David Hingtgen

Sci-Fi needs brighter green.  Neon or GTFO.  

18 hours ago, Chronocidal said:

I noticed this too, but I would just chalk it up to general KO imprecision.  I wouldn't be surprised if it was related to the check locking tabs, and their relative size.  Everything's just a little off compared with the originals.  It's not enough to make it fall apart (mostly), but things just don't fit quite as well.

After checking Roy again, I do think it's the "tabs way to the rear" that slot into the top of the chest plate near the airbrake---as in, the ones the KO really needs to have sanded down or it's nigh-impossible to transform without cracking/snapping something.  So now I'm trying to "thicken them back up" with nail polish, to find the perfect balance of "holds it down a bit better in jet mode" and "can actually transform to battroid mode without making terrifying bending and cracking noises".   Of course, a genuine Roy does both right out of the box...

I think the KO's tabs are too TALL (and need sanding down), but also too THIN (front-back mainly) and need thickening.  Which creates problems in both modes...

I'm trying to get my Fugu Jetfire fitting together as well as possible, but I just can't figure out how to fix this gap at the intake----my original Roy fits nice and tight there, but there's no obvious lock or post---I can't figure out what holds the chest plate down on the original, and why Jetfire is so loose and just kind of "floats above the intake"   

New thought:  Prime Day is next week.  And they keep bugging me about getting the Prime Card.   $200 instant gift card...

5070 super family is "too far away, and will be too scarce and too expensive at launch".  Plus, even a 5060 is going to "outperform the rest of my PC"----my new plan is "get a 5060 right now to tide me over, wait until the 5070 Super Ti is readily available in a pre-build, then buy a whole new PC".  (assuming the current trend of "it's cheaper to buy a pre-built then make it yourself" holds true).   My case is so old that it'd be a poor decision to re-use.  The PSU is probably the only thing I could re-use in a new build, so buying EVERYTHING individually would be a lot more than a pre-build likely would.   

$199.99?  Oof.  

Well, with the super 5070 and super 5070 ti news, I think I'll wait and see---they seem like they may be worth the wait+price.  

Gerwalk just doesn't "work" IMHO, with the wings hanging off the calves.   

I often run with the side of the case off, so lots of air...

5060 ti's seem to be in stock fairly regularly, tempted...

What are the pros and cons of "short wide card with 2 fans" vs "long skinny card with 3 fans", if any?  

I do like quiet, so if one style has a more "pleasant" sound than the other...

Both MSI and Asus have annoyed me lately to varying degrees, thinking Gigabyte or maybe even PNY?   

Ironically, they're not glued in ENOUGH now, I think.  Looking carefully at how the backplate flexes etc, on Roy----I actually decided to glue down Jetfire's as flush as I can. Then will reinforce it   THEN see if I can get it to clip both in and out, nicely.

The screw just isn't enough, at least not with the cheaper (more translucent?) plastic Jetfire's made of.  It's definitely lighter/more flexible it seems.  

(also, a Roy booster really doesn't want to fit onto a Jetfire clip)

On 6/4/2025 at 11:44 PM, Chronocidal said:

I had this issue too, and didn't notice it so much with the first release, but I think what's going on is some slight mis-alignment/mis-molding of the plate just above the backpack hinge.

When I took mind apart, I had issues with the tiny screw that's buried under the hip swingbar.  I have a tiny screwdriver that fits in there, but as it turns out, I don't believe those screws were actually biting into the plastic.  If I lift up on the backpack, you can see the two prongs that hold the gnurled pin inserted into the hip swingbar are lifting away from the backplate, meaning that screw isn't holding things together.  When I tried screwing it in, it just spun, so I have to assume those tiny holes stripped out.

I do not know if this is the direct cause, but I think the looseness of that assembly is contributing to the booster mount catching.  Because the panels flex, it's causing the trapezoid panel just ahead of the backpack hinge to lift, and it's catching directly on the booster mount when you try to slide it on.

What I did just now as a test was to file down the squared off edges on the front underside of the backpack bracket to let it slip over that back panel edge easier.  It's the section directly inboard of the booster mounts, and it's already beveled somewhat, but I just rounded off the front underside edge further until it's about at a 45 degree angle, and it helped it not to catch on the backplate.  I can take a picture tomorrow where I mean, I'm about to head to bed.  

Glad to hear the arm repair was a success though!  It's so refreshing working on valks you can actually take apart.  

I compared Jetfire to an early Roy, and I see what you mean----a real one has this edge smooth and rounded, while Jetfire has it quite sharp and squared off:

I do not think that is whole story though--your backplate looseness theory also seems to play a role----Jetfire's clip fits onto Roy pretty well, despite the sharp edge.  I think it's the double-whammy of the sharp edge AND the backplate having issues, that combine to make attaching the booster-clip such a struggle.  

There were unused ethernet jacks in the walls when I moved in. I had the 2nd bedroom (office) and living room  ones wired up, so I can plug main PC and PS5 directly to the modem in the basement.   They had 50% more latency on WiFi.  

I "won the Amazon lottery" and not only got a legit, US-market drive (always a concern with Amazon PC parts), it's a very new one---April 2025 production.  

