FEGEITOK:


Speaking of the value of knowing your stuff inside out.

I decided to update the BIOS of my main laptop on Saturday morning. It turned out to be the biggest mistake of my life. I bricked my primary workhorse and had to literally cancel all my schedule for Saturday and Sunday.

I have been updating BIOS all my life. But this one went south. The laptop would not come on again. To be more specific, it would turn on, but only into BIOS. It would not boot into windows. I tried every trick in the world same thing. I downloaded and created a USB based Windows Boot disk, but it would not load. I downloaded recovery ISOs and used them to create a USB stick that can allow me access the system, no luck.

I then assumed I have a bad USB stick and went to a repair man and he gave me a his own, same thing. Guy was stumped, referred me to someone else who was busy. I went home, kept trying all of Saturday and all of Sunday then luck smiled on me towards evening.

Then something occured to me. As a matter of practice and principle, I try to duplicate how enterprise networks are run at home. It means that I standardized on a particular laptop brand (Lenovo), a particular series of that laptop and that I have several of such laptops at home. I have Thinkpads X series several generations. I have more than one of each generation. X240, X250 and X260

So I said, when I bought this laptop, I swapped out the 250gb SSD for the 1TB SSD from my retired laptop. What would happen if I put back that original 250gb SSD. I tried it and the laptop would come on. So, the problem was with the drive and not the motherboard.

I took it out and returned the 1TB SSD same thing.

I then recalled that they said that X240 and X250 are literally the same internally. So I took out my X250 that I rarely use from storage and it would not come on, the power button would blink and make some noises and then go off. I removed the external battery, same thing. I removed the internal battery, same thing. I disconnected the BIOS battery, reconnected it, reinstalled the internal and external batteries and it came to life. I then removed the SSD that came with the X250 and inserted my 1TB SSD and it roared to life.

If I did not know my onions, I would never have resolved this at home and all by myself.

This story also illustrates for those IT guys who have never operated in an enterprise environment why enterprises always standardize infrastructure. It makes troubleshooting a lot easier. It also explains why you must duplicate the enterprise environment if you want to relate well with your peers inside.

In my days as a hardware and software guy. I was not that guy who fixed a bad PC by formatting it. I never did so. I always repaired the OS. I was very adept at those tools. Which guy would you prefer? A guy that does the easy fix or the guy who tried to understand what went wrong and then fixed it. Who knows the technology better? Who would you want in your corner when you got into IT trouble? I did not mind how long it took.

Even before repairing, I would use Antivirus Boot CDs to throughly disinfect the system because the primary cause of those failures was infection from human error. I would even replace the corrupted operating system files.

That quest to understand the underlying technology and understand how things work and fix the problem instead of just refreshing everything made me extremely knowledgeable of operating systems and led me to such tools like Winternals amongst others. Knowledge that I have sadly rarely ever used since I switched camp. Winternals was so good that Microsoft ended up buying the company and absorbing its founders, I can never forget Mark Russinovich. How much sadness I felt when Microsoft said they would discontinue that line of products. How many hardware and software guys knew that such tools existed? Their solution was to get pirated CDs and reinstall Windows. I never did that.

Neither can I forget The PC Upgrade & Maintenance Guide by Mark Minasi.

In the event that that had to be done, I would extract all the license keys from the installed software before ever formatting. So that the user would not lose his or her investments. I invested so much and found out that private individuals cannot pay for the labor that I put in. They were always willing to pay for hardware but never for the brains that did the work.

I would also save the user's data. I would ransack all corners of the hard drive and I would even take notes of where I got what data from so that at the end of the day, when I was done, the PC would be the same as it was before the trouble.

Then I plotted my pivot from that sort of business and thank God I did. Where I am today and where I was then is literally as different as the night is as different from day.

FEGEITOK:


I used to encounter trojans. I remember finding a set of files that was responsible for siphoning data from a certain government machine to the outside world via email. Long time ago.

I have since stopped doing that kind of IT so NO, neither have I come across it in a client's establishment.

jonescosmos:


What you needed to do from the beginning was a NAND hard reset, and that's what you ended up doing when you sterved the laptop of power by taking out any sources of power to the mainboard.

