Category: computers

:(

July 27, 2003

After using a Mac at home for the last week, and being here at work and needing to work quickly on a PC, I’m really starting to think that while Macs are nice, a PC workstation and a FreeBSD file server are what I need to get the kind of work done that I want to do. I’m having problems with the OS X interface not having the kinds of keyboard shortcuts I want, mostly due to lack of availability of flexible instant messengers, and the difficulties with Finder as opposed to Explorer.

computers moved from livejournal

:)

July 20, 2003

Wow, tonight was definitely a night of getting work done. Let’s see what got done:

– Shuffled hard drives in the file server (\\golgotha). There was a 20GB as /var/storage and a 40GB as /var/storage/Audio. The 40GB is now /var/storage and a new 80GB is /var/storage/Audio. All data shuffled over intact.

– Installed a DDS-1 drive in \\golgotha to augment the DLT and handle small nightly backups.

– \\golgotha uses smbtar to pull a copy of my email, cookies, favorites, and chat logs off of my desktop (nuxx) every night at 3am and once on the first of each month, creating nightly and monthly archives.

– \\golgotha dumps the database for thefest.org‘s bbs at 2am, using a nightly/monthly scheme.

– Golgotha takes the files from \\nuxx and the various important files from \\golgotha, including financial and website stuff, and backs it up to DDS drive.

– Wrote scripts to back up the various important directories on \\golgotha to DLT (eg: /var/storage/Audio, /var/storage, /var/storage/Video) and created appropriate tape sets.

– Hooked a second UPS to the network rack down in the basement. The previous single UPS couldn’t handle more than a 30 second load.

– Put a second coat of paint on the trim around my living room and hallway. Also patched a couple more nicks and dents in the walls that I found.

Wow, yeah, quite a busy night. At least I got stuff done for once. hehe. Tomorrow afternoon I’m supposed to head over to my sister and brother-in-law’s house and show them how to hang moulding up around rooms the same way I’d done it. It’s not hard, it just helps to have someone to show you.

So, yeah. With that I think it’s bed time. Well, in a minute… I need to finish watching this backup script run manually, then I’ll add it to root’s crontab and things will be good.

around the house computers moved from livejournal

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July 18, 2003

For what it’s worth, WebDAV seems pretty cool. I still need to work on the authentication stuff, but as soon as that’s resolved I should be able to edit my site easily from work. Thanks, Windows XP, for supporting WebDAV right smack dab in the OS, like mapping any old drive.

…just need to get security working properly.

computers moved from livejournal

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July 17, 2003

Remember not too long ago when I posted something about all the tubes I acquired? Well, as part of that I acquired some plans for the HAL-4096, the first computer ever used to demonstrate the synthesis of music. Anyway, just now I received some email back from one of the people who worked on it, Dave Cox:
Click here to read…

computers found things moved from livejournal

:)

July 14, 2003

Ahh… The video card has been removed from the G4 Cube and placed in the freezer. Why, you ask? Well, it seems I dorked in epoxying the heatsink on and I need to remove it*. I think I screwed up the application of epoxy and didn’t get an even layer on the GPU. So, I’m borrowing a tube of Arctic Silver Silver Thermal Adhesive from a friend and I’m going to reapply the heatsink. Hopefully it will all go smoothly. The only problem I can see running into is if I crack the GPU when removing the heatsink, if I can’t get the epoxy off of the heatsink, or of I fail to apply the adheasive properly. Again. We’ll see… Click on this for a picture of the card in the freezer…

* Removal is accomplished by chilling the card inside a baggie then popping the heatsink off with a screwdriver. I’ve done it before, we’ll see if it works this time.

computers making things moved from livejournal

:)

July 13, 2003

Well, after a bit of hacking around I got a GeForce 2 MX to fit nicely inside of a PowerMac G4 Cube. See?

