Ratdude's main rig V3, maybe

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's main rig V3, maybe

Damn, that's a good find. I would go for it!!! You know that's a good unit except it might have OST in it

Bought one.

(the guy still has another up for sale )

[Pentium4]

Re: Ratdude's main rig V3, maybe

Bought one.

(the guy still has another up for sale )

I bought the other one good find

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's main rig V3, maybe

Tv tuner came in a few days ago... but I didn't have time to open the box until today.

I was expecting just a used tuner, which for $30 shipped was a steal. However, the box was a tad large, and upon opening, I found this:



Ok, so they included the original box. I wonder what's inside?



Yup, all the accessories, all of which are unopened (maybe the CD's were used, I can't tell).

I already had used equivlents of those ready for use (scuffed remote, used sensor cable, S-vhs player as Svidio converter), so the new ones are going to be put away as spares, along with the original box and CD's (I have another cd for winTV verification).

If anybody has ever used one of these w/o a cable box, you'd know what a PITA dealing with the IR blaster side of the sensor cable is. Since I'm doing QAM directly, w/o a box, I decided to fix the issue once and for all:



This way I can just unplug the blaster side of the cable when I'm not using it (like all the time):



I keyed it by alternating pin genders...

I then installed it to the front of the case:



Note the newly installed Floppy/card reader combo.

I took some other pictures of the system while I was at it:

The insides, overall:



All the rear I/O:



All the cards:



Note the newly installed SMD header on the 3ware card, and the custom LED header extension connected to it.

The SATA cable harness:



The 4 HDDs, with the bays labeled by port #:



At this point, all it needs is the PSU (still in mail), Mobo (Shovenose hasn't shipped it yet ), and win 7 x64 disc (I haven't bought it yet).

Looking good?

[Pentium4]

Re: Ratdude's main rig V3, maybe

That's pretty sweet having all that stuff still in the packaging. And the inside looks good, good cable management. Should get that PSU soon and you can always install Windows 7 and activate it later so that you can at least use it till your copy gets there.

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's main rig V3, maybe

the win 7 copies are from the college bookstore @ $20 a pop. I just need to go there, fill out some BS paperwork, and plunk $20.

[Pentium4]

Re: Ratdude's main rig V3, maybe

Oh wow even better, that's awesome! Any version you want?

[Uranium-235]

Re: Ratdude's main rig V3, maybe

seriously, retail? You should resell them with new builds for other people hehe

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's main rig V3, maybe

seriously, retail? You should resell them with new builds for other people hehe

Student edition upgrades, ultimate. Both 32 and 64 bit (your choice). I already have one of each (an x64 for the D630, a x32 for V2 (or whatever I use it for next). I'm *suppossed to* delete the installs and destroy the discs when I graduate in 2015/2016 (if I stay for a master's degree). By then I bet M$ wouldn't give a ****, since we'd be on W9 or W10 by then.

[momaka]

Re: Ratdude's main rig V3, maybe

That's a professional looking workstation

I kind of miss the fact there aren't any ghetto mods

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's main rig V3, maybe

I kind of miss the fact there aren't any ghetto mods

I do too, a bit. Not nearly as much "character", or at least that kind of character.

[severach]

Re: Ratdude's main rig V3, maybe

By then I bet M$ wouldn't give a ****

Won't care at all. Your first hit is free!

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's main rig V3, maybe

PSU came in today. I'll upload naked (PSU) pics in my next post, but let's just say BigTroll would consider the caps Centerfold material.

Reason I post this is I put the PSU in, and did a test fire with the board to test the PSU... and I was slow to power it off... and suddenly I heard the FDD chirp to life! I then grabbed a keyboard and monitor, and what do you know, it's actually alive.

Apparently changing PSU's and CPU's did something... it's bootable. However, it was a tad unstable, locking up under the old V2 win7 boot (via the old 3 drive array) and doing the kernel-panic dance during a Usb linux boot, so I'm diagnosing that. Running an overnight memtest (6% ATM)... It could also be the LAN, since the LAN boot prompt popped up 4 or 5 times during the last POST.


In the mean time, Shovenose prepped his board to ship... only to find a popped KZG that was fine the last time he looked at it ( a few weeks back?). . Yeah, KZG super-sucks. I'm (under re-negotiated terms) taking the board anyway, as it would make a good spare board (and I need the I/O shield).

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's main rig V3, maybe

First, some pictures of the PSU:

The guts:




The primary:



The secondary:



Just for Bigtroll, a good picture of one of the caps:



Just for chegge, a death adda:



The PSU label (not 100% true, it's AFAIK a single rail):



I think the caps may have dried up, as the instability has gotten worse with time and the PSU is putting out a lot of heat. I'd invoke the warranty but I honestly don't want to have to mail it back... so I'll just recap it and add the cost of caps to the ultimate PSU price. (Topcat, check your email...)

