Replace hp officejet 8600 printer power supply - step by step

We have an officejet 8600 plus all in one printer and it's been a good unit. One day, a power surge came through and that was it. The printer was dead. We have 4 kids doing primary school, all needing things printed, copied etc. this was a family crisis, and demanded action!

I went through the power diagnostic advice from hp - I think a video on YouTube? I got to the point where my power supply is not replaceable and I should go see a service agent. My previous Samsung printer cost 250 to repair! So not going there again. So I had to find the power unit and replace it.

I then tried to find the name and number of the power supply component and tried finding a supplier. On aliexpress I found the right unit - a CM751-60045

So, here's the step by step on replacing it:

You'll need a T9 screwdriver.

Place the unit on its side with the power supply at the top

 

There are 2 screws that hold the cover on

Sorry that's oriented 90 degrees different to the first picture. I worked out the right way afterwards!

Unscrew those 2 screws and now we want to take that side cover off. Look at the underneath of the printer and you'll see a little tab:

Slide a little flathead screwdriver underneath and you'll then be able to allow the lateral movement you need to move the cover sideways.

Don't use brute force! Back on the pane with the screwdrivers, insert another flathead screwdriver and use that as the lever. Lever a little and the panel pops forward.

 

Now twist it up as there are two "hooks" on the underside of the panel at the top that you should swivel the panel up to disengage:

 

 

 

That shot shows the underside of the panel. Here's where I salute the engineers on this project. Look at the power supply: 2 screws to release, and one small plug, all easily accessible. Samsung - take note!

Screw number 1

 

And screw number 2

Unplug the cable, pull out the old unit and put in the new. Reassemble.

 

Hope that helped!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Samsung clx 3170 : Clearing paper wrapped around the fuser

About 6 months ago, we used 70 gsm paper in the printer and it got wrapped around the fuser. I researched a fix but it looked too hard and ended up taking the printer to a repairer who replaced the whole assembly.

last week it happened again. Right before Christmas. Crazy time. I had holidays coming up so it's a great time to tackle it rather than pay for it.

I found two li ks that contained the good oil:

see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIKdbgsbRlw

 

and

 

http://www.fixya.com/support/t6880316-need_replace_samsung_clx_3175fn


 

They were all good and correct and I'd like to add to them.

1. When pulling off the cover, the front side of the right hand cover is the hardest side to do. Persevere. Ensure you put it over the end of the table like its recommended in the vid on you tube.
2. I also found while putting it back that disconnecting the hinge on the toner door made it easier to get bar on. However, if you do that ensure once you have the front side on that you re engage the hinge. If the cover is fully on it s harder to reattach. Not impossible, just hard.

But back to the paper around the fuser

After you have the cover off, the fixya site says remove the two plugs holding the fuser. Which plugs? This was after I'd taken it out, but the plug goes here. Bottom right of the mother board. Undo it through all the wire guides up the sides of the motherboard.

 

The other plug is here:

Again I'd removed it. The two wires on my machine were white and to up through a hole through to the fuser unit. If you try removing the fuser unit without unplugging it will feel tethered. These two plugs are the reason. Here's the hole that they go through:

Enough on the plugs.

Once you have undone the 4 screws, and pushed he spring loaded lever on the back to get the fuser unit out, how can you access that drum to unwrap stuff. Te drum unit is hinged and screwed down to create pressure betweeen the hot rollers. You see my paper problem below

there are two screws to undo. Set the unit on a flat surface to do this

And

THe unit then opens out to this.

 

The amount of paper on mine was truly staggering. Note to self - picking at the wrapped paper with pliers does nothing and putting more paper through only creates more of a problem. I got a system overheat error and smoke appeared. I was relieved to get to this spot in the repair and that I found the browned, smelly paper characteristic of the problem.

When you are spinning the drum to unrol make sure you don't unseat the hubs at the ends of the drums. They can't really come out due to the temperature sensors ( I presume the two white wires are the sensors. ) but you can unseat them and rotate them so they don't go back in.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Setting up Battlefield 3 for XBOX 360

It's amazing what a month or so will do. How much an obsession can start creeping up on you. How many late nights and hours creep in. how it doesn't matter that your eyes are sore. It doesn't matter that you've now purchased cables to obsessively connect a headset, that you've scoured the internet to understand how VOIP works in BF3 for Xbox. You get on the game, and you're hooked.




right - all settled in? All ready to go? Let's get started. I want to let you know the secrets I've learned so far on getting going with BF3 on XBOX.

