COMPUTERS, THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY

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Re: COMPUTERS, THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY

Post by Pluggy »

I have a card reader but I get pictures from my camera with a lead. But I tinker with Raspberry Pi's and you can't write the SD cards for them using a camera. Some people just like to see what the hardware is doing in normal use, I'm happy to leave the CPU temperature to its own devices. It might be different if the computer was misbehaving.
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Re: COMPUTERS, THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY

Post by Stanley »

What a busy little corner this is!
Moh, glad you're sorted and you did right chucking enormous amounts of money at Pluggy! He's well worth it for the peace of mind. (Did he vacuum it out for you as well?)
Kev, glad to hear you solved the fan on two counts, you have a silent machine and my diagnosis was correct. Always nice to know that the old diagnostic skills are still functioning...
As for the card reader, I read the card because it save mucking about with leads. I shall persevere with it and see if it decides to start working. Not going to change the card, it worked fine with the old card reader and is OK in the camera. No sweat, just a piece of machinery that's sulking. As for temperature, I shan't be doing anything about that either. The only reason it came up was because of the noisy fan on the FMII which has a built in panel that gives chip temperature and other info. No use asking me what it does because I never looked at it! Kev will tell us I'm sure.
Just did a pic and popped the card in the reader, nothing registered so bugger the card reader!
PS. Just for curiosity I inserted a pen drive into the socket on the data card and it recognised it instantly and read it. Looks as though I need to try a different flash card to see if it this one it doesn't like!
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Re: COMPUTERS, THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY

Post by Stanley »

PS. Kev, when you come round for the FMII bits can you bring a flash card so we can try yours? If that works I'll have to spend money!
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Re: COMPUTERS, THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY

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I'd pull all the pictures off the camera and format the card in the camera. Then try it again in the reader. I didn't need to vacuum out Mohs computer, apart from a stray SD card it was pretty clean inside :)
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Re: COMPUTERS, THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY

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I need to read SD cards because I record radio programmes on a Pure Digital set and sometimes want to put the file on my PC and send it to someone else or tidy the files on the card. The radio might have the the facility for direct cable connection to the PC but it's more trouble to carry the radio about the house than carry the card! I've never bothered with a card reader in a PC because I got a USB card reader free with some other bit of kit and it works fine. I've just put it in my new computer's USB port and put a card in the slot and it came up immediately on screen.
Pluggy wrote:I didn't need to vacuum out Mohs computer, apart from a stray SD card it was pretty clean inside :)
Probably a reflection of the cleanliness of Moh's house!
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Re: COMPUTERS, THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY

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Stanley wrote:PS. Kev, when you come round for the FMII bits can you bring a flash card so we can try yours? If that works I'll have to spend money!
You in any rush to try it?
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Re: COMPUTERS, THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY

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Stanley wrote:Kev, glad to hear you solved the fan on two counts, you have a silent machine and my diagnosis was correct. Always nice to know that the old diagnostic skills are still functioning...
I spoke too soon, it's rattling again, I'll have to have a rummage in the drawer for another one.
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Re: COMPUTERS, THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY

Post by Stanley »

I formatted the card yesterday. Kev, no rush to try the card, sorry to hear the fan is rattling again, disconnect the bugger, I'm sure it doesn't need it! Apart from the fan, how is the performance on PShop?
Tiz, like you, I prefer to just whip the card out and shove it in a slot, far easier. I was interested to hear you had a radio with a card.... Didn't know they existed.
Did anyone watch Horizon on Big Data last night?
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Re: COMPUTERS, THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY

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I watched it, or I tried to through my daughter complaining it was boring. I quite enjoyed it.

