Asus Slate EP121/B121 disassemble and BIOS replacement

Posted on June 7, 2013 by thydzik

Recently, I upgraded my Asus Slate EP121 to the latest 704 BIOS version, through the inbuilt BIOS flash utility and unfortunately I bricked it (failed to power on or boot).

It was out of warranty, and even if it was in warranty, a failed BIOS upgrade is not covered. A bit of googling revealed that it was a fairly common occurrence, which then led me to Joe Kabalan from Advanced Quality Systems LLC who was able to provide a replacement BIOS for $20 plus $6 postage to Australia.

To replace the BIOS chip of the EP121 or any surface mount device (SMD) I recommend the following tools;

rework station or heat gun ($50 from eBay)
tweezers (few dollars from eBay)
solder paste
solder flux
thermal compound is needed specifically for the Asus Slate

Start by removing the back cover of the unit, start at the USB ports and slowly unclip the clips by sliding a credit card between the back cover and unit.There is a ribbon cable connecting the thermal sensor to the back cover, carefully dislodge the cable from the socket.

Near the HDMI port you will notice the BIOS chip tucked away under the metal frame. Convenient.

Remove the battery by removing the four screws and disconnecting the cable.

Remove the fans and heat pipe. Remove all screws surrounding the metal frame to detach it from the main unit.

Turn the removed frame and motherboard over and remove all screws holding the motherboard to it.

Once the frame is removed you can access the BIOS chip.

HP MicroServer N40L and Gigabit HD 6450 horizontal flickering line

Posted on May 7, 2013 by thydzik

I recently purchased a HP MicroServer N40L and half-height Gigabit Radeon HD 6450, after installing Windows 8 I noticed that a third from the screen was a flickering white horizontal line, noticeable when playing movies in full screen or moving the mouse around the right start bar.

The problem doesn’t lie with the MicroServer of Windows 8 (or even your monitor), it is the Gigabit Radeon HD 6450 at fault here. Luckily, there is a relatively easy fix, a BIOS update.

Download Easy Boost (about half way down the page)
Download the Easy Boost manual
Install Easy Boost
Follow the “VBIOS backup” procedure, you will also find your BIOS type either F1# or F2#, mine was F21
Download the correct BIOS (F11 if you have F1# or F22 if you have F2#), you can also see the BIOS offers “Fixed screen flicker problem”
Follow the “Flash VBIOS” procedure.
Reboot

Thanks to this RedFlagDeals post for the procedure.

Calculate last business day in month with Excel

Posted on April 2, 2013 by thydzik

Here is a quick post to calculate the last business day in a month taking into account holidays.

This is useful for with finance calculations and wanting to know a bank’s last banking day in a month.

=WORKDAY(EOMONTH(A2,0)+1,-1,holidays!A:A)

Where;

Cell A2 is the reference month cell
Range holidays!A:A is a list of holidays

Tool to remove VGA/DVI mounting screws – 5mm Hex socket

Posted on February 8, 2013 by thydzik

I was salvaging a number of motherboards from a server and noticed that the VGA mounting screws were connected to the chassis. Done with time-consuming pliers I decided to investigate if there was a special tool to remove these screws.
There isn’t, but a standard 5mm hex socket driver works perfectly.

Find it on eBay for a few dollars (including shipping).

Home loans – Fixed vs. Variable interest rates

Posted on February 8, 2013 by thydzik

I saw an interesting chart on Canstar which plotted the history of RBA Cash Rate, variable and 3-year fixed interest rates. This data is all available on the Reserve Bank of Australia website, look for A2 and F2 statistics.

I thought I would take it a step further and determine from past history if the 3-year fixed or variable rate would have been a better choice at a given time. I always believe that choosing a 3-year fixed interest rate was like gambling, it could either work in your favour or not, I am curious to see if I am right.

Given monthly data for the variable interest rate, to calculate which would have been the better choice I average thirty-six months of future variable rates. Because it is constantly looking three-years into the future, it can be observed that the data finishes in February 2010.

What can be observed is that the fixed rate is sometimes a better option (when under the three-years future average) and sometimes it is worse. Pre 2000, the fixed was mostly a poor choice, post 2000 the fixed rate is lower most of the time.

Finally, a difference of the two and it can be seen that it really jumps back and forth between good and bad. If we take the average of the difference we get 0.41%, which means the 3-year fixed rate is generally an interest rate of 0.41% worse.

Out of 233 months, 121 months (or 52% of the time) the fixed had a worse off interest rate and 112 months (or 48% of the time) the fixed had a better interest rate.

However, if we look at the 121 months from 2000 onwards, the variable interest rate is better off by an average interest rate of 0.23% which occurs about two-thirds of the time.

In conclusion, 3-year fixed rates these days do seem to have a good chance of having a lower interest rate for the locked-in period. That combined with the advantage of having a non fluctuating interest rate makes it a good choice.
I still would avoid them though, fixed rates make it difficult to switch lenders due to the extra fees payable.

Family Day, Doha Qatar

Posted on December 16, 2012 by thydzik

Family Day in Doha, Qatar is a common occurrence on Fridays (the weekend), were main shopping centres refuse entry to single males without family. There is quite obvious discrimination with south-east Asian and Indian males being always refused entry, whilst local and western men are not hassled when they enter.

I propose the following solution;

ComputerSphere – modding the original base to include a DVD burner

Posted on December 2, 2012 by thydzik

I thought for a change in scenery, I would look at modding the original square base. The square base was an attachment that could be used to support the Videosphere, it wasn’t needed if the Videosphere was hanging. To keep with this idea, I decided to make the base a removable DVDRW drive, with a connection to a standard USB, the base could still be removed and was not essential to the operation.

I purchased a slot load DVDRW drive from eBay for $50 and a USB slim laptop drive SATA adaptor for around $10.

First I glued some wooden pieces to the inside of the base, and this provided me with mounting points.

I created some brackets for the DVD drive from some quarter channel aluminium and a hacked older CD drive.

With the position of the DVDRW drive now know, I cut a slot into the plastic square base with a Dremel.

Once the slot was large enough it was cleaned up with a file.

The DVD burner mounted inside the Videosphere’s base.

The work in progress.

Next post I will look at fixing up the USB cable at adding some obligatory lighting to the base.

Lazy Load v2 – delay image loading Nivo Slider v3

Posted on November 23, 2012 by thydzik

Nivo Slider is a great image slider which I recently implemented on one of my WordPress blogs, the problem with the current version is all images need to be loaded first prior to running the Nivo Slider JavaScript.

After a bit of searching I found a fork by Lee Powers named Lazy Load, the update was for an older version of Nivo Slider which didn’t support responsive images.

After a bit of copy and pasting I managed to port Lazy Load to the updated Nivo Slider version.

Find the fork on Github.

For an example of Lazy Load v2 with 100 images in a Nivo Slider head over to SonyaandTravis.com.

Blog of Travis Hydzik

random snippets and information