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I discussed with an Apple support representative last Friday how my laptop was not fully backed up when I sent it off for repair. When a computer goes from 100% working to 100% not working with no intervening stages, it's hard to pick the right moment to do a backup...
From her tone, I gathered that the merest hint of hard disk problems would have the technician hoik out my hard disk and dump it -before- finding out whether some other component might be at fault. So it looked almost certain my laptop would come back blank.
So I had a long weekend to contemplate just how many files were not backed up on my laptop. It's quite a grim thought. I have most of my email and digital photos backed up, but there are a few weeks not saved.
My weblog lives on my server, so it's fine. However the little rsync script which nicely publishes it for me lives only on my laptop. Doh!
Living without my laptop for a while, I realised my email filters in "Mail" are also completely un-backed-up. Doh!
Browser bookmarks - Doh!
Palm Desktop - Doh!
Lots of brief moments of horror like this. Oh what fun.
So it's with great relief I can report my laptop came back fully repaired,
and yet with all my files. Flextronics of Memphis, Tennessee, you rock!
Applecare? JUST DO IT, it's worth it.
posted at: 23:09 | path: /rescue | permanent link to this entry
My DSL went down on the day I was travelling to the UK. It had gone down before a few days previously and come back up, so I ignored it. On arrival in the UK, my laptop failed to boot, so I couldn't get online at the hotel in London. Finally I arrived at my parents house to find their DSL was down too.
After several days of frustration I fixed their problem. Sky TV had come in and fitted a new cable box with no filter on the phone line. What a bunch of amateurs!
Getting on-line I found my server still down, so I asked Speakeasy to try and reset the circuit. Their vendor Covad were a little unwilling to help until I'd reset my modem (impossible) but I persuaded them to try it. No joy.
To cut a long story short, my line stayed down until yesterday evening when Verizon replaced a cable from our back wall to the phone pole at the bottom of the yard. There was no useful email waiting for me, as the backup mail exchanger gave up after 4 days or so. So I lost a bunch of email, probably got booted off a bunch of lists and my laptop is due to go off to Apple in a box. Waah!
Lessons learned?
Powerbook - return of the life
My Powerbook came back from Apple safe and sound. Hallelujah!
No logic board swap, no new hard disk, just a new superdrive.
I wasn't expecting it this quick (less than one week) and it came superbly packaged - like "I'm going to keep this box" superb. So on the whole I am once again happy with Apple and my investment in AppleCare is definitely showing a big return (I simply knew something had to give eventually given how much work this laptop does).
Any complaints? Well, the CD that jammed wasn't returned. I'm going to assume it was more work to get it out of the knackered drive, so I'll let them off. I also asked for them to look at the latch which is reluctant to trigger, which they don't seem to have done, but I can see that this laptop is basically in good shape for its age and allow it some signs of again.
During the worrying time when I thought the laptop might get damaged and I might lose files I got a bit more serious about backups again. My research led me to favor Dantz Retrospect software plus a stack of Firewire hard drives for backups and standbys. For more details on the reasoning behind this, please see Take Control of Mac OS X Backups - a rather good "EBook" I bought (and no, I wont forward you the PDF, buy your own!).
I need to take a deep breath before committing that much cash (make sure I don't have any other big bills lurking). In the meanwhile, here's the semi-random things I backed up off my laptop :-
And here are the things I didn't backup, that I realised I'd miss after I handed over the laptop and walked off :-
So here's to backups, but also, here's to a hard disk that didn't
fail. "TOSHIBA MK6021GAS" you made my day.
posted at: 22:27 | path: /rescue | permanent link to this entry
I made an early start this morning and got to the Apple Store SoHo by 9am. They don't open until 10am. So I'm not the genius in this story, it's safe to say.
Trying again, I made an appointment for 4.45, and just before that time grabbed a taxi, making it to the store just after 5pm. I figured they might be running a bit behind, and I can hang around a bit if they've given my slot away, since I am a little late, should work out nicely, right?
Arriving in the store for the first time wanting to get something out of the genius bar, I found I didn't know how it works.
There might be a sign saying "wait here and someone will see you". But no.
There might be a ticket dispenser saying "take a number". But no.
I had to interrupt a "genius" to ask "how does this work". I consider this already a sign of bad design.
