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Even more adventures with a Rover 114

I had to go to an AutCAD training course a couple of weeks ago.

That was a 45 mle round trip and on the Thursday I got flagged down and told my brake lights were not working.
I ran around three garages to find some stop and tail bulbs, put one in and still no brake lights so I knew the brake light switch had gone.

The brake light switch on this car is a spring actuated by pressing the brake pedal. This is my third Metro and they have all broken that spring. It's at the top of the pedal in the bulkhead between the engine compartment and the drivers bay and the manual says first remove your steering column. I searched for a replacement part and got responses by the Friday but they wanted £23 for delivery and it was a used item so no idea of the life span.

I rang Kwik Fit who suggested an auto-electrician for the job so I rang the auto electrician who'd replaced my alternator and battery last month and asked if they could do the job. Got the car down to them Saturday morning bright and early and left it with them. By 10:30am they had concurred with my diagnosis and had a new part on the way. I went to town, got the bus out to them and paid just over £35 for the full repair.

It's really funny how much space you get behind you when you start using hand signals to indicate braking and I am happy the car is fixed.

Tek Fun

MsP is doing well .. at least she's a little less pink which shows her allergy is subsiding under the effects of the steroid injection she had on Friday. I have also decided that no matter how much she nags, walks so well on her lead and is norty about not going out, she is going to have to become a totally indoor cat.

Mother came for a visit this week and Tuesday we went to see The Devil Wears Prada. We got back late that evening and I went to check emails. Nada ... zero ... zilch was happening. No graphics signal at all. Ho hum. It's a Athlon XP 2000 on a Asus A7V333 mobo in an ITee case. The case is pretty and was mooted as a great new design but I think it got beat by the lack of modability and the Shuttles plus some design issues. More about those later.

I did a hard reboot - switched the whole thing off and then back on again - still nada. I swapped the KVM cables. That didn't fix it. So I opened the case up and took out all the RAM took out all the IDE drives and tried booting it with just the graphics and 1G of RAM. Still nada. Figuring it was something nasty I went to spec up a new machine.

After a few hours speccing up a nice little number, a friend encouraged me to try a different power supply so I borrowed a 250W and plugged that in. Hey presto! life!

So I have ordered a new case and a new PSU. The ITee case is an orginal design but, in my opinion, it has some flaws. The case is very well well constructed but

• air flow is a problem
• the PSU is at the bottom of the case with no meshing around it to give it some air
• the PSU is non-standard- the mains socket is on the side of the machine with a lead to the PSU from that socket so you'll have to mod up a replacement PSU
• you have to be aware of the power leads when shutting the case; if you trap them, the steel case will cut the leads so use the cable tidy that comes with the case
• heat rises and that PSU always got hot in there, so much so that I ran it with the case open for years
• long IDE cables allow you to lay the back of the case down, but long or short they clog up the innards of the computer when the case is closed causing airflow problems
• space for two 8cm fans but you have to fit a 6cm because an 8cm fouls on the IDE cables as they come off the board

This case was part of my first build and I bought the maroon one because I liked the availability of different colours. The case could be much improved by a deeper recess for the mobo - or a longer bay for the drives, some better cable management for the IDE cables, and a lot more case meshing to improve airflow but I don't think even that will get this case up to spec for the heat some of todays CPUs kick out. I don't yet know if a standard PSU will fit in the case without any mods to the case itself.

Good bits were excellent build quality, the colour - which has never scratched, the different design and the clip in drive bays. This was one of the first cases I came across with clip in drive bays; necessary for this design and so easy to use. But the heat issues mean I am getting a new case. I might take down my old Celeron and see how that does in there with a 250W PSU but I will mod the base of the case and cut/ream/drill holes underneath to get some air to it. Be a shame to see it go after all these years.

Further Adventures with MsP

Yesterday, I noticed a lump under MsP's chin. She objected to it being touched.

I checked it this morning and it had got a lot bigger and the objections a bit louder so I took her off to the vet's again.

She's had a lightweight steroid injection - she had a full strength one on Oct 9th so it's just running up to four weeks and we decided the lighter jab would be safer. She's also got 10 days of Antirobe to take in case it is an infection.

Poor little baby looked a bit queasy once I had got her home.

The vet also said to continue feeding her the Hill's Prescription diet z/d Low Allergen dried food so she is back on that after a bout of diarhea this week too.

We go back next Wednesday.