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Reply 1220 of 1270, by BitWrangler

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Yeah, I'm hoping outlook stops crashing several times a week, update behaves, and I can try that new embedded ARM emulation crap.

Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.

Reply 1222 of 1270, by Minutemanqvs

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Yesterday I had to change some RAID controller batteries on HPE DL360 servers. When opening one of the machines which was running since the last 4 years I was surprised to find a loose screw just sitting in the middle of the mainboard. Well I guess we were just lucky all this time not to get a short 😀

Searching a Nexgen Nx586 with FPU, PM me if you have one. I have some Athlon MP systems and cookies.

Reply 1223 of 1270, by GigAHerZ

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Updated my Pocophone F1 from LineageOS 20 to LineageOS 21. (Android 13->14)
Had to mess around for the whole day to get all the banking apps and other "sensitive" stuff working, but i did manage it.

Now i have the latest November 1st android security patches along with really snappy phone in general. Love it!

Learned to love APatch, which seems to be far more advanced and better option than Magisk ever was. The mere fact that it works with whitelist instead of blacklist for apps is additional security on its own.

"640K ought to be enough for anybody." - And i intend to get every last bit out of it even after loading every damn driver!
A little about software engineering: https://byteaether.github.io/

Reply 1224 of 1270, by PD2JK

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Minutemanqvs wrote on 2024-12-06, 12:42:

Yesterday I had to change some RAID controller batteries on HPE DL360 servers. When opening one of the machines which was running since the last 4 years I was surprised to find a loose screw just sitting in the middle of the mainboard. Well I guess we were just lucky all this time not to get a short 😀

A big slam with the server room door could be enough. 😉
Which generation? We still have two DL380 G7 and about ten DL360 G8's running. Three G10+ are waiting for VMware licenses for months now...

i386 16 ⇒ i486 DX4 100 ⇒ Pentium MMX 200 ⇒ Athlon Orion 700 | TB 1000 ⇒ AthlonXP 1700+ ⇒ Opteron 165 ⇒ Dual Opteron 856

Reply 1225 of 1270, by Minutemanqvs

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PD2JK wrote on 2024-12-07, 09:06:
Minutemanqvs wrote on 2024-12-06, 12:42:

Yesterday I had to change some RAID controller batteries on HPE DL360 servers. When opening one of the machines which was running since the last 4 years I was surprised to find a loose screw just sitting in the middle of the mainboard. Well I guess we were just lucky all this time not to get a short 😀

A big slam with the server room door could be enough. 😉
Which generation? We still have two DL380 G7 and about ten DL360 G8's running. Three G10+ are waiting for VMware licenses for months now...

This one in particular was a Gen 10. We have DL325 (a lot, great things), DL360, DL380, DL385, Apollo 4200 and Alletra 4120 mixed between Gen 9, 10, 10+ and 11 at this point. I'm particularly happy about the HPE offering and support compared to Dell/IBM, having worked with almost all of them. We rarely had big issues, except on the Apollo 4200 which have mainboards that die from heat after 5-6 years; but even then they never ask questions and replace them. thse servers are under very heavy load.

Last edited by Minutemanqvs on 2024-12-07, 10:07. Edited 1 time in total.

Searching a Nexgen Nx586 with FPU, PM me if you have one. I have some Athlon MP systems and cookies.

Reply 1226 of 1270, by Minutemanqvs

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I always wondered what an x86 CPU does when sitting in the BIOS/UEFI, particularly from a heat generation standpoint. To that extent I took an old 1U Supermicro server with a Xeon from 2015 we were about to recycle, opened it up so the CPU has absolutely zero active cooling from airflow but only the heatsink on it, and powered it up and let it sit un BIOS for 15 minutes. Well, I now have my answer, the CPU does nothing, it's barely warmer than the ambient temperature (about +5°C).

Searching a Nexgen Nx586 with FPU, PM me if you have one. I have some Athlon MP systems and cookies.

