May 20, 2008
Chenbro ES34069-Mini-ITX Home Server/NAS Chassis as new unRAID server
Chenbro ES34069
The Chenbro ES34069 is a cool lil mini ITX Home Server/NAS Chassis that I've been using for a while to house one of my unRAID servers from Lime Technology.
What can I say, I outgrew my kuro boxes and needed a new method of storing data, music, video, backups in a reliable manner. I choose to go the tiny route to save some space and power using ITX and a mobile processor.
Lo and Behold my new data warehouse is born. Unraid ITX (pics enclosed)
There are many cool features about this mini ITX case I like, and a few I have issues with.
On the Positive side.
Small, but not too small to work with
Accepts 4 SATA Drives + 1 2.5" Laptop drive + 1 SLIM optical Media Drive + built in Card reader
Two 70MM fans on back which are pretty quiet and cool the drives and cpu well.
Accepts a special PCI riser card so you can use a small PCI raid card.
The case is very well ventilated. and if need be, you can put in a 60MM fan on the front.
4 removable hotswap SATA trays
On the negative side.
I disike the external bricks, but sometimes it's the price you pay for small size.
The card reader and PCI card are very hard to come by. I had to order them separately frmo the UK (that was expensive).
I would have really liked to have had an externally accessible PCI edge so I could use an eSATA connector, but no pci edge is accesible externally.. therefore I had to do some modding of my own.
The PCI riser does come with a special bracket to lock it in, but it did not fit well with the promise TX4. If you are not careful it can rise out of the motherboard.
Parts List
Chenbro ES34069 Mini-ITX Home Server/NAS Chassis From Logic Supply
At First I went with the Jetway J7F2WE1 From Newegg
It was cheap had the CPU and I had the spare 1GB ram module.
Later on I switched to a higher end MSI board that could support more ram.
MSI Industrial 945GM1 Core 2 Duo Mobile Mini-ITX Mainboard From Logic Supply
OCZ Gold 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory From Newegg
Internal Card reader & PCI Riser Card www.mini-itx.com
PROMISE SATA300 TX4 PCI SATA II 4-Port Adapter NewEgg.Com
Kingston 2GB Secure Digital (SD) Flash Card w/MobileLite Reader Model FCR-ML+SD/2GB From Newegg
and a bunch of 500GB SATA II drives laying around.
Slim Optical Slot load Panasonic Optical drive from eBay.
Duo Core 2.33 GHZ CPU from eBay
In general, I really like the chassis, motherboard, machine OS and form factor. I've already touted unRAID as a home server NAS environment. This chassis is a perfect fit for it.
One might have chosen to forgo the internal card reader, however unraid loads it;'s OS from a USB flash and there is a license tied to the flash GUID. This was a necessary evil, so I went for the embedded card reader.
Why did you buy a 2GB card and card reader you ask? This card reader, in particular, accepts all three SD media SD/MiniSD/MicroSD. It;s just a handy device to have around. I really needed the 2GB card and I did Not want this big bulky card reader hanging off the chassis. So it's more for a cleaner look. Besides the price was right!
Overall the build was pretty easy, Screws come off the back the motherboard tray pulls out.
One thing is that you have to build these boxes in order. So I had to install things in steps.
First the 2.5" laptop drive,
Then the card reader.
Then the motherboard, ram, route cables, PCI card to riser, Slide riser down, re-route cables so it did not push the riser card out.
Last but not least the slim optical media. This is where things became a problem.
If your board and memory are too high or close to the optical media, you will be unable to install it.
When I started out, I had the Jetway board with the AMD Geode. I got this from newegg at a very cost effective price of $129 with a $20 rebate. Not too shabby as it came with the CPU and I had a spare gig ram chip laying around. This setup performed very well. The only downside was the board's Ethernet is not natively supported by unraid. This caused me to get a 3 port 1GB Ethernet daughter board. (ugh). Once installed that worked like a charm. I knew one day I was going to rebuild gatekeeper as a mini itx machine so I knew this board would be put to use elsewhere.
I had the need for more ram because unRAID's root filesystem is in ram. this is good and bad. Good because you can spin down all the disks and the system still functions and bad because you need a decent amount of ram if you want to load other packages.
unRAID is based on Slackware 12, so installing packages is really easy.
It seems as you find more uses for an almost idle machine, you find yourself adding packages.
Very soon I had a caching nameserver, time server, dhcp server. etc, etc.. Then I decided I wanted to move my bittorrent to this device and I saw the need for more ram. Perl/php/Apache/mysql and sure enough.. now you need the ram for root.
The MSI mainboard was quite sufficient. it accepted the 4GB of ram yielding 3.2GB to the OS after loading. This is due to the bios/pci reserve area and the nature of the chipset. Still, it's enough!
With a cheap 2.33Ghz Dual core mobile processor the machine became a quite able workhorse.
I'm hoping to one day get vmware server running on it and possible rip dvd's and compress them directly on the NAS box.
As I mentioned on the downside, I could not lock/screw down the Promise TX4 PCI card and riser. Perhaps a different card would work better, but this bracket just did not fit well with the promise.
I had to have 4 SATA ports so I had to go with what was available.
I took 1 of the internal SATA motherboard ports and attached it to the 2.5: laptop drive.
as I mentioned, once I get vmware server running on it, I plan to run a ripping xp environment and a slackware development environment right on the box.
Also unraid makes use of a feature called a cache drive whereby all writes happen to a temporary work drive.
Later on in the eve, the files are moved from the cache drive to the raid array, thereby providing very fast writes because you do not do the parity calculation until files are moved to the protected JBOD array.
Ithink the main reason for this was to handle HD video streaming without having RAID parity calculation causing delays. Don't get me wrong the system is fast enough, but the ram cache fills up fast and the nature of parity calculation may cause pauses.
After all sata connections were made, I realized I had one more unused motherboard connector and I thought... Gee.. allI need is an eSATA adpater and I can attach a 5th drive...
A quick look at the case shows a vent at the back. A few nibbles here and there and I was able to unscrew the eSATA from the PCI bracket and attach it to the back of the case. I'm not using it right now, but should the need com e where I have to expand or backup data, I want to do it at top speed!
So although simpler then my ReadyNAS interface, and not as mature as openfiler, unRAID is going to be a serious contender due to the way it uses disks.
As I outgrow and retire my Kurobox-HG's I think how far we've come and how much I enjoy building these lil machines.
Stay tuned as I still have a few more project builds as I plan to dabble with clustering, iSCSI and new backup technology.
Links of Interest
http://www.chenbro.com/corporatesite/products_detail.php?serno=100
http://x-case.co.uk/p/404991/chenbro-es34069-mini-itx-home-servernas-chassis---just-arrived.html
http://www.logicsupply.com/blog/2008/03/27/the-chenbro-es34069-case-review-part-1/
http://www.mini-itx.com/store/default.asp?c=42¤cy=0
What to watch out for:
You will see a number of different pricing structures on the net. One must ask.. how can one company have this product $40 cheaper? Read the fine print. Some of them do not have a power supply, or possibly the heat sink or other cables.
I bought mine from Logic supply and it came with everything needed.
Ram Height and Placement if you plan to use slim optical media. You may have to get a motherboard with ram placement further back or go with low profile ram.
With the MSI and OCZ ram I just barely made it!
Posted by Me at 12:00 AM
May 01, 2008
unRAID unvieled. my new NAS OS.
Today I bring to view, unRAID from LIME TECHNOLOGY.
This has been something I've been exploring for quite some time now. As all the hard drives in my network started filling up from DVD rips I knew there had to be a better way. It's easy enough to buy a new hard drive, but then you have to consider how do you backup the precious data you've just placed on it.. Buy another, then raid them.
The downside of this is, you are always growing and you have to keep buying 2 drives for raid-1 or growing filesystems across multiple drives. Geeze, then god forbid you loose two drives in a raid-5 set up! This happened to me once and I'll never forget it.
I also was considering just how many spindles are spinning on the network for each raid set up. As it grows, so do the costs of keeping them live.
Don't get me wrong here, I love my readyNAS NV+. It's a great lil box, but I noticed I was outgrowing the 4 slots and realized how much time it takes to grow the file systems across multiple spindles.
Granted, RAID5 across multiple spindles has it's advantages,
Redundancy, Fast read speed, Large filesystem support.
But it also has it's cons such as...
Difficulty in expansion, How do you backup a multi terabyte raid 5 filesystem and what happens when you loose more then one spindle in a raid 5 environment.
I've had this issue in the past where I lost 2 spindles (due to simpel IDE lockups) and the raid 5 array was shot... Many mp3's from napster lost.. Oh well.
