Search found 79 matches

by truckman
Thu Oct 21, 2010 8:08 pm
Forum: Silent Storage
Topic: WD 3TB Green released
Replies: 37
Views: 23099

Re: WD 3TB Green released

I generally nuke stuff after I watch it, but I've been getting a bit behind :roll: Have you ever seen the show Horders ? You are the digital equivalent of those people. Even in 1080p, it would take several lifetimes to watch that much TV. I've seen articles referring to it and I've seen it in the T...
by truckman
Thu Oct 21, 2010 4:16 pm
Forum: SPCR Article Discussion
Topic: Silent Home Server Build Guide
Replies: 137
Views: 92252

Re: Silent Home Server Build Guide

As mentioned by many others, RAID of any kind is no substitute for backups. Systematic frequent backups work as well for a failed drive, and provide more security overall by being separate from the source data. My guess is that in business servers, HDD failure occurs more frequently than in any hom...
by truckman
Thu Oct 21, 2010 4:04 pm
Forum: SPCR Article Discussion
Topic: ECC Support (offshoot of Silent Server Build)
Replies: 62
Views: 53729

Re: Silent Home Server Build Guide

The scores of folks who use an old P3 for a home file server certainly aren't using ECC memory Pretty much all of the old hardware I've got around here supports ECC, starting with a pile of Intel 430 HX chipset Pentium motherboards, and my old favorite 440 BX Pentium II motherboard. I've also got s...
by truckman
Thu Oct 21, 2010 3:12 pm
Forum: Silent Storage
Topic: WD 3TB Green released
Replies: 37
Views: 23099

Re: WD 3TB Green released

I know that we just posted a guide on how to build a silent 12tb server, but all of my personal and business digital data easily fits on a single 2TB drive. The real question is how does anyone fill something like a 12TB server -- not w/ garbage? :lol: From my mythtv box: % df -h Filesystem Size Us...
by truckman
Tue Aug 24, 2010 6:44 pm
Forum: Cases and Damping
Topic: Antec Solo upgrade soon?
Replies: 71
Views: 44303

As a long time owner of two Solo cases, I'm generally pretty satisfied, but I've got some comments and suggestions ... In terms of height and depth, this case is just about ideal for my uses. It was the only mid-tower case that I found that can accept a DDS tape changer in the upper 5.25" drive bays...
by truckman
Sun Jul 25, 2010 10:29 pm
Forum: CPUs and Motherboards
Topic: Biostar A760G-M2+ - 30W barrier broken
Replies: 119
Views: 142643

Re: ECC no go on TA760G

After digging around, I realized I misinterpreted what memtest86+ v4.10 (latest) was saying. It's saying that ECC detection and correction are on, but not chipkill. It looks like the the TA760G supports chipkill with x4 chips, but my modules use x8 chips . If I turn off ECC in the bios, then memtes...
by truckman
Sun Jul 25, 2010 9:56 pm
Forum: Off Topic
Topic: Vanity and motherboards; LPT and COM ports
Replies: 16
Views: 6620

I don't have any use for printer ports on motherboards, but I find that serial ports are useful. I've got one machine serving as a stratum 1 NTP server that has a GPS receiver connected to one of its serial ports with one of the control lines serving as a PPS interrupt input. Timing jitter is typica...
by truckman
Tue Jan 26, 2010 10:26 pm
Forum: Silent Storage
Topic: how do you test a hard drive?
Replies: 13
Views: 6630

Lately I've been testing drives with a couple of programs from the Ultimate Boot CD . I start off by running the MHDD32 seek test for an hour, though it seems to have a bug that causes it to not work on 1TB and larger drives. Then I use Darik's Boot and Nuke do multiple write/read tests. I set the w...
by truckman
Tue May 12, 2009 2:56 pm
Forum: Fans and Control
Topic: Need fairly quiet 92mm and 80mm fan recommendations
Replies: 5
Views: 3261

I'm using two 80mm non-PWM Arctic-Cooling exhaust fans and a Nexus 92mm fan in one of the drive cages of my Silverstone LC-17. All are undervolted with Fanmates or something similar. I'm satisfied as far as fan noise and cooling are concerned. Noise from the five hard-mounted drives in the box is a ...
by truckman
Sun May 03, 2009 10:49 am
Forum: Fans and Control
Topic: Silverstone fans: 80mm,92mm,120mm
Replies: 11
Views: 6553

