Sergeinc

Well, I got my hands on some older hardware on the weekend, from a friend who had it just sitting in his basement. It came up in conversation when I mentioned I wanted to play with Windows Server 2008 to get some working knowledge with it, other than just modifying user accounts in Active Directory because that's just boring.

Among the stash of goodies, was an old Abit VP6 motherboard, with dual 1Ghz Pentium 3's. Something I've always wanted to play with was a dual processor system, dual cores are just not the same, they're probably better than a dual Pentium 3, but still not the same. There was also two old Antec server cases with Enermax power supplies. When I first started putting the server together, I noticed there was two bad capacitors by the AGP slot, so I changed those, and was on my way. I ended up having a hard time starting the setup, it mostly just froze, I was getting RAM problems, since I had a pretty mixed batch in there. After lots of testing, I was right about the problem being memory related, but it wasn't bad ram, I had a friend over who's quite the geek, just like myself, and he looked at the system, and pointed out more bad capacitors right away. I had noticed two of the bad caps he pointed out before hand but wasn't sure, as they weren't leaking, and the bulge was a very slight bulge, barely noticeable, the third he pointed out, I never even noticed was there. That night we changed those capacitors as well, and the Server setup worked right away, although the fact that the board was able to POST was a relief on its own.

So now I'm running a 2008 Enterprise server. Services include DNS and Active Directory at the moment. I'm still in testing phase, but I have my Windows 7 machine on the domain, and will have more to come. Other services I'm thinking of including, are network installation services, since I could cut down on the number of install CD's I keep looking for, and a windows Vista or Windows 7 network install disc can fit on CD, which is nice because I don't always have DVD drives easily accessible when I'm tinkering with other machines. I'm still working on setting group policies, and I'm also planning on adding network storage on the server to use for automated backups. The other thing I need to work on is Kerberos, I think thats going to be what challenges me, since I barely know what it is, all I really know about it, is that it's what I need to blend my Linux machines into my AD.

To be honest, I'm a little disappointed with the installation process so far, I thought setting up a domain server would have been more difficult, technical if you will, but with the wizards for everything in Server 2008, it kind of had that "Hi I'm a newb, hold my hand" attitude.

Other than that, I guess a screenshot is in order.

I am not going to lie, but I am really starting to dislike Google. It's not that they don't offer a good service or anything, I use Gmail, and I'm quite happy with it. I also used Picasa web albums for a short while after my webhost went down, before I set up my own web server. They also have their new Chrome OS coming up, based very much on the cloud computing concept, which I find intriguing even though it doesn't interest me, its not something that's for everybody, yet.

But the reason I'm starting to dislike Google is the search engine. It's a great search engine, for most day to day things, but if I try to search for something more obscure, I find its always trying to sell me something. For example, if I want to find a diagram to make an eeprom reader for a specific device, or a JTAG cable, all I find are online stores to buy eeprom readers or JTAG cables, whether I throw in keywords like DIY, homebrew, how to, etc.

The other problem, is I've been noticing quite a bit lately, is that it will list results, and show my keyword phrases in the short preview section of what's on the page, but when I follow the link, there's nothing remotely close on the page. So how is it finding something on a site that's not even there?

It's nice for businesses and all that they can pay a little for advertising and have a better chance of their web page being listed in results, but just because they paid, it doesn't mean they should be at the top of the list, when they have nothing relevant to the search.

That's all.

......well its not really new, it was dropped off to me today from the same guy i got my printer from. He told me he had a bunch of stuff to send out to the recyclers, and i told him he could leave it with me since i know a guy who recycles the stuff, and will let me go through his pile to find old tinker toys

but here's the ram that was in there

32mb 72 Pin dimms......I wonder how much those were at the time of purchase, I'm not sure though, the aluminum pins tell me they might be cheaper sticks, higher latency, but I don't remember too much about that stuff, too long ago. I used to have a hard time finding 16mb dimms after SD-RAM became standard, now these just fall in my lap......a little too late.

I had my K6-2 running on a board with that stuff, but I eventually replaced the board with an Asus TX-97 that can take 256mb SD-RAM, I was actually playing with it last night when I found this. I had used a defogger kit to draw trace where there were no pins to set the jumper for the higher multiplier settings listed in the manual, and had the cpu maxed out at 390mhz. So i wanted to try the 2x multiplier thing, and now Its running 450mhz, I also slapped in the pci voodoo 3 that was in the stash i got today

there was also a bunch of SCSI stuff in there too, a Microtek scanner, an old yamaha 6x external cd burner, zip drive, and a superdisk drive, looks like the superdisk drive is for a Mac.



a friend of mine has an old hp scanjet 5j that he may replace with the scanner i have here, larger scanning bed, and maybe better optical resolution, he also DJ's, so he may find a use for the CD burner too. I'm half temped to keep the zip and superdisk drives for myself, in case I ever have to recover data from the associated media, but I don't really see that happening....