What I really like about unRAID is that each hard drive spindle becomes it's own filesystem. To me this has the pro of easy migration to larger hard drives, and the con of managing multiple hard drives and navigation across them.
unRAID solves all my neesd for a Media Storage (or backup storage) server.
It's actually a protected JBOD. Similar to RAID4 but without the striping across multiple spindles.
Each Hard drive (of any size) uses a shared parity drive (must be the largest in the system), granted there is a slight performance penalty, but for a media storage box it far outweighs the management of a mult-spindle raid5 arrangement.
Because each drive is it's own filesystem, you can litterally stop the raid array, put in a larger hard drive, restart, and the volume will be rebuilt/expanded onto the larger drive.
In addition since each drive shares the parity, the chances of loosing all your data to a multiple drive failure drop dramatically.
I.E. The array will survive a single drive failure and rebuilt the failed drive when replaced.
If by some chance, you loose a second drive, then you only loose the data on those two drives. The other remaining drives will still be intact because they have thier own separate file systems.
My only beef is that the author users reiserfs instead of ext3.. but it's a small price to pay
On the plus side, The unraid environment is designed to run the root filesystem in ram.
All the data drives are mounted, but programmed to spind down on inactivity.
This became a major plus for me with all the hard drives spinning on my network, and summer coming along with no a/c in my computer area..
Another cool feature of unRAID is it's userspace filesystem.
Because you have multiple drives and data may not all fit on one spindle, there is the user space filesystem that sort of joins the multiple drives into a single view.
Let's say for example you have 10 disks and a DVD folder.
If you program the share to overflow onto 5 of the disks, when one of the drives starts to fill up the user space filesystem will automatically write the next file to the other disk.
It's configurable at what directory level the disk toggle works too.
On Reads, you do not have to know which disk the file is on because the userspace filesystem keeps indexes of all the files in memory and knows what disk it's on.
So over the last few months I've been playing with this and I like it allot.
I plan to use it as my backup system with HDUP (possbly backula) and media server.
I have two systems I'll be pimping in the near future, in the meantime here's unRAID!
PROS
Root filesystem in ram, very easy OS install. Drop in on a USB key, set bootable. reboot.
UI is browser based and very simple to set up.
Each disk is part of a protected array, Think of it as a protected JBOD. Like RAID4 without stripping.
User Space Filesystem allows SMB shares across multiple drives to be seen as one. I.E. it hides the fact that you have the same directories on multple drives and shows them as one.
Simple slackware 12.0 install. you can install packages from the net easily.
Boot filesystem filts on a 128MB USB key.
Handles single drive failure without loosing data.
Multiple drive failure does not result in loss of every single drive, only the failed drives vs raid5 and loosing the whole array.
Can use spindles of any size as long as the parity drive is the largest drive in the array. (good way to make use of those old drives)
Can be set to spin drives down when not used for a period of time.
If need be, you can remove a drive and re-use it, accessing the data on the drive from another linux machine (as long as reiserfs is compiled into the kernel).
CONS
All of the easy of single spindle drive management.
You can migrate a drive from a smaller to a larger with a few clicks or simply swapping out the drive.
All of the performance penalty of RAID5 writes without any of the read performance. (The price you pay for easy management).
Reads do not require the parity drive so you get read performance of a single drive.
Userspace Filesystem has write performance penalty.
No NFS yet. (coming soon)
No iSCSI yet (coming soon)
Still a bit immature.
Cannot use other linux raid options because thw whole md/raid subsystem has been replaced.
Limit of 16 drives + 1 cache drive.
Cannot concat or raid0 multiple drives for parity therefore it must ALWAYS be the largest drive in the array.
Posted by Me at 11:00 PM
April 30, 2007
Gateway FPD2485W 24-inch Widescreen HD-LCD Flat-Panel Display
Gateway FPD2485W 24-inch Widescreen
Tis the season for upgrades. I figured it was time to retire my 21" CRT's and update the resolution of my LCD monitors. My first update was a widescreen HD capable monitor/LCD for my bedroom. With DVD's mostly in widescreen format these days and the multitude of connection options, this monitor made perfect sense for my bedroom.
So far it looks pretty slick, You can see more pics in the gallery.
Future plans include another 24" widescreen for use on my development station in the computer room (hercules) along with 1 or more 20" 4:3 monitors rotated in portrait mode. (The gallery shows my brief experiment).
Circuit had almost the lowest price on this. (J&R is about 5$ lower now). However, with circuit city I was able to drive over, pick it up and also save $10 on the speaker bar. Not too shabby...
It was a bit funny though while working out the sale with the sales person.
He had to double check the pricing, to get permission.
Afterwards he kept insisting I purchase an extended warrenty.
He even went as far as suggesting to break the monitor near the end of the warrenty period to get some money back to put towards a new monitor.
My response... "but that would be dishonest".
He was really unahppy that I would not go for the extra $200.
I figure if the unit dies in a year, I'll just put that $200 towards a new monitor.
My other monitors have lasted a long time.
I think these days, I'll just refrain from the extended warrenty, I'v enever been able to really use them and it only inflates my price. About the only place I think I'll use it is on a large screen HDTV which may be happening this year.
Posted by Me at 11:00 PM | Comments (0)
April 24, 2007
Move over Kuros, Here comes Gollum. The Infrant ReadyNas
Over the past few months I've found the need for space (not speed, just space). With all the video ripping I've been doing for my travels, I've realized the storage requirements are astronomical. I had 2 kuro boxes online for backups, along with the Rhapsody N35 in NDAS mode (all with 320 gb drives). Last month I put another kuro box online and I was going onto the fourth when I realized, there's gotta be a better way. So many boxes pullin' juice, so many network ports. So went my quest for a kuro box replacement.
I had high hopes for the new Kuro box coming out. It was to sport 2 SATA ports which meant I could do mirroring. As cool as the kuro's are, I've always been ansi about not having a hot copy of the hard drive. I always new I would outgrow them. The new Kuro proved that I would not be as happy because it still sported only 1 internal drive. Although there are 2 Sata ports, one is not accessible unless you pull of the front panel. Wtf? it has PCIe and a SATA port, but behind the panel!.
Over the past few weeks I've been considering upgrades in many aspects. It's that time of the year. Still I did not want all my eggs in one basket. I like having my music and video off my herculean workstation. This way I can upgrade him as needed yet still function without him.
There have been 3 choices over the past few weeks.
1. Infrannt ReadyNas NV+
2. Thecus 5200
3. A small ITX server running unRaid from lime-technology
Frankly, I was leaning towards the Thecus or the unRaid server, however I wanted something polished, reliable and low in power usage.
The unRaid server is perfect for what I need, however, It's running a customized slackware. (slopware) kernel. requires specialized hardware and questions to the developer went unanswered. It's now at version 4, but I'm still not sure it's ready for prime time. On the positive side, it has one of the best methods of making your JBOD volumes raid and reliable. Instead of striping across multiple disks, each disks is it's own volume and entitiy. The only requirement is that your largest disk is your parity disk. If that is so, the others can be of ANY size. This raid mechanism also sports the ability to survive multiple disk failures. One disk failure and your raid survives, limps along and can be rebuilt. 2 Disk failures and the failed disks are lost, but the remaining disks are still intact because they each have thier own filesystem. I've learned early on how bad a double disk failure can affect you with software raid 5. None the less, software raid 5 is much more polished these days. As much as I want to do this mechanism, I think the power will be come an issue. Still, I may try my hand at it using vmware on hercules or my itx machine.
I also considered the Thecus. The reports say this performs the best, but it's "rough around the edges". on newegg there was reports of corruption too. This was enough to scare me away... Still, The thecus might be nice as a JBOD server or perhaps rolling my own unRaid md driver.
In the end I settled on the Infrant readynas NV. For 600 bucks I purchased a diskless version. I also purchased 3 750 gb disks. let me tell you this lil guy is small and really good on power. With 2 disks in raid 1 the unit pulls about 50 watts while spinning. When the drives spin down it was pulling 22 watts. This jumps up as you add drives. For 3 drives the power is 30 watts and 60 respectively. The X-raid is a really interesting feature too. it always you to eXpand the Raid array by adding disks on an as needed basis. I started off with two. This morning I added the third, which took 4 hours to initialize. This eve, I rebooted and it automatically eXpanded The volume across the other disk to a whapping 1.3Terrabytes. When I add the 4th it will be just a bit under 2tb.
Another neat feature is you can expand the array over time by swapping each of the 4 disks (one each day). Day one, swap 750 for a terrabyte drive, day 2 and so on and so forth until wala, 3 terrabytes are available. Not too shabby.
The web management interface is quite polished too.
