Anyways, this is a post just to show some photos of my new speakers and write some initial thoughts. I don’t think I’m qualified to write a actual review for these speakers or any sort of audio equipment. As always, please excuse my crummy photos. I only have a not very new cellphone as my camera.

The SP2500 came in quite a large box.

For a 2.1 system, the SP2500 came in a surprisingly large and hefty box. It’s certainly not your average 2.1 computer speakers. The box has a black and blue color scheme and features a nice picture of the speaker set along with the specs and other notices.

The insides of the box were packed very nicely.

Inside the box, everything is neatly packaged and sectioned off with cardboard blocks. They probably did it this way to make the speaker easier to repackage. Too bad I had to get rid of the box to fit the speakers into my luggage.

The manuals and readings, none of which I bothered to read.

The left satellite speaker on the floor

The whole SP2500 package includes the two satellites, the subwoofer, the control pod, a manual, and all the audio cords and power cables needed to make the speakers work. The two satellites are normal sized (by computer speaker standards) and they share the black and blue color scheme of the box. The satellites come with little standoffs that allows you to point them slightly upwards or downwards. Since I’m placing the speakers on the floor, I tilted them upwards.

For a 2.1 PC set, the SP2500's subwoofer is massive.

In comparison to the satellites, the subwoofer is massive and hefty. The subwoofer is all black and has a panel of ports for all the connections on its back. All of the other parts of the speaker set plug into the back of the subwoofer. The setup was so easy that I didn’t need to look at the manual.

To shake the entire apartment, turn dial all the way clockwise.

The SP2500 is adjusted with the included control pod which connects to the subwoofer with what looks like a serial cable. The control pod features a small LCD screen, a scrolling button, the power button, and three other buttons to control the speaker set. Using the buttons and the screen, the user can adjust the volumes of the satellites and subwoofer (separately), adjust the input sources, and use any number of audio presets. The SP2500 has three inputs: red and white RCA connectors and an auxiliary (3.5mm TRS) jack on the back panel and an additional auxiliary jack on the control pod. The control pod also has 3.5mm headphone jack and a micro-USB connector for firmware upgrades.

The back panel with everything wired up

My improved TV setup including the Corsair SP2500 speakers

The SP2500 speakers set looks pretty nice and build quality seems solid. To test that the speakers work after I had connected them to the TV, I just turned on the TV to some random channel. Obviously there was no comparison between the TV’s tiny little speakers and the SP2500′s 232 Watts of power. The SP2500 sounds better, richer and louder by a wide margin. I’m no audiophile, and I don’t have another set to compare with, but the SP2500 sounded pretty nice to me. I didn’t turn the volume all the way up because I didn’t want to disturb the neighbors, but most reviews I’ve read said that the speakers can maintain sound quality even when cranked up to the max, and the big subwoofer produces pumping bass.

Overall, the Corsair SP2500 has given me some good first impressions. It’s not a 5.1 or 7.1 surround sound speakers that real home theater buffs would use, but it’s definitely a big improvement over the TV’s internal speakers. Best of all, I got the set for free, and that’s probably the best part of the story.

UPDATE:
I watched a movie on the TV and the SP2500 speaker set, and I was pretty pleased with the results. All the scenes with loud sounds and explosions had some kick to it thanks to the speakers. This might be more motivation for me to watch movies with the TV more often now.

The Autel Maxiscan MS300 OBD reader with manual and CD

The Autel Maxiscan MS300 came with a manual and a CD with a diagnostic trouble code library. The MS300 is a simple device with an attached OBD (OnBoard Diagnostics) connector, a two line display and only two buttons: Enter and Scroll. It’s not nearly as fancy as the code readers used by professional mechanics, but the MS300 can read codes, the Vehicle ID number (VIN), and other information. Most importantly for us, the MS300 can clear the trouble codes and thus turn off the check engine light.

After receiving the MS300 in the mail, I first tried the device on my 2006 Mercedes ML350. My car didn’t have any problems at the moment, but I wanted to check the other functions of the reader. The MS300 is powered by the OBD port, and thus the device turns on once it’s plugged into the port.

MS300 when first plugged into the OBD port

To use the device, I have turn my car’s ignition to the “ON” position without starting the engine. After that, I pressed the “Enter” button on the MS300 and it started to scan for information. Once the scan is done, the reader told me how many error codes were there (0 in my case) and displays the menu as shown below.

MS300 Main Menu

There are five items in the menu: DTC Code, Erase, I/M Status, VIN, and Rescan. DTC Code displays any trouble codes in the car’s computer; erase clears the trouble codes and turns off the check engine light; I/M Status displays some inspection/emissions info; VIN reads the vehicles’s ID number; and rescan gets the reader to scan for information again. I tried the I/M and VIN functions on my car and both worked.

One of the screens under the I/M Status menu item.