The PSU installed:



The HDD power bundle:



The cable management at the top:



I placed my zip tie buttons only on the PSU side, so the PSU can be removed w/o cutting ties.

Memtest:



As I said earlier, I suspect the culprit for the stability is the PSU... Stupid Su'scon...

edit- the cap values were a **** to get (lots of glue to remove), so for Pentium 4, the values:

3900uf 16V >10mm (did't caliper it)
2700uf 16V >10mm
1000uf 16V 8mm
3300uf 10V 10mm
2200uf 10V 10mm x2
1000uf 10V 8mm x3 (or use 3 additional of the 16v's)

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's main rig V3, maybe

Found the cause of the stability issues... Corrupted BIOS.

I tried running it off the supermicro PSU to no avail... but I decided to use some old tricks I used on my EEE pc a few years back to hack the BIOS splash (the default tyan one is ugly). After making a new splash image (I'll attach it in a few posts), I slipped it into the most recent bios which supposedly my board was already flashed with. After some "uncompressed bitmap required" bull puckey (fixed by opening the image that was extracted form bios and pasting over it the new one), I made a new bios file. After some more bootable floppy bull puckey (ended up using the old reliable 98.iso slipstream n burn trick), I reflashed the bios... the screen didn't quite work (edges were cut off, my LCD was set wrong), but the unstableness and other quirks (like a bunch of gibberish in the boot order menu) are fixed. Well, were fixed, as the system locked up after a bit and resumed the crap. Maybe a bad BIOS chip?

I hope shovenose's board runs better than this... it's a bunch of if you ask me.

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's main rig V3, maybe

Made some changes to the bios splash image; I haven't burnt it to the bios yet (just got done using AMI tools to make a new bios ROM).

Here are the old and new splash screen images:

Old:



Full screen on an LCD it looks pretty crappy...

New:



Much better, don't you think?

[Pentium4]

Re: Ratdude's main rig V3, maybe

I pulled out the Su'scon caps on mine and they had surprisingly low ESR and the capacitance values were all in tolerance, but they're still Su'scon...

I'm curious to know how many watts that things pulls

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's main rig V3, maybe

I pulled out the Su'scon caps on mine and they had surprisingly low ESR and the capacitance values were all in tolerance, but they're still Su'scon...

I'm curious to know how many watts that things pulls

According to a "quite shit" extreme PSU calculator, it should draw about 549W, with a recommended PSU of 599W (chcking the FB dimms? box made a slight difference). So yeah, maybe it's getting toasty because I'm drawing so many watts...

[Sweet & Spicy]

Re: Ratdude's main rig V3, maybe

Made some changes to the bios splash image; I haven't burnt it to the bios yet (just got done using AMI tools to make a new bios ROM).

New:



Much better, don't you think?

I have to agree. I like that much better.

[c_hegge]

Re: Ratdude's main rig V3, maybe

Just for c_hegge, a death adda:

image

At least it's not a sleeve bearing. They're the real "Death Adda" fans.

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's main rig V3, maybe

Motherboard caps came in today... Recap of the 2nd board was a success.

I also found the issue with the 1st board... I accidentally replaced a 470uf 25V cap (NCC KMH, not bad) with a 1500uf 6.3V... it was slightly bulged too. No wonder I seemed to be a cap short last time (and why my amended cap list was one too many this time). I'll swap that cap later and keep the board as a spare.

System still was a tad unstable... I boiled it down to two issues:

1. The USB card was toast. I need to find another NEC card with a USB header (or at least the solder holes) on the front of the card, as my other NEC card has them further towards the back, which my card reader cable won't reach. I also have a Firewire/USB combo card, both NEC, and with the header in the right place... however, I already have firewire on the motherboard...

2. My really nice 1gb ATI/AMD Radeon hd4670 doesn't play well with this system... as soon as I installed the drivers, it would lock up after the next reboot/login... I tried all sorts of stuff... to no avail. However, it seems to like my Nvidia GEforce 6800gt, so I may find a decent Nvidia card for it (the DVI port on the 6800 is toast, missing Passive micro-choke). U-235, check your PM's.

(looks like V2 will be getting back the killer GPU... I also have a 1TB drive for it, so I'll have TWO killer worstations to play with... )

The PSU hasn't been recapped yet... apparently there was a miscommunication between topcat and I and as a result the PSU caps (and the caps for 3 LCDs) weren't in the order... my bad there. In the mean time, I re-did the SATA plugs on the PSU so one cable has 4 right angle plugs at half the original distance between plugs (for the HDDs), and the two straight plugs on the other cable (In case the PSU ever sees a newer board with SATA opticals). I also re-did the cable routing of the front USB/audio, so between that and the PSU mod, the wiring is a lot cleaner. Pics to come later (too busy/lazy to upload them now).