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Oh, what a day...
Aug. 5th, 2001 10:10 pmSpent the morning going through a whole bunch of stuff that was occupying a makeshift room under our porch. Found and threw out my old Commodore 128 (encrusted with mouse droppings and some spilled liquid) and a Zenith terminal (keyboard long departed), among other items,which included about 100 pounds of old translations, from my pre-Houston period, which I trashed.
I also picked up my jury-rig fan one last time and turned it on to see just what kind of wind it developed. It turns out that, since I installed the fan sideways in the cassette box, there was as much - if not more - air coming out of the inlet to the box as was going out the business end.
So, I spent about an hour rebuilding the device so that the air flow was more axial, and then attached it to the VAIO, sealing all possible sources of leaks, and running the fan at the full 12-Vdc rating.
The thermocouple I placed in the air strem read a steady-state temperature of about 98 deg F (which tells me that, between the leaks and the inefficient fan placement, my original design sucked). I got the temperature up to about 117 deg F by working with a document to two, but the temperature went back down just about as soon as I stopped typing. So far so good.
Then, about 8 pm, disk activity picked up tremendously, and the temperature climbed to 120 deg F and hung there. The disk continued to operate, the result of my Kaspersky antivirus doing its daily scan. I displayed some system stats, which showed a pretty consistent series of disk reads, to the extent of between 800 KB and 1.2 MB per second. CPU usage was 100%, as opposed to about 75% when the system is doing nothing. The case around the CPU felt warm, but not hot.
The temperature climbed slowly up to 129 deg F, and the case started to feel about at hot as it gets when the CPU gives up the ghost, which it did about 40 minutes after the scan started, after the temperature just kissed 131 deg F, and just after I killed the scan from the keyboard. Strangely enough, the temperature continued to climb after the CPU froze the system, so I killed the power, letting the fan run.
I restarted the VAIO a few minutes ago and the steady-state temperature is standing at about 98 deg F again.
The solution, of course, is not to have a fan stuck on the back of the machine... it's to find/get/beg a copy of the sales receipt and get the thing fixed. Or maybe get the thing fixed and pay for it as if it were out of warranty.
This eSlate running Windows is one strange puppy. If I leave it alone for any length of time, it almost certainly does something to hang itself. Suspecting power management (from Windows, and not the base hardware) I went into the Power Management section of the Control Panel and set things so that it never, ever tries to shut anything down (exception, disk drive after 1 hour).
I have "reinstalled" Windows from the \WINDOWS\OPTIONS\CABS directory at least five times since installing Windows yesterday, more as a precaution to make sure nothing gets overwritten inadvertently. I noticed that doing so clears out any Workgroup setting in the Networks part of the Control Panel, and clears out any file sharing one may have enabled.
Finally, the eSlate was acting so weird (a real or apparent race condition between Explorer and other tasks, such as the virus-scanner or the MyComputer window, which resulted in multiple faults running Explorer), I even decided to hit the Microsoft web site and see if the Windows Update would do any good. Funny thing, after about 40 minutes of downloading stuff, the attempt to install it failed, although the updated audio driver downloaded and installed with no comment. Whoo.
I edited the files sent by my Houston client last Friday and sent them off. I'd been dreading having to sit down and do them, simply because I think I've been hankering for a day off for a while, now.
The files, by the way, concern the testing of glasses that some U.S. astronauts like to wear while doing space walks, except these tests were done in a Russian space suit, in anticipation of U.S. astronauts doing EVAs in one. Timex watches never took such a licking, although the point of the test was simple: try to get the glasses to fog up under extreme conditions (something you don't want to have happen while inside any spacesuit, where it is impossible to just reach up and take them off).
One more day and a wakeup until I leave for Houston. A review of my schedule tells me I can sort of take my time going down, so maybe I'll drive through Austin (instead of around it), to see what I can see and maybe have lunch somewhere. The last time I was in Austin proper was in... 1994?