Reply 1227 of 1270, by shamino

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Minutemanqvs wrote on 2024-12-07, 10:04:

I always wondered what an x86 CPU does when sitting in the BIOS/UEFI, particularly from a heat generation standpoint. To that extent I took an old 1U Supermicro server with a Xeon from 2015 we were about to recycle, opened it up so the CPU has absolutely zero active cooling from airflow but only the heatsink on it, and powered it up and let it sit un BIOS for 15 minutes. Well, I now have my answer, the CPU does nothing, it's barely warmer than the ambient temperature (about +5°C).

Older BIOSes (pre UEFI, like the typical Award BIOS from late 90s-early 2000s) heat up the CPU pretty well. I think it must use busy waiting loops. There are software apps that will run hotter, but the BIOS at least back then isn't nearly as "idle" as people often think it is.

Reply 1228 of 1270, by RandomStranger

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BitWrangler wrote on 2024-08-04, 18:24:
Well I would wish you luck with that, but you want someone else's UPS luck, not mine. […]
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Well I would wish you luck with that, but you want someone else's UPS luck, not mine.

I also just grabbed a used UPS, BN900M, now I know every UPS in the thrift is probably dead as a dodo, but with ppl still clearing out their covid home offices, I thought there was a chance some stuff like that is getting there with some life left in it. Anyway, tried to test this thing at the thrift, and their tester power bar is a surge protected one, and it's sockets are worn, so it's got another surge protector socket ziptied on top of it. Plug the UPS in and it's giving me the bad power light, great, hit the button and I've got a low battery flashing green.. hokay.. things sit around a bit... and then it goes red with a beep and shuts off... now not quite deciphering exactly what is happening, since thrift store testing power is potentially screwed up by worn out surge suppressor behind worn out surge suppressor. So plug it in for 5 mins and then turn it on and yank the plug out... well the power out alarm went off loud and long enough that everyone in the store stared at me until I mashed the button and shut it up... well whatever, there seems to be some life in this battery, I'll give it a chance.

Okay so get it home and plug it, and it's still doing the charge battery and the red green flash for replace battery... ah well let's pop that sucker out and see how bad it is... 12.79V... well that's not too bad... put it on an "automatic" charger with only idiot lights and that says It's got 9 out of 10 bars and charges it for half an hour or so, then shuts off, measure it, 12.82... okay so according to all SLA voltage charts I can dig up, that's about 95% battery life, seems okay.... put it back in UPS... green blinky and red/green blinky again. Okay you dumbass thing, what specifically is it you don't like about this battery???? They're meant to fault at like 80%, not like "few months old" level of wear.

Just tried it again now, after supposedly doing it's own charge for 24 hours, yup same faults. Seems like I am going to have to blow it's tiny little brain out, by pulling everything out and shorting it, to make sure it's reset, then try again. Might want to cycle the battery down to about 30% and charge it back up with my charger that's meant to have a desulfation program to try to make it seem fresher... though wondering if I'm gonna have to completely disassemble and start examining for signs of overload and tired caps.

Anyway, that's my recent luck with UPS units so hope you do better.

I just want something to keep my network up a while really. I hear of guys just getting pissed with the whole SLA battery racket and wiring them up to car batteries, hah, 100Ah, die now you bastard.

RandomStranger wrote on 2024-08-05, 04:11:
That's why I prefer getting stuff from a higher price points APC Smarts are much more robust and reliable than APC Backs. I don' […]
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BitWrangler wrote on 2024-08-04, 18:24:

That's why I prefer getting stuff from a higher price points APC Smarts are much more robust and reliable than APC Backs. I don't understand people. They buy this $700-750 UPS and once the batteries they shipped with dies, they resell them for $100-150. In some of the newer BackUPS models you can't even replace the battery (you can, but you aren't meant to https://youtu.be/vO_JqeizMso ).

