Category Archives: hardware

hardware, internet

How-To: Combine 2 ISPs into 1 home network

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In my home, I have 2 ISPs providing internet service – SingNet and Starhub. I won’t get into details as to why I have 2, but the fact is, I have 2.

For a long time, these 2 ISPs have remained separate. PCs and laptops connected to one can’t see the other, and vice versa. When one ISP fails, we’d have to manually go to the router and plug the LAN cable into the other one, to continue having internet service. Now, we’re (meaning the people in my household) are naturally lazy. The thought of having to walk to the routers, sort out which cable is the right one, and plugging it into the other ISP, is a headache that we dread. It was made even more apparent recently when my ISP seemed to be having some minor lag issues with an online game I’m playing, and by swapping my cable over to the other one, I confirmed that the fault lay in the ISP and not in any of my PCs or laptops.

During the troubleshooting, I had to plug, unplug, replug the cables many times, and as you can imagine, it’s tiring.

Continue reading How-To: Combine 2 ISPs into 1 home network →

hardware, self

So I Went And Got A New Monitor

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Wow, it’s been 9 months since my last post!

Yeah well I’ve been busy doing other stuff… you know, mundane stuff like “work”. Oh yes, I got into Star Trek Online too, but that’s another story. The topic of this post very conveniently has references to the previous post made here, 9 months ago. Yeah, my HP monitor died. Truly dead. As in, “no sound no picture.”

As a quick recap, the monitor suffered a weird red-dot syndrome and I had to call in for servicing just a few days before the warranty ran out. Now, 9 months after the monitor was replaced, it truly died. I was just surfing the net, then I moved away from the PC and fiddled with something on my phone. Now, I had set my PC to blank the monitor after 10 minutes of inactivity, as a power-saving option. So, as I was fiddling with my phone, I saw the monitor blanking from the corner of my eyes. No big deal, it’s just going to sleep mode.

So, when I was done with my phone, I turned back to my PC. I shook the mouse as usual, and waited for the monitor to come back on. Nada. Hmmm, strange. Ok, so I pressed a couple of keys on the keyboard. That should wake it up nicely.

Nope, the monitor stayed blank.

Continue reading So I Went And Got A New Monitor →

hardware, self

A Very Rare Hardware Failure – DVI Port faulty!

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Lately my stuff has been failing. Luckily, ALL of them were still within warranty. Back at this post, I was lamenting that my stuff all seemed to start dying at the same time.

Last week, a new item joined this infamous list – my relatively new 21-inch LCD Monitor. Yeah the one I use to play games on. What happened was that it started showing red dots scattered all over the screen, and it doesn’t ALWAYS happen. It would happen when the screen went into high-resolution mode (ie anything more than 1600×1200) with pictures with dark grey bits. Incidentally the native resolution of the monitor is 1920×1080, and yes that means HEAPS of red dots all over the place! Continue reading A Very Rare Hardware Failure – DVI Port faulty! →