This Protestor Must Be A Computer Geek. --from skynews.com.au

Mildred: “Hey Johnny, what are you rebelling against?”
Johnny: “Whadda you got?”

-Exchange between two characters from the movie The Wild One, 1953, with Marlon Brando

I’m classified as a late-stage baby boomer, having been born in the late 1950’s. During the decisive and divisive decade of the 1960’s I was a snot-nosed school kid; the most important crisis of my life was when our TV died and it took weeks before Mom could afford to replace a bad tube. (No, not the tube you looked at—one of several tubes inside the box that generated heat and helped make the picture.) The country was embroiled in Vietnam. JFK, MLK and RFK were assassinated, and the civil rights movement was in full swing. Back then it was common for young people to stage protest marches, sit-ins, and acts of civil disobedience to make a point about something. The war, equal rights, poverty, injustice, or political misconduct—it didn’t matter. Everything seemed fair game and it was all done to a rocking soundtrack. The evening news was filled with stark images: soldiers on the front lines; water cannons deployed against civil rights marchers, and students shot by National Guardsmen at Bowling Green University in Ohio. As a kid I soaked it all in but much of it didn’t make sense. The only thing that solidly connected was the certainty that I would be drafted by my Government to fight for them when I turned 18. I didn’t want to die so I prayed every night for the abolishment of the draft, protection for our soldiers, and an end to war. It’s a shame that any kid who hasn’t reached the age of 12 had to pray every night about death and dying but it’s what I did.

Years passed, Vietnam ended, and the draft was abolished for a window of time. America sailed through the disco years and into the prosperity and growth of the eighties. Everything was okey-dokey, at least on the surface. There were societal issues that needed to be dealt with but we were caught up in a capitalistic furor. Go to college, get a great job, make lots of money to buy stuff, and grab a piece of the American dream. I remember reading a magazine article back then by someone decrying the flaccidness of our youth’s resolve to change the world. “No one has a cause to fight for anymore. All they care about is money.” The piece was probably written by an ex-hippie protestnik remembering the golden age of social activism. I remember thinking that, perhaps, that time had passed and the role of the mass protest had become unnecessary. In actuality capitalism and the acquisition of worldly goods lulled us to sleep. Meanwhile a lot of Very Bad Things were going on behind the scenes, and crimes against the citizens of this country went unchecked. Our political process, which was never very clean or honorable, had long ago yielded itself to corruption.

Suddenly we found ourselves in the new millennium and realized that things had gone to Hell. America was attacked in grand Hollywood style on September 11, 2001. We found ourselves involved in multiple wars and losing our individual rights and freedoms on a daily basis in the name of security. Rich corporations received massive tax relief for years in order to “build the job market,” and did just that—for foreign countries. They’d started shipping American jobs overseas to save themselves money in the nineties, but really ramped up their efforts during the past decade.  Many local economies were devastated as towns whose residents supported the steel mill, auto plant, or multinational shipping conglomerate saw those businesses close with no jobs to replace those that were lost. Then we discovered that the financial institutions—the ones the government had failed to properly oversee—had perpetrated several types of shell games using our money and our economy nearly went under, wiping out many families’ finances and future retirement plans.

The citizens of our fine country suddenly found themselves totally screwed by those who were supposed to represent and protect them, and helpless when they tried to express their anger. Politicians didn’t seem to listen or care about anything except their own jobs and keeping the ‘other party’ at a disadvantage. Some bright people decided they’d had enough and marched on Wall Street to denounce corporate greed, the lack of jobs, homelessness…in fact, everything that had been repressed for years came rushing out in a torrent.  That movement became “Occupy Wall Street” and gained strength over a few weeks to encompass protests across the country.  Despite the best intentions of these people to have peaceful demonstrations, local police ratcheted up the tension by employing tear gas and pepper spray, then used force to shed blood and hauled hundreds of them away to jail. The protester’s resolve was unbroken. When told they couldn’t use electronic amplification, they created ‘human P.A. systems’ by having crowds loudly repeat what a speaker said for the benefit of all. They set up mobile food kitchens, portable Internet hotspots, bathroom facilities, and extensively used social networks to organize the faithful. There’s no doubt that they’re determined and dedicated to their goal of making the voice of the people heard.

But many people are asking: “If everyone’s shouting different things, can they really make a difference?”  Part of the problem is that we’ve been silent for so long that a lot of things have turned sour. And, unfortunately, many of those things are inter-related. People can’t get needed assistance after natural disasters because funds were bled dry by numerous calamities this year, and the cost of ongoing warfare in multiple theaters of combat as well as a divided Congress hampers their replenishment.  The job market sucks because the economy nearly collapsed from the corruption of Wall Street insiders who weren’t properly overseen by the government due to its own corruption and incompetence.  Got that? How can you attack any one of those points without attacking the others? How can you fix jobs without fixing the economy, and how can you fix the economy if the government can’t be trusted to ensure that the companies manipulating the economy are honest? It’s a rabbit hole that Alice couldn’t tackle without major chemical assistance.

The other problem is that our fledgling young protesters don’t seem to know how to affect social changes of this magnitude, any more than the youth of the sixties did when they began their journey. Back then they had to flex their muscles, find their voice, and experiment to find the best way(s) to express their views. Today’s youth are no different. They’re like Neo who, after being freed from his pod in The Matrix asks Morpheus, “Why do my eyes hurt?”

His answer was simple: “You’ve never used them before.”

The Occupy movement is in the chrysalis stage—it’s well on its way to becoming a mature force to reckon with. For now it’s stretching, flexing, reaching out to test the capabilities and power within its grasp. The list of its demands seems way too broad and unfocused but they’re quickly learning to prioritize. The ways of the original sixties protestniks are well documented—both good and bad—and widely available through the web, and you can bet they’re soaking in everything they can learn.

As of this writing things have quieted. Occasional protests sporadically occur but as winter settles in the Occupiers appear to have lost their will to fight.  Appearances are deceiving. Kalle Lasn, who conceived Occupy Wall Street, was quoted in Rolling Stone’s January 5, 2012 issue as saying, “The first phase was wonderful, it was leaderless, it was demandless, it inspired millions of young people to get politically engaged. Now we’re moving into another phase. … But the really interesting stuff will start happening next spring.” For these tech- and internet-savvy protesters I’m sure it will be a busy winter as they research, plan, and organize for next year.

I’m happy that people are finally getting off their butts and making their voices heard. We’ve all witnessed the changes that began with the so-called “Arab spring” and I’m sure many are drawing inspiration from the Middle East events of the past year. However, the government has heard the voices of its citizens in the past year and, to be honest, I’m not sure they care. Congress seems fixated on fiddling while the country figuratively burns. Not even the Republican candidates for next year’s election seem to get it. Newt Gingrich’s statement during a recent debate was particularly telling:

“All the Occupy movement starts with the premise that we all owe them everything. They take over a public park they didn’t pay for. To go nearby to use bathrooms they didn’t pay for. To beg for food from places they don’t want to pay for.  To obstruct those who are going to work to pay the taxes to sustain the bathrooms and to sustain the park, so they can self-righteously explain that they are the paragons of virtue to which we owe everything. Now that is a pretty good symptom of how much the left has collapsed as a moral system in this country, and why you need to reassert something as simple as saying to them “Go get a job, right after you take a bath.”

Never mind that the Occupiers are meeting on public property for which they were paying their share with their tax money when they had jobs, or that the message wasn’t “You owe us jobs” but “You owe us accountability for your screw-ups and you’re obligated to responsibly manage our country and our assets.”  Gingrich’s response is similar in spirit to that of Chinese Emperor Hui of Jin, recounted in the Zizhi Tongjian. When the Emperor was told that his subjects didn’t have enough rice to eat he replied, “Why don’t they eat meat?”  The protests in the Middle East began peacefully but when the respective governments employed violence against their protesters, those protesters retaliated in kind.

The thing I fear most is the increase of violence on both sides in this country. Some may say, “This is the United States of America; that’ll never happen.” I don’t think there’s another way this can play out, especially when our Government simply refuses to get the point. If non-violence doesn’t work escalation is the logical result. Violence has become an integral part of the overseas protests, just as it did here in the sixties. People aren’t stupid and they realize that terrorist methods get an immediate response. One or two nutjobs operating completely outside the actual movement could kick the whole thing off while using the movement as a cover. Everything quickly escalates and gets ugly; bloodshed on our own soil becomes rampant; protestors and their sympathizers get branded as domestic terrorists. Then if President Obama signs the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 as he’s promised to do, the Government could “go Guantanamo” on anyone it brands as a domestic terrorist and can make them disappear without a trace.

The anger and frustration in the air seems physical, palpable; it’s as though you could grab a handful if you simply reached for it. Perhaps things will settle down over the winter, or maybe they’ll boil over as the buffoons in Washington continue playing their brinksmanship games.  All I know is this: 2012 will prove to be a most interesting year. I’m grabbing a good seat right now to enjoy the show—how about you?