Your SSD frying up was due to multiple power interruptions when you were power cycling the system because it was up and running before you went upgrading the firmware.

My Disaster Recovery days and knowledge would have reminded me of removing the SSD at the 3rd failed bootup. Good luck.

FEGEITOK:


Speaking of the value of knowing your stuff inside out.

I decided to update the BIOS of my main laptop on Saturday morning. It turned out to be the biggest mistake of my life. I bricked my primary workhorse and had to literally cancel all my schedule for Saturday and Sunday.

I have been updating BIOS all my life. But this one went south. The laptop would not come on again. To be more specific, it would turn on, but only into BIOS. It would not boot into windows. I tried every trick in the world same thing. I downloaded and created a USB based Windows Boot disk, but it would not load. I downloaded recovery ISOs and used them to create a USB stick that can allow me access the system, no luck.

I then assumed I have a bad USB stick and went to a repair man and he gave me a his own, same thing. Guy was stumped, referred me to someone else who was busy. I went home, kept trying all of Saturday and all of Sunday then luck smiled on me towards evening.

Then something occured to me. As a matter of practice and principle, I try to duplicate how enterprise networks are run at home. It means that I standardized on a particular laptop brand (Lenovo), a particular series of that laptop and that I have several of such laptops at home. I have Thinkpads X series several generations. I have more than one of each generation. X240, X250 and X260

So I said, when I bought this laptop, I swapped out the 250gb SSD for the 1TB SSD from my retired laptop. What would happen if I put back that original 250gb SSD. I tried it and the laptop would come on. So, the problem was with the drive and not the motherboard.

I took it out and returned the 1TB SSD same thing.

I then recalled that they said that X240 and X250 are literally the same internally. So I took out my X250 that I rarely use from storage and it would not come on, the power button would blink and make some noises and then go off. I removed the external battery, same thing. I removed the internal battery, same thing. I disconnected the BIOS battery, reconnected it, reinstalled the internal and external batteries and it came to life. I then removed the SSD that came with the X250 and inserted my 1TB SSD and it roared to life.

If I did not know my onions, I would never have resolved this at home and all by myself.

This story also illustrates for those IT guys who have never operated in an enterprise environment why enterprises always standardize infrastructure. It makes troubleshooting a lot easier. It also explains why you must duplicate the enterprise environment if you want to relate well with your peers inside.

In my days as a hardware and software guy. I was not that guy who fixed a bad PC by formatting it. I never did so. I always repaired the OS. I was very adept at those tools. Which guy would you prefer? A guy that does the easy fix or the guy who tried to understand what went wrong and then fixed it. Who knows the technology better? Who would you want in your corner when you got into IT trouble? I did not mind how long it took.

Even before repairing, I would use Antivirus Boot CDs to throughly disinfect the system because the primary cause of those failures was infection from human error. I would even replace the corrupted operating system files.

That quest to understand the underlying technology and understand how things work and fix the problem instead of just refreshing everything made me extremely knowledgeable of operating systems and led me to such tools like Winternals amongst others. Knowledge that I have sadly rarely ever used since I switched camp. Winternals was so good that Microsoft ended up buying the company and absorbing its founders, I can never forget Mark Russinovich. How much sadness I felt when Microsoft said they would discontinue that line of products. How many hardware and software guys knew that such tools existed? Their solution was to get pirated CDs and reinstall Windows. I never did that.

Neither can I forget The PC Upgrade & Maintenance Guide by Mark Minasi.

In the event that that had to be done, I would extract all the license keys from the installed software before ever formatting. So that the user would not lose his or her investments. I invested so much and found out that private individuals cannot pay for the labor that I put in. They were always willing to pay for hardware but never for the brains that did the work.

I would also save the user's data. I would ransack all corners of the hard drive and I would even take notes of where I got what data from so that at the end of the day, when I was done, the PC would be the same as it was before the trouble.

Then I plotted my pivot from that sort of business and thank God I did. Where I am today and where I was then is literally as different as the night is as different from day.

