All Blogs Great and Small. That Paul Guy Edition.

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Old equipment can only do so much. Time to make it better.

How did we get here?

My original thought for this weekend was to bring Danny DD to my sister’s to do some streaming. I brought some of my own equipment like a second monitor, mic and camera, and I thought I would have pretty much everything I needed. Not so fast, my friend.

As it turns out, there is a small issue of an eight year old router to contend with. Now, back in it’s day, it was a great choice. It is capable of 2.4 and 5Ghz and rated up to 802.11 ac (including a/b/g…….). It does a fair job with only two people and the occasional guest, but even my brother in law has expressed frustration, because, after all, the modem is new, everything should be fast and not buffer.

The modem is new, but that means a very fast signal can’t go anywhere.

The modem is fine, and the internet speed is quick, I don’t yet have the cap on the download speed, but they are getting in excess of 50Mbps upload, which for a cable company is rather impressive. The problem is several fold and as technology improves, it causes more of a gap. One that the older router just cannot make up. We didn’t have the technology that now exists, eight years back.

What’s the big deal

There are a few factors here. A few years ago, they switched to streaming content instead of using a cable tuner. That meant more devices running more often. A lot more often. TV, a home pc and laptop, phones, a tablet……… you see where I’m going with this. That is just the devices that they now might use everyday and/or stream from. That doesn’t include the son on the other side of the house with several devices, the TV in the family room that streams, and guests that come over like myself.

That router is rated to handle, on it’s best day, about a dozen devices. These days, even your kitchen appliances or security systems try to use the same internet. It’s a lot more than the old equipment was ever designed for.

Time for a change.

This is a very typical situation, with a typical family. Yours may be slightly different, but as we move away from a device like a cable tuner and get the next great phone, tablet, or laptop, we may be disappointed with the results if we don’t look at the equipment we use to connect with. We go all out on a bigger tv or new phone, but they can only do as well as what is supporting them.

Think of it like getting a shiny new sports car that does 150 mph (240 kph). Do you know how to drive that fast? Are the roads you travel on designed to handle a car that fast? Probably not. It’s similar to a high speed train traveling on a freight train track. It’s not made to do that. The train can go fast, but the track won’t handle it.

So, what’s the solution?

Time for new equipment

Now this can be tricky, too. Some internet providers furnish one that works with their equipment, and some have you furnish your own. My provider supplied one, their provider supplies the modem, but not the router. Both have advantages and disadvantages. In my sister’s case it means they have a very wide range of routers to chose from. Too many to choose from. It’s not hard, just go buy the best one, right? Do you need the best one? Probably not. You may not need something that expensive to do the job.

Find the one(s) that best fit your situation. Do you need something capable of covering several thousand square feet or when one covering a couple of thousand will do? If you aren’t adding on to your house any time soon, you don’t need one that covers three times the area.

Budget is another concern. You can buy a great quality router for less than two hundred USD and be set for another five or six years. It doesn’t have to cost an arm and a leg to do a great job. Keep in mind, you probably spent a lot on that new phone, or TV, and the supporting equipment deserves to fit the situation.

Brand quality counts. If you’ve never heard of the company, there may be a reason why. Keep in mind, though, just because you recognize the name doesn’t mean greatness. We all know at least one brand of our favorite products, that we absolutely stay away from. Bad reputation might make a company famous. Just saying.

My advice on new equipment?

Do your research. And even after you ask questions and look at different models, look at different retailers to make sure its a good deal. Sometimes it also may be worth it to pay an extra few bucks to go see, feel, and touch it before you buy it. There is a lot to be said for a hands on experience, after all, that’s what you will have to do when you have it home. You can also go get hands on, then order it from a retailer that has it on sale.

Still no idea? Get your brother, you know the one with tech experience, to tell you what the actual issue is, then have him find the best tool to solve it. Put your trust in a third party with no bias. He may even write about it and your movies won’t buffer when he tries to play online.

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The new NAS project is nearly complete.

How did we get here?

