Dual OWC Express 4M2 chassis (#P46)

Another thing literally nobody asked for: A 3D printed chassis to house two OWC 4M2 quad NVMe to Thunderbolt adapters

Well, all of my NVMe activity of the recent months had to lead to something – the Blueendless USB dock (WHL #104), the Samsung 970 Evo Plus (WHL #106) (and the other Samsung 970 Evo Plus), as well as the AliExpress shenanigans with the fake drives in WHL #92 and WHL #95. I feel like now is the time to make changes to my always unwieldy RAID and backup strategy, as technology, pricing and size is finally where it needs to be to fit my needs. […]

18th May 2025 18th May 2025 By Bzzz In No Comment

HP / HPE ProCurve 2910al-24G J9145A Switch teardown and shenanigans (WHL #108)

Earlier this year, I got my hands on a bunch of old HP switches, 20+4+x ports in 1U, in basic configuration without like fancy 10G addon cards. These were thrown out when my employer moved, but realistically, they should have been in the trash years ago. PCB date late 2008, component date more like mid-2009, so they were a solid 15 years in 24/7 operation. Good stuff.

So I had a peek. Like I always do :)

Hardware is of course ancient, the main processor is some (dual!) ARM11(56T2S) chip with ARMv6 architecture from like 2002. And while the thing has all the oomph it needs for 24/7 sustained 100% load on all ports with VLAN and filtering and sniffing, it’s doesn’t come lightly from a single ASIC like a modern switch would. […]

4th May 2025 5th May 2025 By Bzzz In No Comment

The Ender 5 PlusPlus on dual linear rails (#E21F7)

A little update on my big Ender.

While I’m indeed satisfied with how the thing works with the somewhat recent upgrade to linear rails on the Y axis (moving the X carriage) in #E21F6 last August, it’s still an old Ender. It sounds like an old Ender and it moves like an old Ender, because despite all the axis changes, mainboard swap and Klipper upgrade, it’s still an Ender chassis with Ender motors underneath.

The other day I had one of these brainfarts at work: We also run machine parts on linear rails, very high acceleration machine parts to be precise. […]

13th April 2025 14th April 2025 By Bzzz In No Comment

Odin/Dallas RTC module…from AliExpress (WHL #107F1)

Two weeks ago, I wrote about a Dallas/Odin RTC module with integrated battery that caused me some trouble on an old Pentium board. The BIOS defaults to no hard disks, and the module isn’t rechargeable, so once it’s empty, the board will no longer be able to boot directly from hard disk. So I checked my options…and bought from AliExpress, because I was feeling adventurous :)

2.14€ and a tad over a week later, this “OEC12C887A” module (matching the old one) showed up on some pink ESD-ish foam:

I mean…it does say Odin OEC12C887A on the housing, and they sure got a nice laser labelling machine…but…

Aren’t they ashamed of their shoddy refurbishment? […]

30th March 2025 30th March 2025 By Bzzz In No Comment

Odin/Dallas RTC modules with integrated battery (WHL #107)

Have you ever desoldered one of those ancient RTC modules from an equally ancient PC mainboard?
There was a time in the 1990s where board manufacturers abandoned the old leaky NiCd buffering cells and instead of hopping onto the CR2032 lithium train. They used Dallas modules (back when Dallas was still Dallas and not Maxim…which also ceased to exist in 2021 when they were bought by Analog) that served as real time clocks and battery backed SRAM for some 100 bytes of BIOS settings.
Well yeah, these are terrible as the battery isn’t replaceable since it is moulded into the bulky case. […]

16th March 2025 16th March 2025 By Bzzz In 3 Comments

Important correction on Samsung 970 Evo Plus revisions (WHL #106F1)

“Houston, we got a problem….the fake news detector just went off!”

THE WHAT?

In all seriousness, my previous post contained a factual error. One that I discovered after spending my own money to specifically buy two 970 Evo Plus SSDs of the new revision. Two brand new ones to be precise (wouldn’t really call it NOS, but eBay is currently full of unopened late 2023 drives for very close to street prices, not sure what’s going on), so the seller only posted pictures of the package with fully intact seal. And when I opened it earlier this week…well, two “old” ones popped out. […]

2nd March 2025 3rd March 2025 By Bzzz In 1 Comment

The Samsung 970 Evo Plus – and the Samsung 970 Evo Plus (WHL #106)

! ! ! IMPORTANT: ALSO READ WHL #106F1 FOR A MAJOR CORRECTION ON PACKAGING. ! ! !

Quick PSA, as this isn’t common knowledge and I only stumbled upon it after purchasing FIVE disks for my future RAID array…: There are TWO revisions of the Samsung 970 Evo Plus SSD!

Sadly, I’m too lazy to either wipe off my marker or digitally remove it, so it’s not too hard to spot the difference:

Well, the two drives in the center are the newer ones, despite having date codes 02/2022 and 10/2023, while the others were made in 08/2021 and 05/2023 (!). […]

17th February 2025 3rd March 2025 By Bzzz In No Comment

Mounting holes of the Netgear GS108v1 (WHL #105)

This week we have feel-good content for nerds and OCD people: The Netgear GS108 gigabit switch. The GS108v1 to be precise. Likely the first consumer gigabit switch from Netgear, and gigabit ethernet has been around for, uhh, 20 years now.

This brick with a chassis much wider than required for the ports alone: (and a maximum power draw of 2.5A at 5V, or 12.5W…)

Since we moved to a new building at work in the last two weeks, the entire office with all the R&D stuff needs to be rearranged and made to fit. One of the many puzzle pieces is some miniPC that is the master control unit for several downstream PCBs. […]

26th January 2025 26th January 2025 By Bzzz In No Comment

Car racing in stationary cars (#E25)

Well, it’s been a bit quiet here lately, as I went from very time-consuming car enjoyment at the very end of 2024 to very time-consuming car troubles at the very beginning of 2025. And while I can only share that the latter is FUCKING EXPENSIVE, I have a little more stuff on hand for the former. Since the battle for track times and fame in Beach Buggy Racing is currently flaring up in the German Tesla forum TFF, I thought taping a couple of runs would add value. So I went ahead and captured some…18 hours of it. To show off the best rounds (as there is very little content on Youtube), and to study things like item effects and the perfect racing lines (there’s none), and of course to compile dumb shit into funny videos. […]

12th January 2025 12th January 2025 By Bzzz In No Comment

Bosch (BSH) spare part packaging (#R24)

Hey Bosch!

Very recently, I repaired the induction cooktop of a former coworker. Bosch/Schott branded (PXV995DC1E?), large 90×50 field with 5+2 zones, somewhat on the more expensive side of things, but likely also available from the other BSH brands like Siemens, Neff, or Constructa. The fault was a partially unresponsive touchy-feely interface, and since those cooktops do not have separate hardware buttons and knobs, it’s a bit of a problem when more and more buttons die. Especially the one that turns everything on and off, but also heating on full throttle all the time isn’t very helpful. […]

8th December 2024 8th December 2024 By Bzzz In No Comment