They are Seagate Exos. The reviews and the warranties for both Seagate and WD are the same. Both companies make junk drives in the low end of the price range......I hope that these work out, but the data will be mirrored in case they don't.
For years I just kept two copies of my data on separate drives in the same PC......that worked fine until that PC took a tumble down the basement stairs when I moved.
My current Crap Top (the name says it all) is an ASUS. It has never worked right since day one, and when I finally decided that it was too frustrating to use, I tired to get warranty service. Despite the documentation on the outer cardboard box, which I still have, claiming a 2 year warranty with "rapid replacement" the customer service rep informed me that my warranty was only one year. A tag on the bottom of the laptop itself next to the serial number says 12M. That apparently trumps anything printed on the box, or the purchase receipt. Because of that I have not purchased anything from ASUS since that phone call in 2015. I won't buy an HP either for the same customer service reasons.
I have been an Intel user ever since the 8088. I have had one Intel chip die, and they replaced it without much grief. I have never bought any AMD products, primarily because of the idiot CEO, but he has been gone for some time. Is AMD the right choice? I don't know but the cost advantages for what I need today look to big to ignore.
A beefy looking toroid and power supply board ostensibly from a Yamaha A-1. Curiously, as the A-1 originally had two regular EI transformers so this must have been a replacement of some kind.
46-16-0-16-46 , 0-5.5 and 0-8.5 secondaries - should be very handy. The board should be reusable too, probably with new caps.
The guy says he has other bits and the "remains" of the A-1 as well... So we'll see what happens when I go to collect it... Might have another repair project [emoji28]
46-16-0-16-46 , 0-5.5 and 0-8.5 secondaries - should be very handy. The board should be reusable too, probably with new caps.
The guy says he has other bits and the "remains" of the A-1 as well... So we'll see what happens when I go to collect it... Might have another repair project [emoji28]
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SMOKE.....FIRE........STINK.....
That's what happened when I tried to fire up the partially built new PC.
Yesterday the CPU showed up. Today the motherboard and RAM showed up. The NVME SSD boot drive will not be here until tomorrow, but I have enough parts to play, so....I rip apart a perfectly working PC, stick in the new MB, CPU, RAM combo and flip the switch. Now I wouldn't expect a boot drive loaded with W7 and Intel drivers to get very far, but what's the harm in trying it?
I hook it up to a 4K TV and a wireless USB keyboard / touch pad and flip the switch. The CPU cooler gets my attention with its light display, but something isn't right....there is a funny smell, then a plume of thick stinky smoke and a small shooting flame.....so I yank the power cord.
The stink cloud is coming from the drive bay stack that holds a small SSD boot drive, a 4T WD Gold, and a DVD ROM drive. I yank that stack, but don't see any obvious damage, so what does the BDBO (Big Dumb Blonde One) do? Well I flip the drive stack over so I can watch, and plug the PC back into the wall.......Flaming stink shoots from the CD ROM drive.
I remove the offending drive to see that it's 11 years old, and has worked faithfully for all 11 of them. It's SATA power connector is FRIED, as is the mating connector on the power supply cable.
About a month ago I put a new video card in the PC. It refused to work with the power supply (wrong connector) that was in the PC, so I swapped in a brand new Seasonic power supply. All worked fine, so I put the PC back together and used it intermittently for the past month. It was used to do all the disk copying I did, so it did see some continuous swapping, but that was all in the other drive bay.
I believe that the cheap IDC (Insulation Displacement Connector) that Seasonic used was the real source of the flames, but why didn't a dead short on one of the supply rails cause the power supply to shut down?
I cut the offending connector off the power cable, and fired the PC back up. It flat refused to recognize any combination of keyboard or mouse on any of the USB ports (even 2.0), or the mini DIN keyboard connector, so I could not get it into the BIOS or setup modes......It however did boot W7 and correctly initialize the video card into 4K resolution. Without a keyboard or mouse I wound up stuck Microsoft's "You Need W10" message.
I will probably stop here today, and hope the new boot drive shows up tomorrow.....so I can bow to MS and install W10. For now the CD drive and the fried power supply connector reside in the garage.....they stink too much to remain in the house.
That's what happened when I tried to fire up the partially built new PC.
Yesterday the CPU showed up. Today the motherboard and RAM showed up. The NVME SSD boot drive will not be here until tomorrow, but I have enough parts to play, so....I rip apart a perfectly working PC, stick in the new MB, CPU, RAM combo and flip the switch. Now I wouldn't expect a boot drive loaded with W7 and Intel drivers to get very far, but what's the harm in trying it?
