What did you buy today? Post your latest purchase!

[paulca]

True.  The SBC I ordered, which is thankfully a little "swiss army knife" of a thing and will find many other purposes.  (Zimaboard 832).  So it's weeky little intel low power CPU, 8Gb of DDR4, 2x1Gb NICs, 2xSATA3 ports, and the gem, a full 4x PCI slot.

The thing to be careful of here is the speed requirements on the buses becomes the bottle neck once you move into the latest gen storage hardware.

A Gen4 PCIe x4 M.2 NVMe drive is capable of over 6Gb/s on a single drive slot.  It will use 4xGen4 lanes.

I don't think there are any "micro form-factor" boards with even a Gen3 bus at x4 for the M.2.  Most are Gen2.

The AliExpress NAS boards for example, which everyone is using to builds "NAS" boxes, has an M.2 slot yes.  However it's only a 1x and it's only PCIe gen 2.  People are then putting 4x or 5x SATA adapters into that slot and then putting a ZFS RAIDz1 or RAIDz2 on it full of SSDs.

A Gen2 X1 M.2 Slot isn't even capable of maxing out 2 SSDS.  It will be limited to around 1Gb/s and will never saturate the Gb links.

5x HDDs spinning rust... sure.  But who actually buys HDDs these days?  Unless you are a video creator with massive 10-50Tb bulk storage media drives... SSDs are the present.

One of the purposes I have for the "storage focused server" is in service container volumes over the network to the VMs/Containers/Docker stacks.  I have yet to determine if this is best done on a "Checkout and commit" style pattern so volumes are then located with the pods/containers locally, but managed centrally and sync'd back home periodically... or...  direct live NFSv4 shares with multi bonded links so that the NFS server and Virtualisation host have EXTREMELY fast access to those "mirror'd" pair of M.2s.

The later may result in just too much network "chatter" and too much instability, but I need the hardware in place to even test out which I prefer.

[beanflying]

The RK3588 based boards are PCIe3.0 and providing whoever makes them x4 is 'normal'. The OrangePi5+ I am playing with is heading for an old Nvidia Quadro GPU next on a NVMe - PCIE riser card as there is factory ARM64 drivers to play with.

The dual drive thing is for me just a plaything to see if it can be done 

[paulca]

The RK3588 based boards are PCIe3.0 and providing whoever makes them x4 is 'normal'. The OrangePi5+ I am playing with is heading for an old Nvidia Quadro GPU next on a NVMe - PCIE riser card as there is factory ARM64 drivers to play with.

The dual drive thing is for me just a plaything to see if it can be done 

Fun stuff.  I tried a dual M.2 Riser card in a Dell Optiplex and got 1 drive.  Expected.
I then tried the same dual riser card in a brand new B550 Asus Prime board and ....  1 drive.  No 4x2 bifurcation support.
I then tried it in the X570 Crosshair Hero 8.  Along side the Gtx3080 in x8 mode and it bifurcated it and gave me 2x full Gen4 M.2 drives.

I promptly put those into a "Windows striped volume" and use it for "Steam games" and video editing scratch drive.  It's completely unreliable and a single corruption takes out both disks, but it has "replacable class" media on it.  The speed on krystal disk mark is 11,700MB.s.  11 Giga bytes per second.

IRL though.  Game loading and scratch driving produce a large number of "random access reads", which, surprisingly (?) will drop an M.2 down to a tenth of it's full speed at sequential.  I believe that is the DRAM cache on the SSD working at it's best in "read ahead" mode.  When you start hitting it with random access for single blocks, I believe it crashes out the cache on the drives and bottle necks them.  Put another way.  A game which took 1 minute to load of a "consumer 500Mb SSD", still takes 35 seconds to load on a supposed 11Gb/s M.2.

Edit:  There is talk about games starting to be optimised for performance SSDs.  Previously game devs moved to "cabinet" or monolithical "dat" files to speed up loading due to seek times on HDDs.  When SSDs became the norm and the seek time went from microseconds to picoseconds, the became lazy and went back to "catalog" folder structures and millions of small assests.

It seems they are having to go back the other way as gamers are realising an SSD/M.2 hit with constant random reads does not perform well.  With modern consoles getting M.2 this time round, the "talk" is in a redesign (again) or assest management to improve load times.

[PlainName]

I might be missing something, but how does the PCIe expansion fit? I mean, I can see there is a PCIe socket on the side, but all the cards that might fit look like normal PC cards with fittings for the case. But the Zimbaboard doesn't appear to have any way of securing a card, so it is hanging there in the breeze. Couldn't fine any cases or anything to solve that either - have I missed something or is it expected that this is just a dodgy don't breath on it hack?

[vk3em]

Have been using pill boxes for storing and picking SMT components but found these on LCSC and just had to have them

[paulca]

I might be missing something, but how does the PCIe expansion fit? I mean, I can see there is a PCIe socket on the side, but all the cards that might fit look like normal PC cards with fittings for the case. But the Zimbaboard doesn't appear to have any way of securing a card, so it is hanging there in the breeze. Couldn't fine any cases or anything to solve that either - have I missed something or is it expected that this is just a dodgy don't breath on it hack?

Swiss army knife, not chef's knife.

People 3D print brackets and the like.  In my case it's very likely to end up in a corner collecting dust and not be bothered.

However.  I do agree.  If you were to, say, knock this off the bench onto the floor, it will almost certainly snap the PCIe card AND destroy the socket, if it doesn't short the PCIe bus out and fry it.

EDIT: The way I looked at it.  It's basically a near like for like replacement for a Dell Optilpex eWaste recon box.  Except it's half the size, half the power and twice the number of NICs.

Still think they should put 2xm.2 slots on the back of it and stop teh SATA ports for the next version.  Assuming the pissy little CPU can actually shift data.  That remains to be tested.