There are a number of things you need to acheive:

1. Get the guide
2. Connect up the headset
3. Ensure you have an Xbox Live Gold Subscription
4. Understand the controls on your xbox controller
5. Campaign for a bit, but then go multiplayer
6. understand the classes
7. understand unlocks.
8. work with a squad
9. use cover.

And finally, I want you to join me and do better tactics so we kick butt.

Get the Guide

The manual from ea, such as it is, is a bit limited. The minimum facts. There are sites that offer great info. But, I game in front of a TV, without a computer nearby, so it is that I have purchased the excellent official guide:

The Prima guide is very comprehensive. It explains the structure of the game, and the detail of how you work the game for success. That is, it talks through multiplayer co-op and campaign modes, and it talks about the amazing amount of weapons, maps and vehicles that make up the amazing BF3 world.

It turns out that knowing the maps is vital, and if you want to understand the game, understanding the classes, the 'unlocks' and tactics are all vital to achieving anything in the game. Otherwise you run around and die and nothing much changes.

The number 1 thing you get from the guide is an understanding of how the game fits together. without that, you're running blind, and you'll die too many horrible deaths. Read it!

Get a Headset

Voice is vital to a good game in my opinion. You can't adequately work with others unless you talk with them. For proof - watch this great video from tactical gamer

I have purchased a headset - the plantronics Audio 355. This is a cheap analogue headset. But there's a problem! the 3.5" jacks don't match the 2.5" jack on the xbox 360 controller. So you need to purchase a bunch of cabling to fix the problem of headset to xbox 360 controller

Purchase a Live Gold Subscription so you can talk

Unfortunatley - you have to have it. party chat is how people talk on BF3 with an XBox. So, set it up and then understand how to invite people (gamer tags) to a party.


Understand the controls on your xbox controller

Very important you know how to run. Press LEFT Stick down and you run. Run between cover and through cover. RIGHT stick down to crouch and cautiously advance. Advance cautiously into rooms, and if you think there's someone there, lob a grenade in. If you're out of grenades, then have a support class guy around to give you ammo. VERY important that you go prone with Right stick down when you're in the open or on a roof.

right button uses a knife. these go through fences , and if you can creep up on an enemy (good luck) you can stab them in the back of the neck. it's been done to me heaps of times, but I don't get close enough to someone to do it.

the little four point control on the left side of the controller is REALLY important. left click and right click are for your 'gadgets' These can be provisioned in your soldier, but can be the defib for revival, or the missile launcher/RPG for the support guy. The recon guy gets a spawn beacon.

Campaign a bit, then go multiplayer

The story is great, and the movies between missions are very immersive. It's valuable to get your basic controls going for multiplayer, and it's fun to see the story play out. The car park killed me so many times it's not funny. Enjoy.

But the real meat is multiplayer. working in a team to overcome some objective. Move multiplayer when you can.

Understand the classes

when you deploy into a multiplayer game you have a choice of what class you can be. You can be assault - shoot with a good sized magazine, and then fix people with the med kit. You can be an engineer - you use anti-tank missiles in your gadget (see above), and you can repair things. You can be a support player (my favourite). You get a light machine gun and then you throw out ammo to people. finally you can be a recon player - a sniper rifle to spot enemies of your team, and a spawn beacon to provide a spot that people can spawn to.

So which of these to use? Why?

The needs of the mission, and where you are with unlocks. If there is a big tank knocking off all your team, then choose engineer and blow it up. If there are enemies coming out of the wood work and surprising everyone, go do a recon. if we're in the right space, but getting mown down, jump in as support and help mow them back. Finally if it's all about pushing through, then go assault and get out there and kill em all.

Unlocks

The secondary part of this is that you need to see where you are with unlock on each class. As you amass points in a particular class you progress towards unlocking the next gadget or weapon, or capability. These are all things that make your soldier more deadly. It's funny - they put you out there with a gun and your head to start with. You then grow up into having all the equipment a modern soldier has and discover you're more effective! surprise surprise. So - go for the unlocks - they help!

The unlock hierarchy is documented all over the place, and its far too complex. the guide says it all.

