Little Guys: Episode 3 [Lex Brik]

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  • Опубликовано: 28 сен 2024

Комментарии • 659

  • @CathodeRayDude
    @CathodeRayDude  5 месяцев назад +74

    I keep getting this comment so to head it off: The fact that the internal bosses are not full-depth doesn't really suggest that this chassis is die cast - that would be an _immense_ amount of extra effort and cost for the return you'd get.
    Die casting is much more expensive upfront, it produces weaker parts, costs more, takes longer, and the surface finish and tolerances straight out of the mold are not terrific (pock marks, ripple, etc.) It's great for parts with highly complex shapes, where flatness and surface finish don't matter, or for rotationally symmetric parts that can be quickly turned in a lathe, but for anything that requires reliable dimensions or clean-looking flat surfaces, you have to machine them all in afterwards; casting gets you the bulk of your volume, but every flat surface has to be added after the fact. So to get the straight walls on every side of this case you'd have to run a tool over every surface, inside and out, including all those radii, and by the time you're done you've spent the same amount of time it would take to mill it out of solid billet.
    Since this has a straightforward two dimensional cross section, it's an ideal shape for extrusion. It would come out of the press pretty much ready to sell, just bandsaw it to length. Yeah, you have to put it on the mill, but you're talking about very little time just to knock off those internal bosses, add the locating grooves for the lids, drill the LED hole, and drill and press in the screw inserts, most of which you'd have to do after casting anyway. That tool mark above the internal boss is also definitely not a gate mark; it's far too deep and too wide.
    Besides any of that though, the company sells other machines in chassis' that are identical except for their height. "The same thing except for height" is pretty much what the extrusion process was invented for, so companies that make parts like this one tend to take advantage of it. Will accept disputes if you have firsthand experience getting things like this made. :p

    • @fletcherreder6091
      @fletcherreder6091 5 месяцев назад +1

      I'm pretty sure I saw that exact enclosure advertised for audio amplifiers and set top boxes a few years ago, but I can't find it. That kind of modification to an enclosure is the kind of thing that enclosure manufacturers offer as a standard service, even in extremely small batches. I love the little _Tunic_ sticker on your TV by the way.

  • @setSCEtoAUX
    @setSCEtoAUX 6 месяцев назад +193

    One of the most interesting things to me about industrial SBCs is the almost pathological dedication to silkscreening reference designators for every component.

    • @MickeyMousePark
      @MickeyMousePark 6 месяцев назад +34

      i worked for a board manufacturing company for a short time in the early 1980s Circuits Engineering (they were shut down when the government found out they were dumping spent toxic chemicals into a large hole behind the building) ..we would take a copper clad board, etch it and silk screen it....
      silk screening every component at that time was so that whatever company populated the board the line could simply say put component C1 into C1 silkscreen position..the line people did not need to know what C1 was or what it did..so they could hire very unskilled people to do the populating ...
      As an example in the late 1970s i worked for SDC (Sundstrand Data Control) which was manufacturing FDC (Flight Data/Voice Recorders) at fantastic rate they could barely keep up with demand..anyway the entire assembly line were people (oddly 90% of them were divorced women) that did not have any electronic experience they were just assembling widgets..albeit VERY important widgets!
      of course board manufacturing has changed by lightyears in the last 50+ years..

    • @markpitts5194
      @markpitts5194 5 месяцев назад +7

      @@MickeyMousePark I put ferric chloride down the loo at work. The U bend looked like it was from a truck stop for weeeeeks. Only did that once!

    • @monad_tcp
      @monad_tcp 5 месяцев назад +4

      nothing says "industrial" more than industrial quantities of aluminum or iron in the case only to find the same kind of PCB we find anywhere else.
      sometimes its not even conformal coated, nor have ceramic components or anything, its just a computer, but with lots of pathological silkscreen as you said... somehow industrial quantities of silkscreen makes it industrial
      its almost like no one knows what they are doing and everything is pure cargo-cult.

  • @crabman8321
    @crabman8321 6 месяцев назад +82

    "Don't overpenetrate" - #232 in important CRD life lessons

    • @Toothily
      @Toothily 6 месяцев назад +8

      That's what she said

  • @Yugophoto
    @Yugophoto 5 месяцев назад +28

    The fact that it was hooked to a gamma knife to me makes it 1000% cooler. I used to work in healthcare in a facility with a gamma knife, and yeah you're right. It uses extremely accurate high doses of radiation to do surgery (mostly on tumors) without having to actually cut someone open.
    It was also the highest security part of the hospital. Im talking rooms made entirely of reinforced concrete and multiple layers of solid steel doors. If an alarm went off in there every emergency responder from the nuclear guys to firefighters to security guards would drop what they were doing and rush over there..

    • @3rdalbum
      @3rdalbum 5 месяцев назад +10

      Well yeah, the capsules in radiotherapy machines have been stolen before and broken open, causing deaths and massive cleanup bills. The last thing you want is somebody purposely stealing the capsule.
      Whereas here in Australia we lost a tiny radioactive capsule. It jigged loose inside the equipment it was being transported in, and fell out onto the road. Took several days to find it, haha

    • @MegaZeta
      @MegaZeta 4 месяца назад

      @@3rdalbum I suppose the famous one is the Goiânia incident, but I'll mention it here for the 5-10% of viewership of this channel that doesn't know about it yet.

