Couple errata: - The cable DOES closely resemble DMS-59, but those cables all had a single pin missing. This doesn't, so it's actually a 60-pin connector, making it more similar to the 60-pin v.35 cables used in T1 routers (etc.) Thanks to @toodarkpark for pointing that out, I should have known that! - Yes, it's a Cirrus Logic SVGA chip, not a Chips & Technologies. Look, everything that can't do 3D blends together. :p
Cirrus and C&T were like the decent-ish 2D cards especially in the embedded/mobile space, I'm surprised Trident sort of outlasted them, Trident has always seemed to inspire the feeling of "well at least it has a VGA output" , not that Trident last much longer though they released a few "3D" chips and at least made it into the early 2000s, their "3D" was awful just like any other card that wasn't Nvidia, ATI or 3dfx. Trident, NeoMagic, and SMI all tried to break into the 3D chips for laptops market and all failed miserably, By about 2003 Intel graphics seemed to be the norm on Intel Laptops without an IGP, and AMD without dGPUs were usually ATI or S3/VIA until S3 finally disappeared then Nvidia chipsets along with ATI started becoming more common in AMD laptops.
@@AnyasJunkyard Yep that's it, it does appear to be an LFH-60 (Molex Low Force Helix 60 pin). There's apparently variants of it with 80, 160 and 200 pins too. I've spent quite some time researching the connector since the Compaq Contura Aero uses the same connector for its dock connector, the only way to get VGA output on it.
its so obvious by your expressions and tone of voice that the changes in the studio and warehouse have made making videos fun again for you, and i'm so happy to see it. i think i speak for everyone that a happy CRD is a happy fanbase.
Never underestimate the power of having more room to move around in, and work on and play with and organize all your things. It truly is an amazing feeling.
I actually work at a company that makes cPCI cards and you got it all right for the most part. Just some quick thoughts. That red slot is usually what we refer to as the SYSCON slot, because the bus master has to go there. Usually this is some kind of SBC, but you could in theory put anything there provided it can perform bus arbitration and act as a system controller. The picture you showed of the 6u chassis is interesting because it has two SYSCON slots, which are bridged by some sort of PCI switch on the backplane. Sort of like a PLX chip it allows for multiple system controllers on the same bus, although to access the children of the other syscon, you have to go through the switch, and then through the other syscon. It is common for those additional pins you mentioned to simply be a passthrough straight to the back side of the backplane, so you can insert what is called an RTM or rear transition module. You are correct that a manufacturer would define this pinout themselves, but provided the backplane is a "passthrough" backplane, and your RTM matches with your SBC, the system should "just work". But like you said you do have to be careful, it's not always immediately obvious that a backplane is passthrough or if it is routing something else point to point on those pins, for example it is common to have Ethernet routed on those pins, and they go directly to another slot in the chassis.
Huh! So the red slot actually has access to different signals, presumably. This is what I get for not having the spec! (someone has since sent me an old copy I need to review, heh) Thank you so much for all the info!
I was working for a well-funded startup at the time and experienced this in-flight satellite Internet link first-hand on an SFO-IAD (San Francisco to Dulles) flight and while "abysmal" was the only appropriate term to describe the experience, it didn't matter in the slightest because even at at least 50% packet loss, I WAS ON THE FREAKIN' INTERNET IN AN AIRPLANE !!! This was near miraculous at the time for any of us working in the valley and putting the $35 buy in cost on the company dime. This, combined with our always-on Ricochet wireless modems taped to the back of our laptop screens gave us mobile warriors the feeling we were living in the future as we rode into companies throughout Silicon Valley like digital Lone Rangers, riding off into the sunset leaving happy customers in our wake asking, "who was that masked man?". Thanks for sharing and tickling these nerd memories :)
I got a pole mount ricochet router from New York, any idea how to get it working? I heard they turned the system back on for a bit after 9:11 , had the software on tape... But I only know about the modems, and using the old ones for point-to-point links.
@@petevenuti7355 The ricochet network is long since defunct. However, if you have multiple modems, you can use them to create long-range point-to-point connections by setting each modem up in your routing stack as an on-demand dial-up link using AT commands. I did this in 2002 to connect my mother's home about 2 miles away to mine so she could share my 144kbps IDSL connection so she didn't have to keep using dialup and had an always-on connection. It worked a treat ! But these days, using the new 900Mhz WiFi bridge devices is a far easier and simpler solution. Regardless, the Ricochet network was a concept almost impossible to believe was implemented (and not surprising didn't ultimately success, mostly due to it being a point-in-time solution that was too costly for general usage. But a bright little spot in Internet history !
Yes, Yes! The owner of the museum has noticed your interest, unlocked the cabinet, and is showing you all the weird stuff! This is top quality content!
Eurorack and CompactPCI are both based on the same standard "single-height" (3U) Eurocard chassis. There's a whole lot of other equipment that uses this form factor too, e.g. modular measurement equipment for use with LabVIEW.
@@paulyearley1084 you can get them - especially when no backplane is needed - for scrap metal prices. i put everything inside them, didn't feel special doing so until i found out about this eurorack audio scam charging ripoff prices for e-waste chassis xD
I was listening while doing something else when this moment passed... I had to go back it up to make sure the images were used, and was pleasantly satisfied :)
This may sound silly and unusual but THANK YOU FOR SHOWING CASTLE OF THE WINDS! I have been wracking my brain trying to remember this game for like 20 years
Agreed. I've spent many an hour playing that game. Still fire it up about once a year. You may already know, but there was a sequel as well that let's you import your victorious character from the first game. Well worth the hunt imo.
@@brandonallard8388 I have fond memories of that stupid clown looking end boss and how my mom on a whim went thrifting and found the game somehow. So glad it's online and free
This hits close to home for me as I work for a company that makes PXI equipment, which is just CompactPCI for electronic test & measurement (PCI Extensions for Instrumentation). You can get all sorts of modular test gear in the CompactPCI form factor under the PXI banner including DMMs, oscilloscopes, function generators, programmable power supplies, relay multiplexers, etc, a lot of which would probably work in your chassis. There is even PXIe (PCI Express) on some chassis which I believe is test industry specific. It's fun to game on $16k of test equipment, and thanks to this video I'll have to start cramming modular synthesisers in too.
Please make a demo/test rig with an osc and other test equip that measures some eurorack outputs all in the same chassis, would make for a great marketing piece and satisfy all our inner nerd !!!
I program these test machines. (And from time to time develop modules and adapters for them) But the company I work for doesn't like PXI as it's expensive compared to other options. Usually we stick to HP / Keysight DAQs and DVMs, sometimes Beckhoff Industrial / PLC stuff
If you guys haven't seen it. Marco reps used some modular racks like this when building his voltage standard rack. On his RUclips channel. That And other metrological equipment projects
Even as an avid IA glazer and copyright hater IA is not without fault in either of those situations, I don't think they should be given a free pass for the sake of dogma, the access to their database and zendesk were leaked through a git repo on a dev server that was public for 2 years, and over a week after the compromise went public (they knew for longer) they didnt rotate their secrets, in the case of the book publishers they removed the lending limits on books during the pandemic, meaning instead of loaning 1:1 with physical owned books - emulating a physical library - they allowed unlimited copies to be made, I think this was an obviously bad idea for the sake of the existence of the archive even though it was based. And now 5 million books have been removed from lending entirely. Their entire defense was that digital scans were derivative works and "fair use" under copyright law. Ffs. if you give them a free pass they won't get better and they will keep making these mistakes.
