Tonight I did some major clean up work on my electronics workbench... it was a real pit and I need work space for what was going to be an upcoming project. Might as well, because working on my car outside is out of the question:
Before I show what the project was (and why it became a complete fail), while it's clean and presentable (or at least the half I'm going to show), here's my current PC work area:
Note that I said half was presentable... the other half is mostly organized but has a bunch of crap stacked up (and the empty pop can, I know
). I retired Main rig V2.8 (Twin Xeon Gallatin's on BCN's first server's mobo) and moved Main Rig 4.1 into its place, since V4.1 was bumped by my uATX sleeper build. Since the case is on 3/8" tall feet (shallow flood protection) and is a beater, I felt OK moving it to the floor to open up some bench space (and to clean the wiring up). I also added a KVM to the setup:
Provided are two USB channels, VGA, LAN, Speakers (and an unused mic), and PS/2 keyboard. The latter isn't part of the KVM, but since the keyboard I'm using is one of the few Microsoft keyboard with both USB and PS/2 on a splitter, accomplishing such only requires a PS/2 extension cable:
This is handy for systems like my old aforementioned Xeon Gallatin rigs that do not have good USB emulation support (enabling it makes the POST time far longer than normal)... and since said keyboards also have USB 1.1 hubs in them, that also means I can plug the mouse in there and use the freed 2nd KVM USB port for the webcam. The other nice thing here is that since I'm using a CRT, I can run virtually any resolution I want w/o distortion. Yes, this is Topcat's old 24" trinitron monster... needs some degaussing work (need to get a proper coil) but otherwise it works great and is the highest resolution monitor in the house.
Anyway, so here's the project:
Some of you may recognize that as the notoriously unreliable Supermicro X7DWA-N from Main Rig 5. Topcat tipped me off to an auction w/ best offer for another board... and was able to best offer it down to $72 shipped (cheapest I've ever seen on eBay is $100). The board isn't here yet, but I can still mock things up.
The plan was to gut out Main Rig 4.1 (see above) and move this board into it... it's a supermicro case with a midplane, so this ought to work, right? I knew that I'd need to add some missing parts to make it run right based on past experience with FB-Dimms:
These being the air duct and rear fans... this case is missing the duct and had dummies in place of the fans in the back. In addition, I'd need to upgrade some things:
The PSU is due to the 545W unit currently installed not having any PCIe connectors (and being marginal for running this board). The Optical drive is because while the IDE drive I currently have would work, I might as well upgrade here. The card reader is due to the lack of a 2nd USB header, I have to use a USB card to use a card reader, so I might as well use a USB 3.0 card with this reader pulled from Main rig 5 (card ordered, not here yet).
Ok, let's tear into the transplant recipient:
Good old Irwindale netburst awesomeness (with 16GB of DDR2!).
Started pulling it apart... and very quickly some issues cropped up. First, while it does use an ATX sized PSU, the mounting isn't standard:
Unless I drill out the PSU and make a custom bracket, that ain't going to work. The air duct also is a no-go:
This was made for supermicro eEATX cases with 1U modular power supplies, like main rig 5 and 6 used:
Hence why the case was missing the air duct
Due to these, I'm not feeling that the X7DWA swap is going to be a good idea (better keep an eye out for a deal on a fresh EATX case). While I'm here, I might as well upgrade the AMCC 9650SE to an LSI 8708EM2 SAS card I had sitting:
...but wait, that doesn't fit either!
The bleeping mini-SAS is too short... *sad trombone*
Put it back together, at least the rear fans fit... but why won't they throttle down like the other fans? Well, here's why:
Apparently they made these fans in a non-PWM version... great.
So after all of this mess, main rig 4.1 is literally right where it started.
I do have a NOS Supermicro H8DAE-2 to play with... but I don't have CPUs or coolers for such. Also, I'd want to run SLI'd cards on such (since it's an Nforce pro chipset), and unless I found another 9800GT like I'm using, I'd have to do a PSU swap of some sort (newer supermicro/ablecom?) or use adapter cables (I hate adapter cables for GPUs). It's an option though... as for reviving main rig 5.x (in a different case since it was replaced by Main rig V6), well, until I find a case, that's on hold.
All of that said, the irwindales do still run well (rock solid ever since I stopped using Engineering sample CPUs) and I really don't have a need to upgrade since I'm not gaming on it nor do I want to upgrade to Windows 8.1 or 10 (Irwindale/Paxville is a couple CPU instructions shy of being compatible with the x64 versions).
What a way to burn a snowy Saturday...
