As I write this on . . . Thursday (grumble) my office is blissfully quiet. I have two PC's (my Linux and Windows boxen) running quiet fans, but that's easy to fade below conscious attention - especially with iTunes playing, like it is now. What I don't hear is that crazy whine the router Linux box has made for the last several months. It was tolerable as long as I ever did in here was Quicken (loud music) or played video games (often with headphones anyway). But now that I spend all day in here it was driving me crazy.
I had thought it was due to the power supply in the old case, so last week I ordered a new case & power supply, which arrived Monday. Monday I started trying to transplant the router and realized that most of the noise was the CPU fan and the hard drive. Replacing the CPU fan was easy, the hard drive turned out to be impossible. I bought an 80 gig drive at Best Buy (smallest drive they had), but the BIOS wouldn't handle a drive that big. A few hours getting a BIOS update, scrounging the only floppy drive from my Windows box, installing that, etc, etc. and I got the BIOS patched. Still no joy. No problem, - I have a second drive in my Windows box (for data backups) that is only 40 Gig. Nope that doesn't work either. So for all of Tuesday and Wednesday I had two PC's open and it was even noisier without the cases muffling the various whines and roars.
Next problem - Jester (the Windows box) somewhere along the line killed the NEW POWER SUPPLY I bought for it last week Grrrrr.
At this point I snapped and decided to try to simplify. Maybe I should just buy a commerical router. Hang on - the Airport Extreme Base Station HAS a router. Sure enough - about ten minutes of messing with it and bam - everything is back on the internet without the third PC. That frees up the new case to transplant Jester (now with 2 power supply silhouettes painted on the case). Last night I finally got all that working. This also moves Jester out of my leg space - an accidental benefit.
So that's why there have been no posts lately. The noise was the sort of thing that while I was ignoring it I could do so - but once I started trying to fix it I could hardly bear to be in the same room as the router.
It's interesting that I keep sliding away from Linux now. I'm one Mac Mini away from replacing all my Linux software with OS X. And honestly - the next time Fedora end of lifes (which must be soon right? Like every four months? Maniacs!) and I need to upgrade to get my patches - it would probably be less time and effort to switch it all to OS X - and get SUPPORT for a while. Ironically Apple will now sell me hardware and a OS X license for $500. Compare and contrast with Red Hat - who will sell me a license for $299 and I bring my own CPU.
Anyway, it's all good now and my office is starting to be a pleasant place to spend time.
I had thought it was due to the power supply in the old case, so last week I ordered a new case & power supply, which arrived Monday. Monday I started trying to transplant the router and realized that most of the noise was the CPU fan and the hard drive. Replacing the CPU fan was easy, the hard drive turned out to be impossible. I bought an 80 gig drive at Best Buy (smallest drive they had), but the BIOS wouldn't handle a drive that big. A few hours getting a BIOS update, scrounging the only floppy drive from my Windows box, installing that, etc, etc. and I got the BIOS patched. Still no joy. No problem, - I have a second drive in my Windows box (for data backups) that is only 40 Gig. Nope that doesn't work either. So for all of Tuesday and Wednesday I had two PC's open and it was even noisier without the cases muffling the various whines and roars.
Next problem - Jester (the Windows box) somewhere along the line killed the NEW POWER SUPPLY I bought for it last week Grrrrr.
At this point I snapped and decided to try to simplify. Maybe I should just buy a commerical router. Hang on - the Airport Extreme Base Station HAS a router. Sure enough - about ten minutes of messing with it and bam - everything is back on the internet without the third PC. That frees up the new case to transplant Jester (now with 2 power supply silhouettes painted on the case). Last night I finally got all that working. This also moves Jester out of my leg space - an accidental benefit.
So that's why there have been no posts lately. The noise was the sort of thing that while I was ignoring it I could do so - but once I started trying to fix it I could hardly bear to be in the same room as the router.
It's interesting that I keep sliding away from Linux now. I'm one Mac Mini away from replacing all my Linux software with OS X. And honestly - the next time Fedora end of lifes (which must be soon right? Like every four months? Maniacs!) and I need to upgrade to get my patches - it would probably be less time and effort to switch it all to OS X - and get SUPPORT for a while. Ironically Apple will now sell me hardware and a OS X license for $500. Compare and contrast with Red Hat - who will sell me a license for $299 and I bring my own CPU.
Anyway, it's all good now and my office is starting to be a pleasant place to spend time.