Category it

Sep 26 2011

IT support in Israel – replacing fans in PCs

Skip this if you don’t want to read IT repair work,  this is just an example of things I do at my work, that saves us money and time and keeps equipment running longer.

We had this PC that was spare I was going to set up for our personal department, I spend hours getting it ready with Windows XP plus 100+ updates, Adobe Writer, database and another 10 or so specialist apps only to find I got some strange errors when booting it mentioning it had a fan problem.

To my surprise there was actually 4 different fan faults!

  1. The fan in the power supply was wearing out, so for the first 30 minutes until it warms up when you use the computer it sounds like an elderly blender!
  2. On top of the main processor (which is an AMD Athlon 64 3000 chip)   the fan appears to be spinning slower than normal, this is was giving the error upon boot up
  3. Also, the chipset fan, which is a little fan that is integrated into the motherboard was completely dead, not spinning at all.  This was probably causing it to freeze in Windows as well.
  4. Lastly, there is meant to be fan on the back chassis of the PC, this was missing.

I bought this from a local computer shop.  Actually this is the bad one, but you can see this fan has a 4 pin drive connector on these.  I don’t like these at all, this makes the voltage supply to the PC’s hard drive unstable and can cause the hard disk to malfunction, its better to use a fan with a 3 pin connector that plugs into the motherboard, on this one there are two connectors on this PC for this purpose.   I had to look in 4 computer shops around Jerusalem to get these fans, as they had none, or only 1 or 2 in stock!

So, the last standard ATX power supply I bought to fix another PC recently cost us 200 Shekels which I thought was a bit expensive, as it was just a fan failing, I opened up the metal casing of the power supply and snipped the wires on the fan, and as this fan was just an 88mm type unit I snipped the wires on this and twist the wires together and sealed it up with tape – no more grinding from back of this computer.

Now normally the heatsink and fan on top of the AMD Athlon 64 754 type processor you buy as a set, but this type of AMD chip is obsolete and not been made in about 5 years so finding this part could be difficult.   Actually it was easy as the fan was also just an 88mm unit, so just needed to take 4 philips screws out to replace this part.

The motherboard chipset fan was more tricky.   I had to get this part from ebay as its manufactured directly for Asus, the board manufacturer.

As you can see this fan has the plastic fastening bolts off centre and a small two pin wire that feeds back to the main board.

Lastly, I fitted one more 88mm fan on the back panel of the PC.

This is what I got, which was about US$10/£6.50, this meant I had to completely gut the PC and remove all cards and wiring, flip the whole motherboard assembly upside down and squeeze two plastic lugs to free this little fan and fit this new one.

Lastly, the front USB ports had broken off and come loose inside the PC, this happens a lot on poor quality clone PCs, this case I think was one of the ‘medium’ quality ones I have used though.   I used a glue gun (one of those things you push glue sticks in the back)  to fix this back on the inside of the front plastic fascia.   I don’t know how much structural strength this has now, but seem ok at the moment.

All these little repairs have saved me from having to throw the PC out or buy drastically more expensive parts.

For some reason, doing IT support in a hot desert like country like Israel, means with the high amount of dust around, I am often replacing fans on computers of all kinds.   It seems the oil in the motor bearings solidifies causing friction noise when spinning up, this is especially true when a PC hasn’t been switched on in months when introducing a new staff member.

On a typical day I am normally answering calls to the helpdesk, researching on new IT solutions for the future, managing backups, setting up new staff on the servers, fixing staff’s own laptops as well as repairing or replacing failing hardware.

Sep 7 2011

Logmein – IT pros working around the world in fun places

I entered a competition recently, its from a program I use at work called Logmein to connect to my office PC from home, not sure when a prize of some kind will be announced.

The competition was a photo from whilst on holiday where is a good place to work from remotely.

Here I love my job!  I don’t actually have an income, but doing volunteer IT support in Israel has to be one of the best things ever!   Its also interesting to see other IT admins doing their roles from other unusual parts of the world.    In this picture in the top left corner of the screen, I am climbing up the Negev desert close to the Ramon Crater.   I once worked with a chap doing IT for the hospitals, who looked after servers on a cruise liner, so I am curious of what the most fun and unusual IT job there could be.

