December 18, 2009
Watched Avatar (3D) with coworkers. Haven't watched a movie at theatres in
years...
December 8, 2009
Cold, Cold snow, at least it stopped.
December 7, 2009
More Light Snow accumulating... and accumulating...
It's ****ing cold. Highs of 9F, lows of -1F, and snow... Several inches fell
already (8" or so)
December 6, 2009
Got a wireless laser mouse... tracking is good, power savings is annoying. It
would shut off/powersave mode when holding down both buttons. Grr.
November 23, 2009
Family came to visit for two weeks.
November 15, 2009
Snow. Another 7" fell under a winter storm warning. Warm during the day
though, 40s, so this snow won't stay long.
November 10, 2009
I had a lot of PORTB |= BV(x) and PORTB &= ~BV(x) (where x is a variable)
statements in deltav. These would need to be converted to a variable bitshift
and then a sbi/cbi.
I ripped them all out and put them in their own function
call and called the functions. Wow... huge savings in code size. Cut out 128
bytes of code from replacing around 12 (6 each) of these two statements.
More free space! Was running up to the limit on deltav just like avrpower.
November 8, 2009
Took 24 hours to run badblocks on the 500G disk. Nothing interesting found.
Weird.
November 6, 2009
Looks like my WD 500G SATA HDD is spitting out bad sectors. It got kicked from
my 4x500G array twice now, so it's getting a bit of a timeout. Hotswapped
the spare Hitachi 500G disk into the array and put the WD into the eSATA case.
Running read/write badblocks on it... No data in SMART yet. Unfortunately
the disk is out of warranty. *sigh*
November 3, 2009
Removed 'vanade.com' as mail host.
Found that my phpbb2 CAPTCHA appears to have been broken or someone got really
lucky. *sigh* Will have to redesign a new CAPTCHA most likely. Oh, and all
the snow is about melted and gone.
October 30, 2009
Found that Yuri's Antec SP400 PSU died after unplugging it for a while.
About 3 years old. Warranty of 1 year means this thing is well out of warranty.
Can't say it wasn't on my radar for possible failures... Its standby power
circuitry is the suspect.
October 29, 2009
About 12-16 inches of snow fell. A 2 ft snowdrift ended up near my front door.
I fell and hit my left hip when shoveling. ouch.
One of my friends' WoW accounts got hacked, and our bank got raided. Ugh.
October 28, 2009
Woke up to about 5 inches of snow and it's still falling.
October 27, 2009
Winter storm warning tomorrow... Possibly 8" snow...
October 26, 2009
Hooked up both my 19" LCD and 21" CRT to my RadeonHD 3650. Ahh dual head.
Hacked a dead ATX PSU case to hold an LCD 16x2 display. Don't really like it,
but at least everything is inside of its own case, from transformer to filter
caps and the actual circuit. The pushbuttons are not attached however.
I think I'm giving up on this old/bad 6V 12AH Lead-Acid AGM battery
from the UPS. It won't take a charge at all.
Found that avrpower seems to oscillate pretty badly under some current draws.
Need to figure out why... May have to use current draw to also influence the
PWM.
October 22, 2009
Orderred a few Atmel ATMEGA8's from eBay. These should be faster than the
AT90S4433's I've been using.
October 14, 2009
Found that I probably stuck in a burned out or bad transistor on the
new current monitor circuit, that caused 15V to be dumped out of the circuit.
This is well over the maximum voltage of the AVR's inputs and fried the
protection circuits as well as reverse-bias diodes.
Dead pin AVR.
What's bad is that I knew this was a potential problem as the op amp was
powerred by the raw voltage so it could handle the full swing, which also
means it could dump out the high voltage to the output. I had a 6.2V zener
diode there to limit the voltage to 6.2V in case something went wrong (the
circuit should mirror 5V if 5A of current was flowing through the 0.1 ohm
sense resistor, which is well over the 3A maximum I wanted the circuit
to deal in the first place.)
