Naaa... I don't roll with threats.
Let me tell you, in all due respect, what I hear you saying and maybe you will understand why we are so adamant in our positions...
I hear you saying "I am smart enough that I don't need to take the courses to pass the certifications" ... Or more succinctly: "I am entitled to flout the system for my own advantage".
There is no doubt you are intelligent. There is also no doubt you are a capable person. I can see that in the writing of your arguments.
But engineering is filled with examples of people in exactly your position. That is, people who except for some small part of the learning experience are clearly able to do most of a good job... but are missing a few key facts.
Some examples are:
The bridge that fell in the wind... YouTube
The foot bridge that collapsed when unstressed ... YouTube
The Mars orbiter that crashed... YouTube
... and hundreds more.
These little side trips in the course, that may not be on the exams are what stand to cause an "untrained" examinee real problems later. It's human nature to study up on what we believe will be on the exam and give the rest a soft touch. It is also in our nature to study hardest for what interests us. But how do we know what happened in the classrooms if we aren't there? How do we know what's been discussed if we weren't in the room? We can't... and it's that stuff that gets us every bloody time.
My first attempt at playing mechanic taught me that lesson, real quick. After years of helping my father, I built a spec-perfect engine that promptly went ahead and crashed the valves into the pistons... Big, expensive, OOPS! Why? Because I didn't know about valve clearance.
Your example of code you've written is very impressive. I am also self-taught in coding in C and Pascal ... I've even uploaded some of my code here for people to use. But there's no way i pretend to be a professional programmer and I'm certainly not begging for a free MSE certificate. You see, I know what I know and I do quite well with it... but like anyone else, I have no clue about what I don't know and it's possible repercussions in a live system. In my mind, my code is 1/2 work and 1/2 luck.
People here are not reacting to your intellect, in fact I suspect you're smarter than most of us. People are also not reacting to your money or health problems. They are not looking down on you...
They are reacting to your outspoken entitlement in thinking that you should be allowed to go around a system that, in fact, safeguards the engineering world from more disasters like the examples above.
I'm sorry if that's harsh... but that's what I see happening here.
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I'm on a waiting period while helping restructure a server room for a local law firm. Right now it's dispatching updates and it gave me a chance to check in here.
How about you, madam?
I'm fixing an amp. But now I have a earache and I'm not feeling it. Last I checked the amp works again, but something went up in smoke (everything still worked though, I think it was an LED dropping resistor). Tomorrow is a new day.
FWIW The only people I know that call other people "girl" are other gay people
Personally I don't like being called "girl" but it's just a term of endearment if you're gay anyway
FWIW The only people I know that call other people "girl" are other gay people
Personally I don't like being called "girl" but it's just a term of endearment if you're gay anyway 
I recently got an inquiry for repairing a 2238B from a guy.
I had to inform him of my other immediate "projects" and the unknown wait time due to these issues.
I got a boot-up "S.M.A.R.T. message yesterday....
apparently the C drive is useful at this time but "bad" for whatever reason.
I'm fully able to use the PC, it works just fine once I hit the F1 button to start Win10.
Time to head out this weekend for a new drive......ugh.
Just in case, I transferred important stuff to save over to D drive, which is fine.
1) Do I need to lecture you about the importance of regular backups?
2) Did you try to do a long format on the drive? Sometimes it's just a data error.
Check these out, and there are others as well.
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Hi wiseoldtech,
It happens that my time is pretty much 100% booked for at least a week out. But, a good tech is normally booked well into the future. So people are use to that kind of thing now. When I had the shop, Christmas cut-off was often a month and a half out. One year we even hit close to two months. But it is better to be honest with people than to promise a faster turn-around time when you know you can't meet it. My problem is that I try to please everyone and that leads to me getting behind. Probably most technicians underestimate the time it will take to get into future service jobs. Human nature.
