Recently I spent 40 minutes on the phone dealing with my Aunt’s laptop, which had mysteriously stopped getting on their household WiFi Network. My mother also had a problem with her laptop’s touchpad–it had stopped working, and she could only use the laptop with a USB mouse attached. What did both of these problems have in common?
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Friday morning I got into the family car (1998 VW Passat with manual transmission) and, depressing the clutch, started the engine. The car rocked backwards (I normally leave the gearshift in reverse when parked, plus the parking break was on), the engine died, and the clutch petal stayed on the floor (not good!). The clutch petal had lost all resistance, so I couldn’t shift the car. Looking under the hood, I found that a hose leading from the brake fluid reservoir had popped off and sprayed brake fluid around. I connected it back to the reservoir, and started the engine in Neutral, but the clutch didn’t magically start working. (Sigh…I like easy solutions.) Twenty Dollar bike to the rescue!
Back in January the power adapter failed for my Silicon Dust HD HomeRun (a network HTDV tuning device).
They replaced my power supply and claimed that they were seeing only a 1% failure rate. As late as March 28th they were sticking to the "less than a percent" figure. Eventually on June 3rd they posted an offer to replace all SW20-S050-15 power adapters. Unfortunately for me, they did not send an email to all customers, so I did not find out about this until my power adapter failed (today) and I went to submit a trouble ticket and saw the notice. I guess that "1%" were causing them a lot of problems…
I've been very happy with the HD HomeRun unit itself, but once again, the el-cheapo power adapter is my weakest link and is keeping me from watching TV until the replacement arrives (and since it happend on a Friday, I'm probably without TV until next Wednesday at least).
So, if you have a HD HomeRun with one of the older adapters, head on over to the replacement page and order a replacement before yours dies. (So far the forums haven't listed any fires started by the failing power adapters, just dimples of melted plastic on the side due to the failure, so hopefully they are not dangerous.)
My iRobot Roomba 4150 started to exhibit a behavior that I hadn't seen before. After starting up, the robot would "wiggle" as it went forward for a few feet, then turn, then move forward a few more feet while wiggling. After a few turns, it would stop and issue a double "uh-oh" sound. After cleaning and removing the vacuum brushes, the behavior was still hapening, so I decided it must be a problem with the sensors or motors on the robot. The robot's wheels would still turn manually, and they would pop up and down into the body as normal. I tried cleaning the clif sensors and that didn't fix the problem. Finally, I blew compressed air into the drive wheel compartment and that fixed the problem. Aparently, the rotary encoders on one of the wheels had gotten jamed up with dirt.
The iRobot website did mention an OSMO update that is supposed to fix this issue, but according to the serial number on my roomba, it had already received the update. I guess removing the debris from the wheel is the better solution.