Re: Just when you think you've seen it all...

[Bill McGonigle]

On Jun 26, 2006, at 23:33, Scott C. Mellott wrote:

Dell finally fessed up and said they were going to recall all of the 
Maxtor drives.


I tend to use Seagates (I know the guy who's been fixing their QA 
system for the past few years) and haven't been a big fan of Maxtor, 
but they're not that awful.  These sound as bad as the Hitachi 
DeathStar line.


Does anybody know if Dell gets 'special' hard drives from its 
suppliers, or if they're the same as retail?  I know Dell is the King 
of Low Price and they're very good at getting deals from their 
suppliers (I've bought A/V gear from them on more than one occasion) 
but my experience has been the money saved over a better server is 
quickly flittered away, often in installation and almost always over 
the life of the machine.  I got one SC server I had to deal with that 
had a realtime clock that wasn't Linux compatible.  I thought the IBM 
AT solved this.  But if you need a Camcorder, go for it.


Oh, and y'all need RAID-1 mirrors. C'mon, and extra IDE drive is like 
$40. :)


-Bill

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Re: SATA cards? RAID/Non RAID

[Bill McGonigle]

If high performance is a goal and you have the opportunity to spend 
$300, I found the better of the 3Ware cards (9xxx IIRC) to be very fast 
with NCQ SATA II drives (Seagate).  I have identical machines, both 
dual Xeons, one with the lower-end 3Ware card (8xxx?) and standard SATA 
II drives and one with the faster card with SATA II NCQ drives.


For disk-intensive stuff, compiling kernels and such, the faster 
card/drives perform about 75% better than the slower ones.  I was 
surprised to see SCSI-class performance from these 7200RPM drives.  If 
I didn't have its sister with the slower gear I wouldn't have believed 
it was from the disks.


They were setup with Linux Software RAID-1.

-Bill

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Re: SATA cards? RAID/Non RAID

[Bill McGonigle]

On Jun 26, 2006, at 22:11, Chris Linstid wrote:

I heard that Broadcom's excuse for their reluctance to release any 
specifications for the wireless chipset is that the chips are used for 
both commercial and military functions and the military functions 
include software radio.  So, I guess they don't want the general 
public to be able to access those functions.  Why they are allowed by 
the DoD to sell the same chips in both spaces is beyond me.


Wow, if the cheap Broadcom wireless chips have a software-defined radio 
in them that would definitely be worth reverse-engineering.


I thought only the spendy TI chips were candidates for SDR hacking.

Of course, they couldn't possibly release an API that didn't include 
the calls to the SDR functions.  And clearly not helping linux will 
thwart Kim Jong Ill's squadron of Evil Hackers from reversing the chip. 
 Broadcom is so patriotic.


-Bill
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Re: Just when you think you've seen it all...

[Scott C. Mellott]

Not surprising about the Maxtor drive failing in the Dell system.  We 
have about 1000 Dell systems deployed at various client sites around 
North America.  After having to replace nearly 20% of the systems' 
drives within 6 months of deployment and threatening to move to HP, Dell 
finally fessed up and said they were going to recall all of the Maxtor 
drives.


They likely have had many drive failures in that particular system and 
have strategically staged the replacement drives locally if they have 
sold a number of the 430 systems locally.  Dell has numerous depots 
around the US to allow them to deploy replacement parts within a 4 hour 
window.


Scott

hewitt_tech wrote:
I had rather rough Monday. One of my clients had their server blow it's 
boot/main drive over the weekend. I was on site for a completely 
different problem when I heard someone ask "Is Alex here to see why the 
server is down?". I opened the case of the Dell SC430 and heard the 
infamous "click of death". Several hours later after replacing the drive 
and restoring from a couple of backups I got back to my office and 
called Dell. Interestingly this system had about 90% of it's parts 
replaced at almost exactly the 90 day point. That included the system 
drive. It was replaced because it was seeing a bad block every couple of 
days over the last few weeks of it's operation. So the new hard drive 
was an identical Maxtor Sata hard drive that lasted barely 5 weeks.
 
