Perhaps unsurprisingly given my "recovering a Buffalo Linkstation" post from September last year, come the start of January I have a dead Buffalo Linkstation HS-DH750GL as it died again.
After the September experience I had instigated fairly regular "Sync Toy" runs to back up the Linkstation HS-DH750GL to a WD MyCloud and a Synology NAS DS216se.
The way I worked, the Linkstation HS-DH750GL was my "working" store so when it broke I was only a few days of data lost but it was unfortunate.
Investigation suggested that the drive was OK and when I put it in a USB caddy and connected it to my Raspberry Pi, to my immense surprise the data partition "mounted" and all my files were there.
The drive isn't easily visible on a Windows machine as it has a Linux format and partition scheme.
I had a spare 1TB drive (the WD Blue that my PC seemed to not like) and so bought another Synology NAS case (a DS115j this time) and fitted it to that.
After an hour of Synology initiation "stuff" it was all up and running with an empty 1TB drive. Unlike the old WD Blue 650GB there are no S.M.A.R.T. error reports on the 1GB drive so it seems OK to use.
The Synology NAS drive was seen by the Raspberry Pi as a server and by copy and paste I set the Raspberry Pi to clone the ex Linkstation 750GB drive (about 600GB of stuff) to the Synology NAS.
It isn't fast (about 48 hours) but is doing it..
Once I've got the data all on the new Synology, I'll have another go with the Linkstation HS-DH750GL but I think the PSU might be on the way out. There is a bit of a "capacitor" smell to it.
Wednesday, 16 January 2019
Monday, 14 January 2019
Repairing a Behringer DSP9024
I have a Behringer DSP9024.
For those unfamiliar with the unit, it can be considered a "poor mans Optimod" as it does split band audio dynamic range reduction.
While I wouldn't consider it suitable for use before an A.M. transmitter, for taming audio before a web stream it is ideal, and that's what I use mine for.
Unfortunately it broke with what I now know is a common failure mode (all the lights on the front panel flash and it "hangs" half way through booting).
A google suggested that the PSU capacitor C65 which seems to do a logic rail is the common fault. It is 16V/2200uF and mine looked like it might have been previously replaced.
I replaced it with a recommended 25v/3300uF and to my great relief the Behringer DSP9024 is mended.
Even now, a second hand replacement would cost £80 on eBay and there is nothing obvious for less than 4 figures that would do a similar job. Behringer make a 2 band unit but I suspect the DSP9024 does a better job (if less easy to set up).
The perfect unit would be a combination of the Behringer DSP9024 and a Shoutcast server.
Orban make something like that but it costs about £5k.
Anyway, the Behringer DSP9024 is mended for now.
Good luck if yours breaks.
For those unfamiliar with the unit, it can be considered a "poor mans Optimod" as it does split band audio dynamic range reduction.
While I wouldn't consider it suitable for use before an A.M. transmitter, for taming audio before a web stream it is ideal, and that's what I use mine for.
Unfortunately it broke with what I now know is a common failure mode (all the lights on the front panel flash and it "hangs" half way through booting).
A google suggested that the PSU capacitor C65 which seems to do a logic rail is the common fault. It is 16V/2200uF and mine looked like it might have been previously replaced.
I replaced it with a recommended 25v/3300uF and to my great relief the Behringer DSP9024 is mended.
Even now, a second hand replacement would cost £80 on eBay and there is nothing obvious for less than 4 figures that would do a similar job. Behringer make a 2 band unit but I suspect the DSP9024 does a better job (if less easy to set up).
The perfect unit would be a combination of the Behringer DSP9024 and a Shoutcast server.
Orban make something like that but it costs about £5k.
Anyway, the Behringer DSP9024 is mended for now.
Good luck if yours breaks.
Sunday, 28 October 2018
Installing Shoutcast DNAS on a Raspberry Pi
Well this was surprisingly painful (mostly because of my complete ineptness with Linux) and I made numerous "schoolboy errors" but because I've now had to do this twice and the second time seemed more painful that the first I'll write it down.
That way if I need to do it a third time perhaps it will be easier.
I already have Icecast running on the Raspberry Pi and that complicated matters slightly as that uses port 8000 by default.
That was a simple install as it is "available" in the repository for the Raspberry Pi.
I found most Shoutcast help focused on Windows or other forms of Linux.
Once I had found a source of DNAS 2.4.7 (In my case where I had previously kept a copy, as the more recent versions seem to require registration to download) and un-archived it to a suitable folder it was a question of what to do next.
To cut a long story short I needed to edit sc_serv_simple.conf
I needed to add PortBase=9000 (to shift the default server port from 8000 where it clashed with Icecast) and edit the stream and admin passwords to two different passwords. This was all done using nano and written out to the same file.
nano sc_serv_simple.conf
Finally run the server
./sc_serv sc_serv_simple.conf
and it worked.
