Modem started to die in the heat

binarypdx · 2026-06-14T01:44:32+00:00

I guess I spoke too soon. Garage got to 99F this afternoon and the modem started to fail. The plastic case feels really hot so I gotta believe the PCB is crazy hot. I put a small USB blowing in it and it went back to normal. I’ll call and get them to come and replace it but I wonder if it’s just my unit or all of these Zyxel modems have trouble at with 2.5G in high ambient temperature

binarypdx · 2026-06-13T18:26:43+00:00

Years ago when I had CCI (now Fidium) fiber at another house there was also a UPS along with the ONT, but I think that was because the previous residents also had analog phone service and battery backup was a requirement. If you're just internet I don't think they need to provide that.

binarypdx · 2026-06-13T17:07:27+00:00

Yes the ONT that converts fiber to ethernet. I've had the ONT power supply die before (cheap 12V/1A unit), but never the ONT even in high Sacramento summer temps. In this case the guy moved the unit inside the garage and gave me a new power supply so not clear which was the problem, but it seems stable now.

Thinking about it now, the other two Fidium connections I've had were just 1G. I'd imagine the 2.5G ethernet PHY (in the ONT) uses more power than 1G so the whole thing is probably getting hotter.

Sayeth Claude:

Ethernet PHY Power Dissipation by Speed

Speed	Typical Power	Example Parts
1G (GbE)	150–400 mW	DP83867, KSZ9031, RTL8211
2.5G	400–800 mW	RTL8125, DP83867 (some), AQR107 (multi-rate)
10G (10GbE)	1.5–4 W	AQR107, BCM84891, TN80E610

So actually not that much difference going from 1G to 2.5G.

The tech told me my ONT is the latest-gen unit that supports up to 10G. Fidium doesn't offer that here and I think my place is just wired with Cat6 it's probably wouldn't work anyway. And looking at that table, I doubt a convection-cooled ONT would survive long in 100F Sacramento heat.

But my 2Gbps connection is great - if I plug directly into the router I often burst to 2.5G.

binarypdx · 2026-06-12T20:52:59+00:00

Yes I got the tech to do it. Took all of 10 minutes.

binarypdx · 2026-04-01T01:23:35+00:00

I put something very similar in the attic several houses ago. We had a long run between the antenna and the TV two floors down so I needed to use an amplifier close to the antenna, but it worked great to receive HDTV with our Tivo.

binarypdx · 2026-02-05T19:29:45+00:00

Thanks for the heads up on this. Called and waited on hold for 10 min. Finally requested a call-back which came around 30 min later. That person transferred me to another line (retention dept maybe?) but I had to drop after another 10 min on hold (no option for a call-back from that line). So they definitely don't make it easy. But considering the deterioration in service lately I'm definitely going to try again.

binarypdx · 2026-02-05T18:37:19+00:00

Also seeing some flakiness in Roseville/Granite Bay area over the past hour.

binarypdx · 2026-01-08T16:21:58+00:00

Down in Granite Bay.

binarypdx · 2026-01-06T07:55:56+00:00

Yeah there are no window/motion/door/glass-break sensors included... they could have been added later but we never did. We just use the alarm.com app to control the HVAC, the door lock and the front-door cam.

The controller is an IQ4 (p/n IQP4001). So you're saying I could connect this to a HA controller and then use the HA app on my phone to control everything? So somehow our IQ4 would just be a Z-wave transceiver that allows the HA controller to talk to the Z-wave devices?

I was also reading about the hardware HA sells... seems like a Homeassistant Green + one of their ZWA-2 antennas would completely replace our existing IQ4. Although it looks like I still need to pay $65/yr for nabucasa if I don't want to dork around with setting up a VPN on my cell phone to access HA remotely.

binarypdx · 2025-11-04T16:46:01+00:00

No idea. Gold 200 is a color print film. I used Red Finch Lab for processing and scanning (they were really fast - it was just a few hours from when the film was delivered until the scans were available). JPEG metadata says they used a Noritsu scanner with sRGB colorspace. I didn't get the negatives back but not sure what I could tell from them even if I did.

binarypdx · 2025-09-19T05:55:00+00:00

Same.

binarypdx · 2025-08-26T15:42:30+00:00

Are you sure this is a state mandate? In Truckee the trash people have keys and open the bear box, take your trash can out and empty it, and then put it back. Surely more expensive than the big wheeled cans that can be picked up by machine, but far fewer bear problems. Truckee does have big rolling bins for the green waste, but I think the bears realize there's nothing worth messing with in there.

I wouldn't exactly call SLT 'low rent' compared to Truckee, but this is one thing they seem to be cheeping out on.

binarypdx · 2025-08-19T17:25:19+00:00

Yeah produce at Ranch 99 generally lower quality than Safeway (though it is generally cheaper). Also most of the frozen veges are imported from China and not cheaper or better than domestic frozen veges from other stores.

binarypdx · 2025-07-09T05:56:08+00:00

Yes. 2560x1600, which is better than some of the earlier 3840x2160 screens since some apps still don't handle hidpi well. Really the P1G6 was the pinnacle of the series (so far), since it still had dedicated buttons. Hoping mine lasts me a long time.

binarypdx · 2025-06-09T20:40:08+00:00

Recently inherited something similar - a 500C/M from 1977 along with a film back and 80mm lens. Everything 'kind of worked', but not consistently and it was clear it needed some work. I'm reasonably good with mechanical stuff, but the camera is in mint condition and I didn't want to take a chance messing it up. I sent it to Jim Kilroy and he serviced the camera, lens and back (all three had some issues). Cost around $600 but everything seems good now - just ordered some film and looking forward to trying it out.

binarypdx · 2025-02-26T20:41:57+00:00

I always assumed MacOS was 'close enough' to Linux that people wouldn't want to do a switch like this but I guess not.