The new NAS project started a few months ago, when I had the bright idea to create a back up solution. I had planned to use a ‘My Cloud’ device that I already had, but found one of the reasons I bought doesn’t apply anymore. (I bought it a few years ago). Gone, is the stand alone app, replaced by a web app. A web app that has no back up scheduler like the stand alone did. A reason I was trying to use it. Faced with using what amounted to a drop folder for external storage, I decided I’d create my own.

This took on a few iterations, but each made progress over the last. The goal, however was still. find something easy to use to get bulk storage off individual PCs and make it centralized. First was a proof of concept in the HP FrankenDell, then we would scale up. The combination of Dell motherboard, Xeon processor, and HP case was an interesting project and did work, but I thought a standard motherboard would work better.

The new NAS next step

The great deal on the motherboard combo was a great surpise, coming with the mobo, CPU, and memory. It was a perfect solution, but it meant shelving the Xeon again. To be honest, I thought I might stil use the Xeon, but the combo deal appeared to be solid, all I needed was a larger hard drive. I found an 8TB solution, and got to work. As it turns out, still a lot of work.

My choice for software was TruNas Scale. It’s an open source solution that is linux based and can make use of different Docker containers for easy integration. I managed to get things set up, and realized I had no idea what I was doing. Okay, maybe that isn’t quite accurate, but it’s close. It may be versitile and overall easy to use, but there is still a learning curve. I relatively steep one, but not impossible. I managed to get a server up and running within a couple of hours. A few days should see most things worked out, and I may even be able to call it a success.

It did give me a bit of feedback telling me a single drive in a pool by itself was a bad idea, but I will be able to change it later. There has also been a few issues trying to get Prometheus (monitoring software) to play nice, but I’ll figure that out as well. The rest of the set up was easy. Well, not easy, but not brain surgery. It’s up, it’s running and it’s transferring files. Later I will also work on automatic backup, but that’s another day.

What’s next for the new NAS?

For now it’s functioning and makes a good swap file, but the goal is to have a stand alone solution that I can use as an auto backup. The use of containers might make it easier to get what I want out of the server, but at the very least, I know have a large data back up solution accessible from my entire network. That leaves two goals, autoback up and remote acess.

I don’t know enough to get it set up immediately, but I know there is a large community of resources to pull from for TrueNas, so a solution is out there. I also know this solution is better than any I’ve had, so that’s a plus. Within a few weeks I should have a solid workable solution that will last until I need something bigger. In the mean time, I’ll use it to learn as much as I can and enjoy it.

The video can be found here

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My new network server, is my old Optiplex? Seriously?

How did we get here?

To begin with, why would anyone need a network server? There can be several answers, including file storage, a plex server, or even a game server. Different uses means different ways of creating and storing data. There is no wrong way and virtually, no wrong equipment There are limitations, however, as to what you can do with what equipment.

In my case, I have a YouTube channel and keep not only raw footage, but finished videos. I do have a back up, of sorts, but it’s poorly done and not an elegant solution. There are duplicate files on two computers, and I use of a back up USB, and Western Digital cloud device. A device that needs to be reconfigured to be more efficient. Long story, short, I have no reliable, streamlined solution. I may not lose data, but it would be a pain to retrieve some of it.

Enter the HP FrankenDell. This computer has a Xeon E3 12700 v3 four core/ eight thread CPU on a Dell motherboard. It came from an Optiplex 9020, and has 16GB of memory tucked very creatively in an HP case from 2008. I’m looking for reliable file storage with something that runs efficiently, and the Xeon fits the bill. Originally, this a sleeper gaming PC, but the extra drive bays make it perfect. There is still the execution to tackle, though.

Setting up the network server?

One of the easier ways is simply create a new file on a hard drive and make it shareable. Doing this will give you an address of sorts that other computers on your network can find. The drive needs plenty of room and to stay connected to the network. The second step is to go to the next PC and find that drive location.

Click on ‘This PC’ in the file explorer. That presents you with a few options across the top, but it may require you right click on ‘This PC’ and chose ‘map network drive’. Select a drive letter you aren’t already using, and put in the address from the first PC. You need to use a double backslash ‘\\’ for this, so don’t forget. In my case, I also copied it to the desktop and changed the icon.

