Acasis Dual Bay 2.5” SSD HDD RAID Enclosure Review

While browsing around the Lazada online shopping app, I came across this Acasis Dual Bay 2.5” SSD HDD RAID Enclosure. I thought this would be useful since I got a bunch of spare hard disks lying around salvaged from various old laptops. After studying the product information and reading through some buyer’s comments, I’ve decided to give this hard disk case a go!

Requirements to Upgrade Old PC to Run Windows 10

Your old PC is lagging so much trying to run Windows 10? Depending on your computer specification, you may yet be able to revive it enough to keep it going. So far I have successfully upgraded a few old desktop computers. There was no need to throw it away and buy a new PC. Everything is running smoothly, and I could stream online movies and play some games on it too!

How to fix XScreenSaver daemon doesn't seem to be running on display ":0" error

XScreenSaver is still one of the best screensaver for Linux. It runs pretty well. There is enough variety and choice to fill your computer monitor to keep you amuse when the Linux OS is on idle. And, hey, you could even use the slideshow function to use it as a kind of picture frame display!

Installing LXLE Lightweight Linux

I am always on the lookout for lightweight Linux OS distro to install into my ye olde ancient computers. I’m not quite ready to dispose of these old PCs of mine and would like to see if I could squeeze out some useful life from them.

My old Intel D915GEV with the stuck heatsink and CPU was a good candidate to try this LXLE Linux. According to their website, this distro has light resource usage, though it was filled choc full of apps. Their philosophy was, a lightweight linux did not mean a stripdown version devoid of apps, but rather it reduced the number of apps running in the background using up resources.

Computer Heatsink stuck to CPU

While trying to fiddle with my old Intel D915GEV motherboard, I encountered a problem. It won’t boot! No boot up post screen. This PC is really old; I got it around 2005. With a Pentium 4 CPU, it is still an interesting piece of old hardware. However the CPU did run very hot. The fan & heatsink that came with it wasn’t really fitting, and I had changed it to a proper version. However the replaced heatsink was smaller and fan top speed was slower than the wrong fit version.

A black screen, no post boot up could mean several things. Some possibilities were: the motherboard was dead, there was not enough power from the PSU (Power Supply Unit). However this unit was very old and some parts could be somewhat rusted. I pressed the CPU and RAM and removed some unneeded peripherals, and voila! It booted! So it is still alive!

Haiku OS GRUB2 menu entry

Haiku is the current continuation of the old discontinued BeOS system. I had the BeOS installation CD a long time ago and played with it a little when it came out. It didn’t catch on and sort of fizzled out. But lived on as an open-sourced Haiku.

I was surprised to find Haiku as a form of BeOS still hanging around the internet. I have been curious about the various OS that have been developed and how the usability of the different OS compared against the big giant Microsoft and the interesting Linux OS.

LibreElec GRUB2 menu entry for booting

I first learned about LibreElec when I got my Raspberry Pi 4. Having played around with it to watch some movies and connect to Netflix, YouTube and Spotify in the little RPi SBC, I was thinking of installing it on my spare old PC.

LibreElec has a simple Linux shell making it very lightweight. It just concentrates on being a media player by running Kodi fully.

Cleaning Up Dusty Computers

I have a bunch of old computers which I would like to repurpose for experiments and other tasks. These old PCs were given to me by family members and some were salvage from the office. These were more than 10 years old and they were no longer capable of running the latest Windows 10. However they were still capable of running light weight operating system like Linux.

However before I could reuse them, I needed to clean them out as the dust accumulated inside was like a mini grey moss jungle, well one of it anyway. The rest had dust in hard to reach corners and on the board itself. Since they were old, I decided to do some drastic cleaning measures. I think most technician would've frown at my methods, but I found it to be truly effective! However a very thorough cleaning was no easy task and it took me the better part of an entire day to clean up one PC. With so many old computers at my disposable, it spanned several weekends just to clean them up! Fortunately with the pandemic lockdown and working from home, I have some spare time after hours to tinker with my various hobby projects!

Pokemon Go new gyms strategy for the lone casual player

My earlier post about @PokemonGoApp was an adverse reaction to the new gyms. For a lone casual player, playing this Pokemon Go game can be frustrating. No doubt the idea from Niantic is to have players socializing more and team up to take down gyms on a cooperative effort; it is not always the case for everyone. I don’t have friends that have any interest in this game at all except one and if we get together it is not to play this game.

One of the core game play is of course battling out rival teams and holding a gym to collect your gold coins rewards. With the coins collected you could exchange it for upgrading your backpack storage, Pokedex storage as well as other goodies including having a change of wardrobe for your trainer!

Celcom XPAX Prepaid SIM card must be upgraded to get 3G

I decided to pop in to a Celcom centre to try to find out why my XPAX 24 could only get 2G/EDGE internet data. A quick check with my phone number and it showed up in their terminal that my SIM card was only meant to be used as 2G.