I brought the reader back home in winter vacation and used it on my father’s 2000 Toyota Echo which had the check engine light on. The MS300 worked as well on the Echo and read the error codes. We know what the error code was and cleared it using the MS300. Hopefully the check engine light doesn’t come back any time soon, but if it does at least we have some idea of what the problem is before my dad has to fix the car. Overall, the Maxiscan MS300 worked as advertised and was easy to use, and that in my eyes makes it a decent purchase.

The front of the nuvi 1490LMT

Ever since I’ve bought my car in March of this year, I have been looking to purchase an automotive GPS unit since my car didn’t have navigation. I usually drive locally and know my way around, but a GPS is nice thing to have when I go on a long road trip. When my parents and I drove to Washington DC in May, we borrowed a GPS from a relative. The GPS was a really basic 3 inch unit with outdated maps, but still it was pretty useful and we didn’t miss too many freeway exits or go the wrong way for 30 miles.

For my own GPS, I wanted a unit with a larger screen and better features than the unit we used on the trip though. I did research online and also checked out products at the local electronic stores, and I decided that I wanted to get a 5 inch Garmin unit with lifetime map updates. The common sizes for car GPS units are 3 inch, 4.3 inch wide screen, and 5 inch wide screen. After looking at the units in the store, I thought 4.3 inch was a little small, so I am going with 5 inch units. As for the brand, my conclusion from looking online was that Garmin is the best overall GPS brand. Garmin has a price premium over Tomtom or Magellan units of comparable size and features, but I am willing to pay the extra 10-20 bucks to get a better overall user experience. As for features, I don’t really care about traffic updates, but I thought lifetime map updates is nice feature to have. Lastly, I was willing to spend up to $150 for the GPS, but I wouldn’t mind paying less.

Since I had no immediate need for the GPS, I waited until Thanksgiving/Black Friday to see if I can score a good deal. There were plenty of models on sale, but I didn’t see any doorbuster type of deals on a 5 inch Garmin with lifetime maps. There was a good deal on the new nuvi 50LM which would fit all my needs… except it didn’t include maps to Canada. I’m from Canada and will probably drive up there sooner or later, so I want Canadian maps. In the end, I ponied up a little more cash and bought a Garmin nuvi 1490LMT. The 1490LMT has the 5 inch screen and lifetime maps plus lifetime traffic, Bluetooth hands free calling and a host of other features, so it definitely fit the bill.

The back side of the 1490LMT. The only thing of interest is the mini-USB connector.

The 1490LMT came with the mounting bracket, the window suction cup mount, a sticky dashboard mounting disk, a short USB cable, the car charger (with traffic receiver), and a bunch of small pamphlets about various things. What’s not included in the box are a manual and a software CD. Any software used to update maps has to be downloaded from Garmin’s website, which I suppose is the way to go in the age of internet. The 1490 series all have a black outer casing which looks nice and well made. There isn’t much else to say about the design since most auto GPS units have the same general shape. The power switch is on the top; the microSD slot is on the right, and the mini-USB data/power plug is on the back. On a side note, you’ll have to excuse the crummy photos since I only have a cellphone to take photos with.

A case to store my GPS when it's not being used

Along with the 1490LMT itself, I also picked up a case for storing the GPS and a dashboard friction mount. The one thing I remember from experience is that window suction cup mounting can be a bit of a pain especially when the GPS isn’t carefully mounted and falls off. So instead, I bought a “sandbag” type dashboard mount that just uses weight and friction to stay on the dashboard and keep the GPS from moving all over the place. The mount has a nice heft to it as expected, and the center of the mount has a smooth surface to attach the Garmin suction cup arm.

The friction mount, with the nuvi's suction cup arm and bracket attached

The 1490LMT attached to the friction dashboard mount

After opening up my new GPS, the first thing I tried to do is update the unit’s software and maps. Registering the product at Garmin’s website was pretty easy, but updating maps is a different matter. First of all, Garmin has a bunch of software programs for updating maps and firmware on the unit, and since the GPS didn’t come with a manual, it took a little while to find out which programs I needed. The second issue lies with the nuvi 1xxx units. Soon after I placed my order, and I looked through customer reviews and found out that people had trouble updating their maps. The issue was that the 1xxx units only have 2GB of onboard memory. Garmin’s maps have grown over time, and now you can’t fit the North American (USA + Canada) maps onto the onboard memory. The workaround for this issue is to split the map and install part of the map onto a microSD card. It was a good thing I found out about this issue early, and so I added an 8GB microSD memory card to my order.