The Smart series are a completely different animal. They often has connectors for external battery packs. And in case of the Smart1000 series, they have the same case as the 1500VA (and maybe 2000VA?) models, so you can just put in them 2×18Ah batteries instead of the 2×14Ah they come with. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O06PLCh8tD4 It also looks like APC/Schneider fixed some of the issues I had with the SUA series.

Anyway, I left it charging the batteries for the night and it seems OK for now. The afternoon I'll leave it on and do some battery/load tests to see if the batteries I had are still up to the task.

Well, after replacing the batteries with 2×18Ah about a month ago today I had a good test. A circuit breaker went off at around 10 AM and when I got home around 4PM the UPS was still on. It ran:

So the load wasn't enormous, about 40-42 VA, and this lasted for about 6hrs. It had at most about 30 mins left in the batteries.

My other UPS I got earlier this year is an APC Back-UPS 650VA (BE650G2-GR) which was running:

and the battery lasted about 45mins.

My other Smart1000 with original batteries had almost zero load on it (daily driver PC in sleep mode, 27" monitor in stand-by, a HDD docking stations power adapter and my stereo speaker set in stand-by) so it had no issue holding, naturally this was the least depleted.

sreq.png retrogamer-s.png

Reply 1229 of 1270, by BitWrangler

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RandomStranger wrote on 2024-12-12, 15:47:
Well, after replacing the batteries with 2×18Ah about a month ago today I had a good test. A circuit breaker went off at around […]
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BitWrangler wrote on 2024-08-04, 18:24:
Well I would wish you luck with that, but you want someone else's UPS luck, not mine. […]
Show full quote

Well I would wish you luck with that, but you want someone else's UPS luck, not mine.

I also just grabbed a used UPS, BN900M, now I know every UPS in the thrift is probably dead as a dodo, but with ppl still clearing out their covid home offices, I thought there was a chance some stuff like that is getting there with some life left in it. Anyway, tried to test this thing at the thrift, and their tester power bar is a surge protected one, and it's sockets are worn, so it's got another surge protector socket ziptied on top of it. Plug the UPS in and it's giving me the bad power light, great, hit the button and I've got a low battery flashing green.. hokay.. things sit around a bit... and then it goes red with a beep and shuts off... now not quite deciphering exactly what is happening, since thrift store testing power is potentially screwed up by worn out surge suppressor behind worn out surge suppressor. So plug it in for 5 mins and then turn it on and yank the plug out... well the power out alarm went off loud and long enough that everyone in the store stared at me until I mashed the button and shut it up... well whatever, there seems to be some life in this battery, I'll give it a chance.

Okay so get it home and plug it, and it's still doing the charge battery and the red green flash for replace battery... ah well let's pop that sucker out and see how bad it is... 12.79V... well that's not too bad... put it on an "automatic" charger with only idiot lights and that says It's got 9 out of 10 bars and charges it for half an hour or so, then shuts off, measure it, 12.82... okay so according to all SLA voltage charts I can dig up, that's about 95% battery life, seems okay.... put it back in UPS... green blinky and red/green blinky again. Okay you dumbass thing, what specifically is it you don't like about this battery???? They're meant to fault at like 80%, not like "few months old" level of wear.

Just tried it again now, after supposedly doing it's own charge for 24 hours, yup same faults. Seems like I am going to have to blow it's tiny little brain out, by pulling everything out and shorting it, to make sure it's reset, then try again. Might want to cycle the battery down to about 30% and charge it back up with my charger that's meant to have a desulfation program to try to make it seem fresher... though wondering if I'm gonna have to completely disassemble and start examining for signs of overload and tired caps.

Anyway, that's my recent luck with UPS units so hope you do better.

I just want something to keep my network up a while really. I hear of guys just getting pissed with the whole SLA battery racket and wiring them up to car batteries, hah, 100Ah, die now you bastard.

