Vocal Voices

Since I started work with Canada I have been using a new virtual machine on an old 2tb hard drive. That hard drive is about 9 years old and has been a bit knocked about. It was causing me problems.

I am at the limit for my virtual server space so I decided to buy myself a new 12TB hard drive and plug it in and use it for my work stuff and the new movies I'll rip once we get our DVD library out of storage.

So, off to Amazon (France not UK, postage and customs have made Amazon UK prohibitive and I have Prime in France otherwise I'd buy from Germany), ordered my 12TB drive with €40 off the normal price. When it arrived I switched off the server, plugged in the new drive into a free SATA slot and pressed the power button.

Nothing. Wiggled the power plug on the motherboard, about 10 seconds of power then nothing. The motherboard had died. No amount of finagling, resoldering the power socket pins or any form of swearing would work and so I hauled out my backup server, swapped memory and drives and I'm up and running again.

The thing is the motherboard is just shy of 7 years old and, it appears, that is has given up the ghost.

Normally I leave it till the last gasp until upgrading hardware. Unfortunately I'll now need to buy two new motherboards to make sure things continue to run. I'll replace my desktop with a new board, put the desktop board, processor, et al, into the backup server and put another new board into the main server (which is also nearing 7 years old and a very similar board).

Whilst it is OK to keep running stuff year in and year out whilst it works, when it fails it can be a real problem. For instance this server runs my work virtual windows 10 machine, the machine which provides a whole virtual network to all the media boxes (satellite/BD player/Amazon fire TV), connected to the TV and also the file server which my Kodi app on the Fire TV plays all our DVD's and BluRay's on. You can imagine the disgruntlement when I told Mrs S that everything but the satellite box was down and the BD player is no good because all the DVD's and BD's are in storage boxes in the attic.

It is working now, but the backup is in pieces. The main reason I have not yet upgraded is because I need to replace all the RAM (DDR3 to DDR4) and I have a LOT Of RAM (88GB).

Been there, done that.

Rip stuff out of one box and put the new stuff in - the box is still good. Get it working. Rip the older stuff out of another box and put the less old stuff in that and get it working.... carry on down the line and donate any bits at the end of the line to the school for the pupils to tear to pieces.

It's all good fun but I have now given all that up and just have the laptop, tablet and phone. The TV and BD/DVD player are on a stand in the corner of the room and that's me sorted.

Yeah my setup is a bit esoteric. I have a larkbox fixed to the wall on the office, it is for zoom conferences as required and can be disconnected and plugged into the back of the TV.

Then I have my server which serves the VPN, media storage and other virtual machines like my work machine. It is much easier that way as it has one small screen which is never used and everything is done in apps on my main workstation. Behind the printer are my main laptop, the travelling netbook and the old netbook which is now designated as the peugeot citroen diagnostics computer. The NAS, which sits in the corner is a 3rd backup for my large set of files and the pile of disconnected hardware, under the eaves and behind my desks, is my backup server. Which is normally with me wherever I am working to get 1 copy of the backups out of the house and safe from fire/destruction, lightning etc.

The TV/Fire TV/BD/Satellite box all connect to a switch under the TV and that switch is connected to the physical network with the VPN (yep, two cables not one). I do mean the FireTV is connected to it, wifi is off and I have the ethernet adaptor on it. This reduces the ability of the FireTV to geolocate itself.

Beyond that I guess the scattering of USB hard drives and the 5 mobile phones make up the rest of the conspicuous hardware. The spare FireTV is in my bags ready to travel, the cupboards are stuffed full of spares, parts, DVI/HDMI/VGA/USB cables of every sort. I guess I missed the 5 keyboards out and the two on top of the cupboards.

Just the odd bit of stuff. Under the eaves is my TV for work, toaster, microwave, you get the idea.

Sometimes it feels like I need to refresh a whole new house.

Poor me.

I have a new Computer which I got last year. It was built by a local computer shop. We discussed the spec before he started ordering the parts.
It is good enough for what I want.
I also have a Xerox B250 printer as I do not need colour.
I will get someone to come and show me how to use zoom when the lockdown finishes. I am not very tech and cannot easily follow written instructions.
I remember sending messages using two empty cans and a piece of string.

