DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

Installing RAM in recent Macintoshes is laughably easy: a lever on the side of the case allows the panel to drop open, giving access to the components. The DIMM banks are not obstructed in any way; clipping in a new stick of memory takes only seconds. Reconnecting the peripherals takes another minute at most.

So I followed these few steps and thumbed the power switch on my wife’s Mac. Nothing happened. “Uh-oh,” I thought with the first stirrings of despair, “here we go again.” I must have the worst hardware karma in the state; every computer I own expires at my touch.

I checked all the connections and tried again… nothing. I opened the case and removed the new DIMM… nothing. I checked all the internal power connectors… nothing.

At the recommendation of an Apple technician, I tested the motherboard battery. To my great joy, the battery was completely drained — the needle on the multimeter did not even twitch.

Radio Shack stocks this part, so I was able to repair the system quickly. The new DIMM worked fine, of course. I did a little jig of relief.

Then, feeling high on accomplishment, having banished at least a few of the hardware gremlins that have set up residence in my office, I eagerly leapt into the stack of parts that will comprise my new webserver — I installed the CPU, cooler, SCSI card, and RAM on the motherboard, and set the board into the case. I mounted all the drives and ran all the cables. I double-checked every connection, wired up a monitor and keyboard, and with anticipation thumbed the power button… which did nothing. The computer was DOA.

Imagine my surprise.

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posted to channel: Personal
updated: 2004-02-22 22:49:16

The bin is huge, like a squat refrigerator, except it’s blue. It is designed to hold 1 week’s worth of recyclables for a single family, although in some cases it has room for the family too. It’s that big.

Single-stream recycling is an amazing thing, really and truly. Quick, call your county supervisor and ask for it now. Go ahead; I’ll wait.

The great thing about the blue bin, in addition to its size, is that I can put just about anything inside: paper, aluminum, glass, those funky juice-box packages (is it paper? is it plastic? Yes.), six of the 7 types of plastic, even aerosol cans. I don’t need to sort or separate my recycling — just dump it in the bin and let the single-stream gnomes work it out.

Glass, aluminum, and paper recycling is old news these days (to our great fortune and health), so it is the plastic recycling that is really exciting here. Previously our curbside program would accept only plastic #s 1 and 2, PETE and HDPE — but now, as a part of the single-stream initiative, the whole gang is invited: V, LDPE, PP, and PS. Take a look around today; you’ll be surprised at how many of these products you consume. Grocery-store salsa, hummus, sour cream containers: polypropylene, #5. The squeeze bottle of honey, and the bag the newspaper was wrapped in: low-density polyethylene, #4. The fancy shampoo bottle in the shower: polyvinyl chloride, #3. Last week, these would have gone into the landfill. This week, they get recycled.

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I remember, about 25 years ago, driving across town with my dad to drop off empty wine and soda bottles for recycling. There were three piles into which we had to sort our glass, one for each color: clear, brown, or green. Have we come a long way, or what?

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In related news, the Bay Area Recycling Outreach Coalition provides this nifty poster promoting paper recycling. It is yours for the cost of a download.

(Just don’t print it!)

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posted to channel: Recycling
updated: 2004-02-22 22:49:16

(For my analysis of the needs that provided the basis for this specification, see the mail-order server, I: the problem.)

In an attempt to avoid hardware gremlins, I decided to stick with reputable vendors. Such hardware costs more, but for me, a few hundred dollars in hardware is cheap compared to the cost of stability problems in the future.

I think both AMD and Intel make reliable CPUs, but AMD units have a reputation for running hotter. While there may be exceptions to this general statement, I decided to focus on Intel products. I found a CPU that intrigued me: the “Tualatin” series of Pentium IIIs. These chips are built on a smaller process than most: .13-micron rather than .18 or .25. The smaller scale translates to a lower voltage requirement and/or higher clock speeds. The 1.13GHz/512k cache model, considered by Intel to be a “server” CPU, can be had for about $225.

Sticking with Intel, the motherboard choice was easy, because Intel only makes one affordable board that is certified for use with the PIII-S: the S815EMB1 — about $150. Note that this is a micro-ATX board, with integrated video and Ethernet, designed to fit into a 1U rackmount case.

I purchased a near-silent power supply from quietpc. These units run at about 26dB(A), as compared to the better-known “Silencer” series (34 dB(A)) from PC Power & Cooling. (As of this writing, Enermax has not published noise measurements for its “Whisper” series.)

System cooling presents a problem, as there is a tradeoff between cooling efficiency and noise. I will not be running this system very hard, so I opted for a CPU cooler that seems to offer the best passive cooling, the Zalman 3100-Plus. The reviews of this cooler were mixed, but I believe it will work best for me.

