So I feel like I've had a very busy week, and I feel like I haven't done much of anything. I guess I'm tired.
My step-sister had an [HP TouchPad 32gb], but her dog chewed the charging cable off of it.. Afterward, it didn't get used for months on end. Eventually a replacement cable was purchased, but by then the battery was shot; as-is a common problem with this device. Being, when the battery is completely drained, there's a chance it won't be able to charge up again because of the way the charging circuitry works.
Well, it was given to me for diagnosis,I found a battery for $90, and the tablet was discarded as trash. I recovered it though, and continued to pursue a cheaper fix in my free-time. Eventually, Jacen and I dropped by a local computer repair store, which did a free diagnosis and found a battery for $30. The guys were very helpful and even gave me a kit to help get the tablet open, as well as the place I could find the battery.
Within a week, I had cracked it open and learned the innards of it. With a new battery installed, I faced a new challenge. I was expecting a simple "pop in a new battery and it works." Instead, I got this:
Fortunately, I found a [helpful guide]. In it, I installed a 32-bit distro of Ubuntu Live (which was buggy on my x64 system) and ran some scripts to recreate the software on my tablet. At one point I nearly gave up, due to the continuously unstable nature of the live OS, and one of the commands not working correctly... Until Jacen popped onto Skype and let me vent my troubles to him. He said something useful, and it worked, and my troubles were cast aside. Were it not for him at this crucial step, I would likely have trashed the project and returned the new battery.
So now the system had a new battery, and the software was all reset so it could charge. After I followed the guide to reformat everything, though, I began having second-thoughts about buying that battery... I began wondering if I could have done this to the original battery and made it work.
Bah! I've not done anything else with the old battery. I just stuck it up into storage. Perhaps I could use it when I tear up this new one with use and age. Perhaps it will be all corroded and old by then; who knows. I'm also planning to go around buying old broken TouchPads and fixing them... I could probably use some spare parts to swap out between them. I guess I should start checking E-bay!
Back to the repair story, after a large chunk of my day was spent, I got this welcoming sight:
I have a tablet now. I worked to get it.
:D
I am elated!!
The tablet, codenamed "Tenderloin", was very persistent. As you can see, it wanted to give me many options to not install a new OS.
Apparently [paint.net] no longer worked on my computer. D:
It was a matter of days before I was down to reinstalling the entire OS just to get it back.
Paint.net is worth it to me.
I'm not intending to be a coder, I just want to know some code. As such I'm on codecademy.com occasionally to refresh myself on some HTML. I've yet to actually complete a single course, however, but I intend to within the next month. My goal is to understand Java programming. I have at least one friend who is proficient in it, and who can serve as my mentor.
Also, I'm desiring to type properly, quickly, and without looking at the keyboard. So I'm at [freetypinggame.net] for some serious tap-tapping practice.
But I'm tired. And I don't want to talk about anything else. And... *yawn*
-Skylark