HARDWARE Short Questions That Don't Deserve Their Own Thread - Reloaded

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > HARDWARE Short Questions That Don't Deserve Their Own Thread - Reloaded

Deanut Pancer: Nov 24, 2012

cat doter posted:

My computer is having some really bizarre USB issues. Basically I have an audio interface, keyboard, mouse, and game controller hooked up, and they constantly disconnect periodically or don't even work at all. I'll check device manager and they'll say something like "device could not start". All I have to do to get them to work again is switch around the ports they're using, but it eventually happens again and its SUPER loving irritating.

Weird thing is they work outside of windows, its only when my computer boots that poo poo goes weird.

Anyone know what I could do to find out the root cause?

Could be power issues. Are they all daisy-chained out of one parent port? Do you have a powered hub?

# ¿ Oct 22, 2014 23:21

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# ¿ May 5, 2024 08:35

Deanut Pancer: Nov 24, 2012

goddamnedtwisto posted:

Yeah, I'm guessing having two different power supplies on the same line is a bad idea for all sorts of reasons so I'll just stop using the thing for now - pity, because it's literally the exact right size and shape to fit under my monitor.

You could butcher/buy a USB cable and somehow cut out the 5V wire. That might still keep the hub working off its own power whilst preventing it feeding back in to your PC. You'll need to keep the data and ground lines intact. However I've no idea if the USB spec would actually support this or not...

# ¿ Nov 26, 2014 21:07

Deanut Pancer: Nov 24, 2012

Not quite that easy, but almost. Google for steammover - that should sort you out

# ¿ Dec 25, 2014 02:35

Deanut Pancer: Nov 24, 2012

Actually there probably is a simpler way. Copy the files from your old disk to a temp folder on the new one. Then uninstall the game in steam and then install it to the new location on the SSD. As soon as this reinstall starts, pause it and move the files from the temp location to the actual place that steam was going to put them. Now if you let steam verify the new install, it should find that everything is now there and sit should show up as fully installed.
This should skip any messing about with links that might otherwise require admin.
So steam itself stays on your C drive, but you can move individual games over to D (or whatever your ssd ends up)

# ¿ Dec 25, 2014 02:55

Deanut Pancer: Nov 24, 2012

Sorry to hear about your buddy; I hope things work out for him.

It really depends what he wants to do with the videos. Archive them for family in the future, upload and send them to people now, or something else?
Go-Pro cameras seem to be the thing to use for one-person capture - they have all sorts of mounts and 'selfie-stick' attachments. They record to memory sticks, so depending on what he's going to do with the videos may determine how useful this is.
Alternatively, any recent iPhone will have an easy way to record personal blog style videos, with built-in tools for sending them up to the cloud or other people. And the cameras are pretty decent quality for the size of them.

# ¿ Feb 17, 2015 01:12

Deanut Pancer: Nov 24, 2012

Sounds like it could be coil whine? Try google for that term and you'll get all sorts of info.
I had it on my machine for a while, and I managed to solve it by changing some power/idle settings in the bios.

# ¿ May 16, 2015 14:49

Deanut Pancer: Nov 24, 2012

Try searching for info on oculus rift laptop compatibility. I think they released some test tool for checking which models could support VR with the gpu on the external display

# ¿ Dec 28, 2015 21:31

Deanut Pancer: Nov 24, 2012

Gharbad the Weak posted:

Recently, due to a Variety Of Issues, it's become possible that I will lose some level of fine motor control. I'm generally fine with typing, but it's become increasingly difficult to use the mouse to click smaller objects, like the x to close a tab in a browser.

I got a Razer Taipan mouse a long time ago, and I've been generally happy with it. Since the fine motor control issues started, I've discovered the sensitivity clutch button, and it's been very helpful. As long as I press the mouse button set to sensitivity clutch, the sensitivity goes down to a (custom set) significantly lower level. So, general usage, I can use the mouse normally, but if I have to click something small, I can just hold the mouse button, boom, super easy to hit anything.

The problem is that, whenever I change the DPI in any way, an ugly green bar appears in the lower left hand of the screen. It's KINDA ANNOYING, and tech support says that there's no way to get rid of the DPI indicator.

Is there a SECRET way to do this? Or, barring that, is there another reasonably good mouse that can do something like sensitivity clutch, but doesn't have the large green ugly indicator? Or, barring that, is there something I can use on any given mouse to do the same thing?

It is pretty common for a 'gaming' mouse to have those DPI buttons for getting those sick 360noscope headshots. Any of them with a DPI toggle option should work for you. I've got a Logitech 518 at work that has them next to the wheel, and they seem to work fine without popping up any obnoxious UI overlays.

# ¿ Jan 22, 2016 22:05

Deanut Pancer: Nov 24, 2012

EwokEntourage posted:

If my computer randomly shuts down while playing games, but not while doing other stuff, is it more likely the power supply or the graphics card?

Both parts are less than a year old, shuts off after 10-30 mins, immediately restarts

I just fixed exactly the same problem on my dad's pc yesterday. In normal use, the passive cooling was sufficient. But when he was watching videos whilst playing solitaire, it would always shutdown after half an hour or so. With the side of the case off and a desk fan blowing onto it, it would always run stable.
Turns out the fan on the graphics card had failed. I used HWMonitor to measure GPU temps, and watched it go over 100 degC whilst attempting to run the fan at full speed but it never started to spin.
Swapped it out for a spare card from another machine and now it runs totally stable.