According to tomshardware, the thecus is the top performer, However the readyNas is no slouch either. It's great at serving files, yet slow as molassis at serving the admin pages. We'll see how this performs over time. I'm sure eventually I'll grow into the Thecus also probably using it as a scratch and jbod backup server
Then again I may just use unRaid for that. We shall see.
Now to install my new 1GB switch that supports jumbo frames and I'll be all set.
Pics are in the gallery (available by clicking the picture).
Posted by Me at 09:00 PM | Comments (0)
April 05, 2007
Archos AV 704 Wifi First Looks
I got one. It was just too cool not to snap up.
With all the features, screen size and the really tough time I'm having ripping dvd's for timeshifting, this just made sense.
With the Cinema plugin, I can view MPG2 files and/or VOB files from DVD without the whole out of sync audio/video due to the copy protection.
Hey, I am actually renting them. I just want to timeshift them. ;-)
So many features to talk about.
First and foremost this thing feels like a lil brick with it's aluminum housing.
It feels solid and very well built.
The WiFi is a bit sluggish, but it works well enough.
I can populate files by samba access and copying them to the archos, or by setting the wifi into file server mode and pushing them from my other boxes.
How cool is that.
The embedded web browser is slick too.
But most important, video looks great.
Audio is good enough. In comparson, the audio in the cowon a2 is better. I think the jetaudio and effects possible truly make that my favorite audio player.
Yet this is good enough for audio, and excellent for video. (although the cowon is no slouch there).
More to come later, I just wanted to get some pics up for y'all to drool over. ;-)
http://www.cotrone.com/rob/gallery/archos704wifi
Posted by Me at 11:59 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 02, 2007
Archos AV 704 WIFI
I found out the other day, my co-worker has an Archos AV-700.
Not that I'm mr. Archos fan, but I heard from another co-worker, it has a large 7" screen.
This intrigued me so much I went over to check it out.
My co-worker Jose demoed the unit (as we always show of our technology toys).
It's a very cool (and large) unit. What intrigued me even more was that it's a special version provided by Dish networks that interfaces with the PVR.
It allows you to download the movies onto the PMP via USB.
Jose said it takes about 5 minutes to download an hour's worth of video.
It was quite cool seeing the dresden files playing on this PMP.
I looked further into it and discovered archos came out with a later rev called the 704 WIFI.
This baby sports a higher res "touch" screen, 80GB and WIFI. How cool is that.
I want one!
http://www.archos.com/products/video/archos_704wifi/index.html?country=global&lang=en
Posted by Me at 09:00 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 13, 2007
Linux, LIRC, X10 and the MR26A
Recently I've been playing with LIRC so I could control the MPD jukebox with a remote control.
I've had this old X10 MP3 Anywhere remote control for-eva but never used it with Linux.
Frankly, at the time LIRC didn't support it. I did however have an old HP IR control that was supported.
I dug out the serial IR sensor, but could not find the remote. dam...
Then I remembered the MR26A (serial RF receiver) and the X10 MP3 anywhere remote.
A lil research showed that it's supported in the later revs of lIRC.
This is a big plus as I have X10 modules around the apartment and having them accessible on the remote while also using it to control the jukebox would be a real boon!
So low and behold, I compile and install (Partially) the lircd and it pretty much works out of the box.
The only downside is the remote sensing from lircd is only for the multimedia buttons.
Although the receiver is capable of capturing the X10 appliance/sensors signals, the lirc daemon does not decode them.
After some research I've found the place where it is all decoded.
Although I still have work to do, I'm making good progress to have the driver decode all of the X10 signals.
There are many (house codes A-P and device numbers 1-16).
Why bother?
Well this brings me down to a new use I require for the office.
Over the past two weeks they moved me to a location where there is a lot of traffic behind me.
The new cubicle is much more open and people walk up behind me scoping my monitor (Shoulder surfing).
Normally not an issue until I overheard someone comment to someone else.
"Everythime I walk by he is on the internet." hahahahaha.
Wouldn't normally matter to me except I overheard the response.
Just keep walking by his desk and see what he's doing?
Hmmm.. were they talking about me?
Funny thing about that. My Boss knows and condones it.
In fact My review this week stated how I search out the latest technology and open source to bring within the group, which improves how we do things.
(I do this as I'm always trying to improve my C system programming skills).
This gave rise to a new need.
A warning system. Who the hell is walking up behind me?
Granted I have all sorts of rear view panoramic mirrors at my desk, but I need an earlier alert system.
Hence. X10 to the rescue.
With X10's photo electric sensor along with the remote lamp modules I can put a proximity alert system in place to light my lava lamps when someone approaches. OK, primitive but fun.
Frankly, I don't need the MR26A sensor and lirc, but I figured with IREXECD functionality from LIRCD, I could run a program that spits out a vocal alert with PROXIMITY ALERT, APPROACH FROM REAR LEFT...
hhahahaha.
Sure will freak out my co-workers.
The Age of Weebo-Trek is upon us.
http://www.lirc.org
http://www.x10.com/products/x10_ak11a.htm
Posted by Me at 04:00 PM | Comments (0)
January 22, 2007
Xtrememac FS1
During the past few weeks I became interested in the in ear monitors thanks to Packgrog's influence.
I had many reservations regarding their use in regards to my ear health and how they would handle the subway noise. After listening to Packgrog's EM3's a few times, I took the plunge and scored a pair of XtremeMac FS1's.
These IE monitors were co-designed by XtremeMac and Futuresonic. According to Packgrog they are very similar to the EM3's (which are no longer available for sale, yet bring rave reviews by many on the PM/X boards)
When I had tried Packgrog's EM3's, I still wasn't convinced. Frankly, I think it's something you have to live with for a while before formulating an opinion. (Something of great debate between Packy and I.)
During my initial tests I thought they were less then remarkable, But I still found the need for further exploration and to forumlate an informed opinion. This is stimulated by my daily subway commute, which requires compact use and being discreet as possible. I really love my Bose QC2's for comfort, quietness and sound, Yet I still need to be more compact during the crowded commute.
There are plenty of other detailed reviews regarding these, so I'll just stick with my thoughts.
After a few days living with the FS1's I have to say, they are pretty dam good. Even Excellent.
As mentioned by many other reviews, a good seal is imperative. Without such, you loose all of the sonic qualities that these are known for. I.E. Tight, yet powerful bass, intricate highs, and a mellow midrange.
In addition, as other reviewers comment, the only way to get the best out of these is with the foam inserts.
It takes a bit of work and learning, yet once insertion is proper, these phones reveal their sonic beauty.
Frankly for the $60 I spent on Amazon, these are a good value for the money.
I've tried the FS1's with a few different devices. They sounded wonderful with my iPAQ PDA. An interesting side effect of these phones was the need to turn down all audio enhancements (except a lil eq) on my COWON A2. Iguess they reveal more then I've been used to and with all the effects of the COWON, the sound became harshe an unbearable. After turning everything down and adusting the eq to my taste, I rediscoverd my music. People will say, they hear sounds and music they never heard before, to which I say.. It was always there.. You just could not notice it as easily. The new balance of frequency enhances the listening experience. I'm sure having drivers aimed directly down the ear canal and sealed have something to do with it. Who cares.. It sounds great!
In regards to use on the NYC subways, these meet my approval. Compact usage (even in a crowd). Excellent noise reduction/'isolation (only secondary compared to my bose quite comfort 2s). Great sound!
I think I will be using these from now on.
It was a hard choice, as there seem to be many IE phones these days, some costing hundreds of dollars. The only other pair that caught my interest were the Ultimate Ears Super.fi 5 EB's. These boast extra bass and have separate drivers for lows and highs. Furthermore they have replaceable cables should the need arise. I thought these might be akin to the effects of the Koss Porta Pro's which are my favorite light walkman headphones ever! Who knows, I may end up with these for a good comparison. After all, I do own several noise canceling headphones too!
PROS
Great sound when using the foam inserts.
Compact package.
Case, choice of ear inserts
Good Sound Isolation.
Cons
Foam inserts will require periodic replacement.
May not be good for exercising.
Internal noises. (cough, breathe, cable rubs)
Overall
I would give it a 4 out of 5 (only because there is possibly something better I have not tried).
I guess the main test of a products worthiness is...
If it broke, would you buy it again.. to which I say YES.
Posted by Me at 12:00 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 14, 2006
The Viewsonic Airpanel V150p
The Viewsonic Airpanel V150p
Having the need for remote connectivity and file/source/documentation viewing brought me into the world of tablet PC's. I've found it found it more productive to be sitting back relaxing the couch, seeing my favorite programs and using that wasteful commercial time for something better. This is one of the main reasons I have a small machine always available on the living room coffee table.
As much as I love me mini P1510d that I use for viewing, There is a love/hate relationship with it.