Replacing with a new transistor made it work the way it should, and finally
I get reasonable numbers for no-load conditions, which is better than with the
difference amplifier op amp circuit. The current monitor circuit
is in the datasheet of the op amp,
so thanks to National Semiconductor for that solution. However there still
seems to be some phantom situations that generate some reading when it
shouldn't...
Theoretically I could just remap the dead pin to something else, perhaps it
still works as an output or a digital input (for the buttons?) but I just
tossed it onto SCORE that didn't really use that pin, and swiped SCORE's good
AVR. All happy and working now.
I also changed my obfuscated ADC mux selection routines using bitwise operators
to select the other channel to use the tertiary ?: operator.
Not that much clearer to the casual reader, but for me (and the compiler...)
it is...
Well, this concludes AVRPower, at least revision 1.0 schematic and software, with full functionality. Onwards to building a nice case for it. And once again I have a bench power supply, well, sort of.
October 10, 2009
More snow overnight, about 2". Got to 18F or so. First accumulating snow
of the season. Going to be a cold winter...?
October 8, 2009
First snow of the season. Apparently no accumulation. It's cold!
September 23, 2009
Upgraded Doujima to PHP5. Looks like most stuff is still working...
Pretty much a forced upgrade as portage no longer has php4 in it.
September 22, 2009
Well, I finally fixed my fluorescent torch floor lamp. Ended up buying a huge
washer, drilling holes in it, and using it to bolster the weak plate using
three 4-40 screws, tapped some holes into it as well. So far so good, the lamp is holding upright once more.
Tried applying resist (toner) to a blank PCB. Failed twice. The toner just
doesn't seem to want to stick. I found that the temperature may not
be high enough to melt the toner so had to shove it through the laminator
more times, and faster so it doesn't have a chance to cool.
Need gloves to handle the hot board.
September 20, 2009
First chill of the season. Winter's coming...
September 19, 2009
I found some ideas on how to turn the MOSFET off and now, gate shutoff is much
faster - basically using a bipolar transistor to quench the residual charge
on the gate whenever it's not being pulled high. Kind of a neat idea, have the
transistor powerred off the charge on the gate do discharge it...
However, regulation is still poor. Mostly due to oscillation. I just
realized the source for the problem: My sampling rate just isn't high enough.
I tried sampling 7:1 for the on to off channel which would increase the number
of samples taken for control (despite more samples, it's nowhere near double
the actual -frequency- of samples which is what's needed)
but it did help somewhat. If only I could
sample _much_ faster, say at least 4x or so :-(
I ended up changing my sampling algorithm a bit more noticing this shortcoming.
Still not great, but may be acceptable.
Changed the blinking pattern again, the _ - looked like negative signs...moved
voltage to the left and used a blinking arrow pointing left (voltage) or right
(current) to determine whether it's in constant voltage or constant current
mode. Arrow changes to a "!" when "the e-fuse" blows or in shutdown mode.
September 12, 2009
Frustration!
I have to work on getting that high side MOSFET turned off.
It's really causing problems when the 1/512 duty cycle pulses
get expanded to 1/50 duty cycle pulses. The output of the PWM from the AVR are
barely noticeable at 1/512 or 1/1024 duty cycle on the oscilloscope, but they
are plainly visible on the MOSFET drive. BAD.
Tried adding more of a full PID controller into the AVR. Since firmware memory
was getting tight, opted for 2-entry history shifting history instead of a
4-entry pointer queue that only top got used.
Kind of sad, I really wonder about software nowadays: Of my full 2048 words on
the AVR, about 455 goes to the UI (LCD print routines and button handling),
268 goes to main (init calls (minor) and UART UI), 54 goes to getline for UART
UI. Printing integers take about 64 words a piece, x2 (one for LCD, one for
UART). This does not include library functions. On the other hand, my
bloating PID controller in the interrupt handler is 175 words long, and the
clock is 90 words. Another 850 words are not accounted for here (library
functions, avr-libc). So... almost half of my firmware is UI...
