RESTORATION

gunrunnerjohn said:

Just curious, what's the purpose of all the mechanical drives?

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The short answer is data. The long answer is back ups, documentaries, home videos, music, networking, and simply because I CAN. To continue with my long answer there was a time a fellow would have to pay through the nose for helium filled drives. Today, they're a lot more affordable. 10 and 12 TB hard drives won't break the bank like they used to and enterprise drives last a long, long time. I store everything. I am my own cloud. I would rather do that than get one of these.



And I still get them and laugh because there's no way I'm letting MS hold my data hostage. Several times my daughters have despaired because they failed to back something up but tah-dah! Super Daddy to the rescue! Whenever I service their PCs for them I make copies of their data and put it in the archives. Yeah, my girls are spoiled. Who needs a NAS when you're already running up to 100 TB on a network? Not me. I also service my little town on a web site because we don't have a newspaper. It's a labor of love. I don't make a dime at it. I'm old, retired, and I keep myself busy. I suppose you could call it a guy thing. It really doesn't have to be a guy thing. I keep telling my girls that but our beloved brainiac tells me she'll stick to the software and let me worry about the hardware. Funny though, first year university made her take general engineering before they're letting her do software engineering. It's an old argument. I keep telling her without hardware she'd have no software to play with.

There's still some strong arguments in favor of mechanical hard drives with respect to wear and tear. Why do I do it? Because I can and because I have fun doing it.

Good enough reason for me! I design electronics for model trains because I'm retired and I can do it and it keeps me busy.

No matter how large space we have. We eventually manage to fill it and need more... My first computer was an XT clone (8088 CPU) and had a "huge" hard disk of 40MB! Yes, 40 Mega Bytes which back then was huge since most games were one or two 360KB floppy disks and simpler games were a few KB. I remember having a 360KB floppy disk with over 10 simple games on it, so 40MB, aka 40960KB was "huge" by comparison. My Iomega ZIP-100 floppy disks were 95MB actually, also "huge" in the '90s as were 700MB CD-R discs. In ten years 100TB will be a single hard disk and probably the future version of Windows will need 1-2TB space to install! For comparison Windows 95 needs less than 100MB!

spapakons said:

In ten years 100TB will be a single hard disk and probably the future version of Windows will need 1-2TB space to install! For comparison Windows 95 needs less than 100MB!

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That wouldn't surprise me. I'm from another time and I accept that. For the things I do with computers I am more than adequately advanced. I'm an enthusiast in my own right even if I'm not doing state-of-the-art bleeding edge. Instead, I'm like the old guy tinkering in his garage with his '57 Chevy and could give a rat's behind for fuel injection, electronic ignition, or a computer module under the dash. I have little use for things like Co-Pilot or One Drive or Chat GPT. Other people have other interests and that's fine with me. To each their own areas of expertise.

Well, I'm at an en passe. Scratching my head after trying everything to get my Thunderbolt back. It ain't happening. What changed?

Short answer: Windows 11.

I'm going to try putting it on the CoolerMaster build again instead since this particular build will be running newer and faster hardware.

In the meantime it's good to see that all the drives connected to my HBA cards still show.

I have yet to pop in the cage with the other 5 drives.

spapakons said:

No matter how large space we have. We eventually manage to fill it and need more... My first computer was an XT clone (8088 CPU) and had a "huge" hard disk of 40MB! Yes, 40 Mega Bytes which back then was huge since most games were one or two 360KB floppy disks and simpler games were a few KB. I remember having a 360KB floppy disk with over 10 simple games on it, so 40MB, aka 40960KB was "huge" by comparison. My Iomega ZIP-100 floppy disks were 95MB actually, also "huge" in the '90s as were 700MB CD-R discs. In ten years 100TB will be a single hard disk and probably the future version of Windows will need 1-2TB space to install! For comparison Windows 95 needs less than 100MB!