What I will be keeping for myself though, is this 16port switch

I got a D-Link DI-604 router from a friend recently. It came up in conversation when I mentioned I needed a few extra LAN ports for the Apple Laser Printer that was given to me, and it supports network printer via an Ethernet dongle, as well as the XBOX I frankensteined to use as a media center. He mentioned he had a D-Link kicking around that someone tossed his way with no AC Adapter. he didn't know if it worked or not, but he said I could have it, but I'd have to find an AC adapter to try it out, fair enough.

So after a quick failed attempt at finding an AC Adapter for it, either cheap, or free to at least try it out, I figured it needed 5 volts and 2 amps, so I broke out my new soldering station,  and decided to wire a Molex power connector to hook it up to the power supply in one of my machines. I did get some weird responses when I asked around for opinions on that solution, I have an 850w Corsair power supply, that I'm barely putting a dent in, that can handle 25 amps on the +5v rail, so I'm pretty sure thats enough. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a plug that fit the power connector on the router, so I ended up soldering the wires straight to it.

Once that was done, I hooked it up, plugged in a LAN cable, it powered on no problem, even dished out an IP address, so something was working. I measure the power going into it with my multimeter and everything checked out fine. Then I started noticing problems though, I couldn't browse to the configuration page on it, so I tried multiple methods of resetting it, and eventually started thinking maybe the firmware was corrupted on it since I was still able to use it as a hub between a few machines with static IP's. But otherwise, it just kept dropping, and I had a previous D-Link router, a DI-784, that pretty much did the same kind of thing, constant network drops, I RMA'd it twice the first year I had it, and it came with a 3 year warranty, I eventually replaced it, because it was garbage. That last router was the reason why I will not ever buy, or recommend a D-Link router again, I'd rather go with Linksys. Not to say that Linksys routers don't have problems, but the problems I've had with them were more firmware related, rather than just being cheap hardware, and those firmware problems are usually resolved by either updating, or just running 3rd party firmware, like DD-WRT, which personally, I prefer.

Anyway, after an hour of trying to force the thing into its recovery mode to reflash the firmware, I gave up on that, and decided to try recovering the firmware via JTAG. I'd been looking for a reason to make new JTAG cable since I lost my old one. So here's a picture of the router with the JTAG cable, and my homebrew power adapter.

Now I had to kind of guess little with this thing as far as the JTAG recovery method because I couldn't find much info on JTAG recovery for this specific router. I found one mention of JTAG recovery for this model on a forum somewhere, but it was a dead link. Luckily, JTAG cables are pretty standard for routers, to my knowledge at least. But if thats true, the diagram on this page for a JTAG cable should be fine. This page also had some more technical info on the hardware in this particular router, but the labels on the JTAG header pins they use weren't exactly great for comparing against the JTAG cable diagram, so I was left using the pinouts on this page, which made more sense.

Next on the check list for the JTAG recovery, was what software to use to program is. Ponyprog which I use for JTAG'ing XBOX eeproms was out, because it didn't support anything in a 1mb flash size. The Linksys JTAG tool linked on the DD-WRT page I mentioned above didn't work, but it was worth a try anyway, even though it is listed as a linksys tool, and I have used it on a Netgear router before. I ended up finding UrJTAG, nice program, but kept giving me a "TDO stuck at 0" error, which from what I could gather may have meant that there was a hardware lock on the router somewhere, and unfortunately the page I know did have info on these, is gone, so if there was mention of anything like that, It's no good to me anyway.

I know previously I said new soldering station, and I've made it clear time and time again that I want cheap or free, so just to explain, my old place flooded, and my old soldering iron was written off with the flood, so this new one was covered by the insurance as a replacement. Also, just to be clear, Its not that I don't like spending money on hardware, I do have plenty of rather expensive hardware, but sometimes when I need a solution to something, I like to use what I have. I like to challenge myself, rather than just throw money at an easy fix. Its not like I'm working for someone who is paying for a timely solution. Besides, you spend a little time learning something, maybe even making an art out of it, its that much easier to implement next time around when maybe you are being paid to come up with a solution, especially if the customer wants a solution on a budget, though some times the cost of labor may even things out.

Just for giggles, here's a picture of my new Weller soldering station, its not a super expensive set, its one of the cheaper ones, it lists at 75$, but it was on sale for 50$. Its fully adjustable from 5-40w, which is better than the 15w or 30w selection from my old soldering iron. The new Weller also provides a place to set down the iron, and something to clean the tip, so I'm hoping I won't have to replace tips as much as I used too. Overall, not bad for the cost, which wasn't much higher than my old one that was 35$ at the time, and a nice upgrade that more than suits my needs. I also made sure to pick up a couple extra tips, a fine point, and a wider flat tip.

Anyhow, in the end, this router was a total waste of my time, but its a D-Link, I wouldn't have bothered trying if it wasn't free since I'm no fan of them. I don't usually like admitting to failure, or even accepting it for that matter. but in this case I don't mind, I just wish D-Link would admit to their failures, and close their doors.