What hardware are you using?

Discussion of hardware related issues
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dai_trying
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Re: What hardware are you using?

Post by dai_trying »

I just got a new Pi today, got it for £13.20 (including postage) which is pretty good for a Pi 3 model B, it wasn't working though and the seller said it never worked from the supplier and they didn't want it back (chinese knock-off) but when I looked at it the USB connections were not attached to the board! I tried for a while to solder them but it proved a little too fiddly and so took off the usb connector and wired a USB lead directly onto the pins. Works sooooo much better than my old Pi which has a date of 2011 on the board but they weren't released until 2012 (according to wikipedia) so i guess thats just a copyright date.
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tlmiller
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Re: What hardware are you using?

Post by tlmiller »

crosscourt wrote: Tue May 21, 2019 4:59 pm Gees, hgdnt realized hgw much stuff I had accumulated over the years. This is going to take awhile.
That's what I say every time I try to start clearing out my paintball equipment!! :D
dai_trying wrote: Tue May 21, 2019 6:36 pm I just got a new Pi today, got it for £13.20 (including postage) which is pretty good for a Pi 3 model B, it wasn't working though and the seller said it never worked from the supplier and they didn't want it back (chinese knock-off) but when I looked at it the USB connections were not attached to the board! I tried for a while to solder them but it proved a little too fiddly and so took off the usb connector and wired a USB lead directly onto the pins. Works sooooo much better than my old Pi which has a date of 2011 on the board but they weren't released until 2012 (according to wikipedia) so i guess thats just a copyright date.
Good to hear it worked out. I have yet to actually ever own a pi or a knockoff of them. Just not sure what I'd actually use it for.
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dai_trying
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Re: What hardware are you using?

Post by dai_trying »

It is basically a very low power complete PC I'm using the old one as an mqtt broker for automating stuff around the house and the new one will probably become a home web server for general stuff that I don't need a full blown machine for. Considering the power usage for both Pi's as around 5-6 watts it will work out much cheaper than having a laptop running 24/7.
I do understand they are not everyone's cup of tea though, most people will just ask alexa to do everything instead. :D
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crosscourt
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Re: What hardware are you using?

Post by crosscourt »

Same as tlmiller, I wouldnt really know what to use it for.
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dai_trying
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Re: What hardware are you using?

Post by dai_trying »

Well I also have a selection of esp8266 boards that I am using to create my own IOT devices, I have just finished a remote control transmitter that works from a web-page it serves to the local network and have set up a button on my phone to switch both the TV and surround system on/off with a single button.
The main reason I started that project was the buttons on one of the remotes has started playing up and not always working, I tested all the buttons on my arduino remote receiver which basically just gives me all the info of a remote signal and the power button was the worst one which only worked around 30% of the time so rather than get a new remote for the TV I thought this would be a good little project.
The next phase of that project is mqtt so I can send commands and receive feedback via the broker (server), but it is a slow process as I am doing it all in bits and pieces and each time I come back to it I have to familiarize myself with what I had already done. :roll:
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crosscourt
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Re: What hardware are you using?

Post by crosscourt »

Im getting too old for lugging all this crap out the door. Never knew how much stuff I actually had, ouch!
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tlmiller
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Re: What hardware are you using?

Post by tlmiller »

I ordered a Silicon Power 1 TB NVME drive last night. I had a $50 gift card I needed to use by the end of June, so it didn't cost me that much out of pocket to get it. It's going to go into the Lenovo, so pulled the Crucial P1 1 TB from there (QLC NVME drive) and put it into the 7490. Reinstalling arcolinux on the 7490 right now. Kept my /home from the Debian install on this drive, so basically set up in no time flat. Still need to copy a few things onto it, but mostly already done.

Now have upgraded my external enclosure to a 1 TB SanDisk X400 drive. And now have a Samsung P871 512 SSD lying here trying to decide if I should just sell it, hold onto it, or replace my OTHER external enclosure hat has a 256 in it with the 512. Probably will do that. I've never even manged to fill hte 256, but why not go to a 512 since I have it spare now!!

One odd thing I noticed, I did have to change the SATA from RAID to AHCI in order for any linux os (didn't test Windows) to see the NVME ssd. Odd that, but since it only has a single slot, RAID is completely useless, so no big deal with going to AHCI.
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Re: What hardware are you using?

Post by tlmiller »

I spoke too soon about almost being done. There must be some fairly major differences between 5.12.7 and 5.15.5. No matter what I did, my profile just would NOT work correctly. Ended up having to blow the entire thing away and recreate. Now it's working fine, although I'm not quite done setting everything up again. Done all the major work.

So far, with migrating this laptop from m.2 SATA SSD to m.2 NVME SSD, I do actually think I feel a TINY bit of a performance improvement in SOME applications. boot/shutdown time I definitely don't see it. But I think I do see some in terms of java (running same OS), although without the ability to test side-by-side (which is obviously impossible), I won't say for sure it's faster.
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crosscourt
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Re: What hardware are you using?

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Ive had that problem with the RAID setting vs AHCI at times with non-SSD drives as well.
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Re: What hardware are you using?

Post by tlmiller »

I'm on my Lenovo with the new NVME SSD installed. Running VERY nicely. Am having a small problem that Debian updated the BACKPORTS linux-image-amd64 package to point to the latest backports kernel...that didn't actually exist in backports yet. So I couldnl't actually install the backports auto kernel. I've installed the latest direct kernel, but of course without the linux-image-amd64 package, I wouldn'lt get kernel updates. Luckily they've since fixed it (took about 20 hours after I had noticed it) and I've got the correct kernels now.

Other than that, everything is working. I followed my thread here about getting ryzen/vega to work, and went absolutely smooth. No issues getting Vega to work perfectly.

Really love this laptop overall. While someone boring looking, the keyboard is still one of the absolute nicest laptop keyboards there is. The screen is very nice given this is a business model. Having dual batteries helps the battery life. And of course that Ryzen Mobile has lots of muscle for anything I want, and the Vega 8 graphics blow any of my other (non ryzen) laptops out of the water.
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