@@TronicJohndoes she have her own channel? I remember thinking that arcade cabinet she had a hand in building (like, 5 years ago?) seemed cool, but I’ve not seen her do other stuff since. Maybe there’s posts on Twitter or something that I’m missing because I don’t go there 😅
@@kaitlyn__L I don't think Daria has a RUclips channel. She's on Bluesky (and before that used to be on Twitter) but I believe that is the extent of her social media career
@@TronicJohn my ADHD has been dragging its feet regarding Masto and Bluesky despite quitting Twitter (ironically might be caused by a deficit of cheap dopamine FROM quitting Twitter, ugh), but that’s good to know once I get round to it haha
If it makes you feel any better, I have known this for about 30 years but never found a USE for it. Everything was either internal OR external SCSI and I don't think I ever owned anything that truly had reasons to swap from one to the other. I kind of miss SCSI.
Yeah you were onto something. Seeing you fully in the shot interacting with the subject does make the content a lot more engaging, compared to the previous episodes where the shot was only bench.
I just want to say, phenomenal work. No idea how much this second space cost you but imo as a single fan it was worth it because this was great. I actually loved the workbench videos but the vibes here mixed with the better viewing angles make it even more fun to watch!
SkyX seems to be a TCP accelerator. Since satellite links have such high latency you don't want TCP replay/go-back-n/ACK type messages going through the satellite link. These boxes probably establish a new TCP link at the ground station and use different protocols through the satellite link, essentially a man-in-the-middle of your connection.
I wouldn't be surprised if they stripped off the entire HTTP application layer and threw that onto a different protocol and re-packaged it on the other end - they probably would have run a proxy server on the box anyway to filter out any users trying to look up 'naughty' sites.
Castle of the Winds. Man, what a game. Just like you, I found it on a shareware disc and played it on windows 3.1, and it dominated my gaming experience as a 7 year old or whatever I was. About 8 years ago I found out the sequel, constantly advertised in-game, became freeware and actually available by the developer and I screamed because I wanted to see dragons and use bastard swords soooo bad. Truly the maximum potential of the Compact PCI has now been reached.
it was a pretty fun more accessible 'nethack' for the time. and unlike nethack you can finish it without too much fussing about so doesn't consumer your life!
The fun thing I found about about hardware form factors is that a standard 19” telecom rack is the exact same width as a standard full size hotel sheet pan and therefore cooling rack. Because I turned an empty half height SGI Itanium chassis into a smoker. I can slide whatever food I’m smoking in on some full size cooling racks easy peasy.
I used to bake the cookies at a hotel(supposed to be front desk but kitchen always fucked us over on cookies) and used those racks all the time, idk how I never made that connection. they were just premade Otis Spunkmeyer dough btw
@@AgentAsteriski I learned from XKCD that standard beehive honeycomb frames are also the correct size to fit in a 19-inch rack, perhaps you should leave them an opportunity to make their own honey someday 🙂
20 inches seems like a reasonable centre-to-centre spacing for vertical posts for an imperial minded engineer. They likely didn't have much faith in their contractors, so they kept it simple. Half an inch for mounting, and voila. You have your 19" racks.
Man that video felt ALIVE and you just go on and on about things you want to show and what ever things pop into your mind as you go while reeling your self back to subject after getting sidetracked. It's like me when I try to show someone stuff, I love seeing other people get excited to talk about things like this, even when it's stuff they've never used in their life or would ever use in the future. Good stuff!
11:45 - Yep, desktop "classic Pentium" went up to 200 MHz, desktop Pentium MMX up to 233 MHz. The mobile MMX versions went up to *_300_* MHz. (The "Tillamook" core, on its own custom "mobile card" interface that also held the 430TX chipset and L2 cache - which means the vendor removed the Tillamook CPU from the Intel-supplied card to re-mount all the pieces to their own custom board!)
@@CantankerousDave around where i lived 200mhz regular pentiums were basically unseen, they were too expensive for anyone to buy before the mmx 166 got on the market anyway.
Tillamook is a brand of cheese from Oregon. I know it’s named for the Tillamook region near the intel fab, but to me it sounds like “Intel used the Sargento core for their mobile chips”
@ For a while, Intel was using names of rivers as the core names. Tillamook, Klamath, Deschutes, Tualatin, Willamette - all rivers in Oregon. Katmai and Coppermine are rivers in Alaska and Canada.
That rack, though. It's giving strong Eurorack, especially Doepfer vibes. In that world, vertical is measured in "U" with almost everything being 3U but occasionally small utility modules being 1U tiles. Horizontal units are measured in HP, where 1HP is very slightly (and maddeningly) more than 5mm. So measure how wide the card is in centimeters and double it, and that's the HP, more-or-less. ETA: Haha, you got there, too. And yes, when Doepfer standardized the Eurorack spec, it was based on computer rack hardware because that was readily available. Sadly, even though I am in the market for a decent Eurorack case, repurposing an old CompactPCI case doesn't appear particularly cheap; there are current-gen cases on eBay for more than a grand... Maybe something to set up a craigslist alert for, to save on shipping, but the perfect era for pulling this off for cheap was probably fifteen years ago when even the industrial P5 users were retiring their racks.
Hence the last 5-10 minutes of the video. I really hope someone does getting around to throwing some Eurorack modules into one of these things - it seems like it would actually be pretty darn cool.
this standard goes wayyyy back to early telecom, doepfer just adopted it because it was convenient. it's also very convenient for me since i just got 416HP of rack for about 100 dollars by buying them from a eurocard case manufacturuer instead of a synth shop where you'd pay a LOT more. API's series 500 is also based on eurocard but the two have diverged just enough that you can't put 500 series modules into a eurorack case. the screw holes don't line up anymore.
@@famitory A lot of eurorack cases I've seen have sliding nuts in TS rail, rather than fixed-position screw holes. What manufacturer of eurocard cases sells to the consumer? I'm in the market myself.
It's less maddening when you realize that 1HP is 1/5th of an inch. (But yes, Eurocard and its derivatives like Eurorack being a wild mix of metric and US dimensions is pretty annoying)
@@oasntet schroff are the standard from what i remember. keyword is Vector Rails watch out because in eurocard 2.5mm screws are standard instead of the 3mm used in eurorack, so if you get those nutstrips you wont be able to use any of the screws included in the box with modules as for marketplaces you want component sellers like mouser and digikey.
I can confirm... this was INDEED a great way to kick off the new season of Little Guys. I'm overjoyed to see Castle of the Winds mentioned! And amused to see a euro-rack synth cameo. Keep it up!!!
I'm using one of those office PCs with a DMS-59 graphics card! It's the only spare Radeon card I have with analog out, and I use the PC to play emulated games on my CRT TV with Retroarch and CRT SwitchRes. In the end, the chain is Optiplex -> DMS-59 -> DVI to VGA cable -> 15KHz VGA to composite/S-Video converter -> TV. It's not the most cursed hookup, but it's *my* cursed hookup and I love it.
Loving the new warehouse vids in style and concept. What I do miss from the bench videos is the overhead cam (not that it would've done much good here, but still). I just enjoyed getting in closer to the action on some of the stuff. I'm sure you'll get the angles figured out in due time. The warehouse has good potential for this sort of informal demonstrating and it really does feel like when I go over to a friend's place and they show me some weird curiosity.
Yeah, I need new furniture to make this work right, I just figured it didn't make any sense to put out *nothing* while waiting to get The Perfect Setup
@@CathodeRayDudeyeah, if we waited until we were 100% prepared to do everything, would we ever really do anything? I love the content you make either way 🔥
I love these new format videos. I think I speak for the majority of us when I say I'm just happy to see content from you. I don't need it to be a long, epic story. Don't get me wrong, I do love those long format videos, but I also like seeing quicker blurbs from you as well, and I'm so glad the new warehouse space has given you that opportunity. Thank you for all you do!