Aug 28 2011

I mend a Samsung NC-10 netbook with a dodgy screen

Taking small break on bible places and things in Israel, skip this if you are not interested 🙂

I fix laptops for people, as for some reason I like repairing them, and people have given me donations towards my volunteering work here.

  • Saves you buying a new computer! well yeah, er of course 🙂
  • You feel like a boss after fixing your computer, and feel and extreme sense of satisfaction of doing it yourself!
  • Stick your tongue out at the iPad crowd, as laptops are still way better than tablet computers, you can type on them, and angle the screen to a comfortable setting and are the best device for real work on the move.  🙂

Rather than throw it away when it gets a fault, if you have steady hands and the right tools, it can be revived again, give this a go!

You need, small philips screwdriver, spludger or some suitable plastic prising device like a guitar plectrum, a bowl or something to put the screws in safe.  Also have another working computer on your desk to follow these instructions and the helpful Youtube videos.

One of the leaders of my bible study had this quite popular Samsung NC-10 mini laptop, the problem with it is the screen on it disappears into a white background or flashes white lines on it, by adjusting the screen you can fix or make this worse.

It seems to be a popular problem, its caused by the cable that connects the screen panel to the motherboard going bad, it seems a poor design in this computer means the wires get pinched by the screen hinges.

If you do some Google searches you can see this model laptop suffers from this issue a lot.  I tracked down the part and read up how it dismantles and decided to try and see if I could fix it.

I bought a replacement genuine Samsung part from eBay.    Like all screen cables for laptops, its got a flat rectangular end and its thin in the middle and has another small rectangular end that plugs into the motherboard with an extra cable for grounding that is fixed by one philips screw.   This part cost me US$17 including shipping from China which took two weeks to get here.  You can buy this part from sellers from UK and US at a higher price too.

The sellers do not usually provide any help on fitting or how to do a repair.

 
I didn’t take much pictures of the work I did, regrettably, but check out these Youtube videos, someone has kindly made available that show a tear-down of this model computer.  Its actually quite easy to take apart, although fitting the cable is quite tricky, as it has to be routed in the exactly the right place through the hinges.

It seems if you take the laptop apart and make sure all the connections are in tight some people say this will fix it but then the problem may come back again a bit later.   Therefore I thought it would be best to replace the LCD cable.    Take attention to where the cables sits underneath the LCD panel other the screen will look wonky and this might pinch your new cable again.

One you have both sections of the NC-10 apart, you need to remove one more philips screw where the cable attaches to the board, give it a gentle wiggle for the cable to come free.   To remove it from the screen end, there is a piece of yellow tape to removed which you should keep safe or replace when you reassemble it.

The rounded chrome coloured screen hinge that houses the troublesome cable is made of two pieces and very gently with screwdriver you can prise it apart and get at the cable.   The tricky thing is that the centre of the cable is wrapped around the hinge along with the cable for the screen mounted web cam.  These have to go in a very specific way, so take a picture with a camera that can do close up pictures, so after you remove the bad cable you know how to fit the new one.

Once this is done, you can put refit the LCD panel in the screen lid and put in the bottom screws and loosely reassemble the laptop and see if the screen lights up, whilst holding F1 to go into the BIOS screen to prevent it from booting into Windows.   If all is well, you put it back together and enjoy your newly fixed Samsung!

If this has been useful to you, and you mended your own computer, please consider giving me a donation to the work I am doing providing volunteer IT support to a Christian charity in Israel.

Jul 26 2011

VMware conference in Tel Aviv

I got up and left the house at 5.30 to go to a IT conference at the Hilton Hotel in Tel Aviv.

As I mentioned before, Tel Aviv’s unique multistory bus station is a strange affair, finding the way out is very confusing.   With stairs and lifts that go all over the place, but no signs explaining the way to the street, I feel a bit like someone from the Labyrinth movie with David Bowie. 🙂

Once I go to taxi rank I jumped in a car and asked if the man could take me to the hotel, he said the journey would be 80 Shekels (£14) I told him I wanted a ride with the meter on, as this was too much, fully aware of rip-off scams of taxi drivers explaining the meter is ‘broken’ and offering a ‘special deal’ to naive foreigners, this driver complained to me he has to pay 35% of the journey to the government.  I just got out and walked away as he wanted to offer me 70 instead.  I just thought if you don’t want to pay those fees, find a different career!   Another driver who was polite and legit with the meter on charged me about 37 NIS instead.