GloriousGbola:


what make is the SSD?

i have found that i should just stick to Samsung SSDs. a few years back i migrated my kids to SSDs and i bought a cheap drive. [silicon power] one fine day, my sons laptop just stopped working. the drive was fried. making a whining noise. order of quality seems to be samsung , crucial western digital/intel.

FEGEITOK:


Samsung SSD 870 EVO 1TB

GloriousGbola:


wow. thats a first

do you have an external drive case or an adapter?

it may still be working but not booting. this also happened to me once years ago when i updated a hard disk [manufacturers website] and it stopped booting and could not be used as a boot drive again .

zeestone99:


Buy a hybrid or transformer based inverter with a low voltage disconnect (lvd).
I have transformer based inverter with lvd that can work for lithium.
It's on the list on my advert but u won't see it.
U rather buy what u like and cause problems then come online to ask for solutions.

Obnoxious2001:


You where making sense until your closing remark.

That inverter you dey try inform me about I no go buy am from you .

I go buy am from who no put him problem ontop him Market...

Pax vobiscum

brightk:
loo... so u mean say marketeers de add family problem on top dia sales. Na wa. Make una temper justice with mercy

FEGEITOK:


Samsung SSD 870 EVO 1TB

jonescosmos:


You should try a PCIe Gen5 NVMe M.2 SSD with blisteringly fast 12,400MB/s read and write speeds with an endurance of 1000TBW per 1TB of capacity. That gives you 2000TBW for the 2TB capacity drive, or enough to rewrite 1TB of data every single day for over five years on a compatible mainboard, thank me later.

Files and Bandwidths have grown bigger lately, after my Inverter setup I decided that I will have to do away with my 32TB WDMyCloudEX4100 NAS and 24TB HPE Proliant DL380Gen9 Server. They became too slow for my liking.
Despite having laptops like HP Omen, Lenovo ThinkPad P43s, HP AIO 24-df1270, HP ProBook 450 G8, all with minimum of 2TB NVMe SSD, I still find it slow pulling files from my NAS and HPE Server especially media files.
So I decided It's time to go full blown SSD.

My latest config goes like:

To replace my 32TB WDMyCloudEX4100 NAS I will use:
ASUS ROG Maximus Z790 Hero
LGA 1700(Intel®13th&12th Gen) ATX Gaming Motherboard
Intel Core i9-13900K Gaming Desktop Processor 24 cores (8 P-cores + 16 E-cores) with Integrated Graphics - Unlocked
PCIe 5.0, DDR5,20+1 power Stages,
2.5Gb LAN, WiFi 6E
Bluetooth V5.2,
2X Thunderbolt 4 Ports,
5xM.2, Thunderbolt™ 4/USB4)
5x4TB Seagate FireCuda 540 PCIe NVMe Gen5

To replace my 24TB HPE Proliant DL380Gen9 Server, I will use:
HPE DL380 Gen10 Plus 8LFF CTO Server
2x Intel Xeon-Silver 4314 16 Core Processor
2x 256GB DDR4 3200
16x 1.92GB SAS SSD
2x 10G SFP
etc.

All these items have arrived except the Intel Core i9-13900K Proc.

Pictures of my setup will be made available on demand.

Obnoxious2001:


You where making sense until your closing remark.

That inverter you dey try inform me about I no go buy am from you .

I go buy am from who no put him problem ontop him Market...

Pax vobiscum

jonescosmos:


You should try a PCIe Gen5 NVMe M.2 SSD with blisteringly fast 12,400MB/s read and write speeds with an endurance of 1000TBW per 1TB of capacity. That gives you 2000TBW for the 2TB capacity drive, or enough to rewrite 1TB of data every single day for over five years on a compatible mainboard, thank me later.

Files and Bandwidths have grown bigger lately, after my Inverter setup I decided that I will have to do away with my 32TB WDMyCloudEX4100 NAS and 24TB HPE Proliant DL380Gen9 Server. They became too slow for my liking.
Despite having laptops like HP Omen, Lenovo ThinkPad P43s, HP AIO 24-df1270, HP ProBook 450 G8, all with minimum of 2TB NVMe SSD, I still find it slow pulling files from my NAS and HPE Server especially media files.
So I decided It's time to go full blown SSD.