[PlainName]

OK, thanks. I could find a use for it as it is, I reckon, but the PCIe connector just plays with my mind. Surprised they didn't make a backplane card of some sort to allow this kind of expansion whilst adding decent mechanical support too.

[TizianoHV]

SH72 soldering iron, I don't know why it's so underrated here on eevblog but after some use, I think it has really good value for the money (for beginners).
I bought it on AliExpress for 17€ shipped and if you search you can buy spare tips for just 3€ (They are a bit light, but they are ok for small stuff).

The tips are not the shortest (quite the contrary), but I have no problem with that. You should go with the BC2 tip: it has a flat head that permit good heat transfer and it’s good for soldering SMD.

12-24V power up to 60W. I use it at 12V, and I can solder THT connectors fine. It gets power via a barrel jack, but I removed it in favor of a nice flexible cable.

[paulca]

OK, thanks. I could find a use for it as it is, I reckon, but the PCIe connector just plays with my mind. Surprised they didn't make a backplane card of some sort to allow this kind of expansion whilst adding decent mechanical support too.

I'll let you know how it goes when it arrives.

[thm_w]

SH72 soldering iron, I don't know why it's so underrated here on eevblog but after some use, I think it has really good value for the money (for beginners).
I bought it on AliExpress for 17€ shipped and if you search you can buy spare tips for just 3€ (They are a bit light, but they are ok for small stuff).

The tips are not the shortest (quite the contrary), but I have no problem with that. You should go with the BC2 tip: it has a flat head that permit good heat transfer and it’s good for soldering SMD.

12-24V power up to 60W. I use it at 12V, and I can solder THT connectors fine. It gets power via a barrel jack, but I removed it in favor of a nice flexible cable.

If you can up the budget by $8, ksger C210 for $25: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005519807256.html Performance and ergonomics will blow you away.
Mostly small size tips though, more for SMD.

[PlainName]

First thing that popped out at me with that Ksger was "12V 5A" and "70W". No doubt doesn't affect functionality, though

[thm_w]

First thing that popped out at me with that Ksger was "12V 5A" and "70W". No doubt doesn't affect functionality, though

The current I see at 12V is 4.5A so 54W. You can raise the input voltage up to 20V and you'll easily hit that 70W figure (as its a resistive heating element).
But... the C210 tip from JBC is rated for ~20-25W?, so you're already massively overdriving the tip at that point. There are settings for current limiting in the menu, though they don't seem to work that well and there is no manual to explain them.

[Alex Eisenhut]

Went thrifting today, found a pleasantly plump old DC power supply, looks like 1970s vintage, a chunky black box with two meter movements.
A Zurich (I know the city but not the company!) DPS-712M
But they still make em, looks like.
http://www.zurich-electric.com.tw/zu-p01.html

Didn't really need it, but it has speaker terminals for output which might be handy for bare wires, and for running my LiPO charger.
25$ but hey, no shipping and this thing's heavy!
Also thrift stores charge more these days.

[jonovid]

smooth brass shaft extensions for any miniature tuning capacitor or gangs used in most analog AM/FM transistor radios of the 80s.
with this brass shaft extension any 6.5mm smooth shaft knob can be used with it.
sold in packs of 10 brass extensions with 2mm mounting screws.

[armandine2]

I don't suppose I'll build an eez bb3? ... but I have ordered an Arduino Due 

edited to add link - the Due is not used in an eez bb3, but it was in its predecessor eez h24005

https://www.crowdsupply.com/envox/eez-h24005/updates/the-h24005-is-dead-long-live-the-bb3

[OneGeekGuy]

I got this Agilent 34401A, maybe not the best price but in really good condition, I still need to to check it. Looks like was barely used. My first 6 1/2 digits multimeter. I might open it and check the statua of the elec caps and general inspection. Old tool but very excited about it! The VFD is in perfect condition which is also important.

[nctnico]

My first Fnirsi:

It is a USB power analyser with USB-A and USB-C connectors. Not the cheapest one but it can also read e-marker information from a cable.

[armandine2]

I don't suppose I'll build an eez bb3? ... but I have ordered an Arduino Due 

edited to add link - the Due is not used in an eez bb3, but it was in its predecessor eez h24005

https://www.crowdsupply.com/envox/eez-h24005/updates/the-h24005-is-dead-long-live-the-bb3

not so many tutorials on the due

edited to add obligatory  blink

[jonpaul]

Another Hameg analog scope, HM 204, 20 MHz, 2 ch with delayed time base.
Mint cond, 100% working, with manual in French...
EU40 at Paris street sale, Sunday.

Jon

[jonovid]

cheap glazed ceramic insulators
in sets of 5 pieces.  available in 4 colors.
I add the dimensions.
the intended use of the chinese insulators is to hold mains voltage wire
as in 1930s vintage style house electrical wiring.
somewhere in the back of nowhere this is the electrical code.
just in case anyone is interested.

[gamalot]

VESSEL Ceramic Adjustment Screwdriver.

[jonpaul]

FREE: Harvest of Chestnuts from Jardi du Luxembourg, Paris 6th

  roast with microwave !



j

[Kim Christensen]

FREE: Harvest of Chestnuts from Jardi du Luxembourg, Paris 6th
  roast with microwave !

As long as you are 100% sure that those are the edible variety...

[PlainName]

FREE: Harvest of Chestnuts from Jardi du Luxembourg, Paris 6th
  roast with microwave !

As long as you are 100% sure that those are the edible variety...

No doubt we will figure that out in a few days

[thm_w]

FREE: Harvest of Chestnuts from Jardi du Luxembourg, Paris 6th

  roast with microwave !

The hard part is always figuring out how to cut the X in them before cooking though. Unless you like to blow things up.