Click for more…

Just for reference, this is a Dell OEM Nvidia GeForce 2 MX combined with cutdown pieces of the original heatsink from a Netpliance I-Opener.

computers making things moved from livejournal

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June 25, 2003

I figured I’d post this again since I didn’t have much detail last time…

Here’s the specs on that computer I want to sell:

P4a – 2.26 GHz
512MB PC1066 RAMBUS RAM
Asus P4T-533 Motherboard
Soundblaster Audigy (provides sound and IEEE1394 for iPod)
GeForce 4 Ti4200 256MB RAM (Gainward GeForce 4 Ultra/650 TV/DVI Golden Sample, I believe)
Adaptec 2940UW SCSI Card
8x Yamaha SCSI CD-RW
Plextor UltraPlex (32x, I think) CD-ROM Drive
IBM Server-class 10/100 NIC
Mylex eXtremeRAID 3000 Fibre Channel Controller w/256MB Cache
30m Fibre Channel HSSDC<->DB9 Cable
Custom external fibre channel enclosure supporting four drives.
Four 9GB 10,000RPM Seagate ST39102FC Drives
Nikao Doggie Case
Ultra Quiet Power Supply

There are pictures of everything available here:
Doggy Case: http://www.dingleberrypie.com/gallery/doggie
Fibre Channel Enclosure: http://www.dingleberrypie.com/gallery/fibrechannel
Fibre Channel Benchmarks: http://www.dingleberrypie.com/gallery/fc_benchmarks

The 9GB drives can be replaced with any size Fibre Channel drives, which are all available cheaply off of eBay. In the machine’s current configuration, it’s benchmarking with disk reads and writes that are over 160MB/sec (http://www.dingleberrypie.com/gallery/fc_benchmarks/aac). Faster disks or a different RAID config could change this both ways.

Also, I’m looking at selling this machine because I want to get a PPC970-based PowerMac G5. It works perfectly fine and is fully functional as my home workstation. I’ll reinstall XP and have everything tweaked before it gets to whoever wants it. I’m thinking $1600 for the main machine, fibre channel array, and connecting hardware.

What do you think?

acquired things computers moved from livejournal

$$$

June 24, 2003

Oh, one other thing. I’m looking at selling my PC. Yes, it works perfectly fine. I’m just thinking I want a PowerMac, and I won’t have a use for a PC if I get that. Here’s what it’s got:

Pentium 4 2.26 Ghz
512MB RAMBUS Memory
Intel i850e Chipset
Gainward nVidia GeForce 4 4200 Video Card
8x SCSI CD Writer
Plextor UltraPlex (32x) CD-ROM Drive
Adaptec 2940UW SCSI Card
Creative Labs Soundblaster Audigy (w/ Firewire)
IBM 10/100 PCI Server-type NIC
Ultra-cute Doggie Case
Especially quiet power supply.

The only thing missing from making this a complete computer is a hard drive, which I don’t have because I was using an external Fibre Channel array.

Anyone interested? I’m thinking $850 for this…

UPDATE: Make it $1000 and it’ll have a 120GB hard drive in it and XP installed and tweaked for it.

acquired things computers moved from livejournal

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April 22, 2003

I’m thinking of moving nuxx.net to being hosted straight out of my house. All I’ll be doing is mail and the current amount of web hosting that I am now, namely /gallery and random stuff in /images and /pdf. The only thing I could think is that it might be good not to do my own primary DNS, that way if my IP changes it’ll be real easy to point things to the right place. We’ll have to see… If I have time after the blind install I’m going to watch Powaqqatsi while working on getting exim or sendmail, apache, php4, random imap or pop3 server, and bind running on golgotha (the file server). Or maybe bind should go on the firewall itself… Or maybe djbdns… I’m so confused! heh.

computers moved from livejournal nuxx.net

:(

February 6, 2003

Gah, what a time for /var/storage/Large to start clanking. :(

And, broadq QCast Tuner seems to crash jdk1.3.1 under FreeBSD 5.0. Hmm. Moving back to 4.x wouldn’t be that hard, but recompiling Java would be a chore.

computers moved from livejournal