VOGONS


First post, by Kadath

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Finally, I found a rack to migrate the PCs I use in my bunker and take up less space, once the appropriate case were found (not so easy). This is the rack cabinet that was given to me by an office... old but still as robust as a tank. The front plexiglass luckily still had the protective film, while unfortunately there were no side panels, which I plugged with PVC sheets cut to size.

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Then, a couple of friends of mine gave me a patch panel and a nice rack-mount 10/100 passive ethernet switch, by Allied Telesis:

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...and this oldie, a rack case full of hardware, that however I will have to disassemble to be able to put other inside - perhaps the components of my main PC (the case is ATX friendly) or those of the PC that I use with FreeNAS, waiting to find an additional case of the same kind.

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Investigating the content, I found a strange AGP video card, mounted on the Asus A7V266 inside: at first I thought it was a Matrox, but the writing "ORI RGB" tells me little. The outputs are 2xBNC + 1xVGA and there is also a daughterboard with a sort of parallel-like port. Nice little audio speakers in one of the frontal drives bay. I think the PC was used for video-editing or sort of. If there's anyone who knows more about this VGA, I would appreciate to know.

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First comes smiles,
then lies.
Last is gunfire.

Reply 1 of 14, by Stiletto

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Kadath wrote:

Investigating the content, I found a strange AGP video card, mounted on the Asus A7V266 inside: at first I thought it was a Matrox, but the writing "ORI RGB" tells me little. The outputs are 2xBNC + 1xVGA and there is also a daughterboard with a sort of parallel-like port. Nice little audio speakers in one of the frontal drives bay. I think the PC was used for video-editing or sort of. If there's anyone who knows more about this VGA, I would appreciate to know.

Google says it IS a Matrox, known as "Matrox Orion". It's a video card / video capture card combo from them, based on Matrox MGA G400. Matrox describes it as "Standard analog color/monochrome AGP frame grabber with integrated true color VGA display and separate TV output."
https://www.cnet.com/products/matrox-orion-gr … 00-32-mb/specs/
https://www.matrox.com/imaging/media/pdf/supp … ion/b_orion.pdf
https://www.google.com/search?q="Matrox+Orion"
https://www.google.com/search?q=%22ORI-AGP%2FRGB%22

"I see a little silhouette-o of a man, Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you
do the Fandango!" - Queen

Stiletto

Reply 2 of 14, by Kadath

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Thanks, now I'm just collecting info about that, never had this VGA in my hands before.

EDIT: DAFUQ 😮 really expensive I see, still today?

First comes smiles,
then lies.
Last is gunfire.

Reply 3 of 14, by Stiletto

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I guess? It certainly would have been back in 2005 or so.

The "thing that looks like a parallel port" is a high density DB-44 (DBHD44) connector. One of the input options for this connector allows up to 13 BNC connectors for video frame capture (though not all can be used per se, it's not 13 cameras: they can be used for up to 8 CVBS connections, and comes with enough BNC-to-SVHS adapters to make them into 4 Y/C connections. Also can be used for 2 RGB connections, or some combination of all of the above).

EDIT: Here's a recent thread about one: Matrox Orion

"I see a little silhouette-o of a man, Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you
do the Fandango!" - Queen

Stiletto

Reply 4 of 14, by Kadath

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You are really kind, thanks for all the infos. I told that about the value strangely high for the age, after doing some fast research on eBay:

https://www.ebay.it/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trk … +orion&_sacat=0

Maybe we can tell is not that easy to find, as VGA? Just curious, I would be happy to own some hardware not that easy to find or diffused.

First comes smiles,
then lies.
Last is gunfire.

Reply 5 of 14, by Stiletto

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One of the uses I saw in the brochure was "medical imaging" and that probably answers a lot about the pricing: the cards on eBay are likely stripped from video production equipment or medical imaging surplus. People who "need" these cards aren't willing to replace the whole system (which probably represents a 5-digit price tag investment back when they purchased it), but they're willing to pay through the nose to get the needed part. If it didn't cost you too much extra to get the software and connectors to test it, I'd tell you to join the crowd on eBay with it, looks like it might be holding onto its value due to (most likely) those reasons.

