It's been such a long time...

I really need to get my own digital camera so I won't have my pc projects bottlenecked by the presence of wedding paraphenalia on nat's camera.

Suck.

The good news is that I can post a few screenies of my hard drive bench marks as this weekend conclude the long, drawn out SCSI odyssey which began way back in January.

Once I can get the camera out to upload pics for the actual installation I will indeed but until then content yourself with the following.

For reference the two systems affected by the SCSI Odyssey are my main PC 'Rorschach' and the new only recently completed 'Zaps' Sadly HD TUNE will not recognize the system drive for Zaps to bench mark so no screenies will follow. Instead I will recount the unusual tale of how Zaps came together out of scraps.

Life came to this unique little box from a myriad of sources. The case and mobo were gathering dust in an attic, the RAM tucked neatly away near a burgeoning gunsafe and the CPU/Video card were altogether somewhere else.

So these parts were culled into a seemingly impressive system. Intel server board, 3.2 ghz P4 chip, 2 gigs ram, 128 mb agp card (admittedly weak but better than onboard) all tucked away nicely in a sleek black mid-tower case.

Now there was work to be done aplenty, some retro junk had to be pulled out, screws tightened, fans taken out entirely (the noise was awful) and after much scraping, tooling and cleaning Zaps was coming together nicely. The only problem is that windows would NOT install no matter what I did.

Like any enterprising IT guy I did the obvious. I installed Linux. Kubuntu to be exact, its all there in the last post (look across the months long void to find it) and so it slept happily as I explored the bouncier and bluer world of the KDE.

However not long ago after offloading a surplus pc for a tidy profit I decided to revisit that box and attempt to resolve. However after three different hard drives failed to accept a fresh copy of XP I decided to give up and just use Linux.

However, in a cruel twist of fate, this option no longer presented itself. For in my haste and greed the system had fallen to the wiles of time and my daunting linux box became an omni-amputee. Lamentations fell and scattered. All seemed lost.

And then, what luck! Upon the acquisition of some SCSI drives a la Chad and the Adaptec controller card I was able to finally score some cables and begin the odyssey.

What began proved the strangest twist of all. There was no room in Beebe, the main system was wrapped up with work use and I didn't want pc guts strung out all over my office (any more so than usual!) so I did what I had to do. I dusted off Zaps, slapped in the card, terminated my drives and set them gently inside their cages.

My intention was to play with the RAID setup so that it would be breezy once the time came to migrate to Rorschach. How I was disappointed to learn that raid would be unavailable. Now when faced with a crucial decision I opted to spend my profits from the recent sale to procure some decent hardware. Approximately 100 bucks on ebay afforded me the following.

5x Amphenol Ultra 320 SCSI cables (4 devices per cable, terminator block included) ~20bucks
3x 36 gigabyte Ultra 320 SCSI drives (all working, rails attached)~40 bucks
1x Adaptec Raid card (o and 1 only, but thats all I wanted) ~40bucks

Granted this crushed my profits over the sale but I felt that it would be worth it. Also it allows me to sell the extra cables (possibly) and as you'll discover to offload Zaps onto some lucky soul.

So going back to discovering that the adaptec card Dom gave me was just a controller card I attempted to install windows and IT WORKED!!

I could not believe it. The crazy thing is that I installed XP on a 160 gigabyte IDE drive and not either of the SCSI drives. What luck, I thought. It worked and if I could just do a burn in then I wouldn't have to worry.

Of course removing the two 73 gig SCSI drives crashed the system and no amount of coaxing or prodding would bring windows back. To quote Neal Stephenson: Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.

So the whole point of the ebay stuff was to acquire a working card for Rorscach and a dinky little drive to use with the original card so that Zaps could...zap stuff.

Once I went through the painfully tedious task of lowballing some bids for the necessary hardware setting up windows was pretty straightforward. There was a minor glitch because the raid card came with a 2 device cable. I tried unsuccessfully to use it with Zaps but nothing I did could get the drive to recognize. After a half hour of heart ache I made ready to chuck out the whole works when I noticed a potential source of failure. The two-device cable had a single wire broken off from the main strand.

Using a healthy cable instantly solved the first problem. After that the only real issue was fairly trivial. Drivers caused more issues than anything else. Once done XP installed and has gone through the 30 boot run and a few other torture tests (prime 95, 6 units of F@home)

So now my dead system is up and ready for resale once I find a willing bidder.

Pics to follow.

Build II in all its glory, as it happened.

Before you delve any further into this post I lay fair warning that most of the way through I ran out of space on Nat's camera and didn't have the patience to actually hunt down the USB adapter for it. Plus the PC I was going to offload all the sweet ass pics onto was half disassembled at that point.

