Month: May 2025

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