  • @disktheprotogen
    @disktheprotogen 6 месяцев назад +42

    In regards to that PowerBook G4 Titaniums super proprietary battery, I have an interesting (though admittedly quite silly) idea. On older PC motherboards (around the time of the 286, 386, and 486/ 1980s though to the mid 1990s), there was commonly a Varta branded (or equivalent) 3.6 volt NiCd/NiMH rechargeable battery, and they are known to corrode and destroy the motherboards traces. Since they are known to corrode, it's quite common nowadays to remove the battery completely and install a cr2032. But like you said in your segment about that PowerBook G4 Titanium, the motherboard trys to... well... recharge it. Because of that, those people replacing the battery with a cr2032 will use a diode between (and my memory could be failing me here) the positive lead on the motherboard and the battery holder. That keeps the battery from being charged, as all cr2032s are non-rechargable (if we are to ignore LIR2032s and ML2032 which have their own issues).
    Now, I've never done this before on a PowerBook G4 Titanium, so there could be issues that I am not aware of. Just throwing out ideas

  • @SonicBoone56
    @SonicBoone56 6 месяцев назад +95

    "It's just so damn blue. It's adorable, I wanna eat it." Lmao

    • @plushifoxed
      @plushifoxed 6 месяцев назад +13

      it's like billiards chalk! that stuff's gotta taste good!

    • @SonicBoone56
      @SonicBoone56 6 месяцев назад +7

      @@plushifoxed or sticky tack

    • @bichela
      @bichela 6 месяцев назад +3

      Call it Brainy Smurf. He is smart and blue too

    • @F6Fdrofnam
      @F6Fdrofnam 5 месяцев назад

      I bet it tastes like blue Jolly Ranchers.

    • @ProtoV33MK1
      @ProtoV33MK1 5 месяцев назад

      @@SonicBoone56 Tried that once, just tastes like gum you've been chewing for half an hour

  • @benholroyd5221
    @benholroyd5221 6 месяцев назад +88

    A gamma knife is what a Jedi uses to butter his toast.

    • @Austinbro217
      @Austinbro217 6 месяцев назад +12

      No no, if you stick it in the skin, I'm sure you'll see it's a wealth of life

    • @dansmoothback9644
      @dansmoothback9644 6 месяцев назад +9

      It's also what a King Gizzard uses for his Lizard Wizard.

    • @bALDbOY85
      @bALDbOY85 6 месяцев назад

      Crack the whip I’ll jump the hoop

    • @shuttlethefox6042
      @shuttlethefox6042 5 месяцев назад +1

      PHONNYYY JOKE!! - some green dude.

    • @MegaZeta
      @MegaZeta 4 месяца назад

      It sounds to me like something from a Fallout DLC

  • @LordVarkson
    @LordVarkson 6 месяцев назад +72

    When I was in high school my parents newsagency had electronic signage put in by a vendor, basically a 17" LCD on an arm screwed into the ceiling, with a small pc VESA mounted on the back. The company eventually went bust so I claimed the gear. I ended up with a tiny embedded Celeron(?) machine, held in the most austere metal box. It looked like those radiation cans they screw into machines. I think it had power equivalent to a Pentium 3, so it could run Windows XP, a program that showed JPEGs downloaded over the network. and not much else. That was the only time I've had any real contact with industrial computers, and I was fascinated by all the random connectors it had.

    • @jonobst
      @jonobst 6 месяцев назад +10

      Yep you got it! The VESA mounting holes are to secure it to the back of a monitor.

    • @LordVarkson
      @LordVarkson 6 месяцев назад +8

      @@jonobst Then it had a huge, very heavy bracket that mounted the machine and monitor to the arm, via the vesa mount. I don't know if there's a term for it, but it was like a vesa extender.

    • @acheleg
      @acheleg 5 месяцев назад +3

      I tried to load windows 99 on an ami indigo industrial socket 370 board, but i put the pci video card in backwards & blew the southbridge :(

    • @jnharton
      @jnharton 5 месяцев назад

      People did quite a lot with far less in the way of computing power than we have now....

    • @TheJamesM
      @TheJamesM 5 месяцев назад

      @@jonobst Yeah, the VESA mounting holes reminded me of the thin clients they had attached to the backs of monitors when I spent a few months after university doing data entry at a hospital.

  • @stepthefox
    @stepthefox 6 месяцев назад +107

    was watching this during a midwest thunderstorm and at 19:15 my viewing experience went something like "but, what happens when this device loses power?" followed by my entire house going completely dark. now I know!

  • @nynjalantz
    @nynjalantz 6 месяцев назад +35

    I think I know why they used the different Ethernet connectors. To do the trick with the relays, they needed connectors without the built-in transformers. This is one interesting little guy! Thanks for the fun video!

    • @tonyb586
      @tonyb586 5 месяцев назад +5

      I think you can see on the bottom the two transformers for the ports without the built-in ones! The two GTS chips labeled FC-2149, I think.

