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February 28, 2006
NEH Records CD Haul
Been a while since I've made a CD haul. Too busy buying computer parts I guess.
So I visted my old friends NEH Records and dropped some cd's in my basket. List and links w/details below.
FARO - Angelost
BOB CATLEY - Spirit Of Man
MARCEL COENEN Colour Journey Ya know I could not pass on this one!
PLATITUDE - Silence Speaks
SECTION A - Parallel Lives
HUBI MEISEL - Kailash
Tears Of Anger - In The Shadows
Minds Eye - Walking On H2O
JORN The Duke
Posted by Me at 07:29 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Router Upgrade - USR8200
For those looking into Routers and/or NAS devices I thought it worthwhile mentioning the USR8200.
I upgraded last night from a Linksys BEFSR81 Router with 8 Port switch to the USR8200 and a EG008W 8 port Gigabit switch.
I had the need for expansion and speed. With Gigabit being standard in many devices nowadays, it made sense to begin the migration.
The USR8200 is worth looking into if you want to share files with SMB and/or FTP as it can also function as a print server and NAS device with the use of external USB and/or FIREWIRE drives.
There are 2 USB ports and 1 FIREWIRE Port. With Firewire you can daisy chain up to 30 drives.
It's a pretty capable router and I noticed a speed increase immediately.
More to come as I learn abotu the device, it's capabilities and usefulness.
Posted by Me at 10:40 AM | Comments (0)
Kurobox tweaks - using hdparm to squeeze out speed
So.. My mp3 archive got corrupted on hercules.. again!!!
Dunno what happened, but when I powered off the external USB hard drive the machine went bonkers.
I've always felt Linux and USB do not mix well. At least in the 2.4.20ish tree.
Even USB on the Kuro is pretty dam slow.
Never thought it would affect the other scsi subsystems though..
Lo and behold my 300GB mp3 archive filesystem ended up being 1 large 300GB file.
No system. wtf!
So I break down, format and get down to rsyncing the files back from the Kurobox. (kuro 1 of 2).
The throughput is about 4MB/s and will take ages to move the 300GB of files.
So I logon to the Kuro and start tweaking vm and hdparm.
The magical settings for hdparm bumped up the rsync from 4Mb/s to a peak of 6-7Mb/s.
My init script follows.
#!/bin/sh
# set stop time for hdd spindle moter
if [ -x /sbin/hdparm ] ; then
/sbin/hdparm -S 241 /dev/hda
/sbin/hdparm -c 1 -d 1 -a 16 -m 16 /dev/hda
fi
Normally the drives are already enabled for DMA. (-d 1).
I added -c 1 for 32 bit i/o on the pci buss.
-m 16 for multicount transfers (i.e. 16 sectors are transfered at a time from drive to ide bus)
-a 16 for readahead buffering internal to the drive's cache.
I think it was the -a 16 that did it as the other settings were already present.
I doubt I'll be able to improve write performance without turning on write caching.
When I get a chance I'll redo some benchmarks on the 1GB network to see how much I can squeeze out of the kuro.
Right now hercules is still on the operating table and not hooked up to the 1GB switch.
Posted by Me at 09:35 AM | Comments (5)
February 27, 2006
WOW, snagged a Kurobox on eBay
Funny how things work out.
Here I go and have Larry order one for him and one for me at the new price, and one pops up on eBay for less ($150.00 what a deal) and WITH a 200GB hard drive!!
You know what I did!
So now I'll have 4.
Hey, you can never have enough backup.
I plan to get rid of all my tape drives and tapes.
I have a nice SCSI Mammoth and over 100 of the 20/40GB Mammoth AME tapes.
It just doesn't make sense to use these anymore.
rsync'ing to an external USB or FIREWIRE drive works the best.
With HDUP (thanks Tom) I can have incrementals automated.
Posted by Me at 01:00 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 25, 2006
Kurobox Price reduction
Just noticed this on the Kurobox.Com Forum this weekend. Not a bad price if I do say so myself. I'm planning to pick up my third unit. These are very handy little boxes that have saved my ass a couple of times due to recent filesystem corruption with Linux/USB and IDE/RAID.
Here's the announcement from the forum.