I love it because it's small... Then again, I hate it because it's so small.
Don't get me wrong it's extremely useful and given the need, I would buy it again in a heart beat.
Yet there are those times when I just want a bigger screen.
In addition, there are times when I could just access screens in my vmware system or just around the aparment.
Reading source code, eBooks or browsing message boards. All a good use of time while commercials abound.
While looking for a tablet PC stand (until I found the multidock) I kept on stumbling across something called the airpanel. What is this device, further research revealed this to be almost exactly what I needed in a pinch.
Lo and behold the Viewsonic Airpanel V150p.
Frankly this is an old and "discontinued" product. Microsoft abandon the "smart display" a couple years back. Yet this still serves a niche need. At the time of it's release this technology was just too dam expensive to be worthwhile. Now through the used markets and with the use of the dock, , it has a new life.
The basis of this product is a Windows CE environment that is a Windows remote desktop environment over a wireless network. It has a touchscreen LCD with a stylus, along with a joypad and left/right mouse buttons. Upon startup you can click to connect to a preconfigured XP machine with remote desktop sharing enabled. Thereafter all desktop/screen/sound output is wirelessly sent to this display. The particular one I bid/won was a 15" model with a resolution of 1024x768. The other models were just too dam small with 800x600.
I won't go into deep reviews or details as there are plenty of other pages on the net.
I'll just go over key points and cool features
I got this one with a docking station. The dock has a few functions, provide a resting place, charge the unit up, provide VGA & USB pass through. This is what grabbed me as to it's usefulness. While docked It displays the screen output of my P1510D on a full 15" LCD. ahhh, rest for my weary eyes.
Upon lift off the dock, it switches over to a remote desktop client. Thereafter you just click on the machine's remote login entry and zing zing zing... your remote desktop is active.
This gives me the ability to use the P1510d without strain, or detach/de-dock the montor, reconnect wirelessly and sit back in the easy chair and continue.
I have to say this is actually very cool.
The only downside is that it is a full 15" plus the width of the outside (I think that comes out to about 17").
I think it would have been better as a 14" with a 12" LCD. Then again bidders can't be choosers (or can they).
As I mentioned, the other models just did not have the resolution that I wanted.
Also, after a while this can get a bit heavy.
Another cool feature is the embedded USB ports. With this you can connect a USB keyboard and/or mouse.
This enables even more "remote" terminal capability. I have an adesso wireless keyboard/touchpad.
When I plugged in the USB RF HID transmitter it worked. I was ecstatic.
Now I can have the best of all worlds when needed.
I would not really recommend this to anyone except my pal Larry.
In a home theatre environment, the remote desktop may prove useless as it disables the base machine's output on the local monitor. As a remote terminal, it can allow you to bring along your monitoring web pages and/or email into any room. (a key reason for me). click click click and my email client is within reach without moving. ;-)
Note sure how much use I'll get out if it, but it's there when I need it and the ability to be a LCD monitor is a big plus.
The airpanel as an LCD monitor for the P1510D
Airpanel De-docked.
Login Screen for a remote desktop enabled machine.
Logged in
Viewing my favorite webpage.
Posted by Me at 08:00 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
December 11, 2006
Is it a Desktop, A Notebook or A Tablet landing on a Dock!
The Toshiba Tecra M4
After considerable work with the smaller screens of today's tablet/notebooks I found I needed something with more screen real estate / resolution. I have the need to fit a 1280x1024 vmware or remtote desktop within a screen.
I figured a used 14" convertible notebook would do fine. After all, once you get used to folding up your notebook, flapping the screen over and leaning back to browse the web, you never want to give that up.
Frankly these convertible notebook/tablets have always fascinated me. So much in fact I have 4 (All for different usage). (T4010D, P1510D, CX210X)
The latest edition is a Toshiba Tecra M4. This is a nice 14.1" Pentium M convertible notebook. I choose this particular model specifically for it's large 14" screen with a 1440x1050 resolution.
The main goal was for living room browsing, email, some games and remote control of virtual desktops from other vmware based machines.
Although the newer Tecra M7's are nice, they are only in a widescreen format which does not fit my resolution needs and space where I planned to put it. The Portege M400 has the ability for high res, yet it's 12" screen would leave me squinting.
The Toshiba MultiDock IIWhat really grabbed me was, the M4's ability to use the Toshiba Multidock II. This docking station mounts it to look like a monitor and also allows rapid repositioning/removal.
After all is said and done it works out almost exactly as I need.
The only downside of the older machine is lack of dual core. Then again I do not really need it, plus I have 2 other dual cores. One for programming and another for the video/audio processing. (and let me tell you the CX210X with duo core 2's 4MB cache is a hell of a performer).
Those who know me, know I grabbed the highest configuration possible within reason. So with a hefty 2.13Ghz single core Pentium M, 2G of ram, 80G SATA and a 128MB nvidia video card, this sucker has great performance.
The only downside with getting a used unit is the in ability to configure a machine exactly as you like. I thought I found one, but it so happened to come without the bluetooth module. This drove me crazy for a day because I knew I had purchased a specific one with bluetooth and it was not working.
For those who have seen Heros in recent times, this will ring back.
Remember the episode where the grandfather gives the kid a laptop.. the kid runs with it into his room, then 20 minutes later the grandfather finds the kid has it opened up all over his desk.. Well that was me trying to figure out what was wrong. It so happened the module itself was never there.
I called the vendor up and when he said I have no idea where this module would even be, I was able to tell him how to open up another and where to grab it from LOL!!! Fedex a day later and it was here. (I took pics of the install too).
After the purchase of a Multdock, A bluetooth module and logictech DiNuvo Bluetooth keyboard and mouse I'm computing and rollin' in style.
I've taken some pics to show off this cool configuration for those interested.
powered by performancing firefox
Some Review Links.
http://www.tabletpcreview.com/?newsID=282
http://www.laptopmag.com/Review/Toshiba-Tecra-M4-S435.htm
The Tecra M4 in note book mode
The Tecra M4 in note docked mode (looks like a desktop lcd eh?
The Tecra M4 in note docked in portrait mode.
The Tecra M4 in docked, but detached in landscape mode. Allows use of stylus without a complete disconnect from the dock.
Here is where I detached the tablet from the dock entirely. Good for sitting back and browsing with the stylus.
(Note the bluetooth keyboard and mouse still work)
Posted by Me at 10:45 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
November 07, 2006
Vosonic VP-3620
I figured it worthwhile to mention the
Vosonic VP-3620 as there are not many reviews on it.
My initial reason for purchase was for a very portable hard drive, capable of long battery times along with the ability to play music. (in particular in the car). This device did all and more.
It's touted as a photobank, yet it's also designed to play music and/or transfer data to/from various memory cards.
Utilizing a Toshiba 1.8" hard drive, this puppy is great on batteries because it loads the songs into a memory buffer, then spins down the hard drive. In most respects this is great as you can get 10-12 hours of music out of a charge.. In some respects this is bad as it prohibits gapless playback.
FWIW, it's small and light enough to deal with. Although a bit thick due to the memory cards.
One thing those who know about me is I dislike apple products due to the closed tight controls. Frankly the products themselves are great, but I don't appreciate the loss of control. Therefore I always go for these off brand products that can work as a basic USB mass storage drive.
(I still have the original NEO-25! the first MP3 hard drive player).
So with this unit, I was able to load up the drive, hang out with Tricia, and pop some music onto her music cards until she was tired of them. With a few button presses you can cut and paste between compact flash, SD and/or hard drive in any combination.
When hooked up to a laptop, it also functioned like an external hard drive/card reader.
it has an FM radio, yet it really was not worth much. Most of the foreign devices that have FM do not work well here. (although the cowon is the best I've dealt with so far).
The vosonic VP-3620 can also function as a voice or music recorder turning the audio into MP3's for later review.
I liked the unit, but after some careful consideration I sold it to my friend PhotoJoe. He could get more out of it with his outside photo excursions.
However, with my recent need for mass movement of data, I may end up getting a Vosonic VP-8360 as it will enable me to pop in a 120GB drive.
(wondering what I'm moving around? I carry vmware system disks to/from work so my development environment is never further them my book bag).
Sound on the VP-6320 was OK. Not great not bad, quite acceptable for the daily commute.
I would still have to say, the cowon A2 with all it's enhancements is one of the best players I've heard so far.
It simply makes me want to listen or watch more then any other device has done before.
I'm sad to see the VP-3620 go as I'll miss the mass storage and card readers, however my eye is on the horizion. LOL!!!
Posted by Me at 07:45 PM | Comments (0)
Life with The Cowon A2
I ended up purchasing a Cowon A2 after checking out Packgrogs.
http://www.cowonamerica.com/products/cowon/a2/
The points that interested me were the added enhancers for music and the wide screen.