    • @j_r_-
      @j_r_- 5 месяцев назад +1

      I really like this series of industrial pcs

    • @monad_tcp
      @monad_tcp 5 месяцев назад

      exactly what I thought, the bigger one have built-in transformers. When I saw the space for relays I thought it was to switch-off some PoE device, I was wrong about that.

  • @NotProFishing
    @NotProFishing 6 месяцев назад +86

    Its a little cathartic that ive seen these machines in so many industrial applications. Thank you for such amazing content.

  • @AnonymousFreakYT
    @AnonymousFreakYT 6 месяцев назад +33

    “What on this could need a fan!?”
    The chipset. The 945GM chipset drew significantly more power than the CPU. I used a similar board as my home theater PC before upgrading to an HDTV.

    • @CathodeRayDude
      @CathodeRayDude  6 месяцев назад +14

      Sure but to wit, they didn't actually put one in here, so it seems like it doesn't actually need it. I guess maybe it would if they were pushing the graphics capabilities harder?

    • @thegeforce6625
      @thegeforce6625 6 месяцев назад +8

      Yeah pretty much, the CPU draws 2.5w as stated in this video, the north bridge is 10-11w and the south bridge is like another 3w iirc.
      Makes me surprised Intel didn’t make a special low power version of the 945 chipset. (Though I think they did sometime after releasing the first Atoms)
      Also have essentially this machine but in a netbook, a Toshiba NB200 except it has a 160gb HDD and a Atom N280 1.66ghz CPU.

    • @forpointsix4.678
      @forpointsix4.678 6 месяцев назад +2

      Keep in mind the intended environment this system was employed to, hospitals/healthcare. These places are keep at cooler temperatures to help combat bacteria and infections. Just a idea on why this system might not need fans.

    • @AnonymousFreakYT
      @AnonymousFreakYT 6 месяцев назад +4

      @@thegeforce6625 Atom had two primary reasons to exist. Power draw was one. Cheapness was the other. Intel wasn’t wasting any design or manufacturing effort on a new low power chipset until they knew it would be a success. The chipset was already obsolete when Atom came out, but it was easy to make more on some of the older-process fabs.
      Later, yes, they made proper low-power chipsets, and even SOC versions with the chipset on the same package as the CPU.

    • @AnonymousFreakYT
      @AnonymousFreakYT 6 месяцев назад +3

      @@CathodeRayDude Mostly I imagine that in this chassis it was unnecessary, but they might have had other chassis that it might be needed.

  • @cian.horgan
    @cian.horgan 5 месяцев назад +11

    Trying to view the BIOS screen, I tilted my own display back to catch a better angle. My brain has completely forgotten he's staring at a video on an OLED, not a magic window to a TN panel

  • @ondrejsedlak4935
    @ondrejsedlak4935 5 месяцев назад +9

    The VESA mount is for mounting directly to the back of a monitor that has a normal stand, to save desk space.
    Very common in government facilities, including hospitals and city offices.
    It would never be mounted on a monitor VESA arm.

    • @Nukle0n
      @Nukle0n 5 месяцев назад

      Yea, tho always never quite as practical as you'd want, so a lot more stuff like Lenovo's Tiny-In-One system being used nowadays

    • @amyshaw893
      @amyshaw893 5 месяцев назад +2

      yeah but it would be funny to have one monitor arm for your screen and another one for your pc XD

  • @arcticrevrus9883
    @arcticrevrus9883 5 месяцев назад +4

    I worked with a DDOS filtering device from a company called Arbor that had a server bypass adapter for fiber modules. The idea of the device is that you would put it *infront* of your edge routing devices, advertise your BGP routes with a /25 instead of a /24, and the arbor device would passively sit there and snoop all your incomming traffic. If it decided that too much of the traffic was illegitimate, it would phone home, and they would use the network of a significantly larger provider (I think it was neustar?) to filter your traffic, by hijacking your routes via a more specific /24 advertisement. Of course putting a single device infront of your edge network is a huge single point of failure, so its network adapters had this relay system, so you could apply updates to it without bringing down your circuits.

  • @dossphosmedia
    @dossphosmedia 6 месяцев назад +7

    I gotta give you massive props. I have been watching you stuff for a few years now. Your quality has gone through the roof! You have quickly become one of my favorite Ytubers.

  • @cliftonchurch6039
    @cliftonchurch6039 6 месяцев назад +14

    Mathematically, it takes three points in 3D space to define a "plane", which is a 2D surface that extends infinitely along a flat surface. Three screws for any "flat" board should be enough. The fourth is for aesthetics and for extra confidence.

    • @CathodeRayDude
      @CathodeRayDude  6 месяцев назад +22

      I actually used to know somebody whose position on this was that three was better than four, because with three you cannot inadvertently force a flat object into a warped non-flat shape. with four, it suddenly becomes very important that the mating surfaces of all four holes be perfectly coplanar.