They have older models however, the Fan 8, Fan 9 and Fan 12, the others listed on that local site are PWM which I don't have on my mobo. Going to the AC site, I found those model fans are discontinued. Also looking at the pics they appear suitable as exhausts but not as intakes--I am mistaken here ...
by truckman
Tue Apr 21, 2009 5:54 pm
Forum: CPUs and Motherboards
Topic: Say Goodbye to Abit
Replies: 26
Views: 11848

Such a shame. I bought a NF-M2 nView a few years ago, and more recently a couple of AN-M2HDs. All three have been really solid boards. The NF-M2 and one of the AN-M2HDs have been running 24x7 since purchase. The only motherboard that I've had with a capacitor problem was an AOpen socket 370 board. I...
by truckman
Fri May 30, 2008 12:38 pm
Forum: System Advice / Troubleshooting
Topic: Low Power MythTV Home Server List
Replies: 16
Views: 15122

The TV card has its issues (both ended up getting the Microsoft MCE remote, giving up on the Hauppage bundled remote, which would connect to whichever tuner device initialised first, confusing Linux). It should be possible to word around this problem using udev rules. This MythTV wiki page describe...
by truckman
Sun Feb 24, 2008 3:31 pm
Forum: Off Topic
Topic: How much Electricity do you use? How much can you REDUCE it?
Replies: 37
Views: 21808

Last month I used 459 KWH over a 28 day billing cycle. One person in a 2500 square foot house with natural gas heat, hot water, stove, and dryer. Almost all high usage bulbs are CFLs. I'm guessing that about half my electricity consumption last month are from the five computers that I had running 24...
by truckman
Mon Jan 28, 2008 1:30 am
Forum: CPUs and Motherboards
Topic: need reliable motherboard with ECC support
Replies: 14
Views: 9624

i'd love to hear more info in the reliability and longevity of the abit AN-M2HD vs. the tyan S3950G2NR, as well as any other boards that i should be considering. The AN-M2 and AN-M2HD are fairly new boards. I've got another machine that's been using the older Abit NF-M2 nView for the last year and ...
by truckman
Sun Jan 27, 2008 6:01 pm
Forum: CPUs and Motherboards
Topic: need reliable motherboard with ECC support
Replies: 14
Views: 9624

AMD AM2 processors do support ECC memory. Whether it is supported on a particular motherboard depends on whether the extra wiring tracks for the error correction bits are routed between the CPU socket and the DIMM sockets, and whether the BIOS has the code to configure ECC during POST. ECC support o...
by truckman
Sat Jan 26, 2008 3:23 pm
Forum: CPUs and Motherboards
Topic: Which chipset for AMD HTPC?
Replies: 39
Views: 17641

That SOYO mobo with its 3 PCI slots and 6 SATA connectors sure looks nice. Lots of room for TV tuner cards and easy to load the machine with disks ...

On the other hand, it doesn't appear to have either a rear panel coaxial S/PDIF or TOSLINK connector.
by truckman
Mon Jan 07, 2008 9:09 pm
Forum: CPUs and Motherboards
Topic: SATA mobo connectors detaching (ABIT IP35)
Replies: 9
Views: 4307

I broke one of the SATA connector shells on my Abit AN-M2HD the same way, though in my case I was trying to unplug the cable in poor lighting conditions and couldn't really see if I had the latch depressed. I was able slip the connector shell back over the pins and the connector still works. This is...
by truckman
Wed Jan 02, 2008 10:30 pm
Forum: The Silent Front
Topic: Best Way of killing coil whine?
Replies: 18
Views: 21920

I would think that a substance that would penetrate the coil windings would be the most effective. There are couple of things that I've recently worked with might be worth trying. The first is silicon windshield sealant. It's a lot runnier than the other silicon sealants and caulks that I've used in...
by truckman
Fri Dec 21, 2007 4:17 pm
Forum: CPUs and Motherboards
Topic: What to get AMD 690G or Nvidia 7050?
Replies: 71
Views: 43893

Yes, I'd recommend this board, with reservations which I'll mention below. I haven't had much experience with retail boards, but this Biostar board has served me well thus far. Reservations: I have not found a working driver for the audio part of the HDMI for the 7050 chipset, so during the time th...
by truckman
Sun Dec 09, 2007 10:28 pm
Forum: CPUs and Motherboards
Topic: Abit AN-M2HD or Biostar TF7050-M2
Replies: 11
Views: 8690

I picked the Abit AN-M2HD for my MythTV box. The deciding factors in my case were the firewire port, for possible future video capture from my cable box, the rear panel optical S/PDIF port, and ECC RAM support. I've had this board for several months and I've been happy with this purchase. I'm drivin...
by truckman
Mon Nov 19, 2007 10:43 am
Forum: Fans and Control
Topic: 120V AC squirrel cage fan needed for fireplace 'heatilator'
Replies: 3
Views: 4630

