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august 10, 2010 05:14pm

HP dv6000 Series AC Power Adapter Debacle


In August 2007 I bought my first modern laptop, an HP dv6000m with specs about like this:




  • Genuine Windows Vista Home Premium

  • Intel(R) Core(TM) 2 Duo T5600(1.83GHz/2MB L2Cache)

  • 15.4" WXGA BrightView Widescreen (1280x800)

  • Intel(R) Graphics Media Accelerator 950 - Core

  • 2GB DDR2 System Memory

  • 200GB 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive

  • LightScribe Super Multi 8X DVD+/-RW w/Double Layer

  • Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection

  • 6 Cell Lithium Ion Battery



There are ALOT of similar HP laptops that I believe suffer from the AC Power Adapter issue that I'm about to describe below (in fact I believe that any HP laptop from this era could be subject to this problem, it's just hard to say).



The tricky part about this problem is that its symptoms do not reasonably lead even a savvy user, like me, to the direct cause. The first day I started using my laptop I noticed a strange non-constant background buzzing sound that seemed to be coming from the speakers. (I will clarify that everyone's idea of a buzz is different and that the sound I'm describing could be called a whine, squeal, or squeek as well). The difference with this sound was that it was not coming from the OS. After turning the volume all the way down in the operating system, the high pitched buzz remained. The buzz was also present in the Line/Mic in signals as well as the Headphone output.



Naturally, this was annoying. But it's not the kind of issue that you send your laptop back to the manufacturer for (and wait 8 weeks in the interim). All in all, it wasn't THAT loud and if you had music or other audio playing it was essentially inaudable. I searched around on the internet in '07 and '08 and found that numerous other people were experiencing similar issues with their recent model HP laptops. It just didn't add up; how could HP not realize that their laptops, or a percentage of them at least, were buzzing whenever they were on?



For the next two years, I accepted the noise and largely forgot about it. It wasn't until about a month ago (July 2010) when the same issue began to manifest itself in another way. Ever since the thermal sensors went out on my IBM Intellistation desktop, my 1080p 23" monitor had been sitting dormant in my room getting no use, so I decided to start using my laptop to drive the display. When I plugged the external monitor in to the laptop (VGA cable) I instantly saw tons of horizontal scanlines jumping all over the display. After a few moments of study and careful listening, I noticed that the scanlines seemed to correlate and move in relation to the high pitch buzz which was still present. Both Windows 7 and Ubuntu 10.4 behaved identically in this regard.



Again, I took to the internet to see if anyone else had ever experienced such a thing before. Sure enough tons of the same people with the buzzing sound issue had the flickering external monitor issue as well, go figure. Fortunately by this time, someone had devised an inconvenient work around: drive the display on battery power. Once the laptop was unplugged from the wall, the flickering and scanlines instantly went away! What a miracle, I could finally use my screen, but it wasn't convenient and desktop-like as I had hoped. The laptop constantly had to be charged, and I couldn't just leave it on for extended periods of time. There had to be a better way, but at this point, I was happy enough and decided to give it a rest




As they say, luck finds you in the most mysterious ways...Not more than 2 weeks after my battery workaround discovery, did I notice that my official OEM HP branded AC Power Adapter had been apparently chewed through. While I cannot confirm how it happened I will say that the frayed adapter was toast (and I was without a laptop for a week). If you clicked that link in the last sentence, you'll see that HP wants the outrageous price of $59.49USD + S&h (and that's even with a $10.50 instant rebate!). Now as a reasonable individual I happen to know that the fine folks over in the People's Republic of China produce notebook power adapters for every laptop ever made and they DON'T over charge for them (fancy that...).



A quick jaunt over to Amazon found me this little puppy: NEW AC Adapter/Power Supply+Cord for HP Pavilion DV2000 dv1000 dv4000 dv5000 dv6000 dv8000 ze2000. As you can see, the total price including shipping comes in at around $10USD.




When it finally arrived in my mailbox (2 days earlier than quoted even!) it was a blessing in disguise. After plugging it in to power the laptop, I noticed that magically, some how, both the audio buzz AND the monitor flicker were no more! The problem all along was HP shipping (some?) their laptops with defective power adapters.



Upon making this realization, I figured it would be worthwhile to share it with the world, so here it is: The power adapter makes a difference! I'll say that again: the power adapter makes a difference! Ironically, in this case, the knock-off power adapter performed more reliably than the OEM one ever did. Which just goes to show you, you don't always get what you pay for.