The way to split the maps between the onboard memory and microSD card is to first download and install Garmin’s maps onto the computer, and this can be done with Garmin’s Lifetime Map Updater or the standalone Garmin Map Updater executable. After that is done, the user can then use MapInstall to manually split the North American maps and install them onto the unit and the microSD card. I mostly followed the instructions found in this forum thread, and so the way I did it was that I used MapInstall to install Canada and Alaska onto the memory card, and then use Lifetime Updater to install the lower 49 states into the 1490LMT’s onboard memory. It took me a while to figure out that MapInstall only works when the maps are installed on the computer, but after that it was pretty straight forward. I also downloaded the full Junction View file of the map update and placed it on my microSD card (in the /garmin/JCV/ directory). The 1490LMT has support for the Junction View feature, but it only comes with a cut down version of the file by default due to the lack of memory. There is no reason not to get the full file though now that I have extra storage in the microSD card.

My new GPS on the dashboard of my car.

After doing all the software updates, it was time to bring my new GPS out for a drive. I brought it along on a routine trip to the supermarket, and the 1490LMT worked as expected. The unit calculated the correct route without too much hassle and all the functions seems to be working. The trip involved a little bit of Interstate freeway driving, and several Junction Views appeared during the Interstate segments. I like the large 5 inch screen, and it was readable even under sunlight. The turn by turn voice instructions worked fine, although I thought that the voice sometimes sounded a little garbled. There were no weird problems during the drive, although the unit did unexpectedly shut down once when I was playing around with it at home. The dashboard mount also worked fine and the GPS didn’t move when I was driving, although I didn’t do any sudden maneuvers that would put the mount to the test. I also tested out the Bluetooth, hands-free calling feature of the 1490, and I was able to sync my phone up to the GPS without problems and make/receive calls.

Overall, my first impressions Garmin nuvi 1490LMT are pretty good. However, I only went on some short, local drives, and so it remains to be seen how the GPS will perform on a longer trip. I probably won’t be using the GPS for driving to places that I go to often, but the unit will certainly be useful for a road trip. Hopefully my new GPS won’t suffer any problems and will work for years to come.

A bit of unimportant history: I built the Athlon XP desktop six year ago and I’ve used it until four-five months ago when I left home for grad school. I bought myself a new laptop, and the old PC was passed down to my mother who was using an even older Compaq that was terribly slow because it didn’t have enough memory. My desktop was old, but it had 1GB of RAM and was fine for web surfing, word processing, and even Photoshopping, so giving it to my mother would hopefully save us from having to buy another new computer.

So after I left for grad school, the PC worked fine for about a month, but then it started acting up. The symptom was sometimes when turning on the computer, the fans would spin and the lights would light up, but there would be no beep and no image on screen. After attempting to turn it on several times, the PC would boot. The symptoms kept getting worse until one day the computer just wouldn’t boot no matter how many tries. My mom needed a computer to use, so my parents bought a new desktop, but they kept the old PC around so I can take a look at it when I returned for vacation. If I can fix the computer, my parents can keep it as a backup machine or for guests to use. If I can’t, well it’s a six year old computer so it has served its purpose.

Starting the repair process, I tried turning on the desktop for the first time, and as my parent indicated the fans and lights powered up, but there are no beeps and no image on screen. No beeps during boot probably indicates a hardware problem. I was suspecting either the motherboard or the video card, and my guess was probably some bad capacitors. Both motherboard and video card were bought six years ago, and those were the days when computer parts were built using bad capacitors. Besides that fact, capacitors are also the only thing I know how to replace right now. I checked the motherboard for bulging, leaking, or exploded capacitors, but all of them seemed fine with flat tops. I then removed the video card for inspection, and lo and behold four capacitors were bulging with one of them having leaked a little bit of brown substance. Just to make sure that the motherboard was okay, I turned on the computer without the video card, and as expected the computer did the annoying long beeps that indicated that the video card was missing. I couldn’t say for sure if the capacitors were the only things wrong with the computer, but I knew they were causing some problems given the state they were in.

One of the bad capacitors. You can see some brown coloring on the top.

With one problem identified, it was time to collect the parts. The four bad capacitors were all 6.3V, 1500uF units. Unlike my LCD monitor repair, I didn’t have this kind of capacitors on hand, so I had to spend money to buy them. There is no guarantee that replacing the capacitors would fix the computer, but these capacitors are cheap so it was worth a shot. It’s better than spending $40 to buy a new (but obsolete) AGP video card for a computer that’s probably worth less than $40 these days. I bought five new capacitors from a local electronic parts store for about $4. I only needed four, but bought one extra just in case of any screw ups on my part.

The new and old capacitors side by side. You can see the new capacitor on the right is much taller.

With the parts ready, it was time to bring out my $10 soldering iron to do the job. The circuit board of a video card is supposed more delicate than the inverter board in a LCD monitor, but since the video card is so old it’s not worth getting a better soldering iron. The capacitors weren’t too small and they were far away from other components, so I didn’t really need a fine tip. Removing the old broken capacitors was probably the hardest part. I removed them by heating the holes from the underside of the board and wiggling the capacitors. As each capacitors has two leads, I heat one hole, wiggle the capacitor a bit, then heat the other hole and wiggle the capacitor out a bit more, and then repeat until the capacitor was out. It took a while to remove all four capacitors, but eventually they all came out.