I am assuming quite a lot and don't know for certain, though.

"I see a little silhouette-o of a man, Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you
do the Fandango!" - Queen

Stiletto

Reply 6 of 14, by Kadath

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Slowly, I'm beginning to 'fill' the old but proud giant. I like the vintage touch of the LED lamp that I have put inside. The clear rack case is empty for now, while on the lower tray I simply laid down the FreeNAS rig that takes care of network backups. Fortunately, the old 10/100 rack switch seems to work without problems.

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Now... I need another tray!

First comes smiles,
then lies.
Last is gunfire.

Reply 7 of 14, by chinny22

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also plan on using an old rack, Now isn't a bad time i see plenty of racks been thrown out as more stuff goes to the cloud.
Just worried they will all be gone before I get a house to put the rack in!

Reply 9 of 14, by Kadath

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Thanks, and I totally agree: old rackmount stuff and cabinets are easier to find than they were years ago, and space-saving and comfort (most of the time) are priceless, using them.

First comes smiles,
then lies.
Last is gunfire.

Reply 11 of 14, by Kadath

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14f0a3d1-f668-4470-8529-d093f5aec2f4.jpg

Work in progress... I'm crying, while I'm thinking I've not found a solution to make the cabinet - the *heavy* cabinet - easier to move. I love its shape, while it's getting components inside. The black rack case is really nice, with filters for the fans, etc. - and sturdy. I'm planning to move there my main rig. The last switch, the active and I think managed D-Link, is working fine:

b3aab17f-d307-4b3a-94f8-25be23e0f0b3.jpg

First comes smiles,
then lies.
Last is gunfire.

Reply 12 of 14, by gdjacobs

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Kadath wrote:

I've not found a solution to make the cabinet - the *heavy* cabinet - easier to move.

An idea...
56.JPG

It's good enough for an upright piano. I would hope you're not much above 200kg, loaded.

All hail the Great Capacitor Brand Finder

Reply 13 of 14, by Kadath

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Finally, systems migration into the rack cabinet is *terminated* - in the white case, I tried to put together a configuration with less power consumption as possible, with the available parts I had, for common home server tasks, like torrents box, backup, maybe some tasks related to the radio, etc. - the maximum I could put together in this sense is a Core Duo E6550 2.33 @65w on Asrock P43DE, with 4GB RAM DDR2-800 and a modest VGA with passive dissipation, the nVidia 6200. Mass storage is easily removable, so I can use and put what I need, on the fly.

In the black rack case I migrated my main system, based on the i7 860, with the only addition of an X-Fi sound card for the convenient external ports rack. Even here, the mass memories are freely replaceable with the use of this very practical dual bay removable tray, for SSD together with common SATA hard disks, simultaneously:

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Here's some pics:

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Inside the rack cabinet I've put a 4 ports KVM switch too, with VGA and USB, for future works.

First comes smiles,
then lies.
Last is gunfire.

Reply 14 of 14, by Kadath

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Taking advantage of a spare Raspberry 1B+, and of the Allied Telesyn rack swich chassis that unfortunately has been problematic (it did not switch the network packets correctly), I finally started a project I wanted to work on for a long time: a netmonitor "at first glance", where the Raspberry does nothing but pings certain network hosts (in this case local network) and then returns online/offline status via python and associated LEDs on the front - the other single board is an Orange Pi PC, which has the task to filter incoming traffic by blocking ads and other, with a good degree of detail and investigation - the project is called Pi Hole, and is well documented.

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The yellow leds are related to the hosts to be checked cyclically by ping - blue led is associated to the status of Hole Pi/Orange Pi, while red and green are activity and power ON of the Raspberry Pi. The two cards are powered by a single small 5v charger, with a double USB output and a discrete amperage.

First comes smiles,
then lies.
Last is gunfire.