Then HP announced they’d make a second and final run of these. It seems their decision to axe the platform greatly P.O.’d their strategic partners (suppliers), who’d invested a lot of money in making parts for the things. Aha! My second chance would arrive in the first part of November! I readied myself for the hunt…only to be disappointed again. This time HP’s retail partners decided to make some extra money. Most retailers like Best Buy, CompUSA and TigerDirect are either selling the tablets for double the sale price ($299) or selling them for the ‘real’ clearance price if you buy another HP computer or laptop at the same time. I call B.S. on this practice and hope it bombs. Who in their right mind would buy one of these for more than the original clearance price?

The problem for me is that I still have these app ideas I’d like to try. About a week ago I heard about a special HP program for WebOS developers…they were allowing people (and companies) who signed up for their developer program to buy up to two of the Touchpads for $149 each. Some undisclosed number of entities will be chosen to get “right to purchase” coupons that must be used by the end of November. I’ve signed up for the program (whose application deadline is 11/18) and am crossing my fingers. I want to make my apps available free, so some of the information requested on signup was off-putting (I suppose they assume only corporations who plan on making mucho bucks will apply). If I can get these, great–and if not, I suppose I’ll try developing my ideas for Android. We shall see…

I’ve been an Apple observer for as many years as I’ve been in IT support. I haven’t always purchased or used their products. In the early days my first computer was a TRS-80 Model I. I moved up to a Commodore 64, and then moved to a Commodore 128 before jumping to the IBM PC-clone platform. Apple was a ‘bit’ player in those early days (pun intended) but the Apple II and III didn’t appeal to me for some reason. For the longest time I mocked the fledgling IBM PC when I had my C-128 (“The 128 has everything built-in—it all costs extra on the PC!”) After a while I came around to the idea that this was actually a Good Thing, especially after leaving college and realizing the PC was the platform that businesses used. How times change!

Some History, and an Attitude Change

Apple always had the cachet of being different. The idea of a WIMP (windows, icons, mouse pointer) interface was a game changer, and Micro$oft realized it when they saw Apple’s implementation of Xerox PARC’s interface and copied it themselves. Over the years the Mac’s interface underwent constant tweaking and improvements, and despite Micro$oft’s best efforts to duplicate its usability their implementation still lacked the grace of Apple’s interface. As a PC wonk I often failed to see the good of MacOS. Things were just, well, too different. There was no command prompt in MacOS, no easy way to get past the OS if you needed to do something that the windowing interface wouldn’t allow. When I had to support a Mac user I dreaded it. Apple’s way was so difficult that, for me, what would take a few minutes to fix in DOS/Windows would often take several hours in MacOS.  My very negative experience with MacOS and a messaging server package at the local PBS station (detailed in an earlier posting) didn’t help my perceptions of the platform.

Then I started working at a local university. Several users in my department had desktop Macs; in addition some of our electronic classrooms had Macs alongside PCs with a switching arrangement for the two platforms. I gradually became used to them and, as I started imaging PCs and Macs (which were, by this time, on OS X) I grew to appreciate the ease with which Macs could be imaged and those images deployed to any number of identical machines. While Micro$oft insisted on tying its OS so tightly to the hardware that an image made on one PC wouldn’t work on another if it had a different video card, you could simply image the most powerful Mac in your fleet and use that image on lesser equipped machines. That is, as long as the CPUs for those machines were in the same class–an image for a G5 wouldn’t work on a G4. Windows has improved over the years, but it still requires some black magic to make things happen across platforms.  I ended up purchasing my first Mac, a G4 machine with such radical styling that some in the computer press called it the iTit, when they were surplused by the university. I ended up with three of these (hey, the price was right) with the intent of using them to display images in my home as Objets d’Art. Although I’d finally gone to the “dark side” my main home computers continued to be PCs.

The iMac G4, affectionately known as the "iTit."

Apple Forges New Territory

Meanwhile Apple branched out into consumer electronics and, in turn, set the music and telecom industries on their ears with the introductions of the iPod and iPhone. I never bought into either platform and only ended up with an iPod Mini because I won it. It’s still a neat device, but I hate the restrictiveness of iTunes, Apple’s digital rights management, and their limited codec support. When the time came to get a smartphone I went Android. Then in 2010 Apple introduced the iPad. I had wanted some type of tablet PC that would allow me to view PDFs since I discovered newsgroups and the large amount of free reading materials there. This device seemed to fit the bill, but I was still put off by iTunes. I waited until after the iPad 2 was released and still hoped for an Android tablet. Android’s developers and the device manufacturers couldn’t seem to get their acts together, and a viable iPad competitor wasn’t predicted to become available until 2012.

The Apple Advantage

I bit the bullet this past spring, drank Apple’s Kool-Aid and bought a closeout iPad 1 with 3G and 64GB of RAM. I’d read about the available apps and liked the idea of connecting USB peripherals through a backdoor method using the Camera Connection Kit. There were USB microphones and recording gear that could be harnessed to the iPad this way, making high-quality portable recording and editing an option that intrigued me. The ability to hook a wired keyboard into the iPad was the clincher.

Almost two years ago my department was dismantled by the university’s administration, and our varying areas of expertise were moved into other departments. The task of classroom technology support moved to the campus IT department. Their mantra of “We do IT faster, better, and cheaper” dictated slashing support costs a number of ways. One major change was to begin the elimination of dual PCs and Macs in classroom podiums by replacing them with dual-boot Mac Minis. When my department was responsible for classroom support we’d looked at doing the same thing but couldn’t come to a consensus. We rack-mounted our podium electronics for installation convenience and theft prevention. Small rack-mount server chassis PCs were used in the beginning and eventually changed to desktop PCs secured to rack shelves by inaccessible bolts. In the rooms with PCs and Macs we bolted the aluminum-cased boat-anchor Macs vertically to rack shelves and secured the cabling out of user’s reach. Those Macs were overkill for the classrooms but we needed user-accessible power switches. Apple’s decision to put the power switch on the Mini’s backside meant that we continued putting sub-$1000 PCs in the classrooms alongside Macs that cost twice as much. Dual-booting wasn’t a possibility until Apple changed to the Wintel architecture and even then the IT folks (to whose guidance we deferred as they set campus computing standards) said dual-booting was a kludge and extremely difficult to image. They worked out the problems over the course of a few years and, by the time they assumed classroom support, felt comfortable enough to convert the classrooms to a single dual-boot machine.

Securing Mac Minis in public environments was a challenge before several companies introduced different mounting options. The IT crew found several that allowed rack mounting but those were deemed too expensive. They settled on a design that allowed secure mounting of the Minis to tabletops. This past summer the IT department replaced 38 of the 120-odd classroom in-podium PC/Macs with podium top-mounted dual-boot Mac Minis. This seemed to be a good move that would eventually bring Mac capabilities to all campus classrooms while saving money.

The IT folks also maintain a pool of short-term checkout laptops. After using PC laptops for years they began replacing them with dual-boot MacBooks. My department replaced its PC-only laptops with dual-boot Macbooks three years ago, which allow us to teach workshops involving either PC- or Mac-based software.  Apple came out the winner with our institution in a number of ways once the OS-specific wall was destroyed. I even considered replacing my desktop PC with a dual-boot Mac when the time came to upgrade.

Customer Needs vs. Jobs’s Vision of the Future

Apple performed an upgrade to iOS last spring that rendered most iPad Camera Connection Kit-attachable USB peripherals useless except for solid-state memory devices. Now when plugging in most USB devices the user is presented with a dialog box that reads “This device draws too much power” even with peripherals that worked before the ‘upgrade.’ Online forums lit up with user complaints, and people who’d purchased the connection kits were returning them to Apple as broken, getting surprised looks from the geniuses at the Apple Stores. It turns out that you can still use those peripherals, but only if you connect them using powered USB hubs. The iPad is all about portability–what’s portable about having to connect extra stuff through another box that requires AC power? There’s only one company that I knew of who made a battery-powered USB hub but it’s long discontinued. Some forum posts I’ve read claim that you can hook up devices through hubs without using AC power if the hub identifies itself to the iPad as a powered USB device. This would apply to those hubs that have an optional AC power port but aren’t always sold with the adapter. I’ve gone through a half-dozen models of these during testing and have yet to find one that eliminates the need for an external power supply. Even if a user finds a hub that will work, they’ll have a nasty-looking kludge with an extra box to juggle.

After our IT crew committed themselves to the Mac Mini conversion Apple revamped their product line and eliminated the Mini’s optical drive. Further purchases for classroom conversions will now have to include some flavor of external CD/DVD drive along with some way to secure the thing to the podium tops. Even when those drives are secured they will have highly-fragile trays, unlike the slot-loading drives in the Mac Minis. This means that equipment maintenance costs just went up as well. “But,” I hear some of you saying, “What about the cloud? Users don’t need optical drives anymore! They’re so last-century! Besides, hasn’t everyone changed to USB drives by now?” Not in the educational environment.  Instructors still get presentation materials through textbook publishers who often use DVD-ROMs as the distribution media. Instructors also want to play DVDs and music CDs in their classrooms.