For the OS install and part of the end game (cable management...you really didn't miss much) you may have to use your imagination.
Here's the boxes!!! Aren't they...cardboardy?

This is my budget Case. I wanted to put a twenty dollar bill next to it for comparison but all I had was 16 ones, 12 quarters and one of those stupid buffalo dollars. The case is way sweeter.

Here's inside the case. Note the PSU to the left. The side panel with the black CPU vent is leaning on the old Dell. More on that later.

Check out the inside of the case. I know my hairy ass arm's in the way but you can see the detachable 120mm fan on the back and all the little case wires. They have to be connected to the Mobo so that the external USB ports, audio and power button all work.

Here's the bulk of the new parts. Even though they are laying on top those pieces on top of the Biostar mobo are going into Build I and their weaker cousins will inhabit Build II

This is the 500 watt PSU that came with the case from Build I. All that junk on the back part is the silicone noise killing kit that I ordered but never used for Build I. The point is that the fan on the PSU is going to be noisy and if its directly touching metal then it only gets worse. With a little buffer I can save an ear gnawing rattle from ruining my pseudo server.

This pic looks like crap but this is the front panel. The fan (top) is actually already placed but screwing the thing in was such a hassle that I forgot to accurately document it. No Pulitzer for me I guess. As you can see to the right the front panel of the case detaches and is more of a grate than a sealed edge. Air will pull through here over the HDD's and get spat out the back via the provided 120 mm fan.


So here's Build I. You'll immediately notice similarities to Build II. Thats because most PC mid tower cases look like this on the inside. Some will have little conduits for routing cables, see through side doors or separate chambers for the PSU. All that crap costs extra so...here's the basic stuff. Take it as you will. Also make a note of the small black tiny fan that came with the CPU.

Back to Build II where you can see the two HDD's have been mounted. The bumps on the case are actually built in standouts for the screws that hold the motherboard to the case interior.

This is just a shot of the IO port on the Biostar. Note the onboard VGA connector. Makes life so much easier!

I give you BIOSTAR (Galactica) The CPU is already attached as well as the big butterfly inspired copper heatsink. Its basically a series of pipes filled with liquid that boils at 35c and a shit load of surface area. Why copper? because its thermal conductivity is unparalleled for the cost. That doodad weighs about five pounds. Arctic Silver thermal paste was from Build I.

This is Build I again. The CPU cooler here is much rounder and heavier and looks so badass its not even funny. Getting the thing on was two and half pains in my buttocks but oh well. The thing rocks out 2,600,000,000 operations per second. Strike that. It does that on both cores at the same time!!
This is my stable temp speed fan reading. I made AVG chase its own tail for 30 minutes or so while doing a little folding at home. It topped out about 5 degrees higher but as I adjusted fan speeds and resealed the case it leveled off in this neighborhood. I made the icons to the left from WoW spells and items. Don't tell Blizzard!

So thats where the pics get scarce. I know this isn't much help for a first time builder but that was not my intent. I don't recommend my style of building to anyone else because it takes forever, uses marginal experience and I had to pull a Mission Impossible style head dodge to keep sweat from dripping onto my Mobo at one point.

I do feel compelled to share a few tips. These are the points that I feel most confident about.

-Research your components to death.
-Try to find others who have built similar systems or used some of the same parts you want.
-Don't just look at manufacturer specs. Read reviews and see what other people think. Take good notes and if someone says something is bigger or wider than it appears take that advice to heart. (In this case my cpu cooler was huge beyond reckoning. That was fine for me but if this had been a slim case build it would have been impossible.)
-Make sure your PSU has the right types of connectors for all your needs.
-Make sure everything fits.
-Try to dry dock all your components before they are installed. Take a look at all the pieces to make sure you can install them in a convenient order. Don't work yourself into corners. I had to take out the PSU for Build II to fit in the CPU cooler. That cost 20 mins and a lot of sweat time because it was already connected to a few other components.
-Cables will be messy no matter how well you plan your build. Tame them with zip ties and make good use of empty spaces. Even tucking a few stray wires can mean a big difference. Plan to spend some time tidying up. Before that plan which cables have to go where and try to get a feel for them. Don't zip tie until the end in case you make mistakes.
-Finally be prepared for things to go wrong. Hopefully all your parts will work correctly and better than that they will all synchronize well. If they don't then the world does not end. If the case looks cluttered or messier don't let it bum you out. Perfection isn't something you have to achieve to make a decent system.


(This how Alex reacted to the post. Two seconds later a bunch of pea soup hit me in the back of the head.)