Starting Feb. 21, 2006 for 2 weeks prices of Kurobox have been slashed on http://revogear.com
Standard Kurbox: $109.00 US
Kurobox HG : $179.00 US
_________________
New IRC channel at: #kbox irc.freenode.net - See Announcements
Posted by Me at 10:30 AM | Comments (0)
February 24, 2006
New Cordless Keyboard - LOGITECH diNOVO CORDLESS DESKTOP Mouse and Keyboard Set
I've been eyeing this baby up for a while, yet the price seemed to put me off. After checking the reviews and seeing the $30.00 rebate I ended up getting the LOGITECH diNOVO CORDLESS DESKTOP Mouse and Keyboard Set (at J&R Music World)
I have the Adesso SlimTouch Wireless 2.4 GHz RF Mini Touchpad Keyboard and as much as I love it, I still feel all thumbs when it comes to alot of typing, in addition, as cool as the touchpad is, it does not seem to have the accuracy of a mouse. Perhaps it's me. Besides that, I really bought it for the ultimate in portability with my ASUS DigiMatrix. Another small form factor HTPC I'll have to tell y'all about. This one was slated for use at my friends house for an album recording project. 
What I need now, is an illuminated keyboard for Hercules. This will let me work in a failry dark environment (of which I find preferable), yet able to see the keys. So far I'm considering the SAitek Eclipse Keyboard. The only downside is it's designed for USB and supposedly will not work with a port converter and probably not with my KVM.. There is hope. I may just make my own converter box to power the keyboard from a USB port, yet provide the actual keyboard signals on a PS/2 style cable... With J&R's new price of $49.00 I may just delve in and try it out!
Posted by Me at 03:00 PM | Comments (0)
Considering a new blogging environment
Although I'm pretty satisfied with Movable Type as itself, I'm considering a more encompassing environment such as http://www.geeklog.net/.
I find myself wanting links into other apps and a forum for further discussion on topics.
I'm not too fond of Movable Type's comment communication plus I have the need for a Wiki to manage other projects.
Comments welcome.
Posted by Me at 09:30 AM | Comments (0)
February 23, 2006
The New NCC
Overlord, In the Network Control Center
Toshiba Cable Modem
US Robotics NAS/WAN Router (Bottom) slated to be migrated to.in the future
Linksys BEFSR81 8port Switch/DSL Router
Linksys EG0080W Gigabit 8port Work Group Switch
Linksys EFAH08W Hub (Yes a HUB! Tto monitor traffic on Wan link with a sniffing ethernet port on overlord's second port)
CMB-673 (Overlord, the overseer)
Kuro1 (MP3 Backup repostiory with MT-DAAPD, Slimserver, Samba & NFS)
Kuro2 (download file repository, CD IMAGES, picture Images Backup repostiory with same apps above plus HDUP1.6 & rsync) HDUP soon to be moved to overlord.
The monitor is my remote TV monitor. It's a Samsung 710MP. This has an SVIDEO & Composite which has a Terk Leapfrog to the TV/Stereo in the other room. This lets it double duty as a remote TV and as a third monitor.
Posted by Me at 11:50 PM | Comments (1)
We Have Connection.
Overlord is finally on the network.
It took a bit of adjustments to get the driver installed for the Marvel Yukon Gigabit ethenet adapter. It's not part of the mainstream kernel so you have to search out the driver. Not a big issue except that compiling the kernel is a chore (and a half). Since everything is enabled it takes quite a bit of time to compile.
After a number of tweaks in the kernel (and failed booting attempts at a broken kernel) I have the machine running at a good clip.
Seems that even though it's a 478 pin (micro FCPGA) P4 based processor the kernel needs to be optimized for a pentium M and not a P4/Celeron P4/Pentium 4M. Once that was done along with removal of unneeded drivers the kernel compiled in 15 minutes. Of course it's nothing like the 4 processor power of the Xeons, still I have a sense of accomplishment on how it's performing.
it also took a few tweaks in the OCZ Ram Timing. When you get to the higher density you loose CAS speed. The speed of this ram was set at 4-4-4-12, yet it's rated at 3-3-3-8. Once that was adjusted (along with the kernel) everything took shape and it felt as powerful as the other systems I own. I bet it would shine if I overclocked it a bit or used CAS2 ram. Too bad they do not make CAS2 in 1GB DDR 240's.
Posted by Me at 09:00 PM | Comments (1)
Overlord is born
Overlord, The new lil tyke
My new baby finally arrived. UPS delivered the final parts from newegg yesterday.
A whopping 2GB of DDR2 533 MHZ ram.
I spent the better part of the day (and 90% of the night) assembling the lil tyke. .
Yep, another one of those 3:00am hacking sessions and boy am I dragging ass today!
It's a cute lil system that I'll describe in more detail after I upload the pictures during the process.
One thing I'll say, It's an engineering marvel, yet very tedious to put together.
Although ITX has come a looong way, the problem with these ITX machines is you have to assemble them in a particular order or you'll find yourself disassembling them to put in the part you can not reach.