RandomStranger wrote on 2024-08-05, 04:11:
That's why I prefer getting stuff from a higher price points APC Smarts are much more robust and reliable than APC Backs. I don' […]
Show full quote
BitWrangler wrote on 2024-08-04, 18:24:

That's why I prefer getting stuff from a higher price points APC Smarts are much more robust and reliable than APC Backs. I don't understand people. They buy this $700-750 UPS and once the batteries they shipped with dies, they resell them for $100-150. In some of the newer BackUPS models you can't even replace the battery (you can, but you aren't meant to https://youtu.be/vO_JqeizMso ).

The Smart series are a completely different animal. They often has connectors for external battery packs. And in case of the Smart1000 series, they have the same case as the 1500VA (and maybe 2000VA?) models, so you can just put in them 2×18Ah batteries instead of the 2×14Ah they come with. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O06PLCh8tD4 It also looks like APC/Schneider fixed some of the issues I had with the SUA series.

Anyway, I left it charging the batteries for the night and it seems OK for now. The afternoon I'll leave it on and do some battery/load tests to see if the batteries I had are still up to the task.

Well, after replacing the batteries with 2×18Ah about a month ago today I had a good test. A circuit breaker went off at around 10 AM and when I got home around 4PM the UPS was still on. It ran:

So the load wasn't enormous, about 40-42 VA, and this lasted for about 6hrs. It had at most about 30 mins left in the batteries.

My other UPS I got earlier this year is an APC Back-UPS 650VA (BE650G2-GR) which was running:

and the battery lasted about 45mins.

My other Smart1000 with original batteries had almost zero load on it (daily driver PC in sleep mode, 27" monitor in stand-by, a HDD docking stations power adapter and my stereo speaker set in stand-by) so it had no issue holding, naturally this was the least depleted.

Cool, thanks for the update. Sounds like you're doing pretty good now.

I got about 30 other distractions since I last messed with that latest one and didn't get back to it. However, in the meantime, I discovered some odd/glitchy behaviour of the power sockets in the room I was trying to test it in. So I probably have to revisit that, it might have been covering micro dropouts and not putting charge in it's battery or something. Though replacing sockets is first priority.

Elsewhere was reading a "re-batterying a UPS" discussion and a couple of interesting points were raised. Firstly that cheap consumer UPS are built cheap all the way through, such that a few minutes of runtime is all the thermal solution, or lack of one, on the semiconductors can handle before it heat soaks... and this may also be true for higher priced units, the 12V to 120 inverter isn't cooled enough for 24/7. ... particularly if in an extended outage your A/C is off and your indoor temps are getting up to 30C or so in mid summer.

The counterpoint to this, was that in smaller units, a great deal of the heat comes from the battery being held at a trickle charge, or the battery discharging. So when a larger external battery is used, that heat is outside of the case and it's not starting at 40 or 50C internal for it's few minutes of run, so for limited extended durations, I guess up to quadruple normal run time, the inverter should cope just fine.

I guess the upshot is, if you're going to DIY upgrade a UPS, you should attempt to upgrade the cooling if you are expecting it to run for hours, when the original spec came nowhere near that. I find in computer stress testing, temp seems to stabilise after 2 hours, so if as originally supplied, your UPS could keep something going for 2 hours, it has more or less 24/7 heat survivability, as long as your room temps don't climb too much.

Other points were, that non-sealed batteries, such as car batteries evolve hydrogen when charging, so that should be vented outside or things might get explodey, or preferably only sealed cells used. Then also going too massive in capacity means the battery never reaches full charge after a deep-ish discharge, because the trickle supplied for a 7Ah battery is a very very tiny trickle for a 100Ah.

Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.

Reply 1230 of 1270, by StriderTR

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Testing out the inexpensive microscope/magnifier I asked my wife to get me for Christmas. These things are all over Amazon and I wanted one just for inspecting chips and solder joints. For the price, it works well, and easy on my aging eyes.