I hook it up to a 4K TV and a wireless USB keyboard / touch pad and flip the switch. The CPU cooler gets my attention with its light display, but something isn't right....there is a funny smell, then a plume of thick stinky smoke and a small shooting flame.....so I yank the power cord.
The stink cloud is coming from the drive bay stack that holds a small SSD boot drive, a 4T WD Gold, and a DVD ROM drive. I yank that stack, but don't see any obvious damage, so what does the BDBO (Big Dumb Blonde One) do? Well I flip the drive stack over so I can watch, and plug the PC back into the wall.......Flaming stink shoots from the CD ROM drive.
I remove the offending drive to see that it's 11 years old, and has worked faithfully for all 11 of them. It's SATA power connector is FRIED, as is the mating connector on the power supply cable.
About a month ago I put a new video card in the PC. It refused to work with the power supply (wrong connector) that was in the PC, so I swapped in a brand new Seasonic power supply. All worked fine, so I put the PC back together and used it intermittently for the past month. It was used to do all the disk copying I did, so it did see some continuous swapping, but that was all in the other drive bay.
I believe that the cheap IDC (Insulation Displacement Connector) that Seasonic used was the real source of the flames, but why didn't a dead short on one of the supply rails cause the power supply to shut down?
I cut the offending connector off the power cable, and fired the PC back up. It flat refused to recognize any combination of keyboard or mouse on any of the USB ports (even 2.0), or the mini DIN keyboard connector, so I could not get it into the BIOS or setup modes......It however did boot W7 and correctly initialize the video card into 4K resolution. Without a keyboard or mouse I wound up stuck Microsoft's "You Need W10" message.
I will probably stop here today, and hope the new boot drive shows up tomorrow.....so I can bow to MS and install W10. For now the CD drive and the fried power supply connector reside in the garage.....they stink too much to remain in the house.
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Wow. That's terrible luck man. I would have expected Seasonic to shut down, but how many watts is it? In theory the OC protection is like a fuse for the entire rail. 600W power supply at 12V is 50A. One 18GA wire can short and burn.
Also is it just me or does it also pisse you off when all the wires are black instead of colour coding like 12V == Yellow, 5V == Red etc?
Also, F**k MS...
Also is it just me or does it also pisse you off when all the wires are black instead of colour coding like 12V == Yellow, 5V == Red etc?
Also, F**k MS...
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It's a 520 watt unit with two "independent" 12 volt rails at 20 amps each. One feeds the CPU and disk drives, the other is for video cards. I powered that thing up twice and it didn't shut down either time. My guess is that the stupid IDC connectors are just point contacts where they pierce through the all black wire insulation. That point contact could not support the amount of current being drawn, so it started melting everything around it, but the whole cable from the drive bay to the power supply was not even warm. That is why I had to try it again.
I couldn't leave it alone so I plugged in a $50 SSD and have been trying to install W10. I have made it mad a few times trying a bunch of old W7 keys.
I bought 16 of these B43541B8476M000 EPCOS / TDK | Mouser Canada
and 4 VPT12-2170 transformers for a new amp build.
And a new enclosure.
and 4 VPT12-2170 transformers for a new amp build.
And a new enclosure.
3 pcs power supply PCBs from The Valve Wizard (Merlin Blencowe), for $14 USD. I figure that's a pretty good deal for making projects easier to build.
Power Supply PCB
Power Supply PCB
14 pack? I'm no expert, but isn't one big thing about antidepressants that you have to commit to taking them consistently for a long period of time?
The missing NVME boot disk for the new PC that I was building in posts 2903 and 2907 arrived Friday. I put a Kapton tape "band-aid" over the burnt section of the power cable where I had hacked out the power connector for the DVD drive, installed the new SSD, and dropped in a W10 install disk. All went without a hitch and Passmark's bench-marking software states that my new PC ranks in the 98'th percentile "worldwide."
I spent much of yesterday loading software, but I did run a rather complex musical mess of soft synth's and automated mixing on Ableton Live. It would push the CPU meter upwards of 60% on the old machine. It touches the low 30% range a few times on the new one.....note that the new one has twice the ram, which is also faster. I haven't tried a Blender render yet, but it doesn't matter since the versions of Blender are not the same and Blender went through a major update in the process.
