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|
| Author |
Message |
| 25 new of 547 responses total. |
tod
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response 184 of 547:
| 
May 5 17:11 UTC 2003 |
This response has been erased.
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mary
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response 185 of 547:
|
May 5 17:16 UTC 2003 |
A huge thank you to all involved. This
is too cool.
|
aruba
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response 186 of 547:
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May 5 21:58 UTC 2003 |
NextGrex has been running over 24 hours now. It's completed 22 passes of
the memory test, with no errors.
|
aruba
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response 187 of 547:
|
May 6 14:13 UTC 2003 |
NextGrex has now completed 38 cycles of the memory test without an error.
The room it's in is noticeably cooler than the rest of the house - I think
those 8 fans are really pushing some air around.
|
jhudson
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response 188 of 547:
|
May 6 15:43 UTC 2003 |
lol at the fans
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steve
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response 189 of 547:
|
May 6 16:01 UTC 2003 |
I wanted to see USB and FireWire available because the future is not
clear, but having those abilities means we can use them if we want to.
OpenBSD already has some FW support in it; I've been playing with it
and while not stable, it definitely works. Not quite yet ready for prime
time, but tats OK, since we aren't using it. USB 2.0 work is evolving
as well. Unless the specifics of the motherboard have changed again (it
gets confusing looking at Asus stuff), we also have serial ATA, should
we want to go in that direction at some point. This means we have just
about all the hardware options that exist: FireWire, USB, IDE, SCSI and
SATA, for peripherals.
|
aruba
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response 190 of 547:
|
May 6 17:36 UTC 2003 |
Yes, we definitely have SATA.
|
aruba
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response 191 of 547:
|
May 6 21:30 UTC 2003 |
I pestered NewEgg, about our disks, and they have moved the process along a
bit; with luck they will ship today or tomorrow, and wiht a little more luck
we'll have our disks by the weekend.
I also pestered openbsd.org, which hasn't even charged our credit card yet.
They will be a little longer - they always experience backlogs around the
time of a release, and the version we ordered was released May 1st. They
haven't gotten to our order date yet, and their ordering FAQ says they can
be as much as 10 days behind at release time. Then, since it's coming from
Alberta, it will be a week to 10 days before we receive our CDs. :(
|
steve
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response 192 of 547:
|
May 6 21:46 UTC 2003 |
But that doesn't matter -- we have what we'll install already. Too bad
about newegg; I've never made an order by anything other than a cc; seems
they are really optimized for that and nothing else.
|
aruba
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response 193 of 547:
|
May 7 03:04 UTC 2003 |
OK, our disks have shipped. We should receive them on Friday.
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gull
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response 194 of 547:
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May 7 13:09 UTC 2003 |
Re #177: That's kind of bone-headed of AMD. I've seen evidence that the
phase change material simply isn't adequate in some situations, and not
just on overclocked CPUs, either. A friend of mine put on a heat sink
with just the phase change material, no grease, and the CPU had
overheating problems until he went back and did it with thermal
conductive grease.
|
aruba
|
|
response 195 of 547:
|
May 7 16:42 UTC 2003 |
At the board meeting last night we decided to order two more 18 Gig disks.
Since NewEgg is kind of a pain for us to deal with (though they're just fine
if you want to ship to the address on your credit card), we decided to order
from Leeron, even though his price is slightly higher. I called Leeron and
did that, and he thinks the disks will be here by Friday.
Our disks from NewEgg are in LA, according to FedEx.
|
keesan
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response 196 of 547:
|
May 7 18:03 UTC 2003 |
How much did grex save overall by ordering from Leeron?
|
aruba
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response 197 of 547:
|
May 7 19:50 UTC 2003 |
We saved $136 over NewEgg's price, on the stuff we ordered before. We'll
lose a little bit of it on these disks, because NewEgg's price is lower.
But we'll have them a lot faster, and returning them if there's a problem
will be a lot easier.
|
aruba
|
|
response 198 of 547:
|
May 8 23:39 UTC 2003 |
The two disks from NewEgg arrived today - I picked them up at the FedEx
office by the airport.
|
aruba
|
|
response 199 of 547:
|
May 9 01:19 UTC 2003 |
BTW, if anyone wants to see the list of what's in the new machine, go to
/----------------------------------------------------\
| http://www.cyberspace.org/~invent/item.cgi?num=256 |
\----------------------------------------------------/
That shows the data for the case, and at the bottom is a list of
everything inside. You can click on those items for details about them.
|
aruba
|
|
response 200 of 547:
|
May 9 03:18 UTC 2003 |
Looks like our SCSI controller card has 68 pins while our disks need an
80-pin SCA connector. I wrote to Leeron to see if he can sell us some
adapters.
|
gull
|
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response 201 of 547:
|
May 9 12:59 UTC 2003 |
If Leeron doesn't have one, try www.atozcables.com. That's where I got
mine last time I needed one. They have them for either $20 or $28 each,
depending on whether or not you need one with termination.
|
aruba
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response 202 of 547:
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May 9 14:29 UTC 2003 |
Thanks David. Leeron says he can order some adapters for us, for about
$10 each, but they will take 7-10 days. I understand the difference
between the cables now - the 80-pin cable (which our drive wants) includes
not only the data interface, but also power and SCSI ID setting. (The
SCSI ID is set by the adapter via software, instead of being a jumper
setting right on the drive.)
These Seagate drives come in two versions, one with an 80-pin connection
and one with a 68-pin connection (plus power connection and SCSI ID jumper
block). At the moment, I'm inclined to send back what we have and get the
68-pin version, so that our drives are compatible with our interface card.
Getting adapters for all the drives seems like a hack, and will make the
inside of the case more complicated than it needs to be. (Here's a
picture of an adapter; it's got a little circuit board:
http://www.mycableshop.com/popups/SCA806850.htm) Plus, we'd need two
types of cables.
Unless, that is, there's an important advantage to having 80-pin drives.
|
dang
|
|
response 203 of 547:
|
May 9 15:55 UTC 2003 |
I'd vote for sending them back and getting the correct drives. I've
used the adaptors, and they're usually fairly shoddy (although they *do*
work). I have a free 68-pin SCSI drive that I can temprorarily donate
for testing/burn-in purposes, so that this doesn't waste any time for us.
|
aruba
|
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response 204 of 547:
|
May 9 18:01 UTC 2003 |
OK, I called NewEgg and got an RMA number to send back the 80-pin drive. It
was going to be a pain to re-order the right drive from them, so I called
Leeron and told him to send back the two he just got for us, and in their
place get us 3 with the correct connectors. This will cost us about $17
more per drive than going through NewEgg, but Leeron is a lot faster and
more accomodating. :)
|
scg
|
|
response 205 of 547:
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May 10 19:42 UTC 2003 |
The general rule with non-obvious changes and warranties is that you void the
warranty if you tell them you made the change.
|
aruba
|
|
response 206 of 547:
|
May 10 23:25 UTC 2003 |
I turned off NextGrex last night because some big thunderstorms were
approaching Ann Arbor, and I don't have a UPS. It had been up for over 5
days, running the memory test, with no errors.
We'll put the IDE disk in tomorrow, and test the SCSI controller with a disk
of dang's.
|
gull
|
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response 207 of 547:
|
May 12 12:52 UTC 2003 |
Sounds like the right decision, disk-wise. SCA connectors seem to be
mostly made for plugging hotswappable drives into backplanes. Any other
use of them is kind of a hack.
|
scott
|
|
response 208 of 547:
|
May 12 13:50 UTC 2003 |
Ditto. Much better to fix it now than to forever curse the adapters.
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