I accidentally a server – Part I

I hereby announce, that my infrastructure took a giant leap forward as I purchased a i3 server(i3 530, 4GB low latency RAM, passive cooling except PSU) on the small hours of some random day not too much in the past. Deals were smooth, the merchant in question was a semi-friend and a computer event was just coming up, so a trusted third party could pick the hardware from there, and then later deliver it to me. Effectively zero postage.

But then the curse kicked in. On the few last kilometers the transport of the 3rd party broke, and caused a delay of several hours. But then it finally arrived.

I found out that the case I had in mind had a bit non-standard method of attaching the motherboard, so I had to forcibly remove some parts from an earlier mobo from that case, and ta-da, almost good as new.

Next part of the curse: chipset does not support on-board video, and no low-end video cards available. Ok, let's just borrow one from routa.

But then things got hardcore; PSU did not have connectors for additional power the GPU requires. So, instead of complete PSU change, let's just power the GPU with another PSU! While it is still in another case, but not connected to anything else. Wirestart, mmm.

Now that the system was up and running, it came time to install an OS. I wanted to finally test out ESXi, and it installed to a USB stick and booted up just nicely. Unfortunately there was a catch; no support for sensors, no support for a Realtek NIC and no support for the mobo's SATA controller. There is some unofficial drivers available, maybe, but at this time I think I'll just install Gentoo Debian. More on that on a later post.

I accidentally Genelecs

I was actually very much considering on getting headphones, but having been repeatedly exposed to the eargasmic sound waves of my friend's Genelecs, I had no choice.

So, on one hazy afternoon Lannukka headed to Iisalmi. Prices had been negotiated earlier, so only a little while later we headed back, with a 7050B for Pilkki and two 8040As for me.

Unboxing, cabling, Zephyr. Oh, and photos.