Apple also decided to eliminate the MacBook from the consumer product line, and though institutional education customers can still buy them, they eliminated user-replaceable batteries. When checking out laptops to various borrowers throughout the day, you have to be able to put freshly-charged batteries in them. Removing a high-demand circulating item just because it needs charged cuts down on resource availability and is a deal-killing issue. As a result the IT department has decided to run the current MacBooks until they die, at which time they’ll go back to PCs. As for those classroom machines, well…the jury’s still out, but it doesn’t look likely that they’ll go back to installing Mac towers. Perhaps we’ll finally become a PC-only campus except for special-purpose labs.

Apple’s never been afraid to orphan their users in their march toward the future. In the early Mac days new models came out every six months, so whenever you bought your Mac you could be sure that it would soon be outdated. When the changeover to OS X occurred they supported OS 9 applications for a little while but soon stopped. A few years after the introduction of Intel-based Macs Apple dropped their PowerPC support. Many of those PowerPC-based CPUs would still be powerful enough to be used today if development for that branch of the OS hadn’t halted. By contrast, take any old PC-compatible software and try to run it on today’s hardware. Unless that software was timing-dependent (tied to the CPU speed for proper operation) or depended on hardware features that are no longer available it will still run. Apple would argue that’s been IBM / Intel / Microsoft’s problem—platform advancement is held hostage by user’s demands to support “legacy” systems and software. Perhaps that’s true; however, except for a few features like FireWire what innovations made Apple’s computers so “revolutionary” that they simply blew the PC away? Even those Apple-exclusive features eventually migrated to the PC, and Apple has remained a minority player in the computer field. Marching forward isn’t a bad thing, but ignoring your customer’s needs and wants certainly is. Apple’s traditionally sucked at listening to customers and accepting criticism.  Ask anyone who’s had their Apple support forum posts deleted because their opinions or complaints were deemed, in some way or other, as ‘offensive’ to the company. The only way they listened was when a lawsuit was filed, as in the case of defective LCD screens a few years ago. They’ve never depended on focus groups as Steve Jobs trusted his instincts.

Where Apple made revolutionary changes to the consumer electronics industry and people’s lifestyles has been in consumer media. The iPod changed the portable music player market and iTunes revolutionized how people buy their entertainment. The iPad has been a runaway success, so much so that the competition is still trying to play catch-up. Electronic gadget consumers expect rapid innovation and obsolescence so Apple’s orphaning tactics might not irritate those customers as much as the users of its computers. However, there’s one thing they absolutely mustn’t do, something I’ve learned through years of supporting faculty members. I call it Combs’s Maxim: A company must not remove functionality from an already-released product, even when that functionality isn’t expressly noted, marketed or endorsed. The USB connectivity issue I mentioned with the iPad is a great example of this—Apple not only left users high-and-dry with no good reason or explanation for their actions, but also violated the trust of the companies that market add-on products for the iPad. Sure, those companies should’ve used the official iPad docking port for connectivity but that limits sales of their hardware only to iDevice users. A USB peripheral can also be sold to work on other platforms.  Sony pulled the same trick with its Playstation 3 when they removed the ability to run Linux on the box, a move which angered users and spawned a class-action lawsuit.

It’s Time for a New Apple

Apple was recently announced as the world’s largest company, beating out Exxon Mobil. Their sales figures are phenomenal, and their liquidity is formidable. They can do anything they want and buy about any other company they want. If they want to continue pushing the envelope and forming the future of media more power to them–someone has to be the innovator. But pissing off your present customers will ensure they’ll no longer be your future customers—and you’ll be left alone in the future you tried to create.

I used to say that Sony made products that were 90% perfect in the market niche where 80% of consumers lived. I bought their stereo and home theater gear exclusively because they would work together with a single remote control. The products were of good quality and sounded good, but other manufacturers had similar products with more and newer features (number of inputs, audio processing modes, et cetera) at the same price point. Getting those features on a Sony added several hundred dollars to their cost. I finally abandoned them when I bought my Onkyo pre/pro and haven’t looked back.

I started writing this piece several weeks before the passing of Steve Jobs on October 5^th. I believe that many of the nits I’ve picked have belonged exclusively to Mr. Jobs and his instincts. Under his guidance Apple seemed more Sony-like to me—they made great products that were hamstrung in some frustrating ways. I’d written the following point more crudely in earlier drafts but it still bears expression: With Steve Jobs gone, it’s high time that Apple goes the extra 10% and shakes off their self-imposed limitations. They must listen to their customers, especially in the markets like education where they’ve traditionally dominated. In this economy customers cannot, and will not, invest in short-lived products with unrealistic limitations on their capabilities. Smart consumers invest their money in technologies with upgrade paths and long lives, and anyone spending money without those points in mind is either a fool or won’t stay financially liquid for long.

I want Apple to be around for a long time, but in a post-Jobs future they must change and improve to ensure their longevity. Let’s all hope they recognize the need for it, and have the courage to do so.

I eventually landed a SnapServer 4100, a nice little 1U-high rack mountable box that could expand to give me just over 360GB of RAID-5 storage.  The on-board chipset could theoretically handle drives larger than 127GB, but a glitch in the OS meant that the proper driver to enable the chipset was missing. The OS could theoretically be modified to accept the larger drives but the manufacturer would have to do it—and they had no incentive to steal sales away from their newer, larger-capacity servers. Many people on the ProCooling forums have spent time analyzing and bemoaning the situation but none of them apparently have the chops to dump and disassemble the OS, then patch and recompile it for the benefit of all. (That includes myself, though I’ve often thought about poking around to see what I could do.)

UPDATE 8-26-2011: Phoenix32 and Terry Kennedy over at Procooling clarified what the issue was, despite some contradictory information they got from the people at SnapAppliance several years ago. The SnapServer 4100 used a different ‘Promise’ controller chip than other models at the time. Snap engineers did not believe it could handle LBA48 disks, meaning drives larger than 127GB. Depending on who you talked to, two changes needed to be made: one to the machine’s BIOS, and one to the OS to add the appropriate driver.  Add to that the server’s insufficient RAM expandability (which comes into play when the server recovers from a disk error) as well as the unwillingness of SnapAppliance to take sales away from their other units, and people decided it wasn’t worth the expenditure of their time and effort . Thanks, guys, for the information.

I gave up on going that route when I determined that the total expandability of the unit even with such a patch would only be 1 terabyte. I wanted more, much more—ideally I want a RAIDzilla, but I don’t think I’d ever use that much disk space.

I set my sights on piecing together a suitable server. I found a place selling surplus Intel SE7501WV2 motherboards and bought one. It’s more than powerful enough to be the heart of a NAS—it has dual Xeon 3.1 GHz processors, takes up to 12GB RAM, and comes with dual gigabit Ethernet ports. It also features a PCI-X high performance expansion bus that will accept a hardware RAID card. The board has on-board RAID support and originally came in two versions, one with SCSI RAID and the other with IDE RAID.  Mine supports SCSI RAID but I knew I wouldn’t use it as the drives are too expensive and available drive sizes are too limited.  At first I thought I’d get a generic multi-disk server chassis but realized I really needed the chassis designed for the board. I purchased a used Intel SR2300 from eBay and thought I was in business. It offers seven hot-swap disk bays and dual redundant power supplies. The hot-swap bays and backplane are SCSI to match the motherboard. I had the basic framework to build a server, but the supported drive type was incorrect. I was determined to make it work. Somehow.

 Inspiration Strikes!

I surfed the net hoping to find some conversion info. I just knew that someone else had to have travelled this territory before me and I was right. Mark Hoekstra’s GeekTechnique site detailed how he shoehorned some IDE drives into the chassis while leaving the SCSI backplane intact.  After chewing over the possibilities I decided I could convert the SCSI bays to accept SATA drives. I’d cut the SCSI connectors off the backplane and glue some combined SATA/power connectors onto the circuit board.  The connectors would include attached cables that would plug into a SATA RAID controller.  Power cables would be plugged into some sort of daisy-chain configuration and then go into the power supply. If I was careful I could keep the front panel connections that go through the backplane, as well as keep the combined floppy/CD-ROM drive assembly working. I was getting more excited as I began planning the mods.

After spending time in research I knew that I’d be losing some capabilities. The Intel chassis/motherboard combo’s hot-swap system can detect bad drives and cut their power to allow for a swap without taking the server down. An error status LED for that drive will light to indicate which drive needs to be exchanged. My version would require a power-down to exchange a drive. Ultimately that’s not a big deal as my server use isn’t mission-critical; I can afford a little downtime.