That way if I need to do it a third time perhaps it will be easier.
I already have Icecast running on the Raspberry Pi and that complicated matters slightly as that uses port 8000 by default.
That was a simple install as it is "available" in the repository for the Raspberry Pi.
I found most Shoutcast help focused on Windows or other forms of Linux.
Once I had found a source of DNAS 2.4.7 (In my case where I had previously kept a copy, as the more recent versions seem to require registration to download) and un-archived it to a suitable folder it was a question of what to do next.
To cut a long story short I needed to edit sc_serv_simple.conf
I needed to add PortBase=9000 (to shift the default server port from 8000 where it clashed with Icecast) and edit the stream and admin passwords to two different passwords. This was all done using nano and written out to the same file.
nano sc_serv_simple.conf
Finally run the server
./sc_serv sc_serv_simple.conf
and it worked.
Sunday, 23 September 2018
Recovering A Buffalo Linkstation HS-DH750GL
I've a couple of these, one I bought new in 2009 and the second from eBay a couple of years later.
The power went off last night while I was out and when I came home a few things were upset (less than there used to be !) but my two Buffalo NAS units were offline.
I turned them back on, one came back no trouble, the other didn't want to come back online correctly.
I could ping it but no sign of the web interface.
A bit of Googling later I had downloaded Buffalo's NAS Navigator.
This showed one NAS as OK but the other as in "Emergency Mode".
I suspected that for some reason, the power failure had upset the firmware on the broken NAS
Further Googling led me to Buffalo's firmware updater tool.
I downloaded the version appropriate to the HS-DH750GL and it found the broken NAS.
I let it run but at reboot it seemed to fail and said that the update had failed.
I then power cycled the NAS from the front panel and to my relief and surprise it came back good.
Whatever the updater had done seemed to have fixed things.
If you come here with a similar problem I hope that this happens for you !
I'm now running my SyncToy backup to copy this NAS onto a Western Digital "MyCloud" which I bought to back up the two Buffalo units.
The power went off last night while I was out and when I came home a few things were upset (less than there used to be !) but my two Buffalo NAS units were offline.
I turned them back on, one came back no trouble, the other didn't want to come back online correctly.
I could ping it but no sign of the web interface.
A bit of Googling later I had downloaded Buffalo's NAS Navigator.
This showed one NAS as OK but the other as in "Emergency Mode".
I suspected that for some reason, the power failure had upset the firmware on the broken NAS
Further Googling led me to Buffalo's firmware updater tool.
I downloaded the version appropriate to the HS-DH750GL and it found the broken NAS.
I let it run but at reboot it seemed to fail and said that the update had failed.
I then power cycled the NAS from the front panel and to my relief and surprise it came back good.
Whatever the updater had done seemed to have fixed things.
If you come here with a similar problem I hope that this happens for you !
I'm now running my SyncToy backup to copy this NAS onto a Western Digital "MyCloud" which I bought to back up the two Buffalo units.
Wednesday, 28 March 2018
The second duff WD Blue disc - now bought a Firecuda
I may have been unlucky but I've just had my second duff WD Blue disc in my ageing desktop.
The desktop is an Acer X3300 and is about seven years old.
The first WD Blue gave me a S.M.A.R.T. failure alarm one day so I wanted a quick replacement disk and bought the same make and model just a bit bigger (1GB vs 650MB).
That installed OK and I used Windows 7 backup and restore to migrate.
Fast forward to about two and a half years and the second WD Blue started being very laggy.
It could sometimes take tens of seconds to seek and the general PC performance was dreadful.
I wondered if it was a driver issue or something broken by one of the Windows 10 updates.
I tried a "refresh" which helped with a laptop but that didn't do much on the desktop.
I decided to bite the bullet and buy another disc.
This time I thought, the Firecuda seems to offer performance improvements and would cost perhaps £20 more. A quick Amazon order and here was a new disc.
Then, how to migrate.
Windows 10 backup and restore wouldn't work (an early indication that all was not well) so I tried the Seagate tool. That didn't like the hard disc USB caddy and had some unfathomable sector size problem, so I replaced the DVD drive with the new Firecuda and set the copy to work. There were complaints about unreadable source sectors but they could be set to be ignored (on the basis that the old system worked) and the copy completed.
Perhaps not ideal but massively less work that another re-installation (although I knew how to do that as I had done the refresh a few weeks ago).
I did a chkdsk /r on the new disc to see if anything duff had been copied and when I looked at the machine next morning all seemed well.
This far (a few days in) I'm very impressed with the Firecuda. It was 1GB 7200 RPM 3.5 inch format and has transformed the machine from frustrating to a pleasure to use.
As a simple upgrade on an aging machine that didn't justify a large SSD it seems good.
