[Les.]

My pal emailed me with this link today.

An old guy (I know that feeling) does the very reflow on the graphics chip of a Samsung R70.

If I had a single adverse comment, I would suggest he was too liberal with his heat sink compound before re-assembly.

Les.

[Les.]

Yes, I did realise where you were coming from. It seemed to me that ONLY the picture settings and the “quality” control could help. All the other settings should not affect the “jumping” at all.The monitor itself chooses the settings (1920 X nnnn), and the prog fixes itself on that.

But another job on the back burner for a few days.

Thanks, Les.

[Les.]

Many years since I did a bios flash, used floppies back then, so I guess a “floppy CD” would be OK. It will boot thro to the start screen of a 8.04 Ubuntu CD.

However, I am pretty well persuaded by Edp’s link regarding the nvidea graphics chip. The point made seemed to be that it was a combination of location allowing overheating, and the graphics chip and CPU + one other are fairly close together under the same heat sink (copper thermal connectors).

It will stay on the back burner for a few days, digging, MGP, damsons to pick and jam to make, other things must wait.

Les.

[Les.]

No luck with the Crucial site. It does not know about Shuttle, and its scanning tool is a Windoze exe file, so no use here.

I will see what time I have to play tomorrow.

Cheers, Les.

[Les.]

I have been too busy to call in until now, you have all been busy. Just looked at your site bob, and after setting UK and GBP, there is stuff there I can afford to buy, and it may even work, but I can’t forget all those (possibly good) ones that would not when I checked them last December.

Edp, am I on the wrong track when recalling that I previously watched thro a lower definition monitor (I even used the VGA input of a TV for a while) whilst my new monitor defaults to 1920 X 1200 (?), and that becomes the only option with SimpleScreenRecorder?

The first screen shown in your link (JayCeeDee) showed a lower screen definition to mine, and as I said, it can not be changed in the setup screen.

Richard, I did understand what you were suggesting, it was just that the only prices seen were on Ebay, at eye watering prices, a bit like Bob’s purchases for his G’son I suspect. You know when it feels wrong, and Bob’s link feels acceptable. Half the MotoGP and F1 season left, so I will not give up on this lightly.

I will try out your suggestions Edp, maybe tomorrow afternoon whilst Tamara is out leaving me in peace, instead of down the drainage pit again. An old man of three score years and ten, and quite close to four score, should not be digging heavy clay at the bottom of a wet hole! But it is good fun long term.

Les.

[Les.]

Richard, I will have a look at the crucial site. I just suspect that any new RAM will be rather expensive (remember I am both TIGHT and an old man who remembers paying 3/6d for a new spark plug, so everything get subconsciously compared with that.

Dan, I have done that previously with one source of transmission which was only viewable in a small rectangle, and which could then be played back fullscreen. However, the current difficulty strictly applies to stuff viewed thro Kodi, and that is full screen and can not be shrunk or even minimised.

Unfortunately Sunday’s recording whilst I was out on the ‘bike dropped out as soon as I left, so I watched the highlights replay on Ch 5 (thro Kodi) on Tuesday night, but I did simultaneously record it to see how it worked. Some jumping, but with no other choice, viewable.

I will keep an eye out for some cheap ram on the off chance it does help improve playback.

Cheers, Les.

[Les.]

Very interesting. Probably too late to “claim off somebody”, but is it worth trying the re-flow route. That went thro my mind as a possible route on Monday, but no evidence to do more than think about it. Now it might be worth trying as an exercise, but certainly not because the laptop is really worth nothing. Scrap yard still beckons it.

Les

[Les.]

I must say I could not see that that would record both sound and video directly off the computer, but at any rate it is a Windoze prog, not Linux.

My likely problem with  Simplescreenrecorder is that either the defaults have changed, or I don’t know how to get the best settings. It also occurs to me that since last year, I have had a new monitor, which works on 1920 X 1200(?), whereas the old one was much lower definition. maybe that is the difficulty. I don’t know if increasing RAM would help, but the price rather frightens me off, even for used RAM. The only RAM that is affordable seems to be “Server” RAM, and I assume that is unsuitable. (£13 would get two 2GB sticks, rather than about £50).

Les.

[Les.]

