Apple "premium" money sucking and it might simply get too expensive, think you should just ask what it will take.
 
Yeah, the good thing is I don't think I'd need to do it right away, if at all in the next few months. Amusingly, CB is actually reading a bit higher than when I first booted up (back to a more normal level), so at least the bar is green again. :lol:
 
I've got a few laptops that have dead batteries, it never bothered me that much because they usually are used as a desktop replacement anyway, if they would have been used for travel and the like of course things would have been different. :)
 
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