My current PC, A IBM M52 part 1

Hello all. Today i'm going to talk about my current PC which is a IBM M52 8215-CTO. There will be several parts to this as i keep upgrading it and i will write about my experiences with it. First a overall picture of my PC:

My Desktop and monitor on my computer desk. Yeah it's a mess.

As you can see i have a HP 1740 17" LCD monitor connected to my M52. I have a Logitech K120 keyboard which is pretty good seeing as it's a fairly cheapish one and a GAME brand mouse, again fairly basic but does the job. You can also just about see on the left a BT Voyager 1500 wireless router that i mainly use for experiments.

Next i'll show you a close up of the front:

At the bottom left is the grill for the two CPU fans, Top left is the floppy drive,
At the top right is the CD-RW/DVD Drive, At the bottom we have the headphone and microphone  jacks,
To the left of those is the two front USB 2.0 ports, the power button and the power and HDD indicator lights.

Next a picture of the back:

On the back starting from the left is the PSU fan grill, power socket, under that is the voltage switch,
Then we have the old keyboard and mouse ports, next to them is four USB 2.0 ports, A parallel port, Line in and line out audio ports, A VGA video port, two more USB 2.0 ports , a ethernet port and two serial ports.

There is also two PCI slots at the top right. As you can see the bottom one is not in use and the top one has a PCI slot fan mounted in it. Some of you may have noticed that there is small piece of metal on the right side of the PCI fan grate. I'm using that to keep the PCI fan in place. Without it the front would fall down as it doesn't fit overly well. More on the insides later though.

Finally i shall leave you with the specs of this PC as it is:

IBM M52 8215-CTO
CPU: Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.00GHz HT SL7Z9
Motherboard: Custom BTX motherboard with the Intel 945G chipset
RAM: 1x Crucial 2GB DDR2-SDRAM PC2-5300 and 1x Kingston 1GB DDR2-SDRAM PC2-5300
Hard Drive: Hitachi Deskstar 7K80 series 80GB (HDS728080PLA380 40Y9028LEN)
Optical Drive: TSSTcorp CDW/DVD TS-H492C
Graphics Card: Intel(R) 82945G Express Chipset Family 212MB
Sound Card: SoundMAX Integrated Digital HD Audio
PSU: Delta Electronics DPS-225HB A 225W
Monitor: HP L1740 LCD Monitor
OS: Microsoft Windows XP Pro (2600) SP3

Quick Tech Tip #2: Clean your fans.

Hello all. Today i'm going to talk about cleaning your fans. No matter what type of computer you have keeping it cool will help prolong the life of your computer and make it a bit quieter too. One way of doing this is to clean out your fans and heatsink.

All computers will be different but they all should have at least one fan (Mainly laptops) and one heatsink (some, mostly desktops have 2 or 3 fans, maybe more). both of these can get quite dusty and when they get dusty it makes them less efficient which in turn makes your computer hotter.

I had one laptop where the fan grate on the heatsink half blocked up with dust raised the temperature about 20C so maintaining clean fans and a clean heatsink will reduce the temperature and prolong the life of your computer. The way i do this is to just take a cotton bud/swab and wipe the fan blades as well as the grates on the heatsink. make sure you can see straight through the heatsink grates and that there is nothing blocking any of them. Also make sure that the air intakes on you computer are clean as well.

And thats it for this quick tech tip. I hope this post has helped you and i'll see you next time. Till then.

Quick Tech Tip #1: Defragmenting your hard drive.

Hello all. Today i'm going to talk about defragmenting your hard drive. If your using Windows it's a smart plan to defragment your hard drive. Basically a fragmented hard drive is where a file is in multiple places on the hard drive. This can happen to many files. defragmenting your hard drive is a process that puts all of one file together on the hard drive thus making it easier and quicker for Windows to find said file.

There are many programs out there that can defrag your hard drive. There is also a built in defragger in Windows. to use the one build into Windows just do this:

1: Right click on My Computer.

2: Click on Manage.

3: Then in the left hand side pane of the window that just popped up click on Disk Defragmenter.

4: Then either click on the Analyze button to analyze your hard drive to see if it needs defragmenting or click on the Defragment button to defragment your hard drive.

I use Auslogics Disk defrag at the moment and it seem very good however there are other ones out there too.

you should defragment your hard drive every month at least. I'd recommend every two weeks just to make sure it doesn't get that bad. Some programs offer a quick defrag option that takes a lot less time that you can do every week or two.

