Folding Community Board

[Inkertus]

6 minutes ago, Gorgon said:

I had lightning hit the ground a couple of blocks from the house one. Took out every GFCI Outlet in the house and the DVD player but fortunately nothing else.

 

Want to get a whole home surge suppressor but waiting on a kitchen reno when I'll get my panel replaced.

 

Just have UPSes and Surge suppressors on all the expensive stuff for now. <<<<<

Yeah same.  Saved my ass a few times when the weather got violent.  Roomie didn't on their TVs and one's long since in the landfill due to a backlight circuit dead and the other is irritatingly flicker-y from a different storm. I have since instructed them which protectors to buy and they installed them.  Saved stuff recently during a storm and brief power outage. LOVE me some surge protectors and UPSes. Also has the added bonus of the internet taking less time to come back up if the outage is brief. Just need to get one for the dumb PFSense custom firewall project I undertook a few months ago. That sucker takes longer than my router (and previous FW) to boot.

[Gorgon]

17 minutes ago, Inkertus said:

Yeah same.  Saved my ass a few times when the weather got violent.  Roomie didn't on their TVs and one's long since in the landfill due to a backlight circuit dead and the other is irritatingly flicker-y from a different storm. I have since instructed them which protectors to buy and they installed them.  Saved stuff recently during a storm and brief power outage. LOVE me some surge protectors and UPSes. Also has the added bonus of the internet taking less time to come back up if the outage is brief. Just need to get one for the dumb PFSense custom firewall project I undertook a few months ago. That sucker takes longer than my router (and previous FW) to boot.

I’m just running tomato router on an Asus wifi/router. My Internet lasts almost an hour during a power failure.

[Inkertus]

3 minutes ago, Gorgon said:

I’m just running tomato router on an Asus wifi/router. My Internet lasts almost an hour during a power failure.

Unfortunately the piddly 2-pin UPS I have for my current batch of stuff (router, modem, IP phone, 5-port switch) doesn't even last more than 20 minutes during an outage.  Downside of it being two discrete pieces of high-speed hardware I guess (wifi/router looks like a spider and gives me multi-hundred megabit and the modem supposedly does gigabit over coax).  Part of the reason why I want to upgrade it, or at least supplement it.  I think the modem and router both take a good chunk of power for passively cooled items considering the speed and range class they each sit in.

[Bitter]

1 hour ago, Inkertus said:

Just need to get one for the dumb PFSense custom firewall project I undertook a few months ago. That sucker takes longer than my router (and previous FW) to boot.

I used a small (16GB) Sata2 SSD for my PFsense along with an Atom D525 which had 4GB DDR3 with low latency. I had a nice squid cache (I think that's what it was called) in RAM and on the disk, it made things feel nice n snappy and with two logical cores I could run ClamAV on one of them and the rest of the PFsense work on the other one. It got up and running pretty quickly, around a minute maybe 90 seconds. A SSD makes a BIG difference!

Sadly the PSU in the tiny ITX case I was using died and I just never bothered to rebuild it/set it up again. Also even though I had two cores the Atom was kind of slow running ClamAV and I didn't want to invest in better hardware...and it only had a PCI slot so the hardware selection was meh for gigabit stuff.

 

I have an i3 370m sitting here but boards for mobile CPU's are hard to come by or expensive or both. Eventually I'd like to set it up again, I've got a bunch of Haswell i3's and DDR3 RAM laying around. Overkill for a two user household but it'll be snappy.

 

[Inkertus]

Finally got around to re-pasting my [other] GPU and temps have dropped 4-5C.

Swapped my remote rig to my main desktop while tuning the CPU voltage down -100MHz and dropped temps 5-7C. Man these Ryzen chips are super tunable like VEGA was.

Put the CPU back to folding again. Forgot how good this one was at it.

Finally got around to setting up and using the passkey system after only 988 work units and 7.5m points. It's estimating north of 800k/day now vs the 100-120k/day.

[Bitter]

Just the P106-100 folding now, brrrrr it's sure cold in the computer room now!

[Gorgon]

Friends, Romans, Countrymen, Give us your CPUs:

Help out Team LTT by crunching COVID tasks on Rosetta@Home

 

[justpoet]

On 5/4/2020 at 9:01 PM, Gorgon said:

I had lightning hit the ground a couple of blocks from the house one. Took out every GFCI Outlet in the house and the DVD player but fortunately nothing else.

 

Want to get a whole home surge suppressor but waiting on a kitchen reno when I'll get my panel replaced.

 

Just have UPSes and Surge suppressors on all the expensive stuff for now.

Most home based whole house building suppressors just tie in via a breaker, then either screw into the back of the panel or just sit in the bottom of it.  No reason to wait on that.  Just don't cut the wires on it to make it neater in your existing box, since you'll put it in the next box too.

[justpoet]

23 hours ago, Bitter said:

I used a small (16GB) Sata2 SSD for my PFsense along with an Atom D525 which had 4GB DDR3 with low latency. I had a nice squid cache (I think that's what it was called) in RAM and on the disk, it made things feel nice n snappy and with two logical cores I could run ClamAV on one of them and the rest of the PFsense work on the other one. It got up and running pretty quickly, around a minute maybe 90 seconds. A SSD makes a BIG difference!

Sadly the PSU in the tiny ITX case I was using died and I just never bothered to rebuild it/set it up again. Also even though I had two cores the Atom was kind of slow running ClamAV and I didn't want to invest in better hardware...and it only had a PCI slot so the hardware selection was meh for gigabit stuff.