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My first computer was a home-brew 8080 system that I wire-wrapped most of the boards for. It was equipped with a pair of 8" floppy drives. They were "dual density" drives, so that had around 600KB capacity. Then I graduated to a 20MB 8" hard disk, but I kept the floppies as well. I also had to build a controller for the Micropolis hard disk since it was a bare OEM drive. The O/S was Digital Research CP/M. Since all my hardware was custom, I also had to write the BIOS for the computer to interface to my custom hardware. My console was the Lear Siegler ADM-3, and I finally got a Heathkit H14 line printer. Most of my software in the early days was written in 8080 assembly language. My computer procurement was mostly done at swap meets for well used stuff, hobbyists couldn't afford the new computers equipment.

gunrunnerjohn said:

My first computer was a home-brew 8080 system that I wire-wrapped most of the boards for. It was equipped with a pair of 8" floppy drives. They were "dual density" drives, so that had around 600KB capacity. Then I graduated to a 20MB 8" hard disk, but I kept the floppies as well. I also had to build a controller for the Micropolis hard disk since it was a bare OEM drive. The O/S was Digital Research CP/M. Since all my hardware was custom, I also had to write the BIOS for the computer to interface to my custom hardware. My console was the Lear Siegler ADM-3, and I finally got a Heathkit H14 line printer. Most of my software in the early days was written in 8080 assembly language. My computer procurement was mostly done at swap meets for well used stuff, hobbyists couldn't afford the new computers equipment.

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Wow. That was before my time . . . Well, at least as far as my interest in computers began. I was a Johnny-come-lately, largely influenced by nerd friends. Before 2000 I wouldn't even know how to swap out a hard drive if you paid me to. Back in '96 I was just starting to get familiar with a Tandy. Before that it was an old Commodore 64. In 98 my son taught me how to use Windows. In 99 I purchased my first Windows PC, Mistake Edition. In a way that was a good thing because it forced me to learn how to deal with BSODs a lot. When XP came out I thought I found paradise.



Still need to connect 0,1,2 to the breakout cables on the IT card. As illustrated here, the IR card is fully populated, but I'm busy trying to get this ASUS Thunderbolt 3 going and the stupid thing isn't letting me select North Bridge and the only South Bridge setting it allows for is the 1X16_2 slot which is sitting behind the graphics card. Very annoying. Not sure why the BIOS won't let me select other vacant PCIe slots. Any ideas anyone?

Sorry, not familiar with such configurations.

spapakons said:

Sorry, not familiar with such configurations.

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No worries. I did some further research.


Now this is odd because at least I had some sort of pass thru for USB C working before when I used Windows 8.1 with the card in PCIEX16_3 slot. Now I don't even get that with Win 11. I'll just reserve Thunderbolt for the SAGE build. It looks like the X299 might give me North Bridge and South Bridge options. How absolutely ridiculous that ASUS would engineer a card like this! Surely they knew that the X16_2 slot on the X99 platform would invariably be covered up by any substantial discrete graphics card! Absolute stupidity at its finest. Theory vs. practicum.

Might make for some interesting wall paper on my desk top. INVASION of the Electric Blue Jellyfish! Now that's what I call RGB!

Decided to put a smaller, but faster, more powerful fan in the back to facilitate the push/pull CPU cooler. This triple "shot-gun" configuration works well for me and has done so for nearly two decades. The leetle tiny blue LEDs in this fan are not obtrusive and will even be less of a concern once the side panel is on the case.

Scannerman said:

Wow. That was before my time . . . Well, at least as far as my interest in computers began. I was a Johnny-come-lately, largely influenced by nerd friends. Before 2000 I wouldn't even know how to swap out a hard drive if you paid me to. Back in '96 I was just starting to get familiar with a Tandy. Before that it was an old Commodore 64. In 98 my son taught me how to use Windows. In 99 I purchased my first Windows PC, Mistake Edition. In a way that was a good thing because it forced me to learn how to deal with BSODs a lot. When XP came out I thought I found paradise.

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Well, I started my career in computers in 1966 with IBM. I was hooked and never looked back. My first Windows was Windows 2.0, it was actually a GUI that ran on MS-DOS, well... actually PC-DOS as IBM called it. There was a parade of Windows versions that came in pretty quick succession. I actually skipped many of them, from XP I really jumped to Windows 7, then on to Windows 10, and of course ending up here.

gunrunnerjohn said:

Well, I started my career in computers in 1966 with IBM. I was hooked and never looked back. My first Windows was Windows 2.0, it was actually a GUI that ran on MS-DOS, well... actually PC-DOS as IBM called it. There was a parade of Windows versions that came in pretty quick succession. I actually skipped many of them, from XP I really jumped to Windows 7, then on to Windows 10, and of course ending up here.

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Thanks for the background. I feel much younger now.

Scannerman said:

Thanks for the background. I feel much younger now.

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See, I'm glad I could help.

I remember Woodstock but I was only a kid back then. You were already into computers.

