Photos Latest Purchases Thread: v2.0

It used to be Philip's encyclopedia, now it's Gareth's encyclopedia.

 

Shiny things...



A Pi Zero 2W and ethernet board for playing around with pi hole.
A Xeon Silver 4210, mounting frame and heatsink to fit in the second socket in my Lenovo P720
A drive bay backplane for the P720 although it looks like I have received a model that needs an 8087 connector which the 720 motherboard does not have, no worries though i was going to buy a card with a couple of those on for other drives, I'll just grab another. with 2 xeon solver 4210 cpus, i won't be short of pcie lanes...(48 each)

 

Gawwd dayum, that CPU is one hefty chonker!

 

Saw these at Wembley earlier in the year.

Emily killed it.

 

She certainly has some girth to her...

Just need to get some appropriate RAM sticks now. When did old server RAM get so expensive? I mean it isn't like i am after cutting edge stuff, just some 16GB DDR4 ECC 2400 OR 2666, nothing too special or big... And let's not start with reconditioned drives...

Meh, I'll get there, plenty of other stuff to do before then like wiring up the house for the "new" networking kit - not even thinking of chasing that into the walls, they are reinforced concrete, trunking (and an understanding and very IT-minded wife) cheesecake.

Emily has more than pleasantly surprised me, of course she makes things different, but I'm liking it.

 

I'm impressed by your well-controlled cleanroom working environment.

 

Far too many projects on the go.... This is just where i do my building of things and throwing paint at other things.

 

You guys think that is messy or cluttered…? Pff, amateurs…

(I’d share a photo, but I have Important Secret Work Stuff(TM) open and I CBA to blur or switch off the monitors )

 

Oh, this gets better......



I save the neat and tidy for what I build...

 

Yeah OK, you win - your keyboard alone would get you over the line

 

Jesus Christ...

That's Jason Bourne!

 

Here in West Somerset, that would be full of spiders...

 

Got a fair few in here too. Good bunch of little dudes

 

Makes my old space look clean and tidy...

 

Just a 5g 128Gb version of the new A11+.

OH needed a tablet update, only needs a basic one that will last for years.

Her last Samsung served her well so why not.

 

The local CEX had a "lightly pre-loved"* 256GB Pixel 10 Pro Fold for £500 off new, so I wandered over.


* - They prefer to say "Grade A". Basically, the box had been opened.

 

Bargain, my folder is dead, been holding out for the trifold but it's rumoured to be Korea only

 

Super Flower Leadex III 1000W to replace my aging Seasonic X650 which I purchased around 2011.

 

Ooh, that's been a good trooper - 14 years.

 

Some hobby electronics gubbins…

KeebDeck & KeebDeck Basic, as covered by the inimitable @Gareth Halfacree here.





I’ve had an idea buzzing round in my head about building a device that is solely for managing calendar appointments & “to do” lists, using the plain-text calendar.txt and todo.txt formats, kinda like a modern PDA. But it has to have a physical keyboard, no touchscreens.

I wanted one of their earlier BlackBerry keyboard devices for a nice retro look & feel - but they’re no longer available, and the cost of finding a suitable keyboard and designing my own interface PCB doesn’t stack up when these are so cheap.

Yet Another Waveshare RP2350-Based Dev Board With LCD Screen - specifically this one





Has a lot of neat features, but the one I’m most interested in experimenting with is the audio decoder IC. May or may not form part of the aforementioned “modern PDA” idea.