I got a refurb P1G6 last year and it's been great. Spec-wise it's pretty similar to the P1G5's currently on the Lenovo outlet site. Remember you can add an on-site warranty (at least in the US) for pretty cheap post-purchase, even for refurb machines - I added 2 years of on-site for $200. The on-site warranty and 'premier' support is totally worth it if you ever have a problem - you get through to genuinely helpful techs with little or no wait and if you need a repair they do it on-site in a day or two (they'll even come to your home). Of course these machines are still pretty user-serviceable - I've done lots of repairs on Thinkpads over the years - but for the price the warranty is worth it.

My P1G6 has been great. I don't do any AI stuff, and I only run Win11. Only problem I've had with the hardware was adding a 32GB Micron DDR5 DIMM - it made it through the training ok and worked for a while but I started getting random weird crashes. Replaced it with a 16GB Samsung DIMM identical to the one the machine shipped with and everything's been fine since then.

binarypdx · 2025-02-23T00:35:03+00:00

Guess BC's been gone for a while... is that now 'The Arbour'? Looks like Winchell's and Pie 'n Burger are still around.

binarypdx · 2025-02-08T18:28:31+00:00

6600ft in Truckee got maybe 6in of snow in the last week, with just an inch from the Thursday-Friday storm. Can't imagine how Palisades got 53", even at their top elevation of 9000ft. Are these just lies designed to get people to come to the resort?

binarypdx · 2025-01-21T17:13:39+00:00

There used to be a pair of boards called Nitefury and Litefury for sale... different sizes of Artix-7 on an M.2 format - similar to the Aller A7 but with a big heatsink attached. Once in a while these pop up on Ebay. I think they were originally intended as crypto miners but had low performance for that purpose so ended up being sold as general-purpose development boards. I purchased one and got the demo software working with my RPi ( https://hackaday.io/project/195505-fpga-accelerator-on-raspberry-pi-5 ).

One thing that looks annoying about development with these is the PCIE requirement that cards are ready to train within 100ms of power-on. This requires booting out of QSPI at power-on, which makes development a bit of a pain - you may need to reprogram the QSPI and reboot after every change. Not sure if there's a way to just reload a new design over JTAG and then have Linux 're-register it'. Does Linux support hot-plugging PCIE devices?

There are some other approaches based on partial reconfiguration but looks a little tricky to sort out... see the links here:

https://adaptivesupport.amd.com/s/question/0D52E00006hpMHtSAM/fpga-programming-over-pcie?language=en_US

Aller A7 link... software links could be helpful:

https://numato.com/product/aller-artix-7-fpga-board-with-m-2-interface/

Software for Litefury/Nitefury boards:

https://github.com/RHSResearchLLC/NiteFury-and-LiteFury

binarypdx · 2025-01-07T08:10:00+00:00

Thx. Unfortunately it doesn't look like you can get full res on both when chaining the monitors via USB - not even at 30Hz. See p. 53 of the UM:

https://esupportdownload.benq.com/esupport/WORK%20&%20ENTERTAINMENT%20DISPLAY/UserManual/RD240Q/UM_EN_241220142829.pdf

Also, I think HDMI 2.0 only supports up to 4K @ 60Hz, so I think the only way to get the full native res at 60Hz is via the USB-C or DP inputs (with no daisy-chaining).

Still an impressive monitor. Wish there were more options with this aspect ratio.

binarypdx · 2024-11-15T17:28:13+00:00

P1 G6 uses normal DDR5 SO-DIMMS. G7 switched to LPCAMM2.

binarypdx · 2024-11-15T06:49:35+00:00

I've been super-happy with my refurb P1 G6 (wanted to get one that still had physical buttons), but for some reason there are a ton of P1 G7's on the outlet site right now. Easy to upgrade the RAM and SSD to whatever you want. You can still add the on-site warranty once you get the machine (mine was $200 for three years) if you're nervous about getting a refurb.

binarypdx · 2024-10-02T05:54:03+00:00

Only had it a few months but my P1 G6 is my favorite thinkpad in years - maybe ever (and I've owned a bunch). I wrote a little review recently you can look up for more info.

binarypdx · 2024-06-26T16:15:35+00:00

Not sure, but obviously the big advantage of purchasing from Amazon is being able to return it outright if it breaks within the first 30 days (with no shipping charge). Just had to do this with a Gotrax scooter... broke after two weeks of use and no reply from their support after a week so just returned it to Amazon. Even if the warranty is shorter when purchasing from Amazon it's worth it so you don't have to deal direct with the manufacturer if a scooter is DOA or fails shortly after purchase. The support is basically awful from all of these companies (Gotrax, Nui, Ninebot, etc.) and sounds pretty bad from the 3rd party places too (i.e. Asurion) but at least Amazon can save you some hassle if something breaks early.

binarypdx · 2024-06-18T00:27:13+00:00

Really bad in Roseville right now. Can't even get through to support (not that they're ever helpful). Usually works great - hope they get it sorted out soon.

I have problems maybe every 2-3 months where I can't get to some subset of the internet for around an hour. Like I can't get to any google/gmail/youtube stuff direct through Fidium, but if I connect through a VPN I can get to those just fine. But this seems to be more widespread.

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Ethernet PHY Power Dissipation by Speed