Be sure to read this 46-way shootout of CPU coolers.

RAM is somewhat easier to select, as it is more of a commodity item. I opted for Mushkin’s “high-performance” variety.

The storage system consists of an Adaptec ASC-29160 and a pair of Quantum Atlas V 9.1db drives, purchased from Hyper Microsystems. I picked those drives because I’ve had good luck with them before, and because Hyper Micro had a great deal on them ($90 per). Subsequently I was pleased to see these drives rated very highly at StorageReview.com.

All together I spent about $1400. The result will be a quiet 1.1 GHz PIII-S with 9Gb of fast, mirrored storage, in a desktop case.

After all the parts were ordered I checked out what a comparable Dell solution would have looked like. Dell happens to offer something similar: the PowerEdge 1400 with a single 1.13 GHz PIII-S, onboard ethernet, onboard SCSI controller, 2x18 Gb U160 SCSI… for about $1400. This machine would have twice the storage space as mine, which is a plus, but the drives are 10K RPM units, so they would run hotter than mine. Also the case is a tower, which I don’t want. And this machine is likely to be louder than mine.

On the positive side, I wouldn’t have to build it.

I was surprised to see the near-parity in price, though.

This concludes what must be the driest pair of journal entries I have ever written. Tune in tomorrow for something altogether more interesting. (Note to self: postpone that thermal-grease performance comparison you’ve been planning.)

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posted to channel: Personal
updated: 2004-02-22 22:49:16

My webserver suffers from annoying and fatal flaw: it sometimes refuses to boot up. This problem has existed since March, and I’ve lived with it since then because the machine, typically, never has to reboot… I powered it down in March (after several months’ worth of error-free operation) to remove a fan, and then it crashed two weeks ago when a power outage lasted longer than my UPS. Those are the only two times the machine has had to boot up in 2001 — such is the stability of Linux.

Both times, due to some as-yet undiagnosed hardware glitch, the computer refused to boot: fans and drives would spin up, but the SCSI card’s LED would show a bus error, and the system would not beep, POST, or display video. Both times, reseating or removing components had no effect on these symptoms. And, both times, after perhaps a dozen attempts, the system eventually booted up as if nothing had ever been wrong.

Which proves to me that x86-class hardware is basically crap. I was tempted to migrate to a RISC platform, and may regret not following through on that temptation… I decided to stay with the x86 platform because it is familiar, and well-supported by my OS of choice, which means I have a wider selection of parts from which to construct the new server.

Which brings me to the question I asked a handful of engineer friends a few weeks ago: what to do? I needed a server but was basically 2 years out of the loop on hardware news. I’m capable of building a server from components — although maybe not capable of building a server that won’t develop mysterious hardware problems 18 months from now.

“Buy Dell,” one friend said. I rejected that idea immediately, convinced it would be more expensive and provide only a cookie-cutter solution that would not meet my needs. As it turned out, this conviction was only half right.

So I read, and researched, and read a lot more. I spent a week of evenings poring over reviews of CPUs, motherboards, cooling technologies, and the like. I decided that the most important criteria is that the system be quiet: after three years I can say with certainty that I am tired of working in a room that sounds like a heliport.

(There is a difference between “quiet” and “silent,” and I was definitely opting for, or settling for, the former: this server will have two high-end SCSI disk drives, which will generate more noise than would qualify as “silent”.)

Quiet- and silent-PC information and tutorials:
Piotr Mitros’ silent PC, Silent PC Guide, The Silent PC

Vendors of quiet fans, PSUs, etc: QuietPC, Directron, Plycon, A Conto

My performance needs are moderate. The current server is a 500MHz AMD K6-2, and is idle 99% of the time. I had no reason to upgrade to anything faster (except to take advantage of related technologies that might accompany a newer CPU). I am a big fan of software-based RAID, though, and plan to install a zippy Ultra-160 LVD SCSI-3 chain.

The only other requirement was that the whole mess fit into a horizontal case. Tower-style cases are more common, but for my purposes a lot less efficient.

With this statement of my needs, I was ready to begin shopping. The details follow in a future installment.

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posted to channel: Personal
updated: 2004-02-22 22:49:16

I saw Pixar’s latest animated film, Monsters, Inc., a few weeks ago, and was somewhat disappointed that there were no “outtakes” during the closing credits. Today Pixar has re-released the film, including outtakes. You can sample the outtakes at the Monsters, Inc website.

The Pixar Theater hosts the original outtakes from A Bug’s Life and Toy Story 2.

In related news, if you have Apple’s Quicktime software (free for MacOS and Windows), Apple’s movie trailers page is just awesome.

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posted to channel: Web
updated: 2004-03-14 16:47:06