I found it odd that the Celcom shop was selling 2G XPAX prepaid card when everyone else, Maxis, DiGi, etc were selling 3G enabled prepaid SIM cards. It seems like Celcom stock is slower moving compared with the other telcos. In order to have 3G/HSPA+ internet data connection, I need to change and upgrade my SIM card to a 3G version. And the shop that sold it to me didn't even informed me about it! And when I called up Celcom support sometime back, they were just as befuddle and didn't understand what was my problem. Why is it Celcom support so poor? Anyway,...

Celcom Xpax Data Connection is so poor!

Is Axiata Celcom Xpax data connection so poor? My Maxis line has not been able to get good signal strength in my home, and was wondering whether Celcom could be any better. The only way to know is to get a prepaid line and give it a test. Who knows? I might just get lucky!

Celcom was a pioneer for mobile phone technology and I heard they have one of the best coverage. Before I switched to Maxis some 20 years ago, I was using Celcom analogue mobile system. Nope, not the Motorola "brick" phone thankfully! It was the Microtac or something named like this from Motorola. Then came Maxis with their GSM system, and my friend persuaded me to change to Maxis and I have been with Maxis ever since.

I have never considered any other mobile telephone operator until now when I could not get any decent mobile signal strength from Maxis after moving to a new house. I recalled the previous owner was using Celcom line so I thought perhaps that telco should be getting good signal.

Surprise! Google Drive Storage is now 15GB

This came a surprise to me when I found that I have 15 GB free Google Drive storage. However after digging around the information online and on closer inspection of my account, this was not really an increase but rather a combining of storage from the various storage. Some blogs said the Drive storage account was increased because it felt like you gained 15 GB of Google Drive / Picasa storage and 15 GB of Gmail storage. So let's look at this closer.

LiveScribe distributor Big'Ant in Malaysia is no more

Talk about bad timing! Big Ant (M) Sdn Bhd under the K-One Technology Berhad who was authorized distributor of Livescribe Pulse and Echo digital pen products has gone bust! Just at the time when my 2GB Pulse pen just ran out of ink and I thought of buying a refill ink cartridge.

I found it strange when my usual IT haunt at All IT Section 14 PJ suddenly removed all the Livescribe products. At first nobody seemed to know what was happening and they weren't able to sell me any of the accessories and replacements. So I searched online and obtained the contact number for K-One Technology / Big’Ant division. Called them up but nobody picked up the phone. After several futile attempts, it dawned onto me that this company may have gone bankrupt.

Device failure one after another! Must be Murphy's Law

Just my luck, I got several electronic device failure one after another. Must be Murphy's Law at work here! First after a battery change, my wife Toyota Wish car remote control didn't work. The Toyota service people should have known better than to change the car remote batteries. Now it needs to be reset in order to work. That's probably minor compared to my car remote when I accidentaly shorted my Toyota Altis car remote while changing the broken casing. Should not have used a screwdriver to pry out the electronics. Now it doesn't work anymore. Next was the old HP fax printer, the modem was strucked by lightning long time ago but still could be used for printing and scanning. While trying to print some documents, the roller was making a ruckus, and finally I got ink cartridge error. I could try buying a new ink cartridge since the current one was already very low on ink anyway. After giving it some thought better not. It could be more than just a faulty cartride because the roller was making such awful noise. Besides ink catridge are expensive and I would have wasted money if the HP printer would not print. So that' the end of life for this HP printer. And finally the church PC which I was attempting to reinstall Windows XP. Well some people weren't too keen on using Ubuntu Linux though it would be far more virus resistant than Microsoft Windows. So I got down planning to dual boot it. The partitoning went fine without a hitch. Installing Windows XP was a different story. First round I got boot error. Strange, tried reinstalling a second time and the PC just hung after the initial booting diagnostic start up screen. Tried several reboot still got the same "hanging there not going anywhere" leaving me scratching my head. It could be the BIOS going crazy on me. For now the PC is not working. If the BIOS goes, the motherboard is just another dead wood. Schucks! And this good old Pentium 4 Intel 3GHz with an Intel 915GEV motherboard is a rather good piece of hardware. I should know, I picked the parts myself when I bought it in 2005. But now it no longer works. Argh! Looks like I will need some replacement hardware starting with a new printer like this Epson Stylus T13. Oh, well.

[update 15/11/11]

Fixing my Intel D915 GEV computer system

Spend the better part of my late nights fixing up the good old Intel D915 GEV motherboard PC. Apparently the hard drive died causing the whole system to freeze up. Hard drive kaput means just change the dead drive without having to purchase the entire PC system, because if the motherboard died, it would be a major replacement. Unfortunately due to the flooding in Bangkok, Western Digital plant is underwater, and that plant account for 50% of the world's hard drive supply.

Which means there is a shortage of hard drive in the market driving up the prices 100% or more! When last I check some vendors are selling at double and some at triple the price! And in All IT Digital Mall section 14 PJ, much to my indignation the sales guy didn't even want to sell to me and was reluctant to give me any price indication!

