Ratdude's Main rig V2

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's Main rig V2

Last week the HDDs came in...

It's about as stable as Powmax PSU... It crashes a lot.

I'm not sure if it's the array (HDDs/controller) or software (it runs debian unstable).

Whenever it crashes, the hdd light is on solid.

The tw_cli tool is useless... it will tell me everything about the array other than each drive's SMART, which when given the command to show that, replies with "feature not supported".

My laptop has debian unstable in the 64 bit flavor... and it's far far more stable.

I'm at a loss here... anybody know of a way other than SMART to test the array?

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: Ratdude's Main rig V2

Take the HDDs out of the RAID array and test each one.

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's Main rig V2

Sound card came in.

Good news: Linux seems to like it better... so far so good.

Bad news: It wasn't quite as pictured and has the proprietary Dell jack instead of the usual AC97/HDA jack (I should have known better)... but the PCB has the holes for one. All the pins translate between jacks (confirmed via multimeter), so I'll order some 10 pin 90 degree jacks and swap them.

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's Main rig V2

New update!

I just bought an even Better GPU for it.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814161337

(not from newegg, I got mine used).

I needed two more decent AGP's and I only had one spare (yet to be shipped). I got what was IMHO a good price on it... which I will not say since a BCN member was the seller.

The only bummer is that all my slots are filled again (since the card is a dual slot beast). I had to put one PCI in a PCI-X... which ended up bumping my G-LAN to 66mhz (with the RAID card in the 100MHZ slot and a PCI in the 66x slot). I doubt it will make much of a difference, since only one port of the two is used and my network is only 10/100.

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's Main rig V2

The GPU came in today.

No pics of the card itself... because I first went about fixing the stability issues (which I determined were not related to software).

I think I found the culprit:



I went through each of the two drives... the first two had a clean bill of health... while drive #3 had 26 bad sectors. There were none pending, but since I had an extra drive (no bad sectors), I figured I'd try the spare tossed in with the two good drives.

I also swapped in the RAM module that originally came on the card... Just to see what would happen.

So far, the new array is rock solid and wicked fast. I used a 64kb stripe this time.

Good thing Shovenose's buddy was selling the drives in lots of 4.

As for the cause of death, I won't point fingers. There was one drive that I unwrapped and didn't re-wrap after unboxing them in my van... Not sure if that was the failed drive... But a dead drive is simply a dead drive. Sh!t happens.

(meanwhile, my HP D530 will need a HDD... but that's for another thread)

----

Second order of business: GPU.

It came in one piece... It was very well packed.

It was in pretty good condition... other than some light dust, It would be a bit difficult to tell the card was used.

In fact, my only minor quibble is that there are two G-Luxons on the card... once My new supply of braid comes in, I'll Swap them for some HNs. No big deal, I recap virtually everything.

I'll talk more about the GPU in my next pictorial post... This card is so badass that it's worthy of a post all to itself.

---

In the mean time, here's a few quick pics of the rig so far.

General inside:



GPU installed:



RAID card and HDDs:

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's Main rig V2

No pics of the card itself... because I first went about fixing the stability issues (which I determined were not related to software).

I think I found the culprit:



I went through each of the two drives... the first two had a clean bill of health... while drive #3 had 26 bad sectors. There were none pending, but since I had an extra drive (no bad sectors), I figured I'd try the spare tossed in with the two good drives.

I also swapped in the RAM module that originally came on the card... Just to see what would happen.

So far, the new array is rock solid and wicked fast. I used a 64kb stripe this time.

Good thing Shovenose's buddy was selling the drives in lots of 4.

As for the cause of death, I won't point fingers. There was one drive that I unwrapped and didn't re-wrap after unboxing them in my van... Not sure if that was the failed drive... But a dead drive is simply a dead drive. Sh!t happens.

(meanwhile, my HP D530 will need a HDD... but that's for another thread)

Right after I posted that... CRASH!

Right now I'm trying them on the old RAID card... if it keeps running, then I can blame the card (write chaching is enabled right now). In that case, I'll need to review my ebay warranty... since the BBU is still good, I don't want to have to return the whole card. Heck, after close inspection, all the old card needs to run the BBU is the BBU jack... which I'm going to order off digikey and solder on.

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's Main rig V2

Knock on wood, but it seems to be working better on the old card. BBU jack ordered (a $1.70 part, why my card omitted it is beyond me).