When it comes to electronics accessories, it is my personal belief, that there is nothing more overpriced and overrated than name brand cables and adapters. For cables, if they're digital signals (USB, 1394, HDMI) and shielded, they're good enough. I've personally bought two $7USD 6' HDMI cables which work flawlessly. I don't even know if you can get ANY HDMI cable at radioshack or the like for under $10, especially not a six footer.



I'm not sure what the moral of the story is, but its a mix between manufacturers cheaping out on OEM parts, lack of effective support and recall for widespread problems, and realizing that a power adapter issue can even cause the kinds of symptoms described above...ultimately however: keep your eyes open, and when troubleshooting always start from the ground up!

Posted By: masen

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july 28, 2010 03:12pm

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

Our congress just passed the Financial Reform Bill on July 15th, establishing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. What's interesting to note however is in the following paragraph:

Independent Bureau Is Established. The Financial Reform Act creates the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection, an independent bureau within the Federal Reserve System. Under the direction of a presidential appointee, the Bureau implements federal consumer financial laws through rulemaking, orders, policy statements, guidance and enforcement actions. Although it resides within the Federal Reserve System, the Bureau is autonomous: the Federal Reserve System's Board of Governors has no authority to review, approve, delay or prevent the issuance of any of the Bureau's rules or orders.


more info: http://www.franchising.com/pressreleases/16490/

Why is this a part of the Federal Reserve? So the Fed can make sure that the bureau won't be able to interfere with the prevention of consumer fraud in the future?

Posted By: masen

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july 17, 2010 01:38pm

Setting the Stage

This video really said a lot to me this afternoon:



Population is projected to double in Africa in the next 50 years to 2 billion people. I wonder how much dryer and warmer the planet is going to be by then...Does anyone else see where this is going?

Posted By: masen

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july 16, 2010 10:34am

Yum Yum




There's not much to say, just watch it. Oh and don't turn it off, he gets to the racial disparity of it all as well

Posted By: masen

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july 12, 2010 06:35pm

A Stupid Way to Brick an Awesome Router

The Linksys WRT54GL is arguably one of the most rock solid home/office routers that one can buy today. Even though the hardware is becoming more and more dated running one with a custom firmware can give someone like me (a nerdy hobbyist) an extremely powerful router for a relatively low price.



I recently traded my dad my never WRT110N wireless-N router for his older WRT54GL purely for the ability to run custom firmware. Unfortunately I also learned something pretty interesting about how these routers behave.



On my way back from home where I picked up the 54GL, I was also transporting a set of computer speakers. Consequently, the two devices have remarkably similar power supplies. Here's the main difference: the Linksys adapter outputs 12V DC and the CyberAcoustics adapter outputs 9V AC. Other than that the two adapters look identical from a quick glance and here's the kicker, they have the exact same plug on the other end. If they were obviously different sized then I could have avoided a few hours of headache.



Now as the story goes, I of course grabbed the wrong one and fired up my "new" router. I will say that I had already tested it before I left and it was in perfect working order. Somehow between there and here the device broke. With the other power supply the lights still flashed and everything seemed to work, except for the fact that the little blue and black box had a constantly flashing power LED was resetting itself every 20 seconds.



After reading numerous posts and trying different things, someone finally mentioned that using the wrong power supply can cause strange behavior in these Linksys routers. (Of course at this time, I had not realized my error and brushed off the suggestion). I had reflashed the stock firmware, nothing... Nothing was working.



It was about 2 hours while unpacking the rest of my stuff that I noticed the shiny Linksys sticker on a power supply in my bag and knew that had to be the cause of my problem.



Well after plugging in the correct power supply and trying again the router stopped rebooting but was essentially dead to the outside world. It appeared that using the wrong power supply corrupted the firmware of my device! As a last resort when the stock firmware would not boot the device I tried a long shot and used TFTP to flash the "recommended" build of DD-WRT to it. On the PC console there was a success message, but the router still didn't spring back to life. I noticed one more piece of important instruction: please wait at least 2 minutes after flashing for the router to load the new firmware. Sure enough, after all that headache I was finally up and running again. Ughh. That was fun =]



The instructions I followed can be found here:


Posted By: masen

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july 02, 2010 03:30pm

toronto police -- strike first, ask questions never

Posted By: masen

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july 02, 2010 03:28pm

talking to god

‘so we’re not obliged to “please” you or follow your alleged guidelines or anything like that?’


‘absolutely not. Never issued a single guideline in the lifetime of this Universe. Have to find your own way out of the maze. And one early improvement is to stop expecting me – or anyone else – to come and help you out.’

-- Harry Stottle


Almost sounds crazy enough to believe even...

Read The Rest!

Posted By: masen

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