best cheap/free scores 1.1

[ratdude747]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

20" Imac Early 2008 (A1224)- $10. Has the meh 2Ghz CPU and a measly 1GB of RAM, but I've already sourced fresh RAM. Everything works too.

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

^
Those were horrible for GPU chip underfill issues, and of course bad caps. Make sure you take it apart and check it.

[ratdude747]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

^
Those were horrible for GPU chip underfill issues, and of course bad caps. Make sure you take it apart and check it.

IIRC it's AMD/ATI based, not Nvidia. Also, I thought the roasted Imac caps were a G5 issue, not an issue with the Core2 and later units? I'll take a look, but I do not follow.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMac_(..._Aluminum_iMac

Edit- it's actually a mid 2007 model. Radeon 2400 XT, 128mb. No underfil issues with those, right?

[stj]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

all apple post PPC are shit - they almost look designed to fail.

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

IIRC it's AMD/ATI based, not Nvidia. Also, I thought the roasted Imac caps were a G5 issue, not an issue with the Core2 and later units? I'll take a look, but I do not follow.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMac_(..._Aluminum_iMac

Edit- it's actually a mid 2007 model. Radeon 2400 XT, 128mb. No underfil issues with those, right?

I think it was more faulty ROHS solder....I've seen them both fail. They usually POST to garble or don't POST at all. They were victims of bad caps though. The G5's were worse, but there were lots of these that came across my bench.

[momaka]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Edit- it's actually a mid 2007 model. Radeon 2400 XT, 128mb. No underfil issues with those, right?

All modern (and even not so modern) ATI and nVidia GPUs are affected - but some more than others, of course (GeForce 6k-8k series series were the worst, along with X1k and HD6k and newer from ATI). In my experience, the Radeon 2400 and 3450 are probably the most robust fairly modern GPUs that ATI put out. Of course if Apple did a piss-poor design on the cooling, you can expect even these to fail after some time. But in general, the HD2400 and HD3450 don't have any issues.

That aside, what would be the use for an old Mac like this? I know that with the same PC-equivalent hardware (Windows), it would still make a decent PC for browsing and will run the latest versions of FF with Windows 7 or newer. But from the limited experience I've had with Macs, it seems like they can't take the latest OS (and for that matter limited in terms of what browser you can put on it?)

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

I'd recommend the Panasonic batteries (I think that unit uses a pair of the 7.2AHr size) -- they may be a few dollars more.

I suggest disabling the noisemaker (unless you have REALLY stable power and.or want to be alerted to every little glitch in your power line!) and install a UPS daemon (PowerChute or something like apcupsd if you're running a FOSS OS) to sort out how and when to bring down the system as well as how and when to alert you to those events. I'm pretty sure that series doesn't accept NMC's so you'll need a bogus USB (?) cable for that (I think can be fabricated from a network cable).

[Here, we have a "switching transient" every night at 12:05AM. You can hear every UPS in the house kick in at that time -- for just a second or two. With noisemakers enabled, there'd be a flurry of chirps!]

I'd also disable the "periodic self-test" feature (IIRC, you can set this to Never, POST, POST+every week, POST+every fortnight). Let the UPSd keep track of the state of the battery (as reported by the UPS). Otherwise, you may find your server crashed, even with "good power" -- simply because the self-test kicked in and the battery was shot (and your load collapsed).

Depending on the power requirements of your server, you may also wish to either disable POST self test or discipline yourself to turn the server on AFTER the UPS has finished it's self test. (some of my larger servers have "upset" the UPSs that were powering them by presenting too large of a power-on load WHILE the UPS was in its self-test).

Also, that UPS has the ability to power down peripherals when your PC sleeps. You might not want that to happen for all peripherals (e.g., a router that might be used to process a "magic packet" to wake up the server!)

Thanks for the tip on the batteries, ordered.

Yes the goofy proprietary USB cable is missing...they can be had for about 7 bucks out of china. We get a lot of those momentary drops around here....kicks off for about 5 seconds, just enough to reboot eveerything...so it doesn't need to carry much load for very long.

[ratdude747]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

I think it was more faulty ROHS solder....I've seen them both fail. They usually POST to garble or don't POST at all. They were victims of bad caps though. The G5's were worse, but there were lots of these that came across my bench.

Looking at pictures of what the mainboard supposedly looks like, it appears to be all polymer caps (more akin to a laptop board). Obviously the power supply isn't going to be, but looking at the PITA this thing is going to be to pull apart (and that I don't have any suction cups handy), I'll wait until I find another cheap T9300/T9500 CPU before I dive in.

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

They weren't overwhelmingly lytic like the G5, most polymer....but the few they had were killed by heat. Usually a couple 1500uF 6.3v 10x12 and a couple 680uf 16v 10x12. either KZJ or MBZ.

[ratdude747]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

They weren't overwhelmingly lytic like the G5, most polymer....but the few they had were killed by heat. Usually a couple 1500uF 6.3v 10x12 and a couple 680uf 16v 10x12. either KZJ or MBZ.

Were they from the Polycarb imacs or the Aluminum ones? Or were you send raw motherboards? What's supposed to be the board for mine (looks correct) is attached, looks to be 100% poly.