Shown with CD's to represent overall size
Overall so far, overlord is looking good. It's not quite as fast as I expected, yet the benchmarks are proving me wrong. I can't help the feeling that it's a lil slow. I'll have to look into the whole speed step technology to get a better handle.
I ended up going to Centos 4.2 instead of my preferred 3.6. Seems the drivers (SATA specifically) are not in the older kernel. . You can imagine how difficult it was getting this to work after attempting PXE boot, floppy, CD-R only to find out, not only is your network device not suppored, but your SATA device isn't either. Centos 4.2 went in pretty easy and detected most of the hardware. I still can not get the network drivers to work which means a complete kernel rebuild, I fired it up last night and went to bed around 3ish.
Part of the lengthy install was just preparing the network shelf, reordering power cords.
This expanded into cleaning up old serial, scsi and power cords under the computer desk.
Afterwards I ended up reordering the powerswitch only to knock down Gatekeeper and the Radiobot.
UGH...Sorry guys.. He did not like that too much and it took me a while just to get him back up.
Finally after all is said and done, it's a bit neater and I have finer control of the external peripherals (SCSI CD drives, tape drives and USB devices) which allows me to turn them off via switch when not in use.
Even though those devices may not seem to be on, anything with a wall wart is actually drawing a few watts of power. So with the new switch arrangment I can save "some" minscule power amounts.
Hey when it comes to a UPS, every bit counts!
I have to be carefull with the Hercules & the Xeons. Although the system hovers around 160 watts. It can rapidly spike to 300 watts if a high CPU load occurs.
More to come later.
Posted by Me at 09:30 AM | Comments (0)
February 22, 2006
SFF PC's
I'll have a few upcoming entries regarding small form factor PC's, ITX , etc, etc.
Over the past few weeks during the upgrade review It's become evident that I needed to offload some of hercules responsibility to another machine. Just some of the basic network infrastructure such as DHCP, DNS, NAGIOS, backup repository, proxy services, web, ftp and monitoring. I ended up getting a couple sumicoms for a good price, yet finalized on the CMB-673 from bwi.com. Here's a link to the OEM for CMB-683 
The main goal was offloading services, while keeping space and power down to a minimum. This is a small machine, kinda cute and will fit right on my shelf next to the Kuros.
So today is the day when the final parts come in for Overlord (the new guy on the network block).
I'll chronical some pics of the assembly and installation process as I go along.
I'll be posting a review and pics of the Sumicom 620 shortly.
Posted by Me at 08:30 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Hercules Upgrade
Getting on with the time of year for my upgrades, I finally embarked upon upgrading Hercules, My strongest workstation. This is one of the reasons I've been so sparse in contact.
Hercules Inner Self
Frankly, I've been putting this off for quite some time since I depend on this machine so much. It's a dual processor XEON that I use for everything. It’s a hybrid Linux/Windows workstation. I rarely even boot up Xena (My windows workstation) since I use VMware to run multiple Operating system instances (Windows for my main browsing internet access, Windows for work, XP for graphics, Solaris for Work and a few other Linux/DOS instances for testing boot disks). I love Vmware! best investment in software I ever made. This creates a double-edged sword. Whenever I work on Hercules, I loose access to all those virtual machines (at least for the time being). Recently I've been upgrading other machines so I can begin offloading the virtual VM's to other machines. Slated is another dual processor XEON for the Seismic Radiobot which will be my backup machine.
This entry chronicles some pics and gotcha's on the recent upgrade. The most recent changes were from 2 400mhz/2.4Ghz Xeons to 2 533Mhz/3.2ghz Xeons. An upgrade of the disk subsystem from 2 80GB SCSI Ultra160 Maxtors to 2 150GB SCSI Ultra320 Maxtors, a doubling of Ram from 1Gb to 2GB and a new Active PFC 600 Watt power supply to handle it all. This should help me train on Solaris 10 and provide the oomph without the lag. (Or so I thought).
The first upgrade was to the Seasonic 600Watt S-12. Recently I've become a bit concerned about electrical usage and heat exchanged for such. Recent hikes in cost for power and the future heat in summer months really made me think about this. I've been reading allot about the power draw of XEONS and active PFC power supplies. In fact I did research for weeks on power supplies alone. The costs can be astronomical (as can be the power draw). I finally settled on a Seasonic S-12 after reading Tom's hardware article. it ranked 2 out of a number of power supplies, had all the connections I needed, was reported to run cool and had active PFC. I can attest that A. It does run COOL, B. Active PFC seems to have some affect, C. it runs quiet. The 15$ new egg rebate also helped. This sucker cost around $160, more then I've ever spent on a power supply, yet there are many that are more expensive. I really like this power supply. It supports the EPS12V (BTX) connector for dual processors and dual core CPU's, but also can come apart for regular ATX boards. It's quiet, cool and well made. I highly recommended it. In comparison to my Antec 550Watt EPS12V power supply, it runs cooler. Much cooler. Although it has a 120MM fan, it's just as quiet as the 2 80MM fans on the Antec.
