Saturday, March 17, 2018

Mac To Windows Part 7



First, a fix: Yes, you CAN get all of your mailboxes in one in Windows Mail: it’s in the settings.
(How did I not see that before?)

This weekend, I fitted the Wifi card and tried to install the DVD drive. The Wifi was easy: I thought that I would put the DVD drive in then use it to install the Wifi driver (which came on a DVD) - but there were problems with this.
The Wifi worked perfectly - tested to 11 Mb/sec,  same as the Mac Pro.

Motherboard matters

Well that was interesting. I did a couple of long renders (using both CPU and GPU) then the keyboard got stuck and produced a string of 2’s – and there is a temp sensor (No.8) that was reading 63 C – except that I cannot find any reference to which thermal sensors are which in the mobo manual. How can I figure out where the sensor is if it isn’t mentioned there?

What I have from the paperwork is a list of temperature sensors – they total 8 but I only have names for five:
CPU
VRM MOS
PCIEX16_1 and 2
X299 PCH (platform controller Hub)

There are 3 along the lefthand side unnamed – I don’t know what they are sensing so how can I decide what got hot and to cool them or not? At a guess, one of them is the one that got hot – and maybe it deals with USB inputs (hence the key failure?) . . . but there is nothing that tells me that.
There are also sockets to connect two external temp probes (EC Temp 1 &2).

 This shows the temp sensors as yellow dots. I have named the ones I recognise.

SpeedFan: I tried SpeedFan but it does not recognise the board and gets no temp sensors from it – so it is probably too old for X299 boards.
There is still the BIOS control that comes with the board for the fan controls.

I am putting off fitting the cooler on the GPU card. I think maybe I will either get a second card or a newer one . . . not yet though. First I need to finish up this stage, including transferring all of the content data onto a nice big 2TB SSD that should arrive next week.

The DVD Drive
The slot loading DVD drive did not turn out to be a smooth installation. First there was some difficulty lining up the drive and the slot in the case provided for it, and then there is the problem of the power cable: it is old style (molex) while the mobo has newer SATA style power plugs. I need an adapter – and I also need some custom plastic plate to fix the drive in the correct place.
Although the DVD drive and the case are sold by the same company they didn’t quite fit together: the two tiny screws that attach the drive into the bracket have slots and even when tight they didn’t actually fix it because there was a large gap under it. I measured it at 2.5 mm and then made two packers to fit from plastic. I also drilled a hole in the bracket to fit a cable tie for the cables as they must curl around 180 degrees due to the plug design.
The DVD drive fitted with the cables bent and tied.


This brings me to the whole cable issue.
The worst lump is the SATA power cables- they string four or more plugs on the same cable and those things are a pest, they don’t fold flat nicely and I have yet to find any alternative. Why can’t I get, for example, a SATA power cable with only two plugs on it? I want to make the cables tidy and keep the airflow as clear as possible – maybe I will need to make a whole set of custom cables.

This brings me to the next stage: The PSU has sockets for the GPU and SATA power but the main cables are fixed. If I got a newer PSU it would have ALL the cables in sockets thus allowing complete custom cabling. 
So off I went to Cablemod . . . well, it is expensive. Yup. They look great, you can specify the exact length of cables, connectors, covering, colour etc. but for a price.

The Cablemod cables                          $US

ATX – 2x4 pin 12v power or EPS       9.90
24pin Main power plug                     24.90
6 pin PCIe                                         19.90
Dual 6 pin PCIe                                19.90
8 pin PCIe                                        19.90
Dual 8 pin PCIe                               24.90
Sata Power 1 plug                           15.90
Sata Power 2 plug                           19.90
Sata Power 3 plug                           22.90
Sata Power 4 plug                           24.90

Planned cable requirements:
ATX                                                                 9.90
Main                                                               24.90
single and dual 6 and 8 pin PCIE                   84.60
Sata Power:
Total of 4 devices -
2 SSDs – Main drive & Main Content drive 19.90
1 DVD drive                                                  15.90
1 HDD – music and all other oddments        15.90
TOTAL                                                        171.10

Converted to $AU                                       222.20
er, maybe I’ll just put that off . . . . . 
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One final thing: I just watched a vid (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeMVvty5b0g) that tells of all the changes between the book Altered Carbon and the Netflix show.  Well, okay it has been a while since I read it - there were big changes, but then there were reasons too. It also hinted that maybe the other books in the series might be coming to the small screen soon . . I hope! 

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