I hate computers

[kengr]

Got a 2 TB external drive to back up stuff and allow transporting data and vital files.

I was having real problems getting the huge amounts of data transferred. Windows would keep popping up "unsafe removal of drive" and the like. I thought it was the cheap USB card or something.

To fix it, you'd have to shut off the drive and restart it, then pick up the transfer from where uyou left opff.

Well a couple days ago, I had to dig a drive out of Fay's mostly dead system which I;'d been using as a stand for the external drives I was transferring files between.

So, when I moved it back, I'd accidentally dropped the cable for the 2 TB drive. There was another USB cable that I'd used for something else, and that I knew was connected to the back of the computer on the same card. So I used it.

All the problems went away. Seems it was the cable I'd been using that was the problem. The cable that CAME WITH THE DRIVE!!!

Grrrrr.

Comments

[fayanora.livejournal.com]

Complain to the company that sells it.

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

Actually, that problem is about as easy to fix as they come. Count yourself half-lucky; if you had to have trouble, it couldn't be any simpler or easier to handle.

[mistresscayenne.livejournal.com]

Yes you were lucky! In all my years troubleshooting telephone systems I only found two like that. Many other problems happen in trouble shooting.

[mikkop.livejournal.com]

Reminds me of one AV story.

Last time we got a new TV, we had to set up a SCART switcher as the new TV had less SCART inputs as the old one. There were three cables, two from the sources to the switcher and one from the switcher to the TV. We had some spare cables so I just grabbed some of them and tried them out.

For some reason one of the sources worked fine but the other didn't. I measured the faulty cable and the switcher to see if they were connecting well, and they were. Then I opened the faulty cable to see what was wrong - and realized that not all the pins were connected. That could've been obvious from the measurements, too, but for some reason I had to see inside the cable.

At this point I googled and realized that there are at least two types of SCART cables: with all (relevant to HD tv signal) pins connected and... less pins connected. For some reason I had the second kind there, and that's why it didn't work. Luckily we had still more cables and they did work, so now the system works ok. Except of course the fact that the SCART connector is very bad, physically, so we have to push them in every once in a while.

At least USB cables usually have all the pins connected. If they're working, it's only a matter of finding a cable with the correct connectors...

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

The SCART situation is if anything worse than mikkop implies. The full 21-pin bus will support video (S-Video, RGB, whatever), stereo audio up and down (in case your wall socket wants to listen to your TV?), data, and so on. It's kind of a mess on the technical side, but there are cables for video only, video & audio, audio only, and data only - which makes five when you add in the desirable 'everything works' cable. There is a color code to identify cable type, which manufacturers do not use.

[kengr]

Worse than DVI connectors then. The box I'm currently using has a both a VGA and a DVI connector on the Video card. But the DVI connector turns out to be DVI-D (if I recall the terms correctly). So I can't use a DVI to VA adapter to connect it to a spare CRT. Once I get an LCD monitor again, I can do things better.

[kengr]

Serial cables. Way too many of the old 25-pin ones had only some pins. And with extender cables, you had to be careful. I traded away some cables because they didn't have all 25-pins.

Y'see, with all 25-pins, any *decent* cable could also be used as a parallel port extender.

And then there are "null modem" cables. I've got a few in my boxes of cables that I have tags attached giving the pinouts (ie a list of pins on each end, with lines drawn between the ones that connect). There were some *really* strange ones out there.

Also, see my reply to Scott below, about DVI connectors.

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

I think the era of null-modem cables has passed - like, by about 20 years. It may be that someone is still making them, possibly for TRS-80 enthusiasts.

[kengr]

I keep a set of Laplink cables in a bag along with a USB to USB data transfer cable (and software for both). Youy never know when you'll need to do serial or parallel port file transfer because otherwise the systems have no compatible data transfer devices.

I really need to check and see if Win versions later than XP still have that feature in them. It's listed under some *totally* non-intuitive heading in the help files on the older versions.

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

It wouldn't surprise me that along with audio output in Turkish and printing in Braille there's still options for 300 baud acoustic couplers and cassette tape data storage...

[kengr]

Well, PC *hardware* quit supporting single density floppies decades back (which is why older controllers are in demand). Cassette storage was only an option on the IBM PC and PC-2 (I've got 5 PC-2 buried in the back of storage)

Acoustic couplers are just modems with aodd way of attaching to the phone.

As for Braille, I have the required software, an embosser (Braille equivalent of a printer) and a box of the paper. Comes of having a blind friend...

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

Interesting; that sounds quieter than the Braille printer I saw years ago, which was basically an upgraded dot matrix head that hit the paper really hard.

[kengr]

Not *remotely* quiet. It *is* an "upgraded" dot matrix. And if you've ever felt braille paper (feels sort of like construction paper) you know how hard it is to make "crisp" impressions on it.

Sounds like one of the noisier dot matrix printer or a scaled down buzz-saw.

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

That's as I remember it, something between a printer and a jackhammer. Too bad, really; when you said 'embosser' I imagined a chunky inkjet of some kind (or lightweight 3D printer), and thought the technology had considerably improved.

[kengr]

Nope. They are called "embossers" because they emboss the braille into the paper. Or thin plastic. Not just dymo label type stuff either. You can make plastic signs with them. I need to find out what sort of plastic sheet can be used in mine.

Tempted to do the classics like "Caution: Hot Surface" in Braille.

Or "if you can read this, you'd better be a good friend". :-)