[shovenose]

Re: Ratdude's Main rig V2

Sorry about that drive rd.
I'll give you this at $10 discount (if you want it) to compensate. so $20 including shipping.
https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showthread.php?t=25561
It's packed well

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's Main rig V2

Sorry about that drive rd.
I'll give you this at $10 discount (if you want it) to compensate. so $20 including shipping.
https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showthread.php?t=25561
It's packed well

No need, it was an accepted risk. Given that the ultimate issue was the card, the drive may still be good. I'll see later.

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's Main rig V2

This will take awhile (at least for me, this work was all done today with 8 hours put in). It's going to be a long two posts... 10 points if you make it to the end.

First, a side note: Linux has been a bust thanks to the pigf**kers at AMD not making a Legacy (HD2000, HD3000, HD4000) driver update for the latest xserver (or Xorg, it's been a long night). For now I'm using Xp pro, which even after forcing PAE won't see my 8GB off ECC DDR goodness. I hear Ubuntu has a PPA patch to allow the usage of an older xserver/xorg and the legacy driver on 12.10... Otherwise, if anybody has a suggestion for a low cost legit (no pirate cracking) x86 Windows OS with real PAE support, post it here.

Today's Modding activities started with some seemingly simple solder mods.

First, I changed my sound card:



(Once Topcat ships my latest order, that 220uf 25V G-luxon will be history)

...from this:



... to this:



Getting the old jack off was a PITFA. I ended up snipping it out with flush cutters and desoldering out what I could. Removing headers is always a PITA... the pins are so tight in the holes.

More on that sound card in a few paragraphs.. because it's time for a a recap job!

Here's my new GPU:



It's an ATI Radeon HD4670, 1gb. AFAIK it is the fastest AGP card EVER made.

It also runs cool due to the newer chip and a well designed Artic cooling cooler (or so the sticker on the fan says).

The I/O:



Which, in addition to working with dual VGA monitors (via a DVI to VGA cable), It also is game for a down the road DVI upgrade:



(that adapter won't fit with the card installed in the case, but you get the point).

There's one thing I didn't like about the card:



(lots of G-luxons in this post)

...which two 470uf 16V HN's later was no more:



This card used some particually difficult Lead-free solder (and some somwhat large power planes)... my Weller W60P struggled a bit at first but in the end, It was actually a pretty good recap.

I will note that I tried a new braid brand (Chemtronics Chem-wik) since I wasn't going to be near a fry's for a while and the cost at Newark was the same as they had listed for my usual MG Chemicals (Both were listed at $30 for 50ft). Fry's has it for $20 but they price gouge shipping.. $13 for a spool of braid? :bsfalg:. Anyway, the chem-wik did an excellent job (as predicted, my college uses the same stuff). It seemed better than the MG chemicals but it's hard to say; both do a good job.

When I went to power on the sytem, I found that the sound card's header is indeed intel HDA, not AC'97.

I had two choices... either go back to the old card (which isn't as nice as the new card) or do some hardcore case modding and convert AC'97 to intel HDA. Given that I said there would be two posts, I hope you can see where this is going.

(ratdude takes a drink break, I'll write the next post in a few)

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's Main rig V2

The conversion from AC'97 to HDA is not easy. The way they function is quite different:

AC'97: Front Mic jack is a jack of it's own (no port sensing). Headphone jack has two SPST NC switches tied to the middle and tip of the jack; audio is sent to the headphone jack, where if nothing is connected is fed through the two switches back to the AC'97 header and to the rear jack (hence why you have to install the two jumpers if you have no case header). If the headphones are plugged in, the Switches open and send the audio to the headphones and not to the rear jack.

This system, while functional, had some drawbacks:

-The front microphone jack was it's own channel; for noobs it wasn't very intuitive (and for non-noobs it was annoying)

-Any audio quality loss in the header leads was doubled when using the rear jack (since it had to both to and from the headphone jack). Not to mention losses in the switches.

-It was a very hard wired system; no software control was involved.

Intel HDA fixed those:

1. A duplicate (and often unused) ground in AC'97 was changed to an active low HDA detect line, used by some boards/cards to switch between HDA and AC'97. It is suggested that for HDA this pin is set 1k Ohms from ground.

2. The 5v Supply line (also frequently unused) was converted into a signal line, where port detection signals were sent to #3:

3.. Instead of two NC switches on one jack and none on the other, they put one NO switch on each jack, isolated from the rest of the jack. Each was tied to the signal line in #2 and to one of the two former return lines. Whenever something was plugged in, the switch would allow the signal input to go to that jack's return line, telling the audio chip to disable the rear channel(s).

The first order of business was to get to the header board... which was no treat...