Here's the interesting aspect - I called Dell and they agreed to send a 
replacement drive. I called them at approximately 5 pm. 5 minutes ago a 
courier showed up at my front door with the replacement drive! That's a 
little over two hours after I called Dell. BTW, the new drive is a 
Seagate. Maybe the Maxtor's aren't holding up too well? ;^()
 
-Alex
 


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Re: Friday afternoon hardware questions

[Bob Bell]

On Mon, Jun 26, 2006 at 12:00:20PM -0400, John Abreau wrote:
> Speaking of which, what's the best SATA raid card these days? I'd
> be using this under CentOS. Does anyone make a raid card for 5 SATA
> drives, or am I stuck using just 4 drives in the unit?

I've always been pointed to 3ware.  They make 2-, 4-, 8- and 12-port
varieties of their cards.

-- Bob
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Re: SATA cards? RAID/Non RAID

[Chris Linstid]

I heard that Broadcom's excuse for their reluctance to release any  
specifications for the wireless chipset is that the chips are used  
for both commercial and military functions and the military functions  
include software radio.  So, I guess they don't want the general  
public to be able to access those functions.  Why they are allowed by  
the DoD to sell the same chips in both spaces is beyond me.


- Chris

On Jun 26, 2006, at 6:55 PM, Michael ODonnell wrote:




Although there may be exceptions it does unfortunately
appear that BroadCom's attitude (toward Linux users WRT
drivers and such) is "best characterized by a middle finger
lifted in our general direction".  At least, I've heard
that said of the drivers for their gbit enet cards and
it seems clearly to be true of drivers for their wireless
chips, one of which I'm stuck with in my HP zd7k laptop.  :-(

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Re: For those who check their email at home...

[Ben Scott]

On 6/26/06, Drew Van Zandt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

Newegg has the WRT54GL for ...


 On a semi-related note, this just came across Slashdot...

WRT54G v5 (VxWorks) has been made to run Linux
http://linuxdevices.com/news/NS6352077661.html

 You still have the cramped RAM and flash to deal with, but it's
there if you want it.

-- Ben
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Re: Just when you think you've seen it all...

[Ben Scott]

On 6/26/06, hewitt_tech <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

I called Dell and they agreed to send a replacement drive. I called them at
approximately 5 pm. 5 minutes ago a courier showed up at my front door
with the replacement drive! That's a little over two hours after I called Dell.


 For Dell's servers, all but the cheapest service option includes a 4
hour response time.  At clients in Boston, I've had new parts within
30 minutes.  Faster then driving to a store myself.  Kinda nice.
(Nicer would be hardware that doesn't fail, but that's a bit much to
hope for.)

 All the big vendors offer this kind of service.  Although, in the
case of Gateway, I can say that it just means they get defective parts
to you quickly.  ;-)

-- Ben
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For those who check their email at home...

[Drew Van Zandt]

Newegg has the WRT54GL for $60 with a $10 rebate, today only.  Just
stumbled across it... final price $50 + $7 shipping.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16833124190

--DTVZ
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Just when you think you've seen it all...

[hewitt_tech]

I had rather rough Monday. One of my clients had 
their server blow it's boot/main drive over the weekend. I was on site for a 
completely different problem when I heard someone ask "Is Alex here to see why 
the server is down?". I opened the case of the Dell SC430 and heard the infamous 
"click of death". Several hours later after replacing the drive and restoring 
from a couple of backups I got back to my office and called Dell. Interestingly 
this system had about 90% of it's parts replaced at almost exactly the 90 day 
point. That included the system drive. It was replaced because it was seeing a 
bad block every couple of days over the last few weeks of it's operation. So the 
new hard drive was an identical Maxtor Sata hard drive that lasted barely 5 
weeks. 
 