A simple test making sure anything going into that folder gets ‘dropped’ in the other PC’s shared folder and we were in business. It doesn’t solve all of my issues, but it’s a start. A start I can build on and improve. After ordering some new sleds for the additional dives, I have room for at least four or five drives and I can start the next step.

What is that, you ask? redundant storage, a raid solution to make sure I don’t lose data, and creating something I can access from anywhere. Those are some pretty lofty steps, but the first one was to get the ball rolling. Mission accomplished. The drive bays came in, so it’s time to add more storage, but very soon, we begin the next part, and of course, I’ll share the story.

The latest video on it is here, and to go back to the blog page, go here.

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Cooling the CoolBlue build. It should be very easy, right?

How did we get here?

This started easy enough, add an All-In-One cooler to CoolBlue. Yeah, not so much. Oh, everything leading up to the change went well, but it wasn’t until getting our hands dirty that things took a turn. Let’s start from the beginning.

I had a Corsair H100i CPU cooler not being used, but it wouldn’t fit as it was, so I went shopping. I had to find a retro kit, which in this case was four slightly shorter stand off posts. That was easy enough, they are widely available and not unreasonably priced. Not unreasonable until you factor in shipping.

The Corsair site had these for 7.99 USD, great, let’s order them. 9.99USD for shipping. What? They cost more to ship than the item cost? You’ve lost your pea picken’ mind! There were several sellers, however, on eBay, so that’s where we ordered. Four days later, things looked ready to go.

I chose to reuse the DeepCool fans already in the case, which was fine, but as it turns out, the case has a flaw. The fans that mount to the top of the case, can only mount in the center. Many case manufacturers add additional grooves so things can be pulled closer to the glass panel and not have an issue with the height of cooling blocks on the motherboard. This case lacks that. My next option was mount the radiator behind the front panel.

A Different Problem

Technically it fits, but it looks awkward. The front has three fans mounted and now the top two reach into the case further, making things look sloppy. There is also the matter of the CPU cooling block having a lot of extra cables causing clutter. Still, I could look past that if it kept things nice and cool. It didn’t.

Okay, it did keep things cool, but only as much as the tower cooler I took out. Not a good trade. It looked bad from the front, more cables to manage in the back, and now the temps were only slightly better. By slightly better, I mean margin of error better. I was able to get slightly better temps by removing the front panel, but that’s not ideal. So, you’re thinking, a horrible fail.

Yes, and No. It was a failure, but I learned something. What not to do.

What’s next for CoolBlue

The very next thing to do is remove the All-in-One cooler from the build. Aesthetically, it’s not pleasing and it’s also not effective.

Next, I will look at the big brother to the current AG400 CPU cooler, the AG620. This is rated for a higher total power output, and although it’s more than that CPU needs, it pushes more air directly out of the case. It may only mean a few degrees cooler, but to be honest, temps weren’t bad, I was just looking to improve them so I wouldn’t have any throttling when I edit.

This also may mean a different case. CoolBlue gets it’s name because is a Intel CPU/GPU build with DeepCool parts, (including the case), but I did put a CoolerMaster power supply in. I may be able to do the same with the case and still keep the theme. I may even be able to find a blue case. If I find one with better airflow, that can solve all of the problems at one time, and that would be cool. No pun intended. After that it will be the process of swapping SSD’s and loading programs I use most often, then it may be ready to become my new every day driver. We’ll see.

Link to the YouTube video

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The Amazing Lenovo M700. Slow and Dirty Edition

How did we get here?

That part is actually easy enough. My friend Tom has a Lenovo PC he ‘inherited’ from work and it needed some attention. It came complete with an intel i5 6500 four core beast of a processor, 8GB or memory, a 640GB Western Digital Blue spinning hard drive and a fair amount of dust. The dust wasn’t the problem. Okay, it was a problem, but a very small one.