My latest config goes like:

To replace my 32TB WDMyCloudEX4100 NAS I will use:
ASUS ROG Maximus Z790 Hero
LGA 1700(Intel®13th&12th Gen) ATX Gaming Motherboard
Intel Core i9-13900K Gaming Desktop Processor 24 cores (8 P-cores + 16 E-cores) with Integrated Graphics - Unlocked
PCIe 5.0, DDR5,20+1 power Stages,
2.5Gb LAN, WiFi 6E
Bluetooth V5.2,
2X Thunderbolt 4 Ports,
5xM.2, Thunderbolt™ 4/USB4)
5x4TB Seagate FireCuda 540 PCIe NVMe Gen5

To replace my 24TB HPE Proliant DL380Gen9 Server, I will use:
HPE DL380 Gen10 Plus 8LFF CTO Server
2x Intel Xeon-Silver 4314 16 Core Processor
2x 256GB DDR4 3200
16x 1.92GB SAS SSD
2x 10G SFP
etc.

All these items have arrived except the Intel Core i9-13900K Proc.

Pictures of my setup will be made available on demand.

zeestone99:


No vex

Obnoxious2001:


No Wahala..
Afraid dey hold some of us when we see price.. ..
Besides I already know the solution, however I was look for an already made system that can work independently with a preset voltage level.....

I was thinking of coming up with a simple analog comparator circuit, to notify the user when it has gotten to 24.5v

But enjoyment too sweet they fit ignore am, so I wanted a cutoff system instead of a notification system.

Obnoxious2001:


No Wahala..
Afraid dey hold some of us when we see price.. ..
Besides I already know the solution, however I was look for an already made system that can work independently with a preset voltage level.....

I was thinking of coming up with a simple analog comparator circuit, to notify the user when it has gotten to 24.5v

But enjoyment too sweet they fit ignore am, so I wanted a cutoff system instead of a notification system.

Obnoxious2001:


No Wahala..
Afraid dey hold some of us when we see price.. ..
Besides I already know the solution, however I was look for an already made system that can work independently with a preset voltage level.....

I was thinking of coming up with a simple analog comparator circuit, to notify the user when it has gotten to 24.5v

But enjoyment too sweet they fit ignore am, so I wanted a cutoff system instead of a notification system.

ojesymsym:
I read that the iPhone 15 has a feature that limits battery to just 80% to prolong the life of the battery. I thought this was bad practice years ago, has this changed? If so, can we adapt it to renewable energy?

ojesymsym:
I read that the iPhone 15 has a feature that limits battery to just 80% to prolong the life of the battery. I thought this was bad practice years ago, has this changed? If so, can we adapt it to renewable energy?

brightk:
haha but ideally 25v is ok

Elcapitan0:
Hello guys and good evening. Pleasei just installed my felicity CC and i'm having trouble connecting it to the inverter. I'm using a normal network cable and I've tried both the RS-232 and the RS-485 port on the inverter but it just flashes for 10 seconds and goes off. Please how can i go about this as i dont want to overcharge this battery if both AC and panel is available?
Inverter is IVPS3524
Charge controller is SCCM8048

Thanks

microgiant:


boss contact installer na, pay small money before you waste money.

Inverter is IVPS3524 = 24V

Charge controller is SCCM8048 = 48V

It was installer that did it oh. I never reach to mount panel myself . The installer did not know about the feature. When it was installed,
the CC auto detected it was a 24V system and to avoid stories that touches, i changed it to 24V myself on the CC settings.

Obnoxious2001:


You where making sense until your closing remark.

That inverter you dey try inform me about I no go buy am from you .

I go buy am from who no put him problem ontop him Market...

Pax vobiscum

Obnoxious2001:


You where making sense until your closing remark.

That inverter you dey try inform me about I no go buy am from you .

I go buy am from who no put him problem ontop him Market...

Pax vobiscum

ojesymsym:
Really, I have never seen it on the laptop power management though, maybe some specific laptops.

I thought they said if you do not charge fully consistently, the battery will develop a memory? Disabling floats puts it at around 96% charge with the balance supposed to be to trickle charge