If the worst come to the worst with this card reader Stanley, I can swap out the card reader for the original one I bought for your machine. Its a 3.5" but the one you have is a 3.5 in an adapter cradle, so we swap the adaptor cradle to this one. If the USB slot is working that suggests it is connected to the board correctly, and it did work here for an SD card. I bought the one you have from 3B in Nelson to get your machine finished, the one I ordered on line still hasn't arrived. Its an on-going with the supplier. The refund for Tizers original duff parts is on its way supposedly. I rang my account manager yesterday to prod him. I got passed to another desk who then apologised for the delay and then said she'd actioned the refund. We'll see.
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Re: COMPUTERS, THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY

Post by Stanley »

Pluggy, don't lose sleep over it. All the evidence points to it being my card. I have left a message for Doc asking him to call in and bring his flash card, let's see what that tells us before we talk about changing the reader.
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Re: COMPUTERS, THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY

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Big Kev wrote:
Stanley wrote:PS. Kev, when you come round for the FMII bits can you bring a flash card so we can try yours? If that works I'll have to spend money!
You in any rush to try it?
I'll be round in the morning, about 11, if that's OK
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Re: COMPUTERS, THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY

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If I'm not here hang on for a couple of minutes, I'll be walking Jack but will be home at 11:00. Thanks Kev.
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Re: COMPUTERS, THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY

Post by Stanley »

Pluggy, Kev called round this morning and we tried his flash card in the reader, it didn't recognise his either so I think we can assume the reader is faulty. I don't mind waiting if you want to send it back and get a replacement, I can manage with the cable. You shouldn't be out of pocket. Let me know what you want to do.
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Re: COMPUTERS, THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY

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Stanley wrote:Pluggy, Kev called round this morning and we tried his flash card in the reader, it didn't recognise his either so I think we can assume the reader is faulty. I don't mind waiting if you want to send it back and get a replacement, I can manage with the cable. You shouldn't be out of pocket. Let me know what you want to do.
I put the same card in the reader on the FM2, initially it wouldn't start, the card reader needed a drive letter assigning to it in Disc Management (Windows). It was then recognised as a USB mass storage device and opens without issue. I was confused as to why it was recognised as a USB device; Does the card reader connect to the bus internally?
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Re: COMPUTERS, THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY

Post by Pluggy »

Most Card readers are connected via USB. They connect to the same ports on the main board as case USB sockets. How they behave depends on the individual card reader, some of them are recognised as devices when they don't have a card in them and some aren't. The one on Stanleys FMIII is the same as the one on my own computer. Linux automatically mounts a card when you plug it in, or should...
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Re: COMPUTERS, THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY

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I've PM'ed Stanley.
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Re: COMPUTERS, THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY

Post by Stanley »

He's calling in this morning. He will not lose out on the faulty card, not his fault.
Thanks for calling in with the other card Kev......
11:00. Pluggy has been and gone. He tried a variety of memory cards and the original reader read every one bar the flash card, he's put a new reader in and it works fine now. Thanks Pluggy. I made sure he didn't suffer financially because of the bum reader. Onward and upwards.
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Re: COMPUTERS, THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY

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A tweak on the FM2 has improved HDD performance a little bit. The SATA drives were using IDE, I've changed this to use AHCI. Microsoft provide a handy little tool to do this. :geek:
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Re: COMPUTERS, THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY

Post by Stanley »

Glad you're getting on well with her. One side benefit of Pluggy's visit was that for some reason neither of us understands, the sound alert is now working on FMIII. I knew it was AWOL but it never worried me. I had the same problem with the FMII and suspect it's something as simple as a mucky jack plug because it came good after Pluggy disconnected everything to work on the card. Whatever, it's fine now. Oh, one other thing, under the new interface I couldn't find the screensave power mode, I know where it is now.....
One element about the graphics of the 12.04 interface that annoys me (and I think Tiz mentioned this) the slide bar on the side of the screen for scrolling is almost the same col,our as the background. It would be nice if it was more obvious. A niggle, not a big problem.
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Re: COMPUTERS, THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY

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That scroll bar change is definitely retrograde but I think they are doing things like that to make the software easier to use on `handheld devices'. The modern world seems to be infatuated with making things smaller, even if they function poorly. I also can't get used to the menu bar for all the windows being at the top of the screen instead of the top of th window. I often use multiple windows and have them open `small' rather than `large' and in different parts of the screen, so it's annoying to have to go to the top of the screen for a menu when the window is at the bottom.

