How do you extend the life of an old PC? The obvious answer would be to swap out the parts with newer and better ones. This is the first time I’m tinkering with a PC. My experience with computer hardware prior to installing Linux Ubuntu on an old unit is just plugging it in and pressing the on switch. What I have done so far is clean the inside of the case. So much dust has accumulated over time. I just opened both sides of the case, pointed a big fan into it and flicked the dust with tissue paper. All while making sure I’m grounded. I know static electricity can kill a computer. It’s not super clean but it is cleaner now. This pc has the following components: AMD Sempron 2200+, Asrock K7VM3 Motherboard, PQI 512MB DDR400 RAM, GeForce FX5200 Video Card, 40GB Maxtor IDE Drive, and a generic 300W PSU to support it. The 40GB hard drive has Windows XP SP2. I bought an 80GB Hitachi IDE Drive for Ubuntu. I asked my brother how to connect the drive and then I was on my way. It was done with no hitches and the new hard drive was already set to slave. Good for me. Because I have no idea how to do the jumpers.
I’ve been having problems with my RAM for a while now. I was convinced that it was dying because both XP and Linux Ubuntu could only detect about 250MB of it. A few days ago, I was tinkering with it again and actually unplugged and replugged the card into the slot. Lo and behold, when I booted up the pc my RAM was back to 512MB. I tested it on both operating systems and they say the same thing. It’s running better now. I had contemplated getting a whole new ram card but that can wait.
My next concern is the heat and noise that it is generating. On Linux Ubuntu, I have Conky running which shows the ambient and cpu temperature. Ambient is about 40C while CPU can go up to 59C. I’m not sure what the threshold is for Sempron processors. I will have to research on that more. I also looked into checking how much power the pc consumes. Using this calculator, the estimate is about 257 watts. Although my PSU can still handle that, I can’t handle the noise my PSU’s fan is creating. I’m thinking about replacing the PSU’s fan or the whole thing. Replacing the fan sounds easier but for a person who’s just starting to learn about the hardware, it’s a daunting task. And so is replacing the PSU itself! I do not want to fry the components. It’s either learn to live with it or get someone who can do it for me.
Heat management. I’ve been reading up on PC cooling for the past few days and in summary, it’s about air flow. The current setup on my pc has only 1 fan – an exhaust on the side. I consider the PSU’s fan as part of the PSU itself since it is. My plan is to transfer the exhaust fan to the back on the my and add an intake fan in the front. I’ve also unplugged the IDE cable for the floppy and folded it neatly inside since I do not use it anymore and it bothers the air flow. I’ve also adjusted the location of my two hard drives to a few bays down. I’m thinking about getting rounded IDE cables so it looks neater. I don’t think spiral wraps will help my wire management but I’ll have to look in the case again for a more detailed plan of action.
Wish me luck!
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These are my first resets, in Normal server and Jumpstart server, where I plan to try my hand at ranking. I’ve been playing the game on and off for a few years now but I’ve always found myself in the middle of a war somehow. The challenge of surviving a series of attacks and being able to defend most of them successfully is fun for me. After more than a year of hiatus from the game, I’d like to try something new. I don’t pretend to know a lot about the game. I still feel that the length of time spent playing the game is hardly proportional to skill. I don’t know much, just enough to survive.
I’ve also started to experience how it is to be a mentor. Purely by accident though. If the mentor settings were not reset, I wouldn’t have been surprised by the students waiting on me. I like being able to help them though. It’s a welcome change to my usually non-existent in-game exchanges. Quite a few of them are playing or used to play a game very similar to The Five Pillars. A couple, I don’t know if it was assigned or by chance, are in the same country as I am. That’s certainly nice to know. Most of the people I know prefer the graphic games while I find them tiring. I try but I don’t really keep playing.
So we’ll see how this goes. There’s more to learn and Havoc is coming…
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Finally, I have everything I wanted on Conky. I had a chance to research and edit the .conkyrc file today. I just added the downstream / download and upstream / upload graph with the borders. I think that’s about it. But who knows, maybe tomorrow there’s a new feature to be added. But for now, it is complete.
On another note, I’ve been watching videos/episode/movies on tv-links. What I do is that I download the source first through wget and then play it on VLC. It’s more steps than what it should be but I don’t mind. Only bothersome when the broadband connection is slow. But other than that, it’s all good. Most videos/episodes I can view directly on the pop up window. I added Xchat for my mIRC needs. Although pidgin worked great but I wanted a separate program for that. I’m looking for a way to be able to use and view a webcam since Pidgin doesn’t support that. I also added Bluefish since I will be taking up a web authoring project soon. Haven’t tested it yet. Looks promising and the reviews are good.
My Sony Ericsson w810i was automatically detected by Ubuntu. Although the desktop icon looks an iPod, no big deal. I can download the pictures I’ve taken and add new songs. Very happy it works! My iPod is automatically detected as well. Haven’t tried changing the songs using Ubuntu though. But since Ubuntu mounts it on the desktop, that shouldn’t be a problem.
