I built a new computer! However, this computer, “Waldorf“, is not intended to replace either Fozzie or Camilla. Waldorf is built (almost) entirely from parts that have been cycled out of other computers — mostly from Fozzie. One of my big motivations for building Waldorf was simply that I had enough parts lying around to build another computer — so why not?
Of note, Waldorf is Linux-only. I quietly removed Linux recently from Fozzie. Fozzie’s goal is to be a computer that constantly meets my needs and is constantly relatively up-to-date. But, by dual-booting Windows and Linux, it was frequently a chore to pick out compatible hardware, which sometimes kept Fozzie from reaching its full potential. I also had been having problems getting XP and Linux to dual-boot from my new SATA drive. And also, I just simply don’t like dual-booting to begin with. It’s nice having a large pool of applications available, but it’s annoying to have to reboot in order to use something in another operating system (especially if you run servers on your computer, which I do). A better solution is to just run Cygwin under Windows, which gives you a Linux-like environment and pool of applications. So, Fozzie is now Windows-only, and Waldorf is Linux-only. Since Waldorf is largely “aged” hardware, this seems to make sense.
The one new piece of hardware in Waldorf is a Linksys PCI 802.11g wireless card. Since there is no room in my computer room for another computer, and that’s where the router is located, I either had to get wireless for Waldorf or run cabling around the house. Luckily, the Linksys card seems to work with Fedora Core 3, by using the infinitely useful ndiswrapper program.
I had some problems with IRQ conflicts relating to running FC3 on this older hardware, but those problems strangely only occur on reboots, not fresh startups, so the rule is to not reboot Waldorf… just startup and shutdown. Other than that, Waldorf is functioning execellently.
Got a new printer today, a Canon Pixma iP6600D. This is to replace my 5-year-old HP DeskJet 932C. The 932C had served me very well over the years (all of college and grad school), but was very obviously starting to die. Whenever I’d print with it, it would emit crazy squealing and grinding noises like no printer should ever do. And it seemed to be jamming more lately. So, I got this new Canon. I’m very happy with it so far. Borderless photo printing, LCD preview, memory card slots. A lot has changed in printing in the last 5 years! I really wanted just another simple printer, but it seemed like all the “simple” printers had bad print quality as well. The 6600D is sort of new, so there aren’t lots of reviews online for it, but the ones I found were positive, and I know that Canon has produced several of the best printers out right now (iP4000 and iP5000), so it seemed like a safe bet.
I finally did a long-planned upgrade: I replace my 5+ year-old 20GB hard drive with a new 250GB Seagate SATA drive. The install went flawlessly. I was nervous, I’ve read about people having problems with SATA installs. I probably didn’t have problems because I read so much and knew about the pitfalls and how to avoid them. It’s worth noting that the 20GB drive I replaced was one of the oldest components in my system. It’s one of the few devices that date back to the original computer I bought in 1999 (along with modem, sound card, and speakers). So, this was somewhat historic in that respect. The old drive was actually still performing quite well, I’m very impressed with that drive (it was also a Seagate). I just wanted a bigger, faster drive. I plan on hopefully re-using the 20GB drive in the future.
I’ve upgraded the Linux operating systems on both Fozzie and Camilla. Fozzie has been upgraded to Fedora Core 4, and Camilla has been upgraded to Fedora Core 3. I’ve switched back from Mandrake because it seems that Fedora has become more stable since FC2. Something about Mandrake never felt “right” to me. Camilla only went to FC3 because that was the only way I could get my wireless card to work under Linux. See the main Leedberg.com blog for more info on that project.
Well, my Yamaha CD writer died. It had been acting flaky lately… most of the time when you’d insert a blank CD, it wouldn’t recognize it as such, it would only see a regular CD-ROM. Then it just stopped burning altogether, even when it did recognize a blank writable CD. Luckily, I had purchased one of those (seemingly gimmicky!) extended warranties from Best Buy when I bought, and the warranty was going to expire this coming October. Good timing!
Best Buy let me take back the Yamaha burner and said I could take any burner up to $150 for free (since my burner cost $150 back when I bought it). CD burners nowadays cost only around $50, so I was able to pick up a Plextor DVD burner instead. This was actually quite good, I was hoping to upgrade to a DVD burner at some point in the future, since my back up sets now span 4 CDs. So now I have a brand-new Plextor DVD burner, which cost me nothing (other than the $50 I paid for the extended warranty).
Well, I found that without a chassis fan, Fozzie was running much hotter, as in, ~10 degrees F hotter, which is no good. So, I reconnected the fan, but I had gotten spoiled on having a quieter computer, so I didn’t like all the noise. So, I ordered a Zalman ZM-F1 silent chassis fan, and installed it today. Does seem much quiter (although slighter louder than no fan). This fan comes with an adapter that regulates the voltage, so it’s quieter because it has a lower RPM when the adapter is attached (you can install it without the adapter and move more air). Seems fine with the adapter right now. Since this fan goes on the side of my case, the cable that connects to the motherboard was too short — I wouldn’t be able to open the case if this was attached! Luckily, I ordered a 99-cent 3-pin to 4-pin adapter as well, so I can connect the fan directly to my PSU, which gives the cable more flexibility. Unfortunately this means I can’t monitor the RPM of the fan. But, that doesn’t really matter (my old fan was an old-style fan that could only connect to the PSU anyways, so I’ve never been able to monitor chassis fan RPM).
Swapped out Fozzie’s Q-Max power supply that came with my case today in favor of a 400W silent power supply from CoolMax. It really is silent! This power supply actually came about 2 weeks ago, but the unit I recieved then was defective — whenever it was powered on, there was a very loud clanging noise that would come from the unit. This unit seems to work. Unfortunately I discovered that most of my computer’s noise does not come from the PSU in this case, but from the side case fan. I’ve never operated without it, so I am going to have a test run and see how the temperatures react to not having it. Fozzie is much quieter with that fan disconnected, especially combined with this silent power supply. The only sources of noise are the heatsink fan and the video card fan at the moment.
This is the first post, so there aren’t any upgrades to talk about, but I can touch on where I hope to go with my computers a little bit. In the near-term, I’d like to replace the PSU in Fozzie (which came with the case) with one which isn’t so loud. I also hope to replace the aging 20GB hard drive in Fozzie with a SATA drive, at least 80GB. The combined 100GB I have currently is enough, but I’d like to be able to mirror my data from my current 80GB Maxtor drive onto another drive for daily backups, but the 20GB drive isn’t large enough. I also hope to expand the memory in both Fozzie and Camilla. Fozzie’s 512MB is enough for now, but when Windows XP 64-Bit Edition comes out, it will use more memory than regular XP, so I might be constrained. And Camilla only currently has 256MB, which is just barely enough to comfortably run XP. So that’s it… stay tuned!