Here's the interesting aspect - I called Dell and 
they agreed to send a replacement drive. I called them at approximately 5 pm. 5 
minutes ago a courier showed up at my front door with the replacement drive! 
That's a little over two hours after I called Dell. BTW, the new drive is a 
Seagate. Maybe the Maxtor's aren't holding up too well? ;^()
 
-Alex
 

Re: SATA cards? RAID/Non RAID

[Michael ODonnell]

Although there may be exceptions it does unfortunately
appear that BroadCom's attitude (toward Linux users WRT
drivers and such) is "best characterized by a middle finger
lifted in our general direction".  At least, I've heard
that said of the drivers for their gbit enet cards and
it seems clearly to be true of drivers for their wireless
chips, one of which I'm stuck with in my HP zd7k laptop.  :-(
 
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Re: SATA cards? RAID/Non RAID

[Ben Scott]

On 6/26/06, Tom Buskey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

I worked as a QA temp at RaidCore as they got bought by BroadCom.


 Ahhh, so it wasn't *originally* made by BroadCom.  That's good news,
in my book.  ;-)


... http://www.raidcore.com ...


 That redirects to a "Page not found" page at Broadcom.  *sigh*


It's not true hardware raid but it works very well.


 Oh.  I was under the impression they had ASICs on the board to do
the RAID stuff.  Hmmm... the Broadcom website makes no mention of
that, and I'm sure they would if they did.  I guess I'm thinking of
someone else... :-/


One *very* cool thing was transforming from one RAID level to another on the
fly.  ex: Add a 3rd drive and transform from RAID 1 to RAID 5.


 FYI, many other RAID cards do that, too, including at least some of
the old Adaptec cards, and the MegaRAID line from LSI.  Probably not
so common in the low-end "host-based RAID" stuff (i.e., software RAID
tied to a particular card).

-- Ben
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Re: SATA cards? RAID/Non RAID

[Ben Scott]

On 6/26/06, Drew Van Zandt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

I can refute that a bit from personal experience...


 My personal experience is with the Tigon 3 gig Ethernet controller
from Broadcom.  Their "bcm5700" driver was, apparently, crap.
Broadcom initially refused to release hardware specs, so the only
option was to reverse-engineer things.  That lead to problems with
lock-ups that turned out to be hardware bugs.  Broadcom started
getting such a rep for producing crap hardware that they finally owned
up to the bugs and provided a list of workarounds -- but it took over
a year, IIRC.  Meanwhile, people had servers that didn't work.

 I watched a lot of this unfold on the poweredge-linux mailing list.
Google for "tg3 bcm5700" for details.  Some choice references:

http://lists.us.dell.com/pipermail/linux-poweredge/2003-February/006379.html

http://www.ussg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0106.1/0454.html

 More recently, I know their wireless drivers are binary-only.  Some
blame the FCC, but other vendors have managed to ship something that
works, so I suspect it's really vendor laziness/cheapness.

 IME.  YMMV.  HAND.

-- Ben
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Re: SATA cards? RAID/Non RAID

[Tom Buskey]

There is an unsupported linux SDK here along with all the drivers.http://www.broadcom.com/products/raid_2.1.0_linuxdriver_download.php
I haven't read through the license.On 6/26/06, Ben Scott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On 6/26/06, Tom Buskey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>  RaidCore/BroadCom has a 4 port and an 8 port SATA RAID card.  Ah, BroadCom makes those.  I've seen an advertisement for RaidCore,but haven't had a chance to evaluate one.  What's the driver supportlike under Linux?  Full GPL, binary-only, or something halfway?
Historically, it seems like BroadCom's Linux support policy has been"Fuck you", which makes me pretty leery...-- Ben___gnhlug-discuss mailing list
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Re: SATA cards? RAID/Non RAID

[Tom Buskey]

