It's case by case. Sometimes they care; sometimes they don't.
Nope, they've just decided that its the most efficient way to do it.
And you can see why the bureaucrats dont like it,
because they cant inspect it when done like that.
Sometimes it's ego (overestimation of one's own skills).
Its easy to do it right.
Sometimes it's money and the developers not allowing time to do it right.
We're talking about normal house slabs, no developers.
And then again, as you said, some things
are NOT necessary to do the long way.
Yep, and this is a classic example of that, the way the bureaucrats
want it done is pointlessly long winded and time consuming.
I've seen each. I'm all for more effecient ways
to do things as long as it has a satisfactory effect.
Yeah. I wouldnt have done it the 'right' way if
I had realised that the council inspection would
have grudgingly accepted it done the other way.
Which often is the case with professionals.
Yep.
I am good at work around the home but would never
presume to be as effecient as the pros; not only is it
a matter of practice but also learning all the shortcuts
Yeah, anyone with a clue will always get a lot better with
practice and thats one area that the pros will always do
a lot better, they'll always have done a lot more.
Ironically, there IS a point to that, as distasteful as it may
be. Inspections do serve a purpose in some cases, IF
done RIGHT. The alternative would be to do the inspection
as the slab gets poured to see the technique being used.
Yes, and thats not practical, thats why the bureaucrats
prefer the other alternative, even tho its a lot more work.
Doesnt mean its a sensible approach tho.
Of course, I was speaking in general about cases where the
care is not used; you're referring to a specific case where
care WAS used. We probably both agree in each case
I dont agree that any of the pros dont lift
the mesh properly as the concrete is poured.
No doubt. I can only imagine what many kids do to houses.
Yeah, destructive little buggers at times.
The sewer pipes also had to be inspected by the
council and back in those days earthenware pipes
were used. One little bugger smashed virtually
every one one night in the place next door while the
trench hadnt been backfilled after the inspection.
I'm starting to get the feeling there are a number of them here...
Yeah, chrisv should start hyperventilating about quoting any minute |-)
especially given the few people I've had offering suggestions here.
Yeah, there are a few that claim to do it commercially, but they
normally just make cryptic comments, presumably because
they dont see it as being viable to do themselves out of work.
You dont see too many do much of it otherwise, mostly
just logic card swaps that either work or they dont.
I would debate that point. It's surely a DIFFERENT
skill but actually driving is pretty brainless.
Nope, if it was it wouldnt be the main killer in that age group now.
I would surmize planting a crop would take much more skill;
Nope, much less, actually. Even kids can do it well enough.
Most cant even ride a bike that reliably, come close
to crashing when attempting something quite basic
like looking back over their shoulder at times.
Crossing busy roads with a lot of traffic on them in spades.
MUCH higher risk than whacking the
cows etc, let alone sheep or goats.
but then you add to that the myriad other responsibilities
in life which we now hire out or simply throw out.
Sure, but even basic agricultural societys had
a lot more specialisation than you might think,
particularly with household goods manufacture etc.
The main exception was certainly with houses
where almost everyone made their own, but
mud huts aint exactly rocket science.
Most did buy new ones, just not at walmart size operations.
That they're different is no doubt. As for arguing the
skill level, that would be a long discussion in itself!
I still feel that your average suburbanite today uses a less impressive
diversity of skills today than the average western frontier townsperson.
Sure, but not necessarily less than the average middle class
person say 150 years ago who would likely have had at least
someone to do the worst of the cleaning and cooking etc.
And you didnt see those in professional occupations renovating
their own houses themselves either, they paid people to do that.
Of course to prove it would require
some research and making lists
And you'd fail |-)
I would say in particular it's true in the past 100 years.
In some ways it is, in others it isnt. Certainly the industrial
revolution did see a hell of a lot more manufacture of goods
used day to day, and more recently thats extended into
even the most basic food etc, but at the other end of
the scale, far fewer have full time servants anymore.
Specialization is my entire point. The specialization we see
today is substantially greater than even in the early 1900s.
Maybe.
I recall hearing the tales of life from my
parents' generation. Quite different.
Mine arent very different at all. They did renovate one of their
houses, but never built one from scratch themselves like I did.
My parents range of non work interests
were nothing like as broad as mine.
His work specialisation was much greater than mine.
I offer the notion that industrialization made the greatest change.
Sure, but that wasnt from the 1900s,
that was for a full century before that too.
What has changed very dramatically since the
1900s is the application of rigorous science to
medicine particularly, as opposed to the physical
sciences and engineering in the century before that,
tho with still massive advances with flying last century.