Although the hard drive is a mere 30GB (by today's standards) this thing packs a wolup on sound.
After receiving, testing and hearing the enhancements I was sold that this was a solid purchase.
Navigation is via folder based organization with a joystick.
It's fairly simple, yet the joystick can be cumbersome when you finally select a fil to play.
Once you get an mp3 up and running adding in BBE, MP3 EnHance, MachBass and 3D sourround this thing sounds so good you do not want to take your headphones off.
I found myself rapidly loading my favorite tunes and listening over and over.
Life with this unit has been pretty good. It's farily reasonble in size and with the added remote, allows me to leave it in my bag while on the subway.
For video, the cowon A2 excels. With it's wide screen 480x272 display and auto sizing almost anything looks good.
I've found AVI/XVID files made with autogk come out the best.
Yet be prepared to spend 4 hours encoding.
Heck, with that time frame, I may have to upgrade my video laptop!
Overall I give this unit a 4.5 out of 5.
Pros: Size, Battery usage, Screen, mp3 sound (OMG!), remote.
Cons: AV/jack door is a PAIN! USB charging has weird way of usage. USB usage still uses some battery power.
(wish it had a dock). Wish it had a larger hard drive. 30GB is good, but 60 is better LOL!
Posted by Me at 07:26 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 10, 2006
The Great Gadget Showoff
I met up with my friend packgrog for the sale of my old Compaq N400C laptop and a great gadget showdown.
2 Geeks hanging out in Houlihans at Penn station showing off the wares.
What was cool is the round of new devices we had.
One of which I plan to purchase for myself.
This unit Cown A2 is one of the latest/greatest MultiMedia players around.
Sporting a vivid mini widescreen, small form factor and sporty looks, has alot going for it.
Great sound and navication are just some of the highlights.See the link for more information. The screen is breathtaking for a tiny screen.
Packy also let me try out the E3 ear plugs. I have to say, when properly inserted they have great bass. Contrary to Aaron's statements, I did not find the bass to be overwhelming. I found it the sound of the music to be exact to the eq curve as displayed on the Cowon. Talk about Punchy bass w00t. The only time I've heard that is from my old Sony CD player with similar in the ear type phones at high volume.
I'm considering a pair because of the small form factor on the subways. However I'm not keen on having something in my ear for 2 hours a day. I still use the Aiwa HP-CN6's on a daily basis as they fold up small and the noise cancellation is excellent. Over the next week or so (or at our next visit) I'll being in my Bose Quiet Comfort 2's and see how they hold up. For air travel they are the bomb!
My gadgets to show off were the Fujitsu P1510D (mini laptop) and the Vosonic 3620 1.8" photobank/storage drive/Music Drive. One thing I love about this laptop is it's small form factor along with the oohs and aahs that it brings. Like a cute puppy dog!
The VP-3620 is a new gadget I purchased from computer geeks. This unit is a small 40GB portable USB hard drive that can download/upload memory cards and also play music. I bought it to offload some of the music files that are growing on my laptop.
Frankly the ripped DVD's I've been loading have been taking alot of room.
I had just got hold of The Butterfly Effect 2 and was able to watch this on the way home via the P1510D. Let me tell you. Portable Video on that thing is stellar! My ride was done in no time!
Although I have not been blogging much lately, I've surely been busy gadgetizing and playing around.
Soon to blog is the Tvisto and Tvisto Lite.
Once I sell of My Roku HD1000, I'll pick up a new Media player called the The TVX-HD
Coming soon! to a blog near you.
Posted by Me at 11:30 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
September 21, 2006
LIFEBOOK P1510D
So I found the need to get a new laptop for my micro mobile needs.
Actually the issue stems from the rude/inconsiderate people on the NYC subways.
Frankly I think handling a 12" laptop on my lap is not much of a big deal.
Yet it always seems you'll get some jealous person who will see you with it and then start messing with you. I.E casually bumping into you multiple times to try and force it to fall.
Well fortunate for me, I can switch it to tablet mode and go smaller.
However I felt the desire to get smaller and lighter.
Don't get me wrong, I love my lifebook T4210.
It's a hefty machine and pretty light, just slightly cumbersome to pull out of my bag and situate correctly amidst someone sitting next to me.
I know I need a new top loading/opening bag, yet that has been pretty hard to come by these days. Most of the bags I've encountered are not in the configuration with opening zippers to expose the laptop the way I need it to be. It seems style and times have changed. Most require you to remove the machine from the bag via lift out.
So lo and behold I threw a hail mary bid on a lifebook P1510D.
Heck, the machine is so small and cute and I thought, Gee, it would make a nice media player, kinda like Packgrog's, only on a grander scale.
This machine is a PC that wants to be a PDA.
So there I am at progpower checking mail that says I won. I couldn't believe it.
It arrived on Thursday and I gotta tell you this thing is cute!
Tiny and light (2lbs).
There are plenty of indepth reviews of this puppy around the net, so I wont go into too much detail. I'll just give an overview.
For the most part. This machine is "small!"
It's not too much larger then a CD case.
Your two hands side by side can completely cover the keyboard.
The keys are quite small, yet surprisingly usable once you get used to it.
The screen is small to. Think 6x9 1024x600 WXGA.
Also the tablet screen is a touch screen rather then an active digitizer.
This means the cursor does not track movements with the stylus.
I.E. it only moves to position when the stylus actually comes in contact with the screen.
I knew this going into the purchase, however I was a bit surprised to find out that the "touch screen" was only touchable with the stylus.
There have been many a complaint that the touch screen picks up palm or finger strokes.
Here I was thinking I could navigate with my fingers. I was wrong. (sigh).
I wasn't looking for 100% tablet/stylus functionality. If this was a real touch screen I would have been happy. So the only downside is I have to keep pulling the stylus out of the socket when I want to navigate around in tablet mode. (minor peeve).
Also the screen's dimensions are odd to work with.
So there are a number of usability factors here.
I.E. with my aging eyesight I find the need to use my glasses for certain reading situations.
The particular unit I won has a 60GB HD and bluetooth.
As a media player this thing rocks, but I'll probably have to invest in some sort of remote control. Possibly the griffin airclick or the hiro pcmcia remote. I'm still waiting for someone to come out with a bluetooth remote media controller and once that happens I am there!
I went for the extra bluetooth functionality for a few reasons.
wireless mouse, possibly wireless headphones and possibly a wireless remote control.
Bluetooth seems to be up and coming for wireless accessories, so I might as well be prepared.
For my T4210, I use a bluetooth mouse and I love it. No dongle!!!
Battery life on the P1510D is great too. 3 Hours on a battery.
There is also an extended battery that can yield 6 hours, yet it will extend past the screen about an inch.
With compact flash and SD card capability I have access to expansion.
My only wish was that it had PCMCIA. From what I read on the boards, they are coming out with a version that does PCMCIA. w00t! I'll be there!
So overall I love this machine. I do use it for quick browsing and emailing, but not for long extended sessions. I use it for a media player. eBook reader & source code browser which will probably be my primary use of it. Who needs an iPod when I have a fully capable PC with all the trimmings and plugins. I have not attempted VMware on it yet, not sure if I'll bother. Although the CPU is probably capable enough, I just don't feel the need for Linux or development on the lil guy.
I'll probably get an FM transmitter, car adapter and GPS setup for the vehicle.
Who knows what other uses I'll find for it! (and my other 3 laptops). Yes I have 4 laptops for various uses.(well actually 5, but I plan to sell of my compaq N400C 3lb P850 on eBay soon). More on those used puppys later.
Pros.
Small 6x9
Light 2.2 LBS.
Tablet Functionality.
WiFi/Bluetooth
SD/CF slots.
Makes a great Media Player
3 Mouse buttons, (middle to help scroll).
60GB drive w00t!
Cons
Keyboard is kinda small and can be cumbersome until you are used to it.
Trackpoint takes getting used to (each machine has it's own feel and the ones I am used to have a slightly different feel)
Screen dimensions odd and how software handles it.
No CD ROM slot (must be external).
No PCMCIA. could be one in the future.
Not really a touch screen as people say.
Stylus location (I wish it were on the other side or lcd screen like the lifebook).
Gets a bit warm on heavy use, yet it is withstandable.
Cover for VGA port on back lends itself to being ripped off/out of the machine. Very flimsy design.
I have some gallery pics here.
http://www.cotrone.com/rob/gallery/Lifebook_P1510D
http://laptopmag.com/Review/Fujitsu-LifeBook-P1510D.htm
Posted by Me at 11:00 PM | Comments (1)
September 03, 2006
Review: The Logitech Cordless V270 Bluetooth Mouse
The Logic V270 Cordless Bluetooth Mouse
A number of months ago if you asked me about bluetooth technology I would have not given it much credance. Simply because there was not too much use for it at the time and I also thought, did we need another wireless protocol?