Work with a squad
when you jump in to a game you are put into a squad. this is a bunch of other players on your side. there are usually 4 or 5 squads. as a squad you move through the game taking on different roles to help each other. and heres where voice comes in. invite your squad to an xbox live party. (see above). put a voice message over as well to say your serious and you want to get tactical.

then work with them. discuss and plan your assault recon support and engineer actions. stick with your squad and cover for them. suppress the enemy with fire. heal each other and ammo up. you'll do way better


Use cover

finally, the open ground is a killing field. run off it and get away. run through underbrush. anything that makes you less visible.

thats about it. join me if you liked this. gamer tag: ideapod , and tell me you read my blog entry so i know how you found me.

all the best and good war fighting

First Games on the XBox

It turned up on the kitchen table for my birthday. still in the plastic bag from EB Games and with a ribbon on it. Lisa is resisting, and shook her head, not understanding why I would want this toy! Fair enough. She likes a smaller form factor (WordsWithFriends).

thursday night - birthday night - and the kids are to bed, the sandwiches made, the dinner done and dishes away. the night is clear for a go at my new games.

the microsoft XBox bundle from EB Games came with the kinect and 2 games: Kinect Adventures & kinect Carnvial. EB Games bundle augmented with Battlefield 3 and Forza. Nice! A good collection of things to tempt me, and wile away the hours.

Setup 

Firstly the set up from the box was reasonably easy. It took an hour or so all up. the link up to the XBox 360 's' console was straight forward except the controllers. The documentation talks about a connect button, and I found that hard to find. I kept hitting the on/off button, and it didn't link up the wireless controllers. eventually there was an unmarked square button that looked like it was next to a covered over port for one of the old PS memory cards. I thought it must be an eject button for what compartment. I pushed it anyway, and the doco's rotating lights happened. Very strange. It's like they feel the audience is so familiar with xbox now they don't need to label or indicate what the buttons are. Maybe it was the low light. (maybe i'm a 43 year old fuddy duddy...)

So, controllers connected, machine on. I try to sign up with a live id i have to xbox live, and i get the strangest message: this live id is already associated with a different gamer tag. What the hell is a gamer tag? and How do I find out who has my live id? Memory resurfaces.... slowly... of a time 5 years ago when the department at work was give an Xbox 360 as a reward and I had it home for 2 nights to play with (lara croft and.... ? lara croft?....) it all comes back. I must have set up my 'gamer tag' then. so, away we go and I 'recover' my gamer tag profile to this xbox 360. I immediately think about restoring a heap of corrupted init files (or plists) and screwing the xbox. but - it all seems to go ok.

I then sat through all the demo videos telling me how to use the machine. the Kinect something, and the Xbox main menu (something else). I end up feeling I saw a lot, but didn't see anything I wanted. How do you get a game disc into the machine? there's no eject button? Ah - there's something on a menu that opens it. Good o - and in goes the battlefield cd. it closes and the game starts. strange though - how do I quit the game? pause it? the xbox menu allows you but it's a bit obscure - you need to go back to the main menu and that ends your gaming session. strange usability to quit a game. How do I reopen the CD ? the menu option is now saying 'play the game'. strange usability. It turns out there is a little touch sensitive spot above the CD door that allows eject. right....

Battlefield 3

The battlefields main screen appears, with text mimicking an old CRT screen - you know, low res graphics and, bursty, poppy sound like it's interrupted transmissions. Great effect - on a big 97 inch panel screen. On my oldish, smallish CRT screen, it' just looks small, and it's a bit hiccupy.

in general - the fonts are too small, and almost impossible to read. Generally this is disappointing throughout the game. for each crucial section something pops up and I can't read the damn thing!

It's hard to find the controls and there are so many different configurations. There's no user manual, so you have to just keep going back and forth to the the options section to find the controls, but they have some strange relationship to different modes of the game I don't understand. What's a soldier stick? No explanation - just assumption you know.

There's a them here, and I think it's to support the post purchase 'game guide' stuff, or just general forum behaviour. You need to be engaged away from the xbox and buy more stuff just to understand how to use it. weird.

Battleifeld is impressive. I'm getting the hang of it. push the left stick down to run. push the right stick down to crouch. press and hold it down to crawl (important so the sniper doesn't take you out). the graphics, the game it's all good. I don't get it at all yet, but I"m getting there. more later.

Kinect Adventures

Kinect Adventures is simple, but the setup of a kinect in a confined space is not. it needs the calibration card, and I can't get far enough away from the screen. You really do need a 6 feet away of playspace.

given the setup problems, the kinect rally ball game is frustrating - it doesn't quite find me properly, and I can't seem to keep up and get my limbs in the right spots. I manage to get 95 and a silver medal. Happy with that. But other things beckon.