The friendly and overworked person told me there are two sweepers who handle incoming requests ... but she couldn't actually see any. That would explain why there's a small knot of anxious people building up. There are signs overhead showing who's next, but they aren't changing.
They sweepers turned up in a few minutes, and I eventually got to talk to one. Firstly I mentioned I had an appointment and was just a little late. He scribbled something and said "oh, you're fine". This didn't really explain enough to me. I asked him "so do I just ... hang around then". He told me yes, just hang around.
It's only by overhearing do I find out the signs listing who's next are apparently just for show, because when someone asks why they show the same names, they are told "That's not how it works here".
Similarly, I overhear something about a two hour wait - nah, can't be!
After waiting for half an hour or so fairly patiently (I thought) I got a bit tired of standing around, so I sat down at a free stool at the genius bar got out my laptop and hopped on the free Wifi and checked my email. Yes, I was trying to be a little in-your-face, this is New York after all.
This got the attention of "my" sweeper. It turns out the sweepers spend a lot of time doing frontline customer service themselves - simple user error in ipods or laptops they can handle. The guy tried rebooting my laptop whilst holding down the mouse button. Ok, that's nice of him, but I was trying to explain that I already had a case number from AppleCare phone support, and I had already exhausted every known troubleshooting trick for this issue. So he rebooted my laptop for nothing, but no harm done.
I stayed at the bar whilst a number of people seemingly walked up with iPod problems and got immediate attention. The guy right next to me seemed very taken with the woman behind the desk who was trying to make his Dell laptop work right with his iPod. He was chatting about how he arranges his music and stuff. All very nice, but he was into Apple for a maximum of $300.
One of the geniuses caught my eye - a little older than some of his colleagues, and he seemed like he was very knowledgeable and I thought I'd seen him checking out someone's iBook. He looks like the guy for me I thought.
So a girl comes up, bypasses the sweepers and asks him (my guy - let's call him Ted) something. Ted goes to a sweeper and says he's going to just take care of something very quickly. It's an iPod pickup. He does take care of it quite quickly, but that's still at least 10 minutes stolen from all the patient laptop clutching people already waiting.
At this point, I'm starting to lose patience. I'm getting stressed, that acidy stomach feeling is growing. After all, I asked Apple for a time, made a pretty good effort to be there. Surely if they're this late every day (and it appears they are) they should change how they do the "reservations"?
I go to my sweeper and try to point out that some of the staff are taking walk-ups. I understand it's only for quick things, but I point out that since my machine is already diagnosed and 99% certain to be sent off, couldn't someone have a quick go - it's "just a drop-off". He says no, there are different technicians for different tasks. An iPod technician can't take a laptop job, and "we don't do drop-offs".
So eventually my turn comes, about an hour after I arrived (more than an hour after my "appointment"). As luck would have it, I end up with "Ted". Yes, he can't fix it, and yes it does have to be sent to Apple. And yes Ted really is technically excellent - asking me about my backups, checking my contact info, deauthorizing my itunes files in case I receive a logic board swap etc etc. Apple has talented support staff who really care about their job and confirm everything I had hoped for in paying for extended support. But it still leaves me irritated ... this guy, who CAN take laptop questions, also apparently just fills in with "quickies" - because the sweeper disappeared and nobody else know's who's next, because it depends on his secret paper-based system. Fucking Hell!
It's utterly frustrating, but also unnecessary. The sweepers and technicians are overloaded with support questions for iPods and really try very hard to cope. However, in trying to accomodate someone who just needs their ipod reset, they unknowingly undermine the system. Meanwhile a stream of people needing help with their actual expensive Apple computers are told "come back tomorrow" or "wait time is two hours right now" even if they made an appointment before-hand.
Here is my suggestion, for what it's worth. The deli counter at my local supermarket does customer service better than this, so just use their system for now (a really amibitious upgrade would be based on state-of-the-art retailers like B&H Photo Video).