True; and the most difficult tradespeople were usually the
highest paid and specialized the most. Nonetheless even
the wealthiest blacksmith of olde is going to know how to
repair the door hinges, plant a small crop and repair the outhouse...
Yes, but plenty in say the last half of the 19th century
would have paid someone to do all sorts of things.
But that's the EXACT point. The people with weaker minds
and weaker bodies are now surviving more than ever because
of medicine and the care and protection modern society offers.
Thats a very small part of the total tho.
The main effect on survival has been much more basic stuff
like the control of infectious disease, particularly with those that
killed kids. Nothing to do with weakness stamping out smallpox.
I'm not saying we should make policy about
this, just naming it scientifically for what it is.
You've overstating the effect tho. Yes, some who would otherwise
have died dont any longer, BUT the main effect has just been the
control over death due to infectious disease by immunisation.
The more you protect people the less capable
and more infirm they will naturally become.
Thats just plain wrong too. People are much less infirm
at age 70 than they used to be for various reasons.
Yes, we also have far more who are nominally alive
but with dementia as well, just because people live
much longer than they used to, particularly in the
worse of the industrial revolution where the average
live expectancy was only 30 in some parts of england.
We dont have anyone starving to death in the first world
anymore either and hardly any in places like india now.
At the same time, genetics may yet hold the answer to this
problem, helping to eliminante many of the illnesses which
arise from the current directions of development.
And its already eliminated some serious problems with gross
inbreeding, just because there is much more movement of
people world wide now than there has ever been.
Or collaborate; share the effort
I've never been into that approach much myself.
Make your own beer, eh? I've wanted to try that.
Yeah, I was always put off by the hassle of cleaning the bottles.
Then a neighbour of mine said that he just puts them in the
dishwasher. Turned out to work fine, so I've never looked back.
I generally do it in the cooler weather, because its a lot
easier to heat than to cool and the database claims I
have just finished making enough to last about a year now.
I would try some bizzare recipies
Havent done any of that, just tried some cider too.
Have been tempted to try distilling but havent tried that yet.
So you feel the only way to fix that
bugger is a head transplant, eh?
I'd try repairing the current one instead myself. Particularly
checking the connections to the heads themselves. The
problem is very likely either a cracked trace in the flexible
connection to the heads or a dry joint at the heads end.
I would only try a transplant as the very last resort,
due to the difficulty of getting the head assembly
out of the drive with the data on particularly. Not
so bad with the source of the head assembly
because you dont care about being able to
get the platters back aligned with that drive.
I still wonder if something could be done to the ribbon to
make it work temporarily. For example cold CAN work
in some cases. I wonder if something ELSE can be done.
Yes, I'd certainly try hotter than normal too.
And replace that flexible connection as a last resort
if I had measured the connections and established
that there was a cracked trace internally.
Haven't found it yet... despite posting the problem on several boards.
I didnt mean that, I meant using groups.google to find previous discussions.
At least I may have a bead on a replacement PCB for
the 40gb... guy has a spin-up but dead drive of the same
series. Only problem is he's half a world away and I
have no idea who even ships from down under to the USA
All the bigger international carriers.
Airmail post is very viable too.
Indeed.... IF I have to go that far. I didn't try tracing it yet. All
the components look very small and hard to de-solder, though...
Yeah, that sort of surface mount stuff
isnt the best to learn to solder on.
You may find that a TV service person will do it for you tho.
OK... naive time. How do you test
"windings" on a motor? The impedence,
Resistance, yes.
With a multimeter.
BTW - I presume those stepping motors wouldn't rotate if
you just put a solid current across the motor, would they?
Nope, the windings have to be driven in a very specific pattern.
In other words, no way to test the motor spinning up by itself...
Nope. Tho just testing that the bearing isnt jammed, which you
have already done, and testing the windings with a multimeter
is all the testing you need to do with those. Since there are a
number of windings, a failed winding stands out like dogs balls.
Its unlikely to be that tho, its much more likely to be
a failed transistor in the set driving those windings.
Hmmm... what WOULD a rotation moroe on a hard
drive DO, anyway, if one put a steady current across it?
Nothing until the current is high enough to burn out the winding.
Is the gymbal the name of the arm which holds the head?
The mechanical connection between the
head end of the arm and the head itself.
If so, that's a major concern if I have to replace eads. I noticed the heads
MUST be slipped in precisely - and it's quite possible to rip them off if the
platter pushes on the heads sideways instead of the heads going between...
very difficult to align when there are 6 heads to insert at once into a small space.
Yeah, which is why I wouldnt even try swapping the heads except
as an absolute last resort. I'd change the flexible connection to the
heads first if I have measured that its got a cracked trace, or just
wire in a single extra wire to replace the single cracked trace, as
a temporary fix to allow the data to be recovered.