Ed, not a linux problem, but graphical. It will display a normal Samsung slash screen, and a normal bios screen, but the gobbledegook appears as the very first text appearance, well before any OS loading takes place.

I did get a perfect Mint pre-boot screen, an at any rate, another attempt yesterday before we pulled it apart was with an Ubuntu 10.04 on CD rather than DVD which I think was flagging a bit. That would not load either, and it obviously would not be too new for the machine. Some things just need to be scrapped, in the absence of a replacement mother board.

Les.

[Les.]

Today we stripped this right down, concluded nothing was possible (hoping there might be plug in chips), knocked it a few times and reassembled it, (A real b***er to put back together).

Needless to say, exactly as before, so it will be returned with a “junk it” message. Pity.

Les.

[Les.]

I am now showing my “out of datedness” with regard to  “double sided” ram. I assume by that we mean similar chips on each side of the stick, notconnector strips on each side. Anyway they all have BOTH, so I guess that means all double sided.

I just looked at the spec from the original data provided. All they say is:-

Dual channel DDR2 533 / 667 / 800 / 1066.

2 Xs DIMM slots, 2GB per DIMM. (Max 4GB)

Interesting that it worked with a 4GB stick in one slot!

I just looked on Ebay, but the prices asked with the risk it wont work puts me off.

I will look again to see if some used stuff pops up.

Les.

[Les.]

I decided to do a bit of playing this morning, viewing a clip of the Honda at the Czech MotoGP. I dropped the frame rate to 25, and increased the “constant rate factor” to 30, and playback was very jumpy, but viewable. Next I put the frame rate back to 30fps, and again a bit jumpy, but then suddenly to grey screen with artefacts returned. Reset to 25fps, and viewable without the problem. Fingers crossed.

Is this simply a matter of not enough RAM. I have 1GB in each slot (2GB total). I had a couple of sticks from Dave last year, but it would not run with any of them. I tested a single 8GB stick for a pal, and that worked, but of course it went back to him. It seems very finnicky on what it will take. Here is what I tested back in December:-

2GB, DDR2-400 (OK in my PC) Mine From New

1 GB, 8500, 1066 (Fast corsair, “kills” my PC) Off Adrian

1024MB (1GB) DDR2-800 Will not run in my PC Off Dave R

2GB, PC 6400 Will not run in my PC Off Dave R

pc2-4200 533mhz 4gb (OK in my PC) Dave Ward

Suggestions please.

Les.

EDIT ERROR reported above, it was a 4gb not an 8GB that worked.

[Les.]

Sometimes it is better not to know too much. I may have mentioned previously that I build well in excess of one thousand computers, but somehow I never got my head around computer software.

By the middle of last week I decided to walk away from my little difficulty for a few days, whilst my brain recovered.

Saturday morning, I switched on the PC, only to be greeted by a linux prompt of some sort with the word INITRAMFS, or something similar. I quickly decided it was beyond me, so shut it down, got out the Cagiva, and went for my usual Saturday ride (in the rain for a change, first time for a couple of months I needed my leggings).

When I got home early afternoon, I sat and ate midday meal, listened to Radio 3, then faced it. I booted it up with the Linux install disc,  copied across from home (on the SSD) to my main backup drive the important hidden files (.thunderbird, .mozilla and .kodi).

I shut down, disconnected the backup drive and the main spinner. Boot up again with linux disc, click “Install” and let it do its stuff.

Once complete, shut down, plug spinner back in and was pretty well back to before the morning’s tantrums.

Apart from putting back the current Thunderbird and Mozilla, it was all OK.

Think how much I saved my poor head as compared with trying to find out what was wrong and why.

Les.

[Les.]

I carefully read thro the thread and other stuff last night and tried to get it all finished. When I tried to write to/etc/fstab, I was informed I did not have permission. Eventually, I threw in the towel for the night, an unsatisfactory conclusion to yet another birthday. (But I want a LOT more even if equally uneventful). I even used the birthday as an excuse (to myself) not to attend a funeral I had originally inked in.

I have left well alone today whilst working outside (underground ware supply problems), and will not go near for a few days to try to clear my head. Then I will systematically go thro it all, with plenty of screenshots. They can’t be easily screwed up. Never heard of pastebin, but may have a look.

