Did you get bad sectors? Weird things can absolutely happen but having sectors marked as bad is on the exceptional side of weird.

Maybe? Bad cables are a thing, so it’s something to be aware of. USB latency, in rare cases, can cause problems but not so much in this application.

I haven’t looked into the exact ways that bad sectors are detected, but it probably hasn’t changed too much over the years. Needless to say, info here is just approximate.

However, marking a sector as bad generally happens at the firmware/controller level. I am guessing that a write is quickly followed by a verification, and if the controller sees an error, it will just remap that particular sector. If HDDs use any kind of parity checks per sector, a write test may not be needed.

Tools like CHKDSK likely step through each sector manually and perform read tests, or just tells the controller to perform whatever test it does on each sector.

OS level interference or bad cables are unlikely to cause the controller to mark a sector as bad, is my point. Now, if bad data gets written to disk because of a bad cable, the controller shouldn’t care. It just sees data and writes data. (That would be rare as well, but possible.)

What you will see is latency. USB can be magnitudes slower than SATA. Buffers and wait states are causing this because of the speed differences. This latency isn’t going to cause physical problems though.

My overall point is that there are several independent software and firmware layers that need to be completely broken for a SATA drive to erroneously mark a sector as bad due to a slow conversion cable. Sure, it could happen and that is why we have software that can attempt to repair bad sectors.

In addition, I can’t tell people enough that most "specialty’ tools are most likely common tools from other fields, but maybe include a fancy adapter or something. And yes, I don’t want to know how many times we have solved problems that were already solved. (A benefit is that we understand the true problem to its core and integrate those solutions much more efficiently into future projects.)

My “jack” is printed in PETG as it has a higher glass transition temperature (80°-85°C) than PLA. I have had PLA prints on my shelf start to sag due to age but most of that is likely negated by additives in new generations of PLA+. (or PLA Pro, or whatever buzzword is currently used.) PETG should be just fine for this. ABS would be another option, too.

I currently have a Prusa Mini that is my go to, but a large format Prusa XL with 5 separate hotends is squarely in my sights at the moment. (I have had several other printers that eventually got disassembled for parts.)

The threads on my print are super tight and no post processing was needed. It just screwed together after it was done. I did go to the trouble of designing a shoe looking adapter thing for more surface area against the card, but the weight of the card is enough to keep it from moving around. The thread angle is such that the downward pressure keeps enough friction on the threads so it’s not going anywhere through any jostling. (Rough threads are a feature, in this case.)

But yeah, printers these days are much more accurate and less prone to errors. Just 10 years ago, every other print I did was a failure. Now? Failures are quite rare and that is mostly because of the tech. Now that layers are consistent enough these days, most threads I print are with 0.2mm layers which is good enough if I keep the tolerances wide enough in CAD. (My go-to is 0.25mm tolerance for fitted parts or less depending on the application.)

Yeah! I remember those wrenches quite well. Print-in-place models are somewhat mainstream now. I randomly put one on Printables and it is far more popular than I ever expected. The success rate seems quite high given the number of random printers that are out there: https://www.printables.com/model/489431-print-in-place-hinge . I only bring this up as it’s a testament to how far the tech has come, and only recently.

I literally just got my first resin printer and have yet to have a failure. Getting consistent prints at 0.03mm has been a breeze and quality is limited by the model, not the printer. (Resin printer fanatics are likely to argue with me on that point.) Getting ABS plastic strength with hyper-detail is amazing! However, it’s messy and smelly, so that sucks. (I am going to setup some real precision testing this evening as I have had some projects on hold for a couple of years due to FDM limitations.)

Here ya go: https://www.printables.com/model/926491-anti-sag-gpu-stand-aka-machinists-jack

Thanks for the kind words!

And yes, I designed this in a vacuum, but it is actually a common machinists jack, it seems. Minus a few neat features I saw around the web (like a lock screw component) it’s a 1:1 match for functionality.

Like you, I have a love for projects and tools that are shared across different fields. Mostly due to my ADHD, I have a slew of hobbies that focus around mechanical engineering, chemistry and biology. It’s extremely cost effective to commingle different hobbies, actually. My 3D printing and CAD work is universal, my collection of chemistry glass is used for rando chemistry things as well as mycology. All of my fittings, connectors and electronic components are also universal… etc. etc.