I'm not going to spend that money yet until Bangkok recovers and Western Digital production is back online. Fortunately I still got an old 40GB PATA IDE WD 7200rpm drive. Well it won't be as fast as a SATA drive, but it will have to do for now.

Default Cluster Size for NTFS, FAT32, exFAT

I needed to reformat my SanDisk 16GB USB flash drive to NTFS file format as I wanted to transfer a large 9++ GB movie file to view it on my media player box. So when the format dialog box came up, I was wondering what would be the best default cluster size for NTFS and what did the "default allocation size" meant.

 

Although I would like to keep my thumbdrive in its default format of FAT32, it was not able to handle any files larger than 4 GB. NTFS filesystem although has more features (encryption, compression, ownership, etc.), it would also mean using up more computer resource in Windows when processing files. Hence I still prefer the simpler FAT 32 drive format, but I have no choice here as the file size was greater than 4 GB. (Note: exFAT or extended FAT can store files larger than 4GB but this disk format is not supported by many media boxes, unfortunately! It was introduced to overcome the 4GB limit but due to lack of support from many devices, access to the files would be limited to Windows Vista/7 onwards.)

Maxis Multi-SIM 1 Line

Finally went and applied for the Maxis multi-SIM 1 line service. I think it would be useful considering that I got spare mobile phones here and there. Besides, my Sony Ericsson X10 mini pro battery seems to knock out very fast these days. So perhaps a second phone with the same line might come in handy. However, after getting the new multi-SIM card it didn't work with my X10. Hopefully when the 2nd line SIM card becomes activated would work. Now waiting for activation which takes 24 hours. So keeping my fingers crossed. Otherwise I would need to visit the Maxis center again to sort out the issue.

Meanwhile, I'm using the main SIM on my old Palm Centro nicknamed 'the Whiteberry'! Haha! The SIM card has no issue with this mobile phone.
It's been a long while since I typed on the teenie weenie keyboard so it is a little slow to tap out this blog!

New devices for my PC hobby

Seems like i'm having a shopping spree on my IT gadget devices recently. Although Malaysia is having sales everywhere in the shopping malls. The same cannot be applied for computer gadgets.

With rather limited time, I haven't gotten around to blog about my new found gadgets.

Basically, i bought myself a LiveScribe 2GB Pulse smartpen as they were letting go at RM400 which was within grasp for me to give this smartpen a go. This model may not be new, but still works just as good.

I've also upgraded my modem coz my old wireless-B router already knocked out sometime ago and i was mulling whether to get the Belkin share router modem. But when Aztech recent lauch their new router modem wifi-N with a usb port for NAS, it was 1/2 the price of Belkin, at RM149, so I went for it.

And finally, I couldn't wait any longer and decided to iindulge myself with the SanDisk Cruzer 32 GB. I could only get it from PineApple computer store meeting up with old friends. I use to patronize their shop however their prices are not as competitive against the Low Yatt based shops in Digital Mall. Still they gave me a reasonable price. Which wasn't too bad.

Now preparing it for security and perhaps even install Ubuntu Linux into this thumbdrive since it got quite a lot of space!

Faulty free gift - USB thumbdrive

If ever a free gift looks too good to be true, this is it. Spend 10 difficult to get points from All IT to redeem a faulty Microsoft free USB thumbdrive gift. Thought I would use it to store MP3 songs for my Red Fox wireless MP3 player. Unfortunately the data kept getting lost after transfer. Even back to exchange for another USB thumbdrive, but that too turn out to be faulty.

The All IT PIC wasn't very keen to entertain me the first time round and to change the second time round to another gift would probably be a bigger hassle. Talk about consumer rights and poor customer service hiding behind the policy of redeemable free gifts are not entitled for exchanges. Looks like I will just end up using this as a useless pretty looking keychain. I guess if I ever want to store important precious data, I should only use brands that I know, at least the defect would be under controlled and at the very least warranty against product defects. Next time I will be more weary about unknown generic IT brands. Always better to pay a little more for peace of mind!

[update]
While browsing around the internet, I found people actually bought fake branded flash drive. How the fake flash drive worked is by showing false capacity, ie if the counterfeiter would make the chip inside the pen drive show up as a 2GB capacity thumb drive, but in actual reality, the memory chip could only hold 512MB of data. I guess the same falls for this faulty thumb drive that I got from All IT.

Why do they do that? To save money from putting in the required memory chips and sell it at the market value of the higher capacity, but in the end the product is faulty and you can't use it at all.

However there are some tools out there where you can fix the reported capacity to the actual capacity and thereby you could still use it but up to the real capacity. Well, kinda too late now that I have thrown it away.

Anyway at the current rate of decreasing price of flash drive, I could get a 4GB thumb drive for as cheap as RM20! Anyway, I have many flash drive and I'm aiming at the high capacity ones with my latest procurement at 64GB! Wow! And yes, it is not cheap!