Re: Disc caddy

Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

It's a rubbish one, that's what.

Yeah, but more rubbish than I'd imagined could be possibly made.

Such a bloody simple device, and just
about the only moving part on the thing, and it's crap.

Not just crap, but gratuitously and unnecessarily so.

Absolutely, and I won't be buying any more Acoustic Solutions products
(I also had a DVD player that went back for refund after 4 months, the
spindle in the drive motor kept slipping, and causing the discs to jam
on the platter).

I had one of their later inkjets (after the breeze-block models), and
wasn't too impressed I have to say.

We have an HP970cxi. It stopped working properly a very long time ago.
No two sided printing. An internal part snapped and flew out in normal
operation - the printer was just sat there, printing away, and then came
the nasty noise and I found a bit of snapped plastic. And then ISTR it
packed up completely. I think the much older HP DeskWriter 520 is still
working fine - it was when I retired it.

My next printer will be something other than an HP... Well, I say that,
but the performance of the HP LJ 1320n on the filing cabinet behind me
as so far been unimpeachable just so long as you don't mind the PS
emulation giving that 'orrible graphics banding. It was bought for text
output, so I don't.

On the other hand, the HP supplied software caused nothing but hassle,
HP's customer support is fucking *awful*, including the information it
supplies for setting up and troubleshooting.

I mean, I had a problem caused by faulty instructions from HP. So I
told 'em about it. They explained that what I'd run into was a
well-known problem, that I should not have followed the instructions on
HP's Web site because they were wrong, they told me what I should do
because it was a standard issue with that particular software and Macs
that they knew all about and had done for ages.

And they told me that they'd updated the information on the appropriate
Web page, where I'd got the wrong instructions from.

I checked.

They hadn't changed a damned thing - just plain lied to me.

<shrug> *** 'em.

So far, my take on the quality I've experienced with printers, in order
of preference:


1) HP Laserjets - we have a 5N and a 6M (at my Mum's) that are lovely -
as you say, not good for graphics, but great for text. Toners can be got
very cheap.

2) Canon inkjets - very impressed with the print quality, and value for
money, consumables reasonable, built quality not as good as I hoped
though, this one is already (18 months old) suffering with banding in
photos. Prints a duplexed booklet without any problems though.

3) Epson inkjets - superb print quality, especially photos, but the
heads are far too prone to blocking, and although the consumables are
cheap enough, they need to be to cope with the head cleaning you need to
do.

4) HP inkjets- poorly made, poor print quality

Lexmark (all) - complete ***, poorly made, and *very* expensive
consumables.

I've also had experience of various printers in my work environment -
usually needing to work on about 2-3000 pages a month. I have been very
impressed with the Kyocera laser printers we had at one time, they just
kept going and going. The Oki 24 pin dot matrix printers we had were
almost indestructible (just about every MOT testing machine has these on
them, even now).

The 7100 was built well - I had one, and the innards were built like a
Brunel bridge. I think the next generation went the wrong way though for
sure.

As soon as IDE HDDs turned up in Macs, I got suspicious. Solid
mechanical construction means nothing regarding the quality of the
electronic design, or the quality of the electronic and
electro-mechanical parts.

Indeed. Most of the 7x00, and all of the 8x00 and 9x00 series were SCSI
based (according to MacTracker).

[..]
Hmm, looks like a general tendency for the GPU manufacturers to use
*** fans then.

Reckon so - a bit rich, given the prices they charge.

Indeed, and an upgrade cooler of better quality isn't that expensive -
expecially when you consider the difference in reliability.

<puzzled> Erm. Are you saying that it's standard practice to replace
these fans? If so, how does one go about such a job?

Pretty much, yes - at least it's sugegsted quite a lot in many forums
I've seen elsewhere (in particular in the Apple 'Discussion' forums)

It was easy enough on mine. I fitted a Zalman copper cooler kit, for £25
you get a lovely copper/aluminium cooler assembly with a silent fan (can
also be wired to run at one of two speeds). On my Radeon card (after
unpluggingm the card from the Mac of course) it was a matter of undoing
two screws, and unplugging the fan, cleaning the old thermo paste off,
apply the new (comes in the kit), and screwing the new until in it's
place. The new one came with a couple of mounting brackets to fit
different hole spacings. Took about 10 minutes.

