Lowyat.NET: Latest topics by zemega

Recovering data from submerged Huawei Nova 3i

zemega — Tue, 02 Jul 2024 21:56:01 +0800

Hello. I have a relative who accidentally dropped a Huawei Nova 3i into washing machine. When it was passed to me, the phone was full of water in the inside. I then proceed to dismantle the phone and dries everything with a hair dryer. I gurss it's too late. he phone won't turn on.

So, is there a data recovery service for this phone? My relative is willing to pay thousands to get back the data (mostly photos) in the phone. Preferably in Malaysia. I suppose Singapore is still acceptable.

Multiple monitor with Lenovo Legion 5 15ACH6A

zemega — Thu, 13 Jul 2023 14:56:44 +0800

Hi. I have a company laptop Lenovo Legion 5 15ACH6A. I want to connect it to two monitors. Is this possible? I'm thinking of something like, two monitors connect to a docking station. This docking station connects to the laptop.

I read the Product Specifications Reference. Under monitor support, it says

QUOTE

Support up to 4 independent displays (native display and 3 external monitors via HDMI and USB-C.
Hdmi supports up to 7680x4320@60Hz.
Usb-c supports up to 5120x3200@60Hz.

Under Ports

QUOTE

...
1x USB-C Gen 2 (support data transfer and DisplayPort 1.4)
1x USB-C Gen 2 (support data transfer, Power Delivery and DisplayPort 1.4)
...

I don't know whether this is possible or not.

The monitors, cables, or docking station are not bought yet. I will ask company to buy. I want to check fist whether this is possible or not. What are the necessary specifications?

Can 2 monitor connect with HDMI to docking station, then docking station with USB-C 3.2/DP 1.4 to laptop? I could not figure out what to look for.

I'm willing to buy a docking station to test, since I have two hdmi monitors at home that I can use with this laptop as well.

All monitors are of 1920x1080 resolution.

Edit: I do want a docking station after all. I wanted to attach keyboard, mouse, network cable, and 2 monitors to the docking station. Then each time I goes to office, I only need to connect the docking station to the laptop. It's a bonus if it can power the laptop while at it.

How much to charge per hour?

zemega — Wed, 17 May 2023 15:40:52 +0800

Hello. I helped an acquaintance with some last minute figure editing and reference/bibliography tidy up. There were 8 figures and they're all schematic done in high resolution. This includes the initial redrawing of the figures and continuous fine-tuning with feedback. The reference tidy up was basically getting all the reference that they cited to be valid reference, and redone them in a consistent style. Overall 40 hours that includes night and weekend.

So now, the acquaintance says to bill properly and accordingly. So, both of us don't really know how much to pay or the current market for this sort of job. If anything, I have a master degree that is related to the work being done. So how much per hour should I charge?

Do people replace their mouse switch?

zemega — Mon, 17 Apr 2023 17:58:37 +0800

I have two Logitech M331. One for desktop, another for traveling laptop. Lately, the desktop one left click is stiff and need to press harder to register click. I'm comparing it with the right button and the other mouse, they're still smooth and easy to click. I have to admit, I play games a lot, maybe that's why the switch wear out or something.

From what I can see in Shopee, the switch ranges from RM 0.50 to RM 10++. Although this one seems most popular, Kailh GM 8.0 Mouse Micro Switch, at RM 5.5. It doesn;t seem expensive to me, although I have no idea of the pricing of such switches. I would prefer high quality over cheap products if it's only in these range.

Any input for this? I would just buy one the popular (according to Shopee search) and ask a shop to replace it for me. Should I get a set and replace both left and right switchs?

Finding replacement battery

zemega — Sat, 28 Jan 2023 12:27:54 +0800

I want to replace this battery. Where can I find a replacement? What keyword should I search for? 3.7V?

I found this in Shopee. But I don't know much about electronics. I think it's the correct replacement. Can anyone confirm it for me?
https://shopee.com.my/3.7V-900mAh-603048-Li...4c-7cc37ed34d40

I think I can solder, I still remember how to do it. But I don't know what solder material I should use. Can I just twist the wire together? Or use something like below?
https://shopee.com.my/1-Pcs-Heat-Shrink-Wat...bc-eeed9c52eb10

Reccomendation for office PC

zemega — Thu, 22 Sep 2022 09:59:54 +0800

Hello.

I would like to ask reccomendation for a friend. This is for office PC. It will be under "Buy your own device" scheme, where the friend will buy the computer set first, company will reimburse RM 3,500 to the friend, and after some years, the computer set will belong to the friend completely.

So, budget is minimum RM 3,500. Friend is willing to chip in their own money, maybe RM 500, for quality stuff.