As requested: https://www.printables.com/model/926491-anti-sag-gpu-stand-aka-machinists-jack

I’ll get it shared tomorrow. It’s designed after a bottle jack but is completely threaded to allow for adjustment and doesn’t have any of the handle components, obviously.

Yeah. I got one and it’s a beast. I had to design and print a support for its ass to keep it from sagging.

Tin the wire and the pin first and then touch the iron to them both quickly. They should stick fairly well without needing to add additional solder. Also, like someone else mentioned, flux can help quite a bit. (Maybe even a cupped soldering iron tip might be useful, depending on the situation.)

Learning how to solder SMD components will get you extremely familiar with how solder behaves at that scale. Let’s just say it’s significantly different than just doing basic wires and THT.

(Well, the solder doesn’t really act different, but at smaller scales it looks like it does.)

If I remember correctly from the good ol’ days, promoted sites/ads kinda stopped after the first few pages and it skipped past most of the SEO crap.

But yeah, I forgot how aggressive Google is with ads and AI now, those bastards.

Nah, this is not really a tech support community, but whatever. (Unless it is a tech support community? I always thought pcmasterrace was supposed to be a hair on the sarcastic side.)

It looks like a self-signed cert that is on your DSL modem (The subdomain was ‘dsldevice’…) and I am guessing you are trying to use the web interface for your modem?

If you aren’t making a connection to that device (which would have an IP address in 192.168.x.x, 10.x.x.x or 172.16.x.x) and you are trying to browse to an external site, then:

1. There is no internet connection and your device is injecting a local address for an external DNS query to give you a hint that you need to fix yo’ shit or
2. Your device is super old and cannot handle HTTPS correctly. (Unlikely)
3. Your DSL device is hijacked and is doing an MTM attack on a HTTPS connection. (Highly unlikely, but you never know.)

Do regular web sites work correctly, or does this happen regardless of the site you are attempting to browse to?

It’s actually a good change, IMHO. You can just click directly on page 10 for anything that might be related to your original search.

Add more garlic and you’ll be fine.

I was more of a compulsive liar when I drank. To be honest, I was always more prone to say what is on my mind when I am sober.

Yeah, I don’t believe that a person is their true self when drunk either. In my case, I was damn near a completely different person.

Very close! The main difference is in thier “socks” or “mittens”. Sudo has the smaller socks, Fenn has the “knee highs”.

Fenn has the massive appetite as well, so just shaking the food back is enough to identify him.

Fenn still likes to suckle when he is going to sleep… Mainly on his brother. After that, Sudo is usually drenched in slobber so both meanings work. :)

They are joined at the hip, figuratively. Everything that one does, the other has to do. Eating, sleeping, playing… everything. (Almost everything… They quickly learned that the litter box is one cat at a time only.)

It’s almost like owning just one cat, just with double the poo.

I started looking into that and if the price is right, it’s not that far-fetched. (After all, I did get my ham radio license mainly so I could legally transmit up to 1000W in some cases…)

HVAC repair seems to be a lucrative business so it may be something to do on the side. The certification would be a great way to start that, actually.

Thanks for the additional info!

It is absolutely just more cost effective, safer and better piece of mind to just replace the breaker. I’ll take that route 99.99% of the time.

If you feel adventurous, there are a couple of ways to test that breaker without proper test equipment. The risks could be zero OR you blow your face off and burn your house down.

Find an open outlet at tap live to ground. This will produce some natural and organic indoor fireworks, but it should trip the breaker. If it doesn’t, there is a small risk of welding the wires together and creating a very strange short condition, turning that entire circuit into a new heat strip. (Free money!)

Find two 1800W space heaters and together, on the same circuit, they should trip the breaker as well. (Breakers should be rated to at least 1800W.) This is problematic as well and I’ll explain. There is something magical about space heaters as I have seen 2 or 3 run off of the same circuit before. I suspect that if a breaker is slowly warmed up due to heavy load it will change its characteristics, causing it to only trip at higher loads. (Absolute speculation on my part!) By default, I would replace the breaker if I saw that kind of load. Extended, and higer heat cycles will eventually damage the breaker.

All you gotta do is pull up the data from a trustworthy source… like Xtwitter or Facebook.

Ctrl z