General Computer Thread

[Gingerbread Demon]

A photo of an engineer wiring an early IBM computer, 1958 by Berenice Abbott.
View attachment 31258
upgrading the OS was different back then mmm

Oh lordy that looks painful. One wrong move.



I made a disk image of my main drive, installed new NVME drive into slot on motherboard and reimaged that but not sure why it is now stuck in a kind of boot loop.

My main drive has no recovery partition. I did remove that so I am wondering if that was recorded in the disk image and possibly the missing partition is the issue but the image is there and there were no errors making it.

 

[Marc]

Oh lordy that looks painful. One wrong move.



I made a disk image of my main drive, installed new NVME drive into slot on motherboard and reimaged that but not sure why it is now stuck in a kind of boot loop.

My main drive has no recovery partition. I did remove that so I am wondering if that was recorded in the disk image and possibly the missing partition is the issue but the image is there and there were no errors making it.

you’ve probably stuffed it by removing the recover partition which could have changed the numbering.

you’ll need to boot a windows install disk and see if the recovery tools will work - there are ones related to boot issues.

google will provide the necessary info.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

you’ve probably stuffed it by removing the recover partition which could have changed the numbering.

you’ll need to boot a windows install disk and see if the recovery tools will work - there are ones related to boot issues.

google will provide the necessary info.

Yeah I did that....... Seems that is the culprit

Once the system is running it's fine to remove the recovery partition but you need that for a fresh boot which is annoying.

Update: @Marc was right it was the partition numbering I did a fresh install of Windows on the new drive, deleted the recovery partition off that, then did an image restore, the system booted perfectly off the new disk that way.

 

[Santaman]

Old graphics cards are iffy, the really old ones usually come without drivers which means you've got to hunt for them, luckily and there are still drivers available on reputable sites, you just have to dig them out.
Then there are hardware niggles, I've got two graphics cards with those tiny whiny fans, think around 50x50mm and totally proprietary and usually the also proprietary heatsink is bonded to the chip with epoxy resin or the like so there's more chance of the chip getting ripped off the board than the heatsink getting ripped of the chip, got a case like that here, a Hercules Radeon FDX 8500 LE AGP, it has one of those round heatsinks with a tiny whiny and very broken fan and you can't remove the heatsink.. so I need to figure out a way to mount a standard sized fan...

 

[Marc]

so I need to figure out a way to mount a standard sized fan...

know anyone with a 3D printer?

could make a small adapter to convert a standard 40mm fan to the 50mm etc.

 

[Santaman]

I've been looking into that, the problem is that the original fan is mounted inside a ring which is screwed into three of the fins which have a flat top with threading, the ring is about 46mm, the fan inside 38mm, would be a heck of a strange adaptor, think if I'm ever using the card I'll just mount a 60x60mm fan near it, I'm quite good at creating stuff like that.

Luckily I found a card with better specs and I had fittd it with a really cool (punny punny) Zalman coolers which is new so that one will last a looooooooong time since the machine isn't a daily driver.
The machine is a Medion PC MT6 which houses a micro atx MSI board MD5000 which is not quite standard, it has a Pentium 4 2.66 Ghz CPU, 512MB RAM, the board has a SIS 648 chipset which is pretty good actually, it supports AGP 8x, memory speed up to 333Mhz but can usually do 400Mhz as well, the southbridge pof that chipset has ATA 133, USB2 and Firewire, also it has the highest bandwith of all the chipsets made back then.
The graphics card is a Geforce 4ti 4200 with 64MB RAM, it has a custom TV card/modem, mainboard and that card have proprietary connectors running to the front panel of the machine, it has a 250GB HDD, wasn't the original drive, the machine didn't have one, the machine is installed and uses XP which it does rather well, I might upgrade the memory to 1GB, might be that I indeed have larger modules somewhere.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

I like your card has a TV tuner as well. I had an old Philips branded PCI card ages and ages ago with another build I made and it was fun while it lasted, I think that was back around 2005/6 at the time lots of fun cards were around like FM tuners and such.

 

[Robin Bland]

I thought this was an interesting article on quantum computing. (For us novices, anyway.)

 

[Sehlat Vie]

I thought this was an interesting article on quantum computing. (For us novices, anyway.)

Quantum computing will upend our current world just as the internet upended...well, civilization. It's a very powerful tool, and it can potentially nullify much of our current cybernetic landscape.

Proceed with extreme caution... that's all I'll say.

 

[Robin Bland]

Quantum computing will upend our current world just as the internet upended...well, civilization. It's a very powerful tool, and it can potentially nullify much of our current cybernetic landscape.

Proceed with extreme caution... that's all I'll say.