The video card after I replaced three of the capacitors (the tall ones on the right). There was one more to go above the lone capacitor on the left.

The solder joints one of the capacitors (circled in green). You can tell that I worked on it due to the minor burn marks around the joints.

It was now time to put the new capacitors back in. The new capacitors are much taller than the old capacitors, but the width and spacing between the leads are the same, so they fit right in back into the holes in the circuit board. I clipped the leads first and then try to solder them back in. Putting new capacitors in is the exact opposite of removing old capacitors: heat the holes and wiggle the leads into the holes. I didn’t even have to use extra solder because the holes still had plenty of solder in them, and putting the capacitors back in took less time than pulling them out. As always with electrolytic capacitors, I had to make sure that I lined up the polarities correctly. The stripped side of the capacitor is always the negative terminal.

The video card with all four bad capacitors replaced.

Now that the capacitors have been replaced, it was time put the video card back in and try to boot the computer up. I pressed the power button, and the computer gave the long beeps indicating no video card. I wiggled the video card a bit, but got the same result. Unwilling to give up just yet, I replugged the video card, and this time the computer booted up as normal, and the screen had an image. I used the computer for a little bit and it seemed to be fine, so it looks like the problem is solved.

My old Athlon XP desktop working and displaying once again.

Despite my shaky hands and cheap equipment, I have another successful repair under the belt. Compared to the LCD back light repair, I had to replace more capacitors to fix the video card, but accessing the video card was a lot easier than accessing the inverter board of the LCD. I’m glad to have fixed the computer, and hopefully the repair will extend the life of the desktop for a few more years. The PC has misbehaved several times on me and my family, but it is the first computer I’ve ever built and I’ve used it for six years, so there is a little bit of an emotional attachment. If we can make it run and find a use for it, it’s better than sending it to recycling. Thanks for reading.

My new TV, with the antenna at the lower left corner of the photo.

I finally bought a TV for my apartment during Black Friday. Before that I lived without a TV for three months, which is longest period I’ve gone without a TV in recent memory. I had internet so in principle I can get any news I want, but I wanted to watch some local news so I decided to buy a TV. I ended up buying the TCL brand 32 inch LCD from Amazon.com on Black Friday. It was on sale for $250 (and had free shipping), which was pretty good for a non brand name 32 inch. There were cheaper 32 inch sets on sale that day, but I’d have to go line up early morning in the cold, which I decided wasn’t worth it. As long as the TV is reliable and looks okay, I don’t really care about brand names and rather save a few bucks.

After the TV arrived, I had to buy an antenna to receive the channels because I didn’t feel like spending 30+ bucks a month paying for cable. The good thing about the US is that most local stations have switched to digital broadcasts, and many of them broadcast in high definition so supposedly you can get a pretty good picture with an old-school antenna. The last time I remember using an antenna for TV was probably around 15 years ago, so it’s kind of like going back in time haha. Anyways, the first antenna I tried was a Phillips SDV2210 which was $10. The antenna is just a basic rabbit ear plus loop. I tried it with my TV and got around 15 channels. Out of the major networks, I can get NBC, ABC, PBS, and CW loud and clear in HD, but the results weren’t as good for the other networks. I couldn’t get CBS or Fox at all, and the reception for MyNetworkTV wasn’t great.

I wanted to see if I can get better reception with another antenna, so I went out and bought a Phillips SDV6122 amplified antenna for around $30. With this antenna, I can finally receive Fox and can get clear reception for MyNetwork TV, but both of these stations are finicky. I had to move the antenna around the TV for quite a bit to find a location where I can get good reception for both stations, and now I kind of know how people fiddled with their rabbit ears in the old days before cable/satellite became prevalent. I still can’t get the local CBS affiliate on their own channel, but that’s because they are on a VHF channel which I heard can be hard to receive, and CBS was carried on another UHF channel which I do get. I’m happy that I can watch all the major networks, so I’m probably going to stick with the SDV6122. Even though I’ll still be on my computer longer than I watch TV, it’s good to be able to watch some local news and also sports, movies and other shows once in a while, and better yet a lot of the shows are in HD. Hopefully my new TV and antenna will stay problem-free for years to come.

The T410 opened and ready to work.

Let’s start off with the specs:

Lenovo ThinkPad T410

• Intel Core i5 540M dual-core processor at 2.53GHz (up to 2.93GHz in Turbo)
• 4GB 1333MHz DDR3 RAM with 1 open slot (8GB max)
• 500GB 7200rpm hard disk
• Nvidia NVS 3100m graphics card with 512MB memory
• 14″ 1440×900 LED back lit display
• Dual Layer DVDRW
• Intel 6300 a/b/g/n integrated wireless networking
• Gigabit Ethernet
• 56K modem
• Bluetooth
• Ports: 4 USB 2.0 (1 powered), Firewire, eSATA, VGA, DisplayPort, headphones jack, ExpressCard slot
• Multi-card reader
• Integrated web cam and microphone
• Fingerprint reader
• Ultranav TouchPad and TrackPoint
• 9 cell Li-ion battery
• 4 years manufacturer’s warranty and accident protection

T410 with its lid closed.