More tricky if its the electrical connection to the head
itself, bad solder joint, with other than the top head tho.
Then what probably happened?
Most likely with the one that wont spin up anymore one of the
transistors driving the rotation motor has failed, or the connection
between the logic card and the motor windings has failed.
Those transistors are pretty rugged because of the current they
switch with the rotation motor and shouldnt have got 'zapped'
I know the 40gb drive had a lot of startups when I was trying to
get the 80gb to be recognized but other than that and the move I
don't know what's likely to have happened to it to harm it that way.
Its possible that the power supply is flakey and you managed
to zap one of those transistors that way, over voltaged it.
I find the "skkkkkrrrrrrr" sound which comes from the
motor every 30 seconds or so particularly distrubing.
You sure its the motor ? Its more likely to be the heads
recalibrating if thats the 80GB drive you are talking about now.
Pretty much all motors have them at least on the rotors (coils, actually).
Stepper motors do that differently.
I presume you mean, however, a number of windings
around the motor to report back how far the motor has rotated?
They dont 'report back', they are driven, powered,
and thats what makes a stepper motor step/rotate,
the sequence of the powering of the windings.
Bit like a series of electromagnets powered
in sequence but with them arranged around
the shaft so the result is rotation of the motor.
I'm normally used to rotor and stator motors
(standard). I should read up on stepper motors.
Yeah, plenty of discusssion of the basics on the web.
I haven't pulled one apart yet.
I wonder if the symptom of the motor "jerking"
could be a result of a steady current being
applied instead of a stepped one.
Thats just due to one of the windings not being powered
anymore, so you dont get the sequence of switching of
the windings anymore. So instead of moving on to the
next position/step, it comes to the previous one when
the next winding in sequence isnt powered anymore.
Stoppit at once...
Yes, but the 40gb drive is more difficult ONLY
because of the lack of a suitable donor at the moment
OK.
The 80gb drives of the same series were still in the store.
I was willing to buy another to try the transplant. The difficulty,
however, with the 40gb drive is that I haven't found one on eBay yet
Yeah, can be a problem with the older drives.
I have yet to get my hands on ANY 40gb drive of the same model.
Yeah, my brain fart there. That was someone else with
another WD 40GB drive that found a logic card swap didnt
help. Different symptoms tho, that one didnt fail to spin up.
For now, until after Xmas, I'm holding off buying a used
one until I can see if I can get a hold of one of the same
series. If one of the same series doens' appear in 2-3
weeks then I'll get as close as I can.
Hmm. Wonder if it could be similar.
The WDs dont appear to get that data off the platters.
The effect is quite different with those Maxtors,
they dont even report their model number correctly
anymore when they cant get that data off the platters.
They do get recognised by the bios, but with the
wrong model number being listed by the bios.
However I doubt it since the drive worked for several days
without a problem then suddenly quit without a speck of warning.
Yeah. Most likely those 80GB WDs dont even respond
to the bios drive poll when they have decided that they
cant read the platters anymore. That would explain
why the logic card swap didnt change the symptoms.
Also, the model # of the drive has always
been accurate whenever I've seen it.
Yeah, that other effect is a characteristic of those Maxtors.
I cant say I have noticed any other drive behave like that.
Which tends to indicate that that model number data is
on the platters and when that cant be read, it falls back
to the more generic model number from the flashrom.
That's my thinking. Which actually is frustrating in that
technically a controller with just the right timeout could
allow my data to be retreived, albeit very very slowly.
I doubt it. Its timing out because the drive doesnt even
respond to the bios drive poll at all when it cant read
the data off the platters properly at drive initialise time.
It wont respond to a bios drive poll at all, regardless
of the timeout time the bios waits for a response for.
Don't happen to know of any IDE/ATA
controllers with troubleshooting features,
do you, for the very purpose of data recovery?
There is some software that wrings the drive out in
an attempt to get the data from every sector on the
drive, cloning the drive to another drive in the process.
But that wont work with a drive that doesnt
even respond to a bios drive poll at all when
its decided that its not in a usable state.
Real downside with the design of the WD
drives if thats whats actually happening.
I'd have a close look at that drive with the WD diagnostic and
see if it really is whats happening, that the drive just ignores
any attempts to use it once its decided that the drive isnt usable.
See if the diagnostic only sees the drive at all some of the time.
Cant say I have tried it myself, havent had any recent WDs fail.
Exactly my thinking... hence the concept that the
correct controller could allow it to continue to retry.
The drive wont reinitialise with just repeated polls.