And as an update to the floppy painting thread, removing the front panel requires removing the left side panel, which requires removing the mobo to get to two center screws; so choice #2 (IIRC, it's been a very long night) wasn't really a choice anyway.

Next task was adding two more wires to the audio cables, one of which has the 1K ohm resistor added inline:



Next, I shorted the two ground pins on the Header board:



From here, It gets dodgy.

First, the connections to the old switches on each jack need to be cut off (desolder the jack or cut the traces, )

The method I saw the most online was to change to audio jacks with the correct switches or to take the back off the jack and glue in a microswitch (which new jacks essentially do). However, thanks to clearance issues, neither was an option.

My first ideal was to file down the buttons some microswitches to an angle, cut/melt a hole in the back of the jack, and mount the switches vertically. This, sadly, was an epic fail, as the switches had too much spring force.

However, I had a bizzare idea... after seeing how much the tip's contact would swing when activated, I did this:



(sorry for the flash issues, too late to reshoot)

I hot-glued some thin wires from a dead IDE cable to the insides of the jacks, in a way such that they were isolated from the jack contacts and that when something is plugged in, they make contact.

It was like brain surgery... I didn't even think it would work... but some mutimeter and real use tests later, and they work great!

I used hot glue because super glue would run all over the place, ruining the jack. Hot glue also absorbs shock and sets faster.

I think this very well may have been the most difficult mod I've ever done... I'm still surprised it all works.

[momaka]

Re: Ratdude's Main rig V2

I went through each of the two drives... the first two had a clean bill of health... while drive #3 had 26 bad sectors. There were none pending...

1. Note the number of bad/pending sectors
2. Do a complete zero fill / low-level format on the drive. Let drive cool a little.
3. Run a normal error-scan with HD Tune, then check S.M.A.R.T. attributes again. See if bad/pending sector count has increased.
- If yes, repeat steps 1 to 3 until bad/pending sectors no longer increase.
- If no, drive should be okay to use again (but don't put it in a critical system). That HP/Compaq D530 should be quite happy with it. I have a 40 GB Seagate laptop HDD with over 1700 bad sectors. Works great and it's been stable for a long time now.

For now I'm using Xp pro, which even after forcing PAE won't see my 8GB off ECC DDR goodness. I hear Ubuntu has a PPA patch to allow the usage of an older xserver/xorg and the legacy driver on 12.10... Otherwise, if anybody has a suggestion for a low cost legit (no pirate cracking) x86 Windows OS with real PAE support, post it here.

I never tried this myself, but I heard you can create a virtual hard disk in the RAM, then you can put the paging file on that. So if XP sees only let's say 3.5 GB of RAM, you can convert the other 4.5 GB to a virtual hard disk and put the pagefile on that. Don't ask me how to do that, though. I just remember reading about it here on BCN a long time ago. IIRC, it was PCBONEZ who suggested it.

[brethin]

Re: Ratdude's Main rig V2

I know that feking with old gear is fun and you can learn alot from it, I do it alot myself but I only do it with the extra stuff I have sitting around.
Stop buying things for this and stop spending $ on it or you will regret it later. I see this happen alot where someone gets all into doing a repair and ends up spending more for what they have and could have got much better for the same price.

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: Ratdude's Main rig V2

For proper PAE, you're gonna need Windows Server 2003 or Windows Server 2008.

[mariushm]

Re: Ratdude's Main rig V2

For proper PAE, you're gonna need Windows Server 2003 or Windows Server 2008.

Windows XP 32bit and Windows 7 32bit are restricted by Microsoft to 4 GB no matter the PAE setting.

Windows 2000 32bit with PAE will work, but it's probably too unstable nowadays. (Otherwise the XP drivers will work on it)

The AMD drivers will work on Windows 2003 both 32bit and 64 bit, if you want just go with the 64bit version, it's still good and stable.

HOWEVER, the AMD setup won't install the drivers, saying Windows 2003 is not supported.

You can however go around that. Just start the setup for the drivers, choose to extract it to C:\AMD or whatever the setup says, and then when it says to install the Catalyst Setup Manager or whatever it's called, just leave that as is.

Go in Device Manager, select the video card , click update, choose select a location manually and you find the video card driver there in C:\AMD or where you extracted it.

After reboot you might have to go and enable hardware acceleration and so on, tweak the background caching for programs instead of services, but otherwise everything will work just fine.

