Dashcat2 Build

MisterDNA said:
Wow. I'm not going to be doing any work on the rig for a bit. Utah is about to get pwnt by a full on blizzard and they're telling _Utahns_ not to travel in the snow. Utah, where we wear shorts above 40F outside and play golf while doing so.
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LOL. Yeah, I was checking up on this thread to see if you were going to do some storm-proofing. I think USU was locked down at 2:00pm today with classes canceled.

As for me, my wife and I are expecting a new little baby boy any day now. Hopefully i'm not stuck driving through the snow later tonight trying to get my wife the hospital. :D
 
Maybe the snow that drifts into my trenches will make driving ground rods easier?
 
That depends... does the ground freeze when it stays cold too long? It does in NC...

;)
 
starhawk said:
That depends... does the ground freeze when it stays cold too long? It does in NC...

;)
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The frost line here is 30" below grade so yeah. Thing is we're not in the dead winter dead part of the year yet so as soon as this Arctic crap blows through, the sun will still warm the dirt some. I'm really hoping I can get in there. I'm running out of time like bad.

I'll be posting blizzard photos in minutes.
 
I'm from NC... blizzard to us means more than 10in of snow on the ground at any given time.

I still remember the year (I think it wass 2000...) when we got 23in in the drifts at my home in Siler City.

I'm guessing that ya'll have a slightly different definition of blizzard :D

BTW frozen ground = needing industrial drilling equipment to get those rods in. At least that's my understanding.
 
Yesterday morning. At the time, I thought this was a lot of snow. Note the shovel handle location
DSCN9620s.jpg


The next photos were taken three hours into the storm.

I have a grill... for now.
DSCN9621s.jpg


That's a snow drift under my carport there. The car on the right is my wife's Grand Prix, which she parked two hours before this photo was taken. Lower left in the frame is a dead Acer LCD I didn't get around to moving out of the carport. And under that, four new KYB struts for the beater Neon.
DSCN9622s.jpg


You can see the shovel handle, lower left. I had to walk out in this to get the bedroom window AC unit out of the window for the season, something I would have done over the weekend if I had had the presence of mind--wisdom teeth be damned. There was snow in our bedroom just from what blew in through the gaps between the AC unit mount and the window frame. And now my wife's clock radio is presumed dead. She inherits mine because I never use it.
DSCN9623s.jpg


Another angle of the same thing.
DSCN9624s.jpg
 
starhawk said:
I'm from NC... blizzard to us means more than 10in of snow on the ground at any given time.

I still remember the year (I think it wass 2000...) when we got 23in in the drifts at my home in Siler City.

I'm guessing that ya'll have a slightly different definition of blizzard :D

BTW frozen ground = needing industrial drilling equipment to get those rods in. At least that's my understanding.
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Ten inches of snow in a 24 hour period here is pretty common, really. The last time anything was declared a blizzard in Utah was in 2001. Considering it was merely by sheer luck the day after Xmas 2003 that I avoided kissing a guard rail on I-15 in my Camaro and that wasn't even counted as a blizzard, I was nervous even though the drive between work and home is only two miles now. I was crawling it at 15 on a 40MPH road.

Well, here's a link to the fun for now: http://www.cachevalleydaily.com/news/local/Snow-Storm-Update-110243034.html
 
14*F here today, and it doesn't even get cold in this city compared to where I used to live :D
 
MisterDNA said:
Ten inches of snow in a 24 hour period here is pretty common, really. The last time anything was declared a blizzard in Utah was in 2001. Considering it was merely by sheer luck the day after Xmas 2003 that I avoided kissing a guard rail on I-15 in my Camaro and that wasn't even counted as a blizzard, I was nervous even though the drive between work and home is only two miles now. I was crawling it at 15 on a 40MPH road.

Well, here's a link to the fun for now: http://www.cachevalleydaily.com/news/local/Snow-Storm-Update-110243034.html
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Last night I was on 6th East coming home...there were 4 cars off to the side of the road. Gotta love the college kids who've never driven in the snow before. :D

BTW. Having an Audi Quattro is "da bomb" in the snow. Too much fun! Beats the hell out of my old Galant. Still miss my Jeep Wrangler though for traction.
 
