Bobs Dollops,The

Laptop Repair tips for; Patriot/EI system/DSG320/PCWorld laptop

+ a bit of fun with attractive AVI & JPG Fractal art files

Original content.

by Bob Seabrook.

Some help

.Htm DIY Laptop fix Models; Patriot 3070, 307x, EI System 3081, Generic DSG G320 laptop Motherboard. May apply to others too.

Background: Through no fault of the computer manufacturers, duff components are fitted in some computers. The components are the big electrolytic capacitors used to stabilize the DC power supply in the PC. The electrolyte fluid was incorrect so the capacitors fail. This can stop the computer turning on or the computer may misbehave intermittently affecting the integrity of the data on the hard disk.

DIY* Repair: Four of the eight relevant capacitors can be quickly checked for obvious signs of venting via the CPU hatch underside. To access the remaining ones remove the laptop keyboard via the four ‘door like’ latches on its front edge furthest from the display. The rest of the disassembly and reassembly is obvious but the page is still helpful because photos locate the capacitors and the order of re-assembly is prescribed. Plus the tip about Blu-Tacking removed screws next to the holes they came from is worth a try. Visit DIY repair tips page now. *Note for translators; DIY means “Do it yourself”.

Offline alternatives

.DOC Word doc 984kB free download.

Alternative Word 2000 document form of the more up to date online article.

.PDF Click here 708kB free download. New Nov 2009

Easily Portable and printable PDF form of the more up to date online article, for non Word 2K and Linux users.

Some fun

.AVI Fractal zooms Zoom in on a point at the edge of the Mandelbrot set pattern tastefully revealing detail at ever increasing magnifications. All movies end where they start for continuous repeat viewing. Low-loss Cinepak compression (good quality) picture, all at 15 frames per second.

.GIF previews

Ariel 2MB free download

17s play

Tiny area - 190x198y pixel

High zoom speed.

Gem 9MB free download

34s play

Small area - 261x278y pixel

Medium zoom speed.

Promise 19MB free download

29s play

Medium area -445x438y pixel

Medium zoom speed

Emerald 23MB free download

51s play

Medium area 423x392y pixel

Low zoom speed

Twister 113MB 800x600y pixel or

Twister 78MB 640x480y hosted on Mediafire

96s play

Medium zoom speed. free download

More information These zooms previewed above reach the resolution limit of 64bit floating point numbers corresponding to magnifications over billions of times (>1e24). They took an old 600MHz PC many days to produce. BMP frames created with my MandelBrother Program written in VB6. Images compiled into AVI’s with Bink and Smacker - CinePak Codec, 15 frames/s.

Viewing Tip Save time. Put shortcuts to source DRIVES & folders down the left edge of your desktop and destination APPLICATION shortcuts that accept drag-n-drop down the right edge.

Make one of the shortcuts down the right edge of the desktop to "C:\Program Files\Windows Media Player\mplayer2.exe" then you can drag any .AVI onto it – to play – in a humble compact window without the bloated borders of Windows media player.

Mplayer2 is the original core program that Windows Media Player runs.

.AVI Fractal Julia set animations. Morphing shapes. Not as good as zooms above. All 15 frames/s, CinePak Codec.

Nose 3.4MB free download

8s play

Medium area 495x407y

Taken from under the nose of the Mandelbrot set beetle ;-)

Auto3 4.5MB free download

8s play

Medium area 496x496y

.JPG Fractal Posters. Big high resolution poster images especially selected for printing on A2 or A3 and framing behind glass. Consider viewing in portrait style.

Some images have been posterized and/or colour saturated to look great when printed but it makes them look worse when displayed on your computer. Don’t be discouraged by this.

.MP3 Dawn Chorus My own Clear digital Stereo birdsong recordings. From Dorset, England.

Preview 1.8MB free download

2 minute play Stereo Dawn Chorus. March 2005

Birdsong.mp3 Plays well on a continuous loop.

Play online

PathsMeet 32MB free download

22 minute play Top quality Stereo Dawn Chorus. March 2005

Crisp dawn air hits you. Listen for the woodpecker. Good on laptop speakers because they suit birdsong frequencies.

Play online

Blackbird Solo 2.1MB free download

3 Minute Play Good quality solo recording using internal (stereo) microphone of Sony ICD-ST10 pictured left.

Play online

Tip.