Forza

Playing a car game with your hands in the air? too much, but now possible. and I went ok. The controller based game looks better. I couldn't get the kinect control on the walk through the car gallery. it kept spinning uncontrollably around the car, and wouldn't stop to let me get in.

once in there, the engine of a ferarri through the mountains is wonderful. The controls responsive, visuals great and it's a nice car game. might also borrow F1 2011 just to check....

Xbox360 vs PS3

Dateline 1983
The smell of warm plastic, and high current power supply fills the air. Beige permeates the room as the TV with a rotary channel changer is turned to channel 0. After much fiddling, the pride of my life is connected. Will it work? What will I be able to do with this magic thing? And what games can I program for it?

With a push of a button the Dick Smith VZ200 - a Z80 based machine like the Sinclair ZX80 fires into life. It's not the ZX80, but something close. To cut a long story short, I can remember the pixelated space ship firing at incoming aliens like it was yesterday. Seminal.

So, fast forward a few years and I'm playing games on PC's. Doom was a revolution. First person shooters became the must play items, and were wild! Fast forward some more and I purchase a playstation. (pre PSOne). That console served me well for many years but has now started gathering dust.

it's been a gap - 7-10 years while our kids have come along, but I need a bit of highly graphical, adrenaline filled game play. What console to purchase?

My sentiment goes to the PS3. It's the grand child of my playstation, so I want to buy it. But I also want to learn about that newest of motion devices on the scene following Wii, and PS Move - the Kinect!

The Kinect is revolutionary and takes out the controller. But what really grabs me is that there is now an SDK following an open source hacking community using the Kinect. It's a robot maker's dream, and for me, a data visualisation maker's dream. I want to experiment with it for work. So, I'm in a pickle - Go with Xbox (and betray the past) or go with what's attracting me back there even if it's not in keeping..?

further, I have 3 kids - 2,5, and 7. What will work for them? they've played a kinect at the State library here in Victoria, and just loved it. The PS platform doesn't quite seem to have as many kiddy titles as, say, the Wii. But then the Xbox is only marginally better? should it be a Wii?

I have ended up doing a spreadsheet of a PS3 and Xbox with their motion controllers and a selection of games I want. I want 2 players, and networking. PS3 comes in at $AUD800 or so, and the XBox $AUD600 or so.

That stacks it. The PS3 is done. Bye bye superior graphics, blu ray, and hello slightly less impressive graphics (but still way better than all my previous experiences), and an amazing Kinect.

What's your take? which did you pick and why?

Freeing up space on my mac

My mac fills up. And fills up. and fills up. I'm totally out of space. I have a 500GB time machine. maxed out. I have a 1TB external USB on the time machine. 71 GB free. (and it's not porn, nor illegal crap, so move on - nothing to see here)


anyways. when I'm searching for space ( as I was today - Toast titanium was writing a video to disk and ran out of encoding space). I have trouble 'getting to the heart of it' and 'finding easy wins'. I needed a utility. 


I had this problem so often that a little while ago I investigated utilities to help solve the 'find the missing disk space' problem. I can report that I have settled on OmniDiskSweeper. 


It's not that pretty. In fact it's ugly. But you know what? I used to use XTRee and file commander and all those thingos back in the good old dos days and with this problem (finding disk space) a text list is good enough. The way omni have used the column layout (ala finder) also works for me (or should I say ala nextstep but thats another story. BTW if you have a black cube next box for sale email me. NOW.). I digress. 


You start the app up and it scans the top level directories to find those with the most disk space used. It then resorts. and keeps finding and resorts etc. you select a directory (/Users is good) and you see the disk space (highest space first). You click on the highest and it calculates and sorts etc. pretty soon you see where the disk space is. You get there pretty quickly. and then you do other things.  so, I like it - it's a quick way of getting there.


Now that we're there what to do? one of the big culprits was ITunes and podcasts. several gig.   Not good. how to archive podcasts? and does itunes keep track of it? I'm paranoid so I have copied the podcasts out of itunes to a backup location and put them onto the 1TB disk. THEN i have removed them from itunes so itunes keeps itself in shape. If there's a better way let me know. 

ACL problem on Preferences causes Dashboard widget problem

Just spent 3 hours working out what a problem was with my MacBook. Often I find problems 'stack' on top of each other. To fix A, I need to fix B, but to fix B I need to fix C. you can imagine the stack grows high! So I started with excessive fan on my MacBook and (so far) I'm at an ACL issue with Preferences causing none of my apps being able to write preferences - including the ubiquitous command 'defaults' that is used in so much of the posts on Dashboard. 