Sadly the WD warranty on my disc is two years.
I suppose it was OK for the £40 I paid for it and I've not lost data but I won't rush to buy another WD Blue.
The desktop is an Acer X3300 and is about seven years old.
The first WD Blue gave me a S.M.A.R.T. failure alarm one day so I wanted a quick replacement disk and bought the same make and model just a bit bigger (1GB vs 650MB).
That installed OK and I used Windows 7 backup and restore to migrate.
Fast forward to about two and a half years and the second WD Blue started being very laggy.
It could sometimes take tens of seconds to seek and the general PC performance was dreadful.
I wondered if it was a driver issue or something broken by one of the Windows 10 updates.
I tried a "refresh" which helped with a laptop but that didn't do much on the desktop.
I decided to bite the bullet and buy another disc.
This time I thought, the Firecuda seems to offer performance improvements and would cost perhaps £20 more. A quick Amazon order and here was a new disc.
Then, how to migrate.
Windows 10 backup and restore wouldn't work (an early indication that all was not well) so I tried the Seagate tool. That didn't like the hard disc USB caddy and had some unfathomable sector size problem, so I replaced the DVD drive with the new Firecuda and set the copy to work. There were complaints about unreadable source sectors but they could be set to be ignored (on the basis that the old system worked) and the copy completed.
Perhaps not ideal but massively less work that another re-installation (although I knew how to do that as I had done the refresh a few weeks ago).
I did a chkdsk /r on the new disc to see if anything duff had been copied and when I looked at the machine next morning all seemed well.
This far (a few days in) I'm very impressed with the Firecuda. It was 1GB 7200 RPM 3.5 inch format and has transformed the machine from frustrating to a pleasure to use.
As a simple upgrade on an aging machine that didn't justify a large SSD it seems good.
Sadly the WD warranty on my disc is two years.
I suppose it was OK for the £40 I paid for it and I've not lost data but I won't rush to buy another WD Blue.
Saturday, 9 September 2017
Windows 10 "refresh" on the HP Mini 110-3700
It was never the fastest of computers but my HP Mini 110 had been running increasingly slowly.
I have taken the free upgrade to Windows 10 from the Windows 7 starter edition it came with and while everything worked it was all a bit slow (or very slow if you were impatient !).
I wanted to clean it out and start again with a cleanish install to limit all the stuff that wanted to run on startup.
My concern was that I would lose the "bundled" Office 2010 Starter Edition (which came with Windows 7) if I did a refresh.
A Google suggested that there was a Click to Run Bootstrapper that would reinstall it.
I decided to give it a go.
At the first attempt the refresh process seemed to get stuck (or perhaps I was impatient).
I had a second attempt and gave it a couple of hours to do its stuff.
Everything seemed to work OK in Operating Systems terms and it certainly seemed no worse in speed terms and was perhaps a bit better.
Loads of stuff had been removed and I carefully picked a few drivers and programs to put back.
HP offer driver downloads (Windows 7 only) at:
https://support.hp.com/us-en/drivers/selfservice/hp-mini-110-3700-pc-series/5082187/model/5082189
but actually I didn't need any of these, I previously had a full set of working drivers under Windows 10 and those all seemed to survive working although lots of drivers were in the "removed programs" list.
Restoring the Office 2010 Starter Edition was a bit more tricky.
The bootstrap installer " setupconsumerc2rolw.exe " was mildly hard to find
https://windowsten.info/filedata/fetch?id=4179&d=1426944590 seems a source but I used
https://www.technibble.com/forums/threads/get-your-office-2010-starter-edition-download-here.73121/
A very useful post by " Metanis " gave the following:
http://www.techspot.com/downloads/6255-microsoft-office-starter-2010.html
He also correctly points out that if you install this after doing a clean OS installation it won't run (not compatible with this version of windows) until until you install https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2598285
After that my Office 2010 Starter Edition seems to work and any light document editing of spreadsheeting seems to work fine.
All in all it seems better and I won't be installing much more on the machine to attempt to keep it running OK.
I have taken the free upgrade to Windows 10 from the Windows 7 starter edition it came with and while everything worked it was all a bit slow (or very slow if you were impatient !).
I wanted to clean it out and start again with a cleanish install to limit all the stuff that wanted to run on startup.
My concern was that I would lose the "bundled" Office 2010 Starter Edition (which came with Windows 7) if I did a refresh.
A Google suggested that there was a Click to Run Bootstrapper that would reinstall it.
I decided to give it a go.
At the first attempt the refresh process seemed to get stuck (or perhaps I was impatient).
I had a second attempt and gave it a couple of hours to do its stuff.
Everything seemed to work OK in Operating Systems terms and it certainly seemed no worse in speed terms and was perhaps a bit better.
Loads of stuff had been removed and I carefully picked a few drivers and programs to put back.