I decided to keep the original backplane as it was and modify a second backplane. Should I ever decide to get rid of the unit I want to provide the original accessories. (Not that anyone would want to go backward, mind you, but still…).  I visited eBay and purchased an identical backplane to hack on for $15.00 plus shipping.  While I was shopping I also purchased another empty drive carrier. The floppy/CD-ROM assembly could be removed after software installation and another drive put in its place, giving a total of seven drives in the array. I could also mount an eighth drive into the SCSI tape drive bay by using the filler tray. My goal for using the swappable drive bays was maintainability, NOT hot-swapability; if a drive goes bad I don’t want to disassemble the server to change it. Using the tape drive tray for another drive puts me right back to server disassembly, so eventually I’ll end up putting a USB-driven LCD status display in that bay.

The Roadmap

Since I’m using the existing backplane as a connector mounting plate the existing SCSI connectors had to go. To make the wiring neat I decided to tap the power off the board’s existing power jack, and run bus wires for each voltage and ground. This would allow me to clip the power wires short and tie them fairly close to the connectors. The SATA cables would be draped along the middle of the board in an effort to keep the existing cooling pass-throughs as open as possible. I knew that I’d lose some air-handling volume because the wiring had to pass from the board’s front side to the back through those holes.  However, since the drives I planned to use were more power-efficient and ran cooler by design the loss of air handling capacity shouldn’t be too big a problem.

Locating Parts

The biggest problem was in finding the appropriate drive power/data connectors. I installed a hard drive in one of the swappable bays and measured the amount of space between the drive’s back edge and the backplane. It worked out to be .35”. I needed a connector assembly whose body measured slightly less than that thickness. StarTech had a good candidate, but according to the technical drawings they sent me it was too thick. Several other manufacturers had similar products but they were also too thick.

Then I found CPUStuff.com.  They had two versions of the cable I needed, a ‘left angle’ version (part number 22SATAL) and a ‘right angle’ version (part number 22SATARS). Both of these have a straight data connector that will pass through the backplane’s cooling slots. The engineering drawings on their product pages told me they would fit on the board with approximately .066” left to fill. Perfect! I’d attach a shim to the connector’s back to fill part of the space and let the glue fill the rest.  Each assembly had a half-meter data cable which would work for all but one of the drive bays.  I ordered the number of cables I required plus a couple extra, and a SATA cable extender to stretch that one cable to the correct length.

I went back to eBay and found a used 3Ware 9550SX-8 RAID controller with a PCI-X bus. The card can handle a maximum size of 2-terabytes per drive, and came with a backup battery assembly for the card’s cache RAM. I also ordered four hard drives to start. I chose the Hitachi DeskStar 5K3000 HDS5C3020ALA632 (0F12117), which is a 2-terabyte SATA 6.0Gb/s unit with 32MB of cache. It employs “Coolspin” technology which means its speed varies between 5300 and 5900 RPM, and theoretically keeps the drive running cooler. Although the drive is capable of higher throughput than the card, its backward-compatible and if I decide to upgrade later I’m not limited by the drive’s speed.

Getting Down To It: Removing the SCSI Connectors

At first I tried desoldering one of the seven connectors. Each one has 80 pins, and as you can imagine the going was slow. I tried applying ChipQuick to a connector’s pins in an effort to lower the solder’s melting point, then applied heat from a hot air gun. The connector wouldn’t budge. If I’d had a hot air rework station things might have gone better, but lacking that tool, I used a Dremel cut-off wheel and removed each connector in two passes, shown in Picture 1.

Picture 1. First pass at removing the SCSI connectors.

After this step I used flush cutters to clip the remaining plastic and pins from the connector side, then used the cutters on the reverse side to eliminate the sharp points. After this I tried once again to desolder a few pins to empty the holes; unfortunately the going was still too slow. I ended up using a Dremel grinding wheel to carefully level each pin even with the PC board. This makes the conductive pad larger if you don’t grind long enough; if you grind too much you go deeper and can sever or short PC traces. I realized that the connectors would need to be glued onto the board where other surface-mounted components were already attached. I surmised that they could be safely removed since they were adjacent to the connectors and probably related to the connector’s functionality so I unsoldered them.  After this step I cleaned the board of any debris, then plugged it into the server and did a power-on smoke test. No magic smoke escaped so I went to the next step.

Picture 2. SCSI connectors off, some components removed, vent holes enlarged.

Attaching the New SATA Connectors

I held a data connector against one of the backplane’s air holes and realized I’d need to enlarge the holes just a bit to allow the connectors to pass through.  A Dremel cutting tool made this a quick job, and the result is also shown in Picture 2. Next I had to make the connector shims, and I’d purchased some .060” styrene plastic stock at a hobby store for that purpose. I measured a connector’s back side to determine the necessary shim size, and then marked the styrene stock with pencil with those measurements.  I used a sharp new razor knife to slice the styrene on a cutting mat. After trimming the edges to eliminate the ridge that formed after each cut, I mixed a quantity of JB Weld and applied a coating to the back side of a power/data connector. After pressing the styrene into the glue I clamped the assembly for eighteen hours and allowed the glue to fully cure.

Picture 3. Clamping the shim and connector while the glue dries.

Picture 4. Finished connector / shim assembly.

Next, I pressed the connector onto a drive (which I’d already mounted into a hot-swap tray), spread a good quantity of JB Weld onto the back of the shim and mounted the drive into a drive bay. I had to carefully manage the cables from the connectors in order to prevent damage and avoid getting glue onto them.  After waiting the requisite eighteen hours I carefully removed the drive from the bay. I knew the glue bond was solid when I watched the backplane flex a bit when removing the drive! This backplane is around 3/64” thick, so flexing it is a feat. (I should also mention that you don’t want to swap drives often because the connectors aren’t designed for that.)

Picture 5. A connector, glued onto the backplane.

I moved on to the next connector and repeated the process until all seven were done.  I left the wiring loose on the front side of the board while I moved on to the power bus lines.

Laying the Power Bus Lines

I sketched a general layout for where each power bus and the ground bus would go. I’d need two power busses: a +5 volt DC supply for the drive electronics, and a +12 volt DC supply for the drive motors. There were two +12 volt lines going to the board’s power connector since that current draw was so large, so that meant I’d need to run two +12 volt bus wires and divide the drive load between them. There were also two ground wires going to the power connector. I asked an electrical engineer friend if I needed to run two ground busses as well; in his opinion it wasn’t necessary. That made a total of four bus wires to place. I purchased some 14-gauge solid, insulated conductor wire for the busses. I wanted to keep the wire colors the same for consistency, but could only purchase red, black, and white wire. I solved the problem by placing yellow heat-shrink tubing over the white wire.

I envisioned that each line would stretch the width of the backplane and have pre-formed ‘dips’ in them.  These dips would allow the line to stand above the backplane to prevent shorts between the bus and any components on the backplane, while allowing wires to be routed underneath them. One end would be fed through a drive vent hole and soldered to the board’s power supply connector. The bus would be glued to the backplane with JB Weld to secure it by putting glue over the preformed ‘dips’ as well as at each end. Gluing the busses at the power connector end is important as the power connector stubs I soldered to are very short; gluing the wires at that end takes stress off the solder connection.

After measuring and cutting each wire, I started by bending the power supply end of a +12 volt line until the wire lay properly in place over its solder point. I then figured out where I wanted each ‘dip’ and bent it into each wire.  After I felt satisfied that the wire was formed the way I wanted it, I marked the jacket where I’d remove a small bit of insulation to create space to solder the drive power wires. A razor knife removed those small bits of insulation, and afterward I tinned each section to allow easier soldering.

Picture 6. A formed 12-volt bus wire.

Picture 7. Close-up of 12-volt bus wire end.

I mixed a quantity of JB Weld and applied it to each bus wire’s ‘dip.’ I carefully placed the first wire and attached it with tape until the glue dried, then moved on to the next until they were all attached. You’ll notice that the glue points are sloppy. This is a consequence of applying glue with the shaft of a cotton swab minus the cotton tip. It’s difficult to be neat when using that method. Picture 8 shows the completed bus lines with the drive connections soldered on.

Picture 8. Bus wires glued in place with drive power wires attached.

The final step was to solder the connector end and verify the connections with a volt-ohm-meter. The final touch was to cut some small pads out of sheet rubber I bought from eBay and glue them to the backplane under each solder point.  Contact cement was used to hold each pad in place.

Organizing the Drive Power Wires

I clipped the power connectors off each SATA power cable and fed the wires through the vent holes before feeding the data cables through. I fed the power wires to the places I would attach them and then clipped them a bit longer than needed. After stripping 1/8” of insulation from each wire it was soldered into place. Black RTV silicone was applied over the power connections to insulate them from accidental shorts.

Picture 9. Bus wires soldered on and glued at power connector.

To organize the SATA cables themselves, I resorted to trimming some self-adhesive 1” square cable mounting pads with a Dremel as shown in Picture 11. I carefully peeled the double-stick tape off the back side of two pads and applied JB Weld to glue them onto the backplane. I arranged the SATA cables to lay down the center of the board as a bundle and secured them with cable ties. Keeping the profile of these cables as low as possible is important as there are three powerful case fans about an inch behind the backplane. You don’t want to stop the fans from working (or allow them to chop up your cables). I re-installed the backplane into the chassis, then test-fitted the fans to ensure I had the proper clearance.