DogChainX said:
Last night I was on 6th East coming home...there were 4 cars off to the side of the road. Gotta love the college kids who've never driven in the snow before. :D

BTW. Having an Audi Quattro is "da bomb" in the snow. Too much fun! Beats the hell out of my old Galant. Still miss my Jeep Wrangler though for traction.
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Best snow rig I ever had was a 1979 GMC Jimmy (fullsize. Think 'K5 Blazer). Built 350, lockers, and freaking 5.5" wide studded snows.

My current setup is a 2004 chevy 1500. Just doesn't have the power the Jimmy did, but fuel economy is a lot better, and the 7" wide Michelin studless snow tires do pretty good.

I'm in Anchorage, Alaska, and we have no snow at the moment 8(
 
I had a 1992 Isuzu Rodeo some years back. Had a Chevy 3.1L V6 under the hood, vicious tires and 4WD. I'd climb snow drifts. Other than crappy fuel economy at 20MPG, it was damn good.
 
I've decided I'm going to keep raw updates coming instead of lock-stepping just because I can't do the conduit thing with all this snow.

So far, I've been able to do one thing that was on my ToDo list for the project. I moved my big storage shelf, once again, from one side of the shop to the other to allow access to the piece of wall where the loadcenter will be mounted.

To do that, I had to move the crapshelf where I keep my 20+ old laptops. Moving that, I discovered just how busy my little Brown Widow sentry spider had been when I found a half dozen gigantic, dead Desert Grass Spiders tangled up in the sentry spider's web. I'll be caulking the gap at that corner shut so big spiders like those won't be able to get in anymore.

There's more snow falling today. We're expecting another 3-6" by tomorrow so my trenches aren't going to be empty any time soon.

But this gives me a chance to clear out a bunch of my "inventory" on eBay so I'm not strapped for cash if freak weather acting in my favor happens to come up.
 
The workstation just got 24GB of 1600MHz Ripjaws. Problem is the P6T Deluxe isn't quite sure whether it's seeing 16GB or 24GB. Turns out I'm running a dreadfully old BIOS so it's time to update as a first strike.

DSCN9650s.jpg
 
And if that fails drop the frequency and loosen the timings to see if it's that ram that is unstable.
 
The BIOS update worked, but didn't change the situation. It looks like my A2 slot is defective since putting a module in that slot will kill the entire channel. I've tried every stick in that slot and still have the same result.

Right now, I have five slots filled and 20GB available just fine in triple-channel mode. Sandra shows everything is Kosher and running at warp speed. I'll have to see why that slot is bad. Maybe I need to re-mount the i7 chip? There might be a piece of dust on a land.

I was only able to POST 24GB twice so it's intermittent and could work, but isn't.

Still, even if it turns out to be impossible to fix, 20GB is plenty of RAM. I just knew some scenes needed over 16GB under a 64-bit OS.
 
I reseated the CPU and that didn't help it, but I didn't get a close look at the LGA socket while the CPU was out. I saw on another board that someone else had a similar issue and the culprit was a bent pin in the socket. I'll be microscoping it this weekend, I'm sure. I want my sixth slot!
 
MisterDNA said:
I reseated the CPU and that didn't help it, but I didn't get a close look at the LGA socket while the CPU was out. I saw on another board that someone else had a similar issue and the culprit was a bent pin in the socket. I'll be microscoping it this weekend, I'm sure. I want my sixth slot!
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I had the same issue with my last P6T6 Rev and I just said screw it and RMA'd it (got a P6T7 XD) but now I see all 12
 
Okay, I have no bent pins in the CPU socket.

This weekend, I will pull the motherboard and look at the underside to see if debris is shorting pins on my RAM slots.

If I knew it wouldn't do any harm, I'd run the whole board through the inline wash at work. There are a lot of crevices where I don't want water to hang around. Deionized or not.
 
For the i7 machine, no updates. It seems I lose no bandwidth by having the RAM set up the way I do so I may just sell the remaining stick and get down to business. I was originally shooting for 12GB with an upgrade path to 18GB under the original plan so 20GB is fine.

For the Dashcat project, I was able to spend some time today cutting out the last bits of sod to prepare for the shed. I had cut out 18' back from the large shed/workshop for the gravel, but decided I want the space between sheds to be 12' so I had to extend the space out to 20'7" to allow for overhangs. I still have to square it up completely (width at the back doesn't match the front, but that can wait until I have the conduit ready for backfill.