HP offer driver downloads (Windows 7 only) at:
https://support.hp.com/us-en/drivers/selfservice/hp-mini-110-3700-pc-series/5082187/model/5082189
but actually I didn't need any of these, I previously had a full set of working drivers under Windows 10 and those all seemed to survive working although lots of drivers were in the "removed programs" list.
Restoring the Office 2010 Starter Edition was a bit more tricky.
The bootstrap installer " setupconsumerc2rolw.exe " was mildly hard to find
https://windowsten.info/filedata/fetch?id=4179&d=1426944590 seems a source but I used
https://www.technibble.com/forums/threads/get-your-office-2010-starter-edition-download-here.73121/
A very useful post by " Metanis " gave the following:
http://www.techspot.com/downloads/6255-microsoft-office-starter-2010.html
He also correctly points out that if you install this after doing a clean OS installation it won't run (not compatible with this version of windows) until until you install https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2598285
After that my Office 2010 Starter Edition seems to work and any light document editing of spreadsheeting seems to work fine.
All in all it seems better and I won't be installing much more on the machine to attempt to keep it running OK.
Saturday, 22 April 2017
Acer Extensa 5220 and Windows 7
I've had an old laptop with Windows XP Professional on it for probably 10 years.
Vista was current when I bought it but I wanted XP to use with some other stuff.
Now XP is well out of support and I wanted another machine to run some fairly undemanding applications but XP wasn't really usable.
I could have bought another machine but I would have really wanted a machine with an SSD and this was going to be many hundreds of pounds.
So....
Looking at e-bay, I could buy a (spinning disk) HD for about £10 and some sort of "recycled" Windows 7 licence for a few pounds and that looked OK, but would the hardware all work ?
Fitting the hard disk was a doddle. The bottom panel comes off easily for service (unlike the newer machines) and it was the work of minutes to put the new SSD in.
The licence came with a link to download the required ISO for an install disk and I burnt that to a DVD.
A fiddle in the BIOS to get the boot sequence to start off DVD and it all booted to the install DVD.
That did it's stuff for a couple of hours and Windows 7 32 bit was running OK on the laptop. Not what one might call "zippy" but OK.
The laptop has 2GB of RAM and 160GB of hard disk.
I triggered windows update and it found 190 ish to do.
I left it to it.
Also the Internet Explorer wanted an update but was so old it didn't seem to want to download a new version.
It would install Chrome so I did that, then downloaded a newer IE using Chrome.
Finally I had a working computer but two devices that were not recognised.
The WiFi is fine (except that the physical switch state isn't remembered over a reboot so WiFi always starts "on") but I wanted the two devices to have drivers.
The first device which talked about "communications" was an infrared device which Windows found a driver for itself after having a try online.
The mass storage device driver couldn't be found.
A good Googling got me to an Acer driver site (as well as a number of other dodgy sites !)
Vista was current when I bought it but I wanted XP to use with some other stuff.
Now XP is well out of support and I wanted another machine to run some fairly undemanding applications but XP wasn't really usable.
I could have bought another machine but I would have really wanted a machine with an SSD and this was going to be many hundreds of pounds.
So....
Looking at e-bay, I could buy a (spinning disk) HD for about £10 and some sort of "recycled" Windows 7 licence for a few pounds and that looked OK, but would the hardware all work ?
Fitting the hard disk was a doddle. The bottom panel comes off easily for service (unlike the newer machines) and it was the work of minutes to put the new SSD in.
The licence came with a link to download the required ISO for an install disk and I burnt that to a DVD.
A fiddle in the BIOS to get the boot sequence to start off DVD and it all booted to the install DVD.
That did it's stuff for a couple of hours and Windows 7 32 bit was running OK on the laptop. Not what one might call "zippy" but OK.
The laptop has 2GB of RAM and 160GB of hard disk.
I triggered windows update and it found 190 ish to do.
I left it to it.
Also the Internet Explorer wanted an update but was so old it didn't seem to want to download a new version.
It would install Chrome so I did that, then downloaded a newer IE using Chrome.
Finally I had a working computer but two devices that were not recognised.
The WiFi is fine (except that the physical switch state isn't remembered over a reboot so WiFi always starts "on") but I wanted the two devices to have drivers.
The first device which talked about "communications" was an infrared device which Windows found a driver for itself after having a try online.
The mass storage device driver couldn't be found.
A good Googling got me to an Acer driver site (as well as a number of other dodgy sites !)
That had a card reader driver which sorted the final mystery device and also a driver for infrared which I didn't try (as this was fixed and I've never used it).
So Acer Extensa 5220 working fine (if a bit slowly) on Windows 7. It is a "mains laptop" as the battery seems poorly but for a limited application usable and saved from the electrical recycling for a few years.
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