That being said, my buttons have key repeat, debounced due to how slow they
work, and have rapid fire after holding them down for a while. Makes it a lot
nicer to use.
September 9, 2009
Didn't like the .oO@ scheme and changed to _ - ... saved memory.
Rewrote LCD routines... the ones I ripped from the 'net were plain memory hogs.
Split up the command and data routines so another arg does not have to be
pushed onto stack each time it's used. Saved a good 50 bytes of flash memory.
Fun trying to squeeze what would have been 8K of code into 4K of flash memory.
September 8, 2009
Finished Schematic Rev 1 - Full Functionality for the PSU.
Added a 'spinner' heartbeat indicator. Unfortunately the HD44780 I had does
not have a \ character, it prints out a Yen symbol... so I opted for . o O @
instead.
I also don't like my current sensor op amp circuit. It seems to drift up as
the voltage goes up.
PCB layout is mostly complete as well. Of course, schematic changes will
affect it, specifically the current sense.
I'm also ponderring whether the input bridge rectifier should be on this board.
Also I found that a PWM duty cycle of 1/512 is still generating a minimum
voltage of 5.7V. Making it 1/1024 lowers it to 2.8V or so. Hmm.
To get to .5V minimum I'll have to think about it.
September 7, 2009
Finished the MOSFET backend test. Built the charge pump and gate control.
Built a test platform of the MOSFET, zener protection, gate discharge resistor,
schottky diode, inductor, and filter cap. Hooked it up and once again saw PWM
controllable voltage. However I made a new observation - while the transistor
stayed fairly cool, I noticed the schottky diode and the inductor were warming
up. Not sure what this will mean. Also regulation is awful, I can see the
voltage going everywhere. Will have to take a closer look at what's going on
with the control system.
September 5, 2009
Finally got the LCD working. I made some boneheaded mistakes writing code:
nibble = data && 0xf;
and
void BusyWait(void) {
while(1){
busy = signal & 0x80;
if (busy) return;
}
}
sigh... In case the problems weren't obvious, the first I should have used
bitwise & not logical &&. The second one, I screwed up the sense
of the logic, should have returned when !busy.
Now it's pretty snappy to update the display, without the delay loops. Just
have/need delay loops on startup, that's about it. Good thing, because the
AVR is almost completely swamped by computations -- Unfortunately I've
found that the 7.3728MHz AVR is being hammerred by doing multiplies and divides
every ADC tick and this will limit how much DSP I can do within the fast
control loop. Resorted to doing this computation every other tick to save
some cpu time. Ponderring if it's possible to do half the computation on
every other tick, to even out the compute time. In either case it's a
serious shortcoming of the AVR for doing control systems. :-(
I also hacked up a PNP power transistor (TIP42, though I think I will go back
to a MOSFET switch), inductor, capacitor, and diode to test out the switching
aspect. I hooked up a 12W 12V incandescent bulb. As expected, regulation
sucks -- don't have enough computation time.
But it looks like control works, I can change the voltage digitally and it
looks like it's PWM'ing as expected. The transistor is staying cool (though I
did severely limit its base drive to around 18mA in this test.) At hFE of
around 50 or so, it can conduct up to 900mA in saturation. With one lamp, the
transistor stayed cool. When I paralleled two lamps, now unfortunately fell
out of saturation, and the transistor got hot. Because I didn't want to drive
the base with the needed 100mA of current needed to keep it saturated (100ma
at 20V for this segment of the circuit means I'm dissipating 2W !!!) I've
decided to increase complexity and use the MOSFET solution - which gate current
is near negligible and if I get things right,
Rdson(0.18 ohms) * Isource(3A)^2 + Charge Pump dissipation is
less than Icollector(3A) * Vcesat (1V) + Ibase(100mA) * Vbase-resistor(18V).
August 28, 2009
After swapping DIMMs around, including the old 1G DIMMs, found out one DIMM
was shorted or something, enough so that the machine would not work with it.
Running just one of the two would work, so I ran with the two old 1Gs and the
working 2G for a total of 4GB.
