Playing with Open MediaVault on my OrangePI machine, that I posted about earlier. I must say that it is running perfect as a music server on my network. I will test movies next. I have a couple of big buck bunnie copies around and I am curious as to how it handles it.

brostenen wrote on 2021-05-13, 19:42:

Finished up my custom ARM computer. Bases on an OrangePI Plus 2 board and SATA harddrive for storage. I have no idea what exactly to use it for. At least it is build, and will most likely be put into storage untill I can figure out what to do with it.

EDIT:
And now the ARM machine is with a fan. Just two pieces of thin white cardboard, glued together with epoxy and holes cut out. Power comes from the GPIO pins.

I like it! So many options with these small sbcs, its the sata storage that extends that even more, settled on media thingy? i'm not sure what's do, but its intriguing

gerry wrote on 2021-05-17, 15:58:

brostenen wrote on 2021-05-13, 19:42:

Finished up my custom ARM computer. Bases on an OrangePI Plus 2 board and SATA harddrive for storage. I have no idea what exactly to use it for. At least it is build, and will most likely be put into storage untill I can figure out what to do with it.

EDIT:
And now the ARM machine is with a fan. Just two pieces of thin white cardboard, glued together with epoxy and holes cut out. Power comes from the GPIO pins.

I like it! So many options with these small sbcs, its the sata storage that extends that even more, settled on media thingy? i'm not sure what's do, but its intriguing

It is set up as a NAS. The SATA drive, is because the board have SATA port on it. It is going through the USB chip, however having a SATA Port on the board, makes me avoid that extra PCB that are on USB HDD's. It is just more convenient, compared to a RaspberryPI solution.

The media thing is as I wrote, just an OpenMediaVault installation. I have installed and enabled the DLNA plugin, so I can read movies and music on my TV, through the network. And it is running headless. That means that I can use it for other things, like installing a minecraft server or something else. The OS is ArmBian server.

Soldered up a few more Pistorm Amiga accelerator boards before work this morning.

Since I've moved away from Synology (Xpenology) and went for OMV I didn't bother setting up a Video Station-like media server.
This weekend I took my time and set up Jellyfin. I thought about Plex, but I have a strong preference for FOSS.

So far I'm very pleased Video Station on the same hardware never really did all that well even on local network. Streaming was stuttery and buffered a lot even on not particularly high bitrate content. Jellyfin however has excellent performance. It streams really well in- and outside of my home network over OpenVPN.

Now my only problem is storage space. I'd really need to expand, but over the past month because of some new crypto currency hard drive prices doubled. At least for the reasonably sized drives (6TB+).

More plex server rips this weekend + plus setup SSH so now I don't need to keep switching to VGA on my monitor to reboot/shutdown the Dell PowerEdge. Starting to get more and more comfortable with Linux networking and Samba finally. Thinking about building a custom Wireless Bridge or AP at home for the vintage laptops that allows passage onto the internet.

Had to e-mail neocities because not but a few hours after uploading an update to my new site it was down and seems my account does not exist except to send password resets and username retrievals - WTH? I might end up using my Geocities.ws site if I've only had this account a week and I'm already having to message support for a mysterious disappearance. Thankfully the whole site is on USB Flash Drive so at least I did not lose it.

I've got to wonder if anyone else here has been through this before, seems a lot of people on Reddit had this issue. I messaged support - make me think "thank heavens I did this before Google Sites goes down".

I am braining around some halfass upgrades for cheap, do I wanna get a Phenom II x6 for an AMD 2+ board, and 8GB ram for it, or do I wanna jump on this local deal for a used i5 3rd gen in a mATX Biostar. Or both.

Both definitely both.

BitWrangler wrote on 2021-06-24, 17:21:

I am braining around some halfass upgrades for cheap, do I wanna get a Phenom II x6 for an AMD 2+ board, and 8GB ram for it, or do I wanna jump on this local deal for a used i5 3rd gen in a mATX Biostar. Or both.

The Phenom X6 is a good CPU. I had it as a daily driver in an AM2+ board for around 5 or 6 years. As the latest and greatest K10 CPU I can see them becoming a collector's item in the future.
As for it's pure performance, the 3rd gen i5 is much faster. The X6 was an answer for the mainstream Nehalen/Westmere CPUs to stall until the Bulldozer comes out. But the 3rd gen i5 is much more of a "generic crap" type of component which probably will probably never excite anyone.

In general I'd prioritize the Phenom X6, but it depends what do you want to use them for. If it's really modern activity, the i5 is the better one.

Hah, think I managed to buy the single most useless cable in the history of the universe this morning at a yard sale.

It's HDMI to RCA, awesome you say, new systems to old CRTs, or failing that, old systems to new TVs/Monitors...

Nope.

None of the above, it's a PASSIVE cable FFS, and at that only works HDMI out, to RCA input, where the display device is expected to be capable of decoding HDMI data put into it's RCA ports, i.e. it's HDMI compliant and probably already has HDMI inputs, so what kind of Unicorn built by committee would this thing ever work with??