Btw. assuming this really is EDO RAM you will absolutely need both memory modules to get this machine to do anything. EDO RAM (and everything else before SDRAM) is only 32 bits wide but Pentiums have a 64 bit data bus, so they insist on talking to two memory modules in parallel. This is why you always had to install memory modules pairwise in early Pentium machines.
Yup, I was actually preparing to say that before I busted the tabs off and got completely distracted. probably if I hadn't thought to tape the stick back in, I would have gone "-oh wait, no, that won't work" a minute later, heh
This new format looks fantastic - it's a big step up! Also, props for the Castle of the Winds demonstration. I remember buying the full version of that, the two non-shareware Jill of the Jungle episodes, and Overkill from the Epic's e-catalog and being sent four floppies.
If you like this, you'll love PXI and VXI. These are both long lived setups for automated test gear. Many of them have integrated PCs in their racks. But the hardware that connects to it varies wildly. Everything from a multimeter to fancy digital testers. Even oscilloscopes. And these things have been around so long, you can find PCs with 486s (or maybe even older) to the latest stuff from Intel.
The only time I've encountered VXI was two 19" racks full of Keysight SERDES pattern generators and protocol analyzers. Sadly no little guy as the VXI connection was made to a desktop with a long daisy chain of Firewire. This was an actual industry standard thing that bridged the five minutes between the GPIB and gigabit Ethernet LXI eras.
Probably won't find anything older than 80486 in an industrial system that only has a PCI bus or variant of it. There was one crazy PC motherboard that supported both 80386 and 80486 CPUs. It had an 80387 socket, ISA slots and PCI slots. With a 386 CPU installed the PCI slots weren't usable. Pull the 386 (and 387 if it had one) and plug in a 486 and the PCI slots worked. A friend owned one for a while.
So. The spacing is identical to Eurorack modular synth standard. My immediate thought has been confirmed and I'm 100% sure they both use the same screw rails.
Making a LAN between the two PCs in the same rack is what I'd call "vlan" - "very local area networking" EDIT: the Euro-Rack format was (is?) very popular for industrial small production runs. If you have only a few hundred of devices to make for a select customer, this would be the way to go: cases are readily available, backplanes can be 1:1 off the shelf or customized using wire wrap... THe company I worked for swore by them in the 1990s.
I work in that area and yes, one of the form factors that we use is modules for a 3U Eurocard rack. Those aren't too frequently ordered, as 19" racks aren't very common around heavy industrial equipment so most customers prefer standalone boxes, but we design PCBs to be 100mm wide whenever we can just to have that option if required. Do note that _Eurorack_ is a standard specifically for modular synthesizers.
@@musashigundoh OK, I was unaware of the "Eurorack" term specifically for synth use... I'm not a native speaker so some terms blend together. We used to refer to the cards as "Eurokarte" or "Euro Einschub".
@@atkelar You were correct on the first one, Eurokarte/Eurocard is a very old and very common standard for fitting PCBs into 3U/6U/9U chassis with optional 96-pin backplane connectors on the rear. It spawned a whole bunch of derivatives, including the titular CompactPCI (fixed 160mm depth and a different backplane connector), Eurorack (very shallow depth, no backplane, 3mm mounting screws instead of 2.5mm), and a whole bunch of proprietary ones.
absolutely love the new format! But i'd also like to see a close up of the cards with B-roll or something, the first 5 minutes i was so confused because i couldnt see the pins!
The connectors and the card form factor (Eurocard) are specified in DIN 41612 and IEEE 60297. VMEbus used double height Eurocards where this system uses the standard 160x200mm card format. One horizontal pitch unit is 0.2" (5,08mm) so the narrowest module you have there is probably 3HP wide.
I work with these things professionally, because normally suppliers don't use all the backplane connectors spec'd in PCI, some cPCI and PXIe can be plugged in a hybrid slot. And as far as I know, the horizontal spacing is called a slot. There's another backplane configuration for timing input. In big factories there's sometimes factory wide high impedance timing lines
Yeah, 'Castle of the Winds'! I must have a retail copy of that game lying around somewhere. It was also my first computer RPG, before I got to switch to table top and potato chips.
honestly i wish that eurorack had kept the backplane connectors in some capacity because even in the era of keyed connectors people are STILL frying modules by plugging them in wrong. plus a proper backplane connector would have had the trace width to properly use the pins rather than doubling up power across pairs of lines. imagine the utopia of having clock/run lines to go with the cv/gate bus lines! come on folks API 500 series is doing it and they're really not any more or less expensive than eurorack.
I think Doepfer did what he did for price and ease of manufacturing. Those connectors + guides cant be cheap. Also, it would be much harder to make skiff friendly modules. Would be cool though, I do agree.
@@AshBashVids yeah in modern hindsight clock lines would be far more useful. i don't think doepfer foresaw that people would be putting DAW-in-a-box sequencers like the hermod in their modular systems.
At my previous job, I've spent a decade building eurorack-based meausrement systems with all knids of 3-6U microcontroller units, that ultimately fed into an industrial PC. Making the cables and troubleshooting was the bane of my existance, but oddly this delightful video kinda brought back fond memories of the time I spent on those machines. Thank you, and if you do ever find the person who makes that PC-synth rack, please make a video of that beast for us! I'm sure I'm not the only one who'd love that.
I was literally working on something that looks very much like eurorack today. I'm building a DWDM fibre optic system for an office relocation so we can have the two independent networks running off the one HA pair of firewalls split between the two offices (don't ask), and it (the DWDM system) uses some 2U rackmount frames that look very much like eurorack. The system itself was "left over" from a managed service we had from [large Australian telco] for like at 20 years, but they never asked to have back when we cancelled the service. The cards in the system have optical input/output ports that either go to the optical MUX or the network, and they act as transponders to convert from a DWDM wavelength to a regular Ethernet optical wavelength (i.e. 1310nm) or vice-versa. You need two cards to convert both the TX and RX directions at each side, unless you get the fancy newer models that are duplex. They plug into a backplane for power, control and monitoring, and the optical connectors push through into fibre housings on the rear connectors, which also plug into the backplane for the electrical connectors (the cards can also be reconfigured from network mode to broadcast mode, but that's another story). Speaking of control and monitoring, there is a controller card which is used to configure the other cards and monitor the optical TX and RX light levels, which is very useful for working out whether you need an attenuator to keep the light levels within the valid operating window. It's managed via the Ethernet port, and it basically had non-HTTPS open access when I used my 1337 hax0r sk1llz to do a scan and determine it was indeed using the default IP address we had been given in our documentation, then I used my even higher-level sk1llz to determine the username and highly-secure password were "admin" and "password", respectively (yes, I promptly changed it), which is only actually required to change any settings. Anysways, turns out the thing is literally a tiny 486 with 32MB of memory, running an ancient Linux from a tiny compact flash card. It was supposed to be managed by the service provider, but I'm guessing they never updated it or changed the password because they were managing it remotely using the serial port rather than the Ethernet port, and none of the access controls apply to that (as far as I know, I didn't really look into it much). _Anysways_ anysways (if you're still reading this), I'd never heard of or seen anything like your CompactPCI little guy. It is very interesting, though, so I hope you find more like it to show us and play with in the future.