Picture 11. Wire tie attachment pads. Unmodified pad is on the left.

Picture 12. SATA cables dressed and tied in place.

LED There Be Light!

After doing all of this surgery I realized I’d forgotten one little detail.  The 3Ware 9550SX-8 card has eight dual-pin connections for attaching drive LEDs. I wanted blinking lights! I posted to an Intel communities forum to see if anyone knew where I could get a schematic for the backplane. I thought I could use the existing surface mount LEDs for each drive and I was correct. Forum member Doc_SilverCreek  in the forum gave me the following information:

“Sounds like a heck of a project.  The LEDs are duel  (sic)/ bi colored LED packages hence the 4 legs. Pins 3 & 4 go to a 150 ohm pull up to Vcc. LED’s Pins 1 is the fault LED via an inverter (U3 & U5) and the back plane EPM7064 power driver controller (which likely is not working in your project). LED’s pin 2 in the activitive (sic) LED which runs directly to Pin 77 in the SCSI connector for each slot.  Hope this helps.”

So I knew where the LEDs were connected, but how could I connect them to the card yet make it easy to remove the backplane? My idea was to run wires from one side of each LED pair in a drive location to a walled ribbon connector socket glued onto the backside of the board. I’d have to remove the single remaining SCSI connector, seen in the upper-right corner of Picture 12, to make room for a cable connector. I’d also need to create a cable with a ribbon connector plug on one end to dual pin connectors on the other. I found the dual-pin connectors at DigiKey—these are commonly used in PC cases for front panel switches and LEDs. I could’ve recycled some of those but decided it was more trouble than it was worth. Spending under ten dollars for these connectors was definitely the right decision. Since these are non-polarized I could easily flip them if the drive LEDs don’t work when they’re first plugged in.

Picture 13. The SATA card-to-backplane connecting cable.

Since the LEDs are normally connected though 150-ohm resistors to the backplane’s 3.3 volt supply, I guessed the resistor was being used for protection as a current limiter. I wanted to leave those in place. I’d need to solder one end of each wire pair to one end of an LED, and the other wire to the far end of the corresponding resistor. The problem: it was necessary to cut the PC board traces at each end of the LED as well as each end of the resistor to completely isolate the components from the board’s 3.3-volt supply and prevent that voltage from reaching the controller card. I cut the traces with a razor knife, then reconnected the resistor and LED with a piece of 30-gauge wire-wrap wire. After soldering each LED wire lead in place I used a bit of hot glue to tack them down and fed them to the ribbon cable connector. After soldering each pair I mounted the backplane into the chassis and used my volt-ohm-meter to measure the two pins from each LED/resistor and make sure there was 0 volts across them.

Picture 14. LED connecting wires tack-soldered in place.

Picture 15. LED connector glued to backplane.

Picture 16. LED backplane connector viewed from top. Last 2 pins on left not used.

Picture 17. SATA controller-to-backplane cable attached and threaded in place.

The board was complete! All that remained was to install hard drives and load OpenFiler, which I’ll document in a future blog post.

Things I’d Do Differently Now

This project involved a lot of experimentation, from removing connectors to laying bus lines and LED cables. Everything’s functional but not as neat as I like things to be. Knowing what I do now, here’s what I’d do differently if I were tackling this again.

1) Buy a hot air rework station.  It would be much easier to remove those stupid connectors with one of these babies. While I was at it, I’d remove as many other IC chips and components as I could to make running the bus wires easier and reduce the backplane’s current draw. That part would have to be done very carefully if I wanted to keep the seventh slot open for the CD/floppy drive. I wouldn’t want to remove any parts necessary for those and the front panel switches/LEDs to function.

2) Lay the LED wires first. There are a lot fewer of these and they’re more flexible in their placement. I could use insulated 30-gauge wire wrap wire and pass them from front-to-back of the board by using the (now empty) SCSI connector holes.

3) Use a syringe to apply the bus wire glue. I’d mix a good amount of the JB Weld and put it into a syringe (minus the needle, of course).  I’d have to attach them all at once before the glue hardened in the syringe.

Who knows? Maybe I’ll tackle version 2 this upcoming Winter with the goal of making it functional AND pretty…

A Thanks and Tribute

I would have loved to share the success of this project with Mark Hoekstra, but unfortunately Mark passed away on September 30, 2008 at the young age of 34. I’d like to think that he’d be proud to have inspired another modder to take his accomplishment to the next level. Without the inspiration he provided I wouldn’t have gone this far. Thanks, man—I hope to meet you someday on the other side, wherever that may be.

When I hooked the tuner up to my office stereo I was impressed by the unit’s look and feel during use, but its sound left me dry.  There was limited treble and the bass, while there, lacked any kind of punch. A quick online search yielded many forum posts complaining about the same issue. Supposedly the optical output yielded normal-sounding audio, but two of my amps only have analog inputs. I listened to the tuner occasionally for several weeks but found that I couldn’t listen long due to its lifeless sound. I had a hunch that the analog outputs had the wrong resistor/capacitor combination on the driver for the analog jacks, so I spent time searching in vain for a schematic for the unit. I had resigned myself to the prospect of having to reverse-engineer the circuit’s audio stage when I finally stumbled across a web forum post by user ‘vintageaudioexchange’ at the AudioAsylum forum. This promised to be a simple swap that would yield immediate improvement, so I ordered three of the Burr-Brown OPA2604AP chips from Digi-Key.  The post’s author claims the part cost him around fifty cents—I’d like to know where he got his op-amps. Digi-Key charges over $5.00 each for these little buggers.

Last weekend I decided to open up one of the tuners and try the mod. As you can see in Photo 1, the unit is what’s fondly called a ‘gutless wonder.’

Photo 1. The Gutless Wonder Exposed.

The power supply is hidden beneath a metal box for shielding; the board to the box’s right holds the op-amp to be changed, shown circled in Photo 2.

Photo 2. The Chip In Question.

The stock op-amp is a JRE 4558, a low-dollar part that’s used to good effect in many products. Not so here!  I unsoldered the chip and tried to install a machine-pin DIP-8 socket. Unfortunately the row-to-row hole spacing is too far apart to use the better socket, so I installed a common, cheaper friction-fit socket before inserting the chip. While I was at it I re-touched the solder joints for the antenna inputs. The circuit board-mounted RF coax jack was the cheapest part I’d ever seen and was not attached to the back panel with the customary nut and washer. The panel hole is bigger than the jack itself although the jack is not centered in the hole. This creates a problem when a standard coaxial antenna cable hangs off the unit’s backside– the jacks’ bracket tends to bend. The jack can be seen in Photo 3.

Photo 3. 'Stock' antenna jack mount. Note the space showing poor alignment.

Mounting a jack from the chassis in this manner is typically done to isolate the jack’s ground from the unit’s power and data ground connections.  However, unless the cable is light and the user carefully attaches and removes that cable you get a mechanically unsound connection.  Even if the jack is of higher quality the stress point is still moved to the PC board itself, which in my opinion is a poor idea.  I tested with a volt-ohm-meter and found all grounds to be tied together. I scoured my “hell box” and found some appropriately-sized nuts and washers, shown in Photo 4.

Photo 4. Aw, Nuts (and washers)!

Since the PC board is mounted a short distance from the back panel, it would take two nuts to make a solid mount.  One of the nuts needed to be thicker than the other; this one would go on first and be screwed against the jack’s bracket. This filled the space between the jack and back panel.  (I could also have used a thinner nut and screwed it back off the jack to the point where it touched the inside of the case’s back panel.)  Washers were another story. The hole in the unit’s back was bigger than a standard washer for that size of connector. I found a few larger washers with solder tabs and used tin snips to cut the tabs off to make them appear like standard washers. The modified washer then went onto the connector from the outside of the back panel before attaching the second nut. This yielded a solid connection that protects the jack in case the cable gets jerked or pulled.

After re-connecting the unit I crossed my fingers and powered it up. While doing my research I’d found another thread where people were discussing op-amp swaps in audio equipment, and a poster cautioned that the resistor/capacitor filter values for the new op-amp might need adjustment since the new chip’s bandwidth exceeds the specs of the old part. I can report that this was unnecessary. There is a significant improvement to the sound—better high-end, improved low-end, and the sound is less fatiguing for extended listening. The original poster said he’s not the type to claim the difference “was like a blanket was lifted from the speakers,” but I will. The difference is that noticeable. I can now happily listen to my new acquisitions without constantly be bugged about their sound quality.

Additionally, I read that Best Buy sold a similar unit under the “Insignia” brand, the NS-HDTUNE. This tuner is reputed to have the same internal circuitry, so the op-amp swap should work on this tuner as well. These are still available as of today on the Best Buy website as an “outlet” item for $79.95; they won’t last long at that price.

I should also mention that, contrary to the logical extension that the “HD” in HD Radio stands for ‘High Definition” as it does in HDTV, it does not. It stands for “Hybrid Digital,” which is a trademark of its progenitor iBiquity Digital Corporation. A brief history of the format’s development can be found  here.