All new parts.

Purpose is for office work, which usually means Office suit and stuff. Rarely she would need to some complex stuffs like Matlab and such. Or when she needs to use some old Linux program that's heavy on RAM.

Intended purchase date is in around three weeks I believe. It's when the friend is required to go to office full time.

Preferences. More like proposed minimum specification. Yes it says "Cadangan Spesifikasi Minima Untuk Komputer Desktop" in the document. But better follows it.

CPU: Intel Core i5 11th generation. 12th generation is the recommended one.
Memory: 16GB. This is because of the occasional complex stuff friends needs to run or check.
Harddrive: 512 GB SSD
GPU: Intergrated.
Monitor: 27 inch. As requested by friend. Also willing to pay more for quality one.
Keyboard and Mouse: Wireless set
Networking: Gigabit Ethernet.
I/O ports: USB 2.0/3.0 or lateset
Audio port
port for monitor (compatible with monitor)
RJ45 ethernet port
Wi-Fi 6 (optional). Not needed really.
OS: Windows 11 Home 64bit English
Warranty: recommended 3 years and onsite support.
Additional: Headphone and camera.

As for friend other information:
There's no plan to add GPU in future.
No OEM build that uses custom OEM parts.
If more storage needed, company will provide HDD.

2.5 years old not eating or swallow food.

zemega — Sat, 07 May 2022 11:57:00 +0800

There's a 2.5 years old girl. She's almost underweight., Hovering over the yellow line in the pink book. She still wants to breastfeed. She eats a couple mouthful. Then she starts to keep the food inside her mouth. For hours sometimes. Until she falls asleep sometimes.

Her mother, also has a small body, and doesn't eat sometimes as well. Not sure of this is genetic or not. The father is normal chubby bodied. The grandfather on mother side is also small bodied. The other grandparents are normal I guess.

The girl is active, can communicate, can speak some words, and starting to strong words together. She just doesn't wants to eat a lot. Either 3 times a day, or several times a day, she doesn't eat much. Currently on lysine+vitamin C, but it's still not enough weight gain according to doctors.

I'm trying to Google this situation, but I could not figure the keywords for this situation.

I would like to have help with the girl situation.

GPU or MB + CPU?

zemega — Thu, 20 Jan 2022 12:52:42 +0800

If I want to upgrade PC to play games like Genshin Impact and Honkai Impact 3rd. On 1920 X 1080 resolution. I'm currently playing on i5-4460 and no GPU. Which do you suggest?

A new GPU? Price is still insane. I'm not sure which card to get. All the new names don't make sense to me. I would like 60 FPS.

New MB and CPU. Is it possible to reuse my DDR4 rams? I certainly needs at least 16 GB for my works. Will get 32GB if I have to get a new system. If the iGPU can play at 1920x1080 resolution, that would be great.

Sudden power surge, desktop damage?

zemega — Fri, 03 Dec 2021 10:13:21 +0800

Hello.

My place just got hit by a sudden power surge. Probably short circuit somewhere. Electrician is looking at it.

Problem is, I heard pop sound from the desktop, and some smoke smell. Would it be safe to assume something broke down? I do have a spare power supply. I think I will swap the power supply first before turning it on. I just hop the motherboard is fine. Anything else I should do or take note of?

There's a power organiser box that house laptop power brick and phone charger. There's pop sound and smoke smell from there as well. What should I assume and not do after power is restored?

Update: Alright, the conclusion has been drawn. The previous solar panel installer jam packed the distribution board when they add the solar panel wiring and changed to the three phase. The wires were forced to connect to the circuit breaker, and becomes loose. The loose wires caused the shorts. Some of the wires are actually doubled together to a single circuit breaker. Replaced the DB with a much bigger one. Also installed SPD as suggested by others. In the end, three ceiling fan broken, quite a number of downlights, my PSU, laptop charger brick, and apparently the phone charger brick also is bust (still charging, but I feel current pulses when holding it, and there's some weird liquid at the seams).

Update 2: Turning on solar panel DB will trip the main DB. Solar panel installer will have to come and check everything related to it.

Astro refund help.

zemega — Tue, 12 Oct 2021 20:35:39 +0800

So, a relative terminate astro sometimes ago. Still got balance, that Astro now doesn't want to refund. Astro said astro don't have evidence the relative overpaid. Bullshit.

So what to do now? Anyone got step by step to complain? Is it tribunal, or MCMC?

PC can't boot.

zemega — Fri, 06 Aug 2021 22:20:05 +0800

Hi.