I'm an automation engineer. I program and support automated equipment for factories. I actually got tasked at one point to support a machine that had a 68k and VME bus. It ran a tablet pill press. The date in the cabinet was 1998. I wasn't given the source code, or the programming software, or any documentation on it. I told them I couldn't support it and it was over. It would have been a cool project to work on though.
Regarding SCSI for industrial use. In the past SCSI was also used for connecting scanners. Now in the place where I work we have a couple of machine's with "modern" (Read: Adaptec SCSI adapter with on PCB PCIe-PCI bridge) connecting to a node on the control system and gets process data out of it for the historian. For audio: Use the USB port ;). Win2K Ships with a generic USB audio driver. Just enable the Windows Audio service in the service manager. That is disabled by default on server editions.
Very happy to see your great return! And I was happy for you to hear about your improved studio and new warehouse! Hopefully, for the sake of all of us, it helps you continue your great work! Also... Really looking forward to the triumphant return of Quick Start in the coming months!
This video spoke to me on multiple levels - the Eurorack stuff and Castle of the Winds namely. I too didn't know Castle of the Winds was a roguelike, and it had been so long since I've played it I never thought much about it, but it was cool to get the history lesson.
Fun fact: connexion is also an archaic spelling of connection, not just some corporate branding. If you read novels written at least like 150 years ago, you're likely to encounter it.
RE the SCSI port, my brother-in-law is an engineer for the auto industry. One of the many job anecdotes he's told me over the years is that they had a very expensive and perfectly useful piece of diagnostic equipment that could output Data to a PC, and it used a SCSI interface. They had to keep a very old computer running in order to make sure that that tool didn't become obsolete because it was five figures to replace it with an updated one. I bet you that external front-facing SCSI port was for a specialized industrial peripheral of some kind.
Around that time SCSI was used for things like scanners and other things that would be USB now. I have a Nikon SCSI film scanner that I’ve used with a FireWire adapter (not so convenient these days either).
16:49 I'm thinking that if you told someone all the specs of USB C and what all it could do in the 90's, this is what someone would've cobbled together in a weekend to do the same stuff lmao
You seem exceptionally happy in the new warehouse. I've always been a fan of the entire little guys series, but this really is breathing new life into it. Long live CRD!
I dont comment much but straight up your videos when I see they are here they make my day! There something about your presentation it never gets old! I love the warehouse too that was a great idea!
Castle of the Winds is a gem. I spent hours on the first floor before I figured out how to use the stairs. I eventually beat the first episode, but I never got the second episode.
Good news, with Wine or WINEDVM, playing both episodes is cheap as free, because they're both freeware now! You can even Wizardry your character from Episode 1 to 2!
At work (industrial automation) often we need to use PXIe chassis from NI if we need to do anything "scientific" such as production line testing they come in all shapes and sizes, you can even get them without any computer and simply attaches via thunderbolt
I think the old bench videos were like eating a delicious cake, but then this one is like when they put whip cream and the little crunchy sprinkles on it
There is another form factor of this used in test and measurement equipment called PXI and PXIe for PCI and PCIe respectively. It's very common for National Instruments and RF equipment. They are also PC based.
I wanna put in my two cents to say that while I loved the cozy vibes of the original little guys format, this is really good and I like it too! You look way more comfortable and in your element doing it this way, even though the setup itself still needs some improvements (for your sake and sanity, please put a backstop for that workbench-shelf). I hope you can continue to tweak and improve this to your heart's content. Looking forward to seeing where it goes from here.
Hey there - I work for a company that designs and manufactures single-board computers, including for CompactPCI! Fascinating equipment, I love how modular and user-serviceable everything is.
Couple errata:
- The cable DOES closely resemble DMS-59, but those cables all had a single pin missing. This doesn't, so it's actually a 60-pin connector, making it more similar to the 60-pin v.35 cables used in T1 routers (etc.) Thanks to @toodarkpark for pointing that out, I should have known that!
- Yes, it's a Cirrus Logic SVGA chip, not a Chips & Technologies. Look, everything that can't do 3D blends together. :p
Cirrus and C&T were like the decent-ish 2D cards especially in the embedded/mobile space, I'm surprised Trident sort of outlasted them, Trident has always seemed to inspire the feeling of "well at least it has a VGA output" , not that Trident last much longer though they released a few "3D" chips and at least made it into the early 2000s, their "3D" was awful just like any other card that wasn't Nvidia, ATI or 3dfx. Trident, NeoMagic, and SMI all tried to break into the 3D chips for laptops market and all failed miserably, By about 2003 Intel graphics seemed to be the norm on Intel Laptops without an IGP, and AMD without dGPUs were usually ATI or S3/VIA until S3 finally disappeared then Nvidia chipsets along with ATI started becoming more common in AMD laptops.
32:52 Up to Server 2003, IIS was enabled by default on server installations (MS03-007). Yes, really.
Sounds like an ultra-cursed implementation of LFH-60
@@AnyasJunkyard Yep that's it, it does appear to be an LFH-60 (Molex Low Force Helix 60 pin). There's apparently variants of it with 80, 160 and 200 pins too.
I've spent quite some time researching the connector since the Compaq Contura Aero uses the same connector for its dock connector, the only way to get VGA output on it.
Compaq Aero 486 laptops have that same connector for port replicator / dock...
“Godspeed. Use a voltmeter.”
Words to live by.
It's like a friendly "use protection" between nerds.
I prefer an oscilloscope...
14:24 "you know what? let's gaff tape it" t-shirt design right there
All for it but ... for goodness sake get kapton tape!
I'd buy it
Yes, but you need to have a roll of gaff tape peeking out from behind a massive shelving unit :D
Mr. C.R. Dude... I could watch you discussing water boiling for 2 hours and I wouldn't leave my chair. You are the best!
I just love how in depth he is, makes me scared to create content 😂
@@camd1552 use that as inspiration to strive for better, then.
Technology Connections is almost cdr and he actually has talked about water boiling a couple of times, sadly not for 2 hours tho
frankly i feel the exact same way. couldn't have put it better myself. even the bench videos, which i didn't know a lot of people disliked!
Me too! 😃
its so obvious by your expressions and tone of voice that the changes in the studio and warehouse have made making videos fun again for you, and i'm so happy to see it. i think i speak for everyone that a happy CRD is a happy fanbase.
Agreed, its always heart warming to see creators regain their spark
Never underestimate the power of having more room to move around in, and work on and play with and organize all your things. It truly is an amazing feeling.
@@micahnightwolf I love your fursona! theyre so cuteeeee ^^
Agreed
@@crimsonlion100 Thank you! This one was drawn by Grion/FursuitUP
I actually work at a company that makes cPCI cards and you got it all right for the most part. Just some quick thoughts. That red slot is usually what we refer to as the SYSCON slot, because the bus master has to go there. Usually this is some kind of SBC, but you could in theory put anything there provided it can perform bus arbitration and act as a system controller. The picture you showed of the 6u chassis is interesting because it has two SYSCON slots, which are bridged by some sort of PCI switch on the backplane. Sort of like a PLX chip it allows for multiple system controllers on the same bus, although to access the children of the other syscon, you have to go through the switch, and then through the other syscon. It is common for those additional pins you mentioned to simply be a passthrough straight to the back side of the backplane, so you can insert what is called an RTM or rear transition module. You are correct that a manufacturer would define this pinout themselves, but provided the backplane is a "passthrough" backplane, and your RTM matches with your SBC, the system should "just work". But like you said you do have to be careful, it's not always immediately obvious that a backplane is passthrough or if it is routing something else point to point on those pins, for example it is common to have Ethernet routed on those pins, and they go directly to another slot in the chassis.