I shoulda been a bit more suspicious, the plug isn't very fat for hiding conversion electronics, but I've got an active HDMI/VGA that's contained in the plugs, and they build nano size 128GB flash drives and WiFi adapters into USB plugs you can barely get hold of to pull out. Ah well, maybe the plugs will come in useful sometime.

Thanks for the notes about the X6/i5, I think I'll do both, i5 gets to be a modern general purpose box, nothing exciting there's bugger all on the motherboard 16x 1x and 32bit PCIs that's it. X6 still has enough stones to be useful, damn it makes the lower half of FX6000 bulldozers look bad, they only time they pull away or even draw level is when SSE 4.1 or other late features seem to be involved,.

Created a Youtube video with the first track, from the album I created 20 years ago. I have asked two people to rate it, and if they think it is good enough then I will probably release it. No need to release crap for people to listen to.

Anyway. It was fun to figure out how to use a video editor. I have never dealt with these type of programs before. The only time that I have edited a movie before, was a shortmovie that I made in 2002. And the video editing equipment was all analog editing equipment. I edited my own project and I did another groups assignment. Kind of funny that we were supposed to make a shortmovie-project about personal loss and grief, and was supposed to be in groups. Nobody wanted to work with me, and everyone wanted to use me for putting their movie together and I did the best short movie. It was so efficient, that my movie made the populair girl (aka ice-queen) run home and cry, because her father had killed him self 6 year prior.

Well.... Revenge is best served ice cold. 😁 (even better when it was not the intent)
Point fingers at me, talk behind my back. Never include me in what triggers you, when we are doing a project on grief and loss.... Well... Not my problem it triggered flashback and trauma. 😁

(Jessie's diet mode for the Brits) Today I are mostly been installing windows 10 (/Jessie)

The HDD in my mother in laws laptop ate itself, 1TB Seagate. So had to crack it open, literally, you know how those clips are nowadays, bung an SSD in there, and then here I am watching it spin the "getting ready" doohickey.

Thought I'd surf the modern Internet with my HP3216 with P200mmx cpu, 256megs of ram, 2megs of vram, 20gig hard drive and HP branded CD reader/writer:

Boots to the desktop in 3minutes, give or take.

The operating system is Devuan Jessie with sysvinit goodness. Has all updates done until it when to archive status last year.

The Desktop is XFCE4.

The internet browser is Dillo.

The internet relay chat program is XChat.

Look at all those pretty rounded edges... 😉

Caluser2000 wrote on 2021-06-28, 21:26:

Thought I'd surf the modern Internet with my HP3216 with P200mmx cpu, 256megs of ram, 2megs of vram, 20gig hard drive and HP bra […]
Show full quote

Thought I'd surf the modern Internet with my HP3216 with P200mmx cpu, 256megs of ram, 2megs of vram, 20gig hard drive and HP branded CD reader/writer:

Boots to the desktop in 3minutes, give or take.

The operating system is Davuan Jessie with sysvinit goodness. Has all updates done until it when to archive status last year.

The Desktop is XFCE4.

The internet browser is Dillo.

The internet relay chat program is XChat.

Look at all those pretty rounded edges... 😉

Oh. And I can do using Firefox-esr as well..😀

And look at all those pretty curved corners.

Also look at all those maga gigas I needed to achieve this.....

My wife gave me here7" Samsung Note pad to use when she upgrade to a 10". Her eye sight isn't that good these days so that was a mutual decision. Win Win.. It's been very reliable until this morning. It started to flicker the screen on and off as well as not connecting to my daily desktop 32-bit P4 3.2Ghz system. Tried a number of times and it was very intermittent and powering down..

I pulled the back off, which was far easier than I thought it would be. Used a small flat bladed jewelers screwdriver around the back cover edge carefully and it basically popped off. Inspected the cable connector on it and decided to put a bit of pressure on its metal surround to close it up a bit. I then sprayed a generous amount if contact cleaner to the components inside and it is now behaving as it should.

Who said you can't teach an old dog new tricks?.....😉

Some stuff just comes apart like pulling a zipper when you get the knack of running a thumbnail around the edge and pinging all the clips... other stuff remains a bastard.

Got my main desktop in a better case (yes, the cable management isn't the best still, but it's a lot more roomy than the other case I used).

http://imgur.com/a/oxBjCsa

Got a new (4 year old) NAS that was no longer required at my work - QNAP TS-653A with 6x8TB drives in. Just upgraded the RAM in it to 8GB.

I just noticed the great juxtaposition of these things in my shed - 60MB ESDI hard drive and a 48TB NAS - only getting on for a million times difference in capacity 😁

SteveC wrote on 2021-07-14, 09:34:

Got a new (4 year old) NAS that was no longer required at my work - QNAP TS-653A with 6x8TB drives in. Just upgraded the RAM in it to 8GB.

I just noticed the great juxtaposition of these things in my shed - 60MB ESDI hard drive and a 48TB NAS - only getting on for a million times difference in capacity 😁

That is a pretty cool wee system. It apears 2/3 the size of my 2004 Shuttle Xpc.