Amarvir's Tech Blog

[amarvir02]

Amarvir’s Random Shitposting Tech blog

Well, I get bored quite often, and even though I’m currently prepping for exams soon, I figured I’d start this up now so I can hit the ground running with this come July-ish.

What is this?

Glad you asked! Is this a cat meme thread?! How did you know? . If you guessed correctly, have a cookie!

What will I be doing?

Well aside from sporadically posting random shit fun and interesting projects, I will be updating this thread with any new skills or activities I get up to. Might get to cross a few things off the bucket list whilst I’m at it.

Be warned, that yes, a lot of things I’ll try will probably fail, maybe it takes more than one attempt. Maybe It fails miserably and I have to go back to the drawing board. But hopefully, I learn a thing or two along the way.

Also, there is a strong possibility of cookies

I already have a few ideas of stuff I wanna work on / eventually get to. Doesn’t mean I’ll get round to it soon, or that I’ll even ever get to complete it, but I might as well keep a written list somewhere so I don’t have ideas constantly leaking out of my brain :

• #001 DIY wifi Router

• #002 Minecraft ship base

• #003 DIY keyboard wrist rest (wood, let’s see if I can get my hands on scrap pallets)

• #004 DIY PC case (wood or aluminum) Done.

• #005 Learning Python for data science and programming (because Uni :D)

• #006 Learning C++ for, you guessed it, data science and programming (because Uni :D)

• #007 Coding some microcontrollers, hopefully learning some assembly along the way

• #008 Finishing off some book I bought about computer architecture

• #009 DIY voltage distribution board? (note to self: PCBWay)

• #010 Creating some fun star wars battlefront 2 mods, mostly custom skins etc.!!!

• #011 learning how to use my computer to run convolutions and matrix operations (again, related to uni, also might help me get an internship at Graphcore, idk)

• #012 Make a NAS/home cloud (when I can afford it :D)

• #013 Licky licky liquid cooling my PS4 with my AIO :

• #014 Replacing my mouse switches

• !Most important Try and swindle my uni prof out of a P100, since they’re upgrading to A100’s around now, it’ll be a nice upgrade from my r5 270 :D.
  These hopes and dreams got shattered sadly after I received this email : :
  

So, looks like i’ll be waiting for DG2 after all!
.
.
.

Why?

Because:
a) I need to improve my repertoire of skills, knowledge and experience in order to get myself internships/jobs.

b) I need to do something to keep myself from being bored and to have some focus on, especially over the summer holidays, so I’m not just letting the days waste by.

c) I would actually like to learn something maybe kinda?

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I guess I might as well link to some of the projects/thing’s I’ve already managed to do with you guys’s help:
Help dead vega 64 - Hardware / GPU - Level1Techs Forums
How to solder - Hardware / PSU - Level1Techs Forums

So yeah, that’s it for now. I’ll keep adding to this in time, and I’ll say this here, so I can say it once, Thank you all for the help you’ve already provided me with [Re: prev forum posts], couldn’t have done it without you.

As a bit of a primer, I’ll leave you off with just something I did today. Managed to solder this microcontroller fairly easily in like 5 mins. I know It’s not much, but it’s better than spending like half an hour soldering up the breadboard pins to my flatmate’s LCD display only a couple of weeks ago.

[amarvir02]

As a bit of an unexpected precursor to my summer holidays:
I bought this badboy recently for just under half off:

And yes, that’s exactly what it looks like. So how did I get it for such a bargain? Well… it has a couple of broken pins, along with some bent ones.

So yeah, that’s a problem huh? Well at first, I figured I could repair the pins myself. But my god these things are sooo tiny, and i’m not spending waaay more money on special tools (heatgun, solder mask, precise tweezers,etc) and then risking it on this thing. Luckily, I messaged a seller on eBay about replacement pins and turns out he runs a local repair shop about 10 miles away. He also pointed me towards £4 Semproms, of whch I bought one to practice pin replacement on with my shitty soldering iron.

Meanwhile, I’ll go over to his shop soon and see if he can get it repaired. Then I’ll probably flip my current 3600 on eBay and upgrade to this beast just for fun. I’m still also considering flipping the 5950x, but the very idea of having a vastly overpowered high-end CPU with no real purpose is very appealing…

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Update 10/06/2021

Well after a lovely chat with this stranger he’s informed me the broken pins are VSS (aka GND ) and VDD, one of the many power plane pins. Honestly, I probably should’ve looked this up WAAY eariler, the thought even passed through my head, and yet I forgot. So after looking up an AM4 pinout diagram, I can confirm this is the case:
https://en.wikichip.org/w/images/f/f8/OPGA-1331_pinmap.svg

So yeah, I’ll probably still meet with him, but hopefully all that needs doing is an unbending of the pins, which should be fine. Whilst I would certainly give unbending pins a shot, i’ll do that later on the sempron, not the 5950x. This thing is too precious

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Update 11/06/2021

Managed to bend back most of the pins, although another loose VSS pin came off and there’s also a bit of a mangled mess of bent pins near the centre. Gonna be too hard to bend those back with my relatively giant tweezers and nails.

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Update 21/06/21

Well I met that guy today, and he was awesome. Had a whole pile of dead CPUs he’d attempted repair on, and it only took him 20 mins using a digital microscope and a razor blade to unbend all the CPU pins.