---

I screwed up again... apparently these things are picky eaters when it comes to RAM and cannot run DDR2-800. I stuck some of such (pulled from a laptop not in use) to test, and no, at least one module needs to be 667 or else it will not POST. Already ordered memory too ... oh well, I have uses for such. At least both pairs of RAM were only $9.63 per set. Try, try again...

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

^
Hmm, dont think i've seen that particular board. As for a processor, you should have a mobile C2Q from another experiment....

[Curious.George]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Yes the goofy proprietary USB cable is missing...they can be had for about 7 bucks out of china. We get a lot of those momentary drops around here....kicks off for about 5 seconds, just enough to reboot eveerything...so it doesn't need to carry much load for very long.

Sorry I can't offer to send you one; I've replaced all of my UPSs with units that have network management cards (so I can "talk" to them from any machine, not just the machine to which they are USB-tethered).

Our utilities are underground so they tend to be more reliable. Having said that, we lost power for most of a day, recently, when one of the buried cables failed. While they power supply may be more reliable, it is far more difficult for them to repair when things go south! :<

[Curious.George]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

A set of six dual 10Gbe NICs that were headed for the trash still in their original packing!

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

A set of six dual 10Gbe NICs that were headed for the trash still in their original packing!

Not bad. I didn't wire my office in cat6 though, its cat5e...so I'm doomed to 1gbit, which is really plenty for most networks.

[Curious.George]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Not bad. I didn't wire my office in cat6 though, its cat5e...so I'm doomed to 1gbit, which is really plenty for most networks.

I'll install optical transceivers.

The wiring in my office is all exposed (hangs from the underside of the work benches) so I can always replace/upgrade it.

The house is all CAT5 (100Mb) -- which is plenty for even multimedia deployments (It would be a PITA to run ~5,000 ft of CAT6 with very little performance up-side)

When I really need to move a lot of data, I just sneakernet a drive to wherever it needs to go!

[ChaosLegionnaire]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

we lost power for most of a day, recently, when one of the buried cables failed.

lol i think u have to wonder why the buried power cables failed and/or who made them fail.

*blames curious george for pulling too much power and making the china made power cables fail* hehehe!

well, i guess its the power company's problem for using cheaply made china power cables. so if its more difficult for them to repair, thats their own problem! lol!

[stj]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

they probably use the british method of "adding a branch", "adding a branch", "adding a branch", until it fails,
never bothering to work out the total load on the inital cable!

[Curious.George]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

lol i think u have to wonder why the buried power cables failed and/or who made them fail.

*blames curious george for pulling too much power and making the china made power cables fail* hehehe!

well, i guess its the power company's problem for using cheaply made china power cables. so if its more difficult for them to repair, thats their own problem! lol!

Cables have been there for just under 40 years (so, unlikely they were "made in china"). Their original service life was supposed to be 20 years. So, the problem is a lack of maintenance on the part of the power utility (reactively replacing items that are long past their EoL instead of proactively replacing at a more appropriate/convenient time).

Note that the power distribution system is designed so they CAN replace a blown cable without disrupting power to any subscribers; each branch circuit is dual fed so the affected customers can quickly be brought back on line by simply turning on the "opposite end" feed.

E.g, if wired as:

FEED1---A---B---C---D  FEED2

and the cable between B&C fails, they can disconnect the B&C ends (to completely isolate the faulty section of wire) and turn on (plug in) the link from D to FEED2.

However, they hadn't maintained THAT link so IT wasn't available to bring C and D back on-line. Instead, they had to run a cable ON the ground from FEED2 to D to restore power to C&D. Then, had to pay a security guard to sit in his vehicle and WATCH the cable 24/7 for the three days it took to get things back on-line "properly".

[In our case, the fault was the FEED1 to A link (makes sense as it sees the BIGGEST load of any link) -- so everyone on this branch (11 customers) was affected.]

Wicked cool to watch to see how they diagnose and repair this sort of thing, though! And, how much "respect" they show for the high tension lines they're screwing with!!

[Curious.George]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

they probably use the british method of "adding a branch", "adding a branch", "adding a branch", until it fails,
never bothering to work out the total load on the inital cable!

They have surprisingly good records of what goes where! (unlike the phone company). OTOH, I doubt there are many changes to the network once its in place (mature neighborhood so the only additional loads would be if individual homeowners opted to upgrade their service).

But, I can see that it would be really easy to get confused while working on this stuff. The dual feed aspect makes it hard to keep track of which cable is an "input" (to a distribution transformer) and which is the "output" (to the remainder of the branch circuit, downstream!).

I expected to see things labeled "IN" and "OUT" and, instead, it's "A" and "B". And you (as a lineman) have to hope they have been consistent in always treating the A (or B) connections the same (fed from the same direction) so you need only remember "B is input" or "A is input" FOR THE ENTIRE JOB (instead of having to examine each distribution transformer to make that decision!)

[Curious.George]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Another 2x2 display stand -- but I don't think it will support anything bigger than 24 inch monitors. OTOH, I don't like individual Workspaces (NOT to be confused with Desktops) to be much larger than that -- the 30" really is an uncomfortably large Workspace (things get too small/hard to read -- given that you have to back up from the display in order to take it all in, visually)

But, its a real drag having to deal with all of those frigging cables -- 4 power plus 4 for each video source (so a total of 16-20 per desktop). And, keeping track of which is which...