Newsletter Archives

• Making connections between computers and monitors

  Posted on April 18, 2022 at 02:45 CDT by Ben Myers • Comment in the Forums

  

  ISSUE 19.16 • 2022-04-18

  HARDWARE

  

  By Ben Myers

  With four different standards for video ports and cables, as well as some “mini” ports, it can be downright confusing to come up with the right cables to connect your computer to a monitor.

  In the best of all possible worlds, we would all want to buy a computer and a monitor at the same time, ensuring that they connect to one another and work well together with the right cabling. In our real world, a computer meets an untimely demise and an upscale monitor is still exactly what we need. Or maybe the monitor fails to light up, it becomes too dim, you punch out the screen in anger, or it is simply time for a larger monitor. Possibly you want to attach a monitor to your laptop, duplicating the laptop screen on a larger viewing area or using dual screens to see more information.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (19.16.0, 2022-04-18).
  This story also appears in our public Newsletter.

  AskWoody FREE Newsletter, AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Hardware AskWoody Plus Newsletter, DisplayPort, Displays, DVI, hardware, HDMI, Standards, Thunderbolt, VGA

• BitLocker and the dead: The story of a successful transplant

  Posted on March 21, 2022 at 02:42 CDT by Ben Myers • Comment in the Forums

  HARDWARE

  

  By Ben Myers

  The CPU is the heart of a laptop, but we do the brain transplants here. BWA! HA! HA! HA!

  Recently, a long-time client who had moved several towns away called me in a panic. A two-year-old Lenovo Yoga laptop had failed.

  When I got my hands on the computer, I surmised that the probable cause was the third-party charger, which had blown out a circuit inside the laptop when the charger itself had failed. The charger did not function when plugged into another laptop, confirming my suspicions.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (19.12.0, 2022-03-21).

  AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Hardware AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Bitlocker, hardware, Repairs, SSD

• Our world is not very S.M.A.R.T. about SSDs

  Posted on February 7, 2022 at 02:45 CST by Ben Myers • Comment in the Forums

  ISSUE 19.06 • 2022-02-07

  HARDWARE

  

  By Ben Myers

  With solid-state drives (SSDs), the SMART ante is raised because an SSD can fail catastrophically — CLUNK! — without warning and with no possibility of recovering data.

  In my recent article “Hard drives — still pretty S.M.A.R.T.” (AskWoody, 2021-12-27), I was hardly overwhelmed by the treatment of the S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology) data kept on traditional spinning hard drives by Microsoft Windows and the rest of the industry. But at least, if your computer started to hiccup, you could almost always look at the SMART data to find a possible cause.

  Read the full story in the AskWoody Plus Newsletter 19.06.0 (2022-02-07).
  This story also appears in the AskWoody Free Newsletter 19.06.F (2022-02-07).

  AskWoody FREE Newsletter, AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Hardware AskWoody Plus Newsletter, hardware, SMART, SSDs

• Special Edition: Building Opal

  Posted on January 3, 2022 at 02:45 CST by Will Fastie • Comment in the Forums

  ISSUE 19.01 • 2022-01-03

  EDITORIAL

  

  By Will Fastie

  Our writers have the week off.

  The AskWoody newsletters are published 48 times per year, leaving four Mondays on which we would have no issue. Last year we tried an experiment on one of those off Mondays, reprinting a few articles that we thought you would like to see in one place.

  That experiment went well; your feedback was positive. We ended up doing it twice last year and now we’re doing it again.

  This time, we’re bringing you the four published articles about Opal, my new Windows 11 PC DIY build. That is complemented with a brief new piece in which I describe my lack of progress.

  We hope you like it!

  Read the full AskWoody Plus Newsletter 19.01.0 (2022-01-03).
  Read the full AskWoody Free Newsletter 19.01.F (2022-01-03).

  AskWoody FREE Newsletter, AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Hardware AskWoody Plus Newsletter, DIY, hardware

• Opal: The Update

  Posted on January 3, 2022 at 02:44 CST by Will Fastie • Comment in the Forums

  HARDWARE DIY

  

  By Will Fastie

  It hasn’t gone as smoothly as I had hoped.

  Maybe I’ve just been lucky. Maybe I’m getting older and slower. Or dumber. Whatever it is, I’ve run into some problems getting Opal up and running.

  I’ve done the basic configuration steps and I’ve installed Windows 10 Pro. The computer is running fine. The UEFI BIOS sees all the hardware and I think I’ve done the RAID 1 configuration correctly. So what’s the problem?

  Read the full story in the AskWoody Plus Newsletter 19.01.0 (2022-01-03).
  This story also appears in the AskWoody Free Newsletter 19.01.F (2022-01-03).

  AskWoody FREE Newsletter, AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Hardware AskWoody Plus Newsletter, ASUS, DIY, hardware, Motherboards

• Hard drives – still pretty S.M.A.R.T.

