ARRRRGGGHHHHH!!!!!

[ffutures]

Went to play a DVD a couple of nights ago and found that my DVD recorder's drive has gone wrong; annoyingly it can play and record but the eject isn't working properly, and there is no manual override, not even a hole for a paperclip. Last night I somehow got it open by opening the casing and some random prodding, and it worked fine for about 30 minutes then stuck again, and now won't open at all. Fortunately there isn't a disk trapped inside. The drive also appears to be a VERY cheaply built plastic thing that doesn't inspire much confidence and doesn't want to be dismantled, which is a pain since it appears to be a mechanical problem. I now need to play "hunt the receipt" and take it back to Argos, since it's still in warranty, before I mess it up.

As it happens I've been thinking about getting a hard disk / DVD recorder anyway, so my thoughts are to do that straight away, then find the receipt and get this one fixed and sell it on eBay. Or sell it "as is" if I can't get it fixed. Won't be able to do anything about this until Monday, since I'm away over the weekend, so any thoughts on a good and hopefully not too expensive DVD/HDD replacement? Liteon do one around that starts around 200 quid, but it's a Liteon recorder that just died so I think I want to look at alternatives.

Meanwhile the old Windows 98 machine I use for downloads crashed overnight, and from the thrashing and banging noises it's making as I run scandisk has a VERY serious drive C problem. Fortunately there's nothing on it I can't afford to lose, and I have a spare hard disk, so I'll have to swap drives and reinstall everything. After the weekend. Means I won't see Veronica Mars 2.03 for a few days, but it'll just have to wait.

So much for technology.

Comments

[smallship1.livejournal.com]

Ack. Both the drives in my computer are Liteon.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

We're talking a fixed drive inside a "no user-servicable parts" DVD recorder - it was never meant to be serviced, just (I'd imagine) ripped out and replaced if it went wrong. As it happens I recently bought myself a Liteon dual-layer drive - haven't installed it yet - for my PC, and it looks as solid and well made as any other DVD drive.

[heliograph.livejournal.com]

You know, there are illegal downloads that act as virii for DVD players and cause crashes, I/O problems, etc.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

No - the DVD recorder only records TV and video signals, haven't even tried to play anything downloaded by the computer on it.

And the downloads are just standard bittorrent recordings of TV programs. The hard disk was wheezing a bit as I powered up the PC, before Windows even booted, so it isn't that - my guess is that one of the heads or platters has failed, since it is actually rattling and making clunking noises when Scandisk runs. It's only a 6 GB disk anyway, and I have a second 6 GB disk in there doing nothing - I'll just swap in the spare, do a low level format and reinstall, which won't take long since there's very little software in it that wasn't part of the original installation.

[dsample.livejournal.com]

It seems to be my month for hardware problems. It started out with the boot drive in my old G3 mini-tower system failing. I have a second drive in it, that has OS-9 on it, but for some reason it refuses to let me install OS-X on that drive, so I bit the bullet, and bought a new Mac Mini.

Then at the beginning of this week, the power cable for my powerbook broke. I plugged it in and there was thiis sizzling noise, and the smell of burning plastic. Of course it broke right at the connector to the computer, so there was basically no way to actually repair it. A little peice that probably costs 50 cents broke, but I have to buy a whole new power supply.

Then I go out to my car this afternoon, to do a little shopping, turn the key, and there's just this groaning noise as my engine tries to turn over. Call CAA, and half an hour later the tow truck turns up. He tests my battery, and tells me it has to be replaced (I figured that was the problem, I think it was still the original battery in a 10 year old car) Good news: CAA sells and installs batteries now. Bad news: he doesn't have the standard model for my car on his truck, but he does have the deluxe model. It's only $5 more, so I tell him to go ahead. So he goes to work, trying to replace my battery. Good thing I decided to go with him doing it, because the old battery was held in place by some rusted bolts that hadn't moved in 10 years. I'd probably still by trying to get the old one out, if I'd gone with my original plan of just getting a jump-start, and driving to Canadian Tire to buy a new battery myself.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I'd tell you about the 90 minute train journey back to London tonight that ended up taking nearly three hours, but it'd depress me too much.