Day Thirty-four: evening of September 4th 2009

A good portion of the morning was spent assembling a laser printer cart, about three hours from box opening to rolling the completed cart into place. My low tech complaint was the, not the directions, but the construction materials. The phillips screws and the locking cylinders seemed unable to stand up to the torque of the ratchet screw driver. I know that I can’t over drive the screw and I can feel the upper limits of pressure approaching. The failure was not consistent, and I wonder what the inspection process was like.

After that, my wife needed some supplies and equipment ordered. The most interesting search was for a cable to attach a 17” flat screen monitor to her labs xserver. I even took a photo of the pin set up of the monitor. Armed with that image and being able to see the styling of the monitor, I hit the internet through Google. In less than ten minutes, I found a photo of the monitor and that the cable mounts was an ADC type. There are two video in ports on the server. One is a standard female VGA receptacle, and the other is a female mini DVI. In my wife’s video adapter drawer, I found a number of different connection combinations. This is where the search for the correct cable became interesting. I had to find an adapter that starts out with the ADC and ends with a mini DVI. It could be a combination of cables, which it ultimately ended up as. But it took about 20 minutes to narrow down the candidates to produce the required connections. The key to the success of the search was gender matching. There were a number of hits that showed an ADC to DVI adapters [remember that my wife has a DVI (f) to mini DVI (m) adapter], but the genders was wrong. Finally, checking the Apple Store, through the search function, I found the correct adapter. It was 99.99 dollars, That price was surprising until I read that it, the Apple Display Connector, not only carried the video and audio signals to the monitor but added USB ports on the back of the monitor. So the price includes a USB cable, a DVI (m) cable, a ADC (f) port on the power supply. I’m not sure what the power supply does other than a statement that the adapter maintains the superior image quality. We shall see, or, really, she shall see.

Another task the was on the list of things to do was diagnose or fix the ‘grinding’ printer. She started the ‘ill’ printer and I could hear the grinding sound. It sounded bad, but she said it was worse yesterday. Most printers’ gear works are non-metallic (nylon or phenolic), so I thought that I might see if there was any deformations in the various gear trains. When I looked I couldn’t see anything obvious, so I attempted to spin any and all gears that allowed any movement. We fired up the printer, and my wife sent though a three or four page document. Initially there was no grinding, but then a more muffled grinding sound happened. My wife said that it sounded significantly diminished from the day before. I had her run a few more pages through and tried to feel where the sound was emanating from. As it was grinding I pushed in on the access panel and the sound disappeared. We opened the panel, removing and reseating the fuser, after I inspected the gear train under the fuser (moving any gear that would permit it), we closed the panel and fired up the printer. She set a document through and no grinding. As of now, problem solved. Luckily she’s have a repair person come in for another problem and she’ll mention the situation then.

The final task of the day, was daisy-chaining some 500 gigabyte hard drives into groups of four. This proved to be the most daunting, and the one I was least prepared for. She had just ordered three mounting racks, and wanted to add the twelve hard drives to the server to allow a more efficient backup process. Prior to this, the hard drives were spread out around the room, in between two or three computer. To back up their work, the student might have to disconnect the hard drive from one computer and attach it to their own. Most, by that I mean nearly all, didn’t bother. When I was checking the hard drives out, I found only one student folder appear on the desk top-wow.!

I had daisy-chained some HDs in the past, but not on this scale. The back of the hard drive had five ports, one eSATA, one Firewire 400, one USB 2, and two Firewire 800 (twice as fast as FW400 or USB 2). So, I explained to my wife that we would be using the FW800 ports because one port could be an input source and the other the output source to the next drive. I wasn’t sure how many that could be strung together, the last number I remember was 24. Checking it out online I found that the theoretical limit was 63. So, we decided to check out the hookup with just four. The only problem was the computer we were working with didn’t have a FW800 input port, only a FW400. (note: currently the USB 2 does not support a daisy-chain hookup). The online result of this was-no problem, it should work. Of the four hard drives we worked with only one showed up on the desktop. Which one was it? My wife transferred some large files, and to my amazement it was the last unit in the chain. The operation system showed that all the HDs was attached to the Firewire bus, but other than the one that showed up on the desktop-nothing else, no sizes, no manufacturer, not a thing. That bothered me. The other hard drives might have failed, but why was the last one that was recognized. If the cables were bad, nothing would work. I decided to check out each drive, before we checked the cables. By the end of the work day (really about an hour and a half after the end), we had all twelve checked out. Of the twelve, there were three that didn’t respond, but when my wife checked those on a different machine, they worked. I was confused. We separated the cables, to be tested next week. The other variable might be the power supplies. They would have to be checked. Another factor might be the current drawn through the surge protectors. I wondered if there might be a breakdown here. She also purchased some new surge protectors in the early afternoon. We finished organizing the cables and equipment before we left.

Overall the day turned out to be fairly successful. It’s nice to know that her class will open with almost all the essentials ready to go. Anything that isn't ready won't be needed for the classes' initial sessions. We always want to meet our students ready for action, matching their excitement with our own. (note: The US Coast Guard motto has always summed it up for me: Semper Paratus=Always Ready)