Fingers crossed, I'm hoping that we've solved the problem that was causing my new PC to freeze frequently. It's been OK since Sunday even though I've done my best to trigger a freeze by scrolling down long web pages with lots of graphics.The 12.04 version of Ubuntu Linux, in both 32 and 64 bit form, is giving a lot of people this trouble, according to posts in the Ubuntu forums and there have been some red herrings that distracted people from the real cause. The problem seems to be that the latest Ubuntu lacks the right Intel GPU (graphics) drivers and they need downloading and installing to prevent the freezes. Most non-techie Ubuntu users (like me) restrict their software and driver installs to those from the official Ubuntu repository (repo), especially when using the Long Term Support version of the OS. The files in this repo are not always the most up to date because the developers will only include files that have been fully tested and proved to work and be stable. The irony here is that the up-to-date Intel driver is not included, with the unintended consequence that some upgraded Ubuntu PCs are exhibiting instability.

I found the answer on this web page:
http://www.techlw.com/2012/08/install-l ... rs-in.html

and it was a case of using these commands in the terminal:
sudo apt-add-repository ppa:glasen/intel-driver
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg-video-intel

Since then I've had only one glitch which was an hour after the change when the screen threw a wobbly and I had to retsart. Since then, nothing else, it's working perfectly. I hope I haven't spoken too soon!
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Re: COMPUTERS, THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY

Post by Stanley »

Luckily I haven't had that problem, I have an idea I'm using a different graphics card but have never looked into it, Pluggy could tell you I'm sure.
I agree about the menus on the top of the page but am getting used to it. Another unwelcome change is that Using Gimp and Gthumb is not as easy and intuitive as it was on 10.4 but I'm getting used to it.... Small price for having such a good OS.
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Re: COMPUTERS, THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY

Post by Pluggy »

Yours is a seperate video card which overrides the onboard one, and its not the same onboard Intel chipset in any case. Yours was over twice the price of Tiz's box. It doesn't share any of the same components, with the possible exception of the DVD drive.
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Re: COMPUTERS, THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY

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The key to using Gthumb is now not obvious until you click on a thumbnail and open the full size version of an image. You'll then see an icon of an artist's palette at top right of the screen. Click this and the Edit Image dropdown menu appears. You might also find thumbnails still are still visible at the bottom of the screen when you have a full-size image open. If, like me, you don't want them you can switch off that feature.

I haven't noticed anything much different about Gimp - I'm using v.2.6.12 - except for the problem of a disappearing top menu bar. When I try to work on an image, each time I use a feature such as Colours/Levels, when I close the feature's window there is no longer a menu bar at the top of the screen which is irritating.
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Re: COMPUTERS, THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY

Post by Stanley »

I've cracked using search in Gthumb but one irritating feature is that when you are filling in the search criteria and punch the enter key it doesn't activate the 'find' button. I've looked at access and mouse settings etc to see if I can activate the find button but no joy. In the old interface hitting 'enter' had the same effect as clicking on the find button. All part of the rich tapestry of a new OS I suppose.....
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Re: COMPUTERS, THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY

Post by Tizer »

`Find' in my Gthumb works the same. I can't recall what it did before because I don't often use Find in Gthumb. The irony is that this version is designed to work better than previous versions in handheld devices which don't have a mouse, hence the Dash feature which lets you get to files, folders and applications easily without the mouse. In Gthumb you can avoid the mouse when doing a search by starting with Control F to get the Find menu, then pressing the Tab key to move the `focus' until the Find button is highlighted then press Enter. I use the Tab key a lot to switch between applications when I have several open. I think we'll be going back to using keys rather than the mouse - which should suit you and I!
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