These rebuild jobs are very time intensive. First you plan the job as to what parts you will be replacing. I try to break it down board by board to make it manageable. Then any circuit changes are planned and assessed as to whether the improvement is worthwhile. The changes are not large ones, but often offer a large improvement in performance that can be measured. I have achieved a 20 dB reduction in distortion, and once even hit 30 dB lower noise floor! That's a lot. that particular improvement was an amplifier designed and built by someone who does a lot of Hafler work and used to work there. The improvement was gained by restructuring the ground paths and some improvements to the regulated supply for the front end on the amplifier boards. This amplifier design also had the main filter capacitors supported only by the screw terminals on the capacitors and the PC board. That I couldn't really do much about without spending alot of money setting up some brackets to the rear panel.
So aside from normal repairs, I am known a bit for these improvements as well. Most times the improvements are more modest in the numbers, but a larger improvement in sound quality. Generally a lot of little things work together to create a better sounding unit. Designing and executing this stuff is impossible to estimate time on unless I've done the same model before. You work hard for the money doing these things.
-Chris
It happens that my time is pretty much 100% booked for at least a week out. But, a good tech is normally booked well into the future. So people are use to that kind of thing now. When I had the shop, Christmas cut-off was often a month and a half out. One year we even hit close to two months. But it is better to be honest with people than to promise a faster turn-around time when you know you can't meet it. My problem is that I try to please everyone and that leads to me getting behind. Probably most technicians underestimate the time it will take to get into future service jobs. Human nature.
These rebuild jobs are very time intensive. First you plan the job as to what parts you will be replacing. I try to break it down board by board to make it manageable. Then any circuit changes are planned and assessed as to whether the improvement is worthwhile. The changes are not large ones, but often offer a large improvement in performance that can be measured. I have achieved a 20 dB reduction in distortion, and once even hit 30 dB lower noise floor! That's a lot. that particular improvement was an amplifier designed and built by someone who does a lot of Hafler work and used to work there. The improvement was gained by restructuring the ground paths and some improvements to the regulated supply for the front end on the amplifier boards. This amplifier design also had the main filter capacitors supported only by the screw terminals on the capacitors and the PC board. That I couldn't really do much about without spending alot of money setting up some brackets to the rear panel.
So aside from normal repairs, I am known a bit for these improvements as well. Most times the improvements are more modest in the numbers, but a larger improvement in sound quality. Generally a lot of little things work together to create a better sounding unit. Designing and executing this stuff is impossible to estimate time on unless I've done the same model before. You work hard for the money doing these things.
-Chris
1) Do I need to lecture you about the importance of regular backups?
2) Did you try to do a long format on the drive? Sometimes it's just a data error.
I did a system file check on C drive yesterday, including "checking for errors" and it came back clean.
Previously, like last month, I did a "DISM.exe/ Online/ Cleanup/ Image/ RestoreHealth" which showed a few corruptions, and was corrected.
The Drive is older, likely mid-2000s vintage, a Samsung model.
Samsung anything gives me the creeps, so I'm going with a WD 1TB replacement for only $49 at Best Buy and just want to clone the drive.
Worst case I'll have to re-install Win10 again on the new drive, and all my programs - which makes me violent and (even more) cranky during the process and for a week after.
I don't know that I would want to call it synergy really. It's more that the individual improvements might not show up in measurements as easily, and each might to too difficult to pick up as a change by listening. But, as a group they all make these changes easier to measure and hear. Like in a tug of war, they are all pulling in the same direction. To me, "synergy" can mean that several changes in different directions can average out to a positive change. I was hoping to be more specific. I have heard the term to describe such a make of capacitor here, and another there, and so on leading to a "pleasant sound". Subjective.
-Chris
-Chris
Chkdsk only verifies the directory and bitmaps, it does not open and read every file.
Do you want to try a deep scan... opening and reading each file in turn to ensure they are all 100% readable?
I'm attaching a little thing I wrote called File Verify... enjoy.
(Honest, no viruses)
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Let me ask you....