Not clear if those WDs will reinitialise completely
with commands over the cable or if they only do
a full reinitialise with full power cycle or what.
Thats one real downside with WD drives, they
dont even have full OEM manuals anymore.
Thats where that sort of thing can be spelt out.
You might be able to get a handle on that using
the WD diagnostic. Try repeatedly loading the
diagnostic if it sometimes cant see the drive
and see if it ever can see the drive after its
not visible, just by reloading the diagnostic.
If it cant, do the same thing but with a red
button reboot between runs of the diagnostic.
If it cant, do the same thing but with a full power
off reboot between runs of the diagnostic.
That should prove if a full power cycle is needed
to get the drive to fully reinitialise or not etc.
As it is, the OS actually has a double whammy...
not only does it wait for the drive's data but
it had to deal with the controller giving up, too.
Hence the only data getting thru is the data which
doesn't time out the controller, much less anythng else.
True.
Guess it might be possible to kludge it up by arranging
for a dos boot thru to the cloning ute, and repeatedly
cycling the power or whatever until the drive is visible
at boot time, and then auto running the cloning ute
from the autoexec and let it clone as much as it can.
Once it gives up, edit the command line for the cloning
ute with the sector it managed to get to last time,
and keep repeating the sequence until the entire
drive has been cloned sector by sector to another
physical drive and then attempt to recover whats
available from the clone drive.
So... still sound like the ribbon cable?
Yes, basically because a logic card swap made no difference
and a flexible connection is more likely to have failed. It could
also be a dry joint at the heads end but thats a lot harder to
do anything about, particularly with the inner heads.
Which makes me wonder if it could, indeed, be
the chip since the cold didn't help nearly enough.
Cold wont necessarily allow a trace crack to conduct.
Its just worth trying because it doesnt
involve opening the sealed part of the drive.
It's a dry, dry day here if we have 50% humidity...
Yeah, I've lived in places like that too. Awful
summers. Much worse than here comfort wise.
The other big advantage with the very low humiditys is
that cheap to run air coolers work well, basically they
just draw the air thru pads of wet wood wool. Much
cheaper to run than full refrigerative air conditioning.
Texas has quite a range, actually. The gulf is
humid and sticky. Much like FL. Inland it dies out
Yeah, I meant the inland obviously,
what texas is known for weather wise.
I wonder if I can get anything else to have
an effect short of replacing the heads.
I'd try the cloning approach first myself.
I get the feeling maybe the compressed air
helped because it could have blown on the cable
I doubt any of that got thru the filter thats inside that hole.
and changed the contact it made ever so slightly
England isn't so bad a deal; a drive wouldn't cost THAT much to
ship and I'm not in a hurry, just so that it gets done some day.
Yeah, I couldnt find the post with a quick search using groups.google.
And I STILL cant find the damned thing. It was definitely in this group,
from someone in england, in 2003. Likely with a relevant subject.
He did have a bit of a grovel about posting at all, but there are so
many posts where the word spam appears that thats not much use.
Unfortunately it isnt even that easy to just go thru every post from
england this year. You could try that yourself if you're keen. 2K+ posts.
I would rather have someone who has the tools and
expertese tinker on it and get the data mirrored onto
a spare I could supply than trying to pull it apart myself,
if that option was at all available without paying $500
From memory he wanted about 100 UK pounds, might have been euros.
I wouldn't trust this drive as anything more than a paperweight,
ever again, even if it DID work afterwards. I just want my data.
And what, out of curiosity, would anyone else do?
It is possible to take the platters out, put them on
a fancy device that allows the platter to be spun
up and read with heads that are part of the device.
But you obviously aint gunna get that done cheaply.
Well, it doesn't work any better after being warmed up, which
probably isn't much less than 50C. However it's worth a shot.
Yeah, I'd try that route myself, automate the clone to
another drive, and see if the drive temperature makes
makes any difference, before attempting to open the drive.
If the crack on this cable would be visible, who knows...
I might be able to do SOMETHING to bridge it.
Yeah, wouldnt be that hard to just run a thin
wire in place of it as a temporary bodge up.
But not if I have no idea where it is.
It shouldnt be hard to work out which
trace is cracked by measuring it carefully.
Not a non trivial exercise tho because a multimeter
puts current thru something its measuring the resistance
of so you need to know what you are doing.
I'd personally just put a CRO on the individual connections
to the heads over that flexible connection. You should be
able to see the effect of a trace crack very quickly that way.
But wont have a cro and wont know
how to use one either most likely.
Geez... I hope not the winding.
Yeah, fortunately its much less likely
than a failed transistor with that drive.