    • @lassikinnunen
      @lassikinnunen 5 месяцев назад +4

      ​@@CathodeRayDudemust be someone who wrote a renderer. It actually can be problematic for 3d printers that tend to have 4 leveling screws

    • @monad_tcp
      @monad_tcp 5 месяцев назад

      @@lassikinnunenbecause nothing is ever really a "flat surface" in the real world, everything warps

  • @brotatoe3299
    @brotatoe3299 6 месяцев назад +4

    Hey thank you a ton for turning me on to metronomy man. I thought that lyric was really funny, and it turns out that song is a banger.

    • @CathodeRayDude
      @CathodeRayDude  6 месяцев назад +3

      you're welcome, it is one of my goals in life to spread awareness of this specific album, it's solid gold cover to cover

    • @mcsv
      @mcsv 8 дней назад

      yeah, got minibared too for a while by such improv

  • @Kalvinjj
    @Kalvinjj 6 месяцев назад +21

    21:40 yep, those annoying USB-only PCIe ports exist, and I loathe them! In laptops they do it all the time for 3G modems, and with it, you can plug a wifi + Bluetooth card and only Bluetooth (always USB. Don't ask me why) will work. On the HP Pavilion dv6000 series, side by side one slot does PCIe only, one does USB only. Can't have both. _Or you can if you're me with a soldering iron and a bit of wire..._

    • @thegeforce6625
      @thegeforce6625 6 месяцев назад +3

      The whole combined USB and PCI-E + SATA functionality wasn’t really a thing in business notebooks until the 1st Gen core i series, you could usually choose between a mSATA SSD or a WWAN card. (Or if you’re HP, still support only WWAN cards in a WWAN slot, atleast on the 3rd Gen core series generations, 4th Gen machines are a bit of a mSATA to M.2 transitional period since i have a Acer TravelMate with a 4th Gen haswell i5 that uses a M.2 SSD, yet a dell precision from the same CPU generation uses a mSATA SSD. (I guess SATA M.2 SSD’s are pretty much just a mSATA SSD in a different form factor in a basic sense)

  • @ScarlettStunningSpace
    @ScarlettStunningSpace 5 месяцев назад +2

    I love all of the little guys you've taken a look at so far!

  • @kleinesfilmroellchen
    @kleinesfilmroellchen 6 месяцев назад +26

    Regarding USB pins in mPCI, M.2 also has USB pins, it's commonly used for connecting the Bluetooth part of a combined wireless module (and WiFi would run over PCIe due to the higher data rate required ofc)

  • @ristopoho824
    @ristopoho824 6 месяцев назад +3

    Something in these things is so dang delightful. I have a mac mini on my table, not in use, but it's a delightful little guy. This reminds me a lot about it. But yep that blue oh that blue. I want it.
    Also. The insides of the mac mini are not fun. Yea it gets the job done, but it's a pain to do anything in there. Lucky you don't usually need to but yea, the inside is just as important on what makes a little guy special. And that brik. I want one. Also oh boy that SSD mount is amazing. Yea it's cheap but it's possibly the most optimal way to mount it. Considering space. Screws cost something. But it's really kinda genius.

    • @ristopoho824
      @ristopoho824 5 месяцев назад

      Ohhhhh heck yea it heatsinks to the chassis

  • @tf6437
    @tf6437 6 месяцев назад +3

    If you love these sandwiched design computers, a 2005-2009 Mac mini would be a great addition to the series.

  • @SpAMCAN
    @SpAMCAN 5 месяцев назад +2

    "I wanna eat it" - Your protogen is showing, Gravis :P

  • @opalpersonal
    @opalpersonal 5 месяцев назад +1

    i am so excited for more little guys!!! you can never get enough of little guys.

  • @JunafaniFIN
    @JunafaniFIN 5 месяцев назад +2

    I love how it has that rubber support for the SATA cable but half of the other components are just missing screws by design

    • @CathodeRayDude
      @CathodeRayDude  5 месяцев назад +1

      hahahaha right? It fits the philosophy though: compromise where necessary, but otherwise build it tough and thoughtfully

  • @catfish552
    @catfish552 5 месяцев назад +1

    Always a delight to see another Little Guy uploaded, they're a guaranteed good time.
    A thought about the blue part of the chassis being an extrusion: That also makes it REALLY easy to produce the double-height version (or really any height you want), just slice off a different length from the extruded stock.

  • @joonglegamer9898
    @joonglegamer9898 6 месяцев назад +3

    I'm not into that at all, but you made it so intriguing that I kept watching the whole thing. Don't know why, couldn't sleep this night for some reason, and you never fail to entertain, thanks my guy!

  • @ToxTox
    @ToxTox 6 месяцев назад +5

    Regarding relays on industrial embedded pc: Generally industrial machines / lines are controlled by PLCs which are ruggedized microcontrollers that reliably run code, however they are somewhat limited in what they can do. So when you need to do something more demanding or have an embedded machine part of another machine, for example a product labeler the labeler would use one of the "little guys" to do the labeling task. The machine (PLC) would still need to communicate / interface with the labeler (embedded pc) and because the PLC could be using 24vdc, 230vac or any other control voltage, relays would be a easy way for the embedded system to handle that. And generally all the communication needed between them are stuff like Labeler_Ready, Apply_label Etc
    And this is also how many industrial machines interfaces with other machines. It is quite shocking how primitive the communication between two gigantic industrial machines can be, all that is needed is a ready signal that a machine is ready to receive product.

