I post things related to computers, programming, and EE.
Since I use Linux I get questions about it. Here's a FAQ:
Q: What Distro do you use? A: kubuntu, whatever the newest LTS is.
Q: What DE do you use? A: KDE Plasma 5
Q: Why don't you use Arch, Gentoo, slackware, etc A: Ubuntu "Just Works" for me.
Some other info about how I make videos: Camera: Black Magic Pocket Cinema Camera 4k Editing Software: Davinci Resolve (Yes, I edit in Linux as well)
If you would like to send something in to the channel you can send me a DM on Discord, or email me at the address in the details on my channels about page
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I’m not sure if you have seen Adrian blacks channel but he need help from the community on a failing self test problem. The machine in question is a plexius /20 server machine from 1985 with Unix 1.2. He has imaged the drive while he was able to get into it so he has that uploaded and has ppl scouring through code to see what the failure is hardware wise
I really like how this video shows things just how they are. All the things you've had to do along the way to make things fit or work are shown exactly as they are no matter how "unconventional" 😀
i dont own a server but a NAS, and one of things I love about it is just archiving steam game installs on a 4tb HDD, and then installing on my main PC SSD, doing this so I don't have to worry about my data caps when I want to reinstall a game. its pretty convenient considering youre just storing the archived format so you can save more space then fully installing it, and I might have to do this with my GOG game installs too.
28:03 why won't you cut the crew section of the stand and just bolt it to the mainboard? this will not tighten it up to the backplate but will give the needed strength not to touch it accidentally
On another point regarding your game streaming setup. I have a similar setup where I use my Nintendo switch on Android to connect to my home network using tailscale, and stream games off my main Windows PC. When looking at your video it appears as though you just have all your games in the steam folder on your server, and then you just select the drive on your steam deck. You didn't mention how you're streaming it or what OS you're using for compatibility since proton isn't 100% I assumed you were using a Windows virtual machine.
Man, that server really is a sight to behold. I get money being an issue but it sounds as if you get a lot of gear donated. With that said wouldn't it have been a better idea to just build a new machine with the new components, and transfer your data over.
Don't put more and bigger drives in the server, move some old projects to cold storage. Even if you have good backups, bigger drives mean larger recovery time in case of disaster and more that can go wrong with the backup itself. You likely don't need a lot of the older content so it's doing nothing on there, but being subject to bit rot and possibly infecting your backups with that over time. You might even want to consider breaking up your jobs and storage between multiple servers, just to be able to keep some work going if one develops problems, single point of failure is never a good thing, just waiting for parts can break your schedule big-time. That's my advice anyway.
Maybe you could consider bluray for archiving. A good brand disc will be M discs, which are certified to last for 1000 years or so they say,. The downside is the cost, 100gb rewritable discs aren't cheap and more physical space is needed. I wouldn't rely on hdds or ssds for archival purposes.
Just staring the video, but as a historian who often uses Tesseract, it brings every computer to its knees. End of video edit about Ubisoft. WatchDogs Legion (the London one) launches fine on my system via Lutris and Ubi Launcher. I roll Kubuntu 24.04 on a Ryzen 1600/GTX 1060 if that’s of any use!
That's what cracks are for. You can combine the crack with the full copy that has video and music. GOG usually include the cracks. The new VPK copies of Half-Life 2 seem to work without any crack. They maitained compatibility with old Windows even in their relatively recent releases (I've not looked at the latest). It's way worse with console peasants who can't play old games at all.