Great help from Ubuntu Forums. Here’s the .conkyrc code I used:
background yes
use_xft yes
xftfont HandelGotD:size=9
xftalpha 0.5
update_interval 1.0
total_run_times 0
own_window yes
own_window_type normal
own_window_transparent yes
own_window_hints undecorated,below,sticky,skip_taskbar,skip_pager
double_buffer yes
minimum_size 200 5
maximum_width 200
draw_shades no
draw_outline no
draw_borders no
draw_graph_borders yes
default_color white
default_shade_color red
default_outline_color green
alignment top_right
gap_x 12
gap_y 48
no_buffers yes
uppercase no
cpu_avg_samples 2
override_utf8_locale no
TEXT
$sysname $kernel on $machine
Uptime $alignr $uptime
Load $alignr $loadavg
Temp $alignr ${i2c 9191-0290 temp 1}C ${i2c 9191-0290 temp 2}C
Hostname $alignr $nodename
eth0 $alignr ${addr eth0}
CPU $alignr ${cpu cpu0}%
${cpubar cpu0}
MEM $alignc $mem / $memmax $alignr $memperc%
$membar
/root $alignc ${fs_used /} / ${fs_size /} $alignr ${fs_free_perc /}%
${fs_bar /}
/disk $alignc ${fs_used /media/disk} / ${fs_size /media/disk} $alignr ${fs_free_perc /media/disk}%
${fs_bar /media/disk}
swap $alignc $swap / $swapmax $alignr $swapperc%
${swapbar}
$processes processes ($running_processes running)
${color white}Highest CPU:
${color de0b0b}${top name 1}${top_mem cpu 1}
${color white}${top name 2}${top cpu 2}
${top name 3}${top cpu 3}
${top name 4}${top cpu 4}
${top name 5}${top cpu 5}
${color white}Highest MEM:
${color de0b0b}${top_mem name 1}${top_mem mem 1}
${color white}${top_mem name 2}${top_mem mem 2}
${top_mem name 3}${top_mem mem 3}
${top_mem name 4}${top_mem mem 4}
${top_mem name 5}${top_mem mem 5}
${color}Networking:
Down:${color} $alignr ${downspeed eth0} k/s${color} ${offset 80}
$alignc ${downspeedgraph eth0 32,150 de0b0b de0b0b}
Up:${color} $alignr ${upspeed eth0} k/s ${offset 80}
$alignc ${upspeedgraph eth0 32,150 de0b0b de0b0b}
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I’ve been using Ubuntu for a few weeks now. I still have winXP on my smaller drive. I think there’s still a lot of things I’ve yet to explore in Ubuntu. So far I’ve been able to get almost all of the things I want working fine. The forum is an awesome resource that I’d definitely point out to. Without it, I wouldn’t have known the things that I could make this operating system do for me. I’ll list down the things that I have working and the things I want to work on when I have time.
1) Compiz-Fusion : Of course! This is the first thing I wanted on my Ubuntu. The desktop effects are just awesome! Beats that of any other OS in the industry.
2) Conky : Great match with Compiz-Fusion. Provides information about my system and is relatively easy to configure. Mostly copy/paste. Not all systems are the same so I had to ask around about the cpu temp gauge. Got it working with help from the forum.
3) Amarok : It’s nice. Easy to configure. Plays .mp3’s just fine. Although I’d like to turn off that pop up thing that tells me what the next song is. Don’t think that’s necessary but it’s all good.
4) Pidgin : Nifty little thing. I had used Trillian on winXP before. I like the functionality and the convenience it provides. I don’t know how to get the webcam working on the yahoo part. Not sure if it even does. Will look into it later.
5) Totem : I got it to play my .avi files with sound. I had to switch between other movie players but this one finally worked. I don’t need an uber video player. I just want it to play videos and it gets the job done.
6) VLC Media Player : Installed it because I want to want xvid / divx files online. Kinda buggy but at least I get something. Will explore more options when I have time.
7) Brother DCP-115C : Prints and scans fine. Thanks again to the people in the forum for creating How-To threads. Was very happy when I got it to work.
Things I still have on winXP : iPod, sony ericsson w810i, games and divx player. I’m not ready to plug in my iPod yet. I’ve heard of gtkpod (sp?) but I’ve yet to try it. I don’t know if it’s gonna mess up the iPod if I plug it into winXP one day and Ubuntu the next or vice versa. More research needed. The same goes for my phone. I will look into installing wine for the games. That’s not important though. The divx player I use a lot for watching shows on http://www.tv-links.co.uk. I hope VLC will be enough. I haven’t tested it fully. I’ve been watching Kyle XY and it seems to pick the episodes it wants to run. We’ll see…
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