Yep, checked the box... no dice. checked the configuration tool... no dice. MAC address supplied on the box is for the ethernet side. I confirmed this by seeing what was connecting to my DHCP server and what MAC address it was sending in terms of the ethernet side. The wireless side is still a mystery, once I actually get everything back together I will have another go at interogating it... but for the moment that is low priority. I should be able to get into the workshop at least for a while today, which means I will be able to do part 2 of my PCB Prettification project. I have also finished my preliminary plans for the case on paper and my best mate (the rather awesome chap from the "short back and sides" post) has drafted them up for me too (drafty by trade). If all things pan out I should have the PCB up tonight & perhaps a shot of the paper plans tomorrow. On a further note, unless your switch is actually managed or at least a little bit smart then it will have no MAC address associated with it.
well.. arnt all switches smart. At least as far as OSI models go, switches all fall into a 'smart' layer in which every thing has a MAC address. Hubs are in layer 1, and do not have a MAC address, but they are simple, whereas switches no matter how cheap are 'smart'. I just dont know how to find out the mac address...
I wasn't entirely correct... my bad. The MAC address on the switch would be transparent to you though. The MAC addresses of the ports in the switch are only useful to the switch itself. When a packet comes in, the switch will save the source MAC address and the MAC address of the port in the switch this is associated with... then it will lookup it's MAC address table for the destination MAC and which switch port this is assigned to and then fire the packet that way. If it can't find the destination MAC address in MAC address table it broadcasts the packet across the switch. MAC MAC MAC MAC MAC... tooo many MACs! mmm quarter pounder...
Well i guess you have good reasons maybe i just had some bad luck with my Wireless ethernet bridge If you log onto the http config page of your switch (i assume it has one) then you should be able to find the mac address in there, i found it on my linksys WEB .. As for switches, they should be transparent (unless as mentioned, they are managed) beacause all they need to do is move data around, beacause you dont need to access them, they do not need an interface (and thus wouldnt have a mac address)
Now I know that I promised that I would put a proper update up tonight and truth be told I did actually finish resoldering the Zalman fanmate and it's all purdy n' jive. BUT... a) I’m not really happy with how the photos turned out so I'm going to snap some better ones later and b) see below I had to help my housemate fit the back tire to his bike, which took a little longer than we were expecting but at least now it's all back and in one piece. So I will hopefully get stuff sorted tomorrow at some point. My heartiest apologies... so hearty they could be used to make a broth to be fed to the hungry little animals you find in the forest... come animals... feast upon the hearty apologies... Night all…
I have been busy, I promise! It's just that I have 86 meg worth of photos to trawl through of the weekend's progress. So far I have prettified the fan controller and also hack'n'slashed the inside shelf. The shelf was given a nice brushed finish and a dab of black paint. This is where things went a little pearshaped. The black paint wasn't quite... umm... well spraying like spray paint should... more like when as a kid you get a plate full of different coloured paint and use a straw to blow the paint onto a piece of paper. So I am not at all happy with the finish. Also, on reflection, I think that I can get the brushed effect to be a little bit more uniform so I will put a big update up once I get all the photos from my friend. This weekend will probably be a write-off but I might get some small bits and pieces done.
Nah, we were busy fixing the back wheel on the GSXR600... All back together now. Tis my housemate's bike. Mine is the ZX10-R on the right. Will try and catch up with my mate in the next few nights to get the photos. I have ordered quite a few more bits and pieces, bunch of cable sleeving to help tidy up all the cabling but there is a twist involved with that. Also have ordered a different TV tuner, still USB but slightly more standard shape (ie rectangular not blobby like the other one). Finally, I have to make some phone calls this arvo to sort out the one thing that should actually make this case stand out, so fingers crossed that comes off, keeping mute on it until I can confirm one way or another... Only other thing that I'm missing is the aluminium plate... which is on hold until I can get a half sheet... or I lose patience and just buy a whole sheet of it.
A lesson i learned when building pukpuk, the PCB often follows the same lines as the casing. To most people this wouldn't matter but it meant that I ended up with a PCB with angled lines in a case full of straight lines (which actually ended up as a boon as I used it as a styling cue for the rest of the case) This would've been the same deal. I only want rounded edges and straight lines for the PCBs and holes that I cut... so if the casing was all blobby looking it's highly likely the PCB would be circular, which would mean more pain to figure out how to mount it elegantly. It's the OCD i tells ya!
