Page 228 - General FOLDING chat.

There was a network outage last night , seems to be OK now.

And I think I'm set for computer equipment for a while, this is enough to keep up with. I just spent the balance of my bicycle parts sale money on new tires and cables . I will keep this setup running as long as reasonable.

Ben N1NP

Keep up the good work, what sort of bicycle.

My bike is like my computers, a little old but is more than I need to ride on these days. Image link does not work, so here is a link to a
2001 Lemond Malliot Jaune Picture.

The tires are for a project that has lingered for far too long, hiding under a sheet in the bedroom: a custom frameset made by Allan Wanta, Santa Barbara CA Allan Wanta road bike project

The other project I'm trying to finish is my 1981 Ron Stout (Salt Lake City UT), which is getting "upgraded" to period-correct Campagnolo Super Record Ron Stout road bike project

I have a soft spot for vintage steel frames, particularly by small American builders.

Ben N1NP

Nice looking frames and forks. Reminds me of an old custom built frame I had when I was younger.

Good to see a toobox and bike stand inside the house somehwere

*sigh* stupid or silly, I'm not sure which. Messing around on ebay this past weekend I purchased a dual-quad Xeon 5420 server, complete but for hard drives. I'm really not expecting much beyond it being fun to play with, but will post back when it shows up and when (if it does actually work) I have run some performance tests on it .

Ben N1NP

Did you need help with some suggestions on really good stress testing for it

You are a folding demon at the moment, that machine should add a little more icing on top of your desktop folding monsters.

Well, it showed up yesterday. Basic checks completed, currently load testing with a generic 3.2 kernel (Slackware 14). Early performance results show this machine is worth 82% of a i7-3770, better than I expected. Kernel tweaking should improve that by a few percent.

Ben N1NP

In the netburst era, kernel tweaks could yield ~12% or so performance increase over a generic kernel. Core2 era saw that decline to 5% or so. The 3770 machine I did recently only got less than 3% for my efforts. Either the kernel code has gotten much better overall with 3.2, or the newer cpu architecture is less sensitive to the configuration. The L5 series Xeons are only giving me ~1.24% increase over stock with all the traditional tweaks and then some.

Oh well, it is still a good machine .

Ben N1NP

Any folding is good folding.

DevH has become like tuning around on 10 meters, not hearing anything and wondering if the band is dead or if everyone else is on just listening and waiting for someone else to say something, LOL. Maybe DevH needs a 10-X to encourage participation.

I've got two things today. First, I found a "budget" cooling unit today that might get some of my equipment through the summer. I will have to wait for the heat to see how effective it is. Second, parts are on the way for my last empty case (more "budget" buys from ebay), that will fill the last of the available space and power budget.

As much as I am tired of the cold (it is forecast to snow the next two days), I'm hoping it will hold out for a bit longer.

Ben N1NP

Hope the colds holds out as long as you want it to.

Good luck with the new bits.

So HP uses non-standard power supply connectors with non-standard pinouts . I should have expected that. Had to go back to ebay for a special HP power supply. Now over the expected budget for this machine, but still not unreasonable (total under US$140 for HP DL160 G5 motherboard, two L5420 Xeon CPUs, copper heatsinks, 8GB ECC FB-DIMMs, and HP power supply). Compare that to a dual L5420 machine complete but for hard drive for ~US$150 and it's not such a good deal .

Sorry, just had to rant a bit . Non-standard parts gets me irritated.

Ben N1NP

You are totally excused for ranting.

In this day and age of PC design standards it makes no sense for anyone to create customised parts, other than the obvious to lock people in.

Local network outage since 00:31 UTC. My ISP says they are working on it but won't say what the issue is. Three machines down waiting so far. I will be losing processing time and bonus points.

Glad my cell phone (pocket comp?) Is on a different ISP.

Ben N1NP

While I am here, the power supplies for the DL160-G5 machine arrived and are working, but now there is a fan problem. It will not boot unless all six fans are plugged in and working . More fans now on order.

Ben N1NP