My PC details is as below. Recently it broke down. I was playing Genshin Impact at the time. The game was pushing my system quite harshly I guess, GPU temp keep reaching 80C. I usually paused the game after a few minutes to let the GPU cools down before resuming playing. Previously, when the GPU overheat, artifacts showed up on screen, and blue screen some times. This time I forgot to pause while playing, and the computer just power off like that. Trying to turn it on will make the fan spin for a second then it stops. I tried disconnecting everything, leaving only motherboard+CPU+PSU+RAM. Still the same thing, fan spins for a second then it went quite again. I also tried without RAM, the same thing. I tried clearing the CMOS using the jumper on the motherboard, still the same thing.

I tried borrowing another desktop that does not work. That PC will turn on, fan spins, but no output graphic output from MB or GPU. No sound either when booting without RAM plugged in. It's the only other desktop I have in the house. Taking its PSU Cooler Master 600W MPX-6001-ACABW (couldn't find any year month marking/sticker on it) and tried booting my PC, the same thing, fan spins a second then it stops. Using my PSU on that other computer will make the other computer fan spins, but its the same thing, no output from MB or GPU.

I would like to think that my PSU is not the problem, and it's still working, but since the other desktop is not working either, I could not rule out that my PSU does not have any problem.

i5-4460
Gigabyte Z97-DH3 (bought new October last year through a forumer here)
16GB Hyper-X RAM
Ancient Cooler Master 750W psu.
Thermaltake Water 3.0 AIO cooler. Still working I guess, it keeps the CPU cool.
Leadtek GTX760.
250 GB 2.5" SSD
500 GB NVME SSD. Edit: Actually M.2 PCIE SSD.
Previously 2 x 4GB GSKILL RAM, which I still kept.

Is there anything else that I can do to diagnose the problem?

Edit: I remembered I still have my previous Mitx-AC Asrock h97 motherboard. I decided to replace this motherboard previously because it was misbehaving. Example of misbehave includes, it will turn on on its own after normal shutdown or force shutdown. BIOS time always jumps around. And sometimes, it won't turn on. I decided to try that motherboard. And it boots into UEFI. Sadly my Windows installation is on the NVME SSD, and the old MB doesn't have port for it.

Old MB + CPU +PSU + GPU + 2.5" SSD = boots into UEFI.

So the motherboard is the one that fails. Is it really broken now? Is there something that I could do or try to reset the motherboard?

Edit 2: So the motherboard is no longer working. So options left are used motherboard, China brand Huananzhi (brand new), or a new setup.

Something like R Notebook for bash

zemega — Tue, 29 Jun 2021 11:33:42 +0800

So, I have been trying to use RStudio Notebook function. It's working great. Being able to organise the texts, codes and figures is actually great for keeping track of what I'm doing and finalising reports.

My question is, is there something like this for bash scripting? I know how to write a bit of bash scripts and using comments. Kind of like a standalone program to make a document of bash instructions and explaining what they do. Previously, I used Word with "Code" style to highlights the codes, and some instruction description, some pictures here and there, with headings and such. I would say it's to make it easier for others to understand the steps, but honestly, it's more for me to recall and understand what I did before.

I really need to document what I did, the justification of it, the reasoning of it. So that I whenever I need to do something about it, I can revisit the documents and be able to refresh and repeat the tasks with modification here and there.

I googled a bit, there's option like Jupyter Notebook that needs several modules, VSCode Markdown that seems to work out of box, and of course RStudio Notebook itself that can call bash.

I'm on Windows 10 most of the time, and I use WSL, so most of the scripting is done in VSCode Windows side. So I'm leaning more on VSCode, though I never used the Markdown feature in it. I want to know what other people thinks about this topic. Any other programs that I should consider.

How to get harddisk repair quotation.

zemega — Wed, 02 Jun 2021 11:03:17 +0800

My friend has a non-responding hard-disk. Decided to replace it by herself since it was urgent. During claimback process, the management (a public university), ask for proof that the cost to repair the harddisk is way higher than a new purchase of harddisk. Is there any company that I can just email and get quotation for harddisk repair? I think it's a 1TB HDD.

Edit. The finance specifically ask the cost of repair to justify the purchase of new harddisk.

Help with understanding Power Spectrum Analysis

zemega — Wed, 21 Apr 2021 18:13:48 +0800

Hello. Referring to This Brooks publication. While I can understand how to do power spectrum using R (stats::spectrum), I am stumped at one part. Referring to Fig 1 in that publication, how do I get the numbers 140 and 62 Myr? Similarly in Fig3, how does f=0.0416 corresponds to a 24 hour cycle?

