Dashcat2 Build

LEO's going to be surprised when they raid that thing as a suspected grow op. Heat signature? Check. Power consumption? Check. Fan noise? Check.

Loving the build log.
 
-Sn1PeR- said:
LEO's going to be surprised when they raid that thing as a suspected grow op. Heat signature? Check. Power consumption? Check. Fan noise? Check.
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You forgot: Trailer park? Check.

If it looks like a cat, walks like a cat and sounds like a cat, it's a duck.
 
Good job on that. I put a 15U rack in the house for my job (I work out of the house as a software developer) and I'm quickly running out of room and will probably have to move to a 30U.

Since mine was in the house, and since I needed dual (or more) monitors on some of the systems, I just got 15' DVI cables and bundled them together as needed.

But, it does get damned hot in my office in the summer so I can see why you put this outside.
 
MisterDNA said:
Utah. Cache Valley, especially. Can't escape 'em.
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You're joking....really? Another Cache Valley-ite??

I was thinking "damn, those look a lot like the Wellsville mountains"....

I live in Logan, in the Island. What a small world....
 
DogChainX said:
You're joking....really? Another Cache Valley-ite??

I was thinking "damn, those look a lot like the Wellsville mountains"....

I live in Logan, in the Island. What a small world....
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Even smaller. I'm in Logan, too.
 
LibertySyclone said:
Maybe we should start doing meets... LOL I need to eat at the bluebird, its been a while.
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I've never even been to the Bluebird. I love the Reubens at the White Owl, though.

When do we get to see some action? err benchmarking or something?
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I can work on the machine as soon as I'm recovered from my asthma. Solder flux smoke sidelined me hard and I only just got the meds yesterday. I sounded like a death rattle. I can at least start putting stuff on ebay again to fund the rest, though.
 
MisterDNA said:
I've never even been to the Bluebird. I love the Reubens at the White Owl, though.

I can work on the machine as soon as I'm recovered from my asthma. Solder flux smoke sidelined me hard and I only just got the meds yesterday. I sounded like a death rattle. I can at least start putting stuff on ebay again to fund the rest, though.
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The Owl has the best burger...and those spicy pickles are so good. Of course, i'm related to those who own Firehouse Pizzeria, so I frequent there a lot.

Good luck on the build. I'll keep coming back to this thread....
 
DogChainX said:
The Owl has the best burger...and those spicy pickles are so good. Of course, i'm related to those who own Firehouse Pizzeria, so I frequent there a lot.

Good luck on the build. I'll keep coming back to this thread....
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The White Owl pickles took me by surprise. Definitely unique and go well with other bold food--and the quintessential big glass of beer.

I've been to Firehouse only once, and that was a few years ago, but I loved it. If a meat pizza doesn't bleed grease from the pepperoni and sausage, it's not a real pizza. One should always be able to see where the pizza was cut just by the oils left behind on whatever it was sitting on. Firehouse makes a real pizza.

The Factory is another good pizza place in town. I was only just introduced to their 'zza this past summer.
 
AC repair, extensive car repair, render farms, glass of hooch. Truely a mans man.My hats off to you and your multiple projects at once.
 
oVrKiL said:
AC repair, extensive car repair, render farms, glass of hooch. Truely a mans man.My hats off to you and your multiple projects at once.
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Thanks. Oh yeah. It gets deeper.

I just got back from buying for $240 altogether (second-hand, of course) a Delta table saw, Delta compound miter saw, DeWalt circular saw, dual halogen worklight (I've needed one of these many a time; wiring outlets in the dark is no fun and extension cords are cheap), DeWalt angle grinder (Now I can actually cut metal) and a Porter-Cable pneumatic finish nailer.

I've got a shovel,180 square feet of sod that needs to be ripped out and one of the last decent weekends we Cache Valley types are going to see in the next six months.

I've got two 4x8 sheets of 3/4" interlocking OSB, nine 10ft 2x4 studs, a thirty year old jigsaw and a shed that needs a better floor.

There's a lot to do and my asthma is letting up. I'm truly under the gun because I get all four wisdom teeth yanked on the 19th and then it's back to work the following Monday. I lose that whole weekend with my face doing an impression of a boxer post-fight as I get loopy on painkillers.

Oh yeah. There's a new piece to the Dashcat cluster: A plugin for the G15 keyboard I just got today. That LCD can hold a lot of info. I want render progress, fault status and other goodies displayed at my keyboard. And Logitech gives you the SDK.
 
Zink said:
You're a boss.
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eatramenlikeaboss.jpg
 
MisterDNA said:
Thanks. Oh yeah. It gets deeper.

I just got back from buying for $240 altogether (second-hand, of course) a Delta table saw, Delta compound miter saw, DeWalt circular saw, dual halogen worklight (I've needed one of these many a time; wiring outlets in the dark is no fun and extension cords are cheap), DeWalt angle grinder (Now I can actually cut metal) and a Porter-Cable pneumatic finish nailer.

I've got a shovel,180 square feet of sod that needs to be ripped out and one of the last decent weekends we Cache Valley types are going to see in the next six months.

I've got two 4x8 sheets of 3/4" interlocking OSB, nine 10ft 2x4 studs, a thirty year old jigsaw and a shed that needs a better floor.

There's a lot to do and my asthma is letting up. I'm truly under the gun because I get all four wisdom teeth yanked on the 19th and then it's back to work the following Monday. I lose that whole weekend with my face doing an impression of a boxer post-fight as I get loopy on painkillers.

Oh yeah. There's a new piece to the Dashcat cluster: A plugin for the G15 keyboard I just got today. That LCD can hold a lot of info. I want render progress, fault status and other goodies displayed at my keyboard. And Logitech gives you the SDK.
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Ouch....four wisdom teeth? I had two taken out about 6 years ago. What did I learn from that experience? TELL YOUR ORAL SURGEON that he NEEDS to use a prophylactic antibiotic. The surgeon didn't load me with any type of antibiotic before the surgery, and I got the worst infection. I was on liquid percocet for two weeks just to knock me out (the pain didn't subside while taking it) and I almost wanted to kill myself to get over the pain. No fun...even on heavy pain meds.
 
DogChainX said:
Ouch....four wisdom teeth? I had two taken out about 6 years ago. What did I learn from that experience? TELL YOUR ORAL SURGEON that he NEEDS to use a prophylactic antibiotic. The surgeon didn't load me with any type of antibiotic before the surgery, and I got the worst infection. I was on liquid percocet for two weeks just to knock me out (the pain didn't subside while taking it) and I almost wanted to kill myself to get over the pain. No fun...even on heavy pain meds.
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I had all four of mine taken out as well about 6-7 years ago. Never took any antibiotics. I think they may have given me a mouth rinse to use until the mouth rinse was finished though. Pain was never that bad. I took the pain meds twice passed out for 4-5 hours each time I took 'em. Stopped taking them after realizing the pain wasn't bad at all. I guess it all depends on how good your oral surgeon is and how your wisdom teeth grew in.
 
DogChainX said:
Ouch....four wisdom teeth? I had two taken out about 6 years ago. What did I learn from that experience? TELL YOUR ORAL SURGEON that he NEEDS to use a prophylactic antibiotic. The surgeon didn't load me with any type of antibiotic before the surgery, and I got the worst infection. I was on liquid percocet for two weeks just to knock me out (the pain didn't subside while taking it) and I almost wanted to kill myself to get over the pain. No fun...even on heavy pain meds.
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The surgeon (Dr. Anderson, for the record, since you're local) who's pulling mine also pulled my wife's wisdom teeth and those of several of my coworkers. I gather that antibiotics are part of the deal.

Liquid percocet. Roxicet? I went through a liter of that last year after taking a Tonsillectomy, Sphenoidectomy, Septoplasty and Vasectomy all in one go because the knockout drops were the most expensive part. I would have had my wisdom teeth out at the same time, had it been an option. Speaking of the anesthesia for the 4in1, though, they put me under with Diprivan (Propofol; aka Milk of Amnesia), which I had plenty of experience with (three times; came back to reality like the Blue Angels land their planes), but waking up shaking uncontrollably from the IV painkiller I was given with it was freaky.

Me: "What's going on? Why am I shaking?"
Nurse: "You'll be okay. That's just the anesthetic wearing off."
Me: "Diprivan doesn't do this."
Nurse: "We gave you Fentanyl and morphine with it."
Me: (still shaking) "I hope it's worth it. This is annoying."

Not five minutes later I was fine. ...and then the pain came on. Morphine is effective. Fentanyl is about 100 times as powerful as morphine.

My wisdom teeth have a soft tissue impaction only with partial eruption on three and they're pretty far from the nerves. Should be straight-forward since the roots aren't too weird. I like when surgeries make sense.
 
I read the whole post very good read. I was thinking at $.30 an hour I can see that getting expensive. Would there be a way you can lease time out for say smaller companies or schools? Have you tossed that idead around?
 
lqrpig said:
I read the whole post very good read. I was thinking at $.30 an hour I can see that getting expensive. Would there be a way you can lease time out for say smaller companies or schools? Have you tossed that idead around?
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I had been considering it, but that requires I be responsible for support. I still work a standard 9-5 job so I'd rather not invite disaster by risking a blown deadline due to an equipment failure.

$.30 an hour is only when the render nodes are up. If you've seen the YouTube video I made, they are connected to a controller that allows me to start and kill nodes based on demand. The controller draws 7 watts at the wall socket. Other than the server's 24/7 drain, the cluster can idle on standby for 60 cents a month.

I'm not expecting to run renders that hog the whole cluster for weeks on end. I built this because I'm impatient and would rather have my final result render out while I sleep instead of waiting a week for it, just in case I screw up lighting or something else that requires doing the whole thing over.

In reality, unless I get tapped for a contract job, my duty cycle on this cluster will be around 10%, if that.

And now I get back to running the shovel. I've got precious little daylight left.
 
And I'm done busting my ass for the day. I just plain ran out of light, but only stopped when my hands started to blister.

First, my little sidetrack for the day. Now, I really don't like Bose in general. I think their gear is overpriced and gimmicky. But at $5 in broken form, this one was worth a shot. Turned out it worked, but the VFD display HV driver has a hardware bug so there was no way to see what you were doing. Fixed it. Now there's just the matter of the crappy switches they used on a $1200 stereo. Those buttons aren't very reliable.

And that scratch on the CD lid is unsightly. As for the CD playing? Van Halen Best of Vol. 1
DSCN9553s.jpg


Scratches are easily covered up with a Rockstar sticker.

Like highs? Like lows? Then don't get a Bose. Sound great through decent headphones, though, so they did that much right... at a $1200 pricetag in 1995. The radio station? KLZX.
DSCN9556s.jpg


Me, a shovel and a race against time.
DSCN9558s.jpg


Halfway. Easier to see in the next photo, but I started piling the sod chunks South of the dig project since we have serious drainage issues in that spot each Spring and I also want my shed to be sitting level. I'll have to move some soil if I want an even layer of rocks when I put those down because I had to rip the sod out to a 5" depth (roots go deep in Utah because they have to).
DSCN9561s.jpg


Almost done. The photo lies. There wasn't that much light. I was holding my camera up against the house to get steady for the one second exposure required. My overexposed porch light tells all. The new location for the sod is real easy to see here.

We're supposed to take some rain a day from now. I welcome it. The grass in the sod chunks will still grow a bit before the big freeze and the soil will settle. I'll throw a bunch of grass seed on that patch so the spring thaw will get the roots to tie the sod chunks together.
DSCN9565s.jpg
 
I'm figuring out the electrical stuff now. Last night I bought a load center and some breakers. The 30/20 quad breaker in my house panel was going to be changed out for a 40/20 quad, but I found out I need different cable because what I have isn't rated for use in conduit or for burial.

What happened is I bought a big SOOW type cable with four 8AWG conductors. It's shown in an earlier page of the thread. I thought I could use it for this, but it turns out I need to use either UF-B direct burial rated cable (conduit optional for the underground portion) or THWN wire in conduit. Since I want to be code-compliant, I'm not going to jerry rig this. I have to buy the right cable.

That means more money spent, but it also means I can have a higher capacity link. I'm going for a minimum of 50A since I want to do away with the extension cord rig I have now. If I go 50A, I have to use either 8AWG THWN or 6AWG UF-B. If I can get 6AWG THWN, I'll likely go with a 60A circuit if I can spare it. It's all really a question of what I can find and when. I'm hoping I don't have to pay retail for this. Copper is crazy expensive right now.
 
That's some BEEFY wire. Hopefully you can find a deal on it somewhere, I don't see copper prices going down any time soon :(
 
I've found my wire. Actually, I've found four.

The 6-3 UF-B wire would be impossible to pull through conduit. At $3.80 a foot, I was open to alternatives.

Lowe's here in Logan had #6 THWN-2 class wire for $.79 a foot. I need three such conductors for the power link and either a #10 or #8 ground wire. #10 ground wire is $.40 a foot while #8 is $.50 a foot. Basically, I'm looking at $2.80 to $2.90 a foot this way.

Code requires that any run with #6 wire or smaller have a white Neutral wire. #4 and thicker can use Black wire for all three with color coded markers on the ends. Lowes did have the white wire. They also had red so I won't have to mess with color flags.

I will have to lay the conduit before I can buy the wire since I don't know how exactly how much I need. I know I'm looking at something in the neighborhood of 40 feet. With tax, that's $124.

Code says that with three current carrying wires in a conduit (ground wire doesn't count), #6 wire is baseline (30C ambient temp) rated for 65A when using the 75C thermal rating (my wire and conduit are 90C rated, but my circuit breakers are 75C rated). I can use this setup for a 60A circuit or just go 50A and have a lower overall voltage drop and better surge-current handling (avoid lights dimming when laser printer starts, for example).

I have to put the wires in a 1 1/4" conduit to meet the code for fill. Such conduit in Sch40 PVC is $.30 a foot.

Now I need to figure out the data conduit stuff. I know I need 12" dirt between the power and data conduits.
 
Digging the trenches now. I just finished the first one (house to workshop) now it's time to work on the second one.

The first six to nine inches were rocky crap that scraped the rust off of my shovel. From there to between 21 and 24" below grade, there were no rocks. Below that, the soil was dry.
 
So you're digging trenches to alleviate drainage issues correct? are you also running fiber to your house? :D
 
pwrusr said:
So you're digging trenches to alleviate drainage issues correct? are you also running fiber to your house? :D
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I'm digging the trench for power and data conduits. I'm digging them in such a way that the runoff will flow away from where I don't want it.

The network lines are copper, but the four CAT5 links I had will be upgraded to CAT6a or CAT7 links. The idea there is to make damn sure I don't have to run different copper since CAT6a will work for 10GBaseT for this distance (if I need it while still living here). One link, for sure, will be CAT7, but that's because it's for my remote console to the supercomputer KVM and carries an analog signal. While I don't expect a perfect image, it's almost useless right now with the CAT5 because I can't tell the difference between a window background and greyed out text. And that's with an XGA resolution. The spec for CAT7 cable has each wire pair separately shielded in addition to a shield for the whole thing. Should be good for a near-perfect XGA console or a usable SXGA console. I would consider it a huge lucky bonus to end up with a usable UXGA console.

Since I had to deal with digging the trenches in the first place, I'm going to run some extra conduit and cap the ends. Conduit is cheap. Trench digging time isn't.

What the hell. I'll calculate it out:

My 90 degree elbows with a 1 foot radius will cost me $1.58 each. Ten foot conduit sections cost $2.79 and couplers are $.66.

Four elbows, one coupler and five pieces of conduit for power to workshop load center.
Four elbows, Five pieces of conduit for data to small shed from house.
Two elbows, one piece of conduit and one coupler for spare to workshop.
Three elbows, two pieces of conduit and one coupler for spare to small shed.
Two elbows, one piece of conduit for link between small shed and workshop.
Two elbows, one piece of conduit for spare between small shed and workshop.

Total so far:
$26.86 - Seventeen elbows
$2 - Three couplers
$41.85 - Fifteen 10' pieces of conduit
---
$75.38 (including Utah 6.6% sales tax)

I'm sure there's more to it than that. The spares have me capping with a scrap vertical piece, not leading directly into an elbow.
 
After the power project for the shop is done, I need to work on getting power to my storage bay for the WiFi shot and lighting. Other than the few watts constant drain from the wifi bridge, I won't be using much energy there. Sixty watts of lights, if that, for a few hours at a time during the dark months (sun setting at 4:30 kind of screws things up). Peak drain would probably be about 600W aside from inrush current.

Hmmmmm...

http://www.harborfreight.com/45-watt-solar-panel-kit-90599.html

I have a few UPS batteries that aren't good enough for that kind of abusive work anymore, but could easily wire up in parallel to run a 600W inverter.
 
the last pic looks like your just dug a shallow grave.


Im liking the work being done dude!
 
FrEaKy said:
the last pic looks like your just dug a shallow grave.


Im liking the work being done dude!
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Thanks.

The way I felt while I was digging that part, I thought it was going to become my shallow grave.

Here it is now (using new domain for these imgs):

DSCN9577s.jpg


The trench elbow
DSCN9578s.jpg
 
MisterDNA said:
Looks like I've got another project to work on simultaneously.

I got this from my brother because it let out a bunch of magic smoke. He had it built for him by some fly-by-night posers. This is going to suck, but I hope it's worth it in the end with the i7-940.

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1530104

Look where they put the f**king radiator!!

DSC01847s.jpg
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That has to be one of the worst builds I've ever seen.
 
ex0du5 said:
That has to be one of the worst builds I've ever seen.
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I rebuilt the poor girl. Been running perfectly since, aside from hating my Logitech Illuminated Keyboard (shift keys locked on return from sleep/standby, or even just not going to sleep/standby mode). I bought a dent-box G15 to replace that. No problems since.
 
I've learned a bit more about electrical codes. There are a lot of gotchas and I've taken it upon myself to ferret them out for this project.

Conduit spacing: My 1.25" conduit, when placed side-by-side(-by-side-by-side,etc) has to be spaced on 2.5" centers. I bought a 25-pack of pine stakes used for marking out construction sites and only really needed four so I can use the leftover stakes and some tie wire to keep the conduit spaced correctly along the run.

I'm sure there's more I'll learn in all this.
 
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