Complained to Newegg that the RAM was bunk. Got RMA number. Unfortunately
have to return both of them.
August 27, 2009
Received order from Newegg. Couldn't get RAM to work, it would cause the
EP43 to power cycle up and down and up and down. I installed the Super
Talent FPM32GRSE mPCIe 32G SSD into my eeePC. Found out that Linux 2.4
kernels do not work properly with the SATA/SSD and had to use a 2.6 boot disk.
Also found that Ubuntu didn't like being tar copied. Ended up image copying
the partition over to the new disk. Nice having plenty of free space now.
August 26, 2009
The PSU is probably one of the more important projects to finish as now I'm
left without a way to charge batteries amongst powerring electronics. It also
looks like I will have to charge pump and use a N-channel high side MOSFET
as I ... don't have any spare P-channel MOSFETs to play with. Oh well, at
least I gain the better Rds-on and have plenty of spares in case I fry one
from static or whatnot.
Tried setting up a protoboard with the AVR controller and the LCD output.
The LCD still hasn't displayed anything yet... not sure what's up with it yet.
Seems that the Enable/strobe may not be triggerring enough, not sure.
So far the specs are 7.3728 MHz clock => 9 bit PWM => ~ 7.2 KHz PWM with
512 steps. This is also about 15K samples/sec on the ADC, about 7.5KHz sample
rate on both voltage and current. I hope I can pass 3A through the buck
converter, this will then be powerful enough to power the eee as well as fast
charge many batteries... and also have auto shutdown if I so desire...
August 24, 2009
Sigh. Looks like a wire broke free in the analog voltmeter and hit something,
causing a high voltage to be presented across the meter, and blew out its
windings. Oh well, nothing lost, nothing gained...
Also destroyed my homemade bench supply. Grr. Was drawing 1A from it for
too long, and the bridge rectifier fried with the heat dissipated by itself
coupled with the (more) heat from the LM317T. Unfortunately I designed it so
poorly that repairing it would be too much of a hassle. So I decided on a
new project: a new, switching bench power supply. The design seems to have a
lot of issues I never even thought of before starting, and since I want to
design only with parts I had in my junk pile, a lot of aspects are somewhat
fixed.
I have a whole bunch of n-channel MOSFETs from January's hamfest. It would be
nice to use them as they only have 10 milliohms Rds.
Unfortunately after quite a bit of consideration, I don't think these would
be worth the design effort and circuitry to build the high-side driver.
Luckily I have a few p-channel devices which unfortunately have much poorer
switching performance (0.2 ohms Rds -- significantly worse),
but it will have to do... At 2A, and if the duty cycle hit 100%, the
transistor would be dissipating 0.8W which may be fine without a heatsink,
unlike that LM317T that was dissipating 1A * (16V-6V) or so = 10W when the
bridge blew out... And this isn't even considerring that loss of .8W at 2A
versus 10W at 1A... hope this design actually works out, I'll love this new
homemade bench PSU -- no more heat. (The loss from the freewheel diode is not
added here, but 2A * 0.2V * (1 - duty cycle of PWM) of that schottky would
only be another 0.4W tops (if even possible) and 1.2W wasted in semiconductors
from 2A at 12V out would mean 95% efficiency... Course this does not include
losses in the filter caps, transformer, inductor, overhead (microcontroller,
its LM7805, etc.)
Also orderred a Gigabyte GA-EP43-UD3L motheboard,
a 32G mPCIe SSD, and 2x2GB=4GB RAM from Newegg.
Really should get the Q6600 going.
August 16, 2009
Went to Denver Radio Club's Hamfest (DRC). While not nearly as extensive
as the one in MD I went to almost 2 decades ago, I still had to admit
there were more there than usual. However still nothing really interesting.
Got a few 0.1 ohm resistors for power measurement, some 2.2uF and 1uF capacitors
to play with SEPIC converters, and some binding posts for the zap circuit.
Also got a free analog multimeter - an Eico 555.