On 6/26/06, Ben Scott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On 6/26/06, Tom Buskey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:>  RaidCore/BroadCom has a 4 port and an 8 port SATA RAID card.  Ah, BroadCom makes those.  I've seen an advertisement for RaidCore,
but haven't had a chance to evaluate one.  What's the driver supportlike under Linux?  Full GPL, binary-only, or something halfway?Historically, it seems like BroadCom's Linux support policy has been"Fuck you", which makes me pretty leery...
I worked as a QA temp at RaidCore as they got bought by BroadCom.  I was: setting up an array (0,1,1+n,5,10,50) installing RedHat/Fedora on the array (there was a driver floppy) using ext3/reiserfs/xfs/jfs for the install
 testing & seeing if it broke.They were very active in the linux support when I was there (2 years ago) and I have no doubt that group is still active.  I think they were looking to release the code.  It may be out there (
http://www.raidcore.com if it's still there).  They do require a license to do the advanced raid (5,50,10?,1+n??) stuff and that depends on hardware on the card.It's not true hardware raid but it works very well.  Those guys came from other raid companies & have a wealth of knowledge.
One *very* cool thing was transforming from one RAID level to another on the fly.  ex: Add a 3rd drive and transform from RAID 1 to RAID 5.  Do RAID 1+n with 3 drives.  Swap the nth drive out as a backup (SATA is hotswap...).  Keep that nth drive hidden from the OS if you want.
It's a very cool card and has very cool features.  I wish I could get a discount on one for my home systems :-)

Re: SATA cards? RAID/Non RAID

[Drew Van Zandt]

I can refute that a bit from personal experience... when their initial
gigabit ethernet cards were released, they came with Linux drivers on
the CD.  The Broadcom rep also seemed perfectly happy talking about
work on it in the future.  Maybe someone got burned?

--DTVZ
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Re: SATA cards? RAID/Non RAID

[Ben Scott]

On 6/26/06, Tom Buskey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

 RaidCore/BroadCom has a 4 port and an 8 port SATA RAID card.


 Ah, BroadCom makes those.  I've seen an advertisement for RaidCore,
but haven't had a chance to evaluate one.  What's the driver support
like under Linux?  Full GPL, binary-only, or something halfway?
Historically, it seems like BroadCom's Linux support policy has been
"Fuck you", which makes me pretty leery...

-- Ben
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Re: Video Conversions

[Randy Edwards]

 > Most of them are encoded with MS-MPEG4v2/Nandub.
 > What I want to do is convert them to burn them to a DVD.
 
   One popular GNU/Linux tool to do video conversions is Tovid 
. It'll handle that just fine, in 
either GUI or commandline modes.

   Once converted, something like qdvdauthor 
 will create and burn the DVDs.

 Regards,
 .
 Randy

-- 
GNU/Linux: superior tools for those who know how to use them.
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Re: SATA cards? RAID/Non RAID

[Andrew W. Gaunt]

We use RAID controllers from 3ware (several vintages).. They work.

Drew Van Zandt wrote:


I use SYBA controllers with 4 internal.  They run about $20 on newegg.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16815124020

On 6/26/06, Tom Buskey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:




On 6/26/06, John Abreau <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> Speaking of which, what's the best SATA raid card these days? I'd
> be using this under CentOS. Does anyone make a raid card for 5 SATA
> drives, or am I stuck using just 4 drives in the unit?


 RaidCore/BroadCom has a 4 port and an 8 port SATA RAID card.  I was 
testing
an 8 port one w/ 2 of the SuperMicro enclosures w/ 10 drives.  2 
drives were
unused.  You can also use multiple RaidCore cards together and 
combine the
drives.  Ex:  16 drives, 2 of the 8 port cards in a RAID 0, 1, 1+n, 
5, 10,

50 array that looks like 1 big drive to the OS (RedHat, Fedora, Suse,
Windows).  They run something like $300.

On a similar note, I'd like to find a multiport SATA controller (> 3 
active
ports) and I can't spend $300 :-(.  I don't care about hardware RAID, 
I just

want multiple SATA drives attached.

I've seen 4 port cards that have 2 internal and 2 external, but only 
2 ports

can be used at a time.  That isn't what I'm looking for.




