EEVblog #720 - Mailbag

[EEVblog]

Dave opens his mail.


SPOILERS:

Chip Whisperer KickStarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/coflynn/chipwhisperer-lite-a-new-era-of-hardware-security

Supermicro Xeon Server Motherboard: http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon/C600/X9DAE.cfm

RF Solutions transmitters and receivers.
Bogey Board: http://rfsolutions.co.uk/acatalog/Bogey-Board.html
KAPPA: http://rfsolutions.co.uk/acatalog/Radio-modem-KAPPA_M868.html#SID=278
BRAVO: http://rfsolutions.co.uk/acatalog/BRAVO_Module.html

PICop II PIC Development board: http://www.bloguetronica.com/2014/12/placa-de-desenvolvimento-picop-ii.html

Automatic Voltage Regulator for an alternator.

[hamdi.tn]

the dude who for whatever reason flipped the oscilloscope up side down  hi  why  and am not sure what he think about his employer holding that knife , i will be scared 

[kayvee]

He has to ease into the limelight slowly, you know.... 

[Muttley Snickers]

The Old Scope Inverse Manoeuvre.     

It's obviously so that you can trigger on either a rising or falling edge
without wearing out the buttons on the scope, just brilliant Seppy.


Muttley

[max666]

I like the postcards. Maybe I'm biased

[bundy]

That strange routing on the Supermicro Xeon board is called offset routing. It is to minimize the influence of the FR4 glass fibers on the controlled impedance. The Er is slightly different at the point of the woven fiber bundle than in between them.

The large unpopulated area on the board is for a SAS interface, Serial Attached SCSI.

[PinheadBE]

The datasheet is from the big metal shielded part on the Automated Voltage Regulator.    Not the whole module, but only the part (or hybrid module ?) that is under the metal casing (which apparently doubles as heatsink for some power switching devices).
This would explain that there are, indeed, SMT parts under there.....

BTW, Dave: you've got one of your scopes stored headside down...
Please, don't drink and blog.... 
A bit more, and you would pretend that *someone* just flipped your scope just to annoy you....
Come on ......

[jancumps]

Can you believe that I didn't see the apprentice.
I watched again after reading all the scope comments here - and yes, now I get it.
I must have been hypnotized by the knife.

[dexters_lab]

  Love the nonchalant attitude while your new helper makes an appearance.

when does he get introduced?

[daqq]

Hi Dave,

When you are dealing with 1TB of RAM you might consider creating a RAM drive for some serious speed boost - you don't need 1 TB of RAM for your application software (not sure if windows is even capable of it) most of the time.

[FHR]

Hey dave,
You need at least 2 DDR3 DIMM RAM sticks, one for each CPU.
Also beware that older servers may have DDR2 memory, which is not compatible. You cant also mix ECC and NON-ECC RAM.

[elgonzo]

the dude who for whatever reason flipped the oscilloscope up side down  hi  why  and am not sure what he think about his employer holding that knife , i will be scared 

Totally awesome and funny appearance of Seppy.
Watch older Mailbags (EEVblog #680 and older) and look for that particular oscilloscope... 
(I have to admit, until i saw Seppy's joke i did not realize that Dave did not have that upside-down scope in the most recent mailbags anymore)

[NRoach44]

The unpopulated pads at ~5:30 is for a SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) controller (big BGA pad, and the shape of the connector silkscreen give it away. And the labelling for the connectors being "SAS0~3")

[pb2k]

Hey dave,
You need at least 2 DDR3 DIMM RAM sticks, one for each CPU.
Also beware that older servers may have DDR2 memory, which is not compatible. You cant also mix ECC and NON-ECC RAM.

The memory is quad channel, so populate all of the blue slots on the board, if you can with with identical speed and sized modules.

Also be aware that according to the quick specs on the supermicro site EEC and non-ECC are supported, but not registered (or Fully buffered, not that FB ddr3 dimms exits)

Look for memory codes like PC3-10600E.

[elgonzo]

Also be aware that according to the quick specs on the supermicro site EEC and non-ECC are supported, but not registered (or Fully buffered, not that FB ddr3 dimms exits)

Look for memory codes like PC3-10600E.

?  Of course it supports registered ECC DDR3 DIMMs...

[FHR]

Of course It supports registered RAM. It will also run in single channel mode, no need to buy 8 sticks.

[pb2k]

Also be aware that according to the quick specs on the supermicro site EEC and non-ECC are supported, but not registered (or Fully buffered, not that FB ddr3 dimms exits)

Look for memory codes like PC3-10600E.

?  Of course it supports registered ECC DDR3 DIMMs...

My bad.

From the full blown manual:

"The X9DA7/X9DAE motherboard supports up to 1 TB of Load Reduced (LRDIMM),
512 GB of Registered (RDIMM) or 128 GB of Unbuffered (UDIMM) ECC/Non-ECC
DDR3 800/1066/1333/1600/1866 MHz 240-pin 4-channel memory modules in 16
DIMM slots."

[Grapsus]

It's a good thing that this motherboard supports both kinds of DIMM (registered and regular).
Which kind of RAM to buy will depend on the desired total amount of RAM.
If it's less than 128 GB, then stuffing this puppy with unregistered non-ecc 8 GB sticks will be the absolute cheapest.
If more than 128 GB are required there is no choice but to buy buffered RAM which will be like two times more expensive and will maybe add a bit of access latency.
In any case, I'd advise to stay away from ECC UDIMM and NON-ECC RDIMM which are uncommon and expensive.
With LRDIMM it's possible to get 1 TB of RAM, but it probably costs more than a kidney.

And please don't listen to stupid advice about ECC RAM on youtube. For a 32 GB machine, the real life data about RAM errors is like one over a year of continuous operation. For storage servers with certain filesystems, it's absolutely required, but for a single video rendering machine it would be a waste of money.

[dentaku]

It's great to see stuff manufactured in Nova Scotia like the Chip Whisperer.
Of course Colin lives near Dartmouth which seems to be the only place to get electronic related parts and tools in NS. I know you can order anything online these days but it's still nice to have a real store to check new stuff out sometimes.

[Switching Power]

This would also make a nice postcard
http://dilbert.com/strip/1999-03-02

[Neilm]

Had to laugh at the appearance of Daves new PFY

[max666]

This would also make a nice postcard
http://dilbert.com/strip/1999-03-02

 

[RupertGo]

Loved the ChipTorturer... er, Whisperer. Bet you can lose a few hours to that baby.

I only mention this because it's normally so good, but there's a spot of hum on the audio from time to time - you can hear it most clearly at around 6:40. Sounds more like inductive hum rather than dodgy shielding, from the way the level changes between cuts. Nothing terrible and no interest in being a precious snowflake on this, but if a bit of cable repositioning can restore the pristine crispness of Dave's unique tonality, then why the hell not.

And props to the Dave Soundboard chap for not doing what I'dve done, and stringing together some of the standard phrases or sayings into proper rudeness, as a bad man could so easily do...

[miguelvp]

Don't forget to put heatsinks to those Xeons, like this one that came from a DELL Precision 490

[SL4P]

the dude who for whatever reason flipped the oscilloscope up side down  hi  why  and am not sure what he think about his employer holding that knife , i will be scared 

It was done for our Northern Hemisphere viewers - who had previously been uncomfortable with the Aussie-centric nature of Dave's presentations.

Date will still be dd/mm/yy  or yymmdd - but NEVER mm/dd/yy - EVER!