We had a nice chat and now this CPU works!
It’s amazing, considering it has three broken pins (two GND, one VDD - power).
managed to get it up and running in my system with an FCLK of 2000MHz and a RAM overclock to DDR4 4000 CL 18-22-22-22-42.
So yeah, this is amazing. Though I still have absolutely no use for it

[FaunCB]

Hey you wanna help me put usb c in pentium m laptops

[amarvir02]

How so? By soldering them on the motherboard?

Is this a case of you needing to use usb-c devices on your pentium m laptop? Man I don’t know how you have that thing still running after all these years​:joy:.

[FaunCB]

Upgrading My Shitty Laptop

So recently I bought one of these. [image] Not my image. This is a Dell Inspiron B130. Its based on a Pentium M, and has many different things you can upgrade. This is from the short burst period where dell randomly made their laptops more… how do I put it, server like? In general mechanical design at least. So many things about this laptop…

Basically I’m updating laptops that are, last I knew, secure to spectre and meltdown. I recently bought my childhood laptop++and got the random idea to get a 1200G based SBC and stuff it in the CD drive slot, telnet and ethernet ports on the laptop go to the sbc to control it and to connect to a desktop of sorts, or to straight up just do vnc to windows 10 and do steam in home streaming. Some magic.

Basically I want to make something stupidly secure out of trash tha tI could then sell because I have nothing to do IRL. I need to do some dumb shit tho and you seem like you like a challenge.

[Necronomicon]

@amarvir02

As a bit of a primer, I’ll leave you off with just something I did today. Managed to solder this microcontroller fairly easily in like 5 mins.

I see, your soldering skills are getting there.
Just a quick tip: Use slightly less solder. You don’t want to encase the pins in big blobs, just add enough to ensure a good bond.

[FaunCB]

Tin the wires firs then toich them together and heat.

[HaaStyleCat]

When I have to replace the chip I burned on my m40 because I’m dumb ill be here for support lol

[amarvir02]

@Upgrading My Shitty Laptop

Dell Inspiron B130

If you actually want a USB-C port on that laptop (I still don’t fully know why) but you’re options would be fairly limited:

• Add in a USB-A to USB-C adapter off the side
• Remove the type A port internally, and solder on a type-c receptacle
• I don’t currently know of any third options. Would have to get back to you on that

[amarvir02]

Tesla m40?!

[HaaStyleCat]

Gaming, on my Tesla, more likely than you think

Heres the damage… [Inked20210604_082334_LI] Under this cap… is this… [Inked20210604_082421_LI] I must have missed that post… worked fine on my grid…might be because of the age of my Dell Server is only supposed to be used with certain cards.

Here it is… I have the chip coming (I think its the right one)…I’m going to try and repair it… see what happens, cant be worse than it is… I didnt use the adapter that changed the pin layout… it went in tight…but I have gorilla grip so…yeah I messed up.

[FaunCB]

@amarvir02

Add in a USB-A to USB-C adapter off the side

To this end I was thinking about an expresscard adapter, of which none exist.

@amarvir02

Remove the type A port internally, and solder on a type-c receptacle

Similar to what I was thinking, if not willing to do

@amarvir02

I don’t currently know of any third options. Would have to get back to you on that

I was thinking add one with an SBC and connect modern features that way, including x64. Using ryzen you keep the specter / meltdownless approach.

[amarvir02]

Can confirm, windows 11 is kinda shite in comparison to win10. The UI feels far more spaced out and clunky compared to what i’m used to.

[FaunCB]

Do me a favor, install elementaryOS

[amarvir02]

yeh lol. To be fair I have Kubuntu installed on my USB stick for running a Minecraft server. It looks great! My only real issue with Linux is the different distros and app support on them, which becomes inconsistent and flaky.

Linux is really sorta intended for enterprise and data center markets tho, and while there’s plenty of great consumer facing versions of Linux, it’ll prob take something like ChromeOS for Linux to become more pervasive.

[Necronomicon]

@amarvir02

Can confirm, windows 11 is kinda shite in comparison to win10.

Windows keeps getting worse. After Win7 I went straight to Linux.
At this point, I feel like Microsoft just wants to know how far they can go before consumers start running away from them.

[Argone]

Besides spyware, i like windows 10 over 7. I guess I am a sheeple.

[FaunCB]

Ok I know exactly what you mean and from a windows/mac/android/ios perspective, yeah sure thats great. But when you look at, say, void linux and its pretty great xbps package manager with its ability to build from source, or just download right from a build server, or look at ubuntu/elementary/any debian desktop, any linux anywhere, you realize it doesn’t rly matter anymore.

You can build from source, or install from basically the debian repos on basically any os nowadays. Its just not rly a problem if you know how, or know how to ask the right question ;3

[amarvir02]

MY 5950X LIVES!!!
Re: 5950X post.

Now it does crash from time to time… but that’s probably due to the 2000MHz FCLK overclock and DDR4-4000 RAM OC.
That said the only important broken pin is the VDD 18_S5 pin. It’s a power pin, but there’s plenty more of those on the chip, so here’s hoping running default settings doesn’t cause too much instability so I can get to using a chip I have literally ZERO need for

[amarvir02]

Hey, I made a terraria world, check it out!

Terraria_World2.zip (4.8 MB)

To play in it, place it in the following folder: C:\Users\[insert_name_here]\Documents\My Games\Terraria\Worlds