Play Blackbird solo simultaneously with PathsMeet as the orchestra – and balance the volumes to taste.

Good when

· Chilling out

· Far from home and homesick

· Stuck in a clattering hospital ward

· Caring for yourself after caring for others.

Make your XP PC play birdsong.mp3 at 07:30 AM tomorrow

1. Copy birdsong.mp3 to your My Music folder

2. Using Windows Notepad create a file called alarm.bat on your XP desktop

3. Copy and paste the red text below into your new file

4. Save it.

5. Run it. (double click the icon on the desktop)

AT 07:30 /INTERACTIVE "C:\Program Files\Windows Media Player\mplayer2.exe" "%userprofile%\My Documents\My Music\birdsong.mp3"

.WMV Levitation Silly mobile phone clip showing my experimental Biefield Brown ‘Lifter’ or ‘Flyer’ device that levitates due to a flow of down moving ions.

Thin horizontal wires at deadly dangerous 20kV 1 inch above the foil cause an ion draft that lifts the device. It crackles, buzzes and stinks of ozone. The 20KV HT was taken from an old computer monitor. Danger of death – do not attempt without qualified adult supervision. The risks are high because the necessarily slack supply wires can move suddenly due to electrostatic charges and touch a bystander. All persons should stand well clear – unlike the individual (JC:-) who recorded these clips.

Flyer1 400kb free download.

21s play Small area 208x160y pixels, Flyer2 is better.

The device is actually held DOWN by threads attached to the red tape.

Flyer2 660kb free download

35s play Small area 208x160y pixels,

Close up is supposed to show no visible means of support but it’s too fuzzy.

HELP ! www.wcgrid.org. www.worldCommunityGrid.org The potential to save an innocent life.

Please donate your computers idle time to medical and other research for at no cost to you. Join 430000 people worldwide. Get crunching. You can choose which projects to help. There is even a project to aid development of a new solar power source.

Instructions are on this very professional site run by IBM at considerable cost to them, download the free software and get crunching at no cost to you – except the trouble you took to install it. Take a look. There is even a busy forum with community advisors. Get business computers onboard with the owners permission.

FYI

If you’re interested my user statistics can be seen here; seabrookb or here but often during updates some of these details are inaccessible. You are welcome to join my tiny team delta, that way I know you came here. I have been committed to crunching for www.wcgrid.org - on numerous computers for over year, and before that for United Devices until they closed their grid. With my current machines my ranking has levelled out at around 20000 out of about 430000 which is just in the top 5%, i.e. 20000 members have done a lot better.

You can help by joining the grid or donating to me your useless old broken but fixable Windows-XP laptop for a redeeming retirement. This will also help you reduce unnecessary WEEE. Obviously donated laptops must not be stripped of parts, must include power supply, 256MB+ RAM, etc, no major mechanical damage like smashed display or hard disk, but filthy, cracked and chipped case through wear and tear is OK. I believe laptops use energy more efficiently than desktops, make less noise, and use less space, so laptops only please.

Get your business computers onboard. They can be scheduled to use CPU and network resources at times that suit you. Be sure to get the owners permission. Once installed with your preferences it can run without attention for months or years – I know. The reputable BOINC software is superbly robust and well designed and there are versions for Windows, Linux and the MAC. The software runs at a low priority so it gives way to your foreground work – however it does use RAM, it will run fine on a 256MB RAM PC, but 512MB + would be preferable.

To save on the cost of dialup internet access for the grid I changed my ISP to PlusNet Broadband Your Way option 1 – here:

Shi t e mod Blog

June 2008 Created page. Initially the laptop repair tips were on the home page. Later moved them to a separate page to cut bandwidth use. At the same time improved that page so that clicking the motherboard picture revealed more detail. Also added a reminder to check/replace the clock/date battery.