Anyway... it's getting late, and tomorrow is likely to be pretty stressful, as there are a bunch of things that have to get done (like pack) before I leave Tuesday.
Cheers...
I also picked up my jury-rig fan one last time and turned it on to see just what kind of wind it developed. It turns out that, since I installed the fan sideways in the cassette box, there was as much - if not more - air coming out of the inlet to the box as was going out the business end.
So, I spent about an hour rebuilding the device so that the air flow was more axial, and then attached it to the VAIO, sealing all possible sources of leaks, and running the fan at the full 12-Vdc rating.
The thermocouple I placed in the air strem read a steady-state temperature of about 98 deg F (which tells me that, between the leaks and the inefficient fan placement, my original design sucked). I got the temperature up to about 117 deg F by working with a document to two, but the temperature went back down just about as soon as I stopped typing. So far so good.
Then, about 8 pm, disk activity picked up tremendously, and the temperature climbed to 120 deg F and hung there. The disk continued to operate, the result of my Kaspersky antivirus doing its daily scan. I displayed some system stats, which showed a pretty consistent series of disk reads, to the extent of between 800 KB and 1.2 MB per second. CPU usage was 100%, as opposed to about 75% when the system is doing nothing. The case around the CPU felt warm, but not hot.
The temperature climbed slowly up to 129 deg F, and the case started to feel about at hot as it gets when the CPU gives up the ghost, which it did about 40 minutes after the scan started, after the temperature just kissed 131 deg F, and just after I killed the scan from the keyboard. Strangely enough, the temperature continued to climb after the CPU froze the system, so I killed the power, letting the fan run.
I restarted the VAIO a few minutes ago and the steady-state temperature is standing at about 98 deg F again.
The solution, of course, is not to have a fan stuck on the back of the machine... it's to find/get/beg a copy of the sales receipt and get the thing fixed. Or maybe get the thing fixed and pay for it as if it were out of warranty.
This eSlate running Windows is one strange puppy. If I leave it alone for any length of time, it almost certainly does something to hang itself. Suspecting power management (from Windows, and not the base hardware) I went into the Power Management section of the Control Panel and set things so that it never, ever tries to shut anything down (exception, disk drive after 1 hour).
I have "reinstalled" Windows from the \WINDOWS\OPTIONS\CABS directory at least five times since installing Windows yesterday, more as a precaution to make sure nothing gets overwritten inadvertently. I noticed that doing so clears out any Workgroup setting in the Networks part of the Control Panel, and clears out any file sharing one may have enabled.
Finally, the eSlate was acting so weird (a real or apparent race condition between Explorer and other tasks, such as the virus-scanner or the MyComputer window, which resulted in multiple faults running Explorer), I even decided to hit the Microsoft web site and see if the Windows Update would do any good. Funny thing, after about 40 minutes of downloading stuff, the attempt to install it failed, although the updated audio driver downloaded and installed with no comment. Whoo.
I edited the files sent by my Houston client last Friday and sent them off. I'd been dreading having to sit down and do them, simply because I think I've been hankering for a day off for a while, now.
The files, by the way, concern the testing of glasses that some U.S. astronauts like to wear while doing space walks, except these tests were done in a Russian space suit, in anticipation of U.S. astronauts doing EVAs in one. Timex watches never took such a licking, although the point of the test was simple: try to get the glasses to fog up under extreme conditions (something you don't want to have happen while inside any spacesuit, where it is impossible to just reach up and take them off).
One more day and a wakeup until I leave for Houston. A review of my schedule tells me I can sort of take my time going down, so maybe I'll drive through Austin (instead of around it), to see what I can see and maybe have lunch somewhere. The last time I was in Austin proper was in... 1994?
Anyway... it's getting late, and tomorrow is likely to be pretty stressful, as there are a bunch of things that have to get done (like pack) before I leave Tuesday.
Cheers...