  • @extracomplex
    @extracomplex 5 месяцев назад +3

    The reason of two Ethernet RP-45 ports are shorter is passive pass-thru function. These ports have external Ethernet transformers on bottom side of the board. It allows relays to be connected in between RJ45 and Ethernet transformer. Other two RJ45 port have embedded transformers and need power to operate anyway.

  • @sklegg
    @sklegg 5 месяцев назад +1

    You’re so good at making these videos. It’s fun to watch.

  • @DreQueary
    @DreQueary 5 месяцев назад +2

    That IODD ST400 is like a physical version of Ventoy boot menu. Very interesting.

  • @renakunisaki
    @renakunisaki 5 месяцев назад +2

    I was surprised to learn that even the Nintendo GameCube used a non-replaceable battery (though it's not difficult to desolder and replace with a CR2032 holder). Thankfully they wised up with the Wii (which I'd also consider an adorable Little Guy).

    • @eDoc2020
      @eDoc2020 5 месяцев назад

      A non-replaceable battery? IIRC the manual had instructions for changing the battery. Either I'm misremembering or different versions were different.

  • @greggm4093
    @greggm4093 5 месяцев назад +2

    Not sure why, but plopping the monitor down on top of the Brik made me actually laugh out loud.

    • @CathodeRayDude
      @CathodeRayDude  5 месяцев назад +1

      was absolutely intentional, it made me chortle so I kept that take

  • @CardboardBots
    @CardboardBots 6 месяцев назад +2

    Your audio for these videos is really good. I could mindlessly listen to you talk about anything. All while learning random stuff.

  • @shuuko_tenoh
    @shuuko_tenoh 6 месяцев назад +1

    I love that I finally saw someone use an iodd device. I have one that I use to host all my recovery media since I work in IT. I have a variety of ISOs and virtual USB images on a 256GB SSD installed in mine.

  • @KrisRogos
    @KrisRogos 5 месяцев назад

    I did not know such things existed, but that IODD device is precisely what I need for an upcoming project. Thanks for highlighting that it is a thing!

  • @Paios
    @Paios 4 месяца назад

    With those vesa mounts when we used em at my old print shop we'd put the (gigabyte) bricks on the same mounts that the monitor used so that everything was all self contained on 1 swing arm that hung over the press and able to be pushed out of the way. Pair that with a touch screen monitor and you have an extremely capable work station that could get covered in lint, spray tack, chemicals, ink, etc and stay on practically 24/7 for many years. I quit eventually but some of our oldest stations were still going strong 6 years later...
    I love these lil guys

  • @sp0ck1p
    @sp0ck1p 5 месяцев назад

    I absolutely love this series, and I love that you're able to put out more videos with less stress around them because of it. I've always been curious about these little guys. It's great to know that they are truly all goofs, but sometimes quite clever.

  • @bakonfreek
    @bakonfreek 6 месяцев назад +1

    I still can't place why, but this whole series is just kind of a comfort series for me now.

  • @movingpixeldeeler
    @movingpixeldeeler 5 месяцев назад +3

    The relays are for bypass ports. That would be for redundant setups, bridging the ports, when daisy chained to second device.

    • @movingpixeldeeler
      @movingpixeldeeler 5 месяцев назад +1

      Oh lol you explained it anyway. It's common on Talari, Riverbed, Cloudgenics, ....

    • @movingpixeldeeler
      @movingpixeldeeler 5 месяцев назад +1

      The relays would not only trip when power is lost, but also when a watchdog isn't reset periodically... To prevent the device from blocking traffic because of a misbehaving/failing OS or application.

  • @rtechlab6254
    @rtechlab6254 Месяц назад

    Fun fact. At the time I was working there, Smoothwall was optimised for the predecessor, the C3 powered LexBook. The relays were there so that the ethernet ports can be bridged out, eg in the event of power failure.

  • @MazeFrame
    @MazeFrame 6 месяцев назад +1

    These videos are as lovely as this little guy is blue!

  • @NorfKhazad
    @NorfKhazad 5 месяцев назад +1

    Would love to see more videos on old video gear, especially pro stuff. Not that I don't enjoy these videos because I do, but I share your passion for weird old cameras I could never afford when they were new.

  • @thetexasinstrumentsmassacre
    @thetexasinstrumentsmassacre 6 месяцев назад +2

    Blue anodized aluminium will always have heavy NASA vibes

  • @jkitchentube
    @jkitchentube 6 месяцев назад +1

    “Built like a shit brickhouse” I’m dying here 🤣🤣

  • @ltlk937
    @ltlk937 5 месяцев назад +1

    Oh dude I have one of those IODD devices. LOVE IT. Best invention ever.

  • @DominatorHDX
    @DominatorHDX 5 месяцев назад

    I really like the Little Guys series especially those dedicated industrial (mini) computers. That is rabbit hole with no bottom 😁

  • @ohareport
    @ohareport 6 месяцев назад +2

    you are killing it dude.
    …that’s good! (?)

