Monday, July 19, 2010

XBox 360 Modded Controller

Well, I cracked open an XBox 360 controller this weekend and installed a modchip for a neighbor. It was relatively easy. Nothing really to report. It was an 8 mode chip purchased off ebay for under 20 bux shipped. 6 wires. power, ground, led hookup (to see the blinks for what mode you are in), the mode button and the two triggers. A little soldering and it was firing on all cylinders. Rapidly.

Only thing was the placement of the chip and the mode button. i had to cut a little of the case in order for the controller board to fit back in (nothing was cut on outside of case, jut a little plastic on the inside) and then bend the masts of the mode button down but it seems to be working just fine. Took about 20 minutes.

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

SUA1500RM2U clicking

I bought a rack mountable APC unit for all my machines to plug into. Its been very nice. Saved me a bunch of times. I have a LOT of stuff plugged into it but it still has barely a load registering.

Since i have had my AC on, it has been doing a lot of clicking, going back and forth between On Battery and On Line. the past week, it was doing it so much that it drained the batteries and then subsequently shut off which then shut everything plugged into it off. Not good. So, after some troubleshooting with a buddy, we came to the conclusion that it wasnt getting enough juice off the circuit. We believe the amps were dropping and the devices i have plugged into it, even tho they were shoing a major load, they were at the threshold of amps that that thing can sustain.

We are going to run a dedicated circuit to it and ill post results.

Monday, July 5, 2010

demoting DC that is primary DNS

Yipes. Not good. long story short, change your DHCP scope options to include a new DNS server of different servers first. Make sure there are NO WINS entries if you dont use WINS. Let that cook for a few days so everyone gets the new settings. Go through your static IP machines and make sure they are changed too. Then demote and change your DNS server entries between servers.

If something messes up, you can make the machine name a domain admin and it will fix your problems. You can then take those machine names out after a few days of propagation. Just for your notes, any server software installation that is Microsoft based (exchange, crm, etc) or anything that uses authentication, will fail if you dont do the above mentioned.