Even with the wonderful information-gathering capability of the Internet the name of this song eluded me. I asked a number of radio people if they recalled the song or could name it, but always got a blank stare or a negative response to my email queries.  I thought I remembered that the song came out in the mid-to-late 1960′s but, as it turned out, I was off by a few years.

While researching another recording artist today I found a Wikipedia article called “List of 1970s one-hit wonders in the United States.” There under the year 1971 was a song called “D.O.A.” by Bloodrock. Something clicked, and after reading the entry on Bloodrock I thought I had the right song but was still unsure.

Don't listen. You'll regret it. Really.

I went to YouTube and there it was…all 8 minutes and 30 seconds of it, in all its depressing glory. You can find it here.  A warning before you click the link: you will probably be depressed after listening to it.  Really, really depressed. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Why was this worthy of a blog post? I’d asked so many people about this and, since no one seemed to remember it, I began to think I was losing it. I’ve finally found the answer, and I’m so happy. At least, I was happy until I listened to the damn thing again.

So is this the most depressing song ever, or do you have another candidate? Feel free to post a comment and pass along your recommendation(s).

The trial finally concluded with verdicts of “not guilty” for each of the three counts; the only things that could be pinned to Casey were four counts of lying to the police. She was sentenced to four years, one year on each count, from which her time served was subtracted as well as the traditional “time off for good behavior.” The net result was that Casey was released a little over a week later.

Two weekends ago she was released. The press camped out at the jail to cover every exciting detail of her ex-perp walk. The end result was a quick trip by Casey from the jail to a waiting SUV, wearing a serious face until she got into the vehicle. A reporter got a picture of her as she entered wearing a smile of relief; afterward she was driven off. A news chopper tried unsuccessfully to follow her but was given the slip in the darkness. The release of her smiling image set the dogs off again, with all manner of regular folk and the media commenting nastily on why she was smiling and how sick they all felt at her seeming happiness.

Casey shows her patriotism before her world caved in.

You’d think it was all over, and could be forgiven for thinking so if you were a rational person. The news channels kept replaying the same thirty-seconds of Casey leaving the jail ad nauseaum the following day, with CNN’s reporters staying on-scene for hours after the non-event all the while discussing…what? The same few facts, conjecture, et cetera. As of today literally EVERYBODY is playing Where’s Waldo? and trying to find out where Casey went to.

My message to all the news outlets: STFU and move on!

Having said that, let me state the obvious: I think Caylee’s story was a tragedy. However, the public was not made privy to the details of the case; twelve jurors were. It was their job to decide whether or not the woman was guilty of murder beyond a reasonable doubt. Heard that before? It’s one of the basic tenets of our judicial system in this country. Given the evidence that was presented to them, they concluded that there wasn’t enough tangible evidence to lock her away or take her life. Despite her trial by media in which the woman was summarily condemned, the courts found her not guilty of the charges.

It’s all over now. Justice may not have been served by the legal system (at least according to all the armchair lawyers) but that’s how it goes in this country. Her life from this point forward, if you could call it that, will not be easy. She’ll be constantly recognized wherever she goes, and will not live a peaceful existence as if nothing ever happened. She’ll probably be spit upon, personally attacked, harassed and worse.  She’ll be lucky if some nutjob with a retribution complex doesn’t kill her in the first year of her freedom. She’ll be practically unemployable, at least in any capacity where she deals with the public.  She alienated her family (and probably most of her friends) so she’ll lead an isolated existence. Most, if not all, of these points could still be applied to her if she’d been given life in prison; the future she now faces in many ways is more unbearable than prison.

Let’s let this woman and the particulars of her case fade into the past and move on, shall we? The best we can hope for, if she was truly guilty, is a fate similar to OJ Simpson’s. Karma’s a bitch, and maybe she’ll end up in prison for something completely unrelated. Like it or not that may be the best that society’s collective rage can hope for.

Dayton radio has sucked hard for years.  Variety was sorely lacking; we have several country stations, an ‘album rock’ station that has been running the same format (with almost the same songs) since the seventies, an easy listening/contemporary station, several talk radio stations, and a few stations that play newer alt and hard rock. Oh, and the urban (read: rap) stations. It seemed that most of the stations were owned by Clear Channel, and they had severely limited playlists.   It’s for this reason that I can’t stand to listen to Cheap Trick, the Eagles, or Pat Benetar anymore.  It’s absolutely incredible that these bands and artists lasted as long as they did but only had one hit song apiece (at least according to Clear Channel.)

In November 2007 a local radio station changed it’s format and mantra to “We play anything.” Fly 92.9 started off great and played a lot of the radio mainstays, but many times a day would pull a song out of rock and roll heaven that hadn’t seen a turntable in years. You could count on being pleasantly surprised more often than not, and they breathed life into Dayton radio. At least on one end of the broadcast band.

Over the past couple of years, however, they’ve started slacking off. They don’t pull the moldy oldies out of the vaults like they used to. And more often that not they’ll play a song you’ve heard way too many times and say something like, “Betcha didn’t think we’d play this one today.”  Uh-huh. I really didn’t–after all, you already played it several times this past week, most recently yesterday afternoon…

So I’ve been getting more tweaked off when I hear their “We play anything” slogan. Will they really play anything?  What two pieces of music would be so unlikely for them to play and so stylistically different that airing them would validate their insipid marketing scheme? An idea occurred to me, so I visited their web page and submitted the following feedback (the wording’s not exact as I foolishly didn’t keep a copy for myself):  “I like your station but I am tired of your false advertising. You can’t truly say “We play anything” until you’ve played “Shaving Cream” by Benny Bell followed by Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture” during your peak daily listening hours. Oh, and if you did ever do that, I’d appreciate an email “heads up” to be sure I’ll be listening.”

Several hours later I received an email reply from program director Brad Waldo.  It read, and I’m quoting here, “I appreciate where you are coming from. We do not equate the ability to, and behavior of, “playing anything”, to the necessity of playing everything.  Thanks for listening. And if I do decide to do that segue, I will definitely send you an email to clue you in!”

Weasel-word marketing strikes again. Yes, we can play anything but we don’t see a need to play everything. But if you don’t play at least some oddball, totally incongruous pieces once in a while, can you truthfully state that you play anything? I haven’t heard “Shaving Cream” on local radio since the early eighties, and the only station that would’ve played the “1812 Overture” changed to country back in 1989. (For the sake of argument here I’m not counting the public radio stations. Their programming is so eclectic that it’s hard to tell what they’re playing when they’re playing it.)

In the meanwhile I’ve been listening to a new station. One of the longtime local country stations changed formats in March to become “Click 101-5,” a new ‘adult contemporary’ station. Their mix of songs is pleasing (for now)…we’ll see how long they remain fresh and relevant.

I bought my first Little Green Machine in 1994.  It was a first-generation, ugly, dark green box with one purpose: to suck up pet accidents and spills.  It was the only thing on the market at that time, and I desperately needed something to assist in cleaning up after an aging dog with bladder control issues.  It worked well, and I got several years’ use out of it for my $70.00 investment.  Eventually a plastic hose barb cracked inside the unit and I couldn’t find a replacement so I trashed it.  Bissell has always had a policy of refusing to supply internal repair parts to customers, thanks to paranoia about consumer lawsuits.

I purchased a newly redesigned model at that time—one that sort-of resembled an egg standing on its fat end.  It was a poor redesign with some flaws (like solution heaters that constantly failed) that I made do with for several years.  I must say here that Bissell was good about support.  After writing to complain twice about product failures, they replaced the unit both times at no charge.  The second exchange was for the first version of their 1400-series model (Figure 1) , which at the time was brand-new.

Figure 1. The Bissell Little Green.

I’ve been through three of these in the last six years.  After the first unit of the new series died, I began studying their design to see how I could service it myself (and extend its life a few years as well).  These things have gotten progressively more expensive, and my last replacement was priced just over $100.00.  For that amount of money I expect something to last longer than a year!

Quirks and Design Flaws

The first redesigned 1400-series model had a simple storage clip on its backside that you’d snap the hose’s sprayer wand into.  The wand was always popping out of the clip and hitting the floor, which would eventually crack the sprayer head and further decrease its already weak suction.  Other problems included: the solution heater would die, the sprayer would simply stop working, or would begin to clog after using the unit for six months or so.  The wand would drip cleaning solution after you finished using the unit and were putting the wand away.   Finally, the cleaner would develop a stench from the urine I’d be cleaning despite rinsing the unit‘s recovery tank after each use.  This is due to the way the recovery tank is designed.

Figure 2. Tank areas that collect waste material.

You can see by looking at Figure 2 that there are a couple of problem areas (circled in red) near the recovery tank’s top.  These seem to collect material that eventually begins to smell.  Simply swishing hot water around in the tank is not sufficient to clean the areas, and you cannot access the tank’s insides to physically wipe the surfaces clean. The sprayer head and wand connection point was designed such that dirty water tends to collect in the nooks and crannies which also creates an unsightly, stinky mess.  This junction also provides a break in the air stream and contributes to the unit’s biggest problem– it simply doesn’t have much suction power.  The area you clean will remain fairly damp.