Well since I've been living with the lifebook, I've gotten a colorful mouthfull with blue teeth
My PDA had bluetooth, but my prior notebook didn't. I just couldn't spend the money on yet another dongle for the notebook. After all I already had one for the wireless mouse.
The Fujitsu lifebook came with bluetooth so I figured I would look into it more.
After a while of dealing with the wireless mouse and dongle I did a search for A bluetooth mouse and found a few.
The one that struck me was the Logitech Cordless V270 Travel mouse with bluetooth.
This was just the answer I was looking for. A way to have a cordless mouse and get rid of the USB dongle.
There are plenty of other reviews and comparisons around the web, so I'll only go into opinions, pros/cons and what they might not have said already.
Frankly, This mouse works great. Pairing it up with the notebook computer was all done at the notebook said. I was up and running in 5 minutes.
It's pretty responsive considering all. When it does go into auto sleep, it wakes up faster then my prior memorex wireless mouse.
I like having an on/off switch on the mouse to save the batteries.
It's small enough to tote along with my laptop as I go back and forth to work.
On that particular lite wood surface, it's response can miss a lil, but it's a small price to pay. eventually it works well enough.
The only feature I gave up with this mouse was not being able to recharge the batteries directly via a USB cable. This was a really nice feature about my prior notebook mouse. When the batteries were low, plug in a cord and it recharges the batteries.
To compensate, I purchased a USB battery recharger for when I go away to Prog Power.
heh, I'll need it anway for other battery operated things.
One beef was the pricing on this unit. it was at least $10 more then any other cordless mouse and it did not even have a receiver. It relies/expects the fact that you have bluetooth already. it was a hard pill to swallow, but I did it anyway. (Bastages!).
Another point in regards to bluetooth is performance. I've noticed when things get busy, the mouse can actually lag behind, almost seeming to have a mind of it's own. A funny thing happened once after I visited a site. Some interference or performance issue cropped up and the mouse stopped responding... a moment later, I saw the mouse move on it's own and frightfully thought for a second I was hacked with someone accessing my computer. LOL!!!
For the most part I'm happy with it.
I would give it a 9 out of 10.
The only feature I wish it really had was the ability to charge the batteries while in the mouse.
Posted by Me at 06:00 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 10, 2006
New Laptop LIFEBOOK T4210
I finally got a new laptop. I've been researching them for a while now. I've been really keen on the possibility of a tablet PC, but the prices were so expensive and I just did not think a tablet alone would suffice. Well lo and behold now convertable tablets are within my price range and I'm finding the need to upgrade to a hefty laptop for some new projects.
I finally settled on a Fujitsu Lifebook T4210. I had many people ask me why I choose this one over others.
It was the size, weight, features, convertable tablet mode and outdoor screen. Feature wise it was on par with computers priced about $300-$500 less. In particular was the newest gateway convertable.
Although priced much less, when I added the beef of a 2GHZ dual core, 80GB HD & dual layer DVD burner it was only $300 less. In all I had to decide where and how I was going to use this and ended up with eht Futjitsu because of the smaller screen and outdoor screen (for subway use). Those seats can be a bit cramped and when I am outside of the subway on the EL, the sun does shine in on the screen. This was the downside of my Compaq N400C.
So the deciding factors were the smaller footprint, outdoor screen and lighter weight.
I could write up a big review of this unit, but others have done this already with the following links.
http://forum.tabletpcreviewspot.com/showthread.php?t=2369&page=1
http://www.tabletpcreviewspot.com/default.asp?newsID=513
http://www.tabletpc2.com/Review-FujitsuLifebookT4210TabletPC.htm
http://www.engadget.com/2006/07/14/fujitsu-lifebook-t4210-convertible-pc-reviewed/
What I'll add are my opinions of points covered and not covered.
Quiet.
This unit is very quiet you can hardly hear the hard drive whirring. Sometimes I do not even know it's on.
Outdoor screen.
There are complaints about the outdoor screen and I would have to agree here. The colors are not always as vibrant and the whites do seem a lil pixley. This is due to the polarized coating. It's not my main computer and it's the price I have to pay for minimal reflections. Cranking up the screen brightness indoors is a must due to the screen sparkle. When viewed up close and at an angle, the 'sparkle' is seen to be caused by a relatively fine texture within the LCD cover... this is obviously to diffuse external light sources, preventing them from hitting the LCD and thus allowing for outdoor viewing. Frankly, after hearing all the bad things about the indoor/outdoor, I was pleasently surprised by it in person. It doesn't really didn't bother me as it may others.
Weight.
I weighed it, It is 5LBS with the CD drive, 4.3 without. Not too bad. My compaq without ANY accessories is 3.6. With my back/sling bag 5LBS is a minimal issue. I've had books alone that weighed more.
Tablet.
This is a really cool feature, yet it takes getting used to.
With this unit the screen can swing both ways (It's BI ! )
Not that it really matters yet, but it makes it less of a thought when switching.
I did notice the screen tends to get smudged.
Speakers/Volume.
The internal stereo speakers suffice but are not loud enough at the highest setting unless you are right next to the unit.
I tried watching a movie from about 4-5 feet and it was barely usable.
Sound quality is adequete. Then again, this is not why I choose it. If I do plan to use it for music, I'll be using headphones or external speakers.
A plus is you do get a stereo effect when in tablet mode. Pretty nifty first time I heard it.
Embedded Bluetooth and wireless.
This is a plus, no more dongles or PCMCIA.
Firewore.
Sad to say, no firewire ports. Guess I'll have to use PCMCIA when needed.
Again, size was a deciding factor for this unit over the gateway, otherwise I would have gotten that one.
Serial/Parellel.
No ports for these, not sure if I need them any longer. I may keep my compaq around just in case.
Battery Life.
Reports 4 hours of use in a full charge. Still more then my compaq which was 2.
Duo-Core 2GHZ.
Fast fast fast. Very comfortable machine to work with. gets a bit warm, but not as bad as Joe's Sagar laptop which gets burning hot!
Table/Stylus.
Works well, tracks well. takes getting used to.
Track Pad.
It's OK, tracks well, takes getting used to after having the pointing stick.
I still find myself using the wireless mouse.
I'll probably invest in a bluetooth mouse and bluetooth headphones.
Keyboard.
The keyboard feels good, although slightly flimsy in certain areas.
I really like the idea of white keys as it shows the keys better in a dark room with the brightness of the screen.
I like the T cursor arrangement, pgup/pgdn and control key placement.
I hate the delete key placement as I tned to be hitting the break/pause key more so then the delete key.
Fingerprint reader.
This is a nice mechanism for managing login/password authentication. Although It had nothing to do with my decision to purchase. Frankly I would forgo it to save a few dollars.
LCD Status indicators.
While this lcd status indicator can prove handy, it would be nice if it was backlit since it can be difficult to read in any environment that has less a than adequate ambient lighting source. I found it difficult to see in many angles and lighting. Fortunate for me, I do not depend on it.
What I need now is a remote control.
Possibly the
GRIFFIN TECHNOLOGY AirClick Wireless Remote or the ZioTek Slim USB Multi-media PC Remote W/ Laser Pointer
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Posted by Me at 04:00 PM | Comments (1)
May 30, 2006
Kitty Computer
Made this kitty computer for a friend. Ain't it cute. LOL!
Click for a larger image
Posted by Me at 06:00 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 21, 2006
Radiobot/Gatekeeper gets a Fanlift
Silverstone SST-FM82's.
This weekend I embarked on s'more surgery for Gatekeeper (My front face to the internet & Radiobot machine). The Imetus behind the change was the failing exhaust fan in the back. It's been spinning for a few years and starting to make noise. Considering the machines position (at my upper right) any noise from this machine is too much. I also wanted more control over fan speed and more ooomph for those hot days in the summer ahead.
Normally I use the Thermaltake Smart Fan II's. 
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16835999111
These are really great fans for the price. Highly adjustable with FULL speed, Manual or thermal control. It comes with mounting hardware and even a grill.
It moves alot of air too! My only beef is the whine. At high speed they have the classic fan whine, at low speed they have a bit of a grrrrrrr.
A lil research turned up The Silverstone SST-FM82
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16811999345
I wasn't actually looking for a new fan for this case. I was looking for a fan for my new SI-9XV XEON heatsink.
So after some research I realized the SST-FM82 was an ideal candidate for Gatekeeper. Wide Blade excursion (90MM) in an 80MM mounting. WOW, I could push more air or the same air with less noise. This version also had a 3.5" mounting for control! A lil further research around the net showed this to be a perfect fan if you have the extra room.
