nuxx.net
Making, baking, and (un-)breaking things in Southeast Michigan.

:)

July 14, 2003

Okay, so I see everyone is curious about the waffles… Well, here’s some more pictures for you. There are lots more waffles than one might imagine:

< -- In Freezer / On Counter -- >
Click for more!

Here’s the deal… Costco has large boxes of Eggo waffles for somewhere around $6. This isn’t much more than the price of a normal small box of waffles, so I got the large one. I figure they’ll make good breakfast and snack foods for the next while.

Tonight I got the cube back together for what is hopefully the last time. First off, I managed to pop the heatsinks off of the GeForce 2 MX after it’s time in the freezer. This went smoothly, and with the help of a razor blade and some starter fluid (mmm…ether) I got most of the epoxy residue off of the chips and heatsinks. Next came the mixing of the Arctic Silver epoxy. This was applied to the chips, and the heatsinks were clamped tightly in place. After a bit of time during which my friend Eric and I putzed around with a message board at thefest.org, I removed the clamps and happily, the heatsinks are now properly in place. Woo! The cube is back up and running, being happy as ever. I’m really happy to have it back. Also, I returned the crappy Kensington keyboard I had purchased and picked up one of the new Apple keyboards to go with the cube. Wow, what a difference… It’s so tiny, too. The board is literally only the size of the keys themselves. It fits very nicely right in front of my monitor. Woo! Finally a (completely) working Apple. I hope. ;)

foodmaking thingsmoved 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.

computersmaking thingsmoved 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.

computersmaking thingsmoved from livejournal

…

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 thingscomputersmoved 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 thingscomputersmoved from livejournal

?

June 24, 2003

Does anyone have any experience with epoxy-based floor coatings? I want to seal/finish the floor of my garage so it’s no longer just dusty concrete, but I’m not sure which products to be looking at. I seem to find either home-grade paint bucket-type stuff, or professional troweled floors. I’m looking for something in the middle… Any suggestions?

around the housemoved from livejournal

:)

June 12, 2003

Well, I got some more tubes and another oscilloscope today. If you’d like to see pictures, take a look here. The pictures of things in my basement, which I guess are a new-found collection of tubes, starts here. Yes, there are nixies. Mmm….glow.

acquired thingselectronicsmoved from livejournal

Wow.

June 9, 2003

Reading through these lab notes, it seems that Mr. Jan [CENSORED] once read about a home-made mini-computer called the HAL-4096 and wanted to build one himself. Enclosed in these notes are letters passed back and forth between Mr. [CENSORED] and Mr. Hal Chamberlin. Thanks to Google, I’ve learned that the HAL-4096 was built by Mr. Chamberlin and a Mr. David Cox back in 1966. Mr. Chamberlin was also the first person to demonstrate music synthesis on a computer, the old classic recording of ‘Daisy, Daisy’ that I’m sure everyone remembers hearing at one point or another.

I’m just amazed… Read on for more…

acquired thingselectronicsfound thingsmoved from livejournal

GPS

June 4, 2003

Yay, I finally got a real GPS. I should be getting a Magellian Meridian XL with serial cable and mounting hardware sometime soon. I guess I’ll have to give some geocaching a try, too. Per Geocaching.com there are a number of sites right around Shelby Township. Woo! It might even be fun to add a new cache somewhere random.

acquired thingsmappingmoved from livejournaloutdoors