But at the consumer level, taking into price+quality+availability----it looked surprisingly dead.  I kept wondering why I couldn't really find much, until I realized, it looks like almost everyone jumped ship already to pure M.2.  And I don't doubt the PS5 is part of the reason.  A zillion M2's were sold because of it (I bought one!).  And so competition/development of that segment of the consumer market was and still is high.  

My now-dead 2.5in SATA was in the coolest spot in the PC and all alone in a suspended cage.

I do, I was just looking to see what was available as a replacement for the dead one, which was a 2.5" SATA.  My only M.2 slot is already being used by my OS drive.

I didn't want to buy a new mobo solely to be able to have 2 direct-mount M.2's simultaneously.  And 2.5" seems pretty dead, if you want a name brand.  

And I went ahead and ordered that combo---even though my board's 2nd pcie x16 slot is only PCIE 2.0 (vs the 1st slot being 3.0), and the adapter only uses x4 bandwidth---that should still be much faster than SATA.  And when it someday gets moved to a new board with multiple M2 slots, then it'll be faster still.  

One of my credit cards is doing 5% back this quarter with Amazon, and Amazon is offering 1 month free trial of Prime again, so free next-day shipping  plus 5% off.   So went with them instead of BestBuy or Newegg etc.  (yes, Newegg is a shell of its former self, but still better than Amazon much of the time IMHO for PC parts).  

Decided on another 990 Evo Plus, same as my (almost)new OS drive.  Everywhere still seems to say it's just about best thing ever.   

::edit:: Seriously, Best Buy dropped the price $10 within minutes of me ordering from Amazon?  :[

Been looking at SSD's, and am currently thinking:

The 2.5in SATA market is already almost dead, with few real options. The 870 Evo was the last new model Samsung made and that was years ago. I don't want to buy another again. The Crucial MX is sold out everywhere.  WD is just rebranded Sandisk.  

So thinking----M2 nvme on a pcie adapter card.  Then I can hopefully move it to my next new mobo (and mount it directly) whenever my big upgrade happens.  

Price-wise, M2+adapter is the same or cheaper than a 2.5in.  

14 hours ago, TangledThorns said:

Completed my new build last week, below is the specs. Overall it went well and was very happy it powered up first time. Only issue was with bottom fans rubbing against the bottom of the chassis that I was able to fix with with #10 nylon washers. It was a way easier build than my old rig from over eleven years ago. 

CPU: AMD 9800X3D

GPU: MSI 5080 RTX Shadow 3x OC

MOBO: MSI MAG 850M Mortar WiFi

 

Did you paint the fans silver, or did they come that way? Even the casings look silvery.  

Also, do I even want to know what a 5080 actually goes for right now?

I swear I saw a couple Am5+DDR4 ones, but could be mis-reported specs.  

If anyone has a 5600/5700/5800 they're not using/for sale, I'm interested.  

Now copying what I grabbed to my main backup drive...

I think the report of "99.95% recovered" was true.  It seems to be all there. Even stuff from the last day I used it   

So then why does Windows act like that drive is the plague?   Ubuntu reported a single bad sector.  That shouldn't make the drive utterly unusable. 

And---well, now I need a new main storage SSD.   Buy another Samsung SATA and hope I get luckier than the last one? Are M2's any more reliable, when it comes to random failure/tolerating forced shut-down?

I'd need a new mobo to get a second M2 slot. (OS drive currently in only M2 slot)

Would get either AM4/DDR4 and reuse everything, or one of the few AM5/DDR4 ones and upgrade CPU only.  

I tried to mount it, but nothing happened.   Gave it a while, but neither errors nor blinking---just, nothing.  

So far "testdisk" seems to work well.  It can directly read folders and files from the img.   And copy them to other locations.   Doesn't seem able to sort by date, so I'm just having to scroll and manually pick them.  

So---I have yet to find anyone agreeing with what to do with the actual .img file ddrescue creates.  I do not want to clone the whole thing and put it on another drive, which is what most places seem to assume will be done.  I want to "go in and grab certain files", assuming they're there.  I have seen so many different programs/methods recommended.  Anyone ever actually "grabbed the files out of a ddrescue-created img"?

PS----this is purely a storage drive.  It was never bootable.  The fact that Windows "cares so much" about this drive, and refuses to boot if it's plugged in, and freezes if you glance at it, is what's so weird to me.  

Said it got 99.95%.  Now to see if I can actually get files out of the big image dump it made...

Busy day---installed Ubuntu.  

Tried DDrescue---it was working, but so slowly it estimated 28 years to finish.  Googled some options---now trying a "skip anything that's damaged, just grab what you can do so easily" run and that is going MUCH faster:

Tried clonezilla's rescue function ----after 1.5 hours, it had done 0.82% and said 112 hours to go, with almost nothing recovered, so quit. Will look into DD rescue tomorrow.  

Ironically, I switched my main storage from HDD to SSD because it was getting old and I feared it failing.  And here the SSD dies in like 2.5 years with no warning, and the old HDD seems fine... (just missing the last 2 years of files...)