Or you could just go Windows 7 64bit

PS. That Radeon 4670 if I remember correctly WILL NOT run 2 vga monitors, the card should have only one DAC so only one vga out. AFAIK it's 2 digital or 1 digital + 1 analogue

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's Main rig V2

Or you could just go Windows 7 64bit

Not with this setup... x64 didn't come until Xeon nocona (this is xeon Gallatin, the generation right before nocona). Nocona also introduced 800mhz FSB, DDR2 RAM (I think) and PCI-e; my board is maxed out CPU wise (400/533 CPUs only).

PS. That Radeon 4670 if I remember correctly WILL NOT run 2 vga monitors, the card should have only one DAC so only one vga out. AFAIK it's 2 digital or 1 digital + 1 analogue

You're memory is incorrect. I'm running two VGA's in a twin monitor setup just fine... see the screenshot (which I intentionally didn't crop).

PS- I suggest you try memtest86+ brain edition.

[ratdude747]

Missed a few other posts:

I know that feking with old gear is fun and you can learn alot from it, I do it alot myself but I only do it with the extra stuff I have sitting around.
Stop buying things for this and stop spending $ on it or you will regret it later. I see this happen alot where someone gets all into doing a repair and ends up spending more for what they have and could have got much better for the same price.

Excuse me?

You sell stuff just as old as this... You have no problem when people buy it!

Seriously, if you have a problem, either be brutally honest or . No Bullshit allowed in this thread.

This rig is plenty fast... and it's very well built. Like a tank. For the ~ $300 (maybe less) I have invested in parts currently present, I doubt I could have built as fast of a rig of similar quality.

If I wasn't as lucky as I was to have been given some of the critcal parts for cheap/free, then, yeah, it may not have been a wise investment. However, I happened be given some really nice offers... and at least in my opinion it built up nice. Yeah, so there are some OS issues ATM, but if that's the worst issue, then I'm actually doing pretty good.

And btw, I enjoy modding... so that's not a deterrent, but a benefit!

For proper PAE, you're gonna need Windows Server 2003 or Windows Server 2008.

That's what I thought. I may go the modded ubuntu route if I can't get one of those w/o breaking the bank.

1. Note the number of bad/pending sectors
2. Do a complete zero fill / low-level format on the drive. Let drive cool a little.
3. Run a normal error-scan with HD Tune, then check S.M.A.R.T. attributes again. See if bad/pending sector count has increased.
- If yes, repeat steps 1 to 3 until bad/pending sectors no longer increase.
- If no, drive should be okay to use again (but don't put it in a critical system). That HP/Compaq D530 should be quite happy with it. I have a 40 GB Seagate laptop HDD with over 1700 bad sectors. Works great and it's been stable for a long time now.

27 Bad, 0 pending.

It's on the to-do list... that rig still hasn't had the GPU finalized (I may have an X1600 coming, not sure). m

I never tried this myself, but I heard you can create a virtual hard disk in the RAM, then you can put the paging file on that. So if XP sees only let's say 3.5 GB of RAM, you can convert the other 4.5 GB to a virtual hard disk and put the pagefile on that. Don't ask me how to do that, though. I just remember reading about it here on BCN a long time ago. IIRC, it was PCBONEZ who suggested it.

I saw that too... but to be honest, the idea just doesn't sound good. Not to metion most places I saw said that unless you want to pay $ most utilities will only support 4gb (RAM installed, not RAM not accessible).

[mariushm]

Re: Ratdude's Main rig V2

You're memory is incorrect. I'm running two VGA's in a twin monitor setup just fine... see the screenshot (which I intentionally didn't crop).

PS- I suggest you try memtest86+ brain edition.

I have the pci express radeon 4850, which only has ONE vga analogue. Not that I use it, I have two dvi monitors connected to it. Actually, it has only two DVI ports, and only one DVI is DVI-I (so I could use a dvi to vga adapter).

Strange (and cool) that it has two analogues out, I would have assumed they'd keep it down to one to keep the card cheap.

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's Main rig V2

Time for today's pictures:

My shipment from topcat (Original Mobo box, I/O shield, etc.) and some caps came in.

Original I/O shield (bare metal) vs the old I/O shield (colorful plastic):



Original I/O shield installed:



I also replaced the one G-Luxon on the audio card:



Man this rig rocks and rolls... with the exception of two levels (which were choppy), I was getting between 56 and 110 FPS in SuperTuxKart. The open-source linux driver? More like 20-10. Yeah, the right driver makes all the difference.

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's Main rig V2

So far no luck on windows... I saw this:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Microsoft-Li...item4ac089347f

but I get the idea that won't actually help me.