Cheers, Les.

[Les.]

Silly error, the LAST line after “Les” should be at end of 6th line, but you all worked that out!

Les.

[Les.]

Yesterday I had some “private coaching” from D-Dan, so some progress made, but final step still to make. He wrote:-

First things first – there are system users as well as just you, so let’s just move all of /home. Unless you already did it, copy (with -a) /home/* to the big drive (with sudo)

if it will take a while to copy, just set it going, and then add: UUID=adc7188d-8052-4574-83ee-c383faf28db4 /home ext4 defaults,user_xattr,noatime,discard 0 0

However I get this:–

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use ‘blkid’ to print the universally unique identifier for a
# device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name devices
# that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
# / was on /dev/sda1 during installation
UUID=0d3eec39-c333-4589-aa4f-5b85a18b0365 / ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 1
/swapfile none swap sw 0 0
/dev/disk/by-uuid/adc7188d-8052-4574-83ee-c383faf28db4 /mnt/adc7188d-8052-4574-83ee-c383faf28db4 auto nosuid,nodev,nofail,x-gvfs-show 0 0
les@les-SN78S:/mnt/adc7188d-8052-4574-83ee-c383faf28db4$ blkid
/dev/sda1: UUID=”0d3eec39-c333-4589-aa4f-5b85a18b0365″ TYPE=”ext4″ PARTUUID=”51e1be8c-01″
/dev/sdb1: LABEL=”Data” UUID=”adc7188d-8052-4574-83ee-c383faf28db4″ TYPE=”ext4″ PARTUUID=”00088499-01″
les@les-SN78S:/mnt/adc7188d-8052-4574-83ee-c383faf28db4$ UUID=adc7188d-8052-4574-83ee-c383faf28db4 /home ext4 defaults,user_xattr,noatime,discard 0 0
bash: /home: Is a directory
les@les-SN78S:/mnt/adc7188d-8052-4574-83ee-c383faf28db4$

What am I doing wrong there?

Les.

to fstab, reboot (or issue a sudo mount -a command) and you should be good to go

[Les.]

OK, a number of things. When I saved that screenshot, it put it into “pictures” in the Home directory, not in Data. I must have done something wrong. Any ideas?

I have opened both Home and Data, made them both to show hidden, and taken another screenshot. Notice that dbus folder once more had refused to be copied to Data.

I can live with things for now, but it seems I am exactly where I was late December, except for an updated Op Sys. I have held back from opening my emails, the .thunderbird folder in home is just the “open and close” entry, but I need to see my own stuff soon.

Les.

[Les.]

I just “replied” but it has gon AWOL. I suspect I was logged out. It was written BEFORE seeing Dan’s last (confusing) message.

Anyway, I had already followed earlier advice:-

Open terminal in HOME

sudo blkid

which gave me the UUID.

Next, I opened terminal in Data:-

sudo cp -rav /home /adc7188d-8052-4574-83ee-c383faf28db4

where I watched everything being copied (would that just be directory entries, it seemed quick?)

It looked OK, so I made a link from Docs onto the desktop.

I attach a screenshot, then I will start another message.

Les.

[Les.]

Dan, you just beat me to it, so just to say Dave is right as usual.

I meant to say last night that without the DVD, it said “entering GRUB rescue, but without success.

Anyway, after a late night, I disconnected the spinner, and it booted up without the DVD. Next I reconnected the spinner and it again booted up without the DVD, so that is that sorted.

Thanks both. Now for the sorting out of the HOME problem.

I still need to mount the spinner after mint runs, so I will tackle that next. Should be straightforward after last December’s advice.

Les.

[Les.]

Now on second install, after screwing a few things.I suspect that inability to copy or move .dbus will not screw things up, but of course will probably be wrong. I managed to copy the UUID of my daat disc (spinner), and (maybe) of Home. When I tried to copy Home as Home.bak, it just made it a sub folder of Home, effectively screwing up the install (for me at any rate), hence the second install.

Dan, I think I need a bit more hand holding to get this right.

I will delete all those hidden files I copied across to Data, and copy the current ones. I assume they must be different at least because the sda and sdb are changed.

Les.

[Author]

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