Fun with computers!

[GH85Carrera]

Fun that is, if you enjoy making up new profanity and cussing.

About in 2013 or maybe 2014 I built myself a computer for my home email, web browsing, and occasional Photoshop playing. i7 CPU, 32 gig of RAM and a mirrored pair of solid state 1 TB hard drives. It was plenty powerful for all my needs.

Then I started a business, doing aerial photography. Lots of monster large files, and heavy processor and memory use. My computer was just not up to the task. It was just to slow. I built my current i9 256 Gig of RAM and 18 TB RAID computer. It is wonderful, but I had a spare computer. Hmmmmmm

So I put 6 spinning hard drives in in it, and built a 36 TB RAID 5 server for my business partner's home office. It ran just fine for years, then nothing. No BIOS screen just the fans turn and nothing, not even a beep. Insert your preferred long string of profanity here.

It has 14 TB of current projects we have flown, and suddenly no access. It was our only copy of those projects.

My business partner brought it over, and said I need to heal it. Sure enough, I can't even get the BIOS screen. So first try was throw in a $100 video card. Then I still could not see BIOS, but I get to the Intel RAID screen and it said all the drives are happy. OK, cool.

I dug around on the internet and saw detective BIOS chip as a possible cause. Golly gosh darn it. So I took a $14 gamble and ordered a new BIOS chip from Bios depot. It arrived, and I was ready to install. Oh, golly that motherboard has a neat plastic cover over the top of the components.


It has cute little fans under the plastic to circulate air and keep the parts cool.

The BIOS chip is hidden under the cover, and the cover is bonded in place. Golly gee whiz, and dang. I started cutting a access port into the plastic, but that was going to take a few years.



I know where the BIOS chip is, just need access. Out to the garage, out comes the Dremel, and access hole magically appears.



Dig out my chip tool, and out comes the old chip, and in with the new.



It is a little chip, but without it, the computer is dead.

For those still reading and wondering what a BIOS chip is, it is the Basic Input Output Chip. It is the root of the way your computer is set up. Cheap little chip, and it is the interface for your computer to have access to the operating system. The new chip has the newest version of the BIOS on it and ready to go.

I built my first computer to run DOS 3.3 and a BBS system back in the stone ages of dial up. In all those years I have never had a BIOS chip fail all on it's own. So just a 14 buck chip cures the problem.

[herr_oberst]

It's not soldered onto the MB?

[id10t]

One of the reasons I love software RAID on my Linux boxes - I can pull the drives and put 'em in any other machine running a recent (last 20 years) version of Linux and have near instant access to my data again

[Bob Kontak]

Solder or plug in?

Good job figuring it out.

[GH85Carrera]

It was in a socket, no soldering needed. Just getting to it was the hard part.

[GH85Carrera]

Originally Posted by id10t

One of the reasons I love software RAID on my Linux boxes - I can pull the drives and put 'em in any other machine running a recent (last 20 years) version of Linux and have near instant access to my data again

We own a Buffalo RAID, and the Linux OS is on the drives themselves. It had some major crash, and now we are stuck as I know very little about Linux. I have the web page, and the instructions from Buffalo, but my ignorance on Linux is a barrier. I keep hoping to find a Linux guru and get the unit back on line. It is a special Buffalo version of Linux from what I figured out. It has been a low priority.

[LWJ]

Pretty brilliant. Great job!

[Rusty Heap]

BIOS, built in operating system.

not "Chip"

but kuddo's of your troubleshooting skills as a EE myself.

[KFC911]

Originally Posted by Rusty Heap

BIOS, built in operating system.

not "Chip"

but kuddo's of your troubleshooting skills as a EE myself.

I'm impressed with Glen's troubleshooting skillz too.... and his correct interpretation of what BIOS means to a Computer Science grad .

Back in Communications R&D at IBM decades ago... some of the very best didn't even have a degree .... Glen would have done just fine too. Buncha 'ol dawgs just learning new tricks and didn't matter if ya had an EE, a CS, or just had "IT" .

Geekin' awesome !

[jcwade]

You all might as well be speaking Martian.
But from what I can figure out, WOW!

[KFC911]

Originally Posted by jcwade

You all might as well be speaking Martian.
But from what I can figure out, WOW!

When I worked at IBM at Research Triangle, we only went out for lunch to a BBQ joint when someone left the team. Buncha geeks speaking Greek acronyms was how the adjacent tables would view us.... 15 wierdos allowed out of the Zoo for lunch .

[GH85Carrera]

Originally Posted by KC911

When I worked at IBM at Research Triangle, we only went out for lunch to a BBQ joint when someone left the team. Buncha geeks speaking Greek acronyms was how the adjacent tables would view us.... 15 wierdos allowed out of the Zoo for lunch .

My only degree is graduating from high school, and then the school of life.

Computers are just a tool for me for the most part. Having to learn more about mapping and how to get our product to fit the needs of our clients has been a real learning experience.

The new 3D imagery we can do of a city is really cool. We flew downtown Oklahoma City and it is just amazing to see it and spin the city, view from above or fly down the streets, all from just aerial photos and no hand holding to clean up or build the data. It is not Hollywood level, but with some extra human data cleanup work it could be.

If some of you want to see the 3D stuff PM me. It is on a cloud server so only a few at a time can view it without overtaxing the server. The full data file is 37 GB.

[KFC911]

^^^^ If ya have the aptitude for this stuff.... it just shows up .

[Rusty Heap]

How it all started for me and dad......"Come on Boy, we're going to the tube tester at the drug store" , soldering up a HeathKit Stereo, and this:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/165693560329?chn=ps&norover=1&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-117182-37290-0&mkcid=2&mkscid=101&itemid=165693560329&targetid=1264870805664&device=c&mktype=&googleloc=9033391&poi=&campaignid=14859008593&mkgroupid=130497710760&rlsatarget=pla-1264870805664&abcId=9300678&merchantid=8190624&gclid=Cj0KCQjw1vSZBhDuARIsAKZlijTyyvFji_wIIAi9uxrT 07Qq3GORqvKqMibdVSsIY25x17OqzsL81TkaAtnAEALw_wcB

[GH85Carrera]

I built a few Heathkits! I like the build as much as the finished project.

We hauled a perfectly good tube tester to the curb as trash. It was too big to ship, and no one wanted it.

[GH85Carrera]

The computer is all finished and ready to go back to my business partners house. I thought it was a bit slow, so I went ahead and cloned the old spinning boot drive to a Solid State drive and got that installed. It for sure is a bit snappier. I set up a program to backup the boot drive once per week to the RAID. I have a thumb drive I can boot with and recover the drive and be back and running in no time. It should be good to go for many years.

[GH85Carrera]

Having opened up the old computer and seeing the dust, it motivated me to pull my main workstation out of it's spot, and haul it to the garage for a blow job. It was about as bad as expected. I have been procrastinating doing it.



It has a heavy duty steel chassis. with the 5 spinning RAID drives, the two M.2 drives hidden on the motherboard, 256 Gig of RAM. and a total of 10 fans counting the ones on the two video cards it is a heavy brute. I have room for 5 more hard drives.

My back is happy it is back in place. The dust buildup was not horrible, but more than I wanted to see. The case has two knobs I can turn to crank up the two 8 inch fans for intensive CPU use. I thought about water cooling it, but come on, I am have owned at least one cooled car since 1970 when I started driving.