The lid of the T410. When closed, there are only two lights: one to indicate the laptop is plugged into the wall and the other to indicate that the laptop is sleeping.

It’s a pretty nice package. The hardware is not top of the line, but it’s above average for a current generation laptop and should be more than enough for my needs.  I can always upgrade the RAM to 8 gigs if I ever feel the need to. The 9-cell should provide ample battery life if I ever need to work on the go, and the four year’s warranty and protection plan should cover most if not all of my years as a grad student. This package isn’t cheap though. I probably could have bought a laptop with considerably faster hardware for the same price, but the build quality and warranty coverage might not be as good.

Bottom of the T410, showing the battery and panels that hide some user-replaceable hardware (RAM etc.)

After using the T410 for a few weeks, my experience has been positive so far. I like the look of the machine. The all black matte chassis doesn’t stand out, but it’s a solid, all-business look. Solid is also the word to describe the build quality, since this thing just feels rigid. This computer can probably take some bumps without much damage, but of course I have no plans to let my new laptop bang around. As a 14 inch laptop weighing in somewhere between 5 and 6 pounds, the T410 is not too bad carry around. There is definitely some weight to this machine, but it’s not too heavy if I put it in the backpack. I mostly take the public transportation to school, so I probably don’t have to carry the laptop very far on most days.

The front of the T410. Towards the right there is the opening mechanism for the lid and then the card reader.

Left side of the T410, wich the VGA, Ethernet, DisplayPort and 3 USB ports.

My T410 has a 14 inch 1440×900 LED back lit display. Before buying the laptop I was wondering if 14inch would be too small since I’m used to desktop displays, but I found the T410′s display to be quite usable. The text isn’t too small, and there is still a decent amount of pixels. I’ve used a 1680×1050 display on a 14-15 inch laptop before and found the text to be too small, so looks like 1440×900 is the right resolution for me.

The T410's Keyboard

Moving onto the input devices, the T410′s keyboard is pretty good for the most part. The keys feels nice and the keyboard isn’t too small. The only complaint I have for the keyboard is the function key in the lower left corner. There are times when I want to use the left Ctrl key and ends up hitting that Fn key instead. The T410′s TrackPad has a slightly dimpled surface and support for some basic multi-touch gestures, and of course there is the famous ThinkPad TrackPoint, but most of the time I just plug a mouse in so I don’t use the TrackPad or TrackPoint much.

The rear side of the T410, showing the phone jack, the 9-cell battery and power plug.

The right side of the T410, with the ExpressCard, eSATA, DVD writer, powered USB and Firewire ports.

My T410 came with Windows 7 64bit installed. This is first time I’ve used a Windows 7 machine, and I like what Microsoft has done at least in the visual department. The task bar grouping is pretty neat and helps keep the bar from cluttering up. Most of the common functionality isn’t too different from XP and Vista though, and that’s good since I don’t have to learn much to get started. I haven’t used Lenovo’s pre-installed management software much yet (other than turning off Bluetooth), so there isn’t much I can say about that.

That’s all I have to say for this post. Thanks for reading.

Update:
After a month or so of usage, the LCD’s backlight died. I don’t think I’ve abused my laptop and I thought ThinkPads were supposed to be solid, but apparently mine’s backlight decided to quit. Good thing I bought mine from my university so I have an identical loaner machine while mine is being repaired.

Update 2:
I got my laptop back and technician told me that only the video connector was reseated, which meant the internal video connector was probably loose. So nothing was really broken, but the fact that the video connector became loose after a month is a bit concerning. Hopefully my laptop will behave from now on.

Update 3:
Same issue happened again around a month after the first fix. Brought it back to the repair shop and got the same fix. Hopefully this doesn’t become a recurring problem.

A few months ago, the 5 year old 17 inch Norcent LCD in my home started acting strangely. Pushing the power button will cause the monitor to light up for a split second then it’ll go dim. In the first few days, the monitor will eventually stay lit after turning it on or off many times and it would work for the day, but we had repeat the process the next day and things progressively got worse. I did some research online, and in particular I found this very handy article. The symptoms or my monitor are consistent with a back light problem, and this seems to be common problem with LCD monitors. I confirmed the problem by shining a light onto the monitor after it went dark. The monitor was displaying the signal, but there was no back light. The cause of the problem can be a faulty back light bulb or inverter board, and if it’s the inverter board the likely cause is bad capacitor(s). Given that our LCD was 5 years old and made by a bottom-tier manufacturer, I wouldn’t be surprised if the problem was just some bad capacitors so I decided to try and repair the monitor. After all, I am an electrical engineering student, and although electronics is not my specialty, I have soldered before and this sounded like an easy repair. My family bought a new monitor to use, but we kept the old monitor around until I had time to deal with it.