  • @utp216
    @utp216 6 месяцев назад +1

    Most excellent video good sir! Thank you for your time abs talent. 👍

  • @pyropenguin
    @pyropenguin 5 месяцев назад

    bunch of neat stuff. love watching you talk about said neat stuff. hope your doing well heath wise dude! keep up the good work

  • @ccoder4953
    @ccoder4953 6 месяцев назад +2

    I have a network card that has relays to bypass the ports. What I have specifically is a Dell R210 II rebranded as a Riverbed network appliance. The network card inside ( part number riverbed 410-00044-01 ) can do precisely this. It's basically just a quad Intel 82580EB NIC with bypass relays. While I don't have the official riverbed software to drive it, somebody figured out how to do it. Apparently, the card itself was actually made by a company called Silcom and, with the right drivers, you can toggle bypass mode.

    • @Electric_Devil
      @Electric_Devil 6 месяцев назад

      For a time I was a certified Riverbed admin / pre sales.
      Riverbed is a network accelerator appliance, placed in line with the firewall.
      It cached often used files in a local storage realm, instead of transmitting data to/from a remote server. Like in a branch office using a file share at HQ.
      The relays make the appliance pass through all traffic in case of software or hardware issues.
      Rendering the device into a really expensive ethernet cable.
      Ie. you lost the cache function but the network could still reach the WAN.

  • @TheArcaneBrony
    @TheArcaneBrony 6 месяцев назад +1

    Clarification near the end of the video: most likely reason for the mPCIe port not being called so, is the PCIe name requiring device manufacturers to pay royalties to bear the name. If I'm not mistaken, this is also the reason for SD cards on cheap devices being called CF cards.

  • @TheChloeRed
    @TheChloeRed 5 месяцев назад +2

    The earlier model of the iodd was rebranded by Zalmon, which is the models I have. They have a jog wheel on the side for selecting the disc images, but otherwise work identically.

    • @Hepglon
      @Hepglon 5 месяцев назад

      I've got one of them too! It's a great little device (lspci on linux seems to indicate that the Zalman branded one is actually made by Fujitsu, iirc)

  • @Griwes
    @Griwes 5 месяцев назад

    Immediately paused and went to buy the iodd when you've shown it. That's one damn versatile device.

  • @alexg8406
    @alexg8406 6 месяцев назад +2

    Your ability to make me care about the utterly banal facets of technology is a testament to your writing.

  • @ChalanaMal
    @ChalanaMal 5 месяцев назад +1

    @CathodeRayDude the relay was probably for power down bypass mode. Some industrial PC's have it when its powered down some of the rj45 directly connects to another rj45.

  • @chrisw443
    @chrisw443 6 месяцев назад +1

    this is why i love the mac mini.

  • @finisek123
    @finisek123 5 месяцев назад

    I am so here for this series!

  • @daemonspudguy
    @daemonspudguy 6 месяцев назад +1

    That name is indeed incredibly accurate. That's the most brick-looking PC I've ever seen.

  • @hardrocklobsterroll395
    @hardrocklobsterroll395 6 месяцев назад +1

    The tool that machined the post could’ve been much larger. I would probably use at least a 3/16 and probably a 3/8 endmill if I could get away with it. Love these videos about our obscure lil friends

  • @lathans1
    @lathans1 5 месяцев назад +2

    You can check Details > Device Instance Path in Device Manager to see if a device is on the USB or PCI bus. Please report back if you do! I just checked a 5G WWAN card in a Lenovo X1 and it showed up as PCI. According to Wikipedia B-keyed M.2s can have two PCIe lanes, USB2 and 3, and other interfaces like SATA, audio, UIM, HSIC, SSIC, I2C and SMBus.

  • @scottishcomedian1769
    @scottishcomedian1769 5 месяцев назад +1

    Good to know you have good taste in controllers (saw the 8bitdo pro 2 in the background)

  • @martinw89
    @martinw89 5 месяцев назад

    Wow that little “CD” guy at 37:30 is super freaking cool

  • @compu85
    @compu85 5 месяцев назад

    It's not a little guy, but I've got some AAUI to twisted pair adapters from Farallon. They have 2 ports and act like a hub when the adapter is powered. When not powered a relay clicks and connects the 2 ports together so any downstream device would still work. This design let you daisy chain a bunch of machines together.

  • @Lastman737
    @Lastman737 5 месяцев назад

    I love the name Little Guys.

  • @scotmolloy
    @scotmolloy 5 месяцев назад

    After watching I purchased iodd ST400. Incredible little tool, now I don't need a pile of USB drives for all my various install images

  • @BrianCairns
    @BrianCairns 6 месяцев назад

    In the useful category, HP/Dell/Lenovo produced a metric crapload of tiny/mini/micro (shoutout to Serve the Home) boxes over the last decade or so. You can often pick up used 6-core 8th gen Intel boxes for like $125 with an SSD, and they run Linux fantastically and even do a pretty good job with Windows 11. They tend to be pretty low power at idle, too.

  • @neckspike4554
    @neckspike4554 5 месяцев назад

    I am enchanted by the case design, it's so charmingly low poly looking? If you unwrapped a cough drop in Katamari Damacy it would look like this I think.