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Re: Video Conversions

[Andrew W. Gaunt]

Check out VLC on videolan.org. I happen to be be using it today to do 
some streaming

for a demo... it's pretty neat and I believe it does transcoding as well.


Bill Mullen wrote:


On Mon, 26 Jun 2006 10:51:50 -0400, Travis Roy wrote:

 


I've recently started getting Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes
from dapcentral.org.

Most of them are encoded with MS-MPEG4v2/Nandub.

What I want to do is convert them to burn them to a DVD.

Does anybody know of any console based Linux utilities to do this. I
was using ffmpegX on my mac, but I ended up with an audio drift
problem where the more the movie goes on, the more out of sync it
gets. I heard this has to do with the audio being VBR.
   



I think ToVid can probably handle that. I don't have access to a DVD
burner, so I have no way to determine that for certain, but this task
appears to be within its stated capabilities. It's a command-line app
(set of scripts, actually) with an optional GUI.

http://tovid.sourceforge.net/

 



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Re: Video Conversions

[Bill Mullen]

On Mon, 26 Jun 2006 10:51:50 -0400, Travis Roy wrote:

> I've recently started getting Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes
> from dapcentral.org.
> 
> Most of them are encoded with MS-MPEG4v2/Nandub.
> 
> What I want to do is convert them to burn them to a DVD.
> 
> Does anybody know of any console based Linux utilities to do this. I
> was using ffmpegX on my mac, but I ended up with an audio drift
> problem where the more the movie goes on, the more out of sync it
> gets. I heard this has to do with the audio being VBR.

I think ToVid can probably handle that. I don't have access to a DVD
burner, so I have no way to determine that for certain, but this task
appears to be within its stated capabilities. It's a command-line app
(set of scripts, actually) with an optional GUI.

http://tovid.sourceforge.net/

-- 
Bill Mullen
RLU #270075
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Re: SATA cards? RAID/Non RAID

[Drew Van Zandt]

I use SYBA controllers with 4 internal.  They run about $20 on newegg.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16815124020

On 6/26/06, Tom Buskey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:



On 6/26/06, John Abreau <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> Speaking of which, what's the best SATA raid card these days? I'd
> be using this under CentOS. Does anyone make a raid card for 5 SATA
> drives, or am I stuck using just 4 drives in the unit?


 RaidCore/BroadCom has a 4 port and an 8 port SATA RAID card.  I was testing
an 8 port one w/ 2 of the SuperMicro enclosures w/ 10 drives.  2 drives were
unused.  You can also use multiple RaidCore cards together and combine the
drives.  Ex:  16 drives, 2 of the 8 port cards in a RAID 0, 1, 1+n, 5, 10,
50 array that looks like 1 big drive to the OS (RedHat, Fedora, Suse,
Windows).  They run something like $300.

On a similar note, I'd like to find a multiport SATA controller (> 3 active
ports) and I can't spend $300 :-(.  I don't care about hardware RAID, I just
want multiple SATA drives attached.

I've seen 4 port cards that have 2 internal and 2 external, but only 2 ports
can be used at a time.  That isn't what I'm looking for.




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SATA cards? RAID/Non RAID

[Tom Buskey]

On 6/26/06, John Abreau <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Speaking of which, what's the best SATA raid card these days? I'dbe using this under CentOS. Does anyone make a raid card for 5 SATAdrives, or am I stuck using just 4 drives in the unit?
RaidCore/BroadCom has a 4 port and an 8 port SATA RAID card.  I was testing an 8 port one w/ 2 of the SuperMicro enclosures w/ 10 drives.  2 drives were unused.  You can also use multiple RaidCore cards together and combine the drives.  Ex:  16 drives, 2 of the 8 port cards in a RAID 0, 1, 1+n, 5, 10, 50 array that looks like 1 big drive to the OS (RedHat, Fedora, Suse, Windows).  They run something like $300.
On a similar note, I'd like to find a multiport SATA controller (> 3 active ports) and I can't spend $300 :-(.  I don't care about hardware RAID, I just want multiple SATA drives attached.I've seen 4 port cards that have 2 internal and 2 external, but only 2 ports can be used at a time.  That isn't what I'm looking for.