I created a Pictorial of Installation process for this particular case.
Woke up early sunday morning and decided.. I'm going drilling!
I modded the front of the computer case to house the two fan controls rather then use up a 3.5" drive bay. Hey. you just never know when you'll need'em.
Overall performance of these fans is excellent.
The speed adjustment is smooth.
They move alot of air and at 2500 RPMS, they are silent.
This installation brought about an interesting learning experience.
I figured I would turn up the exhaust fan a lil more until I just barely heard it.
The prior exhaust fan was at 2200RPMS and this was around 2600 RPMS.
So front and back fans were spinning around 2500 RPMS.
This seemed to make the motherboard temperature go up.
I couldn't believe it my once 38c temps are now 40c. WTF!
I turned up the volume, but the noise was just unacceptable.
So I started adjusting all day to find that the system stayed cooler when the exhaust fan was lower then the intake fan.
Meanwhile I had always been under the impression negative or equal pressure was best.
After all said and done the system worked best with 1800RPM exhaust and 2400 RPM intake.
CPU temps are now a cool 34c&35c and system temp is 38c.
Not too shabby.
My next mod is a Thermaltake Ducting Mod. which will supposedly get more air into the center core of the heatsink where it really matters.
Hercules also need this piece of plastic to help cool off the motherboard at strategic parts. Seems air blows over the mobo, but really past it. In my case, I want to mount it on one of the intake vents and aim the fan directly at the motherboard. We'll see what the future brings.
Posted by Me at 06:00 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
May 12, 2006
RadioBot scheduled for surgery
The aging radiobot computer for seismicradio.com is scheduled for surgery.
This baby has been running on a PIII BX-133 MoBo for the last 3-4 years now.
Power measurements show it drawing about 120 WATTS.
Although it's been a great performer over the years, my planned projects of automated jukebox and FTP server will require just a wee bit more horespower. Plus it's my backup computer to hercules and if I'm doing so much with VMWARE, I need the emergency horsepower.
I thought about going to a P4 with hyperthreading so I have smoother opertion, but the thoughts of power utilization & heat production for the Preshott CPU's have held me off.
I've also considered AMD, yet there's still more research for me to do on my end.
I even considered using a Mobile processor which uses only 30watts of power
That is... until recently when I discovered Low Voltage XEONS.
After a bit of hunting, building and testing it seems that LV Xeons is the way to go.
(for now anyway, We'll see what the future brings with DUO-CORE or AMD technology).
So I snagged a pair of 2GHZ 1.3V (Low voltage) XEONS on eBay the other week.
Sold off my higher voltage (1.5) XEONS for a price close to the ones I bought.
Installed them into an ASUS NCCH-DL MoBo with a pair of Swiftech MCX603-V Heatsinks and Wala!
We have achived success.
I like the board itself, although I'm not happy with the heatsink mounting process.
It requires you stick certain plates onto the Chassis and screw the CPU fan onto these plates.
This required going back to the internet for special screws on the heatsinks.
After some consideration I also purchased some aftermarket plates and rigged my own set up.
It all worked out good. If you click on the image above, you will see pictures of the process (Which I took for 2CPU.COM)
These CPU's are supposedly very overclockable.
I'm a moderate overclocker so I elected to only overclock the bus a bit. Reliability and low power/heat production are my main concerns. Right now this puppy only runs an EGGDROP bot for seismic and is my gatekeeper for all incoming connections. So, instead of running the CPU's at 20X100MHZ bus, I'm running them at 15*133MHZ.
This seems to yeild a slightly faster response time. I still have more benchmarking to do.
What really amazed me is these CPU's only pull about 35 Watts each when they are running flat out on a high stress load. Something that I do not reach very often.
So with this upgrade I get dual hyperthreaded processors, and it draws about the same power as my current PIII system which is about 120 WATTS. The 2 Xeons are currently drawing 100 Watts on idle. (.7 amps)
In addition, the heat produced by these is very low. They average around 35c and when they hit 40c the fans whir up to wisk the heat away.
Some of the utilziation could also be the new Seasonic S-12 power supply. This has Active PFC which is far more efficient (at a cost) then regular power supplies. So when I run the CPU's flat out the power will spike to about 160 WATTS. (still not bad).
Overall I'm pretty pleased, yet we'll see how well the fans and heat handle the summer.
Posted by Me at 10:30 AM | Comments (1)
April 28, 2006
New Laptop or Tablet PC?
So, I'm about due for a new laptop with a lil more umph.
Mines been pretty good so far, but I think I need to do more with it.
I need something small for source review on the trains, yet functional to do VMWARE type of things.
I'm torn between a decent refurbished Compaq EVO N800C (2.4GHZ) 14" or a very small Fujitsu Notebook and Tablet style PC.
The Fuji is so very small and cute although No CD and it will cost 2X the amount.. hmmmm.
Ultra Portable, or Ultra Powerful?
http://www.jr.com/JRProductPage.process?Product=4089931
http://store.shopfujitsu.com/fpc/Ecommerce/PrdBridge.jsp?pclass=P1500
Although this model has some merit too.
http://store.shopfujitsu.com/fpc/Ecommerce/PrdBridge.jsp?pclass=T4
Posted by Me at 03:19 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 16, 2006
Rock Box on the iPod
This may be the one thing that sways me to the Dark Side of Apple!
http://entertainment.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=06/04/13/165223
Posted by Me at 10:00 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
April 12, 2006
Roku SoundBridge Action Shots
Roku SoundBridge. M2000
A while ago I mentioned purchasing the Roku Soundbridge, a remote wireless MP3 player that uses either a slim server or DAAP server for acessing MP3's via WiFI or Ethernet.
I ended up purchasing a few (4 to be exact), but not as Music players, but as remote alert console ticker displays. Don't get me wrong, The remote music interface is great. But I didn't really need it.
What I needed was some way to flash a message when an event occurs. As cool as it is to have a speech synthesizer speak your email or alerts, it still doesn't suffice if you're busy or are not close enough to hear it.
Enter the soundbridge.
So I purchased a few of these with a new intention in mind. The manufacture opened the interface enough to allow remote control via socket programming or telnet interface.
So maybe you've been wondering where I've been, why no entries.. Well..
It's been alot of studying and alot of programming to create a C socket application to function as a shell script interpreter to control this puppy.
I tied it in with Festival and SpeechD so when the computer talks, the 3 SB's in my home all light up with the message. The one in the bedroom kicks out of standby lights up then shuts off.
It's working pretty well now and it's cool to hear the computer alert me then see the three units display the message like a ticker.
So Finally.... I'm ready to show action shots to everyone I've been touting this to.
I've now rigged my work environment to foward alerts into this environment also. So now no matter where I'm at I have a bird's eye view of everything I'm responsible for.
In the meantime as I'm learning a bit about RSS, I wrote a NAGIOS logger to create An RSS feed of alerts.
This now enables me to have a birdseye alert view from Larry's new emwebmail interface or My Yahoo page.
If any one is interested, I can post the code and create a new projects folder.
Soon to come is an interface to gather RSS feeds and spit them out on the SoundBridge.
Although I'll probably work on a Driver for LCDPROC or LCD4LINUX
and use that environment instead.
In the long run I think that would prove to be more flexible and allow the greatest growth/use.
Also the cost of a SoundBridge M1000 is not much more then a Crystal Fontz and it gives you a music player too!
Sound Bridge Action Shot Gallery
My Desk at work.
And a Close Up.
See the Extended Entry for other pictures.
Disk running out of room again.!
Seismic RadioBot Alert Close up.
Nagios Display in the Dark. (It lights up the room)
A shot of the unit over the TV. Any blurriness is purely the camera, the larger M2000 is very visible and readable.
This one is in my Bedroom, on top of a Cambridge Soundworks Radio.
Normally it is off, but the script will turn it on, then marquee the message, then turn it off.
Posted by Me at 10:15 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
February 28, 2006
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)
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)
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)
January 25, 2006
Off to Bedford MA for a business trip
Lucky me, I get to go to Bedford MA. for a departmental summit.
I get to train my co-workers on RPM, teach them about jailed chroots, describe the current design of systems and plan for a new global wide FTP server.. Fun fun fun!
Been checking out SFF (small form factor) ITX PC's lately. (what a weird facination).
Ordered a few recently.
Type and tell y'all about'em when they come in.
Posted by Me at 11:08 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 09, 2006
MCXB case for Xbox arrives
Thanks to Packgrog who turned me onto this case., mine has just arrived. In fact it according to the vendor at X-MODS, it was the last one of this style. Seems the person who began it all has closed shop. You can see some details from a vendor here www.x-mods.co.nz/mcxb/ and the origin here www.o2xmodification.com.Ah Yes, just what I need, another PC style building project. Well, I actually had to jump on it, since I waited so long, the place ended up shutting down. heh, at least I got one albeit, the last. (and paid for it dearly!)
