Uppgrade fun
Jul. 11th, 2014 04:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kengrSaturday, I finally got a chance to head down to Free Geek with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
fayanora. I wanted to get some RAM for a new-to-me box I'd picked up a couple months back.
It only had 512 meg of RAM and it was *agonizingly* slow ayt some things (like when I cloned an old IDe drive to a newer SATA drive. Took all day to clone a 300 gig drive. Ugh.
I'd found the specs online and wanted 4 1 gig DDR2 DIMMs. 533 MHz. That'd bring it up to its full 4 gig capacity.Even if Windoze XP can't use all of that Linux can.
This was our first time at Free Geek's Thrift Store. Lots of interesting stuff. I had to "settle" fotr 667 MHz parts. Fay was looking at LCD monitors and other things. She got a mike, an ergonomic keyboard and a mouse.
I spotted several things I wished I had the money for. (heck, I'd had to borrow money from Fay to get part of the RAM)
When I got home I stuck the RAM into the system. And got the "bad memory" beep code. *sigh*.
I had to do a lot of shuffling, because it wouldn't come up with some of the DIMMs in the first socket.
I wound up leaving the old 512 meg DIMM in the first soclet and trying the others one at a time in the second.
I quickly determined which one was bad. I also discovered that one of the ones I got was only 512 meg instead of 1 gig. Looking closer at it I could see that the label Free Geek had put on it when it was tested (and which covered the manufacturers label) looked like it;d been peeled off and put back on. My guess is that someone bought a 1 gig from them, put the label on a 512 and returned it as being incompatible.
It wasn't until yesterday that I got a chance to head back and exchange the DIMMs. Got home and after a bit of swapping, the system came up with 4 gig of RAM. The BIOS recognized it just fine. In Windoze, it reported that it was using PAE (Physical Address Extension) but only reported 3 gig (maybe a bit over but not much).
Waiting at the bus stop to head out to Free Geek, I'd run into another tenant here. He was carrying a weird looking computer. When he got closer, I could see it was a laptop in a weird looking docking station.He was going to gret rid of it, but said the only thing wrong was the power adapter. I said I'd take a look at it and if it wasn't useful to me I'd haul it to Free Geek. So he said he'd leave it outside the door to my apartment.
Sure enough, when I'd gotten home it was there.
Turned out to be an old Dell Latitude. And the power supply was *very* dead. And the battery didn't have a charge. But the weird shape of the power connector looked familiar. I dug out the old iGo power supply I'd picked up for an old laptop (which could be set up for a buch of different laptops). Yep, it had the right tip available and when I set it up it charged the laptop just fine.
It's got 408 meg f RAM (say what?!) and a 20 gig HD. With Win2k installed on it. Some online checking showed that the max RAM was supposed to be 384 meg, but that with the right parts it could be upgrade top 512 meg. I may have the parts in my collection from upgrading previous laptops.
I also found a replacement power supply listed by an Amazon vendor at $2.55 (plus $5 shipping). Obviously trying to get rid of old stock. I may grab one next month if I decide to keep the laptop. I have a project in mind it'd be useful for (running my weather station gadget)
I also had Windows inform me last night that there were a bunch of upgrades available for this box (probably because I'd upgraded Windows Media Player on it. This one had only 3.5 gig, and while digging through my collection of old memory, I'd found a could of DIMMs that ought to work. Since I needed to restart anyway because of the updates anyway.
I did that after breakfast today. Oh lord, what a mess.
I thought that one of the DIMM I'd found might be part of a paired set with the other one in the system already. Nope.
But I'd pulled all the DIMMs and was putting them back in what I thoiught was the best way (a couple were likely "pairable".
But the system wouldn't boot.
Much shuffling of box, cables, and DIMMs later, I discovered that I'd managed to get a dust bunny under one of the DIMMs when I put it into the first socket. I tried cleaning it out, but things still didn't work. A quick trip to the stores, and I had a can of canned air. I blew out the sockets. I also cleaned a fair bit of dust out of the CPU's heat sibnk.
Fortunately, that did it.