If I owned a server, I would attempt to build a clean box with a pre and then Hepa filter on the air intake, that should keep the entire server dust free, though would require good intake fans and monitoring of the filters. Would make a neat video project? Wow! so many drives 😊
22:14 that SAS controller is set as a RAID controller. When flashing it to IT mode, you’ll be able to use it as an HBA. You won’t have to use any specific controller for it. That’s a lot easier when you need to recover data from the disks. Setting up ZFS or LVM should make it fully controller independent. In short: disks are now controller dependent. You’d want to fix that. :)
Why are you not using one of those plastic feet that used to hold old mobos in, instead of that plastic bubble bag? That bag will just hold heat in that spot 😢
I bought gt7 day 1. I havent spent a dime and the game hasnt encouraged me to spend any. Not even so much as a suggestion to buy credits, which is by the way the only microtransaction in the game. All the updates have been free and have added both cars and new menus. If you dont want to "grind", you should pick another racing game cause gt has been like that since the first one. The only valid criticism is its online drm, which sadly will eventually become a problem, but not right now.
Being a Windows guy, I was wondering how smooth the hardware upgrade would go on Linux. It's interesting it had that issue with that RAID1 set and I was also perplexed that you put off the NIC swap, since I would've thought that change in Linux would've been fairly straightforward for you.
During this time no-cd cracks were out for all games. This got past the online "drm" which you speak of. Always online games will never work unless getting your hands on server files.
If you're feeling serious about preserving your Steam games library it might be worth backing them up outside of Steam. You might've missed it but there was recently a minor scandal involving Capcom adding an additional layer of DRM to their entire Steam library, so even though games aren't ever supposed to get removed from your Steam library (still possible but very very very rare) they might very well get updates that either change the game in undesirable ways or cause major compatibility issues such as the new Capcom DRM not liking Linux as much. Since you've already got everything installed just temporarily rename your Steam executable and try running games directly on their own. Some games run just fine out of the box without Steam, others might require SteamAPI replacements or renaming the SteamAPI DLL file, some need proper executable replacements and some need other patches like XLive DLL replacements for old GFWL games.
If a single-player game requires DRM beyond the store I bought it from, or if it requires me to be online… …I don’t buy it these days. Ubisoft, EA, ETC games… I just don’t buy. Everyone should do the same. Windows for Gaming Live in a retro sense should have forced Microsoft to fix all the problems and pay out customers.
I think the problem with the raid1 array could be caused from the fact that you build an array with disks and not partitions (dev/sdj and /dev/sdf, not /dev/sdj2 ...) where one is partitionned and the other is not. Just my 2cents
Funny that through piracy, a third-party, illegal method of running these games on old systems such as Windows XP actually works unlike official services that the games were meant to be run through. I'm glad people preserve things like this.
You think a RAID0 is spooky? I have 4 RAID0 arrays in my server and that array is RAID0. I effectively have a RAID0+0. It's insane but it works(for now) until I can get some decent drives and actually do a proper RAID5 (Maybe even RAID50 if I feel spicy enough).
Kinda shocked you went Sandy Bridge to Ivy Bridge, with Haswell and Broadwell server available so cheaply. Heck, even faster chips are at somewhat sensible prices. Also, I run a Dynatron 2u active cooler on my Xeon Scaleable, and it's perfectly quiet with the stock fan.
Uuuuuuh, is he aware that every single one of his CD's, DVD's, floppy's, flash cartridges are going to fail eventually? Music masters on tape are constantly getting worse every year, but luckily it's a lot easier to "restore" analog audio than it is binary code. I don't think DVD's are expected to last longer than a few decades, and some of those titles are getting pretty damn close to their physical life expectancies. It's actually why RAID storage configs are still important outside of home use. What's the new argument when the physical media starts to fail?
I love it how you put SO MUCH care and love into restoring and perfectly cleaning and soldering your vintage machines, and... the server that makes all the videos about them is just a jank-ass dusty mess with cables everywhere and tape covering pci buses so they don't conduct and a MacGyvered cooling fan made of plastic panes. Absolute unit! This is why I love PCs!! 😆🤣
Notice the old AkBKuKu (?) logo on the shirt. I still remember. And sorry if I butchered your old RU-vid name, I can still use Druaga 2 if necessary. ;)
What is with the HUGE amount of distortion in the audio? I checked it on multiple devices... It's sounds terrible, Like a surging buzz.. I'm guessing you were trying to lower the fan noise from The server?
