Well, unfortunately 2010 was not my most successful year in making and doing. 2010 was mostly the year of fixing the things that keep breaking. Luckily there were plenty of great albums to keep me company as my electronics and mopeds crumbled around me. There was a bit of shuffling around from my list in May, but the early year albums are well represented. Mostly because I haven't gotten the albums that came out in the last couple months. Anyway, here are my favorite 18 albums of 2010. Happy 2011!
1. Arcade Fire - The Suburbs
2. The Tallest Man On Earth - The Wild Hunt
3. Nathaniel Rateliff - In Memory of Loss
4. Apples in Stereo - Travellers in Space and Time
5. The New Pornographers - Together
6. Surfer Blood - Astro Coast
7. Portugal. The Man - American Ghetto
8. Broken Bells - Broken Bells
9. LCD Soundsystem - This Is Happening
10. Mumford & Sons - Sigh No More
11. Best Coast - Crazy For You
12. The Radio Dept. - Clinging to a Scheme
13. Cameron Scott Fraser - Promised Land
14. Beach House - Teen Dream
15. Vampire Weekend - Contra
16. Frightened Rabbit - The Winter of Mixed Drinks
17. Titus Andronicus - The Monitor
18. Land of Talk - Cloak and Cipher
Sunday, January 2, 2011
When Moped Engines Explode
This happened about two weeks ago and I don't currently have the money to fix it, but there will be a future post about rebuilding my engine. It is a bit of a mystery as to what broke first, but I think it was the wrist pin. Check out the carnage:
Reflowing a GPU on a Macbook Pro
*UPDATE 12/11* In the last year I've done this two more times and both times it has come back like a champ. The moral is, it's not as much of a crap shoot as I had anticipated. Also, it's not necessarily a permanent fix, but I've got an extra year out of it with minimal effort. If you're planning on doing this I highly encourage giving it a try.
It was heartbreaking. My screen went black and the computer froze. Maybe par for the course with my PC, but I expect more from my Macbook Pro. I rebooted to find a checkerboard of confusion where my desktop used to be. It looked like this:
You could sort of navigate around, but it was nearly impossible to read anything on the screen. Subsequent reboots changed nothing and I began to fear the worse, my computer was finally dead and there was no bringing her back. I'm certainly in no financial position to buy a new MBP, so this represents a serious blow to my ability to work. I did some research on the interweb and discovered that the most likely cause for my issues was a loose connection between the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) and the logic board. The only way to fix it was to replace the whole logic board or reflow the GPU. Reflowing is heating the solder connecting the chip to the board until it melts and "reflows". Then you just hope that it reflows in such a way that the broken connection fixes itself. The whole thing is complicated by the fact that the solder connections are all hidden under the chip, so a soldering iron will not help you. The trick is to heat the whole chip and just hope you don't ruin it or the rest of the logic board in the process. The techniques I came across involved either candles, blow torches, or heat guns. Since I wasn't going to spend $700 for a new logic board I decided there was nothing to lose. I might as well cook the chip and give it a try. I decided to go with the heat gun technique since I couldn't bring myself to expose my laptop to an open flame.
I'm not going to do a step by step walkthrough, but I will tell you some of the important specifics if you are looking to do this yourself. If you want more info check out these posts here, here, and here.
First step was taking apart the laptop, removing the logic board, and cleaning off the thermal paste. Luckily I have lots of experience with this from my last laptop adventure. Once the logic board was out and cleaned I made a heat shield out of about 6 layers of aluminum foil:
Next came the fun part (by "fun" I really mean "harrowing"). It was time to cook the chip. I got it as horizontal as I could and then placed a couple pieces of solder next to the chip on the foil. This was my temp gauge. In a perfect world I would have had a IR thermometer. This was procedure:
1. I started out with the heat gun about a foot above the chip with the fan on low and the temp set to about ~300C (although the controls on the gun are pretty crude). I think the solder in the chip needs to hit about 210C. Over about 60 seconds I slowly moved the gun down until it was about 2 inches above the chip.
2. I held it there for about 5 minutes then I put the fan on high. After about 5 more minutes the solder pieces on the foil melted. I was using 60/40 solder, which melts at 188C, so I knew I was close.
3. I continued to heat the chip for two more minutes. That seemed like a reasonable amount of time for the heat to soak through the chip and melt the solder below.
4. Finally I turned the fan down to low and slowly raised the gun up to about a foot over 60 seconds to slow the cooling a bit.
I removed the aluminum foil and let the board cool for about 30 minutes. I did the reassembly (don't forget the thermal paste) and then came the moment of truth. Honestly I didn't think there was any way in the world this was going to work. I figured I actually made it worse. No loss since it was essentially and expensive paperweight by that point. Anyway.... I turned it on.... and success! No f@#$ing way! I could not believe it. All in all it only took me about an hour and a half and it's been working great for the last three days. At this point I just need it to survive until I find a new job and can buy a new one, but in the interest of avoiding needless consumption I hope this one lasts for as long as possible.