The fan noise problem I traced using Activity Monitor. Start it up (command space to get to spotlight) by typing Activity Monitor into spotlight. then order by Process and choose My Processes. The one at the top is the one sucking most CPU. as seen in other posts, my safari was big and so was my sync server. 


To fix safari I went to the safari menu and chose empty cache. This certainly sped it up. Safari had been slow. Clearing the cache fixed this, and it went faster. it's CPU usage went down.


Then to sync server. This post on resetting sync contained some truths about resetting the thing. It seemed to get the CPU usage down once I had done the reset of all the sync databases. but there sstill seemed to be occasional spikes that seemed excessive. It turned out whenever i started iCal it went nuts and hung up almost syncing ONE of my calendars. I found in a number of posts the idea that you should export your calendars and then delete them so that any corruptions could be fixed. I wasted a couple of comical hours with me deleting them, and then they reappearing. I had forgotten that sync was of course retrieving them from mobileme and writing them back to my machine. But at least they weren't corrupted now. Anyway that seems to have sorted sync server.


I have a dashboard widget called iStatPro that I LOVE. It shows CPU, fan speed and CPU heat, and does history. This was a good debugging aid during the whole process. I moved it around and tried to delete some of the other widgets I have on my dashboard. But each time I logged back in the deleted widgets were there again. 


I found posts talking about resetting dashboard. I did the killall Dock and tried to do defaults write com.apple.dashboard. BUT I got an error about permission denied. 



machine:Library userx$ defaults write com.apple.dashboard devmode NO
2010-01-02 14:19:56.476 defaults[972:10b] Could not write domain com.apple.dashboard; exiting

I couldn't work out why. I thought maybe the file has permissions that prevent it. So I deleted the file and hoped that osx would rewrite the file. It started up but didn't rewrite the file. Strange. I then did some command line stuff to work on it more:


ls -ld ~/Library/Preferences 



machine-3:Library userx$ ls -ld ~/Library/Preferences
drwx------+ 332 userx  staff  11288 31 Dec 20:17 /Users/userx/Library/Preferences

showed that there was a + right at the end of the permissions block in the line. This means there is 'other security information' (see man ls). But what is it? This is very hard to find (or I spent too much time on it). I found that the + is either extended attributes or an access control list.  from the man ls:



If the file or directory has extended
     attributes, the permissions field printed by the -l option is followed by
     a '@' character.  Otherwise, if the file or directory has extended secu-
     rity information, the permissions field printed by the -l option is fol-
     lowed by a '+' character.

So, to find out how to see these/ manipulate these, lots of googling, man's etc and you can do: 
the manual entry for man ls shows that you can do ls -@. No - only if you do ls -@l can you see the extended attributes. ALSO if you want to see the directory entry you have to append d:



machine-3:~ userx$ ls -@ld Dropbox
drwxr-xr-x@ 8 userx  staff  272 29 Dec 21:05 Dropbox
com.apple.FinderInfo 32 

That's great but doesn't help. So then you can use ls to get the ACL:

machine-3:Library userx$ ls -led ~/Library/Preferences

drwx------+ 332 userx  staff  11288 31 Dec 20:17 /Users/userx/Library/Preferences

 0: group:everyone deny add_file,delete,add_subdirectory,delete_child,writeattr,writeextattr,chown

ok THAT does not look right. What this is saying is that NOBODY should be able to add files in there NOR should they be able to delete, add sub dirs etc. So, I looked at another users's directory to see what their ACL said: 

machine-3:~ usery$ ls -eld ~/Library/Preferences

drwx------+ 37 usery  staff  1258 Jan  2 14:41 /Users/usery/Library/Preferences

 0: group:everyone deny delete

Soo - that's intriguing. how mine go so far wrong I have no idea. the command line to fix it was typical un*x obscurity:

machine-3:Library userx$ chmod -a# 0 ~/Library/Preferences

machine-3:Library userx$ chmod +a "everyone deny delete"

NICE. beautiful command line design. You can see that ACL support was hacked into unix can't you. I think it originally came from DEC and the VMS? not sure. anyway it makes sense to put it in chmod (sort of). but a chacl would be better... 

then to have -a# 0 mean delete the entry number 0 is beyond me. 

but that's because +a means add an entry. plus minus get it? 

anyways. that reset the ACL and now I can write. I did 

touch ~/Library/Preferences/blah

and that proved the problem was fixed. 

the ACL thing was just so bizarre I was compelled to make an annual entry in my blog ;-)