Huh! So the red slot actually has access to different signals, presumably. This is what I get for not having the spec! (someone has since sent me an old copy I need to review, heh)
Thank you so much for all the info!
Rad insights. Thanks for sharing!
I was working for a well-funded startup at the time and experienced this in-flight satellite Internet link first-hand on an SFO-IAD (San Francisco to Dulles) flight and while "abysmal" was the only appropriate term to describe the experience, it didn't matter in the slightest because even at at least 50% packet loss, I WAS ON THE FREAKIN' INTERNET IN AN AIRPLANE !!! This was near miraculous at the time for any of us working in the valley and putting the $35 buy in cost on the company dime. This, combined with our always-on Ricochet wireless modems taped to the back of our laptop screens gave us mobile warriors the feeling we were living in the future as we rode into companies throughout Silicon Valley like digital Lone Rangers, riding off into the sunset leaving happy customers in our wake asking, "who was that masked man?". Thanks for sharing and tickling these nerd memories :)
I got a pole mount ricochet router from New York, any idea how to get it working? I heard they turned the system back on for a bit after 9:11 , had the software on tape... But I only know about the modems, and using the old ones for point-to-point links.
@@petevenuti7355 The ricochet network is long since defunct. However, if you have multiple modems, you can use them to create long-range point-to-point connections by setting each modem up in your routing stack as an on-demand dial-up link using AT commands. I did this in 2002 to connect my mother's home about 2 miles away to mine so she could share my 144kbps IDSL connection so she didn't have to keep using dialup and had an always-on connection. It worked a treat !
But these days, using the new 900Mhz WiFi bridge devices is a far easier and simpler solution. Regardless, the Ricochet network was a concept almost impossible to believe was implemented (and not surprising didn't ultimately success, mostly due to it being a point-in-time solution that was too costly for general usage. But a bright little spot in Internet history !
loving the new presentation. you're totally right, doing videos in this way in your new room makes things way more engaging!
yeah, very good setup for vids like this. loving it
I really hope he figures out how to cool that other room tho. That room looks tough to work in
Yes, Yes! The owner of the museum has noticed your interest, unlocked the cabinet, and is showing you all the weird stuff! This is top quality content!
Saw it - my mind instantly went "Eurorack! Eurorack! Does it fit Eurorack?" 😸
it would
Eurorack and CompactPCI are both based on the same standard "single-height" (3U) Eurocard chassis.
There's a whole lot of other equipment that uses this form factor too, e.g. modular measurement equipment for use with LabVIEW.
Yup. This thing. First minute.
Same - that was the first thought in my head. I'm glad it's not just me.
That said, this would be a rad case for a synth
@@paulyearley1084 you can get them - especially when no backplane is needed - for scrap metal prices. i put everything inside them, didn't feel special doing so until i found out about this eurorack audio scam charging ripoff prices for e-waste chassis xD
i absolutely love the running joke with the image used for any time there is two of something
I was listening while doing something else when this moment passed... I had to go back it up to make sure the images were used, and was pleasantly satisfied :)
This may sound silly and unusual but THANK YOU FOR SHOWING CASTLE OF THE WINDS! I have been wracking my brain trying to remember this game for like 20 years
Agreed. I've spent many an hour playing that game. Still fire it up about once a year. You may already know, but there was a sequel as well that let's you import your victorious character from the first game. Well worth the hunt imo.
@@brandonallard8388 I have fond memories of that stupid clown looking end boss and how my mom on a whim went thrifting and found the game somehow. So glad it's online and free
This hits close to home for me as I work for a company that makes PXI equipment, which is just CompactPCI for electronic test & measurement (PCI Extensions for Instrumentation). You can get all sorts of modular test gear in the CompactPCI form factor under the PXI banner including DMMs, oscilloscopes, function generators, programmable power supplies, relay multiplexers, etc, a lot of which would probably work in your chassis. There is even PXIe (PCI Express) on some chassis which I believe is test industry specific. It's fun to game on $16k of test equipment, and thanks to this video I'll have to start cramming modular synthesisers in too.
imagining a mordax data feeling incredibly self consious mounted next to a Big Boy oscilloscope that can do 10 gigasamples
Please make a demo/test rig with an osc and other test equip that measures some eurorack outputs all in the same chassis, would make for a great marketing piece and satisfy all our inner nerd !!!
I program these test machines. (And from time to time develop modules and adapters for them)
But the company I work for doesn't like PXI as it's expensive compared to other options.
Usually we stick to HP / Keysight DAQs and DVMs, sometimes Beckhoff Industrial / PLC stuff
If you guys haven't seen it. Marco reps used some modular racks like this when building his voltage standard rack. On his RUclips channel.
That And other metrological equipment projects
the people taking down IA, whether it be book publishers, or the hackers, are the lowest of the low.
Even as an avid IA glazer and copyright hater IA is not without fault in either of those situations, I don't think they should be given a free pass for the sake of dogma, the access to their database and zendesk were leaked through a git repo on a dev server that was public for 2 years, and over a week after the compromise went public (they knew for longer) they didnt rotate their secrets, in the case of the book publishers they removed the lending limits on books during the pandemic, meaning instead of loaning 1:1 with physical owned books - emulating a physical library - they allowed unlimited copies to be made, I think this was an obviously bad idea for the sake of the existence of the archive even though it was based. And now 5 million books have been removed from lending entirely. Their entire defense was that digital scans were derivative works and "fair use" under copyright law. Ffs. if you give them a free pass they won't get better and they will keep making these mistakes.
@@nixietubes I still think they should get a free pass IMO.
they did something stupid
either way library genesis for books goated
@@nixietubes I would rather fix the real problem, Copyright.
@@davidmiller9485 exactly
@@nixietubes "they broke the law"
Bad laws should be broken.
Bonus points for pronouncing Moog correctly!
His girlfriend is a modular synth nerd, he's BOUND to get the pronunciation right lol
I am Woof, son of Moog.
@@TronicJohndoes she have her own channel? I remember thinking that arcade cabinet she had a hand in building (like, 5 years ago?) seemed cool, but I’ve not seen her do other stuff since. Maybe there’s posts on Twitter or something that I’m missing because I don’t go there 😅
@@kaitlyn__L I don't think Daria has a RUclips channel. She's on Bluesky (and before that used to be on Twitter) but I believe that is the extent of her social media career
@@TronicJohn my ADHD has been dragging its feet regarding Masto and Bluesky despite quitting Twitter (ironically might be caused by a deficit of cheap dopamine FROM quitting Twitter, ugh), but that’s good to know once I get round to it haha
22:40 😳🤯🤦
*_I HAVE BEEN USING 68-PIN SCSI FOR 30 YEARS, AND I NEVER NOTICED THAT THE INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL CONNECTORS ARE PHYSICALLY IDENTICAL!_*
If it makes you feel any better, I have known this for about 30 years but never found a USE for it. Everything was either internal OR external SCSI and I don't think I ever owned anything that truly had reasons to swap from one to the other. I kind of miss SCSI.
the one drawback to these videos being in the studio now is the cat won't invade anymore.
the way you walked up remined me of the Korean dude walking up to a refrigerator in his store and him saying " i love refrigerators "
Funny, I thought Tech Connections was the true refrigerator lover
I live in Central Florida, homeland of Appliance Direct. We all love Sam Pak.
If you didn't buy Direct, *YOU PAID TOO MUCH!*
@@josephpbrownno he just is slighty obsessed with heat pumps
"But again, wrong gender"
Story of my life...
Yeah you were onto something. Seeing you fully in the shot interacting with the subject does make the content a lot more engaging, compared to the previous episodes where the shot was only bench.
