Apple Airport Extreme

Posted on September 5, 2010 by admin


$179, Apple.

Features

  • USB port to plug a printer into, lets the Airport become a wireless print server
  • WPA/WPA2 Security with 128-bit WEP
  • Guest Networking – you can create a secondary wireless network (‘John’s Guest Network’) with a different password or no password at all.
  • Dual band
  • Supports up to 50 users simultaneously

Looks like a good solution for retail shop, classroom, or busy home.

BTW It’s currently on sale at Amazon
Apple AirPort Extreme Base Station (Simultaneous Dual-Band) (MC340LL/A)

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No more mouse hot swap in Windows 7?

Posted on May 10, 2010 by admin

This isn’t headline news or anything, but it sure is annoying when OS features that have worked fine for years suddenly stop working. Case in point, I purchased a new Kensington Orbit trackball yesterday and figured I could just unplug my old microsoft USB mouse and plug this in, and it would just work. No drivers are required for the trackball,  as its a USB HID compliant device.

Did it work? No. No mouse cursor movement at all. Windows 7 sees the new device, but it pops up an error saying it had a problem installing the drivers.  So I rebooted the machine and the problem goes away and the trackball works.  I can ALMOST accept that this is the way things are now, because its a “new” device. So guess that happens when I plugged the old mouse back in? Yep, it doesn’t work unless you also reboot the machine.

So mouse hotswap is just broken in Windows 7.

p.s. I’ve tried this on two different computers with different versions of WIN7, same exact problem on both machines.

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Nice deal on the Tyan 4985 Quad 1207 motherboard

Posted on April 24, 2010 by admin

The bad news is newegg  stopped selling the Tyan 4980 Motherboard I featured in my 16-core workstation build last year.  Fortunately, they are selling a better one now. The TYAN S4985G3NR Thunder has FOUR expansion slots to the 4980′s one. This means you can improve the built-in raid controller, add a good video card and still have some slots leftover.  Its on sale for $299 right now, which means its probably getting replaced by a better, more expensive Tyan Quad board in the near future.  I’m tempted to upgrade my workstation!

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The trouble with 802.11 Wireless-N

Posted on April 15, 2010 by

(Ed: This was originally written in 2009 when I was reviewing the WNR 3500)

As I finish up the third day of frustrating testing with the Netgear WNR 3500 Wireless-N Gigabit router, I’ve come to a simple realization: There just aren’t enough channels at 2.4 Ghz to make 300 Mbps wireless N work. Continue reading →

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DIY 16 core workstation part 4: Case & Power Supply

Posted on August 7, 2009 by admin

One very important detail on this build is the case. Building a system with a server motherboard requires an EATX case (Extended ATX).  EATX cases are the only things large enough to hold the Tyan S4980 motherboards.

So which one do you get? Well a few things to keep in mind. The motherboard supports 6 SATA hard drives and 2 IDE devices. So you should get a case that can support at least 8 drives.

The first case I tried was the Zalman GS1000, which is very nice looking, and can hold 8 hard drives. Unfortunately, I could not get ANY power supply plugs to reach the motherboard with this case.

I lucked out with the Antec 650 Titan EATX server case, because not only did it have a power supply mount near the motherboard power supply connectors, but the 650 W power supply ended up being perfect for my build.  How did I know that? I purchased a 1000W power supply first and mounted it into the Antec 650 case,  and I used a logging watt meter to measure the idle and peak watt usage while running IoStress on all hard drives  on the server.  IoStress pegged all 16 cores, and maxed out all 6 hard drives for a week. I checked the logged results — 520 W max usage.  The idle power consumption is less than 300W. Windows 7 does a good job at shutting down cores when they are not being used,  and the low power opterons help out alot.

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DIY 16 core workstation part 3: Memory & Heatsinks

Posted on March 18, 2009 by
build-021

Kingston 1GB DDR2 ECC REG.

-Continued from Part 2-

It was a little tricky finding the right memory for the Tyan S4980 motherboard. You have to make sure that you use ECC, Registered DDR2 DIMMs  400, 533 or 667 Mhz. If you buy memory that doesn’t say ECC and REGISTERED on the box it won’t work.  You can use 1GB, 2GB or 4gB DIMMs, and you MUST install at least 2 DIMMs per CPU. Here’s a few part numbers I know work in the motherboard:

1GB $18.49 Kingston 1GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM ECC Registered DDR2 667 (PC2 5300) Server Memory Model KVR667D2D8P5/1G

2GB $30.99 Kingston 2GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM ECC Registered DDR2 667 (PC2 5300) Server Memory Model KVR667D2D8P5/2G

4GB $84.99 Kingston 4GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM ECC Registered DDR2 667 (PC2 5300) Server Memory Model KVR667D2D4P5/4G

Heatsinks:

You have lots of options here, and a few snags.  Since the CPU’s are spaced fairly close to each other, you will need compact ones.  The 2U case fan cooled heat sinks fit nicely.  The snag: there are 4″ and 3.5″ pitch versions. This is basically how far apart the mounting screws are spaced. The Tyan S4980 motherboard needs the 3.5″ pitch ones. See all figured out for you! Here are some good choices.

1. Dynatron F558 77mm 2 Ball CPU Cooler – Retail – $32.99

This CPU cooler comes with an unnecessary CPU support plate – the S4980 comes with them pre-installed. This is the one I purchased. Its noisy at full speed.  This one won’t work in 2U cases.

2.  Dynatron F661 60mm 2xBall CPU Cooler $24

This CPU is quieter on paper, doesn’t come with the CPU support plate, and its $9 cheaper. I should have bought this one. This one does work in 2U cases.