This thing seems really sensitive, the meter seems to sense static
on the meter face and I couldn't really use it - so basically this thing is
dead. While 20K ohms/volt is nothing to write home about compared
to digitals (which are around 1-10Mohm all ranges) it seems pretty sensitive.
However I have questions about its accuracy...
There was a 1-minute power outage or glitch, my UPS was able to carry through.
All nonprotected machines rebooted... my Geode rode through too and for the
first time with the "power button pusher" circuit, turned on after the outage.
August 15, 2009
Mowed lawn... All of it for once instead of doing front/back piecemeal.
Used up about 1/2 tank, around 1 cup of gasoline on the weedwhacker.
August 14, 2009
Finally learned some viable SVG and hacked up power charts...
July 26, 2009
I finally built a serial cable for my UPS and hooked it up. Wrote a custom
UPS script to handle it. Its status can be seen
here. Not much as of now, but it completes the
circle, it should gracefully shutdown the machine if power goes out.
July 14, 2009
Tried starting my Impreza this morning, battery was dead. I knew I didn't
leave anything on, but I know the battery has been leaking or something, as
there was a lot of white residue on the battery. Removed the battery, drove
Jeep to work and bought new battery when I went home. Installed it, and test
drove it. All is good again it looks. $90 battery... Ugh.
July 11, 2009
Received Thermaltake rebate. They sent a $10 debit card.
July 10, 2009
Seems the Actiontec isn't way too unstable. Unfortunately can't traceroute
through it. Thinking about buying my own Actiontec so I can hack it. So many
options on it that I'd like to tweak a bit...
July 6, 2009
Looks like my Cisco 678 is on its last legs. I was able to crash it while
trying to dump parameters to get my Actiontec, which is its replacement
from Qwest due to discontinuing support for the Cisco, working. In any case
I got the Actiontec GT701 up and running. Need to torture test it a bit...
July 4, 2009
Happy Independence day! (USA)
Tried the new gasoline powerred string trimmer. At low RPM it was easy to
stall like any engine (should have guessed...) but at speed, very powerful.
Bent fins on my AC condensor outside where my electric couldn't. Mixing the
(less than 1 gallon of) 2-cycle gas was a feat...
July 3, 2009
Bought a Ryobi straight shaft trimmer. Got sick of the electric trimmer.
Haven't used it yet.
July 2, 2009
My DSL crashed again...
June 22, 2009
Mouse/Keyboard problems on Yuri! Not sure what's wrong as of yet - Yuri was
using a Logitech Keyboard/Mouse desktop combo. Mouse went
flaky on VNC and then died. Then keyboard died. Tried another PS/2 keyboard
but it too had issues.
Had a really fierce lightning storm this night. Continuous lightning. Took
some photos of the lightning, will be available soon.
Considerring buying a gasoline powerred trimmer to upgrade from the electric
Toro. Tired of the cord.
June 15, 2009
Tornado warning. A strong thunderstorm tipped off radar indicating a tornado
was possible around here. Was at work and had to evacuate the second floor.
Fortunately nothinig came out of it. After the event was a briefing since we
never had an evacuation at work, and there was a funny but sad story of someone
kicking people out of the tornado-safe meeting room because ... there was a
meeting there and not enough space... Shouldn't happen again after they
re-emphasized safety > business concerns -- despite people being
"replaceable," life isn't.
June 5, 2009
Got an Asus eeePC 900A. Mostly to play with an Intel AtomTM CPU.
Tentatively named "Chii" (Chobits) but likely to change when I figure out a
better name for it.
The default Xandros-eee install is simply horrible. As a seasoned Linux user
I still managed to destroy the default install by simply upgrading packages with
the upgrade manager... doing nothing special at all! It got to the dreaded
full disk condition. After a few attempts at trying to keep using the default
install, I gave up and tried eeebuntu (as apparently Ubuntu is a fairly popular
install). Works much better...
Question now is whether I want to simply install Gentoo on this machine, since
I can't use default OS anyway, and to keep maintainance down on my machines,
install the same OS on all machines. The nice thing about Gentoo is that I
can customize the install for the netbook yet still use the same distribution
files.