The food at the event was on par with a wedding or Bar Mitzvah, there is a huge buffet of different things on offer, traditional Israeli breakfast spread of bread, salad, yoghurt, etc, lot of cake after the first seminar and various types of coffee served by a waiter, and a really superb choice of things for lunch too.  There was also a free bar, well just two types of beers on tap, which was very welcoming when sitting outside given it has been about 35 degrees C recently.   Full marks for the catering, but then again with $850m earned last year I guess VMware didn’t want to look like cheapskates.   The Microsoft event I went to in 2008 which had the Windows 7 launch in London I only got a couple of sandwiches though.


The seminars were mostly spoken in Hebrew with the powerpoint slides and annotations in English.

Most of the products on offer were showing the new upcoming (v5) version of VMware ESX, and addons and third party software apps from other vendors, aimed at someone with a VMware system already in place.

I had some questions I asked the staff, such as differences between the freeware and paid for licences of ESX, they told me to go to the web site, but there isn’t much there.

So not a great deal of value for my job or for my plan to build a server at home, but I did get decently fed, a IBM 100 anniversary T-shirt and a HP flashlight, got to chat to chap from the Israeli company I used to work for and a few other people.

Jul 18 2011

Home server PC

You can skip this article if you are not an IT person 🙂

While I am away doing a volunter IT system admin job in Israel, I have a small computer back in the UK I use a server.

Its a little Dell Optiplex SX280, its a ultra small form factor PC about the size of a large telephone book.   I used to support these type of PCs in a hospital I worked at, and I decided to get one for myself to use as a server.  I paid about £75 for it off ebay which the seller promised it had a Pentium 4 2.8 processor, so I was quite pleased when it arrived with a 3.2 processor 🙂   I added 2.5Gb of memory and a 320Gb hard disk, which uses normal off the shelf bits.   The performance of the PC is good but I would recommend vacuuming out dust from the insides which can block up the fans once in a while.

This mini server is perfect for me, although it doesn’t have any slots, and can only support one hard disk.   I use this computer in conjunction with VNC and RDP using a Dynamic DNS address my brother in law Jim helped me set up along with the right setting in a now very obsolete B series Netgear wireless router.   In more recent times I just use Logmein which is easier and less fiddly to set up.   These days I prefer small quiet computers.  I used to work at Novatech a computer dealer just outside of Portsmouth and since then I have lost interest in self-build/clone PCs which turn out to be more trouble than they are worth in their reliability and quality, having mostly Asus based clone PCs at my work, I spend a lot of time replacing failing hardware.

1. I run virtual machines on it using Windows XP as a base operating systems and simulate multiple extra computers and used it to learn a lot about Windows 7 which it runs beautifully under Sun/Oracle’s Virtualbox.

2. I use this box for downloading TV shows from BBC iPlayer using a special alternative app that downloads them as MP4 files, as this cannot be done on a non-UK IP address, so I can get TV shows remotely and copy them into Dropbox and watch them on my laptop here in Jerusalem.

3. I also do web based surveys which earn me a small amount of Amazon vouchers, this only works in the UK.

4. When I eventually head back to the UK I can stream TV shows off to it, althoughnI am one of these odd people who still has an old fashioned CRT telly, so will look at to treat myself to a LCD TV when I am one day back in the regular workplace again.

As an IT person its important not to stop learning new things, and I am wondering what my fellow peers in IT do to use as a lab for trying out stuff.

However in recent times for my work I need to learn more server environments like Windows Server 2003 and 2008, the latter version is mostly used in 64 bit form, also VMware which is the most popular software system for running virtualisation set ups, so I now need a 64 bit based system as a server.

Something like a Mac Mini would be nice, and they run Mac OS X, Windows, Linux under VMware well I think, but these are expensive at least £600 and not easily expandable (laptop style memory and hard drives

A few months ago, I came across an advert from DABS.com for this clever piece of kit, the HP Proliant N36L

These little HP servers look great as:

1. They are small form factor, can sit in a shelf or a cupboard out of the way, only uses 40-70 watts of power, means more time on a UPS power back up system, quiet running fans.

2. Really cheap, about £140, actually £240 but you get £100 back from a rebate from HP.    A real server for the price of a simple NAS device.

