Tag: intel

Tiny customizable OpenSCAD CPU shipping boxes (#P38)

Shipping season is here. For no good reason people start terrorizing the logistics companies and I’m probably one of them. Difference being: I need to get rid of stuff, not buy more. I need to ship items.

For quite some time now I’m fond of the idea of OpenSCAD as a STL file generator. While elaborate 3D designs with multiple levels of rounded edges and polynomial madness in three dimensions are better created in graphic tools such as DesignSpark, I don’t find them all that pleasing when making simple geometric shapes that need the occasional modification. […]

28th November 2021 28th November 2021 By Bzzz In No Comment

The strange formatting of Oracle-branded HGST SSDs (WHL #71)

A little tale from the world of enterprise computing (again). Well, I needed something to do alongside filing my taxes, and I recently received a bunch of hardware, so there’s that.

I ordered, after long and unfruitful discussion and some eBay detour that also didn’t work because of, well, eBay, a couple of replacement hard disks of the spinning rust type, as well as SSDs to support them. The original ZFS RAID volume that kept *ALL* my data crashed via some obscure file system bug, and since I’m not a paying Oracle customer (not that they would help me out – everything is plastered with “restore from backup” notes), I finally migrated to Ubuntu and OpenZFS. […]

31st October 2021 1st November 2021 By Bzzz In 7 Comments

Fujitsu Esprimo E920 D3222-A12 12V/11Vsb to ATX conversion (#P28)

Recent hardware acquisition: Parts of an Esprimo E920 system (board, CPU, RAM and power supply) for replacing my main desktop system, a good old FX-6300 with 970 chipset board.

Why would I post about this? Well, it’s not a drop-in replacement. DIY required, since those OEM things always have some custom oddities. In this case it’s two (and a half) of them:

  1. Power supply has no ATX mounting bracket
  2. Power supply and board are not -12V/3V3/5V/5Vsb/12V units but 11Vsb/12V only
  3. Board has no I/O shield, just fitting case cutouts

Note that there are datasheets of this very Fujitsu board out there that show a regular ATX connector with all the standard voltages required. […]

2nd August 2020 3rd August 2020 By Bzzz In 9 Comments

Mellanox ConnectX-3 MCX311A-XCAT 10GbE and Solaris 11.3 (WHL #42)

The heat. F*ck me.

I think post #42 deserves something nerdy. More nerdy than usual. Glad to report that I just bought something suitable – two Mellanox SFP+ cards (MCX311A-XCAT), capable of 10GbE over fibre (IEEE 802.3ae) and per DAC cables (not even sure which 802 that is – 802.3ak is Twinax as used in DAC, but thats quad-Twinax as used in CX-4 connectors, like Infiniband does). 55.00€ delivered from the Netherlands, as fast network connections are “Neuland” in Germany and therefore carry a heavy premium. Slap on some 1.5m of compatible FS.com […]

29th July 2018 29th July 2018 By Bzzz In 3 Comments

Mini PCIe Module QCA9880 WPEA-352ACN 802.11AC Dual Band Wireless WiFi network card support Linux (WHL #39)

While I’m in the “X doesn’t do Y, so let’s hotchpotch DIY something to get Z running” mindset, let’s release something else that I’m slightly bitter about. WiFi network cards. [scroll down to the first image to skip my rambly introduction]

I’m not a big fan of Intel for their business practices, but when it comes to Consumer/Prosumer network cards, Intel is basically the brand to get. I’m running a CT Gigabit (82574L) addon card in my AMD ZFS server, and my old Thinkpad has something similar (82567LM) built in. […]

22nd April 2018 9th November 2018 By Bzzz In 3 Comments

USB 3.0 to 10/100/1000 Gigabit RJ45 Ethernet LAN 1000Mbps Network Adapter (WHL #34)

While I’m at computer peripherals…this one has been laying around for quite some time. Bought in January 2017 for 5.68€ on AliExpress, but current pricing is basically the same. Guess IC prices haven’t dropped much, although laptops that do not carry an ethernet port due to height limitations have become more common. Yeah, bullshit, but Jon Doe likes thin hardware with cooling problems. Always reminds me of the Macbook Air / Thinkpad X300 ad parody…

That aside, I really wanted to compare this Gigabit adapter with the two other types of network interfaces that I have available – some Realtek onboard stuff that I deem “good enough” for everyday use, and some PCIe addon card from Intel that is usually considered worth the upgrade (after all, people still buy sound cards, right?). […]

31st December 2017 31st December 2017 By Bzzz In 5 Comments