Does PFC Work? I used the Kill-a-watt meter to test the machine's draw before and after swap out. The dual Xeons & 6 drives were pulling about 160 watts on idle. Less then I had originally thought.. After swapping with the Seasonic, it was pulling about 156 watts. Hmm, not much of a difference, yet the heat output certainly was different. Will it save on my electric bill? Probably not. Yet when you have more then one machine running 24x7 it will start to add up. Besides it's important to consider efficiency when connecting to a UPS.
The Maxtor SCSI upgrade was done next. I elected to use the ZALMAN ZM-2HC2 NP(Noise Prevention) Heatpipe HDD Cooler. Previously I had been using the Antec hard drive coolers for these 10,000 RPM drives. I'm not sure it did very well as every few months one of the two drives would end up needing replacement. Heat was around 40c to 50c, which isn't too bad, but I felt they did not breathe enough for these drives. The Zalmans are good, but I do not think they are good enough for these drives either. The temps hovered around 45c. Probably not enough airflow. I elected to go with the I-STAR iStorm7 Heat Terminator Bracket 2x5.25" with 3 HDD Drive with 1x80mm Fan. This proved to be an upgrade well worth the money. Quiet and Cool. The drives now hover down to 34c. The fan is very quiet and I think it helps the case breathe better too.
For those interested, I modified the Nagios check_smart utility to monitor the temps so I was sure these upgrades would actually have an effect. If anyone wants my new improved check_smart nagios plugin let me know.
Close up of the heat sinks
The next step was the CPU and memory upgrade I've been putting off. It was not something I was thrilled about doing because it required removal of the Extended ATX motherboard. My case, albeit large, has some brackets that block slipping the ram directly in. Plus if you've ever installed XEON heat sinks, you know what a pain that can be. Recently I won a pair of MCX603-V Heat sinks. Rated high, yet costly and difficult to acquire I was pretty stoked to get them way under actual cost. They suckers are big. heavy, yet work like a charm. I've been using the heat sinks that came with the Supermicro X5DA8 and although they work well, I was a bit concerned about using them with the higher powered CPU's. First off they are a bit noisy when the CPU's heat up. Those 60MM fans at 5000RPMS can make a grating whine. Second, I was not sure how well they would cool the CPU's. For the Swiftech's I purchased a pair of 80mm Thermaltake Smart Case Fans. This gave me a more CFM and a bit of control to the fan speed. Although putting on the Swiftech's was a bit more difficult then regular Xeon heat sinks, the effort was well worth it. This combination really rocks! It dropped my CPU temps a whopping 10C. On idle the temp is now around 35c and on a faster more powerful CPU! I'm very happy with this combination. Noise is a minimum.
Since these smart fans work so well I'll be swapping in 3 of them on my case. I highly recommend them. You cannot go wrong for $9.00. You have the choice of Full speed, temperature controlled or manually controlled fan speed. You can use a motherboard connector or a regular power supply connector. Although whiney at high speed, finding a sweet spot between good performance and noise should be easy enough. At full speed (4800RPM) they push a whopping 70cfm of air. I may try one of the Panaflo's, however they are not adjustable like the smart fans. I ended up purchasing a 120MM smart fan and plan to do a casemod to allow more air to be drawn out of the computer.
So onto the next upgrade was Ram, this was simple. Pop in 2 modules, boot up and there ya go.. Or so I thought. Per a prior entry, I had previously upgraded a pair of 160GB IDE Maxtor’s to 320GB WD drives. This proved to be a big mistake. Mixing the two manufactures on the same bus wreaked havoc on the bus, kernel and ultimately my data! (Those drives are no longer in Hercules and now exist in the Radiobot, which already had WD drives and is now ready for MP3s woot!) I think part of the problem here also had to do with the ram upgrade. it seems with the two drives on the bus and the ram upgrade the kernel did not like how DMA with the IDE drives was being mapped. For some reason my I/O dropped from 60MB/s down to 3MB/s. It took many hours of testing. I removed the WD drives and the system still under performed. I finally decided to fool the kernel and lie. When booting I told the Kernel it only had half the ram it really did. The system hung on booting. I then told it, OK, you only have 1.5GB. This time it booted and everything went back to normal regarding speed. I left it like this for a week as I tried recovering my data. it seems with the WD drives and the memory problems my file systems were corrupting. Fortunately for me, my Kuro boxes saved my ass! These had redundant backups of my Mp3 and file archives (I have two Kuros) and I was able to rsync the files back. Don't think I lost too much. Phew. Last time I ever mix those drives on the same bus!