The whole piece is nuts... I had to read it in two chunks just to get my head around some of the concepts. I've read about QC before and it just reads like SF. It'll certainly change the world... maybe overnight. Perhaps it'll be a force for good though (and I can hear the birds on the roof cackling with glee as they fly off shedding feathers in a show of derision at that comment). I dunno, these days when I read about such things, I'm reminded of what the gods did to Prometheus after he stole fire. But let's not think about that.

 

[Sehlat Vie]

The whole piece is nuts... I had to read it in two chunks just to get my head around some of the concepts. I've read about QC before and it just reads like SF. It'll certainly change the world... maybe overnight. Perhaps it'll be a force for good though (and I can hear the birds on the roof cackling with glee as they fly off shedding feathers in a show of derision at that comment). I dunno, these days when I read about such things, I'm reminded of what the gods did to Prometheus after he stole fire. But let's not think about that.

LOL! Right? Or when Icarus tried on those new wings...

 

[Santaman]

Quantum computers can't run DOS..

So, one last oldie project, got three mainboards of the same type, MSI 6526GL, they all have Pentium4 chips ranging from 1.7 to 2.0(A) Ghz so really old and they don't have an AGP port, just three PCI slots and one CNR slot.. never actually got my hands on anything that fit AMR/CNR slots..
This is a little micro ATX office computer board, the on board graphics card is actually capable of 3D operations and seems to be about as fast as a Geforce 2MX so it will play Unreal Tournament GOTY 1997..
I have found a CD-ROM drive and I think I've got a working HDD for the machine as well.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

Linus does Glammed up PCs

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From Toronto

 

[Tom Hendricks]

Anyone build their own NAS? I’m thinking about doing it, instead of buying something off the shelf like a Synology. I’m considering a full NAS build, using typical NAS components. However I’ve also started to research a Raspberry Pi NAS, which is very tempting.

 

[Marc]

Anyone build their own NAS? I’m thinking about doing it, instead of buying something off the shelf like a Synology. I’m considering a full NAS build, using typical NAS components. However I’ve also started to research a Raspberry Pi NAS, which is very tempting.

Nah - Pi is seriously going to lack the oomph and you're connecting drives via USB.

Doubly so if you plan on storing your video files on it.

Have a search through r/homelab on reddit for some relevant discussion.

In terms of software, if don't want to go a complete roll your own solution, TrueNAS and unRAID would be the two main packages to look at. Both have their fanatical followers but comes down to which seems a best fit for you.

Biggest difference is how they are approach the drive setup, the former uses ZFS, the later it's own and like everything there's strengths and weakness to both.

running a ZFS solution usually sees the recommendation for a boat of memory to all the best performance and use all features.

use of ECC memory is a bit of a religious argument and it does limit your choices board and processor.

Look at options for 10Gbe ethernet (might also require a network switch upgrade but again if video editting you could find it advantageous).

Case wise, there are some specialised NAS cases but they can be tricky to work on again your board and processor choices will be limited.

 

[Santaman]

I have built a few NAS-like systems here and there, they're possible but have niggles, you indeed need a CPU with quite a bit of power, you can do software RAID, but going for a RAID card is also an option they also reduce the load on the CPU, with a PC based NAS you can invest into a pair of high end LAN cards which will speed up data transfer.
Been a while I built something like it, at the moment my brother and I run an off the shelf NAS, performance is good, it works as it should.

As for my (for now) final vintage build, so one of the three MSI 6526GL boards actually works, I have a fitting PSU and an old Compaq Deskpro casing, actually needed the cut out the rear opening a bit so the power socket and on/off switch would fit, silly Compaq..
Specs, that mainboard has the 845G/GL/GE/GV/ chipset, means it also doesn't do a 533Mhz front bus so CPU's were a tad limited, I have some slow P4's fastest being 2Ghz, I have a 2.4Ghz P4 but that one needs the 533Mhz bus so I decided to use the fastest Northwood Celeron I have, it's running at 2.6Ghz, for cooling I have done things quite different...
The backplate of Socket 478 and of Socket 939, yes, that's AMD 939, are the same so I took the backplate of a Medion machine and mounted the socket 939 cooler mounts to that, fitted a Scythe Ninja Mini with a 92x92x25mm fan, so a modern heatpipe cooler with a rather large fan, the machine also has a 92x92x25mm intake and exhaust fan which run at a moderate speed, haven't seen a Netburst CPU run this cool, 36c max so far which is pretty damn cool for these chips.
The mainboard has no AGP slots but the on-board is working well enough no complaints there, only two memory slots, fitted 512MB RAM minus the 8MB for the graphics cars is still enough for Windows XP.
Drives, one Maxtor 250GB PATA drive, and I found an old Aopen DVD drive so the even older CD-ROM will go to one of my other machines which lacks a optical drive, will be MUCH easier to get drivers etc onto it then.