Scannerman said:

I remember Woodstock but I was only a kid back then. You were already into computers.

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I had a friend that went to the 1969 Woodstock, he was sorry he went. He said it was a once in a lifetime experience, but he was glad it would never happen to him again. He was one of the many that got stuck in the mud up to his doors and was hours getting his car out of the mire. People like to talk about what an "experience" Woodstock was, but most that actually experienced it are trying to forget all the bad stuff that happened there.

That's one experience I'm glad I passed on after hearing his saga!

gunrunnerjohn said:

I had a friend that went to the 1969 Woodstock, he was sorry he went. He said it was a once in a lifetime experience, but he was glad it would never happen to him again. He was one of the many that got stuck in the mud up to his doors and was hours getting his car out of the mire. People like to talk about what an "experience" Woodstock was, but most that actually experienced it are trying to forget all the bad stuff that happened there.

That's one experience I'm glad I passed on after hearing his saga!

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I wasn't quite a teen back then but my father took us all out on a family vacation that year to British Columbia and we visited Stanley Park in Vancouver. He was all red-faced and angry because those @#$% hippies took all the parking lots. I do recall a lot of vans and school busses covered in brilliant colors and psychedelic patterns and my mother trying to calm him down because the hippies were "ruining" his vacation. lol I can't help but to laugh every time I have this recollection. For me, 1969 was a great year.

Scannerman said:

I wasn't quite a teen back then but my father took us all out on a family vacation that year to British Columbia and we visited Stanley Park in Vancouver. He was all red-faced and angry because those @#$% hippies took all the parking lots. I do recall a lot of vans and school busses covered in brilliant colors and psychedelic patterns and my mother trying to calm him down because the hippies were "ruining" his vacation. lol I can't help but to laugh every time I have this recollection. For me, 1969 was a great year.

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No complaints about 1969 for me, I was in tall cotton at the time. I had a brand new Pontiac Grand Prix SJ and I had just bought my first airplane! My 20's were a pretty wild ride. I had just landed a job with a software startup that gave me a nice chunk of stock and good money.

Well, all three controllers failed to do the job. First of all, the Corsair Mini Commander failed the firmware upgrade and will not cease flashing. I feel like mailing it to Corsair and telling them their over priced piece of junk never worked properly from day one. The second attempt resulted in paying for a controller that was missing pieces and, upon further investigation, had burnt out circuitry. Needless to say just peeling back the cooked insulation and giving it a sniff was enough for me not to bother plugging the thing in. Amazon refunded me the money. Nasty bit of business there. Not to blame the brand name for some third party shady bizz nizz, I ordered a Molex powered version of the same sort of device. Alas, the pins don't quite match up with the Corsair proprietary plugs and since none of the wires indicate what polarity should go where I wasn't going to take any chances. I didn't return it because the unit probably works fine with standard LED strips. Perhaps I'll find a use for it. I don't like return stuff that actually works. ↓





So what to do? Well, since I had nothing left to lose it was surgery time. I could only find the + wire for fan power which left the other three for RGB. The challenge was figuring out which was which. After all, all I wanted was blue fans to match the rest of the light theme — nothing a little shrink sleeving or even some electrical tape can't solve. This is not an RGB build although the case is capable of rudimentary RGB. I simply set the fan lights to "blue" and keep them there. No strobing, no flashing, no green, red, yellow, this ain't no disco. This ain't no foolin' around. Yes, that's a home-made splitter made out of necessity. The ketchup and mustard will be dealt with. None of this hackery will be visible once I'm done. ↓
It turns out that by cutting the second middle wire (unmarked) removes the "R" in RGB. From that point I just had to connect it to one of the other two until I got the desired color. I can get these fans to give me yellow, green, pink, and white without a controller. Finally, I discovered the trick for blue and of course it would be the last option. Nonetheless I succeeded and I did it without purchasing Corsair's half-baked, ridiculously over-priced junk ware. The software was a nightmare. These RAM fans are a relic from the past but they work well.

Through persistence and determination I succeeded. These fans work well and they are a remnant from an era when Corsair was identified with quality. Those days are gone, I'm sorry to say. I wouldn't advise anyone to buy anything new today from Corsair — especially their fan controllers or anything requiring proprietary software from Corsair. I hear they still make good computer cases but I'm going to vote with my wallet and snub them at every turn because they are hardly the Corsair they used to be. If you can get your hands on these fans good for you! Unlike Corsair controllers they were built to last.