DreamPC 2006 ready for it's grave...

  • Thread starter Thread starter Skybuck
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Some more interesting reports and possible conclusions.

Yesterday the DreamPC was on for a long time running Linux Mint 11, suddenly
I started hearing this ticking sound.

Tick, Tick, Tick, Tick, Tick.

Apperently it was coming from the DreamPC.

I suspect one of the harddisk heads was hitting the platter repeatedly over
and over and over again.

I decided to turn off the system.

Today I turn on the system and immediatly boot into Linux Mint 11 also
because yesterday Windows did not want to boot because
of boot manager/disk problems/bad sectors ? Which was kinda weird. Linux
Mint 11 yesterday had some trouble starting because of bad sectors
it seems but ultimately managed to boot from dvd.

I was surprised that today Linux Mint 11 booted up just fine and I was also
surprised that the harddisks are working again.

Even Windows 7 came back alive surprisingly which is what I am using now.

I also checked the bad sectors on the Windows 7 System drive which is one of
the new 2 TB hitachi drives.

The drive now has 366 bad sectors, which is reported by Linux Mint 11 as
"some bad sectors".

The number of bad sectors seems to have increased I think... probably caused
by the ticking yesterday.

The ticking is gone today, the ticking yesterday occured very suddenly,
therefore I shall have to come to the following conclusion:

The cause of the ticking could be:

Micro vibrations and resonance.

So my hypothesis is now the following:

The spinning of the harddisk bay fans cause micro vibrations, if these micro
vibrations somehow match the frequency of the material of the harddisk head
then the harddisk head starts to vibrate/resonante, like that famous bridge
which ultimately collapsed because of wind and resonance.

I also tried to cause more damage to the remaining harddisk by bumping my
table a couple of times and rocking it back and forth a little bit, the
monitor rocked a bit back and forth but the PC not... probably too heavy...

I also checked with Linux Mint 11 and the other two harddisks which were
undamaged remain undamaged, so bumping the table does not lead to damage or
bad sectors, at least not immediatly.

I also thought about smacking the horn of the phone on it and maybe that
caused damage when I was angry once, but that seems to be impossible as
well.

Rocking back and forth my table wasn't too smart, the table is a bit shacky
as well, fortunately no damage occured.

I am starting to believe the "micro vibration and resonance" hypothesis and
therefore I have secured my remaining harddisks, by attaching the 24
harddisk bay screws to the drive bays.

I am now also starting to believe that Antec company must have known about
the need for 24 screws, they must have known this is necessary to provide
the harddisk with some more stability.

The advice of somebody else on usenet to leave only a few screws attached or
none at all appears to have been foolish, at least assuming this is cause of
damage, which starts to become more believable.

I also notice the bottom harddisk bay has slightly more vibrations, this can
be explained by two factors:

1. The power fan is on the bottom.

2. The bottom tray contains two harddisks.

The other two middle and top bays are nearly vibrationless now that the
screws have been attached.

So without screws there was some vibration feeling by fingers touching it.

With screws the vibration is nearly gone.

This was felt/measured at low fan speed.

Since filters are gone I keep fans at low fan speed to prevent hairs from
being sucked in, this seems smart setting to use at least for my much lower
heat graphics card.

Perhaps my system could now take much more heatfull graphics cards, but I
dare not risk it and the graphics card would get full with dust anyway and
then overheat motherboard again so I am not going to do that.

I also wonder if perhaps electrical issue might still be cause of some
strange behaviours, but for now it's probably the vibrations and bad sectors
which caused some weird stuff to happen.

I shall now enjoy my computer a bit more... and hopefully soon I will be
able to buy some new harddisks. It's could to try and figure out what cause
of death was to try and prevent it in future otherwise it would be useless
to buy new stuff.

For now I am still a bit skeptical though ;) So I will run my system some
more to see if the ticking returns ;)

I have one more good idea, I shall now place the speakers on the ground
instead of the table, perhaps the gaming I did also contributed to
damage/bad sectors/vibrations.

Perhaps I should test that theory by blasting some sound from speakers, but
I don't feel that test is worth... I might as well place speakers on ground
unless perhaps I can then enjoy music and sound less, but that is something
I am going to try it probably won't matter
that much so the speakers are going on the floor for now... It's a bit dirty
there but so what ;)

Bye,
Skybuck.
 
Wow, placing the front speakers from the table on the ground has a very
interesting effect, it makes the sound volumes coming from all speakers much
more equal, which makes the surround sound effect much more noticeable.

I guess the wooden table was acting as one gigantic speaker and was somewhat
distorting the surround sound effect ! ;) =D

Now with the new setup it's pretty cool, there also more room on the ground
to spread the front left and front right speaker more apart for more
surround sound effect.

I can now actually hear the side left, side right and rear right and rear
left speakers kicking in ! ;) =D

I also tested call of duty 5 world at war when the speakers where still on
the table and there was indeed some slight vibrations coming from the
"kaboom" power ups... so it's probably better to place the speakers on the
ground anyway.