Remember: never pay for this sort of software as most of the time it really isn't any better than the free ones.

And thats the end of this Quick Tech Tip. I hope this post helped you and i'll see you next time. Till then.

Introducing Quick Tech Tips.

Hello all. Today i'm posting about a new series of posts called Quick Tech Tips. Every so often i will post a short "tech tip" that i've learnt through my years of trying to fix computers. These will be anything related to computers really.

also a quick bit of news i've just released V0.1.5 of my Simple Text Editor. (STE) You can download it from the SourceForge page here:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/simpletxteditor/

RMQG V0.5.3 and CMDQuest released, apesstuff updated.

Hello all. I haven't posted in a while (3 months in fact) but i've finally found the time to do another post. This one is mainly news. I've released RMQG V0.5.3 (Released it a while ago actually) so you can download that at the SourceForge page here:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/rmqg/

I've also released a game called CMDQuest. It's a command line RPG. Yes thats right i finally got round to making a game. It's only the second version so it's not really playable as a actual game yet but if i can get stuck in with it hopefully it should get developed fairly quicky. Thats the theory anyway. You can find out about it and download it at the SourceForge page here:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/cmdquest/

Finally I've update apesstuff again. I've added some pictures that i've taken in GT5 using the photo mode. You can find them here:

http://sites.google.com/site/apesstuff/gaming-zone/gt5-pictures

And that all the news for now. As always if you need any PC help please visit PCHelpForum.com. A great forum for computer help. Till next time.

STE V0.1.4 released, RMQG V0.5.2 released.

Hello all. Just a quick post to say that i've released V0.1.4 of STE and V0.5.2 of RMQG. You can download RMQG here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/rmqg/ and you can download STE here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/simpletxteditor/.

Also great news! STE is now listed on Softpedia and has the 100% free award.

How To: Get the disc out of a YLOD'ed PS3

Hello all. Well my PS3 YLOD'ed again for the second time today so i thought it would be fitting to post this today. As some of you may know when a PS3 does get the YLOD (Yellow Light Of Death) if you have a game disc in at the time it won't eject because the PS3 isn't on long enough for you to get it out. I found out how to get the disc out when i phoned Sony. So i thought i'd post this up here for people who didn't know how.

To get the disc out make sure the PS3 is off at the back. Then hold the eject button down and flick the power switch on the back on. The fan should come on very fast and the disc should pop out. Be sure to grab it quickly or it will go back in.

And thats it. now you know. If you have any questions please fell free to either comment on this post or email me.

STE V0.1.3 released. apestuff updated.

Hello all. I've finally released STE V0.1.3. STE or Simple Text Editor is a text editor that can open, edit and create text files. You can download it at the SourceForge project here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/simpletxteditor/

I've also update my website with a STE page under the My programming projects section. And thats it. till next time.

RMQG V0.5.1 released, Programming projects section on my website updated.

Hello all. It's been a while since the last news post but this is a big one. I have finally released the Random Maths Question Generator or RMQG. You can find the download link at the SourceForge project here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/rmqg/. I've also updated the programming section on my website now that i've released RMQG. You can find that page here: https://sites.google.com/site/apesstuff/my-programming-projects And thats it. Till next time.

Inside a Hi-Grade 8615.

Hello all. Today i will show you the inside of a Hi-Grade 8615 and explain what each component is. For higher resolution pictures click the links under the pictures. So first up is a overall view of it with the back access panel removed.

From Hi-grade

Here we have the hard drive in the upper right corner, The fan in the upper left corner, On the far right bottom corner is where the wireless network card would go if i had one, which i don't. Next to that just to the left is where the RAM goes. I do have some of that. Finally at the far left bottom corner is where the CPU is located. You can just see it under the heat sink.(Which is the orange piece of metal that goes from the top of the CPU to the the very top of the picture just infront of the fan.) Lastly right next to the CPU to the right is the graphics chip or more precisely the heat sink on top of the graphics chip. (The silver rectangle.)

Next up is a close up of the left section.

From Hi-grade

Here you can see this section in more detail. Next is a close up of the right section.

From Hi-grade

Here you can see the right section in more detail.Finally is a close up of the CPU.

From Hi-grade

Here is a close up of the CPU. and that's it. Hope you found this interesting. The next computer we'll be inside of will be a IBM R40e. Till next time.