Well my hardware will not be being replaced any time soon. A quick check tells me that certain processors which I'm interested in have tripled in cost. Because of the scarcity of parts which is still ongoing.

Fortunately my father asked me to help him replace his tower late last year. We got him a bare-bones AMD unit and swapped his hard drives over and added any drivers needed. He tripled the speed and doubled the memory for £300 and got USB3.0 into the bargain. None of that available now.

It just goes to show that you really can't say "Well my hardware will not be being replaced any time soon". After a week of hell with my main machine I finally ordered one of these. Plus 64GB of RAM, a 512GB M.2 SSD and a 14TB external USB3.0 hard drive to allow me to do multiple backups.

The interesting thing is that this tiny little box will be 2.5 times faster than my current machine, have 2x the memory, still connect to my 2x 32" screens and, with the 14TB external drive, be everything that the current full tower case is and, apart from the graphics (limited on the machine), better than I could have hoped for in almost every way.

Yep it's costing me €1,300, but this is work we are talking about. I can't just be disappearing out of calls all the time because my machine crashes.

I did finally get down to the issues, three of them. 2 I fixed, but the third has no resolution. My chipset on the motherboard is overheating. I had two different SSD's which were faulty. One crashed the machine by overheating the chipset from the SATA connection because it was working too hard, the other did the same but from the USB3.0 access.

It finally occurred to me why I can't buy a processor or decent graphics card for normal money. I'm looking at a £200 (prior price), graphics card, costing as much as £1,000 and processors have nearly tripled in price. It is only these integrated machines, which are non expandable, which are not impacted.

The reason? Bitcoin hit over $60,000. Which makes mining viable again. For a short while.

To add to the pain, my main laptop died, 8 beeps when powering on. The screen had been doing odd things like going white etc, when powering on, then suddenly 8 beeps. After a bit of research I decided that the motherboard had finally died.

I went onto aliexpress and found a second hand replacement board and ordered it. I got it yesterday. Cursing the fact that I can't replace the machine due to the whole cost of hardware due to shortages.

When I tested it, I left everything off but processor and memory. Worked a treat. So then I put in the dedicated graphics card. Black screen. So it seems the second dedicated graphics card died (yep that's why it was so expensive at the time, a laptop with AMD Xfire graphics in it), but fried the motherboard in the process.

I've decided to replace the 1TB SSHD, inhabiting the BD Rom slot, with a 5TB rotating drive. When that arrives, tomorrow, I'll rebuild the machine completely. The other two hard drives are accessible from the bottom of the machine without disassembling so when a 2TB SSD becomes about £100 I'll replace the 1TB SSHD with it. But not for now.

As the Bitcoin and chip shortage wanes and prices fall, I'll replace the dedicated graphics card and put in an uprated processor.

Who knows, maybe it will last me another 5-7 years? The whole machine build cost me around £4,000, I had to replace the memory twice as it was cheaper to do that and the SSD's were outrageously expensive when I bought the machine. The first one I put in was £500. But if it lasts 17 years, who can complain?

One bonus is that all the lights are now working again. They died years ago when I gave it a drink of coffee....

The next time I pay over £400 for a laptop will be my first and last.

I don't stream or game so just need the legacy stuff: mp3, mp4, doc. xls. pdf... you get the drift.

I actually use my lappy more as a TV most of the time. I have an HD dongle, Freeview, and it does a perfect job.

Mine was bought for business at a time when they allowed you to do that. So the expense was justified.

With testing I've found out the replacement motherboard I bought has a faulty CD channel Bugger.

However it works. Now it is about juggling data from 3 dives to 2 and the larger 2.5 drives do not fit into the custom caddy ( 2 drive caddy).

I use FireTV as my TV enhancement tool. It was one of my best purchases. After I added Kodi to it.

August here. Small screen at bottom left for TV while I read articles.... and hidden for DAB radio. One click gets full screen.

It's light years away from what we had only a few years ago.