I just want to say, phenomenal work. No idea how much this second space cost you but imo as a single fan it was worth it because this was great. I actually loved the workbench videos but the vibes here mixed with the better viewing angles make it even more fun to watch!
SkyX seems to be a TCP accelerator. Since satellite links have such high latency you don't want TCP replay/go-back-n/ACK type messages going through the satellite link. These boxes probably establish a new TCP link at the ground station and use different protocols through the satellite link, essentially a man-in-the-middle of your connection.
That makes a ton of sense, thank you!
Didn't satellite Internet upload on dialup
@@AgentOffice some were pstn return path.
Some are satellite up and down.
@@AgentOffice the consumer stuff often did, but bidirectional satellite networking has always been feasible if you had the money
I wouldn't be surprised if they stripped off the entire HTTP application layer and threw that onto a different protocol and re-packaged it on the other end - they probably would have run a proxy server on the box anyway to filter out any users trying to look up 'naughty' sites.
Castle of the Winds. Man, what a game. Just like you, I found it on a shareware disc and played it on windows 3.1, and it dominated my gaming experience as a 7 year old or whatever I was. About 8 years ago I found out the sequel, constantly advertised in-game, became freeware and actually available by the developer and I screamed because I wanted to see dragons and use bastard swords soooo bad.
Truly the maximum potential of the Compact PCI has now been reached.
it was a pretty fun more accessible 'nethack' for the time. and unlike nethack you can finish it without too much fussing about so doesn't consumer your life!
The fun thing I found about about hardware form factors is that a standard 19” telecom rack is the exact same width as a standard full size hotel sheet pan and therefore cooling rack. Because I turned an empty half height SGI Itanium chassis into a smoker. I can slide whatever food I’m smoking in on some full size cooling racks easy peasy.
For some reason I read "bed pan".
I used to bake the cookies at a hotel(supposed to be front desk but kitchen always fucked us over on cookies) and used those racks all the time, idk how I never made that connection.
they were just premade Otis Spunkmeyer dough btw
@@AgentAsteriski
I learned from XKCD that standard beehive honeycomb frames are also the correct size to fit in a 19-inch rack, perhaps you should leave them an opportunity to make their own honey someday 🙂
What a good idea for an old server rack!
20 inches seems like a reasonable centre-to-centre spacing for vertical posts for an imperial minded engineer. They likely didn't have much faith in their contractors, so they kept it simple.
Half an inch for mounting, and voila.
You have your 19" racks.
Man that video felt ALIVE and you just go on and on about things you want to show and what ever things pop into your mind as you go while reeling your self back to subject after getting sidetracked.
It's like me when I try to show someone stuff, I love seeing other people get excited to talk about things like this, even when it's stuff they've never used in their life or would ever use in the future.
Good stuff!
11:45 - Yep, desktop "classic Pentium" went up to 200 MHz, desktop Pentium MMX up to 233 MHz. The mobile MMX versions went up to *_300_* MHz. (The "Tillamook" core, on its own custom "mobile card" interface that also held the 430TX chipset and L2 cache - which means the vendor removed the Tillamook CPU from the Intel-supplied card to re-mount all the pieces to their own custom board!)
My very first PC was a non-MMX P200 that I bought on clearance because it was being replaced by the MMX version.
@@CantankerousDave around where i lived 200mhz regular pentiums were basically unseen, they were too expensive for anyone to buy before the mmx 166 got on the market anyway.
Tillamook is a brand of cheese from Oregon. I know it’s named for the Tillamook region near the intel fab, but to me it sounds like “Intel used the Sargento core for their mobile chips”
@ For a while, Intel was using names of rivers as the core names. Tillamook, Klamath, Deschutes, Tualatin, Willamette - all rivers in Oregon. Katmai and Coppermine are rivers in Alaska and Canada.
This is such a great example of how to use your new space. I love the video!
That rack, though. It's giving strong Eurorack, especially Doepfer vibes.
In that world, vertical is measured in "U" with almost everything being 3U but occasionally small utility modules being 1U tiles. Horizontal units are measured in HP, where 1HP is very slightly (and maddeningly) more than 5mm. So measure how wide the card is in centimeters and double it, and that's the HP, more-or-less.
ETA: Haha, you got there, too. And yes, when Doepfer standardized the Eurorack spec, it was based on computer rack hardware because that was readily available. Sadly, even though I am in the market for a decent Eurorack case, repurposing an old CompactPCI case doesn't appear particularly cheap; there are current-gen cases on eBay for more than a grand... Maybe something to set up a craigslist alert for, to save on shipping, but the perfect era for pulling this off for cheap was probably fifteen years ago when even the industrial P5 users were retiring their racks.
Hence the last 5-10 minutes of the video. I really hope someone does getting around to throwing some Eurorack modules into one of these things - it seems like it would actually be pretty darn cool.
this standard goes wayyyy back to early telecom, doepfer just adopted it because it was convenient. it's also very convenient for me since i just got 416HP of rack for about 100 dollars by buying them from a eurocard case manufacturuer instead of a synth shop where you'd pay a LOT more.
API's series 500 is also based on eurocard but the two have diverged just enough that you can't put 500 series modules into a eurorack case. the screw holes don't line up anymore.
@@famitory A lot of eurorack cases I've seen have sliding nuts in TS rail, rather than fixed-position screw holes.
What manufacturer of eurocard cases sells to the consumer? I'm in the market myself.
It's less maddening when you realize that 1HP is 1/5th of an inch.
(But yes, Eurocard and its derivatives like Eurorack being a wild mix of metric and US dimensions is pretty annoying)
@@oasntet schroff are the standard from what i remember. keyword is Vector Rails
watch out because in eurocard 2.5mm screws are standard instead of the 3mm used in eurorack, so if you get those nutstrips you wont be able to use any of the screws included in the box with modules
as for marketplaces you want component sellers like mouser and digikey.
you put so much love, live and enthusiasm in your videos... much repsect, i just love it.
s/repsect/respect, lol. i wonder what rep-sect would be :) .... repsectoids from outer space... yay.
@18:19 "you can very easily snap off one of the very tiny pins on here"
@18:55 *yanks cable out of port sideways*
😭😭😭
I'm glad I'm not the only one who struggled to hold back a panic at that...if there wasn't half the video remaining I would probably have yelled
I can confirm... this was INDEED a great way to kick off the new season of Little Guys. I'm overjoyed to see Castle of the Winds mentioned! And amused to see a euro-rack synth cameo. Keep it up!!!
I'm using one of those office PCs with a DMS-59 graphics card! It's the only spare Radeon card I have with analog out, and I use the PC to play emulated games on my CRT TV with Retroarch and CRT SwitchRes. In the end, the chain is Optiplex -> DMS-59 -> DVI to VGA cable -> 15KHz VGA to composite/S-Video converter -> TV. It's not the most cursed hookup, but it's *my* cursed hookup and I love it.
Loving the new warehouse vids in style and concept. What I do miss from the bench videos is the overhead cam (not that it would've done much good here, but still). I just enjoyed getting in closer to the action on some of the stuff. I'm sure you'll get the angles figured out in due time. The warehouse has good potential for this sort of informal demonstrating and it really does feel like when I go over to a friend's place and they show me some weird curiosity.
Yeah, I need new furniture to make this work right, I just figured it didn't make any sense to put out *nothing* while waiting to get The Perfect Setup
@@CathodeRayDudeyeah, if we waited until we were 100% prepared to do everything, would we ever really do anything? I love the content you make either way 🔥
Loving the new space and presentation format. Your enthusiasm is shining bright! Congratulations and looking forward to many more excellent videos.
