Recent content by fractal

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    PoE access point?

    What's wrong with a C7 plus a POE splitter? Just make sure you buy one compatible with your switch, or buy as a matched pair with injector or your eyes will go blury with 24v passive, 48v passive, 802.3af, 802.3at, lions tigers and bears, oh my. Modern gear uses 802.3. 'af' up to 15 watts...
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    HP ML350 G6 8 Slot HDD Cage

    I have a similar one. I found the power cable pinout online. The one thing I do caution is these things are not anything even remotely standard size. Do not expect to shove in an existing case unless it is a ML350. I would suggest you take a peek at the supermicro cages. They fit in many...
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    Home cabling Cat7/8 and or Fibre?

    Not to go too far in the weeds but ... In the beginning, well 1999 or so, there was Cat5. And all was good. But there was one parameter that was not clearly defined. Most manufacturers met the "assumed" spec. But then came one who did not and it didn't work as expected. Finger pointing...
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    Pfsense Build - 1U, Quiet, Short Depth

    You think you can build a netgate.com box cheaper than them? Go for it. I have one of their older 4 port models and it is "adequate". If I were building my own today I would find a supermicro x9sci-ln4 in a supermicro chassis on eBay. Paired with any i3 or e3 it will draw under 20 watts idle...
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    The lowly Rack PDU / Power Strip / UPS

    Love the 79xx off eBay. But recovering the IP address can be tricky. Fortunately Robert tells you how to do it. Google told me. They are NOT indestructible so what you get off eBay may have bad outlets. Like many out there, I have a half dozen varying from total current only to switchable...
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    25GbE NIC New

    I could be confused but I thought 25GB used SFP<mumble> and QSFP<mumble> was 100G. I also thought that SFP<mumble> DAC could be used at 10G or 1G if they were cheaper. Am I confused or did I get it right?
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    Gigabit + 10Gb Switches under $550

    Sorry, I was not aware that there were any consumer 2.5 or 5 Gbps products on the market. Plenty of 1 and 10. Hence I was curious of your use case.
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    Gigabit + 10Gb Switches under $550

    Can I ask ... why? I am trying to think of a use case for such a switch but am failing.
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    SBE-710E-R48 Blade w/ 8 Nodes B7DW3 $200+

    no, no and NO. I can see the spinner in my electric meter flying away down the street like a Frisbee. Add DDR2 and it is a non-starter, even for me who likes old crap.
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    Very quiet rack mount server

    It is going in a rack in peoples offices. The rack has shelf after shelf of development board. Think raspberry pi and you won't be too far off. All it does is to connect to the usb serial port on the boards.
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    Very quiet rack mount server

    @kapone I don't really care what generation it is. I do care about support/warranty. Hence no home brew pi jobs. We are not that price sensitive but we will need a dozen of these to begin with and more over time. That suggests something modern for LTS. Add the fact that I am a cheap bastard...
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    Very quiet rack mount server

    Not really. Might use as a TFTP server to boot the serial devices if there were any cycles left but that's gravy. Mostly 32 or 48 usb 2 serial devices.
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    Very quiet rack mount server

    I couldn't find a better place for this, so here goes. I need a very quiet rack mount server. Silent preferred. Must have two USB ports but prefer 4. Must have 100 MBit ethernet, but prefer gig. Will run linux. Does not need much power. I own a Dell R210-II and that sucker is silent after...
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    HDD as a back up media

    I personally like USB HD as backup. I can put everything I really, really need in a couple hundred meg but if I don't want to think too hard, a pair of USB drives in A/B rotation take care of everything in my homes. I started doing this when 250's where the thing. then 500's. then 1tb's...
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    Everyone's next boot drive S3500 480GB $120

    Don't put a 480GB L2ARC in a box with only 16GB of Ram. Exact numbers are tricky but using 5x RAM for L2ARC is less wrong that many rules of thumb. I was going to put an 80GB L2ARC in my microserver with only 16GB of RAM ... but didn't.