So after all the upgrades, The system seems to run much cooler, quieter, yet also draws less power then I expected. As of now (even while writing this) with VMware running and 4 drives the system is pulling only 168 watts of power. Not too shabby eh?
Linux still under performing?
So I'm still working on the upgrade because I feel it's still under performing, or at least the later kernels are. I've noticed my I/O dropped with the Bonnie benchmarks on the later kernels. Not sure if it's a high memory DMA access issue or just re-adjustments of the kernel. it seems my SCSI I/O is almost half the prior benchmark. Although 65MB/S throughput is good, prior benchmarks were at 145MB/s. it could be the driver, so it looks as though I'll be hacking s'more before it's finally ready.
If interested I have a some pics in the Technology section of my gallery.
http://www.cotrone.com/rob/gallery/Technology
Posted by Me at 07:00 AM | Comments (0)
February 10, 2006
I hate western digital drives
Have I ever mentioned how much I hate western digital drives?
They just do not play nice, nor do they last.
When they fail, it's usually without warning.. Forget about S.M.A.R.T. detection.
Usually they just come up and knock because they can not seek to track 0.
So, breaking my usual "refrain from western digital behaviour", I recenlt broke down and purchased a couple of P-ATA 320GB ide's for Hercules (My dual XEON workstation).
First off they are much slower (half the cache).
Second I've quickly discovered WD does not play nice with Maxtor on the same cable.
I had to make the WD drive the master of the cable.
But now I'm having trouble every night when my backup executes.
I surmise if WD drives are the only thing on the bus, they are fine.
After all the radiobot machine has been up and running for years without incident.
So today I'll take the plunge and pick up a pair of SATA 500GB Maxtors.
And soon I hope to implement a new machine on my network..
geekly named "overlord" who will be my network monitor and backup server.
He'll be a pretty expensive machine, yet he's designed to fit in a small area and use very little power.
Take a peek here http://www.cappuccinopc.com/cubemini-673.asp
I actually purchased it from here http://www.bwi.com/prod/363682 because it is out of state.
Sure I'll pay shipping, then again, I won't be paying over $50.00 in sales tax + the shipping.
The CPU will be pretty dam expensive on it's own!!!
Cute lil guy eh?
Something about these ITX machines has been intriging me in the past few weeks.
My goal has been the hardware sweep.
Out with the old, in with the new...
But watch out for power, heat and size.
fun fun fun!
Posted by Me at 09:44 AM | Comments (5)
Let the hardware sellout begin
With my annual technology sweep of "out with the old in with the new" my second eBay technology Auction of the season goes up.
A nice lil Abit bp6 with some other parts I have to get rid of.
Hopefully I'll get enough money to pay for one of the CPU upgrades I recently got.
(Had I mentioned, I sold a broken VP6 and got $25.00 for it? LOL!!!!)
I realized recently I have spare parts bloat and it's time to clean out the closets.
At last count I had
2 slot1 dual motherboards
3 P3 Tyan S2505's (1 to be sold in the next two weeks).
12 PIII's of varous speeds (4 slot1's, the rest FC-PGA).
and a ton of ISA/PCI cards I no longer need.
and a number of SCSI controllers, cables and drives.
Sheesh...
At least I found a place that purchases old hard drives so I can ship them all to one place.
I'm in need of a couple laptop drives.
Posted by Me at 09:35 AM | Comments (2)
February 07, 2006
Rockaway Sunset Diner SOLD!
A bit of "local" news from my home town.
Just read today in Rockaway's Wave that Rockaway's Sunset Diner is being sold.
This saddens me as it is one of my second favorite fast food joints...
OK, it's only a diner, but then again, I know the owners and they always take care of me.
It's got a great view too!
I also read that Steve plans to turn his other business, The Beach Club, into another apartment building on 116th street.
It was bad enough when The Beach Club shifted from a restaraunt to a catering hall, Now we loose the other eatery as well. Although Rockaway's had a new restaurants pop up on 116th, Nothing beats a Beach Chip/SUnset Diner Burger or Wing Zings... *sigh*.
BTW, The Beach Club is hosted by Larry with HostASite.Com
Posted by Me at 09:27 AM | Comments (0)