Technology

How to Fix: Washed-out display or changing contrast with Intel Iris Xe Graphics

Emmanuel Fix:, How To's, Technology 0 Comment

The color pallet on my new dell 7420 inspiron plus kept changing and the display looked horribly washed out or with horrible contrast. This took me too long to diagnose so I’m making a post about it. The post below was super helpful in diagnosis this so I am linking to it.

Problem: Washed our colors and contrast on a laptop with Intel Iris Xe Graphics

Solution: Disable Display Power Savings

https://superuser.com/questions/1487069/how-to-disable-intel-display-power-saving-technology

https://community.intel.com/t5/Graphics/Washed-out-or-faded-colours-on-Intel-Iris-Xe-Graphics/td-p/1448656

I tried taking a good picture but it was difficult to capture the fine details. Contrast was way off and pixels appeared blurry. On the left is with the settings enabled and on the right with the settings disabled. Pay attention to the details on the cloud, you can’t tell the detail on it on the left side. the details are also blurry and washed out.

Fix: Black screen after upgrading RAM and/or SSD on a Dell Inspiron 14 PLUS 7420

Emmanuel Fix:, How To's, Technology 0 Comment

What feels like one of dells last laptops with modular RAM, I decided to give this computer a try until something more modular and repairable comes along (Framework maybe?!) I bought the RAM and SSD below and upgraded the laptop. Be sure to disconnect the battery cable first! I tried disconnecting the cable connecting to the motherboard but it was stuck in there and I was nervous to apply much force. Luckily there is an additional connector on the other side of the battery cable, you can slide that metal tab down and pull the battery cable out.

Swap out the RAM and/OR SSD and it will boot up to a black screen. Be patient and wait about 5 min, it will eventually it will boot into the BIOS telling you hardware changed. I worried I fried something but fortunately that wasn’t the case. Hopefully this post helps you not freak out that something went wrong. Enjoy the upgrade ram and ssd!

  • Crucial RAM 32GB DDR5 4800MHz CL40 Laptop Memory CT32G48C40S5
  • Crucial P5 Plus 1TB PCIe Gen4 3D NAND NVMe M.2 Gaming SSD, up to 6600MB/s – CT1000P5PSSD8 Solid State Drive

Latest Beta BIOS for the motherboard Z87-G41, Version 1.8

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Version 1.8 was taken down from the MS website for this motherboard, currently the latest version is listed as 1.7. If anybody is interested the 1.8 version is still up on the servers under the link below. Or I’ve attached it here if anybody want’s it.

https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/Z87-G41-PC-Mate/support

V1.7
https://download.msi.com/bos_exe/mb/7850v17.zip
V1.8 (notice only the ending changed but there is no link to it on the MSI website)
https://download.msi.com/bos_exe/mb/7850v18.zip


Just remove the “.pdf” extension from this zip file and that will contain this beta BIOS

7850v18.zipDownload

How To: Update the firmware on an LG SL3D Soundbar

Emmanuel How To's, Technology 0 Comment

There are no official firmware updates to this sound bar, but looking at the comments on the LG page, someone managed to use the firmware for LG SK4D 2.1 Sound bar which is what I did and it worked!
All you have to do is download the zip file and unzip the binary file into a flash drive that is FAT32 formatted, turn on the sound bar and set input to USB, then plugin the USB drive, the front LED’s will flash left to right until the sound bar turns off, firmware is now updated!


Download the zip file below and remove the “.pdf” extension. That will contain the latest SK4D firmware as of 11/14/2022

DSP_SK4D_1812070_MP_rev1609.zipDownload

Support Page to firmware
https://www.lg.com/us/support/product/lg-SK4D.DUSALLK

SK4D.DUSALLK_WEB_ENGDownload
ENG-SW-Update-Guide_SJ2SJ3SK1DSK4DDownload
SK4D.DUSALLK_SIM-Sheet_MFL70585603Download

Reasons why Linux (Ubuntu 22.04) can’t be my daily driver.

Emmanuel Random, Reviews, Technology 0 Comment

Updated: 2023/01/09

Main Reason: Stability

There is and inherent sense of anxiety and fear not knowing how your OS will react in any certain day depending on the task and whether or not it will be compatible with what you need.

Video Conferencing

  • This is lacking, online versions of zoom, webex, teams aren’t very well made and the desktop clients are lacking a lot of features. On top of this Wayland doesn’t support desktop sharing which is a pretty essential feature depending on your job.

Word Processing

  • No Microsoft Suite support
    • Closest I could find was OnlyOffice but it’s missing a lot of tools that makes MS Office work well.
  • No Adobe products including Adobe Reader
    • This is fairly important for signing legal documents.

Automation

  • There isn’t a robust built-in automation tool to use like macOS Automation

Other Random Issues

  • Mapping network drives can be difficult
    • By far not as straightforward and easy as in windows,
  • Remote Desktop (Remmina) isn’t as well made as Windows Remote Desktop
    • You can easily copy files between remote and local client as well as copy and paste from the buffer.


GPU Support

  • I have a NVIDIA 3070 Ti so with that in mind:
    • GUI/UI issues
      • Desktop icons shifting by themselves
      • With multi-monitors, dragging and dropping icons sometimes highlights them on both screens with unpredictable end placement on desktop
    • Fractional scaling breaks when using multi-monitor and launching games full screen
    • Sleep and then resume boots to a black screen with no icons or distorted text
      • It seems like it’s been going on for a while

Conclusion

I would love to switch over to Linux one day as my main operating system, but there are too many sacrifices and hurdles where I’m spending more time troubleshooting than actually being productive. I still revisit Linux every 5 years or so and hope enough progress has been made but unfortunately this year is not the year.

Technology: Trying to use Elgato Video Capture device in 2022 (spoiler: don’t, video freezes)

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I recently bought one of these at a thrift store for $4 to digitize some tapes. I tried using my newest PC (AMD 5600x 32gb ram) and the video would freeze a few seconds into playing it. if I opened OBS at the same time, the audio would cut out but the video would keep playing on the elgato software. I finally gave up, don’t waste your time getting this device working on newer computers.

To get this working, I did have a spare PC and a windows 7 CD so I installed it on that computer, and after a little playing around with it it worked as intended not surprisingly, although a bit buggy, sometimes video would freeze unless you wen’t back to the video screen. also rewinding causes the video to freeze. I get the feeling if the signal on the software drops even a little bit, it will freeze the display on the elgato software. What I ended up doing was pressing play and right away quickly pressing next through the various screens and quickly started the recording.

If you do want to use this device I would suggest getting a cheap pc with windows 7 but don’t waste your time on newer

Tech: Keyboard/Mouse unresponsive trying to install Windows 7 from disk in 2022.

Emmanuel Technology 0 Comment

I wanted to use some software that was windows 7 specific and I had a spare computer I wanted to install it on. Everything worked fine up to the windows 7 install screen, then I would get no mouse/keyboard inputs. I rebooted the computer and the mouse would work fine on the BIOS screen. I figured it may be tied to a date on the windows 7 installer so I set the date on the bios to 2010 and voila mouse and keyboard on the installer!

Problem: No Mouse/keyboard on the windows 7 installer screen

Fix: set the bios date to 2010