May 24, 2009
Well, finally got a solution to the loose new Variac grounded outlet problem. I just spread out the spring clip on the new outlet to simply grab onto the back of the panel instead of the back of the edge of the hole... The new outlet is stable now and there's no way it's coming out unless I remove the screw in the back. Time for variac experiments!
May 23, 2009
Got the $10 Hitachi rebate for drive #3. I really should use it as part of the array and not as a spare as it is somewhat faster than one of the disks in the current array, but oh well.
April 27, 2009
Nice...it snowed last night again. 2" on grassy areas. It's going to melt
fairly quickly, at least.
April 26, 2009
Upgraded Hinoki and Mughi to xorg-server-1.5. Ouka still pending...
Mailed out Thermaltake case (Temporarily for the Core2 Quad) Rebate.
April 17, 2009
Lots of rain, too warm to snow.
Fixed more 2008. Argh, I keep on typing 2008, stuck in 2008...
Upgraded Doujima's X11 to xorg-server-1.5. Now using HAL.
April 16, 2009
More snow? Another winter storm warning...
April 14, 2009
Finished and submitted taxes...owed more...
April 12, 2009
Core2 Quad with RadeonHD 3650 can now once again run WoW in OpenGL mode. It's about 2x the speed of the Radeon 8500 in Windows.
The white-out minimap is still broken. Tried Linux-2.6.30-r1 with the opensource ATI driver, seems acceleration is not enabled or something...
REALLY slow.
April 11, 2009
Finally got Doujima to display 1280x1024 again on the KOGi LCD monitor. The 1024x768 was starting to get really irritating as it wasn't native resolution. Seems DDC isn't working properly (or the monitor returning modes it can't sync to). The LCD won't sync to 85Hz, but my HP P1130 Trinitron could...
April 6, 2009
Started working on taxes... again, I owe more...
Changed login script to not use useless ?grab= option -- since most browsers
will just dump the file as login.cgi instead of the original filename; now
the context menu will use download.cgi which will send you the file you want
as application/octet-stream, which usually will make your browser save to a
file. Of course no CR-LF/LF conversions from Unix to MSDOS, but who cares...
April 4, 2009
Well, the snow started about 10PM last night, and only about 6" of wet snow
fell. Most of it melted on contact on the roads, but mostly stuck on grassy
areas. Wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.
April 2, 2009
Winter storm watch tomorrow... Wonder how accurate it will be.
Hopefully nothing like the one last week, as pretty much all the snow has melted already...
Also more functionality into login.cgi, now can move files around with the 'pin' functionality, no more keyboard interaction required for moving files. Timer also added to tell about when the login is about to expire. Started adding code to refresh pages properly for IE using Javascript, also re-thinking about login -- want to pull up a separate page for login instead of temporarily displaying the login page for the desired page. This should reduce the number of "Resubmit" queries for login info.
March 26, 2009
Huge snow storm, blizzard conditions all day. Wind blowing, snow falling.
Visibility dropped to 1/10 mile due to the blowing snow. Schools closed early
and driving was treacherous.
Got around 8-10" of snow, kind of hard to measure as it's blowing around.
March 24, 2009
Started to add 'pin' functionality to allow keyboardless copy and moves of
files to login.cgi.
March 22, 2009
Drilled a few holes into the aluminum rails and added 4-40 standoffs
for the Geode. Not sure why I kept all those 4-40 "nutbolts" from a whole
bunch of DB-25 connectors, but finally found a use for them.
No more sliding around possibly sliding off insulators!
No more plastic spacer to prevent shorts! Well...not totally, just center
still has plastic spacer to account for board flex. The tap seems
to work fine, got a pretty well defined threaded hole that which the standoff
screws in. Used WD40 as cutting oil.
March 16, 2009
Ended up getting a tap & die set to install standoffs and make a makeshift case for motherboards. Will be installing Geode motherboard into the aluminum rack case, and stop using makeshift insulators to make sure it doesn't short with the bottom.