The less vibrations on the table the better me thinks ! ;) =D

As somebody else would say: "I am now a completely anti-vibration-nazi" ! ;)
=D LOL.

or: "Vibrationless nazi" ! ;) =D

Bye,
Skybuck =D

P.S.: Vibrations is best kept for some female devices ! LOL.
 
I do wonder if I perhaps set the volume of the rear speakers slightly higher
in the receiver, so I'll have to check that sometime to see if that's indeed
the case or not...

It would be nice if I can see that on the digital display of the receiver
otherwise I will have to connect monitor to it again and then requirings
moving the monitor a little bit again which I would rather not do ;)

I shall have to consult receiver manually to see if it's possible to display
speaker volumes on the receiver's display ! ;)

Bye,
Skybuck :)
 
Oh well, now that the speaker setup is pretty much different I should
probably re-do the audesy auto detection range testing and stuff like
that... pretty cool.

So attaching the monitor is probably best to do all this stuff so me gonna
do that to see what happens and such, me want top surround sound quality !
;) =D

This also requires attaching the mic again ;)

(I also did re-assignment of speaker, apperently left speaker was subwoofer
again which is a bit strange, maybe linux has something to do with that or
so)

Bye,
Skybuck.
 
The cause of the ticking could be:

Micro vibrations and resonance.

So my hypothesis is now the following:

The spinning of the harddisk bay fans cause micro vibrations,
Click to expand...

You're an idiot.
 
Wow, I just cut my ring ringer finger on my right hand pretty deeply trying
to find a cable in a box, there was also a motherboard i/o bracket in there
which has razor sharp edges.

You electronics people are pretty crazy creating such sharp edges, I could
have cut my entire rist/hand open if I grabbed more deeply.

I am going to put that bracket away in a close somewhere or maybe I should
even dispose of it it's fricking dangerous.

But for now it goes into a close where it will hopefully not cut me in the
future anymore.

My finger is bleeding pretty badly, I hope a bandage will be enough to stop
the bleeding otherwise I might actually need surgery for the first time in
my life...

I am gonna make new bandage and put it a bit more tight... gjez, first
bandage already badly blooded...

Bye,
Skyblood.
 
Ok, when I removed bandage the blooding seemed to have stopped, but if I
stress it it will probably bleed again.

The new bandage a bit tight, maybe too tight, but gonna let it be for now..
hurts a bit, but ok.

There little bit more loose, hurt is bad, no hurt is good ;) :)

Ok now I go secure that dangerous razor... and then on with the cable show !
;)

Bye,
Sky-dry-blood.
 
I was even searching in the wrong box, but I thought I just start somewhere
and see, then I knew it was other box, but anyway good thing I searched that
first box, there were 3 of these dangerous razor sharp motherboard i/o
brackets in there... I have placed them all 3 in the cabinet so it's out of
harms way lol...

and I also find the two nice av cables which will probably reach to my
receiver, maybe even without moving monitor, now opening monitor side panel
! ;) :)

Wow I just heard a strange noise... hmm must be windows, and also a windows
beep oh well.

Bye,
Skybuck.
 
Ok, that black extension cord cable/thingy is not the correct cable.

The correct cable is the shorter black cables with the yellow connectors.

It's a bit short so monitor will have to move, from now on I keep it in the
little table with receiver on top/next to PC so I can easily find it and use
it ;)

Bye,
Skybuck.
 
Wow I just noticed something when I was in my spare parts room.

There is an electrical cable running from the power wall socket to the
heating.

This is a "ground" wire connected to the heating done by a precious owner or
perhaps the cooperation.

This is probably forbidden by now, and is probably ineffective or maybe it's
still effective, but it also looks a bit dangerous.

I definetly don't want heating to get electrified or so... for now it's
probably ok since I don't use that power socket but I was thinking about
maybe getting a network storage device...

But now that I see that flaky power socket I am a bit scared about that, so
not gonna do that for now :( but I might still look into what I might have
bought or so...

Gjez what a surprise again ;)

At least the kitchen seems to have one grounded power wall socket, but now I
am starting to wonder if it's really grounded or just a fake, maybe it's
even a fake and that could be dangerous, especially since the fridge
is also kinda flaky/shacky/always running so this could lead to perhaps a
defective fridge and dangerous electrical situation, so gotta try and get
somebody to look at that gjez !

For now on with the show ! ;)

Bye,
Skybuck.
 
Ok,

I just did the audessey auto-setup test and it was kinda interesting to see
it detect the range/meters to speakers, one speaker behind some stuff.

But the weird/odd thing is the receiver changed the assignments of the
speakers, which confuses windows/creative labs software/thx software which
is kinda strange but ok.

I guess I have no choice but to follow the receiver's assignment somehow ?!?

But how do I know which speaker is where ?

This is a really strange situation... I guess I will have to use thx
assignment sound and listen very carefully where sound is coming from.

If this is not done correctly then I guess the audessey auto-setup is kinda
useless and the wrong settings would be used per speaker.