The old Norcent LM730, ready to be taken apart.

These four screws secures the stand to the monitor. It took me 40 minutes to figure out that they are there.

To repair a LCD monitor, first your have to open it up by removing the stand and back cover. It’s recommended to do the dis-assembly on a soft surface so that there’s less chance of damaging the screen. The back cover is often clipped into the front with plastic clips and secured using screws. The Norcent I was dealing with had four screws on the corners that was visible. I removed the four screws and tried to pry the monitor open with a flat blade screw driver (not recommended if you don’t want to scratch the outer casing, but I didn’t care since this was an old monitor) and spent 40 minutes at it, but something was holding down the back cover near the bottom. Eventually, I discovered that the stand was also fastened into the LCD by four screws, but these screws are hidden underneath two plastic covers that had to be removed. I was feeling pretty stupid at the moment, but I continued on, removed the four screws and took off the back cover. The lesson here is that to make sure you remove all the screws before trying to pry open the back cover.

After much effort, I finally popped off the back cover to reveal the protective casing and all the goodies inside.

Removing the back cover reveals a protective metal casing sitting over the circuit boards of the LCD. For my monitor, the protective casing can be removed by releasing two screws on the left and then sliding the cover to the right. However, removing the casing proved to be more complicated than that as two connectors when through the casing at the bottom. The wider connectors is for the front panel controls, while the narrow black connector is for the speakers. The wide connector was relatively easy to remove, by the speaker connector took a lot of fidgeting mainly because the socket on the circuit board was loose, and therefore I dare not pull too hard on it. It took me about 10 minutes to unplug the cables and remove the casing.

The Power/Inverter board removed from the rest of the monitor.

With the protective casing gone, I got a good look at the two main circuit boards of the monitor. The larger yellow board on the left is the power supply and back light inverter board, and the green board on the right is the Analog to Digital converter. At this point, it was time to inspect the circuit board and components for any abnormalities. For radial electrolytic capacitors (the tall cylindrical objects in the picture), the tops should be flat and nothing should be leaking out of the capacitors. From my inspection, I found one capacitor on the power/inverter board that had a bulging top, and I assumed that was the troublemaker as everything else looks fine.

Found the culprit. The bad capacitor is the one with the black marking on top.

The bad capacitor was a 16V 1000uF radial capacitor. If you don’t have any capacitors on hand, you can buy some from local electronic stores (those that cater to hobbyists) or from online sources. Luckily for me, I actually had some capacitors left over from my undergrad electronic labs, and in my collection was a 1000uF capacitor rated at 50V. The voltage rating of a capacitor is the maximum voltage the capacitor can be used under, so in many cases it’s okay to replace a capacitor with another one with a higher voltage rating, provided they have the same capacitance. The 50V replacement capacitor was a fair bit taller than the broken 16V, but it looked like it would still fit under the protective cover, and the good thing was that the two capacitor had the same spacing between their terminals. That means I only had to straighten the wires on the replacement and it should plug right back in.

To remove the bad capacitor, first I had to remove the circuit board so I can access its underside. The power/inverter board was fastened to the front monitor by several screws which were easily removed. There were also a couple of connectors to the back light that have to be disconnected, and it’s important to note down the orientation and location of the connectors. It’s also important to keep track of all the screws that have been removed.

At that moment, I suddenly realized that I didn’t have any soldering tools at home, so I went to a local hardware store and bought a $10 soldering iron and $4 worth of rosin core thin solder. A $10 soldering iron probably won’t be too reliable, but I didn’t want to spend too much money on this repair. The soldering iron worked well enough though, although it does take a bit of time to heat up.

The two capacitors: the smaller one on the right is the bad one, while the larger one on the left is the replacement.

Back to the task at hand, removing the bad capacitor is a pretty straight forward job. All I had to do is used the soldering iron to heat up the solder on the underside of the board and wiggle the bad capacitor out on the topside. This is much easier to do if you have something to hold the circuit board in a vertical position. Since this particular capacitor wasn’t located closely to any other component, I didn’t even need to use any solder sucker or solder wick. After the bad capacitor was removed, I put in the replacement which slid right in as the two capacitors have the same distance between terminals. The board clearly indicates which side is positive and which side is negative, but it’s always important remember which way the capacitor should go in as electrolytic capacitors can blow up if inserted in the wrong direction. The striped side of the capacitor is always the negative terminal. Resoldering the capacitor was pretty easy as well; I just melted a dab of solder onto each wire and let it form the bond with the board. I then snipped off the extra wire from the terminals of the replacement capacitor and that’s all for the soldering.

The replacement capacitor soldered back on to the board.

The repair board mounted back into the monitor.

