Tag: comparison

MicroSD speed comparison – genuine cards and a Chinese fake (WHL #96)

Since I don’t want to become the BigClive of the text blogging world, I pretty much have to stop rambling about fake flash drives (NVMe, SATA SSD, USB drives and SD cards) from China. Clive himself knows that too much ozone content makes his audience yawn ;)

So, as Easter (read: the couple holidays around it) is a great opportunity to run some backups and digitally clean up the place, here’s a quick speed test comparison on the history of MicroSD cards. It all started with my troublesome RPi4 having high iostat values all the time, leading to a new card for my laptop backup drive, which in return handed down his MicroSD to the Pi. […]


Brand New Portable SSD 1TB 2TB External Hard Drive Type-C USB 3.0 High-Speed External Storage Hard Disks For Laptops/Desktop/Mac (WHL #95)

AliExpress and their stupid game rules finally made me (inadvertently) buy* something that I heard about at least 13 years ago…a full-sized USB hard disk that only houses a tiny USB stick!

*Ackchyually, that is not quite correct. Like with the NVMe drive of WHL #92 that took me a long time to get refunded (and it only happened via PayPal, since AE to this day strongly believes in returns to fake warehouses in Afghanistan), this one also ended in a dispute and now I get to return it in exchange for a full refund. This time, though, to a warehouse in Germany, so I unfortunately cannot keep it, but now that I know how to find these…

But first things first, this is the fake USB drive that I remember seeing all over the interwebs:

Funny back then, but it probably consisted of a fully working USB drive, just a very small one compared to the expected HDD. […]


More GEEETECH 1kg 1.75mm 1KG(2.2LBS) Pure PETG, 3D Printer Filament, Vacuum Packaging,Tangle-Free, 3d printing materials (WHL #89F2)

Results are in!

In the last blog post #89, I showcased my rookie mistake of printing large objects across two spools of filament. Yeah, it still sticks together, but there’s warping (hence a large crack) and a color mismatch.

Since then, I printed a couple more of these ducts. And I contacted Geeetech (no complaint or formal refund process, just plain messages to the seller) in parallel to resolve this issue.

Let’s start with the mail exchange. Generally, those are very nice folks. Some sellers require significant pressure to offer a customer-friendly solution; most of the time, those sellers *know* they’re selling subpar shite and aren’t too keen on keeping an unsatisfied customer. […]


CEM DT-9939 multimeter leads (WHL #88)

Just an oddball thing that I discovered this week when lending out the leads of my newest multimeter, a CEM DT-9399. While the unit was an absolute bargain for what it can do, and the only thing to complain about is the slow continuity test mode and the slow Wireless USB (!) data transfer, this post really is about the boring leads. They just happened to be the only ones around in the office, and the boss asked for a spare multimeter that he could take home for the weekend for some rudimentary electrical testing, likely on an AC device. Well, better safe than sorry, don’t hand over the regular (non-safety) 4mm leads with some add-on test prods – give him the leads that came with the 1000V CAT III/600V CAT IV meter, right? […]


Dremel 575 Right Angle Attachment (WHL #78)

I recently got a Dremel 575 90° adapter for tackling a problem that would have been much easier to solve in 4D space – and I returned it the next day for a new unit. It was running pretty rough due to the input shaft actually wobbling around by a millimeter, but even with that fixed in the second unit, it still has a very harsh, grinding, mechanical sound to it. I do not dare to run this at full speed of my 35krpm Dremel 4000, although the one-page manual does not specify any restrictions.

(I know, colors are off, I twiddled with the camera settings on my recent vacation…that made me miss a blog post on top of that!) […]


AVM FRITZ!Box 7362 SL to 7520 upgrade + 7530 unlocking (#P39)

Quick reminder/PSA: Router patch week in every parent’s basement starts in a dozen days. Be prepared!

Not actually sure what type of…internet-free telephone service box thing my mom is using in the inherited farm house, but at my place, I needed an upgrade. Until earlier this week, an AVM Fritz Box 7362 SL (the cheapo 1&1 branded one) provided service. Bought that sucker 8 years and a month ago and it’s running just fine – except for the fact that it is considered EoL by AVM. That however is debatable, since on the one hand AVM announced EoM (end of maintenance) and EoS (service) dates for that box type to be June and December of 2019 respectively, but on the other hand nowadays no longer states exact dates for any product and has released FritzOS 7.13 for it just last month. […]


Pre-Facelift Tesla Model S LED number plate lights (WHL #70)

It’s time for cheap lights on expensive cars because of the friggen 3G mobile phone network. Yeah, that sounds perfectly alright.

Two weeks ago I ordered the MCU2 upgrade for my 2015 Tesla Model S at the Service Center Frankfurt. Ever since the possibility for that retrofit was announced by St. Elon, I lusted after it, yet of course it only was made available in the alternative Elon Time™ dimension on time and was delayed forever for everyone else, especially for AP1 cars like mine. Some day in between the recall bombshell of the MCU1 dropped and Tesla extended warranty of that part to 100k miles / 160Mm or 8 years max, and some months later the price for MCU1 cars was reduced from 2500€ (inclusive VAT) to 1550€ (same), as those do not need the AP3 computer refresh. […]


Supermicro X9SRW-F Ivy Bridge EP compatibility comparison (#P33)

Some canned content for today – back when making the Supermicro 2011 board fit my needs (#P23,#P24), I stumbled upon the Ivy Bridge thing. Technically, the two rack servers that I got should both be compatible with the E5-2600 series (Sandy Bridge EP), as well as E5-2600v2 series (Ivy Bridge EP). The product website states that “BIOS version 3.0 or above is required” for this to work, and both boards run the most recent version (not that there’s so many versions to choose from). Both had a E5-2630L installed, so SB-EP. […]


3D printed switch repair parts (#P31F1)

Some more details on the Bosch oven repair. These are the replacement parts that I ordered from Sculpteo, which, according to its own website, is the market leader in online ordered printed parts. Sculpteo also happened to be bought by BASF this spring, and they’re mainly printing in France but offer support in German (with offices in Germany, I think). They offer laser cutting as well but charge additional shipping cost for those, which made me skip parts of my order…

The part in question was already featured in WHL #61 (crappy automated model generation) after which I recreated it by hand. […]


Brennenstuhl PM 231E power meter zero reading fix (#P19)

Quick fix today – a colleague recently complained to me about his Brennenstuhl Schuko power meter only reading a static “0.0W” regardless of the load that was connected to it. Display was fine, the outgoing Schuko was fine (we checked with a 2kW space heater), but the unit would display no power usage at all.

As there’s no long tri-wing bits (bastards!) at work, I took the unit home only to discover that my bits are also too short to reach the damn screws. He said he didn’t care and was ready to buy another unit (I kindly recommended the ELV Energy Master Basic 2, which will serve as comparison unit later), so I drilled into the case to widen access a little. […]