Pretty amazing how complex these audio guys have made all of this, but there
is probably a reason for it...

Well now I go try and re-configure the software setup so it uses the correct
speakers, gjez.. ;) :)

Bye,
Skybuck.
 
That is not very usefull, first of all the noise sound is hard to
distinguish where it's coming from and second of all it just doesn't make
much sense it completely screws up the assignments it's just weird.

My conclusion can only be that for PC's + Receivers the audessey auto setup
is probably useless and miss configures the equalizer and assignments unless
I could somehow figure it out, but it's way too much work and confusing and
just plain weird.

So instead I am going to play it safe and set everything to defaults or
so... because otherwise it's just weird.

To bad that THX software and receiver cannot work together to come to an
agreement.

Bye,
Skybuck.
 
However, maybe then again it might not matter for the receiver.

The receiver will probably use it's own equalizer settings and distance
settings to produce the correct sound from the speakers.

So ultimately how windows/creative configures it doesn't matter for the
receiver.

They independant systems... I just have to setup the software side to use
correct speakers and thus the audessey auto setup/test should be usefull.

However receiver slightly in front of right speaker which will be moved, and
my foot was also slightly in front of rear left speaker.

I could feel the pounding on my feet which was kinda funny/amazing, probably
doesn't influence it that much or maybe it will but I am not going to
re-do...

I also tried second position hearing setup but cancelled it, because there
is no second position, hopefully those variables weren't set during the
receiver's calculation ;)

I do hope those guys who programmed it where smart enough to zero out those
variables when I cancelled it, I bet they did ;)

So so far it looks good, now just have to reconfigure speaker assignment
which should be easy, though maybe not...

The receiver really pulled a number on me here since now the labels on the
connectors might not make sense anymore... or maybe it will I don't know...

It's still pretty damn strange...

But hopefully it gonna work out ! ;)

Bye,
Skybuck.
 
Ok re-assigning the speakers was easy, I learned that last time I messed
with this.

Just go around and click in circle no matter where sound is coming from, and
swap woofer with left speaker and done.

So now everything should be setup properly.

Now time for some music to see if I notice anything different.. well it's
interesting it does sound a bit different but that's ofcourse because
the speaker configuration is now correct.

It does sound a bit cooler than last time so I guess the auddesy auto setup
that help a little bit to get the max out of it ! ;)

Ok now time for cleaning up and go enjoy some more music ! ;)

However I do wonder if the zooming/humming of the PC might have some
influence on it, maybe some day I should do a re-callibration with the PC
off, and just on screen display menu ! ;)

But I will save that experience for the feature ! ;) Gotta think little bit
of neighbours too ;) That testing does produce some shock waves slightly !
;) :)

And I don't wanna turn off my computer at this very moment ! ;)

I think the audessey test might compensate for the buzzing sound of PC since
it's very weak or maybe not...

Maybe it's even better to test with PC on, since normally it will be on as
well. Maybe the test does and "environment/ambient sampling to see what's
that all about" ;)

So for now I am gonna let it be ! ;)

Sounds nice so it's good enough ! ;) :)

Bye,
Skybuck :)
 
"FatBytestard" wrote in message

I personally do not care about any facts you may find because my harddisk
has bad sectors plain and simple.
Click to expand...

"
But it was NOT from you closing your ****ing PC case door, IDIOT!
"

I never said it was. Learn the meaning of the word probably idiot ! ;) =D

Bye,
Skybuck :P
 
"FatBytestard" wrote in message

The antec 1200 case door is detached, therefore it requires horizontal and
vertical movement to shut it closed properly.

Bye,
Skybuck.
Click to expand...

"
NOTHING you do short of knocking the PC over, or off of a table top is
going to do ANYTHING to your hard drive. So shut the **** up about
something which you obviously know NOTHING about!
"

I know believe harddisk-bay/tray-fan's caused vibrations and resoning of the
harddisk head !

I bet you haven't heard that before ! ;)

Possible proof: harddisk started ticking, now the ticking is gone.

Not completely sure if it was harddisk making the ticking but what else
could it be ? Perhaps cd/dvd-rom ? I have never heard of such a thing as a
ticking dvd-rom drive ! ;)

Bye,
skybuck.
 
"FatBytestard" wrote in message

I suspect one of the harddisk heads was hitting the platter repeatedly over
and over and over again.
Click to expand...

"
You're an idiot.
"

You're an even bigger idiot then you believe me to be ! ;)
 
"FatBytestard" wrote in message

The cause of the ticking could be:

Micro vibrations and resonance.

So my hypothesis is now the following:

The spinning of the harddisk bay fans cause micro vibrations,
Click to expand...

"
You're an idiot.
"

Is that all you can say ? I guess you are flabbergashed by mine nice
tracking down of issues !

Just admit it ! ;)

Bye,
Skybuck :)
 
I know believe harddisk-bay/tray-fan's caused vibrations and resoning of the
harddisk head !

I bet you haven't heard that before ! ;)
Click to expand...

Because it is so ****ing STUPID! You clueless twit.
 
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