All that was left to do now was to reassemble the monitor and test it. Having learned from my mistakes during dis-assembly, I took much less time to reassemble the monitor. All I had to do now is to test if my hard work had actually fixed problem. First I just plugged the monitor into the wall plug and turned it on to see if smoke will come out. Thankfully, nothing of the sort happened, and the “no signal” message displayed on the screen and it was clear that the back light was working. I then connected the monitor to my computer, and the screen displayed without any problems. The monitor was fine once again and all it took was $15 worth of equipment and a bit of elbow grease.

The old Norcent LM730 is displaying once again! In case you are wondering, I drew the picture displayed on the monitor.

Looking back at the process, taking apart the monitor was definitely the hardest part of the job. That was mostly because I was unfamiliar with the monitor’s construction and I was also being dumb. The soldering part was quite easy by comparison. Despite having shaky hands, I managed to complete the job without any problems. Then again, I did spend a couple months doing hardware testing in a co-op job and the kind of soldering I had to do there was much more difficult than this job (I got my work done, but killed a lot of test boards in the process ). Overall, replacing a capacitor in a LCD monitor is pretty simple repair that almost anybody can do with a little bit of research and equipment. I hope this post will be some help to people facing a similar problem. Thanks for reading.

Since I’ll be going abroad to study and won’t be bringing my own computer, I need some way to take my files with me and that means buying an external hard drive. I don’t have that many files, so any of the external hard drives that’s on the market today would be fine in terms of capacity. The main factors I considered was price, physical size, interface, and other features. After weighing the pros and cons, I decided to get a 2.5″ drive instead of the 3.5″ ones. 3.5″ drives have much better cost/GB, but they are heavier and need a separate plug while many 2.5″ can be powered by the USB connection. Interface-wise, the majority of external hard drives these days are USB 2.0. There are some that use eSATA, Firewire, or USB 3.0 which are all faster but are less common. For me, USB 2.0 is the most convenient, but I wouldn’t mind anything extra. Feature-wise, I want the drive to come with backup software so I can use the drive to backup my files.

With this set of criteria, I started doing research and found that many manufacturers have products that fit the bill. At that point, all it came down to was price, and I ended up buying the Seagate because it was on sale. My budget was under ~$100 Cdn, and so I bought the 500GB model which sold for about $90 before tax.

The box for the GoFlex 500GB. Sorry for the blurry photo. The pic was taken with my cellphone cam which doesn't have very good image stablization.

The back of the GoFlex box, with the stats in no less than four languages.

The GoFlex came in a average-looking small box with a picture of the product in front and the usual descriptions and stats on the sides and back. The packaging is certainly not Apple-quality, but it’ll suffice.

The three pieces of hardware: the drive (left), the USB 2.0 interface adapter (top right), and the USB cable (bottom right).

Inside, plastic packaging held three pieces of hardware along with a quick-setup guide and the warranty info. There is no driver/software CD, as all of the software is loaded into the drive. The three pieces of hardware in the box are the hard drive, a one foot long USB 2.0 cable (male mini USB to male type A) and the USB 2.0 interface adapter. All the hardware is colored black to match and the drive and adapter have glossy plastic on the top and sides. The interface adapter has two white lights on the top. The glossy surface gives the device a shiny and sophisticated look when new, but the black color and glossy surface means that the drive is a dust and fingerprint magnet. The look is not a big deal for me though.

The GoFlex series differentiates itself from the competition by having upgradable interfaces, and by default the drives are packed with the USB 2.0 kit. For $20-30, one can buy the adapter kits for eSATA, Firewire 800, or USB 3.0 and swap out the USB 2.0 interface. By inspecting the back end of the hard drive, you can see that the drive itself has a standard SATA interface, and the adapters just bridge that to another interface. I might think about upgrading the interface in the future, but for now USB 2.0 is all I need.

Everything assembled and ready to go.

The GoFlex connected to my PC.

Installing the drive was very easy. Just plug in the interface adapter into the back end of the hard drive and plug the cable into the mini-USB plug on the adapter. After that, connect the cable to the computer and the computer should automatically detect the drive as a mass-storage device. The software on the drive will then launch and prompt you to register the product and install the software. The main control/administration software is called Seagate Dashboard, but the backup utility is actually provided by Memeo. I have used Memeo’s backup software before (from a Buffalo LinkStation) and found it to be a decent program, so it’s good that the GoFlex comes bundled with it. However, the Memeo Instant Backup software is a little limited in terms of which folders it can back up, and I guess the point is to encourage people to buy the Premium Backup software. The Instant Backup software is enough for me though. The installer can also install trial versions of other Memeo programs, but I only needed the backup software.

The GoFlex shows up as a new disk drive when connected.

The drive comes with these files already loaded.

The registration interface.

Installing the software for the GoFlex. The drive comes with a full version of Memeo Instant Backup, but all the rest are trial versions.

The Seagate Dashboard adminstration interface.

The settings window from the Seagate Dashboard software.