 

[Marc]

I have built a few NAS-like systems here and there, they're possible but have niggles, you indeed need a CPU with quite a bit of power, you can do software RAID, but going for a RAID card is also an option they also reduce the load on the CPU, with a PC based NAS you can invest into a pair of high end LAN cards which will speed up data transfer

Hardware raid isn't the be-all/end-all it once was - the power of modern processors allows them to do raid calculations without much overhead.

Also technologies such as ZFS (developed by Sun now Oracle) are working to alleviate the biggest issue with RAID in age of multi-TB drives - the rebuild time. It's hard to recommend RAID-5 these day because the time rebuild is enormous and you're at risk of a second drive failing. RAID-6 will at least protect you if a second drive fails while everything being put back together (though if you don't have backups who's a silly-billy?)

10Gbe is becoming pretty cheap to implement though for short distances you're better of with Fibre or a DAC than UTP - it's more expensive and requires more power and generates more heat.

Though iirc Tom's a Mac man through and through so use 10Gbe he'd probably have to go the Thunderbolt route which I think would be UTP based.

 

[Santaman]

RAID 6 is one of the RAID levels that sucks when it comes to rebuilding since that is its weak spot, the overhead for reads is okay, the overhead for writes though is NOT, its double compared to reading, parity etc, RAID 10 is probably the best option, that's the one which has the highest performance except for RAID 0...

 

[Tom Hendricks]

Hardware raid isn't the be-all/end-all it once was - the power of modern processors allows them to do raid calculations without much overhead.

Also technologies such as ZFS (developed by Sun now Oracle) are working to alleviate the biggest issue with RAID in age of multi-TB drives - the rebuild time. It's hard to recommend RAID-5 these day because the time rebuild is enormous and you're at risk of a second drive failing. RAID-6 will at least protect you if a second drive fails while everything being put back together (though if you don't have backups who's a silly-billy?)

10Gbe is becoming pretty cheap to implement though for short distances you're better of with Fibre or a DAC than UTP - it's more expensive and requires more power and generates more heat.

Though iirc Tom's a Mac man through and through so use 10Gbe he'd probably have to go the Thunderbolt route which I think would be UTP based.

Correct, I am running Mac. I recently upgraded to a Mac Studio and it has 10gig ethernet. I would probably do 2.5 gig, 10gig is not really needed. My current routers are all 1gig at the moment. I currently run a 8tb thunderbolt attached storage device. However the reason I'm considering a NAS is more about my wife. She just got a new Macbook Pro from work but with only 512gb HD. She asked for them to upgrade it to 2TB but they only order the stock MBP. She needs more storage than that, so I was thinking about using the NAS as a way to get her more storage for when she's home and out at work by letting her access it through a VPN. It would also be her backup drive but I could also use it for some storage. Of course RAID is the added benefit here, because redundancy is important. Drive failures aren't as common nowadays but it is something you always have to weary of.

 

[Marc]

Correct, I am running Mac. I recently upgraded to a Mac Studio and it has 10gig ethernet. I would probably do 2.5 gig, 10gig is not really needed. My current routers are all 1gig at the moment. I currently run a 8tb thunderbolt attached storage device. However the reason I'm considering a NAS is more about my wife. She just got a new Macbook Pro from work but with only 512gb HD. She asked for them to upgrade it to 2TB but they only order the stock MBP. She needs more storage than that, so I was thinking about using the NAS as a way to get her more storage for when she's home and out at work by letting her access it through a VPN. It would also be her backup drive but I could also use it for some storage. Of course RAID is the added benefit here, because redundancy is important. Drive failures aren't as common nowadays but it is something you always have to weary of.

I wouldn't go hardware RAID though.

As mentioned earlier TrueNAS and unRAID are the the two predominate packages for people looking to roll their own NAS. They implement RAID functionality via software and adding a hardware controller is a recipe for disaster.
It also becomes a point of failure because if the controller borks, you're down until your get a replacement (and praying the RAID configuration data was stored in the drives, not the controller). Software and you just move the drives to a new system and you're up and running (especially with unRAID which also runs from the thumb drive).

There is also Open Media Vault (OMV) but it doesn't get as much love.

I'm just not sure what their support for AFS is like and you'd also need to look at the best way for her access the files remotely. Haven't done remote access with Apple recently to know how AFS goes over VPN. SMB isn't brillant over VPN but it's better than what it was.

I'd also look at some sort of offsite storage to replicate from the NAS for the really important stuff.

Could either setup another NAS (seeding it before setting up onsite would save time getting it up and running) at the parents/in-laws place or make use of a cloud service.