There's no snow in the trenches right now, but I don't know how long that will remain the case.

I still have to figure out how I'm going to get the small shed into final position with respect to the conduit. I don't really like the idea of having a junction box hanging off the side of the shed, but with the alternative requiring I find some way to have gravel under the shed while the trench is still open for conduit to be routed down through the floor of the shed and cemented in place in the open trench, I might have no choice.
 
I would just RMA the board, asus has pretty good support and usually doesnt require invoices since you the original buyer seems pretty removed from you. I had something along the same lines happen on my asus board. A ram slot went out so i just moved my ram into the other channels, then another slot seemed to go so I could only run in single channel, after that my crossfire support seamed to up and leave and Im left with a board that really couldnt do half of what it was supposed to. I just got the RMA approval and ill be sending my board in. I can let you know how painful/less the rma procedure with them is if you want
 
I've had a friend RMA a board with Asus, it was 100% painless. It was very quick, and there were very few questions asked.
 
I'm glad they're good about RMAs, but I just can't afford the downtime required. And I don't even know if it's the motherboard or the CPU causing the issue because I don't have another i7 I can pop in there to test.
 
then use your crazy haxzor man skills youve been showing off the for these 12 pages and fix the damn thing
 
Just cemented two 10' conduit segments together. This piece will go under the house. It's the longest conduit segment and had to be done indoors in order for the cement to be at the right temperature. Because of the size of that sucker, I have to thread it under the house from the back side.

The pipe is under our practice house now. With that done, I have a better bead on how much wire I'll really need. My refined calculation is 44 feet for each conductor. That will leave me with some extra slack in the loadcenters.

I'm working the numbers on whether I need to reinforce my shed frame or not. I might just do it anyway.
 
Project's on hold for a bit while I get the proper permissions as I want to make it right and go commercial one day. It's a big risk, but I don't like secrets.

In other news, I've got another major car repair project that isn't really all that major. Months ago, the fuel pump in my not-that-hot-rod went out and it sat parked while I drove the beater. Well, the beater's clutch hasn't got much life left in it and has started to slip pretty badly so it was time to bring the beast back.

After trying to directly drive the pump with absolutely no effect, I rigged up my DMM to check pump voltage as turned the key. Normally, the pump primes for three seconds to charge the lines and then shuts off until the key is turned to Start. I got battery voltage. The pump just wasn't moving. And with no blown fuse, it wasn't blocked either.

I tore the pump out and did a destructive analysis. This is what I found:

DSCN9678s.jpg


Those copper sections start out at the same height the whole way across in a new motor. The solid graphite brushes are the about the same size as each section and are positioned opposite from each other. One brush was worn down to the point there was no spring pressure.

It was Russian Roulette in reverse. If the pump stopped on a dead spot, it wouldn't start up again. If it was able to start, it would stay running (but not very well). That explains why my wife's car (same engine, just no supercharger) seemed to have more power than mine.

Anyway, I've got a replacement pump kit on the way from Racetronix in Canada. It's based on the Walbro high-output pump and eliminates the drama of rigging that pump to work properly.
 
It has nothing to do with your build, other than delaying the anticipated updates, but you deserve respect for working on a car during the winter.
No garage and you're pulling a fuel pump. Outstanding!
 
I just drove the eight foot ground rod for my shop.

DSCN9682s.jpg


With a twist. I did it by hand. You stab the rod in by a foot, pull it back out, pour water down the hole and work the rod butter churn style, adding water each time the rod is pulled out of the hole. If you don't hit rock, it will take mere minutes. Worked like a charm... I'll leave the dirty jokes to you all.

I've fixed my car. The new fuel pump arrived on Monday and was installed that night. I even had time for a break-in run.
 
I've got so much ground to cover. I was in California for a few days with a lot on my mind. Part of the trip had me deciding whether I was going to begin planning a move there, negating the need for the power project.

Well, after a bunch of hype I took with a grain of salt and three more years I want under my belt as a pro electronics tech before I even consider such a move, I'm not moving. The project continues. Though I'm making a few changes.

The Name:

In memoriam: Little birds told me a neighbor's pit bull dog murdered Dash, same as she had done to a bunch of feral cats in the park. I won't blame the breed. Pit Bulls are receptive to training and what their owners allow them to do, however, so I do blame the owners. Wouldn't do anything about it since Dash, while he was my buddy, was just a cat, not a person. I've taken the necessary defensive precautions just in case, however.