I found that this machine and the one I'd upgraded Thursday had different socket layouts. The one yesterday was a Gateway box. And it had sockets 1 &2 as channel A and sockets 3 & 4 as channel B. It was happy with DIMMs in 1 & 2, and then 1, 2 ^& 3, and then 1,2,3 & 4.
This one (an HP) had sockets 1 & 3 paired and sockets 2 & 4 paired. I found that out as I added DIMMs one at a time. The BIOS complained when I had DIMMs only in sockets 1 & 2. But was happy (and informed me it was running dual channel) when I had them in 1 & 3. Having 1,2 & 3 pop[ulated didn't get a complaint, but wasn't running "dual channel anymore. But when all 4 were filled it was happy and was running dual channel again.
Before Windows had reported 3.5 gig of RAM, now it reports 3.25. Whatever. Hopefully the dual channel buit should speed things up.
Next upgrade will wait until I get a chance to pull the ThinkCentree I'm using as a media server and clone the original drive (which has a bunch of IBM pre-install stuff on it) and clone it from the existing 40 gig drive to a 160 I have waiting for it. I'll also be swapping it with the ThinkCentre that is currently under the desk with that one. That's because I didn't realize until after I'd already set things up as a media server that I was "wasting" a dual-core system on that. The one under the desk is single core. Otherwise they are practically identical.
Thae former media server will go in the spot under the monitor shelf that currently has an old 486 in it. The 486 will go to the desk in the bedroom, and eventually get used to read old floppies (it has a combo 3.5"/5.25" floppy drive) and for checking out ISA boards as I strip old computers from storage. Be able to stick old MFM/RLL/etc drives in there with their controller cards to get data off of them before reformatting them and eBaying them (folks who have systems that use those old drives will pay for them. Not huge amounts, but enough for my time & trouble.
Further upgrades planned for the future (as time & cash allow) is getting another external SATA enclsure to get the 2 TB drive out of the Gateway, and getting an HDMI capable video card for the media server.
And I need to upgrad at least the switch in the living room to gigabit ethernet as the HP, both ThinkCentres and the Gateway all have gigabit ethernet.
In the far future is at least oine NAS box (gigabit capable, with RAID). and upgrading the other switch to gigabit. And the router.
fayanora. I wanted to get some RAM for a new-to-me box I'd picked up a couple months back. It only had 512 meg of RAM and it was *agonizingly* slow ayt some things (like when I cloned an old IDe drive to a newer SATA drive. Took all day to clone a 300 gig drive. Ugh.
I'd found the specs online and wanted 4 1 gig DDR2 DIMMs. 533 MHz. That'd bring it up to its full 4 gig capacity.Even if Windoze XP can't use all of that Linux can.
This was our first time at Free Geek's Thrift Store. Lots of interesting stuff. I had to "settle" fotr 667 MHz parts. Fay was looking at LCD monitors and other things. She got a mike, an ergonomic keyboard and a mouse.
I spotted several things I wished I had the money for. (heck, I'd had to borrow money from Fay to get part of the RAM)
When I got home I stuck the RAM into the system. And got the "bad memory" beep code. *sigh*.
I had to do a lot of shuffling, because it wouldn't come up with some of the DIMMs in the first socket.
I wound up leaving the old 512 meg DIMM in the first soclet and trying the others one at a time in the second.
I quickly determined which one was bad. I also discovered that one of the ones I got was only 512 meg instead of 1 gig. Looking closer at it I could see that the label Free Geek had put on it when it was tested (and which covered the manufacturers label) looked like it;d been peeled off and put back on. My guess is that someone bought a 1 gig from them, put the label on a 512 and returned it as being incompatible.
It wasn't until yesterday that I got a chance to head back and exchange the DIMMs. Got home and after a bit of swapping, the system came up with 4 gig of RAM. The BIOS recognized it just fine. In Windoze, it reported that it was using PAE (Physical Address Extension) but only reported 3 gig (maybe a bit over but not much).
Waiting at the bus stop to head out to Free Geek, I'd run into another tenant here. He was carrying a weird looking computer. When he got closer, I could see it was a laptop in a weird looking docking station.He was going to gret rid of it, but said the only thing wrong was the power adapter. I said I'd take a look at it and if it wasn't useful to me I'd haul it to Free Geek. So he said he'd leave it outside the door to my apartment.
