Skip to the Main Content

Note:These pages make extensive use of the latest XHTML and CSS Standards. They ought to look great in any standards-compliant modern browser. Unfortunately, they will probably look horrible in older browsers, like Netscape 4.x and IE 4.x. Moreover, many posts use MathML, which is, currently only supported in Mozilla. My best suggestion (and you will thank me when surfing an ever-increasing number of sites on the web which have been crafted to use the new standards) is to upgrade to the latest version of your browser. If that's not possible, consider moving to the Standards-compliant and open-source Mozilla browser.

June 29, 2007

Desolé

My laptop is on the fritz, so there will be no further updates from Strings 2007. Which is a pity, because there have been some very cool talks since my last posting.

Update (7/04/2007):

Thanks to those who speculated on the nature of my laptop’s ailment. On Friday evening, Kelly Stelle came to my rescue, equipped with an iPod1 with a copy of MacOSX on it, a variety of cables and connectors, and a Swiss Army knife. We tried everything to resuscitate the machine. Nothing worked, until we opened it up and removed the 1GB RAM module. It then booted just fine, with the 128MB of RAM on the motherboard. Unfortunately, there’s not much you can do with 128MB of RAM. So a real fix had to wait until my return. I flew back on Monday, arriving home at 2 am on Tuesday. At 1 pm, the new memory module arrived, I installed it, and my machine was happy again.

1 The cool thing about the old-style FireWire iPods is that you can actually carry around an entire System and boot a Macintosh off of them.

Posted by distler at June 29, 2007 5:48 AM

TrackBack URL for this Entry:   https://golem.ph.utexas.edu/cgi-bin/MT-3.0/dxy-tb.fcgi/1343



5 Comments & 1 Trackback

Re: Desolé

Hard disc drive problems, maybe? That seems to be the main mechanical failure cause for laptops. If it is the problem, it’s usually accompanied by a clicking sound or a slowing of boot-up. Just back up the HDD to a DVD with Norton Ghost or similar, take the laptop apart and replace the HDD with a new one (you just need to know whether it’s 1.5 inch or 2.5 inches and SATA or PATA) and then restore the contents.

Posted by: Nigel on June 29, 2007 10:56 AM | Permalink | Reply to this

Re: Desolé

Is is it Mac or PC? My Mac Powerbook died while I was on travel last fall..disk drive failed after 2 yrs. (I heard the 2 yr MTBF for disk drives on Powerbooks is common). Very inconvenient. I went to the local Walmart + bought a replacement PC (what shame!)

Posted by: joe on June 29, 2007 11:19 AM | Permalink | Reply to this

Re: Desolé

And on the topic of rebelious computers, did anybody found a HP laptop battery? It seems I left it in the auxiliar conference room.

Posted by: Alejandro Rivero on July 1, 2007 12:32 PM | Permalink | Reply to this

Re: Desolé

Hi Jacques,

You have my sympathies. Especially because last Thursday I finally diagnosed the problem with my 15 inch powerbook that developed a while back (I’d been using another machine instead and only just got around to it). The problem? Memory! The seating for the lower memory module in those machines is known to fail, and then you lose half its memory all of a sudden. (I only later found out that this is a well known problem…and it seems that Apple would only fix a very narrow range of serial numbers of the machines affected, mine not included.) So I’m waiting for a 1G memory module to arrive to put into the upper one, to restore full capability. I suppose I might as well upgrade to Tiger while I’m at it.

Cheers,

(and Happy 4th of July!)

-cvj

Posted by: cvj on July 4, 2007 10:20 AM | Permalink | Reply to this

Re: Desolé

I had a nice experience with my previous laptop (a G3 iBook). Even though it wasn’t officially covered, they ended up fixing it for free.

And happy 4th to you, too!

We’re having a rainy one here (not unrelated to the fact that I got back to Austin at 2 am instead of 8 pm, as originally scheduled).

Posted by: Jacques Distler on July 4, 2007 10:54 AM | Permalink | PGP Sig | Reply to this
Read the post Beyond the MSSM
Weblog: Musings
Excerpt: Things I didn't blog about, but would have.
Tracked: July 5, 2007 11:43 AM

Post a New Comment