Fasco makes a lot of blowers of about the right size. A Google search on "Fasco blower" turns up a bunch of vendors. If you poke around the vendor web sites, you should be able to find blowers from other manufacturers as well.
by truckman
Tue Nov 13, 2007 12:59 am
Forum: System Advice / Troubleshooting
Topic: Advice on: Silverstone LC16m Build
Replies: 5
Views: 6353

I must say, 40C sounds like a very nice CPU temperature. A quick comparison showned your 'BTF90' to be cooler at low speed then the 'SP 128'. So, with a hot GFX, I'd expect to run at 50C during summer. I'll look into the clearance issues between the HSF and the case. Tricky little things, those HTP...
by truckman
Mon Nov 12, 2007 9:50 pm
Forum: System Advice / Troubleshooting
Topic: Advice on: Silverstone LC16m Build
Replies: 5
Views: 6353

I used the LC16M for my MythTV PVR build. I'm not doing any gaming on this machine, so I was able to get by with the onboard graphics on an AN-M2HD motherboard and drive my TV via the HDMI port. I'm using a 65W Brisbane-core Athlon64 X2 4000+ CPU, cooled by a Zerotherm BTF90. This HSF seems to be to...
by truckman
Sun Nov 11, 2007 12:03 am
Forum: Green Computing
Topic: Datacenters: Gas-Guzzling Jalopies of the Technology World
Replies: 10
Views: 7914

If anything, the biggest problem (at least for our servers) is that for SQL servers, there is too much disk space as the drive sizes have increased but we still need a high number of spindles for I/O performance purposes, so there are situations where we have highly transitive DBs that are relative...
by truckman
Sat Nov 03, 2007 11:52 am
Forum: Fans and Control
Topic: Where can I get a simple on/off 3-pin switch?
Replies: 25
Views: 10798

If I'm running the fans from my PSU (using a switch WITHOUT a snubber diode) and something goes wrong - what's going to get damaged? If it's just the fan, then I'm happy to roll the dice... The most likely thing to get damaged would be the fan, and since I've never seen any reports of fans being da...
by truckman
Fri Nov 02, 2007 10:00 pm
Forum: Fans and Control
Topic: Where can I get a simple on/off 3-pin switch?
Replies: 25
Views: 10798

Now that I think about it, I wouldn't bother adding a snubber diode. One reason is that the fan motor controller chip in the fan hub inherently has a reverse biased diode connected exactly the same way as an external snubber diode would be connected, though I can't be totally certain that it is ther...
by truckman
Fri Nov 02, 2007 8:08 am
Forum: Fans and Control
Topic: Where can I get a simple on/off 3-pin switch?
Replies: 25
Views: 10798

Forgive my pathetic diagrams... but are either of these correct? http://i6.tinypic.com/4pazuvl.jpg The first diagram is the correct way to connect the snubber diode. The second diagram shows how to decrease the voltage to the fan by about 0.7V (connect more diodes in series to increase the drop). T...
by truckman
Fri Nov 02, 2007 3:00 am
Forum: Fans and Control
Topic: Where can I get a simple on/off 3-pin switch?
Replies: 25
Views: 10798

A cheap solution would be to add a diode or RC snubber circuit . The diode version is simpler, but you have to be careful to connect the diode with the correct polarity to avoid letting the magic smoke get out. This sounds like exactly what I want. Assuming I'm going to be running a single fan off ...
by truckman
Thu Nov 01, 2007 9:55 am
Forum: Fans and Control
Topic: Where can I get a simple on/off 3-pin switch?
Replies: 25
Views: 10798

Is there such thing as a 'soft start' resistor that I can use in a DIY switch to avoid voltage spikes? The problem isn't a start surge. The problem is suddenly interrupting current that's flowing in the inductive fan motor. In other words, the problem is the sudden stop. A cheap solution would be t...
by truckman
Sat Sep 29, 2007 3:54 pm
Forum: Cases and Damping
Topic: P150/Solo - 120mm in place of two 92mm fans?
Replies: 13
Views: 8911

I have a question about the air flow in Solo. I don't plan to use any front case fans in Solo. Will that be enough air flow, if I don't use any of the 2 92mm fans? Only one HDD will be inside (possibly 2.5" drive), and CPU is P4 Prescott 2.4 GHz, S478. PSU is Seasonic S12 II 430W. I don't know what...