Gardens, computers and stuff
Oct. 7th, 2012 04:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kengrWell, the roma tomatoes are pretty much done. A few more green ones hanging on the plant, but it's dying, so I may wind up harvesting them green and letting them ripen on bits of vine.
The Cherokee Purple finally started ripening (they are all yellow now and a few have gone red. Alas, they grew a bit too well, and most of them split some before they get ripe. I'm just cutting those sections out and chopping up the rest for use in various things. There are a couple dozen of so still on the plant. And *large*. Oy.
And the cherry tomato is not on;y still producing (though much slower than the peak) but the silly thing has actually put out more blossoms!
Next year I'll get that kind again, but I'll need to give it more space. It's covering a 3 foot square area. Darn near smothered the Romas!
On the tech side, I'd asked Doug to keep an eye out for an old box that'd run Win98 or so and have a serial port and a USB port. I'd planned on using something small and low powered to run the weather station stuff I've had for ages, and maybe a webcam looking outside.
He offered me an IBM ThinkCentre. Seems he'd bought half a dozen cheap a while back for various projects and had three left over. One had already been offered on eBay. But the specs on them were better than what I'm using as my *main* computer currently.
After some negotiation, I wound up with the last two for a price I can afford (and paying off a bit at a time doesn't hurt).
He hadn't even opened the box they were in. I checked them out and found that I had a ThinkCentre S50 (8183 DTU) and a ThinkCentre S51 (8171 2CU). Both run at 2.6 GHz. And can run 2 IDE and two SATA devices. Downside is that the cases only have two drive bays, and only one is for an externally accessible device (like a DVD drive).
Both have DVD drives, and a 40 gig IDE HD. Gigabit ethernet, 6 USB ports on the back, 2 USB ports on the front. Two serial ports and a parallel port. Line in & line out audio on the back, mike and headphone on the front. Also have things like wake on LAN ( which I may or may not enable.
The cases are tool-less. You press a couple of buttons and the top of the desktop case flips up. The drive bays tilt up so you can get at part of the motherboard (like the pair of DIMM slots)
Max Ram is 2 gig. They came with a 512 meg DIMM and Doug thru in a pair of 1 gig DIMMs. So now the S50 is 2 gig and the S51 is one gig (I'll upgrade it later, the RAM they use isn't that expensive)
Both machjines only have 2 slots (the cards go in horizontally, parallel to and above the motherboard. The S50 has two PCI slots. The S51 has a PCI slot and a PCI Express slot (probably video only).
The other big difference is that the S50 has a case instrusion detector and case lock (I don't have a key, but I may check with a locksmith to find out if it's worth the trouble. The S50 is also dual core. So I have plans for it.
Oh yeah, the cases are *tiny*. Desktop cases, 3.5" tall, 12.5" wide and 13.5" deep. *Heavy suckers though.
I had a SATA top eSATA adapter (basically a couple of cable attached to a slot blank) that I got a year or so back to possibly install on Kermit's computer. I stuck it in the S50 so I could use the SATA drive docking station with it using the eSATA connection instead of USB 2. *Much* faster. I'll pick one up for the S51next week. Probably pick up another docking station as well.
Timing was fortuitous, as my media server gizmo decided to die. Turns out that there actually *is* a fan in the case, but it wasn't running (I deduce this from the lack of dust). Of course, it's *way* out of warranty. And they don't sell them anymore. I may save up and get a replacement off eBay. But in the meantime, the S50 has more than enough "oomph" to play the videos that Fay and I watch. Good thing the TV has a VGA connector and a PC audio connector. :-)
The drive from inside the server is apparently ok, but had a fair number of file system error. Those are being fixed and I'm getting it synched back up with the drive I'd been backing it up to.
In other news, I seem to have come down with something. I'll probably spend extra time in bed today.
The Cherokee Purple finally started ripening (they are all yellow now and a few have gone red. Alas, they grew a bit too well, and most of them split some before they get ripe. I'm just cutting those sections out and chopping up the rest for use in various things. There are a couple dozen of so still on the plant. And *large*. Oy.
And the cherry tomato is not on;y still producing (though much slower than the peak) but the silly thing has actually put out more blossoms!
Next year I'll get that kind again, but I'll need to give it more space. It's covering a 3 foot square area. Darn near smothered the Romas!
On the tech side, I'd asked Doug to keep an eye out for an old box that'd run Win98 or so and have a serial port and a USB port. I'd planned on using something small and low powered to run the weather station stuff I've had for ages, and maybe a webcam looking outside.
He offered me an IBM ThinkCentre. Seems he'd bought half a dozen cheap a while back for various projects and had three left over. One had already been offered on eBay. But the specs on them were better than what I'm using as my *main* computer currently.
After some negotiation, I wound up with the last two for a price I can afford (and paying off a bit at a time doesn't hurt).
He hadn't even opened the box they were in. I checked them out and found that I had a ThinkCentre S50 (8183 DTU) and a ThinkCentre S51 (8171 2CU). Both run at 2.6 GHz. And can run 2 IDE and two SATA devices. Downside is that the cases only have two drive bays, and only one is for an externally accessible device (like a DVD drive).
Both have DVD drives, and a 40 gig IDE HD. Gigabit ethernet, 6 USB ports on the back, 2 USB ports on the front. Two serial ports and a parallel port. Line in & line out audio on the back, mike and headphone on the front. Also have things like wake on LAN ( which I may or may not enable.
The cases are tool-less. You press a couple of buttons and the top of the desktop case flips up. The drive bays tilt up so you can get at part of the motherboard (like the pair of DIMM slots)
Max Ram is 2 gig. They came with a 512 meg DIMM and Doug thru in a pair of 1 gig DIMMs. So now the S50 is 2 gig and the S51 is one gig (I'll upgrade it later, the RAM they use isn't that expensive)
Both machjines only have 2 slots (the cards go in horizontally, parallel to and above the motherboard. The S50 has two PCI slots. The S51 has a PCI slot and a PCI Express slot (probably video only).
The other big difference is that the S50 has a case instrusion detector and case lock (I don't have a key, but I may check with a locksmith to find out if it's worth the trouble. The S50 is also dual core. So I have plans for it.
Oh yeah, the cases are *tiny*. Desktop cases, 3.5" tall, 12.5" wide and 13.5" deep. *Heavy suckers though.
I had a SATA top eSATA adapter (basically a couple of cable attached to a slot blank) that I got a year or so back to possibly install on Kermit's computer. I stuck it in the S50 so I could use the SATA drive docking station with it using the eSATA connection instead of USB 2. *Much* faster. I'll pick one up for the S51next week. Probably pick up another docking station as well.
Timing was fortuitous, as my media server gizmo decided to die. Turns out that there actually *is* a fan in the case, but it wasn't running (I deduce this from the lack of dust). Of course, it's *way* out of warranty. And they don't sell them anymore. I may save up and get a replacement off eBay. But in the meantime, the S50 has more than enough "oomph" to play the videos that Fay and I watch. Good thing the TV has a VGA connector and a PC audio connector. :-)
The drive from inside the server is apparently ok, but had a fair number of file system error. Those are being fixed and I'm getting it synched back up with the drive I'd been backing it up to.
In other news, I seem to have come down with something. I'll probably spend extra time in bed today.