The big problem was the hard drive. I’ve been working with computers a long time and never seen a 640GB drive in the wild. To top it off, the drive had a lot of data, so a 500GB was out of the question. To anyone that hasn’t been SSD shopping lately, prices have fallen, drastically, so now may be a good time. I found a 1TB TeamGroup drive for around 50 bucks. Then, it was time to clone. We’ll get back to that in a minute.

Dusting didn’t take long. I got out the electric duster and blew out the big stuff, then turned my attention to the fans, and repasted the CPU cooler. It didn’t have heat problems, but I erred on the side of caution. A microfiber cloth and some alcohol wipes, and it was cleaned up and ready for the next steps. I needed a video card, and to replace the antenna on the wifi card. Taking care of the drives would be easy, and it would be ready to give back. I was wrong. Very, very wrong. The drives were not easy, but we’ll get back to that.

Starting off with the easy steps

The final step mechanically was to add in a graphics card. Nothing fancy, Tom said he just needed an HDMI port, and NVidia’s GT1030 has that. To any that may be reading this, and not familiar, the GT1030 was the low end of the 10 series cards from NVidia. After its release with 2GB of DDR5 memory, NVidia cut corners on future models by using DDR4 instead. There is a very real difference between DDR4 and 5. DDR5 is twice as fast, for one. Still, this fit the need. This isn’t a gaming PC, it just needed a tune up and an HDMI port, which the 1030 definitely has.

With the CPU in good shape and the graphics card installed, it was time to tackle the hard drive issue. Total time for this thing to boot up was about three minutes. It should have taken less, but the BIOS was set up to boot with a network connection. The problem? It wasn’t on a network to boot from. The HDD did have an operating system, though.

Every boot first went through the network process, then checked the HDD, which sounded bad. It almost sounded like scraping on something. I’m sure most of you have heard the sound of a drive clicking as it searches. This one sounded tired. It was time for the new SSD. Luckily, I now had one. I just had to clone the old one.

The cloning process

Did you know there is no company that offers a true open source cloning program? They all either make you pay up front, sign up for an elaborate scheme to get your data, offer only a small trial period, or a very limited set of utilities until you subscribe to a monthly program. Hmmm, Yeah, that’s the reason I don’t use Adobe products, either. Then, I remembered the only thing good about that 640GB drive. It was a WD. That means it has a version of Acronis specifically for Western Digital drives. Nice. I downloaded the software and I was in business. I chose what type of cloning and was ready to start.

Then came the real problem. The drive sounded like it was on it’s last leg, and I wasn’t 100% sure it would even survive the cloning process. That wasn’t the only issue, though. It was going to take five hours to clone. Five. There was no way this was going to survive five hours of activity. I started the process and left it over night expecting an error message when I woke up. Instead, I was greeted with success. Nice! I unplugged the HDD and tried it. After the network attempt, it booted into the SSD. We were doing well, so far.

The next step was to get into the BIOS and redirect the boot order to the SSD. I plugged the HDD back in and it promptly failed. It booted first to the network, then from the HDD. What? Seriously? But I already changed the boot order! The flipping thing had four different boot up scenarios in the BIOS. Completely ridiculous. This was definitely a former office PC.

The finished Lenovo

I set all of the boot orders the same. Check for a USB device first, then move to the SSD, then to the HDD. I saved, exited, and waited for it to punk me again. It booted straight from the SSD in about twenty seconds. Finally, we were in good shape. There were some final touches cleaning, a new antenna for the network card, and we were truly in business. This thing had new life.

Then curiosity took over. I chose to test Shadow of the Tomb Raider and CyberPunk, and wasn’t surprised by it’s lack of achieving even twenty frames per second, but that was never the goal of this computer. It will be primarily used as a creative tool, and not need to be the end all/ be all PC. There’s no need to equal to a two thousand dollar custom PC, or even a budget gaming PC. It just has to be solid, start quickly, and output using HDMI.

After running it through a few tests and making sure the graphics driver was good, I gave it my blessing. With any luck, this PC will last several more years. Or, at least long enough for Tom to get all of the use he needs from it. Now, it’s on to the next project.

The video can be found Here.

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