It was heartbreaking. My screen went black and the computer froze. Maybe par for the course with my PC, but I expect more from my Macbook Pro. I rebooted to find a checkerboard of confusion where my desktop used to be. It looked like this:
You could sort of navigate around, but it was nearly impossible to read anything on the screen. Subsequent reboots changed nothing and I began to fear the worse, my computer was finally dead and there was no bringing her back. I'm certainly in no financial position to buy a new MBP, so this represents a serious blow to my ability to work. I did some research on the interweb and discovered that the most likely cause for my issues was a loose connection between the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) and the logic board. The only way to fix it was to replace the whole logic board or reflow the GPU. Reflowing is heating the solder connecting the chip to the board until it melts and "reflows". Then you just hope that it reflows in such a way that the broken connection fixes itself. The whole thing is complicated by the fact that the solder connections are all hidden under the chip, so a soldering iron will not help you. The trick is to heat the whole chip and just hope you don't ruin it or the rest of the logic board in the process. The techniques I came across involved either candles, blow torches, or heat guns. Since I wasn't going to spend $700 for a new logic board I decided there was nothing to lose. I might as well cook the chip and give it a try. I decided to go with the heat gun technique since I couldn't bring myself to expose my laptop to an open flame.
I'm not going to do a step by step walkthrough, but I will tell you some of the important specifics if you are looking to do this yourself. If you want more info check out these posts here, here, and here.
First step was taking apart the laptop, removing the logic board, and cleaning off the thermal paste. Luckily I have lots of experience with this from my last laptop adventure. Once the logic board was out and cleaned I made a heat shield out of about 6 layers of aluminum foil:
Next came the fun part (by "fun" I really mean "harrowing"). It was time to cook the chip. I got it as horizontal as I could and then placed a couple pieces of solder next to the chip on the foil. This was my temp gauge. In a perfect world I would have had a IR thermometer. This was procedure:
1. I started out with the heat gun about a foot above the chip with the fan on low and the temp set to about ~300C (although the controls on the gun are pretty crude). I think the solder in the chip needs to hit about 210C. Over about 60 seconds I slowly moved the gun down until it was about 2 inches above the chip.
2. I held it there for about 5 minutes then I put the fan on high. After about 5 more minutes the solder pieces on the foil melted. I was using 60/40 solder, which melts at 188C, so I knew I was close.
3. I continued to heat the chip for two more minutes. That seemed like a reasonable amount of time for the heat to soak through the chip and melt the solder below.
4. Finally I turned the fan down to low and slowly raised the gun up to about a foot over 60 seconds to slow the cooling a bit.
I removed the aluminum foil and let the board cool for about 30 minutes. I did the reassembly (don't forget the thermal paste) and then came the moment of truth. Honestly I didn't think there was any way in the world this was going to work. I figured I actually made it worse. No loss since it was essentially and expensive paperweight by that point. Anyway.... I turned it on.... and success! No f@#$ing way! I could not believe it. All in all it only took me about an hour and a half and it's been working great for the last three days. At this point I just need it to survive until I find a new job and can buy a new one, but in the interest of avoiding needless consumption I hope this one lasts for as long as possible.
Monday, December 13, 2010
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
New Website for Mechanical Design
So, I've been under a rock for the last few months. Mostly I've been trying to get my freelance and contract mechanical design enterprise off the ground. Unfortunately this did not involve any cute sewing projects or fun new screen prints, but I've got to at least try to make a living. So, if you're curious as to what I've been doing, or if you need an engineer/designer, check it out:
geoffmhill.com
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
New Hard Drive, RAM, and Thermal Paste for a Macbook Pro
(Side note: It's time to let go of my irrational distain for capitalization. From now on I'll actually use the shift key.)
Anyway, my Macbook Pro has been my most prized possession over the last 4 years. As much as I try not to get caught up in the ownership of shiny objects, my MBP is my primary means of communication, entertainment, and productivity. Recently as I've started taking on freelance work, my MBP is my only office. Unfortunately it's aging and with that age has come some problems. The most notable of these is that it overheats, the hard drive is jam packed, and it bogs down sometimes when using SolidWorks (the CAD software I use for work). So, I decided to tackle all three of these with a D.I.Y. blitzkrieg. Here is the rundown on the problems and solutions:
My computer started having overheating issues a couple of years ago. Recently it's been common for my computer to be above 70 deg celsius when virtually nothing is running. There are tons of forums talking about Apple's poor application of thermal paste being the culprit. I've been using smcFanControl to monitor and manually control the fans, but even so my CPU temp has gotten into the 80s and 90s on regular occasions and has crashed the kernal several times. Admittedly I wasn't convinced it was solely a case of poor thermal pasting as I could generally get the temps down by shutting down hung up processes in the Activity Monitor. The most common offenders are Adobe Flash and iAntivirus. Even still, normal operating temps were around 60 or 70 C, which was much higher than when it was fresh out of the box. So, I did a bunch of research and found some tutorials and advice on reapplying the thermal paste and cleaning out fans and ducts. This post isn't meant to be a walkthrough, but has info on my experiences. If you're looking to do this on your MBP, check out:
- Disassembling First Generation MBP
- Reapplying Thermal Paste
- Application Instructions for Arctic Silver 5
Another problem I've been struggling with is hard drive space. My MBP came with a 120 GB drive, which was huge at the time, but I managed to fill it pretty quickly. I like keeping as much as I can on my hard drive since I travel a lot with it (I'm currently writing this in a coffee shop). My music alone takes up more than 60 GB and I find I have to cull through it periodically just to free up a gig or two. Since I'm constantly on the edge I find I am always uninstalling and reinstalling software to make room for other programs or files. I also run SolidWorks off Bootcamp, which means partitioning a cramped drive, which just makes two extra cramped drives. I did switch to Parallels recently, but now I'm having RAM issues (see below). I do have a time capsule, which is great, but it doesn't help me when I'm in the library or in Berlin. So, it's time for an upgrade. I didn't need anything huge, but I figured 500 GB should give me some breathing room. After a bit of research I settled on the Seagate Momentus 500GB 5400RPM drive. I decided to go with the 5400 RPM over the 7200 since they seem to have fewer issues and they create less heat and drain the battery slower for only a marginal decrease in speed.