  • @sjokomelk
    @sjokomelk 5 месяцев назад

    We used these as firewalls running Linux on them at one of my former employers. The base config was made by a guy called Tor. So I gave them the name “TorWall 4000”. And the name made it into our product catalog. 😂

  • @talonmccree9416
    @talonmccree9416 6 месяцев назад

    About that Mini-PCIe bit: Just yesterday I found out about that PCIe/USB fact when I was testing several different combined WLAN/Bluetooth cards in a different Industrial PC (Pokini O) I'd gotten from work when we were cleaning some stuff out. No matter the card I put in, I either saw nothing in device manager or bluetooth only so I checked lspci and - nothing. But when I checked lsusb it showed e.g. an "Intel Centrino USB Bluetooth" adapter. Neat coincidence :)

  • @muffin_j_lord
    @muffin_j_lord 5 месяцев назад

    hot damn, that iodd st400. I had no idea something like that existed, but it makes perfect sense. If I was still deskside teching I would be in the procurement office stumping for a whole crate of those. Hell, I might still stump for one, just to see what weird situations it can get me out of.

  • @PenguTT44-sh2oe
    @PenguTT44-sh2oe 6 месяцев назад

    Love this series. Love mundane things.

  • @GrizzLeeAdams
    @GrizzLeeAdams 6 месяцев назад

    I had one of the Zalman iodd devices before they put the encryption features in (which is why there is a numpad). They had USB 2 and USB 3 versions, and the USB 3 used very fragile microusb connectors that were prone to breaking off the board. You can do the same sort of thing with a Raspberry Pi Zero and the mass storage gadget kernel driver, but at the time (2012ish?) the iodd was a great device for IT professionals that would have otherwise had a spindle or case of cds for all the crap they needed day to day. Technicians working on multiple computers at the same time would need multiple iodd devices, and they were quite expensive at the time.

  • @andrewinthecloud287
    @andrewinthecloud287 6 месяцев назад

    For the old power books you can take a old ecig battery and solder it in place they are lithium rechargeable batteries and small enough to fit.

  • @BillAnt
    @BillAnt 6 месяцев назад +1

    Dave's Garage just posted a video about this miniPC used as a PFSense/OPNSense transparent filter/router. ;)

  • @spacewolfjr
    @spacewolfjr 6 месяцев назад +1

    44:06 -- a quick way to check if it's PCIe or USB is to look at the hardware ID in Device Manager

  • @greenconscious210
    @greenconscious210 3 месяца назад

    I went out of my way to buy a Lex "BookPC" system in the early 2000s to use as a router. Via C3 (with encryption acceleration!) with 3 10/100 NICs and their custom USB ADSL modem that mounted into the case. It ran Linux off a CF card for many years until the capacitor plague took it down. Small(ish), fan-less, with connectivity was harder to find back in the olden days.
    I never really used the ADSL card, but it would another layer above the 2.5" hard drive bracket like in your Brik with a cable snaking down to a USB header on the board. One day I'll have a DSLAM in my house and I can use that ADSL card.
    I also have a set of dead-system bypass ports out of a Baracuda caching appliance. They were part of the system's front panel but went back and connected to a PCIe NIC inside as well as USB or maybe SMBUS for control. I ripped them out because I didn't want to bother trying to figure out how to control them but kept the parts for the oddity of it.

  • @rogerk6180
    @rogerk6180 5 месяцев назад +1

    Hey man. If you want to fix that titanium macbook you can replace the battery with a normal coincell battery. You just need to put a diode in line to make sure it can not be charged.
    That would bring back these old systems again.

  • @3rdalbum
    @3rdalbum 5 месяцев назад +1

    32:31 I have one of those Power books - not sure whether I'm fortunate or unfortunate. I don't think Macs of this vintage are "landfill fodder" without a PRAM battery, they just won't store the date and a few other settings. My concern, however, is that this battery board is a pain to get in and out. I bought a set of Torx drivers specially to get into my PowerBook but tbh I haven't even tried yet - I don't want to brick my computer.

  • @faultyillustration3197
    @faultyillustration3197 6 месяцев назад

    Re: your rant about that proprietary laptop battery, I JUST had to spend a couple days straight trying to find a battery for an Okuma CNC mill from the 90s and it turns out Interstate Battery Centers usually have one branch in an area with Some Guy (TM) that just makes specialty batteries for the other stores and their pricing was beyond reasonable. Might be worth looking into! I imagine if they can find a proprietary connector for industrial machining equipment you might have luck.

  • @wraithcadmus
    @wraithcadmus 5 месяцев назад

    Big ups the Atom N270, recently replaced a 10-year old Fanless NAS I had under my desk based on one. Thing just kept on trucking.

  • @The_Boctor
    @The_Boctor 5 месяцев назад +1

    In regards to "binary-compatible" or "binary-identical," I thought this implied a fully compatible, bug-for-bug identical ABI in something, not that the operating systems themselves were identical, per se.