Finally I have actually managed to get some work done. This was actually from two weekends ago. This weekend was pretty much a write-off, as I had expected, I must say though that the gig I went to on the Friday night could've been an abject failure but was thankfully saved at the last minute. 2 hours waiting in a queue to get in... Even though we had tickets... ended up missing two of the headlining acts... but enough about that... this isn't myspace! This is a worklog, so onto some photomographical goodness. Montana: Hack'n'slash Just to prove that I actually have some degree of planning mapped out. I have snapped some photos of one of the paper plans I drew out for the modifications that were going to be applied to the interior shelf. As you will have seen in the other shots earlier in the log, the main task of this shelf is to hold the DVD drive and the HDD. I want to add a 120mm fan into the mix so that I actually have some proper ventilation. By itself it just looks like a plan I've drawn out, but basically I spent an hour odd taking all the measurements from the shelf and transferring them to paper. I have to say that this is one of the most satisfying things, when you spend a long time measuring up everything and then when you overlay the drawings over the original piece, EVERYTHING lines up! Just to give me a reference point, I find it's always a good idea to stick some crosshatching on the areas that are due to be sacrificed. Nothing worse than making cuts only to find it's in the wrong piece... or in your arm... or someone else's arm... you get the idea. So here's the shelf in its unmodded, virgin state. As you can see I also have to take out the perpendicular 20mm wide piece. I realise that this is actually structural, but considering the thickness of the steel and the way it's used I don't think this will be too much of an issue. Stupid perpendicular bit! Since I wanted to actually overlay my plan onto the piece... you can see the piece I was just talking about prevents me from nicely placing the plan. So, out with the sacrificial marker, just so that I have a very visible cut line. Since this is going to be filed and finished after the cut the width of the cut line isn't really a concern, I just want to make sure it's as straight as I can get, to minimise the amount of finishing needed. Now out with the dremel... We were a little bit dubious at this point. Purely because we had spent an hour or two cleaning up the workshop, so by the time we were actually dremelling it was getting a tad late in the piece, but we can't have that stand in the way (tbh it wasn't that late, 8:30pm on a Saturday night) Unfortunately with the planned removal of this chunk of metal it will leave a rather nasty empty space on the back of the case. So instead of just wantonly lopping off the metal I first marked out this little tab so that I can just screw this in place and thus not end up with the nastiness of an empty gaping hole in the back of the case. Think I need a new cutting wheel, this one just doesn't seem to be cutting anymore... I think it's blunt or something. Here are some shots of the rough cuts. These are to be finished properly after, but more so I just like the photos and wanted to include them. Though it does give you an idea of how much material I need to remove to finish this properly, the sanding drum is your friend.
This stuff is great, basically it should called "DIY Sticker Stuff". It will take anything flat and make it a sticker, well... technically speaking it is just spray glue, but that's not quite as fun as DIY Sticker Stuff, is it? I trimmed up the plan so that it will fit around all the other pieces of the shelf. Then we take said plan, lay on some newspaper (optional, but the more clever option, as having big gobs of spray glue all over the floor/table/wall/friend is never that appreciated), spray a few coats of DIY Sticker Stuff and wait 10-15 minutes for it to become tacky. Lay the plan over your piece and voila! Cut-lines! And a heck of a lot easier than trying to redraw the plans onto the actual piece. Clamp said piece to something sturdy and preferably non moving. I would suggest not an elephant since although sturdy... it's not the most non-moving of objects. Plus my elephant was on holiday at the time, apparently enjoying MaiTais in the Caribbean, lucky bugger. Now, quite a lot happened to get to this shot. I started off with the dremel, but by this time it was nudging 10:30-11:00pm. We are in a metal roofed shed. I think you can imagine the noise of a dremel trying to make its way through 1.5mm mild steel. My mate and I decided that it was probably a tad too loud. So we needed a different solution. Cue the jigsaw and metal blade... only problem being that we needed to back the metal with some wood otherwise it was just as loud and hilariously inaccurate... and we didn't have any scrap handy. So being the resourceful so and so's that we are... we did the only thing any normal person would do... just cut into the workbench. Now before you all go "man that's fscking stupid", "morons!" and "you dillweeded sunflower seeds!", this 'workbench' is basically a piece of ply that my mate had laying between some of the other workbenches in the workshop. And the cuts weren't really that long either so we only did minimal damage. As you can see, there is still a lot of work to be done with the files but at least I've gotten sort of close and more importantly I haven't gone too far. This is after quite some time with the file. Doesn't really look THAT much different, but trust me when I say I took off quite a lot... of metal. *blush* There was no way I was leaving the piece unfinished. Aside from the fact I would get corrosion on all the cuts that I had made, I figured that I should try and make it look at least a little more interesting, thus brushed finish it is. Looks pretty nifty with the blue light too. Oh the joy... Oh the fun... Oh the ... ummm ... beer! As you can imagine, it did take quite a lot of sanding to get to this finish, but more about that later. Just a quick mock up to see how things will fit. This is where having a bunch of buggered components comes in handy, since you don't have to risk damaging the shiny new stuff. And finally a little shot of the small piece left that will sit in the back of the case and make sure there are no empty bits. Ain't it cooooooote! Onto the comments... We added some paint onto the little cute piece and the matching piece on the shelf. We used some black rattle can since my friends airbrushed decided that it was going to have a hissy fit. After warming the can... and doing all the usual proper prep work this paint just did not want to play nice. It basically came off with a hammered looking finish, very uneven. We laid a clear coat over the brushed section too, this helped clear up a lot of bits and pieces but all in all I'm not happy with it at all. The brushed effect is no where near perfect enough, the black has to go cos it just looks terrible. So basically this entire piece will get re-stripped and then the whole thing will be brushed (no black) and then we will apply the clear coat again. Bit of a bummer, but still... Until next time... I’m going to do some work now.