Site hosted by Plusnet BBYW1 since I don’t plan to squander bandwidth on video and audio streaming, and since other use is seasonal and I already have a phone line, the attraction was

a) broadband only, up to 8Mbps. I know what I’m paying for, no confusing bundles, I already have a line and that is complicated enough,

b) low cost. To save more for you too click the PlusNet logo above (it helps me too at no cost to you). It is only £9.99 per month (inc VAT, excl BT line),

c) no long term contract(1 month), [The only trouble with this is that the terms can change quickly month by month (see e below) ]

d) free help on the phone, or by email, and via busy expert forums,

e) flexible pay as you go currently £1.25 per gigabyte beyond the first two gigabytes in a month, or upgrade to option2 for many more Gb, or pay nothing more and still have limited bandwidth of 128kbps for the rest of the payment month.

f) faster than 6Mbits/second, after some RWIN / MTU tweaking. Before tweaks download speed never > 3Mbps. But even that is good.

g) if you cancel your direct debit, you won’t get a scary letter from a debt collection agency a year later for a service you didn’t use, you’ll just loose the service you didn’t use – after being informed of course. No great loss. No demonically diabolical labyrinths to escape from. I had a bad time with Demon Internet Ltd– stopped using them for YEARS and eventually cancelled my contract. No confirmation. Years later I get a letter from a debt collection agency demanding an extortionate amount for services not used. Demon Internet Ltd said they could not tell if I had used it or not so I should pay. In that case what was the logon user authentication for? Nearly as traumatic as robbery. Eventually negotiated paying half the amount demanded. So Demon Internet Ltd Suck IMHO. Avoid Demon Internet Ltd like the plague – would be my advice.

h) Referral scheme.

5 July 2008 Added jpg fractal posters and made the links to the avi files relative to the location of the home page so that one might save the webpage with File->SaveAs for offline viewing, because that helps folks with limited access get what they want for later use at minimum cost.

The beauty of fractals first captivated me after reading James Gleiks illustrated book Chaos in the 1980s. The first and only publication that showed me how to create Mandelbrot and Julia set pictures was Personal Computer World vintage December 1986 article entitled Fractal Sets on pages 196 – 1999. Mandelbrots own book was no help at all! Today the first place to look would be Wikipedia of course.

12 July 2008 Regrettably I had to replace relative refs to avi and mp3 files with absolute ones for 2 reasons. (1) when relative refs were used, Word used \ where / wanted which understandably upset Firefox3.0 browsers! Explorer6 is OK. (2) Plusnet advice documentation suggests it’s better to discourage slurpers (robot crawlers that suck in the whole site content).

Rant follows; Whilst I fully understand PN’s POV from a cost of bandwidth perspective, and a fair access to bandwidth perspective, I think in some cases their POV is hugely against the public interest. Since if they found themselves hosting a popular site that was loosely in the public interest, that interest would be restricted, customers would be embarrassed, visitors would be unimpressed and disappointed. It may even be counter-productive for PN hosting the site. Before this date I had assumed visits to a site would be limited to the equivalent of thousands of slurps/day, not 1!!! More sinister is the moral injustice of all the cash stopping at the likes of the service providers (mostly BT [ipsteam/datastream-etc]) rather than the good content providers as if they are just service consumers with nothing to offer. It may partly explain the high proportion of drivel (like this;-) on the web. The honeymoon is over PN.

20 July 2008 1) Simplified title text. Removed the date updated from title text because (a) when seen in search engine results is does not tell visitors about what the site contains (b) contains many complex font changes that confused Yahoo cache display software (c) this site change record contains the same information, (d) required manual update.

2) Inserted www.wcgrid.org widget. Oops, no it does not display properly when the grid is updating the database of user statistics. Maybe when they fix it. For now I have just inserted a logo.

3) Added unique visitor counter from http://www.bestfreehitcounters.com . The sponsors name is nearby and in the counters tooltip.

30 July 2008 1) discovered that the hit counter is very poor at busy times – not displaying the digits reliably, seems like I may have to go over to a CGI web page. Cannot believe it is sponsored by a company that sells baby toys in Australia – who would be interested in that here in the UK?

2) Added proper graphical links to my PlusNet ISP for those interested in a good broadband deal referral with no wretched long term contract.

6 August 2008 1) Added Banner for NHS Blood Service. We often see people receiving blood or blood products and you can’t help wondering how the heck there this always enough. I understand that sometimes there isn’t! A similar concern is that donors also cease giving because there are times when it is not OK to donate. With this in mind the donor [and the grid] community is a bit like a relay race in the sense that it is important to know there is someone fresh to take the batton from you to keep the race going. Also like the grid giving blood is another direct way to make a small difference without cash.