The problem with computers is they become obsolete and are replaced and scrapped. I didn't want to have that happen to something named in honor of Dash so the supercomputer is getting a new name while Dashcat will be the name given to the special control hardware and software collection used to get official and ad hoc nodes to play nice and work together. The focus is placed on utility, but there's ample room for a bit of flair, which I'll demo in a YouTube video later this year.

So what of the cluster?: There are a few pieces to this. The first has been in my signature for a while. My i7 workstation carries the name "Layla". Older members probably mentally heard the guitar riff upon reading that. Younger members probably won't, but should because it's a timeless classic.

Dashcat has become Domino. Future versions will receive the Mark II, etc designations. The nodes will receive names starting with Domino00 so you could say there are many dominoes.

Now, with that in mind, my real first name, and its origin, should be no mystery. Clever, eh?

As for the trip, I had planned to scope out the job my grandfather suggested I take where he works, maybe with the end result being a move, which would negate the workshop power project. I quickly realized this job was going to make me miserable due to lack of social contact with people who are at least young enough to know who Aerosmith is. I understand the old-school merit of slide rules and ten-key calculators, but to be looked down upon for using today's tools to solve today's problems at today's speeds is not my cup of tea. I don't need to become an old curmudgeon at thirty and have my creativity stomped to death due to being jealous of the happiness of characters I create. The project is still on.

I'd like to live in NorCal, just not under those conditions. I work with hundreds of people who run the gamut between brilliant, gung-ho college kids and non-elitist, smart-assed engineers in their fifties. Until I can find that kind of environment, I'll stay put.

I also managed to tackle CA-17 through the Santa Cruz Mountains in pretty much the worst conditions imaginable during a storm that taught me why windshield wipers have that super high speed mode and came out unscathed and glad I did the brake upgrade before leaving Utah. After that and two trips through Donner Pass, I can handle anything.

I'm feeling weary just writing about it, though. I hope I've managed to stay coherent.
 
Layla, you've got me on my knees.
Layla, I'm begging, darling please.
Layla, darling won't you ease my worried mind.

mmmmmmmm. Eric Clapton, good old times!


Dude, I really hope this all works out for you. Making a decision to stay and get more experience is a plus. Keep it up bro!
 
FrEaKy said:
Layla, you've got me on my knees.
Layla, I'm begging, darling please.
Layla, darling won't you ease my worried mind.

mmmmmmmm. Eric Clapton, good old times!


Dude, I really hope this all works out for you. Making a decision to stay and get more experience is a plus. Keep it up bro!
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The name of his band was sneaky. A frontman who doesn't even exist, all because of a typo... epic for sure and a namesake I'm proud of.

Thanks for the kindness.
 
Well, Mr & The Dominoes, The cluster sounds like it's coming together nicely.. shame you don't have an opportunity for any real winter driving, though....

(Last month we had water over black ice. that was fun. This month we have rutted slush over ice with variable intersections.)
 
I'm doing some software this weekend after doing some derpy hardware work. It turns out the USB 2.0 card I installed in the server to allow high-speed flash drives interacts with my RAID card in such a way as to drop it to 33MHz bus speed. Without USB 2.0, the RAID card runs at full PCI-X 133MHz speed. I'll give up the USB card for that. I still have USB 1.1 to fall back on.

I have the proper Samba package installing right now. I'm going to copy data to the server over the network and move it back as my goal for the weekend.
 
The ground has temporarily thawed today. This came out of nowhere. I'm going to don my work boots, power up the halogens and see if I can clear out the mild cave-in one trench experienced during the past few weeks.

I so wish I had had today off from work.

If I have to buy anything extra for this part of the job, it will have to wait since the project to fix the 3008WFP is taking financial priority among my many irons in the fire during the cold months.

If I can't get the new power link installed until Spring, the most recent modifications I made to the existing one will allow the cluster to be used.
 
I just drove the second ground rod. While pulling bricks from a collapse out of the trench, I found one very early in the game that just would not move. Frozen in place. And that's not going to change for quite some time yet.
 
If you were coming over donner pass right before new years you had horrible timing, we havent had any snow, until a few inches today, since then. Whereabouts in norcal were you looking?
 
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