Blowing a PSU
For months now my main computer which is Microslow Winbloze XP would be mysteriously rebooted whilst I was away from it, I just put it down to some Windows updates which forced a reboot. Occasionally it would also just cut out but we do seem to get short lasting power cuts fairly often
Last week or maybe the week before (my mind forgets me sometimes), my computer just wouldn’t boot, or it would start and then just cut the power so I opened her up to operate. I then realised the computer had not been cleaned inside for about 2 years which was preventing the CPU fan from turning, yuk it was disgusting but this was surely the reason for it cutting off to save the CPU and mother board right………………….
I cleaned her out and it booted first time, all was well my baby was fixed again or so I thought. About two days later it does the same again and again, this was a sure sign my PSU (Power Supply Unit) was on it’s last legs, I’d not opened that up to clean the days before but now I opened it up in hope of saving it with some radical cleansing but alas it did no good.
I kept forcing it to boot whilst I made back ups, pushing it to it’s limits but now my PSU rest in peace has gone to computer heaven, I just hope in my haste I didn’t crash the Hard Drives to, althought my PSU could do with the company, it’s just not the HD’s time, there twins and still young.
A friend whom works for a computer company was sending me a new PSU out, however he got a little busy and now I won’t get it until the weekend, but for the last week or two I’ve taken a self taught crash course in Linux which is on my other machines. As I think I mentioned in another blog on here, I’d used Linux before in fact the websites of SJB are on Linux servers (now Centos) but I’d only ever learned to do something as and when I needed it or I asked the server admins to take care of it, can’t do that here though so I learned the hard way and it’s been rather fun albeit time consuming.
If you considering dropping Microslow Windbloze and have no experience of Linux then try Ubuntu, it has to be the most user friendly I’ve tried. They also allow you download an ISO which when you stick on a CD and then pop into a windows machine allows you to run Ubuntu without installing it, so you can try it before installing it which is really cool.
Hopefully I’ll be back on-line properly soon. I know I’ll be moving my main system from Windows to Ubuntu soon so that will be more fun.
If you rely on Microsoft for some programs then you needn’t worry, there are two programs one emulates a Windows environment and the other allows you to install a windows partition and run it from Ubuntu like it’s just another program which is amazing.
1). Wine – http://www.winehq.org – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine_(software)
2). Qemu – http://bellard.org/qemu – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QEMU
3). Virtual Box – http://www.virtualbox.org
Anyway, yeah I was saying….. I should have my new PSU soon, lol.
Blog Action Day 2008
Well it’s nearly that time of the year again for another Blog Action Day. This years topic is Poverty.
If you not familiar with Blog Action Day, it’s basically one day of the year where thousands of bloggers all blog about one important issue in an attempt to make a difference via the internet. Some will talk about issues close to their hearts, others about ways to donate and fight the cause.
It doesn’t so much matter what your blogged about providing it covers that years topic.
Information from their website:
Post Topics
The best thing a blog can do is to keep their post on topic. Audiences visit our blogs because they enjoy the style, personality and topic of the site. So it makes sense that the best way to get through to these audiences is to use that same style, personality and topic to talk about Poverty. For example:
- A Design Blog might analyse a set of charity posters and how they convey their message.
- A Tech Blog might look at pro-poor technologies and projects.
- A Political Blog might examine the relevant agendas of leading candidates.
- A Sports Blog might look at recent charity activities of a major sports franchise.
What Can One Person Do?
Poverty is not only a pressing issue, it is a complex one. It’s easy to think that there isn’t much an individual can do. Fortunately this isn’t the case at all. With activities ranging from advocacy and professional contribution to charity and financing, there is in fact many ways that we can act.
You can find a range of resources about poverty, about what the average person can do as well as dozens of post suggestions and ideas in our Resources section.
To learn more and/or get involved then visit their Blog Action Day’s website @ http://blogactionday.org
I’m a Linksys Wireless Router Get Me Outta Here – Ubuntu
That was my Wireless WUSB54GS yesterday as it laid in the bin.
Ok a little over dramatic, it never quite got to the bin but it was close on a few occasions. Ubuntu is an opensource Operating System which is basically a Linux Variant. An OS (Operating System) you will most likely be familiar with is Microslow Winbloze XP or Vista
I spent perhaps 18 to maybe 20 hours trying to figure out why my adaptor would not work, once I found a nifty feature it took 2 minutes to get it going. I went through various Ubuntu support forums to find what I needed.
I’d played with Ubuntu a fair few times but always hit the same issue of the wireless adaptor not working, this time I was set on making it work so I downloaded the latest copy which is currently Ubuntu 8.04.1 desktop from http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download and installed it.
I was hitting the same issue and just couldn’t get it to work, everything kept pointing to something call Ndiwrapper which basically allows you install windows drivers on a Linux box. I’m familiar with commands after using SSH on my managed servers so it made it a little easier for me to understand, but I still couldn’t get everything to work. I downloaded the Ndiswrapper but couldn’t get it installed to start with.
I looked for tutorials and found the following:
I still had trouble even after reading this, not sure where I was going wrong.
After the many hours, I was about ready to give up again but thought I’d have a play with Ubuntu first. I went into Add/Remove Applications and found some real cool stuff, free games and more. I then used the search box and searched for ‘Wireless’. I couldn’t believe it an option came up ‘Windows Wireless Drivers’ and it was the ndiswrapper so I installed it (you’ll need a hard-wired connection).
The ndiswrapper was now working with a nice GUI (Graphical User Interface) which made it real easy to add drivers, but it wasn’t recognising any drivers I had, so I plodded off back to that tutorial again and found the following:
My guess is that you’ll come back to this tutorial wondering what went wrong, right? Ndiswrapper reports “invalid driver”, right? Well, if I’m wrong, skip the rest of this step.
The last command says that the drivers are invalid. That’s because it didn’t install the sys files! We need to do this manually. Run these commands in the same terminal:
If you have a WUSB54GS device, run this:
sudo cp usb8023.sys rndismp.sys /etc/ndiswrapper/wusb54gs/If you have a WUSB54GSv2 device, run this:
sudo cp usb8023.sys rndismp.sys /etc/ndiswrapper/wusb54gsv2/Now run this command:
ndiswrapper -l
Now if you new to linux all together you might be wondering what’s happening here, so I’ll break it down
sudo – Super User DO – Basically says “oi run this as admin/super user” and it will request your password to before running the command
cp - This ones just saying copy
The next bit looks first at the file/folder and copies it to then to the location after the space:
usb8023.sys rndismp.sys /etc/ndiswrapper/wusb54gsv2/
Is the same as:
/copy/file.sys to /etc/location
Now you will need to navigate to the folder or use the correct path for the files within your command.
cd /folder/name – will move you between folders.
I hope this saves someone losing hair and sleep, lol. If it helps at all, then please just drop me a comment, it’s always nice to know that I can help others 
My Ubuntu install is now successfully working with a Linksys Wireless SpeedBooster WUSB54GS
The following is a compressed archive containing the Linksys WUSB54GS drivers for both version 1 and version2
If you need the actual ndiswrapper because you can’t see it in your install: