Please wait...
From bios with NO drive it still shows older boot options and i dont
see a way to clear/delete them. ( ami bios ). Soooo i assume its
`efibootmgr` is your friend.
It's the most curious thing.
[ Long and rambling story about various different SSD and Spinnydrives in my main computer ]
With the old drives, the front panel LED never lit, even when I was using the new drive I added later.
Now that the old drives are gone and there's only the new one (plus an old spinnyrust for backups of my machines up at the data center), the front panel LED glows red during disk activity.
Same machine, same motherboard, same operating system. These are all SATA drives because I am not cool enough for NVMe yet. What gives? Is there such a thing as a bug on an old disk firmware that would stop all drives from being able to light the controller's LED?
No! So the controller is responsible for the activity light. On NVMe systems, the NVMe controller signals the SATA controller to turn the light on and off, because of course the PCIe bus should be used for such shenanigans. /s
Most likely, the drives were drawing a bit too much current for the LED to light up, and now that you're on SSD you have some current leftover to not starve the light.
Mon Sep 18 2023 23:20:10 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar
It's the most curious thing.
[ Long and rambling story about various different SSD and Spinnydrives in my main computer ]
With the old drives, the front panel LED never lit, even when I was using the new drive I added later.
Now that the old drives are gone and there's only the new one (plus an old spinnyrust for backups of my machines up at the data center), the front panel LED glows red during disk activity.
Same machine, same motherboard, same operating system. These are all SATA drives because I am not cool enough for NVMe yet. What gives? Is there such a thing as a bug on an old disk firmware that would stop all drives from being able to light the controller's LED?
My vote too.
Mon Sep 18 2023 23:28:44 EDT from LadySerenaKittyMost likely, the drives were drawing a bit too much current for the LED to light up, and now that you're on SSD you have some current leftover to not starve the light.
I didn't know about the NVMe to SATA LED signaling. That's pretty sad. Although with NVMe we are probably approaching the end of the era of even having an HDD LED at all. These damn kids and their M.2 sticks! When I was their age a hard disk drive was the size and weight of a brick and had its own LED sticking out the front of the machine!
sticks! When I was their age a hard disk drive was the size and weight
of a brick and had its own LED sticking out the front of the machine!
I've actually extracted and kept the platters from a couple of old disks just for the off chance that some day I can show some whippersnapper and go "back in my day we used to store data on tiny particles of rust!"
That, and ST4038, were mainstays of the yearly Hard Diskus throw competition around here. Never a shortage of dead drives for the competition.
I have the Apple 250MB hard drive that shipped with my Quadra 660av. I don't use it, but it is an artifact.
Somewhere i have a disk from a mainframe. ( or at least i did ).
That was a funny story.
Wed Sep 20 2023 22:32:57 EDT from zelgomerI've actually extracted and kept the platters from a couple of old disks just for the off chance that some day I can show some whippersnapper and go "back in my day we used to store data on tiny particles of rust!"
i still have my face mask and bunny shoes from when i worked in a class 10 clean room making mainframe CPUs. oh, ya... i still have a few of those CPU's hiding about. (A10, A15, A17)
I have the Apple 250MB hard drive that shipped with my Quadra
660av. I don't use it, but it is an artifact.
I remember back in college finding a discarded Quadra 840av in a corner of the EE department. Made an excellent NetBSD machine. I used it that way for the better part of a year before it just.. disappeared one day. Still not sure what happened to it. Somebody probably tossed it because it didn't come up to the right clicky-clicky screen they were expecting.
Perhaps 20 years ago we had an app that was running that one of the BUs relied on for monthly reports/billing/etc ( some were reports that go to the Feds, honestly dont remember all the details now. been too long ). One day we got a phone call "hey our stuff isn't working".
Wasn't a server in the data center, so used all sort of odd resource to track it down to a contractors desk. He left 2 months prior. They came and recycled his machine. By the time we tracked the actual box down, it was on another persons desk by then. Reloaded.
i found a CD "code backup' in a drawer that was taken just before he went live, almost a year prior. "sorry folks all your stuff is gone"
We clamped down on our polices after that :)
Similar: App i was hired to support at the same place. Tracked the hardware down on my 3rd or 4th day. Found it running on a desktop PC, laying on floor at the the bottom of a server rack. At least it was in the server room and they knew about it..
Job before that, guy i was replacing had been gone 2 months " the computer stuff is in the room is over there, here are the keys, i think he left some passwords in there, and his phone number, if you need to call him. good luck". First task.. backups.. there were not any. ( had been running a DB prune on the tapes for months.. no actual data. ."ok, everyone leave me alone for a little, this is really important"
Job before that 2nd or 3rd day: "our stuff crashed come help" ( remote site ). "sure, we are on our way" got there, ok where are the backups. There was brand new box unopened of tape sitting beside the server. " Um, ok, where the tapes you swap out every night ?" "we have to do that? How do you do that, he never told us that.. ( my predecessor, who also mis-labeled a kvm at another site.. I took a branch down like that.. my first time there at that location, wrong machine.. poof.) "well with luck we might.. oh.. tapes broke. been broke for months.. " somehow i managed to boot the original 1/2 dead drive on a set of Linux disk i brought ( it was Windows NT, it was a novell shop and i was hired as, go figure, the windows guy...of all things ) and copy off the database and important files. took me until like 2am but i saved the place from a disaster.
Sort of a rant too, but not exactly.
As i have mentioned before , i have been collecting those little Lenovo M93 tinys as for the cost they are great. And you can replace the i5 CPU with a xeon. Normally in this market space, the CPU is soldered down. They work great as s small PVE farm. they also make decent dektops if you dont game ( onboard GPU ). 3 video ports, BT/Wifi, bla bla. and as it sounds, tiny...
I do wish they could support more than 16gb ram. But i understand why.
What i DONT understand... They have traces for 2 m.2 sockets on the board, one can be used for storage the other i think is a 2nd network, but didnt bother to populate either. So unless you want to dig into it and do some surface mount work you are stuck with one drive. They did the hard work.. why didnt they freaking put the socket and pull-up resistors on? So they raise the price a buck or 2, no one would even notice the cost... I would LOVE to have it boot off m.2 then use the SSD for storage only. Be perfect for native Ceph machines, but you cant boot off your storage device, so you need that extra device. But im not really in the mood to try add them. ( now, if they could take more ram, i might... )
i still have my face mask and bunny shoes from when i worked in a
class 10 clean room making mainframe CPUs. oh, ya... i still have a
few of those CPU's hiding about. (A10, A15, A17)
Were those the old Burroughs mainframes? Are you from Pennsylvania? Kannst du micka fange?
Oh, those cranky old beasts! I think they're just emulated now and running on bog standard AMD64 machines.
ya, i was there when they wrote the emulators and shut down the wafer fabs. then moved onto way more fun stuff. wireless- ground floor. sneaky stuff.
We still have a 'real' mainframe on site. Not sure what model/revision, but it is IBM. Its going to be retired soon. ( that is what they said 10 years ago .... )
ya, i was there when they wrote the emulators and shut down the wafer
fabs. then moved onto way more fun stuff. wireless- ground floor.
Cool! I studied at Kutztown and we had an A-9 at the time (1988-1993). And I did my internship at AT&T Microelectronics over in Reading. All those plants are gone now. But the one in Breinigsville (the old Solid State Technology Center) is now occupied by the company I work for, we have a data center there.
Total coincidence many years later.
The old Burroughs systems had a really neat architecture, but like IBM it was a lousy experience due to their non-teletype terminals.
i helped decommission two CDC 3800's, it was a grab fest to get the "core" memory modules. alas.. i was low man in the room and wasnt able to grab one. They were the full assembly - 64 modules of 16x16 wire matrix grids with cute teensy ferrite cores at each wire intersection. those turds were heavy. they looked like lamp bases you'd find in the living room. (the newly released album The Wall playing in the background) good demolition music.
Grumble.
So couple of years ago i bought another 'smart' watch. After being burnt by Sony "we decided not to sell watches anymore, sorry *poof*. And before that Pebble, after holding out for a long time in the first place. Well, not really pebble i guess but that f-ing "fitbit" when they bought hem out and discontinued the entire line. "no more pebble for you, oh and that new watch you were waiting on that you wanted, that was ready to be released.? Nope.. Oh and in a year, we will shut the servers down too, so your device wont work at all" After the pebble thing, i went with Sony 'no one is going to buy them at least'... then 6 months later... doh. Being burnt twice, i went back to only real watches. Should have known better.
Fast forward several years, and i really only got it as my mother was sick, so i would not miss a call while at work in a meeting or something. Worked ok, got used to it. and kept wearing it.
Year ago it started acting funny. wouldn't turn on after a charge when i had let it die by accident. I did their 'magic power reset' and it worked. moved on. Today decided to erase it and pair to the new phone. One of the things it *forces* you to do before you can use it is to go they every freaking feature it has, which i had forgot how annoying it was.... "swipe left, right, left up down wiggle,wiggle, touch touch touch, swipe 20 more times" got to where it says push buttons "push bottom .. bla bla.. now push top button".. nothing... arrgh
Button is broke. now i know why had problems last year. BUT if i dont push the dammed button every time i touch it "press the button, jerk" pops up on the screen ( ok, not jerk, but you get the idea )
How frustrating.
And ya, took it out back and hosed it down the best i could with contact cleaner. But no. Button is toast.