2) Neatly listed (a to h) reasons for choosing PlusNet BBYW1.

7 August 2008 1) 630AM: Corrected backslashes to forward slashes in links to first 3 of the posters at top of page. Used dot forward- slash notation rather than absolute path.

2) 10PM: Added graphs to www.wcgrid.org section to illustrate my actual member ranking as a percentage of total members, and to show growth in total members.

8 August 2008 1) 530AM: poster links corrected yet again, now absolute. The editor was STILL changing my / to \ on subsequent file saves when using dot forward-slash notation.

2)1045PM: Separator lines added .

3) 1046PM wcgrid section paragraphs re-ordered.

19 September 2008 1)6pm; removed unique hits counter because its cr@p! My counter from http://www.bestfreehitcounters.com reset back to 0 which has to be the ultimate sin for a publicly viewable counter. I now know about 2 unique hits per day occur. Those hits are probably bots of one kind or another. Anyway at least “bobs dollops” gets found by Yahoo and Google, but it took a 2 –4 months. Probably because of some of the errors corrected more recently as listed above.

3 October 2008 Added my name to the top of the page. It can’t be found if it ain’t there. Not that it matters. Noticed ‘Bobs Dollops’ is not be found by Google or Yahoo again since I stopped hitting my own site in order to see who the real visitors might be (using webstats). Maybe it does pay to look up yourself;-)

4 October 2008 Added text to fractal posters section (first section) to suggest the enigmas that they represent.

28 October 2008 7PM - Added Grid utube video. 11:20PM changed my rank from 18000 of 400000 to 19000 of 410000 (my rank is slipping – must enlist another computer). Seabrookb membername and rank of 20000 are now hyperlinked to my public statistics, and delta teamname is hyperlinked to a page where you can JOIN my team delta by clicking the [join-this-team] button there. The current number of members of about 420000 is hyperlinked to the global statistics page for a more up to date figure. However readers should be aware that figures are sometimes unavailable while they are being updated at least once daily and nightly for a couple of hours. For the same reason I don’t use widgets that brag up to date details because they display garbage during these updates.

2 November 2008 5AM – Embedded another Grid Utube video because the first was not my favourite – and I wanted to see if different defaults could be embedded. Also added more text to the first section in connexion with the fractal posters.

27 January 2009 12PM – Added Twister to collection of fractal zooms. This file was created in 2000 but only today reduced from 288MB to 80MB by Shrinking its area without loss of resolution using NCH Prism Video Converter. The original video is huge at 1284 pixels wide and 288MB in size. I am beginning to like the smaller version here already since is presents well on a 1024x768 laptop display.

1 February 2009 4PM linked to twister on mediafire.com instead of the copy on my webspace. This is because mediafire quickly show me the number of downloads started. If you have trouble getting the file from mediafire you can download my bigger 113MB 800x600 website copy from here.

10 February 2009 Previews for AVI’s added. They are GIF’s. Made from AVI’s with NCH Prism Video Converter to reduce size, then Movies13 from Jansoft to make GIF’s. Also used NCH Prism Video Converter ‘shrink’ on original Twister AVI to halve its area and cut file size from 288MB to 113MB maintaining resolution. 288MB too big for my paid-for plusnet account - limit is 250MB.

Mediafire host unlimited files for free, but each file may not exceed 100MB.So I tried Mediafire for a 78MB 640 x 480 pixel version of the Twister file. Mediafire reveal to me quickly how many downloads were started. Mediafire are disappointing. I expect them them to advertise but they open explorer windows with video advertisements (commercials) that can get hidden behind your foreground window and use up loads of your precious paid-for bandwith before you discover it – this is a great shame. So sorry Mediafire, very nice try, good software, but if you are allowing these you suck on this issue alone IMHO.

1 March 2009-03-01 Added picture of the problem laptop that can be repaired. Promoted laptop repair section to top of page since it is attracting visits. Added background information paragraph crediting www.badcaps.net. Used more advanced formatting to wrap text around picture. Corrected spelling of Blu-Tack and linked to a Wiki entry for it and IBM in the grid section. Oh heck – in the end I went all the way and re-layed out the whole home page – more or less as I had always wanted to, with pictures/icons/previews on the left and text wrapping on the right around a central gutter. But paying attention to detail took hours.