Somebody seems to be in a much improved mood.
I love these new format videos. I think I speak for the majority of us when I say I'm just happy to see content from you. I don't need it to be a long, epic story. Don't get me wrong, I do love those long format videos, but I also like seeing quicker blurbs from you as well, and I'm so glad the new warehouse space has given you that opportunity. Thank you for all you do!
Little Guys Season 2: _Big Changes, Same Little Guys_
Season 4?
@@Just.A.T-Rex edited the comment for clarification, should've had it that way when I initially typed it.
That breakout cable is the best thing I have ever seen.
Cathode ray dude is so effortlessly cool.
Btw. assuming this really is EDO RAM you will absolutely need both memory modules to get this machine to do anything. EDO RAM (and everything else before SDRAM) is only 32 bits wide but Pentiums have a 64 bit data bus, so they insist on talking to two memory modules in parallel. This is why you always had to install memory modules pairwise in early Pentium machines.
Yup, I was actually preparing to say that before I busted the tabs off and got completely distracted. probably if I hadn't thought to tape the stick back in, I would have gone "-oh wait, no, that won't work" a minute later, heh
@@CathodeRayDude I wonder if Louis Rossmann could replace the RAM socket, assuming a replacement could be found?
Wouldn't the server family be waiting tables at Denny's?
this was the most satisfying episode in my history of following this channel, holy SHIT i got hyped about his idea at the end WOW
This new format looks fantastic - it's a big step up!
Also, props for the Castle of the Winds demonstration. I remember buying the full version of that, the two non-shareware Jill of the Jungle episodes, and Overkill from the Epic's e-catalog and being sent four floppies.
If you like this, you'll love PXI and VXI. These are both long lived setups for automated test gear. Many of them have integrated PCs in their racks. But the hardware that connects to it varies wildly. Everything from a multimeter to fancy digital testers. Even oscilloscopes. And these things have been around so long, you can find PCs with 486s (or maybe even older) to the latest stuff from Intel.
I absolutely DO love PXI/VXI and have been stopping myself from trying to buy a system on ebay until I have time to really think it through hahaha
Seconding! as someone who has worked with the PXIe variant. Such a wild world of adding things to PCs
The only time I've encountered VXI was two 19" racks full of Keysight SERDES pattern generators and protocol analyzers. Sadly no little guy as the VXI connection was made to a desktop with a long daisy chain of Firewire. This was an actual industry standard thing that bridged the five minutes between the GPIB and gigabit Ethernet LXI eras.
Probably won't find anything older than 80486 in an industrial system that only has a PCI bus or variant of it. There was one crazy PC motherboard that supported both 80386 and 80486 CPUs. It had an 80387 socket, ISA slots and PCI slots. With a 386 CPU installed the PCI slots weren't usable. Pull the 386 (and 387 if it had one) and plug in a 486 and the PCI slots worked. A friend owned one for a while.
Those bespoke Hydra style I/O cables are a nightmare and a half, always.
10:40: IIRC the width of the cards were called 4T, 8T, 12T... Where a "T" is always 5.08mm or 0.2 inches.
ahhh, interesting. I'll keep that in mind!
That would explain the expression of "Fits it to a T".
So. The spacing is identical to Eurorack modular synth standard. My immediate thought has been confirmed and I'm 100% sure they both use the same screw rails.
Making a LAN between the two PCs in the same rack is what I'd call "vlan" - "very local area networking"
EDIT: the Euro-Rack format was (is?) very popular for industrial small production runs. If you have only a few hundred of devices to make for a select customer, this would be the way to go: cases are readily available, backplanes can be 1:1 off the shelf or customized using wire wrap... THe company I worked for swore by them in the 1990s.
I work in that area and yes, one of the form factors that we use is modules for a 3U Eurocard rack. Those aren't too frequently ordered, as 19" racks aren't very common around heavy industrial equipment so most customers prefer standalone boxes, but we design PCBs to be 100mm wide whenever we can just to have that option if required.
Do note that _Eurorack_ is a standard specifically for modular synthesizers.
@@musashigundoh OK, I was unaware of the "Eurorack" term specifically for synth use... I'm not a native speaker so some terms blend together. We used to refer to the cards as "Eurokarte" or "Euro Einschub".
@@atkelar You were correct on the first one, Eurokarte/Eurocard is a very old and very common standard for fitting PCBs into 3U/6U/9U chassis with optional 96-pin backplane connectors on the rear. It spawned a whole bunch of derivatives, including the titular CompactPCI (fixed 160mm depth and a different backplane connector), Eurorack (very shallow depth, no backplane, 3mm mounting screws instead of 2.5mm), and a whole bunch of proprietary ones.
How about calling it "can" ("chassis area networking", but also because both machines are in the same tin can)
"I mean, it's rackable for crissake!" 🤣🤣🤣 Love the new studio addition and format.
27:15 that was a real *gaffe* you made there chief...
I love your enthusiasm and this format. Thanks!
14:01 That's a Intel 21143-TD PCI 10/100 Ethernet controller, for the 1 other person that's curious.
Hey that’s me!
you know what i dont care about the little guys its just fun to watch you chortle and be so positive all the time.
Loving this new location and format for Little Guys
absolutely love the new format! But i'd also like to see a close up of the cards with B-roll or something, the first 5 minutes i was so confused because i couldnt see the pins!
The connectors and the card form factor (Eurocard) are specified in DIN 41612 and IEEE 60297. VMEbus used double height Eurocards where this system uses the standard 160x200mm card format. One horizontal pitch unit is 0.2" (5,08mm) so the narrowest module you have there is probably 3HP wide.
I thoiught that the best thing of the video would have been the tape but alas seeing you geek out over the rack synth hybrid was really endearing
I work with these things professionally, because normally suppliers don't use all the backplane connectors spec'd in PCI, some cPCI and PXIe can be plugged in a hybrid slot. And as far as I know, the horizontal spacing is called a slot. There's another backplane configuration for timing input. In big factories there's sometimes factory wide high impedance timing lines
Your energy in this video is simply a joy (I mean it always is, but it really is!) Love to see you back to work in such a happy manner.
Yeah, 'Castle of the Winds'! I must have a retail copy of that game lying around somewhere. It was also my first computer RPG, before I got to switch to table top and potato chips.
Yeah I've got a copy hanging around, too 🙂
If that wild breakout cable ever gets damaged irreparably, at the very least you could tape it to the end of a stick and turn it into a flail.
honestly i wish that eurorack had kept the backplane connectors in some capacity because even in the era of keyed connectors people are STILL frying modules by plugging them in wrong. plus a proper backplane connector would have had the trace width to properly use the pins rather than doubling up power across pairs of lines. imagine the utopia of having clock/run lines to go with the cv/gate bus lines! come on folks API 500 series is doing it and they're really not any more or less expensive than eurorack.
I think Doepfer did what he did for price and ease of manufacturing. Those connectors + guides cant be cheap. Also, it would be much harder to make skiff friendly modules. Would be cool though, I do agree.
I mean the CV/Gate lines are rarely if ever used, so we could already use those.
@@AshBashVids yeah in modern hindsight clock lines would be far more useful. i don't think doepfer foresaw that people would be putting DAW-in-a-box sequencers like the hermod in their modular systems.
At my previous job, I've spent a decade building eurorack-based meausrement systems with all knids of 3-6U microcontroller units, that ultimately fed into an industrial PC. Making the cables and troubleshooting was the bane of my existance, but oddly this delightful video kinda brought back fond memories of the time I spent on those machines. Thank you, and if you do ever find the person who makes that PC-synth rack, please make a video of that beast for us! I'm sure I'm not the only one who'd love that.