# ¿ Dec 23, 2016 21:30

Deanut Pancer: Nov 24, 2012

Schiavona posted:

The gently caress is going on here?

I had similar 'noise' issues to your first pic happen intermittently with one of my monitors on my work PC. I swapped out all the HDMI/DVI cables for replacements and the problem didn't happen again.

The second one looks like your monitor is running through a diagnostic/demo mode, showing pure red/green/blue screens and then black-white gradients. I think this is some mode used for calibrating the colour/brightness settings. Have you had a play around in the monitor's settings to see if you can find any options for anything like this?

# ¿ Apr 14, 2020 22:50

Deanut Pancer: Nov 24, 2012

yoohoo posted:

I have a short question, but this might not be the right place for it.

Is there a way to lock in a jpeg or PDF or really any kind of image to a specific size in inches, so that no matter what screen you're looking at it on, it will always be the same inches. Like I need a document to render at 6.375� x 9.5� regardless of what screen it�s beeing seen on. I realize that I�m dealing with pixels and different resolutions of different screens so what I�m asking is probably impossible, but for my job I deal with physical print media and a lot of folks have struggled the whole WFH to get a grasp on what something will look like in person when they�re looking at it on a screen. A printer is probably the only solution but thought I�d see if there were any tricks that I don�t know about.

I don't know exactly how to do it automatically (I suspect it may not be possible to support all possible resolution/monitor combinations) but try googling for 'compare phone size' and have a look at a few of the sites that come up. Quite a few of them have you hold up some physical thing of known size (eg your current phone, a credit card, dollar bill) in front of your screen and move a slider until the image on screen matches your physical thing. Then they can use that info to show you a bunch of phones at accurate 1:1 physical sizes.
Maybe there's some site out there that lets you use a similar approach with arbitrary images, which you could submit your document to?

# ¿ Dec 3, 2020 23:30

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# ¿ May 5, 2024 08:35

Deanut Pancer: Nov 24, 2012

ProperCoochie posted:

Hi, it's me again. The Alesis headphone jack pretty much fell apart with my tinkering. I should mention the outside ring was the first thing to break many months ago and that's what started all the problems. The speakers haven't worked right since then.

I don't care if the headphone jack and power LED don't work and sit inside the speaker. I just want to output audio out from the speakers.

Here's the Alesis pcb that had the headphone jack. Note the right side is the power LED
https://imgur.com/ZwWZPzg

rear view
https://imgur.com/7bx0vQT
Unfortunately, leaving the 5-pin connector and/or 2-pin connector disconnected from the main board didn't bypass the headphone jack.

Now here's a headphone jack from an old junky pair of computer speakers.
Is it possible I could solder this onto the Alesis board?
https://imgur.com/tomSEaf
https://imgur.com/XJzAqtS

I'm having a hard time researching and googling answers and opinions on this, so any help is really appreciated.

This is all guesswork based on your pics, a few minutes of research, and having disassembled random things in the past trying to fix them up (with a >0 but <100 percent success rate), So buyer-beware and all that. You might blow up your house with this, I take no responsibility

I suggest asking in the Learning Electronics thread and ignoring all my bad advice, as the folks over there love their soldering irons and multimeters and likely know better than me. :byoscience:

Watch this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbTUJ0QBNv0 and then play around with a multimeter set to 'continuity' mode - with the unsoldered jack, and also with the small pcb by itself. Maybe that is enough to work out if the jack or the board is the faulty part.

Then have a read here https://www.cuidevices.com/blog/understanding-audio-jack-switches-and-schematics#switching-audio-between-speakers-and-headphones (the whole page will have the background, the link takes you to what I think is the appropriate section)

Using this image https://imgur.com/7bx0vQT and numbering the cables from left to right, there's two possible arrangements I could imagine:
1,2: Power LED - Red is +power (5V maybe?). Black is ground
3,4: Left/right audio return signals for when jack is unplugged - these will go back to the speakers carrying the audio signal that would have otherwise gone to the headphones. When a socket is inserted into the jack, these lines are isolated and so get no audio signal.
5,6,7 Ground/left/right input signals that provide the audio source. Internally the jack will then connect 3 to 6 and 4 to 7 when no plug is inserted.

or
1,2: Power LED - Red is +power (5V maybe?). Black is ground
3,4: A switch sensor that signals back to the main unit when the headphone jack is populated. Will probably be 'normally closed', and so will be connected together with an empty jack, and will be isolated with a populated jack. The main unit will then use this signal to control whether audio goes to the speakers or to this headphone board.
5,6,7 Ground/left/right input signals that will go out to the headphone jack.

To 'fix' the first arrangement (ie permanently convince the main unit that a headphone is NOT inserted): connect 3 to 6 (red to red) and 4 to 7 (white to white). Or maybe 3 to 7 and 4 to 6 (if the stereo outputs are reversed)
To 'fix' the second arrangement, 3 and/or 4 need to be connected (if the jack has them normally closed) or disconnected (if the jack has them normally open)

The problem you have is that if you pick the wrong fix, you might blow everything else.

I'm also concerned about the pcb trace for wire 4 - that looks to have been scraped off almost entirely. I don't know if that is by-design, or a result of your work.
Good luck

# ¿ Dec 8, 2020 02:26

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > HARDWARE Short Questions That Don't Deserve Their Own Thread - Reloaded