Design Improvements in newer models

I kept that original 1400-series model going for three years, by my estimates about two times longer than I should’ve been able to.  The fixes were fairly simple for a geek to do.  The recovery tank sat on a very thin rubber gasket that was glued to the main unit’s base.  This was in addition to the rubber gasket on the tank itself.  The base unit’s gasket began to wear away after a time, and I managed to make a replacement from some sheet rubber I purchased off of eBay.  I cracked the sprayer head attachment apart and re-glued the pieces together with five-minute epoxy.  I also glopped extra epoxy into the designed-in gaps and cracks while I was at it, which helped increase suction.  I finally had to retire the unit after trying to discover why its motor was whining so loudly.  After I took the unit apart to possibly oil the motor I learned more about the unit’s Achilles’ heel.

The currently-sold unit has several design revisions that seem to address some of the problems.  The wand clip on the unit’s back has been redesigned and includes a swivel arm that locks the wand in place.  Hallelujah!  No more dropped sprayer wands!  The sprayer hose has been changed from a solid green to a greenish-tinted clear hose.  This allows the user to see how much crap is in the hose (and tell how well the suction is working).  The recovery tank’s base gasket is gone (shown in Figure 3 sans gasket), which also eliminated a source of fluid leakage into the base.

Figure 3. Redesigned recovery tank dock on base.

Finally, Bissell redesigned the sprayer head with better welds and eliminated the extra gaps.  This helps to a degree, but the redesign introduced several new ways for dirty solution to collect in the sprayer/wand connection and stink up the works.  They did nothing to redesign the collection tank tower, which still collects material that leads to ‘Stinky Tank syndrome.’  My current unit had its hose replaced twice, once under warranty.  (This may have been due to my sucking up hot water in order to flush and de-stink the unit.)  The original hose was a little too short and it was under stress when the wand was placed into the clip.  The stress also ended up breaking the clip after the unit was no longer under warranty.  I performed a couple of simple fixes to increase its suction but didn’t implement anything major.  I performed the second hose replacement myself, as I finally found a source for internal parts.  I had to buy a second unit while waiting for the parts to arrive as they were backordered for a month-and-a-half.

Why doesn’t it suck (enough)?

The Bissell Little Green’s designers had a challenge, I’m sure…how could they suck up a spill and easily separate the water from the air?  Most wet/dry vacs have a foam filter that the suctioned air passes through, which keeps the water out of the exhaust.  I’m sure the designers didn’t want their customers to deal with replacing a filter (liability lawsuits, you know!), given the tendency for most consumers to screw up the simplest of operations.  This probably led to the current design.

Suction is provided by a motor with a squirrel cage fan attachment located in the base.  Air and water are pulled into the sprayer head, through the hose and into the recovery tank.  The tower-like structure you saw in Figure 2 is divided in half.  The water falls into the tank since it’s heavier than the air, and the air exits the hole in the opposite side of the tower.  The air stream then passes the fan/motor assembly and is blown out the unit’s backside. Simple design, yes, but flawed.  The air has a high degree of moisture in it, and there is no filter of any kind to protect the metal motor and blade assembly.  If you have too much suction the air will have even more water in it; this will accelerate the disintegration of the motor and allow water to blow out of the exhaust port with the air.  You read that right—the motor will disintegrate faster.  This is the Achilles’ heel I mentioned earlier.  When I disassembled my last unit to try and oil the motor, I discovered that the blades and motor casing were so rusty that they practically fell apart in my hands.  That was what caused the motor to scream and whine.  This is a marketing textbook example of built-in obsolescence!  At the time I didn’t know where I could get repair parts, but now I know and will share the source with you.

Making Things Suck More

So, we know that the unit will eventually stop working due to the disintegration of the motor.  Should that stop us from making the unit work a bit better? NO!  If it’s going to have a finite life before we have to repair it, let’s mod it to perform its job better.

Figure 4. The Sprayer/Wand junction.

Look at the sprayer/wand connection in Figure 4.  You can see a rubber O ring that attempts to seal the wand/sprayer connection point.  In my last unit this O ring was so loose that no seal was taking place.  I went to the hardware store with the old ring and found a new one that was a little thicker.  Its size is given as a “number 32.”  I replaced this ring, which now requires the user to jockey around a bit when removing/reattaching the sprayer head.  The improvement is well worth the additional effort that will be required.

Now take a close look at the sprayer head/wand.  If you’ll notice, there’s a button that you have to press down on to remove the sprayer.  This is located on a molded plastic lever that flexes when the button is depressed.  This design feature also allows a good deal of suction to exit the hole around the lever.  Additionally, the end of the wand does not seal inside the sprayer head.  This is a second point that allows air to exit around the lever and allows dirty water to accumulate.  Sealing that leak will require a bit more work; however, we can significantly increase the suction by installing a flat rubber seal into the wand below the button/lever assembly.  How much additional suction does that give?  I don’t have a scientific method to gauge it, but by simply holding the sprayer head against my hand with the unit running before and after the mod, it feels as if I’ve approximately doubled the suction.

I took a piece of 1/16” thick sheet rubber and cut a 1.5-inch by 3.5-inch piece from it.  I then applied rubber cement around the edges of the piece (Figure 5) leaving the center dry.

Figure 5-a. Apply cement to pad edges on one side only.

Figure 5-b. The finished pad.

This is important!  If the rubber adheres to the lever, it will be extremely difficult to work the lever and remove the sprayer head.  Next, I folded a piece of paper from a magazine (Figure 6) and inserted it into the slot around the lever.

Figure 6. Protecting the lever from glue application.

This allows you to apply contact cement around the lever without accidentally getting glue on the lever itself.  Apply rubber cement to the inside of the wand in approximately the same area where the rubber will go as in Figure 7.

Figure 7. Apply glue into the wand.

After applying the cement into the wand, quickly pull the paper out of the slot.  Now wait about five minutes to allow the glue to get tacky.  After you’ve waited, flex the rubber piece in an arc as shown in Figure 8 and carefully insert it into the end of the wand with the glue side facing the glue inside the wand.  DO NOT ALLOW THE PIECE TO CONTACT THE GLUE INSIDE THE WAND UNTIL IT’S IN POSITION.  If you do, it will be extremely difficult to remove.  You may want to use forceps or tweezers to assist you in alignment.

Figure 8. Carefully placing the pad into the wand.

Once it’s aligned, press the rubber into place, exerting pressure around the edges of the rubber.  You may have to use a tool to reach in and push the edges down.

Figure 9. The pad in it's proper place.

Let the piece sit overnight to dry; then reattach the sprayer head and turn the unit on.  You can hear a little bit of air still exiting the hole around the button.  Hold the sprayer against one hand and cover that hole with your opposite thumb.  If you tried the suction before the mod, you should notice a considerable difference in the amount of suction after the mod.  If you wish to cover the hole with a piece of electrical tape you can easily seal the leak, and remove the tape when you wish to clean the unit.  Alternatively, simply cover the hole with your thumb as I do while using the Little Green.  I am considering milling a second channel around the end of the wand with my Dremel tool, then using a second O-ring to completely seal the connection.  This would allow for more comfortable use of the sprayer wand.

Some tips on using the Green Machine

1)  Clean the unit after each use by holding the sprayer head under warm (not hot! I learned my lesson…) running water.  I will sometimes mix some pine-scented cleaner with water in a bucket and pull that through the hose. Note that you can only suck so much fluid into the recovery tank; there’s a white line on the tank showing the maximum level.  When you’ve finished flushing the sprayer head and hose in this manner, hold the sprayer head above the unit pointing upward for a moment or two to allow all the remaining water in the hose to be sucked into the recovery tank.

2)  Stopping the dribbles. When you’ve finished cleaning a spot and you’ve turned the power off, hold the sprayer head above the unit pointing upward and depress the trigger. Hold the trigger in for a count of five before releasing it.  MAKE SURE THE POWER IS OFF BEFORE DOING THIS OR YOU’LL SPRAY HOT CLEANING SOLUTION ON YOURSELF OR SOMEONE ELSE. Performing this maneuver allows any cleaning fluid still in the hose/sprayer head to drain back into the unit, and prevents leakage when you’re moving the sprayer head around to clip it onto the unit.

3) Clean the recovery tank after each use. Do not allow material to stay in the recovery tank!  This allows the material to soil the plastic and contributes to ‘Stinky Tank syndrome.’  Dump the recovered material into the toilet and flush it. Use the toilet because any pet hair in the water may clog your sink drain.  Run hot water into the tank from the top hole, then turn and twist the tank to thoroughly swish the water around before emptying the tank again into the toilet.  Remove the rubber gasket from the bottom of the tank and clean it with soap and water or pine-scented cleaner as well.  Material tends to collect on the backside of that gasket and also creates a smell.  If you have a bucket that’s big enough, you can dump the entire tank into a water/pine cleaner mix and get things smelling a bit better.

