PC fettling and repairs thread

[GuyBoden]

Do you think it was a good idea to upgrade from a 286 to a 386 chip?

With a bit of hindsight...yeah, not bad!

I'm still undecided.

 

[DCBassman]

The lovely Apple Mac Pro Cheesegrater has a new home with a software engineering student, and is off to college! He's lucky enough to also have a brand new M2 MBP, but he's a bit of a vintage freak, and this gives him something that satisfies that itch while remaining entirely capable of doing what he needs it to do. Win-win.

 

[DCBassman]

My son has just built his partner a new general-use PC. It's based on the Asus P9X79 that we have both used. So this shopping PC has a 10-core, 20-thread Xeon E5-2680V2, 32GB 1866MHz RAM, and topped out with his 'retired' RTX2080 video card. Plus something pretty nippy in terms of storage, no doubt...
Talk about overkill!

 

[DCBassman]

In the meantime, I've maxed out the RAM on both iMacs, so they will not lag in that department when running versions of MacOS that they shouldn't...

 

[Jenkins]

My printer has broken again - it's an Epson WF-2530 and again it's showing the error whuch claims there's a paper jam, whch there isn't. The first time I managed to clear it, but the same trick isn't working this time. It's quite a few years old so I might as well replace it, but what with?

Do I go with yet another printer/scanner/copier - Argos have an updated version of what I have for £60 and Epson have a £20 cash back on this model, but it means more expensive ink cartridges (or cheap compatibles which may not be recognised). The other option is a basic laser printer for around £80-£90 (Brother HL-1110) but longer cartridge life and a single compatible replacement for around £15.

I'm not a heavy user and generally only print out documents so colour's not essential and I've hardly used the scanner/copier part of my printer since I got it so the laser printer is tempting.

 

[DCBassman]

@Jenkins Laser would seem to be the way to go.

 

[Jenkins]

@Jenkins Laser would seem to be the way to go.

That's the way I'm leaning at the moment and Amazon have the Brother at £72 on Black Friday...

 

[GuyBoden]

That's the way I'm leaning at the moment and Amazon have the Brother at £72 on Black Friday...

I've had a Brother HL-2030 laser printer for over 15 years. Great economy printer.

 

[MontyVeda]

not PC related but similar enough... my Xbox One runs very hot, but not so hot it shuts itself down with an overheating error. I've sucked a lot of dust out of the vents with a vacuum which now appear to be clear... but on watching a YT vid on how to open an Xbox, I noticed that the hard disk drive in it is a standard looking 2.5" SATA... which i may or may not be able to upgrade to an SSD, which will run a lot cooler.

Has anyone tried such a thing?

 

[Jenkins]

Sod it - laser printer purchased.

 

[GuyBoden]

not PC related but similar enough... my Xbox One runs very hot, but not so hot it shuts itself down with an overheating error. I've sucked a lot of dust out of the vents with a vacuum which now appear to be clear... but on watching a YT vid on how to open an Xbox, I noticed that the hard disk drive in it is a standard looking 2.5" SATA... which i may or may not be able to upgrade to an SSD, which will run a lot cooler.

Has anyone tried such a thing?

Not the same, but I have swapped a few mechanical hardrives for SSD in a few older Humax boxes. I just needed to reformat the drive to Humax standard.

 

[Grant Fondo]

my MS Sidewinder keyboard has given up the ghost after 10+ years, oh no.

My son has just built his partner a new general-use PC. It's based on the Asus P9X79 that we have both used. So this shopping PC has a 10-core, 20-thread Xeon E5-2680V2, 32GB 1866MHz RAM, and topped out with his 'retired' RTX2080 video card. Plus something pretty nippy in terms of storage, no doubt...
Talk about overkill!

pretty good gaming pc, although that old cpu might bottleneck the mighty 2080 a bit? probably still worth £250 that gpu?

 

[Grant Fondo]

not PC related but similar enough... my Xbox One runs very hot, but not so hot it shuts itself down with an overheating error. I've sucked a lot of dust out of the vents with a vacuum which now appear to be clear... but on watching a YT vid on how to open an Xbox, I noticed that the hard disk drive in it is a standard looking 2.5" SATA... which i may or may not be able to upgrade to an SSD, which will run a lot cooler.

Has anyone tried such a thing?

i think you can do it but you don't get the full speed benefit like you would with an HDD pc upgrade, still run cooler though?

 

[HMS_Dave]

my MS Sidewinder keyboard has given up the ghost after 10+ years, oh no.

pretty good gaming pc, although that old cpu might bottleneck the mighty 2080 a bit? probably still worth £250 that gpu?

I use a dual Xeon E5-2690 setup with an rtx 3060 and it bottlenecks that in some situations, those that rely on single threaded tasks particularly. My son who has the same GPU on a more modern CPU seems to suggest this is accurate but he also uses Windows and I use Linux so my GPU drivers are lagging behind somewhat too...

 

[DCBassman]

not PC related but similar enough... my Xbox One runs very hot, but not so hot it shuts itself down with an overheating error. I've sucked a lot of dust out of the vents with a vacuum which now appear to be clear... but on watching a YT vid on how to open an Xbox, I noticed that the hard disk drive in it is a standard looking 2.5" SATA... which i may or may not be able to upgrade to an SSD, which will run a lot cooler.

Has anyone tried such a thing?

Search Youtube, almost certainly something on there.
Also check iFixit:
https://www.ifixit.com/Device/Xbox_One