... at least I have a mostly usable work bench again.
Before I show what the project was (and why it became a complete fail), while it's clean and presentable (or at least the half I'm going to show), here's my current PC work area:
Note that I said half was presentable... the other half is mostly organized but has a bunch of crap stacked up (and the empty pop can, I know
). I retired Main rig V2.8 (Twin Xeon Gallatin's on BCN's first server's mobo) and moved Main Rig 4.1 into its place, since V4.1 was bumped by my uATX sleeper build. Since the case is on 3/8" tall feet (shallow flood protection) and is a beater, I felt OK moving it to the floor to open up some bench space (and to clean the wiring up). I also added a KVM to the setup:Provided are two USB channels, VGA, LAN, Speakers (and an unused mic), and PS/2 keyboard. The latter isn't part of the KVM, but since the keyboard I'm using is one of the few Microsoft keyboard with both USB and PS/2 on a splitter, accomplishing such only requires a PS/2 extension cable:
This is handy for systems like my old aforementioned Xeon Gallatin rigs that do not have good USB emulation support (enabling it makes the POST time far longer than normal)... and since said keyboards also have USB 1.1 hubs in them, that also means I can plug the mouse in there and use the freed 2nd KVM USB port for the webcam. The other nice thing here is that since I'm using a CRT, I can run virtually any resolution I want w/o distortion. Yes, this is Topcat's old 24" trinitron monster... needs some degaussing work (need to get a proper coil) but otherwise it works great and is the highest resolution monitor in the house.
Anyway, so here's the project:
Some of you may recognize that as the notoriously unreliable Supermicro X7DWA-N from Main Rig 5. Topcat tipped me off to an auction w/ best offer for another board... and was able to best offer it down to $72 shipped (cheapest I've ever seen on eBay is $100). The board isn't here yet, but I can still mock things up.
The plan was to gut out Main Rig 4.1 (see above) and move this board into it... it's a supermicro case with a midplane, so this ought to work, right? I knew that I'd need to add some missing parts to make it run right based on past experience with FB-Dimms:
These being the air duct and rear fans... this case is missing the duct and had dummies in place of the fans in the back. In addition, I'd need to upgrade some things:
The PSU is due to the 545W unit currently installed not having any PCIe connectors (and being marginal for running this board). The Optical drive is because while the IDE drive I currently have would work, I might as well upgrade here. The card reader is due to the lack of a 2nd USB header, I have to use a USB card to use a card reader, so I might as well use a USB 3.0 card with this reader pulled from Main rig 5 (card ordered, not here yet).
Ok, let's tear into the transplant recipient:
Good old Irwindale netburst awesomeness (with 16GB of DDR2!).
Started pulling it apart... and very quickly some issues cropped up. First, while it does use an ATX sized PSU, the mounting isn't standard:
Unless I drill out the PSU and make a custom bracket, that ain't going to work. The air duct also is a no-go:
This was made for supermicro eEATX cases with 1U modular power supplies, like main rig 5 and 6 used:
Hence why the case was missing the air duct
Due to these, I'm not feeling that the X7DWA swap is going to be a good idea (better keep an eye out for a deal on a fresh EATX case). While I'm here, I might as well upgrade the AMCC 9650SE to an LSI 8708EM2 SAS card I had sitting:
...but wait, that doesn't fit either!
The bleeping mini-SAS is too short... *sad trombone*
Put it back together, at least the rear fans fit... but why won't they throttle down like the other fans? Well, here's why:
Apparently they made these fans in a non-PWM version... great.
So after all of this mess, main rig 4.1 is literally right where it started.
I do have a NOS Supermicro H8DAE-2 to play with... but I don't have CPUs or coolers for such. Also, I'd want to run SLI'd cards on such (since it's an Nforce pro chipset), and unless I found another 9800GT like I'm using, I'd have to do a PSU swap of some sort (newer supermicro/ablecom?) or use adapter cables (I hate adapter cables for GPUs). It's an option though... as for reviving main rig 5.x (in a different case since it was replaced by Main rig V6), well, until I find a case, that's on hold.
All of that said, the irwindales do still run well (rock solid ever since I stopped using Engineering sample CPUs) and I really don't have a need to upgrade since I'm not gaming on it nor do I want to upgrade to Windows 8.1 or 10 (Irwindale/Paxville is a couple CPU instructions shy of being compatible with the x64 versions).
What a way to burn a snowy Saturday...
... at least I have a mostly usable work bench again.
Attached Files
Lemme know if you need my coil.
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