Paddy's hardware restructuring thread!

[Fat Tone]

Looks legit, his other listings have gone.

Billhooks indeed.

[Paddy]

yup. I've email him. If I don't get a reply by monday i'll inform the bank.
sigh.. we knew it was going to be risky, I just hope the bank honour their agreement!

[Goc]

Have you considered Fujitsu-Siemens?

http://www.cclonline.com/product-info.asp?id=4298&pc=nextaguk

I don't know if that shop is any good in UK but it seems a nice price.
I have one of these, and I'm absolutely satisfied with it. It is pretty large because of the widescreen, and it could have better speakers, but otherwise it's top notch. The one I linked to on the top looks like it is in same case, but comes from the latest PCI-express generation. Might be worth considering...

[The PIT]

yup. I've email him. If I don't get a reply by monday i'll inform the bank.
sigh.. we knew it was going to be risky, I just hope the bank honour their agreement!

You'll be lucky they'll try and worm their way out of it. Looks like off to the small claims court for you if it doesn't turn up.
Wish you luck.

[Paddy]

I spent hours getting them to accept liability prior to payment. I have that in writing, so i dont see a problem. It's only £480 and It's a platinum credit card. The bank can afford the loss.

I contacted the bank as the ebay email is timed and dated. They are happy to proceed, but ask that I call back on monday when the correct department is open.

[Paddy]

Now that the laptop's on hold, I've diverted my attention to the ProLiant server.
I managed to get the 4200 SCSI RAID controller working, but kept getting intermittent faults on the device. It's been sat in the garage so long that some of the connections have probably corroded. I've cleaned it up a bit and it's better, but my OS installation died overnight - so I've decided to abandon it. I've used a standard SCSI controller which works fine.
I've installed 2003 Server and am using software RAID 1 with 2x9.1GB disks. That will be fine for the OS, but it is a shame that I can't implement the RAID in hardware.

I'm in the process of installing updates which brings me to my first question. I am connecting to the server by remote desktop as it's bloody freezing in the garage. Whenever the server reboots after installing updates I have to go outside and hit F1 just so that it will boot. There must be some way of bypassing this... The message is 'F1 to boot, F10 for system tools (smart start)' I haven’t installed the system partition as it will happily boot from CD. Any thoughts? It's not a major problem as once running it wont be rebooted regularly, but it is a PITA!

I have an Adaptec ATA RAID controller which supports up to 4 ATA100 disks. I play to use 4x250GB in a RAID 5 array to give me 750GB of protected data. I've just noticed that there are no molex connectors in this server (bangs head against wall!). It should be straight forward enough to take the power from the SCSI backplane, but I am reluctant to damage the server too much. As a compromise, I'm thinking about mounting an external drive enclosure. It will be just above the server as i am limited by the length of the ATA ribbons. I can, presumably, use a spare 300W PSU and short it to work without a motherboard? I can see no problems with this arrangement, can you?

That’s it for now!

I’m on the phone to the bank to sort out the Chinese incident – fingers crossed there!

[Paddy]

Hmm...
Contacted the bank and the money hasn't been debited, so they are unable to file a dispute.

Contacted Western Union and the money has been paid out in China.

Contacted the bank again and the money definatley hasn't left my account.

Perhaps I should keep quiet and drink beer?

[Fat Tone]

Can't the bank prevent W.U. from taking it?

[Paddy]

not as its already been authorised.
But WU are in shifty ground.

They can accept the loss, or take my money and have the bank go after them.
NatWest advised to call them back on wednesday when the authorisation expires. They predict that WU wont claim.

Perhaps i should get hold of this chinese guy and ask for a cut???

I do have his bank details though.... I guess my bank would want them...

[Marshmallowman]

is their any option in the servers bios for headless mode, or change the setting to for stop onerrors to stop on none?

[Paddy]

eh?

[Fat Tone]

No news on the lappy?

[Paddy]

not as yet... they guy has clearly done a 'runner', jsut calling the bank now so see if the money has been taken.

[Paddy]

yep the money has gone - time to kick a$$

[Fat Tone]