Re: Friday afternoon hardware questions

[Tom Buskey]

On 6/26/06, Bill McGonigle <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On Jun 26, 2006, at 08:46, Tom Buskey wrote:> SuperMicro has a 5 shelf module for SATA that lets you hot swap the> disks> w/o touching the cables.  You might be able to swap the module too.> It fit
> into a tower nicely.Neat.  Does it use a multilink cable or a fistfull of SATA cables onthe back?A fistfull of standard SATA cables.  You can setup LED blinks on them for all disks or individual.
 

Re: Friday afternoon hardware questions

[John Abreau]

Bill McGonigle wrote:
> On Jun 26, 2006, at 08:46, Tom Buskey wrote:
> 
>> SuperMicro has a 5 shelf module for SATA that lets you hot swap the disks
>> w/o touching the cables.  You might be able to swap the module too. 
>> It fit
>> into a tower nicely.
> 
> Neat.  Does it use a multilink cable or a fistfull of SATA cables on the
> back?
> 

I picked up one of those recently; I'm hoping to get around to
installing it soon. It uses a fistful of cables, and I assume it
will hook up to pretty much any SATA raid card.

Speaking of which, what's the best SATA raid card these days? I'd
be using this under CentOS. Does anyone make a raid card for 5 SATA
drives, or am I stuck using just 4 drives in the unit?


-- 
John Abreau / Executive Director, Boston Linux & Unix
ICQ 28611923 / AIM abreauj / JABBER [EMAIL PROTECTED] / YAHOO abreauj
Email [EMAIL PROTECTED] / WWW http://www.abreau.net / PGP-Key-ID 0xD5C7B5D9
PGP-Key-Fingerprint 72 FB 39 4F 3C 3B D6 5B E0 C8 5A 6E F1 2C BE 99
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Re: Video Conversions

[Greg Kettmann]

Travis:
I don't have a specific answer for you.  However, I've done a lot of
video editing, on Windows, and Video/Audio loss of synch is a very
common problem, even for commercially available software.  It's similar
to what you described, more of a "creep" than anything.  It starts
small and get's progressively worse.  One solution, with the commercial
software, is to add "cut points" which breaks the whole into smaller
pieces and minimizes the creep.  

That said, I recommend http://www.doom9.org/   They are one of the best
sites I know for video editing.  Their forums are excellent.  Not sure
about their Mac support, but they're the source for the answers to
video questions.  

Good luck.  

Travis Roy wrote:
I've recently started getting Mystery Science Theater 3000
episodes from dapcentral.org.
  
Most of them are encoded with MS-MPEG4v2/Nandub.
  
What I want to do is convert them to burn them to a DVD.
  
  
Does anybody know of any console based Linux utilities to do this. I
was using ffmpegX on my mac, but I ended up with an audio drift problem
where the more the movie goes on, the more out of sync it gets. I heard
this has to do with the audio being VBR. 
  
I have yet to find a Mac app that can fix this issue.
  
-- 
Travis Roy

Re: Friday afternoon hardware questions

[Bill McGonigle]

On Jun 26, 2006, at 08:46, Tom Buskey wrote:

SuperMicro has a 5 shelf module for SATA that lets you hot swap the 
disks
w/o touching the cables.  You might be able to swap the module too.  
It fit

into a tower nicely.


Neat.  Does it use a multilink cable or a fistfull of SATA cables on 
the back?


I also ran across what is probably one of these in a box (looks like a 
Shuttle case) with a handle on top and a multilink connector.  Not what 
I need for this project, but a lovely portable $2000 3 Terabyte backup 
system nonetheless.