  • @TheJuggtron
    @TheJuggtron 5 месяцев назад

    A few notes on Diamondville
    Its a reborn P54C
    The Northbridge does take care of the memory
    The N270 may be 2.5W but the NB is a 10-15W part
    The successor N450 / D450 was a much more mature product, Hyperthreading, 64 bit support (I think?) smooth video playback, and the northbridge on the chip and sucks lots less power. I still have one as my FreeDOS netbook machine that I fire up occasionally.

  • @aviinl1
    @aviinl1 6 месяцев назад

    because the vesa mounts are throughhole, i think they are intended to mount the brick to the back of a monitor, eg, take it apart, mount the backplate to monitor, then reasemble it.. you dont stick it on a mount itself, no risk to short with too long screws as the screws will be the other way around.

  • @ocsrc
    @ocsrc 6 месяцев назад

    A Gamma Knife, I worked for a doctor that had PET / CT / MRI and other nuclear medicine and Gamma Knife was used to zap parts of the brain. Really impressive machine

  • @xarin42
    @xarin42 6 месяцев назад

    Something about this series speaks to me.

  • @GothGuy885
    @GothGuy885 3 месяца назад

    30:52 reminded me of something else on certain computers that were a royal pain in the ass. the Dallas battery, that also contained the clock chip, so you could only replace it with the same. and they were getting hard to find later , after the systems became outdated, and I think also..... virtually impossible now. BUT, I saw a video , where someone drilled into the chip, in just the right places, and soldered wires from there, to an upright 2032 battery holder and hot glued the holder to the motherboard. I think these type of bios battery monstrosities were on some of the 386-486 motherboards. if my memory serves me well... it has been a long while since I worked on one

  • @fluffycritter
    @fluffycritter 5 месяцев назад

    With the VESA mount pattern I would assume that the idea is that you open it up, remove the mainboard (or at least the drive "caddy"), mount the backplate to your monitor on its VESA mount (assuming your monitor has separate VESA mounting from its own included stand), then reassemble the machine on the back of the monitor. That mode of mounting would also require the front screws to close the case back up.
    I have no authoritative information as to this being the case, though, it's just what makes sense to me.

  • @DantheLion
    @DantheLion 5 месяцев назад

    8:02 the intrusive thoughts are kicking xD

  • @eDoc2020
    @eDoc2020 5 месяцев назад

    You ended up discovering half the things I was going to point out (mPCIe USB, bypass relays, removable disk) so this comment is a bit shorter. On the storage front I woulds suspect the internal flash would be connected through the same ATA bus as the CF card. These chipsets predated eMMC. When a card appears as removable you can use the Hitachi "cfadisk" filter driver to make it appear as fixed.

  • @Teseng
    @Teseng 5 месяцев назад

    We had several systems like this (in a hospital IT setting) but they are largely being replaced by virtual machines on the applicable VLANs combined with server out-of-band management.

  • @owenvogelgesang7314
    @owenvogelgesang7314 6 месяцев назад

    44:12 Found this out when I installed a WWAN card in my Dell laptop. Not only did it just connect via USB (USB3, which is nice I guess), but it also added 4 whole new virtual serial ports to my computer, so now I'm permanently stuck with COM25-28 unless I take out the card. Fun stuff.

  • @midbc1midbc199
    @midbc1midbc199 6 месяцев назад

    That blue case piece was probably made from injected molten aluminum alloy of some other less brittle metals

  • @pptemplar5840
    @pptemplar5840 4 месяца назад

    I had an idea a few weeks ago of making like an "efficient materials" PC using an aluminum case as a shitty heat sink and antenna. Basically I wanted it to have each component serve as many functions as possible, And the design I had in mind was basically this but with a PSU strapped on the bottom pushing air through the top, like if this thing had a baby with a trashcan mac

  • @ProtoV33MK1
    @ProtoV33MK1 5 месяцев назад +2

    I have a box of some really little (like 3"x3"x1") guys I got from an old amusement park job that were used to run digital signage (in this case for the preview screens at the little photo prints counter when you got off the haunted house). I haven't really looked into them, all I know is they're branded Ebox (or at least, that's what's written on them) and they can run XP. If you have a PO box or something I'd be happy to send one for you to poke at. Also, what's that fox sticker on the tiny monitor?

    • @rraygen
      @rraygen 5 месяцев назад +1

      The fox is from Tunic (videogame) :3

    • @ProtoV33MK1
      @ProtoV33MK1 5 месяцев назад

      @@rraygen thanks :3

  • @spedi6721
    @spedi6721 5 месяцев назад +1

    There was there was possibility to mount an SD card as a hard disc for win XP. I used this years ago on my Asus EEE PC.
    I would like to see a video about this cd emulator. Does it also support DVDs or even Blurays?

  • @Stoney3K
    @Stoney3K 5 месяцев назад

    Weird to see it having a VESA mount. You'd expect it to have some mounting holes for a DIN rail clip since usually these foothold devices (or VPN gateways) are mounted inside of a switchgear cabinet to connect onto the client network.

  • @maverickbna
    @maverickbna 6 месяцев назад

    I love that SSD enclosure. I have one too - great device, and a godsend for installing an OS!

  • @ShawnArmstrong-p4n
    @ShawnArmstrong-p4n 6 месяцев назад

    You can't say "Don't over penetrate" and expect someone NOT to over penetrate