If the boot-up sequence recognizes in its bios with the S.M.A.R.T. system enabled that there's an impending issue with the C drive, wouldn't that justify changing the drive?
Also, would there be any tell-tale findings in the WindowBoot part of the drive?
And if so, how could they be located?
The motherboard is an American Megatrends ASUS P5LD2, the latest bios version is dated 2009.
But she runs like a banshee, and has a great older video card too.
Radeon X1950 PRO.
My important stuff/files are all on D drive, (a WD drive) I shift them over there soon after aquiring them online. (AKA my safety storage area)
C drive is only Windows 10, program files, some other junk that is disposable/unimportant.
Honestly, I'm on it now, and it runs great as always.
It's just that "F1 to continue" crap that I could do without.
The price of hard drives today I would replace any I was in the slightest doubt about without hesitation. I am also a fan of SSD for C: drive, 240-256Gb is cheap and useful.
Apart from shorter boot times, the big advantage is that the endless Windows updates install quicker.
A laptop with >15 minute boot & start-up time, showing no drive errors and despite a clean install of Windows now takes ~30s to load Windows & get on the web. The only change was to replace the old mechanical HDD.
Apart from shorter boot times, the big advantage is that the endless Windows updates install quicker.
A laptop with >15 minute boot & start-up time, showing no drive errors and despite a clean install of Windows now takes ~30s to load Windows & get on the web. The only change was to replace the old mechanical HDD.
It can. It depends what the SMART error is. The manufacturers usually offer free software for running extended tests that will reveal the error for you.
In one case, a friend's machine was popping smart errors and R/W errors when copying/saving files. He was all set to run out and buy a new hard drive until I pulled the sata cable off, cleaned the connectors and put it back together... He hasn't had an error since.
A 10 year old Seagate drive is probably just about done. I've had WD drives that have gone far longer. But I wouldn't be in any special hurry to run out and spend half a hundred if I could fix the problem with a bit of alcohol and a few rapid plug and unplug cycles, to clean the contacts.
As always, the number 1 failure in electronics is bad connections.
Number one failure in HDDs used to be "stiction" but now the heads ramp load. Now it seems to be the spindle motor controller, or the driver for the actuator.
S.M.A.R.T errors can't be fixed by formatting. S.M.A.R.T. is there to tell you the drive is probably going to fail soon... when it's already failed S.M.A.R.T. is useless.
As far as cloning the disk. use Clonezilla and you shouldn't need to reinstall windows. If you're really a "wise old tech", use dd example: "dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/dsb bs=1M" in Linux, and change to suit your actual drive config.
I've been running Linux for 10 years now. Windows is a POS IMHO.
As a general rule, with HDD space so damned cheap, you should buy two drives and make them into a RAID1 array. Completely redundant automagic backup. mdadm makes this easy on a modern Linux distro like Manjaro.
S.M.A.R.T errors can't be fixed by formatting. S.M.A.R.T. is there to tell you the drive is probably going to fail soon... when it's already failed S.M.A.R.T. is useless.
As far as cloning the disk. use Clonezilla and you shouldn't need to reinstall windows. If you're really a "wise old tech", use dd example: "dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/dsb bs=1M" in Linux, and change to suit your actual drive config.
I've been running Linux for 10 years now. Windows is a POS IMHO.
As a general rule, with HDD space so damned cheap, you should buy two drives and make them into a RAID1 array. Completely redundant automagic backup. mdadm makes this easy on a modern Linux distro like Manjaro.
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Finally repaired the damned amp I was working on... A bad ground on the power supply caps meant one speaker was floating at -140V which would explain the blown up NFB resistor and the wild oscillations when trying to bias it.
All is good in the land of Koda now, but I wanted to punch it a few times haha
All is good in the land of Koda now, but I wanted to punch it a few times haha
! A Yamaha CR2020. Did not have the b...s ( ) to get into it until now. Actually after reading a lot of post where you guided others in the process! Thanks!