So far it's looking mighty slick on top of my HTPC Ahanix D.VINE 4 case
Although, I may swap this out for a different HTPC case that I've been eyeing up. One with front panel card reader which I think would be useful for those memory transfers to my PDA and camera.
Posted by Me at 06:00 PM | Comments (2)
December 07, 2005
Woo Hoo, Got a new 1U Web Server
While considering options, I decided to co-locate a web server for my family website.
I've been meaning to do this so I could house more family oriented sub sites.
Seems I have this huge extended family I never knew as a child.
They have yearly gatherings in the summer and winter.
I thought it would be great to have our gallery and possibly an event bulletin board online.
Also, this lets me do more advanced support for seismic and the PM community should the need arise.
My friend Larry at http://www.hostasite.com has been gracious enough to sport some rack space, power and bandwidth for the cause. Thanks Larry!
At first I considered a simple 2U dual 1GHZ PIII system. The price was right about $200.
But after some consideration I thought it best to invest in something more modern that I could grow with.
Lo and behold I see an auction for a
1U Rack mount SuperMicro 2 XEON CPUS (2.0 GHZ) 512MB Ram
The price was only $450 for this. Sheesh the CPU's and ram alone would cost close to that.
So I talked the guy into dumping the 40GB hd (can ya believe it) and adding another 512MB ram instead.
So $495 delivered to my door and I have this new kickass cotrone.com server. Not too shabby!
So in the next few weeks (after I order two 300GB hard drives) Cotrone.Com will be moving to Garden City NY. w00t!
Posted by Me at 05:22 AM | Comments (0)
November 15, 2005
Kuro Box News
RevoGear
Revogear is up, and for any geeks this presents a chance to purchase one of these Geeky Boxes.
Also found an interesting link whereby some geeks built a robot usinga Kuro Box.
HOW-TO: Transform your mini PC into a police robot
Posted by Me at 11:13 AM
October 20, 2005
Vmware Player FREE!
OK this has to be one of the cooler things I've heard about recently.
Vmware has released something called the VMware Player. Better yet. It's FREE!
This product lets you play or run pre-created virtualized operating systems.
Part of this makes me wonder.. What's the catch?
Frankly, I'll still buy the Workstation product and keep running it.
I depend on it so much.
Expecially since my windows machine died last year.
Yep, I've been running 3 virtual windows machines in my Dual Xeon LInux workhorse. In some sense, it saves me power and all the maintance chores. OK so I don't have full Multimedia and mind blowing graphics, Then again.. I'm programming through a telnet session, so.. Who needs them LOL.
Check it out.
http://www.vmware.com/products/player/
Posted by Me at 11:26 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 18, 2005
Kuro-Box
Buffalo Kuro Box
I've recently been intrigued by the amount and variety of embedded linux devices. Upon looking for information regarding the roku soundbridge and slimdevices squeezebox I stumbled onto a new scene. Hacking the embedded Linux NAS devices. It seems people are hacing into these devices, upgrading/altering them to do more then the initial intent. Not only can these devices be a NAS server, but they can be more advanced music servers. With the newer downstream hardware clients out, there is a need for more advanced servers. It sure is great to have a server use the very basic SMB file access mechanism, yet not everone designs thier systems around that. The audiotron was one of the first mainstream products. Yes I owned one, but quickly felt it's limitiation on 10,000 MP3's (I have 40,000). I sure wish they had opened sourced it as it the audiotron was one of the best hardware user interface I've seen. So, during the search I've come across 2 interesting devices. Buffalo's Linkstation and Cisco/Linksys's NSLU2. If you know me, I got both to play around with.
Friday night my Kuro-Box arrived and I got to hack it all weekend (sorry trish).
Let me tell you this, It's a pretty cool box for the price. All you do is add a 3.5" hard drive of your choice. Boot up a special way, set up partitions, format, FTP an image and you are done.
It's a full linux environment on the Power PC. 128M Ram, network adapter, 2 USB ports in a self contained box the size of a small toaster. Even the power cord is attached.
It took a while to get this unit going. Although there used to be alot of information out there, the main site that had it was hacked and ruined due to a security flaw in phpBB. *sigh*.
In any case there is a Wiki that has alot of information here http://www.kurobox.com
Once the images/zips/ipkg's were installed I had a full gcc environment to put anything I had the source code for on the box.
I quickly installed, all the core GNU utilties, SSH, RSYNC, NAGIOS and a few others.
Imporant for me was the ability to use this as an offload device for my main linux workstations.
I then decided to offload my network monitoring to the lil guy.
I also added MT-DAAPD/ so it could be an itunes server for the ROKU SoundBridge and a Samba server for the ROKU HD1000. Now I can access segments of my music when I am doing work on my file server.
Kuro Box Pretends to be Toaster
It's a handly lil toaster sized box to have around as you can attach USB hard drives to it for more offline storage.
I even have a Tritton external USB with a card reader that was accesible.
So for the $200 + hard drive investment I have a tiny lil linux box capable of many services.
Something to really consider these days.
Next up is playing with the NSLU2 and getting a complete NAGIOS in a box environment running from a Compact Flash or 2.5" USB/IDE drive.
I'm also considering the addition of USB audio and festival to have a vocal alert system for NAGIOS. This is something I have today, but would sure love to move it off my linux box and onto an offboard box.
I have some gallery pictures of the device in the extended entry if anyone is interested.
You can also read alot more detail about this device on Tom's Networking Page
RESOURCES
KuroBox Wiki
Penguin PC Article
Tom's Hardware Article
Another Informative Wiki
Engadget Article
The Technologist Corner Part 1
The Technologist Corner Part 2
The Technologist Corner Part 3
Posted by Me at 11:00 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
October 13, 2005
Roku M2000
Roku SoundBridge. M2000
So, I ended up going with A Roku Soundbridge instead of the Squeezebox2.
I really bought the puppy mainly as a remote notification console.
Yes, as silly as it sounds, I thought it cool to have a couple of these around the house so specific alerts from my computing environment could post messages.
BTW, It plays music too! so a second use was for music, mainly as a client to an Shotcast/ICECAST jukebox server I plan to set up for Seismic Radio.
I really miss my audiotron. It's too bad Turtle Beach did not manage it well.
Had they open sourced the hardware, it would have sold like crazy.
That dam WinCE hurt them.
Don't get me wrong, they were very responsive in feature additions, but they also limited thier market too.
I believe it would stil be selling today if they opened sourced the hardware.
Linux on that hardware would have provided life way beyond what thier developers dreamed of.
After seeing the market with Hacked NSLU2's, Kuro Boxes, WRTG54's, Roku's photobridge & soundbride, peop[le should really consider where things are going.
Roku did the right thing by allowing such interconnectivity with techies.
In any case, I bought one, tested it, put it on top of my 21" monitor, then turned around and bought another for the living room.
Normal retail is $399, My price point for these was $300 each. When I found an eBay seller making them available at $279 +$20 shipping I jumped on it.
It's going to take a bit of programming to write to the screen.
It allows simple telnet access to write in 5 different fonts all over the screen.
Pretty slick.
I just have to integrate it with my alert system.
Right now the alert system is based on a Voice Synthesis application called Festival.
A simple mail message to an address and the subject is extracted and sent to the speech synthesizer.
I also have this tied in externally to an alert mailbox that is queried via IMAP.
Once everything is done, it will display the alerts to the remote consoles around the house.
All wireless too.
As I mentioned, it plays music too!
It's not as simple to implement as the HD1000/Photobridge, but it's small, highly portable, ver visible and a workable solution for remote MP3 library access.
Supposedly it works with slimserver, however I could not get it to work right.
Slimserver sort of sucks anyway.
It's a great idea, but the implementation is in perl (of which I love) and starts to bog when your library gets large.
I expect to get it to work with slimserver in the future, although it looks as though Roku does not plan to offer future support.
Roku supports the UPnP AV interface. It can also support iTunes and WMC.
I had to install some server software mt-daapd to allow access and once done it worked like a charm. A lot of people on the boards balked at having to install server software, even I was a bit turned off by it. After I thought about it, it would either be a samba server or a daapd server so it became moot.
There is an issue with the mt-daapd implementation. It uses the file's inode as a key in a GDBM file.
Also it can only access one directory at the current time.
Although you could use symlinks to build a spanning tree, the single inode key will cause problems when two files on different filesystems have matching inodes.
I may have to hack at it.
We'll see what the future brings.
Posted by Me at 09:20 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack