AMD Epyc workstation build
The H11DSi motherboard I had, which was damaged in shipping so I got for free, wouldn't post, probably because it was damaged. The ebay seller I bought two Epyc 7302's from sent me a 7302 and a 7662...the latter is a lot more expensive, but I need two of the same for the dual socket H11DSi. Installed one in socket 1 of the motherboard to test it. The motherboard powered on, but the BMC LED didn't come on like it was supposed to and it never posted.
These problems coupled with the price of 7302's and epyc motherboards increasing for some unknown reason, and lack of motivation led to me abandoning this project. Having good computing resources at work helped kill the motivation. I'm currently in the process of selling off all of the parts. For a brief time I owned a Tesla V100 and two P100's, though. These are great for turning watts into double precision FLOPs.
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| Oooo....shiny |
Home media server
Currently building a home media server/NAS combo in the old headnode's case. I3-13100T, Asrock Z690 Pro RS, 32GB DDR4, 1GB NVMe boot drive, and 6x18TB=108TB raw HDDs. I finally got it built, but it also wouldn't post (UGH). The DRAM error LED was lit, so maybe the new corsair RAM I bought was bad. OR the brand new motherboard memory channels are shot. OR the processor I bought was bad (was supposed to be a new pull...). I bought another motherboard and more RAM to test, one of those things should fix it. The motherboard has 8 SATA connectors, using 6 for the HDDs, one for a Bluray drive (that I'll put old/hacked firmware on for ripping blurays), and one for an external hotswap SATA port, which I'm planning to use for testing HDDs and creating offline backups. 2 HDDs are shucked WD external drives that I got for cheap on black friday. The other 4 are new Dell-branded Seagate Exos I got from serverpartsdeals for a great price with a 3 year warranty. If you need HDDs or server parts, they're a great company to buy from. They shipped the HDDs in anti-static bags, in custom closed-cell-foam holders in a box, wrapped in fancy bubble wrap, inside of another box.
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Old case, new guts. Decided to use this one
because of all the space for HDDs.
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The software plan is to install Ubuntu and Docker, and run TrueNAS core (ZFS) in a docker container, and the *arrs, jellyfin, pihole/fail2ban, wireguard, etc in other containers, but I haven't fully figured all of that out yet. There are a bunch of online guides for these things. Going to use RaidZ2 for two-drive-fail-safe, which should give me about 65TiB usable space, which is roughly double what I think I'll need in next few years. If I become a data hoarder, there's room for at least 10 more HDDs in there, and the motherboard has a pcie x16 slot for a HBA..also has a couple x4 slots, which might be enough bandwidth. If tech improves a lot by the time I need more space, I'll just replace the whole server. Solid state storage might be cheaper than HDDs by then.
Update: It was the bios. Updating it to the latest let it post. Maybe a 13th gen proc support problem? If that's the case, idk why the DRAM error light was on. I'm keeping the 4x8GB RAM installed. The 2x16GB RAM will be useful if I ever decide I need 64GB. I returned the spare motherboard. I installed ubuntu on the 1TB NVME drive, uninstalled a bunch of crap that comes with it, and ran short SMART scans on the 6 HDDs. I need to figure out how to use badblocks, smartctl, and smartd to check and monitor HDD health.
3D Printers
I bought a creality K1 on black friday. It's awesome.
It was only $380. I have about double that "invested" in the wanhao i3 and the K1 prints way faster and better. Amazing how far FDM tech has come. Unfortunately, this is going to hurt motivation to finish CubeXY. I'm planning to transition to prusa slicer from cura soon.
Other
I put a trailer hitch + wiring kit on my prius.
Curt brand. They sell them for just about every vehicle, and the instructions were surprisingly good/easy to follow. Only thing missing was how to deal with the plastic underbody cover. I took it off first, but apparently didn't have to. Getting it back on after installing the hitch required cutting it in a couple places. Of course, that means that if I hadn't taken it off first, then whoever worked on that part of the car next would have to cut the cover off (or take the hitch off), so maybe it was a good thing to do. Overall, took about 2.5 hours. Anyways, the reason I did this is that basically every experience I've had with renting a UHaul truck/van has sucked. Now I can just rent a utility trailer, which is a lot cheaper, too. Should pay for itself in 3 trips where I don't have to rent a truck/van.
I made a reservation for an Aptera a little over a year ago. They
recently removed the estimated delivery date, though, sigh...I think the
prius will last a few more years at least, so maybe I'll get the solar
car by then.
I was at AIAA SciTech for a day to give a talk. Unfortunately caught COVID for the first time, ugh. Over it now.
Haven't done much in the garage. Cleaned a corner of it, so progress? Ha, one day...
1/30/24 update:
I got to use my hitch! I bought a Craftsman 152 table saw off marketplace. It was in fantastic condition and for a decent price. It was on a sled with wheels, which was convenient. I towed it home on a 5x3' home depot ramp trailer that only cost $25 to rent. I backed the trailer up to the garage and rolled it right in.
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Bad pic, mosquitos were swarming me
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I'm going to sell the 113 saws, probably as they are (in parts). I decided I'm far more likely to actually make things if I don't have to spend 10+ hours rebuilding one.
