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| Author |
Message |
| 25 new of 547 responses total. |
other
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response 171 of 547:
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May 1 22:10 UTC 2003 |
Of the three places I know of that I should or want to be on the evening
of Sunday 18 May, the one that wins is "on a plane from Denver."
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aruba
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response 172 of 547:
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May 2 21:48 UTC 2003 |
Leeron certainly is as good as his word - the replacement motherboards
arrived just now, and they appear to be just what we need. Thanks Leeron!
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aruba
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response 173 of 547:
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May 3 21:53 UTC 2003 |
Today I bought two extra Antec fans at CompUSA, for $15.99 apiece.
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aruba
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response 174 of 547:
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May 4 21:33 UTC 2003 |
Today, janc, dang, danr and I got together and began assembling Next Grex.
All went well, and NextGrex is currently running an infinite memory test.
(Since it doesn't have any hard disks yet, there's not too much else it can
do.)
Jan's going to make up a web page describing everything we did. But
basically, we
- Installed the CPU in the motherboard. Since cooling is an issue, I
decided to spen $14.99 for a tube of "Arctic Silver" thermal grease, which
goes between the CPU and the heatsink. All the web pages I looked at said
it works much better than the stuff which came already attached to the
heatsink.
- Installed the two extra fans I bought yesterday.
- Installed the CDRW in the case. This is very easy in our fancy case -
just screw some little plastic runners on the drive, and it slides in the
bay right from the front.
- Likewise with the floppy drive.
- Installed the port template which came with the motherboard on the back
of the case.
- Screwed the motherboard into the case.
- Put the memory in.
- Connected lots of power wires to the motherboard, drives, and all the
fans. Connected the USB ports on the front of the case, and firewire
ports on the back. Also the wires for the power switches, speaker, and
LEDs on the front of the case.
- Installed the SCSI card.
dang had brought a video card with him, and we put that in, plugged in a
monitor and keyboard, and booted it up. dang set the processor speed in
the BIOS, and set the system to boot from CD. He put in a copy of Linux
he had on CD and we successfully booted from it. It recognized all the
hardware we had installed.
So, all in all, very successful. Hopefully by next weekend the disks and
OS will have arrived, and we can take the next step.
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cross
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response 175 of 547:
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May 4 22:11 UTC 2003 |
Wonderful. Sounds great!
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steve
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response 176 of 547:
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May 4 23:54 UTC 2003 |
This response has been erased.
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steve
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response 177 of 547:
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May 4 23:56 UTC 2003 |
Is the CPU a retail or OEM unit? If it was retail, the usage of heat sink
compound has voided the warranty. For an OEM CPU, it isn't quite clear to me
what is what.
There is an article on this at http://www.xtremetek.com/info/index.php?i
d=14&page=1
that talks about this.
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steve
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response 178 of 547:
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May 5 00:06 UTC 2003 |
I'm glad to hear that it booted up and is running the memory test. Booting
from a CD at least partly proves that the ide controller works, and that the
CD works, too.
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steve
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response 179 of 547:
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May 5 01:02 UTC 2003 |
Wasn't the ide disk purchased? Seems one might be able to boot from
that. But the booting from the cd should indicate that the onboard
ide controller is OK.
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aruba
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response 180 of 547:
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May 5 03:27 UTC 2003 |
The hard disks haven't arrived yet, because NewEgg needs our check to
clear before they will mail us anything.
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aruba
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response 181 of 547:
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May 5 03:39 UTC 2003 |
Re #177: That's an interesting article. Based on it and the other things I
read on the web, I think using the fancy thermal compound was the right
thing to do.
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janc
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response 182 of 547:
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May 5 03:58 UTC 2003 |
First draft of a web page on the system construction is at
http://www.unixpapa.com/newgrex/
Some mediocre photos are included. This needs more work before it becomes
a staff notes page.
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aruba
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response 183 of 547:
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May 5 17:02 UTC 2003 |
When I left home this morning, NextGrex had run 15 cycles of the memory test
(it takes about 67 minutes per cycle), with no memory errors.
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tod
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response 184 of 547:
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May 5 17:11 UTC 2003 |
This response has been erased.
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mary
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response 185 of 547:
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May 5 17:16 UTC 2003 |
A huge thank you to all involved. This
is too cool.
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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.
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aruba
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response 187 of 547:
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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.
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jhudson
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response 188 of 547:
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May 6 15:43 UTC 2003 |
lol at the fans
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steve
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response 189 of 547:
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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.
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aruba
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response 190 of 547:
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May 6 17:36 UTC 2003 |
Yes, we definitely have SATA.
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aruba
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response 191 of 547:
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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. :(
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steve
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response 192 of 547:
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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.
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aruba
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response 193 of 547:
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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.
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aruba
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response 195 of 547:
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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.
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