-Bill

-
Bill McGonigle, Owner   Work: 603.448.4440
BFC Computing, LLC  Home: 603.448.1668
[EMAIL PROTECTED]   Cell: 603.252.2606
http://www.bfccomputing.com/Page: 603.442.1833
Blog: http://blog.bfccomputing.com/
VCard: http://bfccomputing.com/vcard/bill.vcf

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Video Conversions

[Travis Roy]

I've recently started getting Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes from dapcentral.org.Most of them are encoded with MS-MPEG4v2/Nandub.What I want to do is convert them to burn them to a DVD.
Does anybody know of any console based Linux utilities to do this. I was using ffmpegX on my mac, but I ended up with an audio drift problem where the more the movie goes on, the more out of sync it gets. I heard this has to do with the audio being VBR. 
I have yet to find a Mac app that can fix this issue.-- Travis Roy

Re: Friday afternoon hardware questions

[Bill McGonigle]

On Jun 23, 2006, at 16:56, Ben Scott wrote:

 Are you saying the case has front LEDs, but no wires on them?  How  
odd.


yeah...


 The connectors that go on them are, I believe, essential the same
thing as a "jumper".  It's just that rather then jumping from one pin
to the other, there are two wires coming out.

 Googling for jumper+connector+wire appears to yield pretty good
results.


Thanks.  That helped get me googling.  I started there, wound up  
searching for '2-pin cable' based upon results and then stumbled upon  
'ID-bit cable' which led me here:



http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp? 
c_id=102&cp_id=10218&cs_id=1021806&p_id=696&style=&seq=1&format=1#largei 
mage


which makes some sense - these are the same kind of cables you would  
have used to jumper an external SCSI push-button ID selector.  The old  
SCSI hard drives had a bank of maybe 6 connectors, 3 for id-bits, one  
for activity indicator LED, one for read-only, and one for spin-up  
delay.


Note to the intrepid - find someone selling them with an affiliates  
account and put up a webpage called 'hard drive indicator cables' with  
a link to them. ;)


-Bill
-
Bill McGonigle, Owner   Work: 603.448.4440
BFC Computing, LLC  Home: 603.448.1668
[EMAIL PROTECTED]   Cell: 603.252.2606
http://www.bfccomputing.com/Page: 603.442.1833
Blog: http://blog.bfccomputing.com/
VCard: http://bfccomputing.com/vcard/bill.vcf

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Re: Friday afternoon hardware questions

[Tom Buskey]

That's it.  It worked very well at RaidCore.I should've had a link too:http://www.supermicro.com/products/accessories/mobilerack/CSE-M35T-1.cfm
On 6/26/06, Drew Van Zandt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
FYI, here's a link to what I think Tom was speaking of:http://www.gotobcn.com/shopping_cart.php?r=SHP20060622&osCsid=9e91643d25ae3b69f277625fd0019408
$118, uses 3 5 1/4" bays, provides 5 hot-swappable SATA drive bays.$129 shipped... I'm very tempted, it's been on my "neat, I want it"list for a while.--DTVZ
Has a fan too.  So it can be outside a case. On 6/26/06, Tom Buskey <
[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:>> SuperMicro has a 5 shelf module for SATA that lets you hot swap the disks> w/o touching the cables.  You might be able to swap the module too.  It fit> into a tower nicely.
>

Re: Friday afternoon hardware questions

[Drew Van Zandt]

FYI, here's a link to what I think Tom was speaking of:

http://www.gotobcn.com/shopping_cart.php?r=SHP20060622&osCsid=9e91643d25ae3b69f277625fd0019408

$118, uses 3 5 1/4" bays, provides 5 hot-swappable SATA drive bays.
$129 shipped... I'm very tempted, it's been on my "neat, I want it"
list for a while.

--DTVZ

On 6/26/06, Tom Buskey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:


SuperMicro has a 5 shelf module for SATA that lets you hot swap the disks
w/o touching the cables.  You might be able to swap the module too.  It fit
into a tower nicely.


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Re: Friday afternoon hardware questions

[Tom Buskey]

SuperMicro has a 5 shelf module for SATA that lets you hot swap the disks w/o touching the cables.  You might be able to swap the module too.  It fit into a tower nicely.