3. Have chassis to support 8Gb of RAM (2x 4Gb) and 4 hard disks in a RAID array.

A few limitations on this device is, relatively low powered 1.3 AMD CPU (but is 64 bit) only 1Gb of RAM and single 250Gb hard disk (just to get you going, you will need to upgrade)   no optical drive, you can get a DVD writer for £12.50 (I got from Amazon free shipping!) anyway or install Windows or Linux from a USB stick.   Just a blank drive for your preferred operating system.    The low spec of the server is intended for businesses with less than 10 people.

So the plan is, when I am next in the UK, is to get one of these HP microservers and put it in place of the Dell, run VMware ESX and similar and run a XP virtual machine and various other environments for myself, questions I have, is VMware easy for me as administrator to control from a long distance without anything going wrong that needs someone nearby?   I am going to a VMware conference in Tel Aviv this week.

Also, two of these would be great for a project at my work as I need to run a critical database system in a remote location, instead of the traditional server having two power supplies and two hard disks in case of one failing, having two relatively cheap servers running parallel with data mirrored on both of them, this in my opinion seems like better performance and redundancy for the money it seems.

I think HP will sell loads of these units, I would love to see if any other IT pros have bought for them for their own test environments, or even if two or more given their bargain price could be used to run a critical system needing redundancy or fail over of some sort.

Some people are running Microsoft’s Windows Home Server (WHS) on these, this seems fine but I would rather use an enterprise grade server like Ubuntu or Server 2008, or just stick to a NAS to store videos and music on.   Microsoft have free 90 day trial versions of Windows 7 and 180 day version of Server 2008 to test out which I want to play around with more.

Jul 16 2011

Journeys of Jesus – Travelling between Nazareth to Jerusalem

Revisiting part of my trip to Nazareth from a few months ago.

In my job I often have to go up to a warehouse in Karmiel, a large food bank which supplies food for the poor in the greater Galilee area, to service computer equipment which requires me to visit every so often.

One of the unique things I like about my job is going to visit this site to do a few days work and doing some sightseeing around the Galilee, meaning I can see Nazareth, Cana, Akko and Tiberias not too far away.   As there is no dedicated IT person based up there, so maintenance requires a fair bit of planning if I need to take a laptop, tools and software CDs, this means I am doing a 2.5-3 hour trip up there from Jerusalem, which makes me think is a trip Jesus would be very familiar with, although Karmiel is much further up than Nazareth.

In Matthew 20: 17-19 the scriptures talk about Jesus “going up” to Jerusalem even though its south of course, part of this is to do with the high elevation that the city is on as well as its great significance for Jewish and Christian people alike.

Getting to Nazareth is quite easy on an Egged bus or even with this above Nazareth based coach operator.

Being in the middle of the Galilee region of Israel, there aren’t railway connections here like all of the (Ashdod / Ashkelon / Herzilya / Yaffo / Tel Aviv  / Netanya / Haifa / Akko / Nahariya) coastal cities have in Israel.

I often think about how often Jesus himself traveled between the two locations, if I were some other kind of mobile tradesman and lived here before cars and buses, there is a number of challenges, stopping for food and where to stay overnight, risks of attacks by bandits/robbers, extreme heat, mosquitos, having enough (3 litres a day per person minimum) water for the journey, steep hills, presents all manner of challenges.

I am wondering if people at the time of Jesus owned camels and donkeys or if they were rented.

 

Arab people in rural parts of the country may have camels (which are still expensive today)   or ancient Peugeot 504 pick up trucks are the other favourite, this one is full of sheep.

Some historians have said it takes 3 1/2 days by foot to go from one of these famous cities to the other.   I thought I would do some research.

Here is a map I have made with Google Maps,

You can get a closer look of this Google maps anotation:

This distance of 103kms (64 miles) one is ‘as the crow flies’ and goes across the separation barrier that fences off Judea and Samaria, what we know today as the West Bank.  (contrary to what you see in the media only 5% of the boundaries of the West Bank is concrete wall, the rest is a chain link fence)

I have only just noticed when doing this, the line passes straight through the West Bank city of Nabulus.  Given the highly mountainous terrain of this country, its unlikely it would be as simple as going via a compass back in Jesus’s time, there were plenty of political issues back then don’t forget, some places would not been safe then, especially given Jesus’s parable of the Good Samaritan, a Jewish man robbed and beaten up was cared for and put into a hotel for the night by a kindly stranger who as a Samaritan an ethnic group then enemies of Jews.

Closer look of this one also:

This one was suggested by Google’s planning system using today’s actual roads albeit a lot longer way around, without going through checkpoints, is quite a bit further at 151km (93 miles)

Look at the link and see carefully the main roads in Jordan, and the shape of the borders between Jordan and Syria create a pattern which looks strangely symmetrical to the route I have sketched out.   Quite bizarre.

To be honest though, its hard getting an idea of time and distance of going to and from the two great cities by foot or donkey in any more accurate terms given the challenges or land boundaries, steep hills and uncertain historical road systems, but I think it gives you a little bit of an idea.

Jul 2 2011

disposing of electronics scrap in Israel

In my job doing IT system administration and technical support for a Christian organisation called Bridges for Peace here in Israel, I am installing new equipment, mostly PCs and servers.

Back in April, we has an unfortunate week where three different network switches in two buildings fail suddenly, this paralysed our network access for about 25 staff, one of these switches broke the same time we had a power outage in the building I was in and the emergency power back up systems did not do the job of protecting the equipment.

What I want to know is, where is the correct place to take scrap IT equipment here in Israel?

It appears in most neighbourhoods, like mine, there are these big skips shared by three or four apartment blocks for putting in domestic rubbish in.  People also put broken furniture and electrical items in.   Some dead computers were left out in the hallway of my block, so I took the Pentium chips and memory out, and put them in the bin as well.

In my work, I have a pile of dead batteries from laptops, large brick batteries from UPS systems, several whole ‘shoebox’ sized UPS devices that were defective, two dead LCD panels from laptops,

All types of batteries contain highly toxic materials and LCD monitors contain small amounts of mercury.  How can IT people here in Israel dispose of stuff safely, legally and responsibly here?

Jun 29 2011

New bike!!

Last week I got another bike.  It used to belong to another volunteer up in Karmiel at the food bank facility I work in every so many months.  This chap has left now, but the bike was abandoned after something broke on it and he couldn’t afford to fix it.

After it was brought down in a van, I got the local bike store to take a look at it, the gear controls on the right hand side don’t work and the chain had come off.   After some components in the gears were replaced and this slightly odd bodge, as the man in the shop said the original twist operated gear parts would be much more expensive, hence I have a thumb operated control ontop instead.

On thursday I managed to get a puncture, so back to the shop again, there is a Jewish owner of the shop and young Arab chap in the workshop and he is super quick and efficient in changing over the inner tube and has me up and running in 3 minutes.  I asked him to remove and discard the kickstand which doesn’t work properly and is more of a nuisance as a sharp bit of metal that could cause an injury.

This writing suggests the bike may actually be made by a company in Israel.  Interesting as cycling is not that popular here.

Its heavier than my old one so its a little tricky carrying down from my 2nd floor flat steps, but it was free and a huge blessing to not have to just rely on buses.

I also got asked to fix a Toshiba laptop with a dead screen from a friend of a friend, so after procuring a new 13″ LCD panel off ebay for UK£67.50, a financial gift for the repair work I did in form of the exact fee it took to get my new bike servicable.

Jun 14 2011

British blogger in Israel appeals for sightings of lost bike….

Came back from a nice day out in the old city with friends from work, only to go back to Zion Square in Jerusalem to find the tree where my bike was locked up was empty.

Its been stolen 😦   Was locked onto this tree in between these phoneboxes.   Actually I would of thought it would be easier to saw through the tree than the chain myself.

This is most annoying as I need to it to get to and fro work.  I work in three buildings, normally one in central Jerusalem 4 or 5 days a week, one in Talpiyot 1 day a week, and on rare occasions up in Karmiel (I go up there in a bus to this one)   I usually do an 8 mile/12 km round trip each day to work.

If anyone spots it, its a ‘Vision’- don’t know much about the model number, frame size etc, its just a gents mountain bike that looks like this, blue, with white and red stripes with plenty of scrapes and rust.  The police were not that helpful but I am sure they have plenty of more important things on, and the officer on duty didn’t speak English when I filled in the forms there.