I was about to toss the fried DVD drive in the trash when I saw the "BluRay" label on it.....OK a Blue Ray writer must have cost me some $$$$ in 2008, so I'm at least doing an autopsy. It seems that the power plug is fried at the 3.3 volt end, not the 12 volt end as originally thought (all black wires). The old drive doesn't even use the 3.3 volt wires since they weren't even populated in most PC's from 2008. So, I cut the connector off of an adapter cable and soldered it to the +5V, GND, and +12V pads on the PC board, and fired the drive up......no not fired....just tested. It has been happily playing CD's for two hours now. The Seasonic power supply's cheap connectors were the reason for the smoke.
I am putting together a second PC from the remains of two old ones with a few new parts. It will take the place of this one which has been used daily for about 5 years, and it was made from recycled parts back then. The BluRay drive will go in it.
This PC will wind up running my test bench, which will leave the old workbench PC without a home.....anyone think its a crime to build a guitar amp that runs Windows 7? Should such a device run tubes or big class D power?
I spent much of yesterday loading software, but I did run a rather complex musical mess of soft synth's and automated mixing on Ableton Live. It would push the CPU meter upwards of 60% on the old machine. It touches the low 30% range a few times on the new one.....note that the new one has twice the ram, which is also faster. I haven't tried a Blender render yet, but it doesn't matter since the versions of Blender are not the same and Blender went through a major update in the process.
I was about to toss the fried DVD drive in the trash when I saw the "BluRay" label on it.....OK a Blue Ray writer must have cost me some $$$$ in 2008, so I'm at least doing an autopsy. It seems that the power plug is fried at the 3.3 volt end, not the 12 volt end as originally thought (all black wires). The old drive doesn't even use the 3.3 volt wires since they weren't even populated in most PC's from 2008. So, I cut the connector off of an adapter cable and soldered it to the +5V, GND, and +12V pads on the PC board, and fired the drive up......no not fired....just tested. It has been happily playing CD's for two hours now. The Seasonic power supply's cheap connectors were the reason for the smoke.
I am putting together a second PC from the remains of two old ones with a few new parts. It will take the place of this one which has been used daily for about 5 years, and it was made from recycled parts back then. The BluRay drive will go in it.
This PC will wind up running my test bench, which will leave the old workbench PC without a home.....anyone think its a crime to build a guitar amp that runs Windows 7? Should such a device run tubes or big class D power?
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> my new PC ranks in the 98'th percentile "worldwide."
35%
Actually, this is probably decent for a rush-bought no-name from the "Computer shop" next to the pet-store 3 years ago. I merely needed "works". It actually did not work when I got it home; bad power supply. The 20-pin from the dead computer worked with the 24-pin mobo so I was up that night. While same GHz it is twice as fast as the 7yo "P-3GHz" it replaced.
35%
Actually, this is probably decent for a rush-bought no-name from the "Computer shop" next to the pet-store 3 years ago. I merely needed "works". It actually did not work when I got it home; bad power supply. The 20-pin from the dead computer worked with the 24-pin mobo so I was up that night. While same GHz it is twice as fast as the 7yo "P-3GHz" it replaced.
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There is no need for a speed demon PC for most ordinary uses. I have several old PC's here that get used for specific purposes. I have several PC's that were once "fast" are now probably well below 35%. They are still useful for most daily tasks like browsing this forum, or even guitar practice.
One of the oldies was used for FFT based audio analysis only....nothing else. It still ran Windows XP. It performed that duty flawlessly until a Dumm Blonde mistake blew up the sound card. I plugged in a new card, but there were no drivers for XP. I installed an un-activated copy of W7 which required a new install of WIN MLS software, but some required files were missing, and Dr Jordan software did not respond to any of my emails, so the PC hasn't seen power in a couple of years.
I fixed up several of the older PC's and gave them to relatives a few years ago. Two of those people still use them daily, but are now getting the MS nag screen saying that W7 will be obsolete and unsupported soon and their PC is not "qualified for W10," MS strongly suggests that you purchase a new machine. This, of course sets off a panic, so I'll either build them something better out of my old junk, or try W10 on their machines.
I got the same screen on my 5 year old core i7- 4790K machine, which now has new hard disks, a two year old mid range video card, and two new hard drives. It is running W10 just fine. It still scores in the 83% range with the biggest deficiencies being in the 3D video and older budget SSD performance. The 5 year old CPU gets 87% and the 5 year old DDR3 memory 91%. It also sucks more power from the line under a full on Prime 95 stress test. 320 watts with .55 PF versus 200 watts at .99 PF on the new machine.
I remember what I put in one of those PC's and it may indeed be too wimpy by today's standards. If it winds up here for a rebuild, I'll test it with Passmark.
When I get caught up with "basement computer store" duty, I'll Passmark some of the oldies to see where they stand.