Mine also came with a set of VRAM heat sinks too, which just stuck onto
the chips.

I didn't wire mine back to the onboard controller, but wired it with a
'Y' connector to the DVD drive supply.

I got mine from here:

http://www.quietpc.com/gb-en-gbp/products/nvidia-vga

(what I'm thinking is that if it's cheapish and easy enough, I might
just replace the dodgy fan myself rather than go to the bother of
sending it back and running the risk of further damage, etc)

IIRC, that is something that should easily be within your abilities :-)

[..]
It's spring now. ;-)

When I posted that, there was snow falling outside here :-(

<grin> Sounds like spring to me.

Well, we know it's summer when it floods.

I don't like stuffy rooms. Windows stay open here - well, some of them
- unless it's very breezy.

That's quite a bit of the time here in Scarborough.

I'm on the other coast - we get wind too, but I'm a few miles from the
actual edge of the land so it's probably less bad.

I'm about a mile from the North Sea. Very soon we'll probably start to
get the 'Sea Frets', and won't be able to see across the garden after
about 5pm.

That makes no sense to me. Graphics processors don't use that much
electricity compared to CPUs. Electrical power going to heat is what
matters with this.

There are reports of 600W PSUs going pop after fitting the X800XT cards
into older G5s.

??!!??

????!!!!!!!????

How much power do the things use?

No idea, but it must be substantial (for a graphics card).

Mine went not long after fitting the 9800XT.

I'm astonished. No properly designed power supply should permit itself
to be overloaded.

That's the problem though, these aren't.

I'd /assume/ over-current, over-power, and over-heating protection as a
matter of routine in any PSU - and maybe an over-voltage clamp to shut
down the PSU in event of an internal fault to stop it frying what it's
feeding.

The G5 PSUs are actually a known weakness, and that coupled with the
higher demands of high performance upgrades is most likely exploiting
the weakness that's already there.

There is an Apple Care cover for some models of G5 PSU failures (of
course mine wasn't covered when it went bang) - a poor quality batch of
capacitors is the problem I believe.

[..]
It's the ones that are getting upgrades that seem to be suffering more,
i.e. fitting a card that was not originally intended for the machine.

You really mean fitting a card that was intended for the machine because
it's a graphics card built to go in a slot of that type.

Er, yes, although cards of such performance weren't around when the G5
was originally designed. I'm only guessing, but these newer cards could
be exceeding the original design specifications. We know that Apple are
quite good at cutting corners - usually where most users aren't going to
notice (upgraders are still pretty much in a minority).

Remember, the early G5s have a poorly implemented SATA controller, and
problems with USB2 data rates.

[..]
Yes, seen things similar to that, and was most likely what was inside
the old system we used in 1980.

Nothing higher-tech was available then, was it?

Probably not. At least not at a level that was affordable in public use.

I think surface mount was still experimental back then. I don't think
anyone had started to investigate pin arrays and those natty solder ball
thingies. Of if they had, there was no sign of it in consumer products
(what's the betting that sort of thing was in military radar come 1974,
eh?)

That's what I was thinking - worth noting that the 'stealth' planes were
flying in 1982 (just as an example of how advanced the miltary are with
technology), yet we didn't see them (sorry) until much, much later.

You say `affordable in public use', but one of the reasons for the
half-sized data buses available on the outside of many late
microprocessors back then was because it was bloody expensive on the
packaging and in any case, 0.1" pin pitch DIL packages of huge length
are quite easy to break. Expensive and fragile is what those old DIL
packages microprocessors were.

Surface mount's cheaper, as are all the other fancy `hundreds of pins'
packages we've got these days.

Aye, but new technology always commands a premium price, just because it
is new technology, it doesn't matter if it is cheaper to make. They are
cheaper now, because they are more common.

--
Andy Hewitt
<http://web.mac.com/andrewhewitt1/>
.