So far, I’ve transferred some files onto the GoFlex and it seems to be reasonably fast. I don’t have any numbers, but the hard drive is definitely faster than the no-name 1GB USB key that I use. I love how small and light the drive is and that it doesn’t need a all plug. The possibly of upgrading the interface is a nice bonus too. Hopefully this drive will last for the next few years as I use it to transport and backup my files. Thanks for reading.

The move to the new host was pretty straight forward. I initiated the domain transfer process which took about a day, and during that time I transferred all my files over and set up the subdomains. Out of all of my websites, the only one that had any issues was this website. First of all, my new host uses the industry standard Cpanel which for some reason cannot point the default domain (tonyjiang.com or www.tonyjiang.com) to a subfolder within the public_html directory, so this WordPress blog didn’t work when I uploaded it as in a folder into public_html. Once I got that sorted out by uploading the WordPress files into public_html, I was met with the infamous White Screen of Death when I tried to access the admin panel. After searching on the web, I disabled all my plug-ins by renaming the plugins directory within WordPress, and my admin panel came back. After some troubleshooting, it seems that WP-Spamfree was the culprit, which is strange since I didn’t have problems with this plug-in on my old host. I killed that plug-in, but that wasn’t the end of my troubles. Afterwards, I tried to find a new anti-spam plug-in, but that caused WordPress to run into my host’s 32MB PHP memory limit. I didn’t want to delete any of my plug-ins, so I sent a support ticket to my new host, and thankfully they promptly replied by increasing the memory limit and everything was alright again.

I have settled into my new host, and everything looks okay so far. Hopefully my decision to move won’t come back and bite me in the behind. Since my websites receive little traffic, bandwidth and server load shouldn’t pose problems. Hopefully there will be no major downtimes or trouble with the host. Now that tonyjiang.com has found a new home, I’ll probably start working on some of my other websites.

WordPress Tidbits

It’s been a week since I converted this website to WordPress. I have continued to play around with the website, changing some minor details here and there. The most significant change in terms of the design since a week ago is the addition of random backgrounds. I only have three backgrounds thus far, but more will be added to list as I accumulate more photos and artwork. Once I have enough backgrounds, I’ll modify the script so that different months of the year will have a different set of backgrounds so that this blog will always match up with the seasons. Other than the backgrounds, the top menus have been made semi-transparent, but that’s just a tiny change.

Moving on to features of the sites, I have installed a quicktags and smilies bar plug-in to the comment form, so visitors will have an easier formatting comments to their hearts’ content. Hopefully that will encourage some comments, as this site hasn’t received a non-spam comment for a while. I did have to try out a few quicktag/smilies plug-in before I found one that worked out of the box, but once I found the one it was smooth sailing from there.

For the most part, WordPress and all of plug-ins I’ve installed are well-behaved with the notable exception of WP-Postviews, which is used to keep track of how many times a post has been viewed. For some odd reason, WP-Postviews would only count hits from logged-in users (ex me) and not guests even when I set the plug-in to track everyone. The plug-in wouldn’t count anything when I set it to count only guests. After experimenting with the code, I discovered that the $post global variable within the counting function did not return the correct post ID number when a guest loaded a post. The original first few lines of process_postviews() is shown below:

### Function: Calculate Post Views
add_action('wp_head', 'process_postviews');
function process_postviews() {
global $user_ID, $post;
if(!wp_is_post_revision($post)) {
if(is_single() || is_page()) {
$id = intval($post->ID);
$views_options = get_option('views_options');
$post_views = get_post_custom($id);
$post_views = intval($post_views['views'][0]);

In order to get the plug-in to count guest hits, I had to switch to use $wp_query and extract the post ID from there. The modified function is shown below:

### Function: Calculate Post Views
add_action('wp_head', 'process_postviews');
function process_postviews() {
global $user_ID, $wp_query;
if(!wp_is_post_revision($wp_query->post)) {
if(is_single() || is_page()) {
$id = intval($wp_query->post->ID);
$views_options = get_option('views_options');
$post_views = get_post_custom($id);
$post_views = intval($post_views['views'][0]);

I don’t know the reason why the original function didn’t work on my website. I’m guessing it has something to do with the templates of the theme, but now that I have the plug-in working I’m too lazy to investigate.

Artwork

Below is my newest Photoshop artwork. I liked how the grassy knoll and dandelions turned out, but the two kids look like cardboard cutouts. Time to work on my people-drawing skills.

Happy New Year!

Another year has gone by, and along with it another decade as well. 2009 went really quickly for me. I spent eight months working as an intern and four months in school, and time just flashed by. 2010 will be a really important year for me. It will be the year when I finally earn my bachelors degree and (hopefully) it’ll also be the year when I start graduate school. It’ll be a busy year that’s for sure, but I think I’m ready for it. I wish all of you (the 5 random people who read this blog) a Happy 2010 and good luck in the new year. I’ll definitely need some of that luck too