I was getting tired of having to switch between OS X and Windows XP on bootcamp for work (unfortunately there is no mac version of SolidWorks). So, I decided to give Parallels a try. The advantage of Parallels is that you can run OS X and another operating system simultaneously. The downside is that running two operating systems at the same time is taxing on the processor and memory. Since upgrading the processor means getting a new computer, I opted instead to upgrade the RAM. It turns out my 15" 2.33 GHz MBP can only handle 3 GB (you can check what type of RAM you need and how much you can install here). Since I already had 2 GB, I got a single 2 GB chip to replace one of my 1 GB chips. I figure if the extra gig makes Parallels manageable, then great, otherwise I'll have a huge HD and can partition it with Bootcamp without having to stress over the space.
Ok, so now the exciting (or perhaps not-so-exciting) results. I got everything shipped and it arrived within a day or two of each other. I actually got the RAM a bit early and installed that since it's super simple. The thermal paste and HD replacement would be all one big surgery. After messing up the wifi antenna on my ipod touch I was a little nervous and was determined to go super slow and be super careful with the MPB. I carefully took it apart and wore my anti-static wrist strap once the logic board was exposed. Everything went pretty smoothly, although the screws holding in the optical drive were rather stubborn and it took a lot of patience not to strip them. I took this opportunity to clean out all the dust that's accumulated over the last 4 years. Once I got the fans out I found both the ducts completely packed with dust, which certainly wasn't helping my overheating issue. Here are some pics of thermal paste on the chip side and heat sink side.
It definitely looks like it didn't have great contact between the two. So, I cleaned off the old stuff and prepped it for a new application.
From there I applied the new paste and put the logic board back in. I then installed the new hard drive. I finished up reassembling the entire computer and then came the moment of truth. I plugged it back in and pushed the power button... and nothing. No lights, no noises, nothing on the screen, nothing. As you can imagine that's about where my heart sank. I knew there was a possibility of this sort of thing happening, but I had higher hopes. Anyway, I spent the next few hours trying everything I could to solve the issue. I tore it all apart and put it all back together several times; I tried the original configuration of components; I even tried banging my head against the wall, all to no avail. After trying everything I could think of and reading dozens of forums about people with similar issues, I concluded that it was the logic board that had been fried and it was either gonna cost me $400 to fix that or I was going to have to mortgage my soul for a new computer. So, I slept on it and the next morning I tore it apart and reassembled it again for good measure.... and then.... nothing. There was one thing that was bugging me. When I was originally reassembling the computer I accidentally used a screw that was too long along the back side of the case. There was a little resistance, so I stopped and put in the right one. When I took it back apart I saw that the cable from the screen to the logic board was right behind that screw hole. I checked the cable and it looked fine. Anyway, it was bugging me so I unplugged the screen and tried to turn it on.... success! I mean, as much success as you can have when you have a computer with no screen. It was making all the right sounds. The hard drive and fans were working and it was beeping like it's always beeped. That was sort of good news since I knew exactly what was wrong. Unfortunately a new screen costs more than a new logic board. Bummer, but I had posted about my woes on Facebook and got a message from my friend Tera who had an old busted MBP (coffee spill incident) that she'd let me cannibalize. Turns out it was the exact same model, so I swapped out the screens and total success! I now have a completely functional computer once again, despite almost totally ruining it.
Now with all the new stuff it's definitely a new computer. The RAM helps Parallels run a bit faster, although I might switch back to Bootcamp just to get ever last drop of power out of SolidWorks. The new hard drive means I can reinstall the software I'd previously taken off and keep all my docs/photos/media on the laptop. The computer has also been running a lot cooler. I've actually been in the 40s when running light applications, which I haven't seen for a long time. It still hits 80 when I'm doing photo rendering, but that is to be expected. So, all in all a total success, although I could have done without the stress of almost ruining my computer.
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