  Posted on December 27, 2021 at 02:44 CST by Ben Myers • Comment in the Forums

  HARDWARE

  

  By Ben Myers

  In my last article, Breaking and entering with Linux: What you see (AskWoody 2021-09-27), I said that there were issues with the S.M.A.R.T. system built into the firmware of both old-time spinning hard drives and solid-state drives (SSDs).

  S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology, hereinafter referred to simply as “SMART”) provides real-time recordkeeping about the health of your hard drive. It is all about system reliability, of which drives are a major element and a significant point of failure.

  Read the full story in the AskWoody Plus Newsletter 18.50.0 (2021-12-27).

  AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Hardware AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Hard-disk health, hardware, HDD diagnostics, SMART

• What’s a NAS, and do I need one?

  Posted on October 25, 2021 at 02:45 CDT by Richard Hay • Comment in the Forums

  ISSUE 18.41 • 2021-10-25

  HARDWARE

  

  By Richard Hay

  If I were writing this to a group of aviators in the United States Navy, they would immediately respond by saying a NAS is a Naval Air Station. However, this article is not about a location where planes and helicopters take off and land.

  For this article, NAS stands for network-attached storage.

  Read the full story in the AskWoody Plus Newsletter 18.41.0 (2021-10-25).
  This story also appears in the AskWoody Free Newsletter 18.41.F (2021-10-25).

  AskWoody FREE Newsletter, AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Hardware AskWoody Plus Newsletter, hardware, Network, storage

• Opal: Physical assembly – the case

  Posted on October 25, 2021 at 02:43 CDT by Will Fastie • Comment in the Forums

  HARDWARE DIY

  

  By Will Fastie

  Obviously, everything ends up going into the case.

  Last week, I discussed the assembly steps necessary to prepare Opal’s new motherboard. That process included installing the processor, the cooler’s mount, the RAM, and the SSD. Now it’s time to talk about getting the motherboard into the case, along with all the other components that make up the system.

  Read the full story in the AskWoody Plus Newsletter 18.41.0 (2021-10-25).

  AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Hardware AskWoody Plus Newsletter, DIY, hardware, Motherboards

• Opal: Physical assembly – the motherboard

  Posted on October 18, 2021 at 02:42 CDT by Will Fastie • Comment in the Forums

  HARDWARE DIY

  

  By Will Fastie

  I didn’t realize assembling a PC could be so dangerous.

  Like other folks who put together PCs, I usually call them “builds.” That’s a bit generous. As you’ve seen from my previous installment in this series (AskWoody 2021-08-30), I acquired components. I’m not really building anything — I’m assembling those components into the final product, Opal.

  Once the collection of components is on hand, where does one start?

  Read the full story in the AskWoody Plus Newsletter 18.40.0 (2021-10-18).

  AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Hardware AskWoody Plus Newsletter, DIY, hardware

• Breaking and entering with Linux: What you see

  Posted on September 27, 2021 at 02:42 CDT by Ben Myers • Comment in the Forums

  HARDWARE

  

  By Ben Myers

  In my first “Breaking and entering” article, you saw what to do step-by-step to get an unbootable system into legacy boot mode and how to prepare a UEFI USB stick with Linux Mint.

  Now, boot your system with that Linux USB stick.

  Read the full story in the AskWoody Plus Newsletter 18.37.0 (2021-09-27).

  AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Hardware AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Diagnostics, hardware, Linux, Repairs

• Breaking and entering with Linux

  Posted on August 30, 2021 at 02:41 CDT by Ben Myers • Comment in the Forums

  HARDWARE

  

  By Ben Myers

  Use Linux on a USB stick to diagnose a Windows system.

  My working premise here is that your Windows system will not boot, not even in safe or any other degraded mode. You have no idea what’s going on, and it is premature, time-consuming, and sometimes futile to rip a computer open to see what is inside. The solution is to boot another operating system from a USB stick and use it to explore and diagnose problems.

  Read the full story in the AskWoody Plus Newsletter 18.33.0 (2021-08-30).

  AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Hardware AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Diagnostics, hardware, Linux, Repairs

• Opal: How I planned my new build

  Posted on August 30, 2021 at 02:40 CDT by Will Fastie • Comment in the Forums

  HARDWARE DIY

  

  By Will Fastie

  I’ll say it again — it’s not the building, it’s the planning.

  A favorite saying about war plans is that they do not survive first contact with the enemy. A slight paraphrase is that a plan does not survive first contact with reality.

  Reality caused me to make a change in my build plan, which is the first thing I want to tell you about. Onyx may be dying.

  Read the full story in the AskWoody Plus Newsletter 18.33.0 (2021-08-30).

  AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Hardware, Windows 11 AskWoody Plus Newsletter, DIY, hardware, Intel, PC
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