A lot of businesses in Israel have a security camera system linked up to a small computer which records video footage onto a hard drive, I asked a few businesses around if they have any recordings, one of them told me yes, but these only are kept for 24 hours.  There must be loads of security cameras around Zion Square, Jaffa Street and Ben Yehuda Street in Jerusalem.

As a Christian doing voluntary role in IT system administration and technical support, its essential tool for me to get around, buses are much better and cheaper than in the UK but still eat into budget.

I would be prepared to give a reward to anyone who can help, just would like any info, or anyone seen anyone acting suspicious (with boltcutters!)  as it was taken outside the Leumi bank at the corner of Ben Yehuda Street and Jaffa Street, between 11.30-16.00 on sunday 14th June.   This is a very busy part of town, it would hard to commit any kind of theft without getting seen in day time.

You can email me on jp.hayward@gmail.com or call or text 052 789 7520.

toda raba.

Jun 3 2011

A day in Christian IT work in the Galilee

As I have mentioned before, my job as a volunteer IT support and system administrator for the charity Bridges for Peace means I am normally based in one of two offices in Jerusalem, and on odd occasions I work up in Karmiel, which is a city in the centre of the Galilee.

This means a 180km visit by car or bus when I have to do work up there.  The food bank I work does a huge amount of service in helping the poorest people in this area especially new immigrants to Israel mostly from Russia or some of the other ex-Soviet Union nations.  Every so many months I need to do a trip probably not that different from journeys Jesus did himself.

I have learned since being here this site requires careful planning as its an awful long way if something breaks unexpectedly.

This empty room in the middle of the warehouse seems like a good place to put the server.  This server will replaced later this year as its running Windows 2000 which is very old now and we need a new more reliable system that helps us with our day to day food bank operations up here.   This room is good as it means an easier job of adding some extra wiring here as its close to the network cabinet which is in the cupboard opposite the door.

This rack full of network kit needs a good sort out.   I manage to swap cables around to enable computer network use in some offices that moved around.   We only have 5 staff up here and there will be at least 3 more and there is not enough ports on the 16 port switch here so I have to put in another switch.   The glass door on the cabinet does not shut as the wires are in the way.   I think I can rotate the brackets on the switch at the top 180 degrees so this sits flush better and should make the glass door shut properly.

There is an other switch supplied by Bezeq (Israel’s no.1 telephone company) for several VOIP phones.   Not quite sure how this works as I think they maintain it.

The black things are UPS power back up units to keep equipment running in case of power failure or spikes in the electricity supply, these are a few years old, most of the equipment was set up when this building got running in 2007 and the chances are the batteries are no good as they have a 3 year or so life span.   I want to get a new UPS that has network connectivity so I can see the status of it using my Spiceworks network management software.   These small ‘shoebox’ type UPSes should be able to be refurbished with new batteries and they could be used on regular office PCs in another part of the building.

When I was staying at one of the staff’s place over night, looking out of the balcony, I get to see an Arab bedouin house across the road, and modern (Jewish) flats in the distance.   Here in this city, these two types of communities seem to be get on well it seems.   It does mean you get woken up up by roosters at 5.30am though!

I have to speak to the rest of the IT department to get some more telephones installed, test wiring for network ports and telephones, get 3 more PCs installed and test the spare server.   This trip was mostly about planning to give extra capacity for this site for future expansion as I know the Lord will provide more resources so we can help the most needy people in this area.  I will need to do another visit up here in July I think.

The main thing I was doing, is a careful back up of the main server and applying all the latest updates and patches.   This is always a delicate thing for IT administrators to do, it puts you a big security risk if you don’t bother, and if you do it without carefully planning it can crash the server.    One of the team had their monitor suddenly stop working, so a local computer store (thanks to KSP)  I got a new Samsung 18″ wide screen TFT monitor.

I really like this job as I always have plenty of interesting and varied challenges so work is never boring and I get to know everyone in the organisation.   It also means I can combine this with a weekend seeing some friends who moved from home city of Portsmouth UK to Karmiel Israel, and later visiting the city of Tiberias which is right on the Kinneret, or the Sea of Galilee, and a few significant places of the bible, I will show soon.

A day in my work in the Galilee – The Jesus boat in Ginosar – The Kinneret Lake – Tiberias evening light show – Preaching and miracles of Jesus in Capernaum – Tiberias city centre and Muriels and Maimonidies