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altivoDidn't sleep well, went to work anyway. Doesn't seem to be flu, since there's no fever. Unlike a cold because, so far, no congestion. But it sneezes and coughs like a cold, and has produced minor sore throat. Unlike either, what feels like sinus headache, but again without congestion.
Arrived to learn that power was out at the system HQ where the server for the catalog and circulation software lives. It didn't come up until well after we had opened and were trying to deal with requests for new library cards when we had no access to the databases that list cardholders.
My desktop machine at work seems to have finally died. My diagnosis is either power supply or cooling fans, one of which is integral to the power supply. It's been having erratic symptoms of overheating on and off for weeks. I thought it was a wonky thermal sensor after opening it up several times immediately after a lockup, and finding the heatsink cool to the touch. Often when you try to power back up, it doesn't boot but cranks both fans up to jet engine speeds until you kill the power. Usually after pulling the power cord and reinserting it, you could boot again and it would run for a couple of days. Today that stopped working.
Turns out that there are rotation sensors on the fans, and the system cranks the fans up when it thinks they aren't moving fast enough. I suspect those have failed on one or both of the fans. So I ordered replacements for both the power supply and CPU cooling fan from surplus houses. Total cost about $40, which is much preferable to the price of a new machine right now. Hopefully my guess is right. Meanwhile, I'll swap drives with another little used machine of the same model.
About 3:30 I decided to go home. No working PC means no cataloging anyway, and I was starting to feel worn. It's finally raining, which we have needed for a while, and rather than a deluge it's a slow drizzle, which is ideal for garden beds.
In the mail at home was an envelope containing a new, smarter option ROM for the Model 100 PC. This is a remarkable engineering achievement as an enhancement for a 25-year old machine. It expands the memory capacity from the original 32K address space plus 32K of ROM to something like 2 MB. Of course the CPU doesn't address all of that at once, but takes it in "pages" or chunks. This means you can have multiple workspace images, with different software installed and different files in active memory, and swap between them with simple menu commands. Combined with a flash card reader and writer that was released late last fall, it makes the small machine incredibly practical for substantial amounts of writing. And it still runs for days on four AA batteries.
Arrived to learn that power was out at the system HQ where the server for the catalog and circulation software lives. It didn't come up until well after we had opened and were trying to deal with requests for new library cards when we had no access to the databases that list cardholders.
My desktop machine at work seems to have finally died. My diagnosis is either power supply or cooling fans, one of which is integral to the power supply. It's been having erratic symptoms of overheating on and off for weeks. I thought it was a wonky thermal sensor after opening it up several times immediately after a lockup, and finding the heatsink cool to the touch. Often when you try to power back up, it doesn't boot but cranks both fans up to jet engine speeds until you kill the power. Usually after pulling the power cord and reinserting it, you could boot again and it would run for a couple of days. Today that stopped working.
Turns out that there are rotation sensors on the fans, and the system cranks the fans up when it thinks they aren't moving fast enough. I suspect those have failed on one or both of the fans. So I ordered replacements for both the power supply and CPU cooling fan from surplus houses. Total cost about $40, which is much preferable to the price of a new machine right now. Hopefully my guess is right. Meanwhile, I'll swap drives with another little used machine of the same model.
About 3:30 I decided to go home. No working PC means no cataloging anyway, and I was starting to feel worn. It's finally raining, which we have needed for a while, and rather than a deluge it's a slow drizzle, which is ideal for garden beds.
In the mail at home was an envelope containing a new, smarter option ROM for the Model 100 PC. This is a remarkable engineering achievement as an enhancement for a 25-year old machine. It expands the memory capacity from the original 32K address space plus 32K of ROM to something like 2 MB. Of course the CPU doesn't address all of that at once, but takes it in "pages" or chunks. This means you can have multiple workspace images, with different software installed and different files in active memory, and swap between them with simple menu commands. Combined with a flash card reader and writer that was released late last fall, it makes the small machine incredibly practical for substantial amounts of writing. And it still runs for days on four AA batteries.