That case is one slick mother! And cleaning up those cables is really going to improve airflow, preformance and of course the amount of upgrades you can throw in there before they begin to affect airflow and temp.... And thats some serious modding with the IDE cable, looks so stubby now... Trimming the heatsink was a stroke of genius, and trimming it down carefully and with precision has made the finished result really quite, well, authentic and looks real..
Right... HOLY THREAD REVIVAL BATMAN! I have just finished up fixing all the images... *note to self: don't change hosting again* Unfortunately I ran into some issues and disillusionment with the electronics but I am pretty sure i have them mostly worked out now. So if all goes to plan I should be putting up some more updates to this in the near future... I haven't been completely idle either... I've been busy restoring a 1970's Pioneer stereo amplifier, so I'm just putting the finishing touches on that before I get back to Montana... So, until the weather clears up and I can put the final coat of paint on my amp, I bid you farewell.
Nice to see you're updating again. I had to switch back to the first page to see what this threas is about
I'd love to see you finish this! It has been the most entertaining log I've read to date! Please continue...
Nice Mod, I particularly like the scarface touch with the intro picture, but, that's some nice integration of peripherals into the computer. I also like reading this log, it's much better than television.
Righto... onto some actual interesting-ness, rather than just lame excuses. And with that, i will give you another excuse. My commentary might be a little bit off since these photos and this progress actually happened last year... And before you ask... no i haven't invented a time machine to go back then, do some work, take pictures and then arrive now to post them for you... it's just that I was slack... and never got round to putting them up. So. Enough about that and onto the more important and interesting bits. Montana: Vent Surroundage As I said WAAaAAAAAY back at the start of this log, I'm cutting vents in the bottom of the case to allow some extra airflow. Rather than just take the easy route and cut some holes in the case and leave it at that... or perhaps steal some stockings from a sexy lady and use those to keep some dust out... i figured i would make some holders to take some mesh that can be removed when they get caked full of dust. I have skipped over alot of the work to get these pieces... but I started with 2mm flat aluminium plate and cut each of the shapes out with the bench drill and jigsaw. Now, as much as this may look like a medieval torture device for small children, it is in fact a jig that I setup so that I could be sure that all of the edges I was filing, both inside and out, were all true and square. CNC is great for negating the need for this (or at least reducing it alot) but since I left my CNC router/miller in my other pants that day I had to make do. Once I had removed all the torture equipment off the piece I gave it a quick hit with the sandpaper to get it looking a little bit more presentable. I am still umm'ing and ahh'ing as to whether or not I'm going to stick with the brushed finish or not... so this isn't the finished product. Quick tip Numero Uno: Jigs are very handy. Quick tip Two!: Jigs do not have to be made out of quality material Quick tip tri (Welsh): Jigs allowed repeatable actions on mulitple pieces Quick tip 4: Jigs are an essential part of an OCD sufferer's arsenal Basically I needed to be able to make some cuts in the pieces that would be equidistant from the sides of each piece, thus the use of a jig. The pegs just happened to be lying around and they made a good bond with the MDF spoil board I was using on the drill press. You can see the mess that this bit makes out of the aluminium. It's also very disconcerting to use as well since the aluminium is that soft that the bit (even when spinning on the slowest setting) would tend to bite and grab the piece instead of cleanly cutting. Lets just say I feared for my fingers while doing this part... thankfully they survived, in tact *waves all 5 fingies* oh yeah... *waves all the other 5 fingies* They don't look quite so bad when you hit them with some small needle files and some sandpaper. Basically this cuts out a 1mm (1/2 depth) rebate for the mesh grills to sit in so I can still mount these flat against the outside of the case. I quickly put together a small balsa cutout pattern that I would later take onto the mesh. This was mainly just to see how it would sit. It would be a heck of a lot neater if I were to route the rebate around the entire inner edge of the piece but after the finger-threatening episode both my mate and I agreed that it was probably in our best interests to limit the amount of possible blood letting operations. I was originally going to use pushpins to hold these surrounds in place, so here i marked them up and jammed one on for some reference (photo is a bit blurry, the camera had been drinking). Turns out I can't use these as they don't make enough purchase into the case, so i'm going to use small nuts and bolts instead. And finally. Here we have all these vent surrounds all finished and given a rough brushed finish just so they look neat and tidy. You can see that I'm not adding a heap of vent area but I think it should be enough to provide a reasonable drop in the temperatures I'm dealing with. So I will leave you with that... but I will say that i have another much more interesting and purdy update to come soon. I just have to prep the pictures... but I'm unfortunately outta my lunch hour now and work beckons... loudly... annoyingly... insessantly... Til then. Da boch chi!