Firstly, throw away the web interface - since you're not using it, it
is just an extra insult to your customers. Just put a ticket system at
the front door, with a sign. "People needing technical help please
take a number". Have the staff providing technical help always serve
the next number. If the person who took the number doesn't respond,
move to the next number. Either have separate ipod and laptop people,
or don't, but please don't let the staff make it up as they go
along. And finally, drop that name, please?
posted at: 22:26 | path: /rescue | permanent link to this entry
When I decided to have a "rescue" channel for my blog, it was so that I could talk about the crazy broken hardware I find (or buy off Ebay) and try to fix.
My last entry was about a completely smashed iMac for instance.
However, I'm sorry to report my Powerbook has gotten rather stuck - it will not eject a cd I inserted to rip to mp3. It's not as if "Ceremony" by "The Cult" was really worth it, considering...
When I try the various methods of getting the machine to eject the cd, it makes all the noises it normally makes when ejecting. The only problem is the cd doesn't make it out. Then it makes all the normal cd insertion noises, and the cd appears back on the desktop, and typically iTunes automatically runs again. Great...
Next step, Apple's support website. I tried resetting various things - pram, power controller etc.
Final step, Googling for other peoples suggestions, but there's nothing remotely useful so far.
So I checked my AppleCare - 400 days left of coverage - phew! I rang through this morning, and after a few more troubleshooting attempts, I got a case number that I can use at the "Genius Bar" at the Apple Store in SoHo. The lady who took my call commented that they would probably send it off for service, and that they would probably just replace the entire drive. Assuming she was right, this does validate the cost of AppleCare - because althought it may be $350 for a Powerbook (ouch!), I believe Superdrive was a $300 option at that time!
For a machine I use literally every day, that goes almost everywhere I go,
and that has already burned dozens, maybe hundreds of DVDs (e.g. MooB Live at the
Lime Spider), AppleCare was a great investment for me.
posted at: 20:33 | path: /rescue | permanent link to this entry
Mac Beyond Repair, but all not lost
My friend Leon from work (home page) came over for some of my chili con carne, a glass of wine and some hardware hacking.
The iMac seems unrepairable. The monitor does not light up, the internal VGA connector puts out no signal, the cd-rom drive does not seem to get any power. So we can't get it to actually DO anything.
Leon got the case off, the motherboard out etc, and after reseatin everything still no joy. We know the motherboard gets power, because it has a green LED on it which lights up. We also tested the hard drive in a PC and it does spin up and has some HFS partitions on it. We even found a readme.txt which explains "why can't I see my files" which apparently is something to do with HFS Extended format.
So why is "all not lost"?
Well, the hard disk turns out to be a 100GB+ unit - I can find a use for that!
Secondly the metal shielding inside the case between the plastic underside and the motherboard looks like a rather good Cylon helmet for Halloween. Yes, pictures are required, and they will be provided.
The evening was also livened up by me trying to show Leon
some of the good bits of Lord of the Rings. I chose the
Prologue, the bridge of Khazad-Dum and the assault on Minas
Tirith, including the Mumakil, Legolas' single-handed Mumakil
takedown, the fight between Eowyn and the Witch-King, and of
course Grond! I think it got his attention...
posted at: 23:08 | path: /rescue | permanent link to this entry
I found an iMac on the street today. It's a 450mhz slot-loading dual firewire model in red. If it can be made to work, it's just what I've been looking for as an mp3 server. If I hook up my external firewire drive and get myself a Squeezebox I can banish most of my CDs to boxes and binders and use mp3s over my WiFi network. That's the goal.
When I first spotted this machine, it was sitting proudly on a big pile of trashbags. A doorman at a nearby building volunteered that it works but it just "needs a new case". That's a tall order for an iMac. He does have a point though, as the case is practically trashed (photos later), and the screen has obvious burn-in. My first investment in this project was a cab ride home. The driver gave me advice on fixing the case - apparently epoxy is best because it's strong and transparent.
Unfortunately after finally getting a power cable in, and hooking it up to a USB keyboard and mouse, the power button does nothing, zippo, nada.
I vaguely remembered the access hatch underneath, so I whipped it open and lo and behold, no RAM. So whoever broke the case knew enough to reclaim the ram. Luckily I had a 128MB stick of PC100 SDRAM which fit nicely. I tried it in both slots, but unfortunately, this is not the only problem. Power is still not flowing.
Another broken computer project - just what I needed, my
wife is thrilled.
posted at: 21:55 | path: /rescue | permanent link to this entry