Sure enough, when I'd gotten home it was there.
Turned out to be an old Dell Latitude. And the power supply was *very* dead. And the battery didn't have a charge. But the weird shape of the power connector looked familiar. I dug out the old iGo power supply I'd picked up for an old laptop (which could be set up for a buch of different laptops). Yep, it had the right tip available and when I set it up it charged the laptop just fine.
It's got 408 meg f RAM (say what?!) and a 20 gig HD. With Win2k installed on it. Some online checking showed that the max RAM was supposed to be 384 meg, but that with the right parts it could be upgrade top 512 meg. I may have the parts in my collection from upgrading previous laptops.
I also found a replacement power supply listed by an Amazon vendor at $2.55 (plus $5 shipping). Obviously trying to get rid of old stock. I may grab one next month if I decide to keep the laptop. I have a project in mind it'd be useful for (running my weather station gadget)
I also had Windows inform me last night that there were a bunch of upgrades available for this box (probably because I'd upgraded Windows Media Player on it. This one had only 3.5 gig, and while digging through my collection of old memory, I'd found a could of DIMMs that ought to work. Since I needed to restart anyway because of the updates anyway.
I did that after breakfast today. Oh lord, what a mess.
I thought that one of the DIMM I'd found might be part of a paired set with the other one in the system already. Nope.
But I'd pulled all the DIMMs and was putting them back in what I thoiught was the best way (a couple were likely "pairable".
But the system wouldn't boot.
Much shuffling of box, cables, and DIMMs later, I discovered that I'd managed to get a dust bunny under one of the DIMMs when I put it into the first socket. I tried cleaning it out, but things still didn't work. A quick trip to the stores, and I had a can of canned air. I blew out the sockets. I also cleaned a fair bit of dust out of the CPU's heat sibnk.
Fortunately, that did it.
I found that this machine and the one I'd upgraded Thursday had different socket layouts. The one yesterday was a Gateway box. And it had sockets 1 &2 as channel A and sockets 3 & 4 as channel B. It was happy with DIMMs in 1 & 2, and then 1, 2 ^& 3, and then 1,2,3 & 4.
This one (an HP) had sockets 1 & 3 paired and sockets 2 & 4 paired. I found that out as I added DIMMs one at a time. The BIOS complained when I had DIMMs only in sockets 1 & 2. But was happy (and informed me it was running dual channel) when I had them in 1 & 3. Having 1,2 & 3 pop[ulated didn't get a complaint, but wasn't running "dual channel anymore. But when all 4 were filled it was happy and was running dual channel again.
Before Windows had reported 3.5 gig of RAM, now it reports 3.25. Whatever. Hopefully the dual channel buit should speed things up.
Next upgrade will wait until I get a chance to pull the ThinkCentree I'm using as a media server and clone the original drive (which has a bunch of IBM pre-install stuff on it) and clone it from the existing 40 gig drive to a 160 I have waiting for it. I'll also be swapping it with the ThinkCentre that is currently under the desk with that one. That's because I didn't realize until after I'd already set things up as a media server that I was "wasting" a dual-core system on that. The one under the desk is single core. Otherwise they are practically identical.
Thae former media server will go in the spot under the monitor shelf that currently has an old 486 in it. The 486 will go to the desk in the bedroom, and eventually get used to read old floppies (it has a combo 3.5"/5.25" floppy drive) and for checking out ISA boards as I strip old computers from storage. Be able to stick old MFM/RLL/etc drives in there with their controller cards to get data off of them before reformatting them and eBaying them (folks who have systems that use those old drives will pay for them. Not huge amounts, but enough for my time & trouble.
Further upgrades planned for the future (as time & cash allow) is getting another external SATA enclsure to get the 2 TB drive out of the Gateway, and getting an HDMI capable video card for the media server.
And I need to upgrad at least the switch in the living room to gigabit ethernet as the HP, both ThinkCentres and the Gateway all have gigabit ethernet.
In the far future is at least oine NAS box (gigabit capable, with RAID). and upgrading the other switch to gigabit. And the router.