22 May 2009 730PM Added blackbird solo to MP3 section. This little chap makes it worth leaving your garden alone in spring for the birds. These critters - especially the youngsters - have a short life because of hurrying traffic. If only we’d remember them too in our busy lives.

For the earlier recordings made in 2005 I built a homemade stereo microphone plugged into the same ICD-ST10 recorders 3.5mm stereo jack. It was simply made of two electret microphone elements (from Maplin) stuck on the end of a Y shaped lead so the elements were several inches ( 10 to 20cm) apart facing outwards. This produced much more discernable and realistic stereo channel separation. Also the larger elements produced better recordings than the smaller ones. Both external stereo microphone sizes were always more sensitive (better) than the internal one. The internal mic recordings sound like they are made in a box with a one inch (2cm) hole – because they are. All microphones need shielding from wind.

The Sony ICD-ST10 recorder is very mobile measuring less than 1cm thick and about 8x4cm. It can just about run from two 1.2V AAA chargeable NiMh cells – but the battery level indicator always reports a low level and has a short usable time. So my biggest wish for future products would be for one with a hi capacity chargeable lithium-ion cell/battery that could be charged in the recorder from the 3V supply jack and/or the 5V USB port giving enough charge time to fill the recording memory and play it back. I’d like to turn off completely the timed LCD backlight to conserve power. The VOR (Voice operated recording) is excellent because it pre-BUFFERS sound so that you never miss the start of the event that activated the recording. The recording trigger level is reasonably sensitive too although I’d sometimes like to make it even more so.

The best thing about digital stereo recorders for sensitive recordings is that there is no tape drive motor noise to eliminate from the recording. Plus recordings can be downloaded to a PC MP3 file via the USB port file for quick and easy sharing.

26 July 2009 0001AM. Birdsong section improved. Inspired by the clean and fast implementation of online audio presentation on the New Forest National Park Authorities Web page called Voices of the Forest by Jo Holmes and team, I added the same audio widget here for online listening of birdsong.mp3. Most thanks to Martin Laine for so diligently showing the way

The online audio widget is really cool because

1. it uses the robust and fast flash player activex plugin already on over 90% of machines of all types from PC to MAC.

2. as a result its presentation is consistent across platforms

3. it does not require fiddly bloated proprietary downloads like Quicktime or Realplayer or Mediaplayer to the client computer.

4. it does not cause MS Internet Explorer to irritatingly block the javascript it employs.

5. once played, the recording is cached so you can replay without wasting your bandwidth downloading again.

6. it starts playing almost immediately - before the whole file is downloaded.

7. its purpose is obvious from its appearance

8. when activated the widget expands showing name of file and progress.

9. when stopped the volume fades out rather than abruptly switching off,

10. can be configured with alternate colours – although the defaults are well chosen.

11. its free from here but you can donate via paypal

12. very well documented in more than one place, here and especially here.

The only unnecessary extra I would like is volume control. Looping can be permanently enabled or disabled successfully from the html – see last link next para below. Realtime loop enable does appear when you right click the widget but it does not seem to change the fixed enabled/disabled looping behaviour.

Only a few steps are needed to get the widget working. First, download audio-player.zip and copy the player.swf and audio-player.js to your website root (alongside your index.html). Second, in a new browser tab visit simple demo, view->source, copy-and-paste the html from <p> to </p> into your web page and change the URL of the MP3 file to access one of yours. That’s it!

2 August 2009 0600AM. Birdsong section improved further. Now all of the recordings can be played online without having to download first.

20 Oct 2009 0100AM. Changed the last picture on this page to the unknown gentleman soldier. A picture tells a thousand words….

1 Nov 2009 0600AM Added PDF version of laptop repair document. It was created using PDF Creator. Small changes made include changing the word “without” in bullet point d of the aims/audience paragraph and adding explicit links [that begin www. Or http://www.] so that the homepage and some hi resolution photos of the motherboard can be accessed from the pdf file. Also updated the reported size of the doc version from 820kB to 980kB. Considering adding a link to a web accessible backup of the laptops driver cd because that was sought after quite recently.

HELP ! UK only

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