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DIY 16 core workstation part 2: Processors

Posted on March 18, 2009 by
AMD Opteron 8347

AMD Opteron 8347

As you read in part 1, we are building an AMD 16 core workstation, so we need to find four Opteron quad core processors.

Our Tyan S4980 motherboard only supports AMD “Barcelona” Opterons.  Barcelona’s have two main product lines: the 23XX and 83XX. We want to avoid the 23XX for this build, because those quad core CPUs only support two in a single motherboard. Nice little hitch to avoid.

Note: AMD is now shipping “Shanghai” Opterons. These processors are faster, better  (more expensive)  and they don’t work in the Tyan S4980 motherboard we are using. Unfortunately, the Shanghai Opterons have the same 23XX and 83XX numbering scheme, so one more little caveat to be aware of.

8347 (1.9Ghz),  8350 (2 Ghz), 8354 (2.2 Ghz) , 8356 (2.4 Ghz) , 8358 (2.5 Ghz) , 8360 (2.6 Ghz).

There are also two high efficiency versions (these use 55W instead of 75W) of these chips which work just fine: 8346 HE (1.8 Ghz) and the 8347 HE (1.9 Ghz) . I used four 8347 HE in my build.

The least expensive Quad core opteron on New Egg is the 8346 HE. it runs $549 for the OEM packaging, which does NOT include any cooling.

Another option is to shop eBay for these cpu’s, you can find them for much less, but make sure to buy the right part numbers.

Oh before I forget..One last detail, make sure to use four identical CPUs. I don’t know if you can mix 8347 and 8347HE on the same motherboard. Good Luck!

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D-Link DIR628 RangeBooster N Dual Band Router

Posted on March 18, 2009 by

d-link-dir628-rangebooster-n-dual-band-routerFrys had this wireless-n router on sale for $69 the other day. Great price.  I bought two in hopes of being able to use one of them as a repeater to create a larger wireless network.  For the record, this product doesn’t support that.  Oh I tried to use the D-Link Quick Router Setup CD, it repeatedly crashes in nmrsbase.exe.  I googled this filename and its the Network Magic setup app, D-Link must rebrand this application.  The manual browser setup works fine. I really despise installation CDs.

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DIY 16 core workstation part 1: The motherboard

Posted on February 17, 2009 by
TYAN S4980G2NR Quad 1207(F) NVIDIA nForce Professional 3600 Extended ATX Server Motherboard

TYAN S4980G2NR

I love virtual machines. Unfortunately running lots of them on one server can get very expensive. A 16-core Dell PowerEdge R905 for example, will set you back about 12 grand (without OS).  So I set out to try and build my own system for less – and I’ve succeeded!

About a month ago I was doing random motherboard searches on NewEgg and I found exactly ONE quad socket motherboard for sale:  the TYAN S4980G2NR Quad 1207(F) NVIDIA nForce Professional 3600 Extended ATX Server Motherboard.

The only catch (for me) was that this motherboard used AMD Opteron cpus,  and I knew nothing about them.  But there are no Xeon quad socket motherboards readily available, so AMD it is.  Theres alot of backstory on the Opteron / Xeon battle for market domination, but really it doesn’t matter if you can’t find quad socket Intel Xeon motherboards.  So AMD wins the 16 core workstation battle for now.

Anyways… The Tyan S4980 sells for around $400. Tyan has a good reputation, and they have all of the manuals online. Also I can vouch for this motherboard, since I’ve built my 16 core workstation with it.

16 CPUs in Task Manager

16 CPUs in Task Manager

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Affordable inkjet printing

Posted on February 8, 2009 by admin

You realize how expensive printing is when you have to buy new ink. So I decided to figure out what it costs per page to print in color and black and white.

I assumed that laser printing would be the most cost effective way to print, since the toner cartridges can usually print thousands of pages and cost less than $100.

So lets look at laser printing and see how much one solution actually costs per page. The HP LaserJet P1006 costs about $99 and it prints 17 pages per minute.   The replacement toner cartridge is the $68 HP35A (CB435A),  and HP says it has a 1500 page yield.  So that comes out to costing us 4.5 cents per page  ($68 / 1500) .  Of course the big catch with this printer is that it can’t print color. 

For Color and some nice “All-In-One” features like scanning, fax and photocopying, the HP Photosmart C4480 All-in-One is a good value. Its only $99.  If you buy the HP 74XL  Inkjets, you can get your per page cost down to 4.6 cents. ($35/ 750)

OEM HP 74 (CB335WN) Black Ink Cartridge $15 for 200 pages. (7.5 cents a page)

OEM HP 74XL (CB336WN) Black Ink Cartridge $35 for 750 pages. (4.6 cents a page).

OEM HP 75 (CB337WN) Color Ink Cartridge $20 for 170 pages (11.7 cents a page)

OEM HP 75XL (CB338WN) Color Ink Cartridge $40 for 520 pages  (7.5 cents a page)

Ok so color printing is expensive part, which makes sense because those color cartridges are actually 3 ink tanks in one.

But the great thing about the HP 74/75 cartridges is that you can get them refilled at places like Cartridge World, or you can simply buy them refilled online at your favorite inkjet website. 

I was quoted around $20 for a refilled 74XL cartridge at Cartridge World — that brings the price down to 2.6 cents a page.

So let me summarize:  Look for a decent HP printer that takes the HP 74/75 cartridges, make sure to buy the large “XL” size cartridges, and you can get your combined average color & bw printing down to about 5 cents a page.

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