Luksusdyret has an adventure

I just spent several hours trying to recover from Luksusdyret’s latest adventure. I did several things at once and I guess that was ultimately my downfall since I wasn’t sure which action triggered the problems.

First off, I half-unpacked the case. I should really have taken everything out (since I was about to get a drill involved) but I was too lazy. I just left as much plugged in as I could while getting the motherboard clear of the back panel (luckily my motherboard sits on a removable panel).

Next I used my drill to cut the case where it was covering the audio out jack. I thought I might be able to keep the case relatively intact but the ports are inset so the whole needed to be bigger than the metal strip. I ended up bending the floating bit back into the case. The bottom also needed some bending. This left a large amount of metal shavings everywhere and my thumb still bears the scars from the last time I drilled out a computer case. Luckily the vacuum cleaner lives in the garage (we don’t have carpet in the house) so I used it to vacuum up the metal shavings.

While I was putting the machine back together I decided it was about time I got around to putting on the new faceplate. It’s not that different from the old one but (most important to me) it it clear which button is POWER and which is RESET. Why the original case didn’t make it clear is beyond me. Thanks to my “clean” work last time it was a snap to disconnect/reconnect the cables. This time I have my PVC electrical tape so it even looks more professional than the regular tape I used last time. I still don’t have that resistor so the power led will remain dark for now. I had to move the optical drives back a notch to sit flush with the front of the case.

My next move was to setup the AMP and speakers ready for the computer to turn on. My speaker wire isn’t quite long enough (isn’t that always the case) so there’s cable running where I need to walk. I might be able to grab one of the longer cables from the house to use it here.

Everything was ready so I turned the machine on. That’s when things started to look bad.

The clock was set to 1970 (I think the battery on the motherboard is dead) but I have it set to get the time from Apple. I checked and sure enough, that’s what it was set to. I checked the Wireless Link and it was up. However, I didn’t seem to be getting DHCP responses from the AP. Worse, I kept getting kernel panics.

My first thought was “I’ve fried the card when I took it out”. I tried taking the card in and out. I tried a different slot. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling the driver. All to no avail. I remembered the app keeps settings so I removed the file and cleared everything from the program. Then I entered all the info again. Finally, the kernel panics stopped and I got an IP address.

Just for fun I did an “insulation test”. I know the insulation is good at blocking sounds from outside (it can be storming and I won’t hear it) but I wanted to know how good it was at blocking noise from my speakers, especially bass. It turns out that the insulation is quite good at doing that. I could barely hear any sound outside with the music quite loud and bassy. That’s a relief because I was wondering if late-night gaming sessions would annoy the neighbors (I know, headphones and all but if you can’t feel the sound it’s not the same).

I’ve been playing around with the wireless link too and it’s really sensitive to the position of the antenna and the computer. I’m thinking some kind of external (so it can be away from the big metal case), directional antenna is in my future (probably a DIY cantenna because I’m too stingy to buy stuff like that). As it is, I have the computer on the desk, rotated almost sideways with the antenna horizontal because that seems to get the best reception. My AP has 2 antennas so diverting one to a directional antenna shouldn’t hurt Bree’s wireless reception.

Well, that was a long post. I think it’s time to get to bed.