Need help buying laptop RAM.

zemega — Mon, 25 Jan 2021 12:22:13 +0800

I have a Asus A315-23-A4QL with me. Searching the Acer website with the laptop Serial number gives only this spec page. https://www.acer.com/datasheets/2020/4876/A....HVTSM.007.html . No specific page for the model. CPU-Z identify this laptop to have 2 memory slot. I opened the laptop, there is only one slot filled. Absolutely only one slot available. There's no soldered memory whatsoever. Take out that one stick, and the laptop would not boot. below is some more information from CPU-Z

Normally I would say any DDR4 SDRAM would do. I was thinking of this one 8GB 2666MHz, https://shopee.com.my/Silicon-Power-DDR4-21...7911.6853626574 .

It should work right?

Is there any wireless headset that is not BT?

zemega — Fri, 25 Dec 2020 15:59:30 +0800

Hello. I'm tired of having wires messing around on my desk. While there's wireless Bluetooth headset, they are very laggy when playing Games. It also makes the BT mouse laggy as well. Is there any wireless headset that is not Bluetooth? It will probably stays on the desk. Any example on Lazada and Shopee? Audio quality is not really important here, no need high end audio surround and such.

Help repair remote control.

zemega — Fri, 20 Nov 2020 22:50:18 +0800

Hi.

I got a broken remote control. The IR LED leg has gone rusty and snapped off the board. How to determine what are the specs if I want to get a LED replacement? Its a remote for ceiling fan. Attached are the pictures of the circuit board. Hope anyone can help me.

Replacing old GPU heatsink.

zemega — Mon, 02 Nov 2020 15:34:39 +0800

Hi.
I got an old Leadtek GTX 760. Still running fine. But playing Genshin Impact on it at 1920x1080 60 fps lowest setting, keep pushing the temperature up to 80C even at full fan speed. For reference below is the original heatsink.

Is it possible to replace it? I was thinking maybe the heatsink and fan from GTX Titan, but the big cylinder caps looks like it will block the path.

In any case, I thought maybe if I can purchase any unused heatsink, or the whole shroud, maybe I can improve the thermal situation. I already cleaned the card, replaced the TIM and such. Tried searching for it, but no luck. I wonder if anyone would know anyone selling them?

Looking for MB replacement.

zemega — Sat, 19 Sep 2020 17:06:49 +0800

Hello. Recently my motherboard has been failing hard. It's Asrock H97M-ITX/AC. I haven't used it much recently since I'm using company laptop most of the time. Looking to make it work again. The motherboard was having problem, so I sent it for RMA on 2017. Since then, the only problem the motherboard have is inconsistent clock time, but that's not important to me. Recently though its getting hard to turn on, even after changing PSU and removing the graphic card. The computer details are below. I'm guessing its a motherboard problem, since that's the only part that has had problem.

Intel Core I5 4460
ASrock H97M-ITX/AC
GSkill AEGIS 2x4GB DDR3 1600mhz
Leadtek GTX 760 2GB DDR5
Thermaltake Water 3.0 Performer Rm199
A MATX case, don't remember.
I think it was 600W PSU.
A couple of 2.5" HDDs.
Windows 8.1

I would put my budget at RM 400. Form factor I guess Matx should be okay. Not concerned with small size. Edit 1: It has to have HDMI or DP at least.

Purpose is mostly work, R and Linux programs. I'm plan to use WSL2 which requires Windows 10 and hyper-v virtualization.
I do intend to play some games, but it is optional. If I have to name one, its probably Horizon Zero Dawn, since it looks so cool, but I understand I barely make the minimum requirement. I used to play Warframe on that PC though.

Just tell me if you need more information.

I don't plan to upgrade the CPU or anything. Maybe upgrade RAM to 16GB or something. If you think I should buy new CPU + motherboard + RAM, do tell so, but I won't have any immediate budget for it.

WTS Crucial MX500GB 3D NAND SATA M.2

zemega — Wed, 19 Aug 2020 17:04:24 +0800

Item(s): Crucial MX500 500GB 3D NAND SATA M.2

Package includes: 1x Crucial MX500 500GB 3D NAND SATA M.2

Price: RM 275

Warranty: 5 Year Limited

Dealing method: COD only

Location: Universiti Malaya and its surrounding. B. B. Bangi and its surrounding

Contact method/details: PM me
---

Item(s) conditions: New, purchased on 17 August 2020.

Picture:

Reason for sale: I made mistake buying this one. Should have bought NVME pcie m.2 ssd, not m.2 SATA SSD. But since I already opened the package, seller won't accept refund. To be exact, it's this one = https://shopee.com.my/product/15417888/1509217513