4)  Use only distilled water in the unit. I cannot stress this enough.  The minerals in tap water can build up after awhile and collect in the heater assembly.  This can clog the sprayer when bits of the accumulated minerals fracture off and mix with the cleaning solution. When the sprayer wand gets clogged you’ll see that fluid has entered the head but nothing exits when you press the trigger.   To remove the clog you can usually insert a cotton swab into the channel inside the sprayer head, and gently move it around to catch and remove the clog.  Occasionally the clog gets wedged into the sprayer hole; this requires pushing a slightly-bent straight pin into the hole from the outside to push the clog out. You can then use the cotton swab to remove it.

The heater itself can be cleaned by first disassembling the unit and then removing the cover on the heater but it’s a major hassle.  The heater box sits atop some plumbing bits and has a thin hose entering and exiting on its sides. To get inside it you remove the screws that hold the top cover on.  You’ll see maze-like channels inside the heater, and should see whitish material inside those channels.  Those are the mineral deposits, and you remove them by scraping them out.  You’ll then replace the top cover and reassemble the base.  This can take up to an hour the first time you do it.

Getting Repair Parts

I don’t know why it took so long for me to find a parts dealer (despite Google), but Hesco Sales (www.hescoinc.com) will sell you any part they can get from Bissell. There’s a section on their website where you enter your unit’s model number and can pull up exploded diagrams of the unit to help identify your part. In my case the part data wasn’t available on their site. Several emails later they had the part information and made the part orderable. Note that they have a $25.00 minimum order, so my advice is to get a couple of the hose clips I mentioned earlier. They’re inexpensive and make good filler material for your order. Besides, you’ll eventually need them.

Hopefully you found this information useful, and maybe you will be able to save your unit from the trash heap (or have gotten the courage to rescue one from the thrift store).  If one person can keep their unit running longer I’ve done my job.

 I worked for the local PBS station in a previous life in IT support. I considered it a dream job—I not only supported computers but got to indulge my interests in audio, video, doing voiceovers, and TV.  It was really great for the first year-and-a-half…and then things started coming unglued.  Besides the fact that the working environment was, as one of their video editors put it, an “effing Peyton Place,” the top management was inept.  There was a President/General Manager who didn’t understand many of the technical complexities and didn’t care (surprise!), he just wanted to use every available resource to make money.  The Chief Engineer at the time, and my boss, was a big Teddy Bear who was always eager to please and would roll on his employees and his decisions when the President barked.  Those of us who understood how things worked and asked detailed questions about proposed plans were deemed “negative and un-cooperative.”  I was unfortunate enough to get tangled in some of those “Peyton Place” machinations and, after experiencing a catastrophic event that is every IT support person’s nightmare, was eventually invited to tender my resignation as the station and I were “no longer a good fit.”  They were generous in that I was allowed to work part-time for six months at full salary, while I searched for a new job.  (They were probably afraid I’d do something nasty to them or their computers, or sue them for wrongful termination.  But after another staff person admitted they’d been deliberately corrupting the station’s program rights database and I got her fired, you’d think they would have understood I don’t play that way. Whatever—I got another, better job within a few months.)

That nightmare catastrophic event was the failure of a hard drive in the station’s PBS messaging and email server. At the time PBS gave every station an Apple Quadra 650 (as I remember) that ran a program called FirstClass.  The machine came with a magneto-optical drive (remember those?) for backups.  A backup program ran a script nightly, and the backup discs were regularly rotated.  The problem with most backup systems is that you cannot tell if your backups are any good unless you try to restore them.  One evening the main hard drive in the Quadra failed.  An attempt to restore the previous day’s data failed, as well as the day before that, and the day before that.  I was finally able to restore the data from several weeks before, but a lot of data was lost.  Since most of the staff used FirstClass as a virtual filing cabinet for all their data (despite being warned many times not to), several important people like the business director were ‘inconvenienced’ in a major way.  I admitted the failure to the entire staff in the weekly meeting and accepted the blame for the failure without making excuses.  That must’ve been a first; the director of corporate sponsorship told me later with a hint of awe that he really admired me for doing that.  Later I found out that the business director went nuclear in a closed door meeting with the upper level staff and ranted, “Somebody’s got to pay for this! There has to be consequences!”  Not long afterward the invitation came that forever changed my life for the better.

In the ten+ years since I’ve thought a lot about that phase of my life, and what I’d have done differently.  We were always pressured to cut costs and do more with less, but I should have invested in a couple of identical hard drives to practice installing the backups onto.  I should have retired those damned MO discs and simply used hard drives in a regular rotation.  Forcefully reminding the staff to copy their valuable information onto other media on a weekly basis would have been a good idea.  (So would having a boss that would make a decision and back it and his staff under pressure, but I digress.)  I’ve also thought a lot about the business manager’s insistence for blood in retribution for his loss—not in a vengeful way, but in a realization that the bloodshed didn’t solve one single problem.  Instead of looking at the issue and saying “It doesn’t matter how we got here—how can we work together to solve this crisis?” the only acceptable option was to “kill” the person who screwed up regardless of that person’s previous record.  (In my case the other entanglement sealed my fate, but my boss’s revelation that the President/GM never thought I was the right pick for the job probably meant I was a goner anyway.)

I’ve seen this problem before, many times—most recently in the case of Tony Hayward, BP’s beleaguered CEO.  Tony was probably like most corporate CEOs.  Most if not all of the company’s daily operations were not even on his personal radar except in the broadest sense.  His primary concern was most likely how to grow BP and increase its value for shareholders.  Things like safety violations and drill rig design compromises were left to others many management levels below him, and when those topics arose they probably never got to his level.  Yet BP made Hayward its public face, a spokesperson charged with soothing frayed nerves and tempers while trying to spin the tragedy into a less negative event.  There were a couple of problems with that decision.  Hayward was not from the States so he had no idea about the area and what it provided to the country.  He was unable to soothe tempers or nerves when various attempts to stop the leak failed.  He was chained by company lawyers into political triplespeak that shielded the company from serious legal consequences if they admitted certain things outright. And he had a fatal flaw many enlightened people share: he could see the futility of the blame game and he visibly displayed his intolerance for it.

Keep this in mind: I’m not advocating for Mr. Hayward or his company in any way. What the company did not only in its reported flaunting of safety rules and regulations as well as compromising the well’s design is inexcusable.  The best thing BP could have done early on was to accept full blame and financial responsibility without leaving wiggle room by saying they’d pay “all legitimate claims.”  The media were in full offensive position before, but feelings toward BP became more hostile after that statement was made.  Then came the thousands of reporters asking the same inane questions over and over again, as well as the constant interviews with “the little people” (as BP chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg gaffed during a press conference) showing how their lives were devastated.  All of this constant attention and yammering is like a hammer, beating the carcass of the horse long after the beast’s life has departed. I believe BP gets it—they screwed up in the most public way possible and were caught in flagrante delicto.  I believe they know exactly how much trouble they’re in and how much the environment will be impacted, but perhaps not how much it will cost them.  Mr. Hayward had finally had enough when he said he wanted his life back—a statement that further infuriated the populace but was one of the more heartfelt expressions of humanity to come out of BP’s side of the tragedy.

But it still wasn’t over.  “His life? What about ours?” the residents of the Gulf started to wail and cry.  Then Congress got involved, doing what they do best—spinning their wheels and wasting taxpayer dollars by putting on a public spectacle worthy of Roman gladiators, attempting to beat the oil industry in general and BP in particular into a bloody carcass for the delight of the American people. It got to be too much for Mr. Hayward, who had started the hearing hat in hand with apologies from BP.  When the inanity continued and refused to let up, he returned after a break with an attitude of disdain for the process.  He began answering questions with perceived contempt, even looking at his watch at one point as if to ask when it would finally be over.  He left the hearing more despised than before, but the entire point was missed by many people who watched every interminable moment of the proceedings.  The exercise was a waste of time.  It might have made people feel better by putting a human face on the disaster rather than a corporate one, but not one more gallon of oil was captured or prevented from flowing when it was over. Congress doubtless thinks they did their job and justified their place in the government, but all they really did was to stir an already smelly pot (literally and figuratively) while fanning the flames of public outrage.

When will we learn?  It is every single person’s responsibility to do what they can, to pull together in times of crisis to solve whatever problem has presented itself.  As for the Gulf spill, there will be time after the well is plugged and the cleanup is underway to assign blame and collect retribution.  Oh, and you media types?  Why don’t you do right now what you do so well after a disaster—turn your cameras off, go away, and stop making a circus out of this mess.  Only this time, give updates when something newsworthy is happening, and try to find some bright spots in this dark night of our souls. Stop being so incendiary and be more helpful. Screw the ratings for once. That goes for especially for you, CNN—dump the ‘bug’ on your screen pointing out how many days the oil crisis has gone on.  When the blame game is played everyone loses.