I was literally working on something that looks very much like eurorack today. I'm building a DWDM fibre optic system for an office relocation so we can have the two independent networks running off the one HA pair of firewalls split between the two offices (don't ask), and it (the DWDM system) uses some 2U rackmount frames that look very much like eurorack.
The system itself was "left over" from a managed service we had from [large Australian telco] for like at 20 years, but they never asked to have back when we cancelled the service. The cards in the system have optical input/output ports that either go to the optical MUX or the network, and they act as transponders to convert from a DWDM wavelength to a regular Ethernet optical wavelength (i.e. 1310nm) or vice-versa. You need two cards to convert both the TX and RX directions at each side, unless you get the fancy newer models that are duplex. They plug into a backplane for power, control and monitoring, and the optical connectors push through into fibre housings on the rear connectors, which also plug into the backplane for the electrical connectors (the cards can also be reconfigured from network mode to broadcast mode, but that's another story).
Speaking of control and monitoring, there is a controller card which is used to configure the other cards and monitor the optical TX and RX light levels, which is very useful for working out whether you need an attenuator to keep the light levels within the valid operating window. It's managed via the Ethernet port, and it basically had non-HTTPS open access when I used my 1337 hax0r sk1llz to do a scan and determine it was indeed using the default IP address we had been given in our documentation, then I used my even higher-level sk1llz to determine the username and highly-secure password were "admin" and "password", respectively (yes, I promptly changed it), which is only actually required to change any settings.
Anysways, turns out the thing is literally a tiny 486 with 32MB of memory, running an ancient Linux from a tiny compact flash card. It was supposed to be managed by the service provider, but I'm guessing they never updated it or changed the password because they were managing it remotely using the serial port rather than the Ethernet port, and none of the access controls apply to that (as far as I know, I didn't really look into it much).
_Anysways_ anysways (if you're still reading this), I'd never heard of or seen anything like your CompactPCI little guy. It is very interesting, though, so I hope you find more like it to show us and play with in the future.
I love how excited he gets about it at the end!!! Someone HAS to do that!!
I'm an automation engineer. I program and support automated equipment for factories.
I actually got tasked at one point to support a machine that had a 68k and VME bus.
It ran a tablet pill press. The date in the cabinet was 1998.
I wasn't given the source code, or the programming software, or any documentation on it. I told them I couldn't support it and it was over. It would have been a cool project to work on though.
...brilliant vid! you knocked it outta the park. Loving the new 'warehouse' scheme
This is a lovely topic! Thank you for that. These little devices are mostly overlooked, yet they have a lot of charm.
Regarding SCSI for industrial use. In the past SCSI was also used for connecting scanners. Now in the place where I work we have a couple of machine's with "modern" (Read: Adaptec SCSI adapter with on PCB PCIe-PCI bridge) connecting to a node on the control system and gets process data out of it for the historian.
For audio: Use the USB port ;). Win2K Ships with a generic USB audio driver. Just enable the Windows Audio service in the service manager. That is disabled by default on server editions.
Very happy to see your great return!
And I was happy for you to hear about your improved studio and new warehouse!
Hopefully, for the sake of all of us, it helps you continue your great work!
Also...
Really looking forward to the triumphant return of Quick Start in the coming months!
This is great and all... But WE MUST KNOW WHAT HAPPENED TO THE ROLL OF GAFFER TAPE THAT FELL BEHIND THE SHELF!!
@27:13 I don't know, but I lose stuff behind my washer/dryer all the time and so now I have a grabber tool for old people like ASIN: B078RMCFWQ
Your energy at the end of this makes me happy that our boy gets to pull out his toys and play again. Thank you for taking us with you.
This video spoke to me on multiple levels - the Eurorack stuff and Castle of the Winds namely. I too didn't know Castle of the Winds was a roguelike, and it had been so long since I've played it I never thought much about it, but it was cool to get the history lesson.
There's an amount of vigor and life that I'm really enjoying in these new videos
Fun fact: connexion is also an archaic spelling of connection, not just some corporate branding. If you read novels written at least like 150 years ago, you're likely to encounter it.
The expanded workspace has massively improved your video already!
RE the SCSI port, my brother-in-law is an engineer for the auto industry. One of the many job anecdotes he's told me over the years is that they had a very expensive and perfectly useful piece of diagnostic equipment that could output Data to a PC, and it used a SCSI interface. They had to keep a very old computer running in order to make sure that that tool didn't become obsolete because it was five figures to replace it with an updated one. I bet you that external front-facing SCSI port was for a specialized industrial peripheral of some kind.
Around that time SCSI was used for things like scanners and other things that would be USB now. I have a Nikon SCSI film scanner that I’ve used with a FireWire adapter (not so convenient these days either).
Best 'Little Guys' yet...... I have rack envy !
Don't forget to retrieve that roll of tape behind the shelf. If you're like me, you already forgot twice.
Seeing you do your thing is always a treat, this was a very good video in particular. You do good job
16:49 I'm thinking that if you told someone all the specs of USB C and what all it could do in the 90's, this is what someone would've cobbled together in a weekend to do the same stuff lmao
You seem exceptionally happy in the new warehouse. I've always been a fan of the entire little guys series, but this really is breathing new life into it. Long live CRD!
I'm gonna be completely honest, this is some of the most fun I've had with the series yet. Great work!
THANK YOU, for putting industrial equipment like this in spotlight, I love it! I always wanted to make a Raspberry Pi version of this.
I dont comment much but straight up your videos when I see they are here they make my day! There something about your presentation it never gets old! I love the warehouse too that was a great idea!
Castle of the Winds is a gem. I spent hours on the first floor before I figured out how to use the stairs. I eventually beat the first episode, but I never got the second episode.
Good news, with Wine or WINEDVM, playing both episodes is cheap as free, because they're both freeware now! You can even Wizardry your character from Episode 1 to 2!
At work (industrial automation) often we need to use PXIe chassis from NI if we need to do anything "scientific" such as production line testing
they come in all shapes and sizes, you can even get them without any computer and simply attaches via thunderbolt
Castle of the winds baybeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
Dude, that nerd enthusiasm at the end. I dig it!
I think the old bench videos were like eating a delicious cake, but then this one is like when they put whip cream and the little crunchy sprinkles on it
There is another form factor of this used in test and measurement equipment called PXI and PXIe for PCI and PCIe respectively. It's very common for National Instruments and RF equipment. They are also PC based.
i hope the gaff tape becomes a recurring character on this show.
It strikes me that if is the new format for Little Guys / bench videos, we'll no longer see any evil spirit invasions. This is quite saddening.
I wanna put in my two cents to say that while I loved the cozy vibes of the original little guys format, this is really good and I like it too!
You look way more comfortable and in your element doing it this way, even though the setup itself still needs some improvements (for your sake and sanity, please put a backstop for that workbench-shelf). I hope you can continue to tweak and improve this to your heart's content. Looking forward to seeing where it goes from here.
Hey there - I work for a company that designs and manufactures single-board computers, including for CompactPCI! Fascinating equipment, I love how modular and user-serviceable everything is.
Love the vintage-PBS-style walk-in intro hahaha
What a wonderful wacky chassis format. I enjoyed exploring it with you!
this is definitely a substantial improvement on the Little Guys format, good stuff
This is really fun, I love the new warehouse setup and the eurocard stuff at the end was pretty neat.
"be careful, godspeed, and use a voltmeter" should be a cross stitch
Good time had!