Hardware

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This is a community dedicated to the hardware aspect of technology, from PC parts, to gadgets, to servers, to industrial control equipment, to semiconductors.

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Some pictures of a build from last year. I replaced a file server that was in reliable operation since 2007, seeing no hardware failures. Its purpose is to store file backups from the network. With only 4,5TB available, it was constantly getting full. It was also loud and power hungry, so I decided that the best option was a complete replacement. I hope the new one is as trouble free as the old!

Old specs: (built may 2007, upgraded some drives late 2009)

  • motherboard: TYAN S2925 "Tomcat n3400B"
  • CPU: AMD Sempron 3000+ "Manila" (single core)
  • RAM: DDR-2 ECC 800mHz 1GB
  • operating system drives: HDD, Hardware RAID-1, SCSI-320, 2x 36GB, ext3 and XFS file systems
  • served data drives: HDD, LVM, SATA-II, 3x 500GB and 3x 1TB, XFS file systems
  • removable media: IDE CD drive
  • operating system: Debian GNU/Linux, starting with version 4 "Etch"

New specs: (built september 2025)

  • motherboard: ASRock B850M-X R2.0
  • CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 9600X "Granite Ridge" (6 cores, 12 threads)
  • RAM: DDR-5 ECC 2600mHz 32GB
  • operating system drives: SSD, ZFS mirror, SATA-III, 2x 128GB, ZFS file systems
  • served data drives: HDD, ZFS RAID-Z1, SATA-III, 3x 24TB, ZFS file systems
  • removable media: USB 3.0 micro SD cards
  • operating system: FreeBSD, starting with version 14
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(Sorry if I'm posting this in the wrong community!)

A Raspberry Pi 5 I use (not the one in the photo) fell off the table, and the black square component pointed at by the arrow was straight knocked off the board. Yeah, if you needed a reason why you should always use a case, this is one, ooops lol...

It looks like it came off cleanly, leaving two square metal pads below. I still have the component, the small black box. This happened while the Raspberry Pi was running, and the power LED went from green to red in an instant. Afterward, booting was no longer possible. So, my questions:

  1. If this happened while it was running, is it likely that this fried something else and it's not worth getting fixed? Or is this likely fixable?

  2. If I want to get this fixed, how do you guys find a good local repair shop? I heard some apparently do sloppy soldering jobs, and given the RAM prices I would like not to have this Raspberry Pi unnecessarily damaged further if it's salvageable. I live in Freiburg im Breisgau in Germany, if anybody knows good local places.

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ohaa.xyz/post/11345138

I recently aquired an old hacousto Accent 8x8 Audio matrix, however I cant find any still alive links for the companion software. The only lead ive found so far is an archived version of the website. Archive.org hasnt archived the actual file though. Does anyone know of any mirrors, repositories, archives, or other sources where something like this might still be available?

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Leaning heavily towards the Lattepanda Mu with Intel N100, but also considering the Raspberry Pi 5 compute module as an alternative. Main reason for the preference is performance. But does that still hold up if passively cooled? I've read that the N100 doesn't really reach its full potential at its 6 W TDP, instead often drawing around 15 W during benchmarks. All of the benchmarks I've come across are for an actively-cooled setup.

I'm planning on a heatsink that will be open to ambient air and not much larger than the compute module itself, maybe 6x12x1 cm. How much do those extra watts beyond the TDP matter to the performance of an Intel CPU?

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An interesting aspect of the Lisuan Tech 7G106 is its Virtual GPU feature. It is a fully-featured single-root I/O virtualization (SR-IOV) component, with up to 16 containers, which lets you share the GPU to virtual machines running on the same system, so that it can be used in containerized enterprise environments and hyperscalers.

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Hi, hopefully this isn't breaking any rules. I just wanted to show my experience with APC RMA process as UPS tends to be quite niche topic and this is also my first UPS so I had no prior experience with any other companies.

I've bought APC Back-UPS Pro 1500 in 10th of July 2022 and recently (early this July) it stopped switching to battery, it showed F02 error instead and immediately shut off the moment a power cut off.

1.) Getting hold of support, very difficult. Most of the links on the website were broken with error "under maintenance" took me around 1 week of trying to be able to contact anybody (I finally managed to get a phone number).

2.) Contacting support - the guy on phone told me where to e-mail my issue.

3.) E-mail - responded within 3 days. Told me the battery is likely bad and sent me a new battery free of charge which arrived another 3 or 4 days later. Also provided link with guide on how to properly reset the UPS (link was broken).

Unfortunately, battery wasn't the issue. I've e-mailed back ASAP after I've tried the new battery. They responded within a day and sent me a whole new UPS replacement (with battery) which just arrived (works).

They will come to pickup the new battery and old broken UPS in the next 2 days. (Free of charge shipping both ways).

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Hi, currently have a spare GeForce 1060 lying around collecting dust.

Planning to use it with Ollama for self-hosting my own AI model or maybe even for AI training.

Problem is, none of my home lab devices have a compatible connection to the GPU’s GPIO. My current setup includes:

  • Beelink MINI S12 Intel Alder Lake N100
  • Raspberry Pi 5
  • Le Potato AML-S905X-CC
  • Pi Picos

Would like to hear about recommendations or experiences with external GPU docks that I can use to connect my GPU to my home lab setup, thanks.

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I use a M910Q with an engenering sample i9 cpu as my home server

After some seconds or minutes after the boot the screen blanks and the machine doesn't seem to have anything running inside

So, if I'm loading something with graphical interface it can show the desktop, sometimes I can use it, but some time after the issue appears

i tried changing the drives, the ram, booting from USB, the problem persists

i noticed that if I change some CPU parameters in the bios the behavior changes. Something like power profiles, and turning off "turbo" which shouldn't work with an es-i9

So my guess right now is that it blanks the screen when it hits some load, but I didn't check it properly. And it doesn't look like I ever encountered anything before.

Any ideas how can I track the problem without just buying everything new?

Thank you

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