She also got me the final few parts I needed to complete my DIY ATX bench power supply. 😀

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Archive: https://archive.org/details/@theclassicgeek/
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Reply 1231 of 1270, by BitWrangler

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Nice, does that one have external output/capture options?

Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.

Reply 1232 of 1270, by StriderTR

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BitWrangler wrote on 2024-12-27, 04:49:

Nice, does that one have external output/capture options?

Yeah, you can USB to your PC. OBS will pick up the camera. You can also capture video and images to an SD card, that's where the image of the IC in my post came from, I just scaled it down to post. It's 720P I believe.

For about $40, not bad. Works for me. 😀

EDIT: Images are 2MP (1920x1080), video is scaled 1080P.

Retro Blog: https://theclassicgeek.blogspot.com/
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Reply 1233 of 1270, by bestemor

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StriderTR wrote on 2024-12-27, 04:07:

Testing out the inexpensive microscope/magnifier I asked my wife to get me for Christmas. These things are all over Amazon and I wanted one just for inspecting chips and solder joints. For the price, it works well, and easy on my aging eyes.
...

Just wondering, will this particular model work normally if battery itself is empty, but while connected to power via USB charger ?
(I notice there are some other models, with AC&Battery power, but this is not one of them)

Reply 1234 of 1270, by RetroGamer4Ever

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I upgraded the SSD in my PS4 Pro and finished installing all of my games on it, so I can now play them all. It took a very long time, because most of them had to be copied off of the external storage and the not-installed games had to be downloaded and installed, along with installing massive updates to various games, because I hadn't run the unit in some time.

Reply 1235 of 1270, by StriderTR

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bestemor wrote on 2024-12-28, 18:28:

Just wondering, will this particular model work normally if battery itself is empty, but while connected to power via USB charger ?
(I notice there are some other models, with AC&Battery power, but this is not one of them)

It would appear so. I let it run itself down, plugged it in, and it let me fire it back up. It charged while in use.

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Reply 1236 of 1270, by bestemor

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StriderTR wrote on 2024-12-29, 18:55:
bestemor wrote on 2024-12-28, 18:28:

Just wondering, will this particular model work normally if battery itself is empty, but while connected to power via USB charger ?
(I notice there are some other models, with AC&Battery power, but this is not one of them)

It would appear so. I let it run itself down, plugged it in, and it let me fire it back up. It charged while in use.

Thankyou for confirming! 👌🙂

Reply 1238 of 1270, by RandomStranger

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RandomStranger wrote on 2024-12-12, 15:47:

A circuit breaker went off at around 10 AM and when I got home around 4PM the UPS was still on.

Since that day this became a habit of the RCD, but only between 9AM and 6PM for some reason regardless if I was at home or not. Really weird pattern. I've been looking for the issue for days since then. Now it seems that one of my power strips, a Hama 137239 with built-in overvoltage protection started acting up. Even if it's plugged in and nothing else connects to it so probably it's the overvoltage protection that causes the issue.

The bright side, it allowed me to really test out all 3 of my UPS-es.

Still, I can't fathom how can it be that the leaking current only happens during daytime, even though there is no difference in the devices being plugged in/used between me being away from home or me being asleep. It should happen randomly whether it's day or night. This initially lead me to believe that it's some transient coming from outside during business hours, but I was away from home for a week and just happened to unplug that along with some devices I already checked out.

I'll look into the power strip after new years and probably take out the overvoltage protection downgrading it to a regular power strip.

sreq.png retrogamer-s.png

Reply 1239 of 1270, by GigAHerZ

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I've been working on a better identificator than GUID or incrementing counter is on C#/.NET - an ULID implementation.
I think i'm getting it to a state where everything i wanted from it has been achieved.
I'm still keeping it as alpha release for a while as maybe over a week or so i might get some more ideas...

https://github.com/ByteAether/Ulid

"640K ought to be enough for anybody." - And i intend to get every last bit out of it even after loading every damn driver!
A little about software engineering: https://byteaether.github.io/