Finally updated login.cgi with more Javascript, the browser now works more like what I was hoping it'd work like. You can now rightclick on files in the browser to delete, view, edit, etc. files instead of having a discrete link for each operation. I think it's pretty slick, and a lot cleaner than before. Authorized users only: Try it! Let me know what you think.
February 23, 2009
Got a square 3-prong outlet for the variac. Trimmed the edges and finally got
it to fit in the round hole. Now need to stabilize it (it's still loose)
and get a 3-prong plug and cable for it. Rewired it slightly since now
hot/neutral is defined (the old plug was not polarized), so that neutral
is connected to the transformer common
as well as the outlet, hot is connected to the transformer directly.
Of course the hot of the outlet is connected to the slider.
Kind of weird how the fuse isn't in series with the transformer,
rather, of the load only. Decided to leave it that way.
Next thing with the 3-prong plug/cable is dealing with ground. Likely will
connect the chassis to GND.
February 21, 2009
Didn't like the snap ring plier set I had, got a new one that actually can be
used for both internal and external rings. Finally was able to remove the old
2-prong outlet from the variac.
February 16, 2009
Removed my GeForce4 MX420 from service after attempting to clean its fan and
retesting. The board is now considered failed and unusable.
February 14, 2009
Finally finished watching Mai Otome. Basically a self discovery story,
it is quite funny. Unfortunately while watching the last episode, the GeForce4
MX420 seems to have suffered some serious failure and is having trouble playing
with mplayer through Xvid. Will need to accelerate the transition of the new
array and computer due to this failure.
February 8, 2009
Guess I should never keep my hopes up. Went to the Aurora Repeater Association
(? - which is the Aurora Amateur Radio Club) Hamfest. Got lost as it seems
Denver got their act together and made 120th Avenue (CO128) continuous,
instead of breaking it up 5 miles east of I-25. Anyway, not much there either,
was hoping to get an outlet I could use to replace the 2-prong on my variac.
In any case I ended up getting some cables (free), a floppy drive (running out
of working ones...), and some Cat5e keystone modular jacks.
Was tempted to get a new, fairly large case
with 2GB RAM, 350W PSU, and a Intel 965G motherboard,
but fought against it...didn't really need another machine...
February 3, 2009
Noticed that I wrote 2008 for the newer entries... oops. Fixed :-p
January 31, 2009
Drove my friend to the airport. Picked up a spare 500G (another P7K500) disk
for the new array as a cold (or possibly hot) spare. Also picked up an eSATA
external case to play with (and hence the potential use as a hot spare.)
January 28, 2009
Finally the pipes unfroze, no apparent damage. (whew)
January 26, 2009
Bitterly cold outside, got to -1F. Ugh, noticed pipe froze again
on my east wall. About 1/2 way through the anime series Mai Otome.
January 18, 2009
Got a drill press vise and SAE hex keys... not sure why I initially got the metric ones initially, I suspect the SAE ones are more commonly used. Tested the ether and pata cards on my PPro board. Since the dual socket board's RTC's battery is dead (and can't be replaced) I moved one of the CPUs back to the single board. Found out that Gentoo will not boot on a 16MB machine (oops!) so I stuck the 16M SIMMs x4 = 64M (instead of the 4x4MB ECC SIMMs) onto that board.
January 17, 2009
Went to the NCARC Hamfest, luckily it was fairly close so it was quick to get to. However, not many goodies there. Got a few power MOSFETs, some Schottky diodes (okay, power supplies are fun...), a PCI UDMA133 card, and a spare 10/100 Intel Ethernet card. Overall a disappointing Hamfest, wish there were more goodies. Too many people there for the amount of space they had - very stuffy in there... Really would like to get a small, cheap DSO.
January 7, 2009
Massive wind storm caused some serious damage to my fence. Did some hacks to
repair/strengthen it, but not sure how long it will hold.
January 1, 2009
Happy New Year!