 

I have an i3 370m sitting here but boards for mobile CPU's are hard to come by or expensive or both. Eventually I'd like to set it up again, I've got a bunch of Haswell i3's and DDR3 RAM laying around. Overkill for a two user household but it'll be snappy.

 

netgate, owners of pfSense, actually make and sell hardware for it.  Look at the SG1100 for a 3.5w gigE capable box.

[justpoet]

On 5/4/2020 at 9:12 PM, Inkertus said:

Yeah same.  Saved my ass a few times when the weather got violent.  Roomie didn't on their TVs and one's long since in the landfill due to a backlight circuit dead and the other is irritatingly flicker-y from a different storm. I have since instructed them which protectors to buy and they installed them.  Saved stuff recently during a storm and brief power outage. LOVE me some surge protectors and UPSes. Also has the added bonus of the internet taking less time to come back up if the outage is brief. Just need to get one for the dumb PFSense custom firewall project I undertook a few months ago. That sucker takes longer than my router (and previous FW) to boot.

Which UPSs are you recommending these days?

[Gorgon]

7 minutes ago, justpoet said:

Most home based whole house building suppressors just tie in via a breaker, then either screw into the back of the panel or just sit in the bottom of it.  No reason to wait on that.  Just don't cut the wires on it to make it neater in your existing box, since you'll put it in the next box too.

Yeah but my panel is recessed into a wall in my kitchen and if I'm going to start punching holes in the drywall I'm going to remove it all then fix the insulation and the mid-70s aluminum wiring, bring the outlets up to split 20A, move the over-the range microwave onto a separate circuit and vent it properly, fix the outdoor outlet on the other side of the wall ... The previous owners had a handyman do some renovations and he had no clue about the electrical code.

 

Zymurgy's Law of Evolving System Dynamics states:

Quote

Invariably when you open a can of worms a larger can is required to contain them.

In this case, doing anything in the kitchen requires the $15,000 remodel to be kicked-off.

[Inkertus]

2 minutes ago, justpoet said:

netgate, owners of pfSense, actually make and sell hardware for it.  Look at the SG1100 for a 3.5w gigE capable box.

My wallet had issue with an upfront cost of several hundred USD for something that could take my internet connection vs crap I had lying around I wasn't using that would arguably be 10x more capable than needed. Simply a matter of what was to hand. If I had spare dosh I would have bought something instead. Still might, if spare money shows up at some point. Got a wishlist a mile long.  Depends on if I can copy the config onto the new box easily.

3 minutes ago, justpoet said:

Which UPSs are you recommending these days?

I have 2 APC Back-UPS units at the moment and I haven't even needed to replace the battery in the main one so far, somehow. It keeps passing self-tests. One is a discontinued NS 1080, but there are newer versions of it since I got it from Office Depot/Max. Still chugs along like a champ after well over a dozen medium and large thumps.

[Inkertus]

Quote

Invariably when you open a can of worms a larger can is required to contain them.

Like how quilts or sleeping bags never roll/fold back up to fit back in their original packaging after you take it out. 

[Inkertus]

Oh, and for surge protectors only, beefy Belkin power strips with 4k Joules or more of surge protection in part because they last longer, in part because they (probably) have added circuitry and protection at that range from that brand to make them safer when they die (like they stop working at all if surge prot. stops).

For smaller single devices of under 200w, I use Tripp Lite 1-outlet portable surge protector outlets with a more modest 660 Joules of protection and a Protected light and Grounded light for info. Basic but useful protection for things like latptops and security cameras, for example.

[justpoet]

15 minutes ago, Gorgon said:

Yeah but my panel is recessed into a wall in my kitchen and if I'm going to start punching holes in the drywall I'm going to remove it all then fix the insulation and the mid-70s aluminum wiring, bring the outlets up to split 20A, move the over-the range microwave onto a separate circuit and vent it properly, fix the outdoor outlet on the other side of the wall ... The previous owners had a handyman do some renovations and he had no clue about the electrical code.

 

Zymurgy's Law of Evolving System Dynamics states:

In this case, doing anything in the kitchen requires the $15,000 remodel to be kicked-off.

You can't open the panel up without punching through drywall?  No external punchouts or extra wire runs should be needed.

Sure, it won't fix all the likely doubletaps and other issues, but you should be able to toss in some protection, even if tossed into the existing rats nest of bad wiring.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01AQAKRSS

 

Heck, if you have a SquareD box, one of theirs is nice and tidy inside a circuit breaker case.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B072PTGC5S

[justpoet]

19 minutes ago, Inkertus said:

My wallet had issue with an upfront cost of several hundred USD for something that could take my internet connection vs crap I had lying around I wasn't using that would arguably be 10x more capable than needed. Simply a matter of what was to hand. If I had spare dosh I would have bought something instead. Still might, if spare money shows up at some point. Got a wishlist a mile long.  Depends on if I can copy the config onto the new box easily.

I have 2 APC Back-UPS units at the moment and I haven't even needed to replace the battery in the main one so far, somehow. It keeps passing self-tests. One is a discontinued NS 1080, but there are newer versions of it since I got it from Office Depot/Max. Still chugs along like a champ after well over a dozen medium and large thumps.

My original BackUps RS1500 with the extended runtime external battery pack was AMAZING.  I bought it on a black friday sale at CompUSA…who have long since been out of business (though I think the name was bought by tigerdirect?).  It went through a good 20 years of heavy 24/7 use.  About 3 or so years ago though, it started telling me everything was undervoltage and wouldn't do anything but run the battery.  I bought a new replacement RS 1500 and plugged the same external pack in, which worked great.  The main unit already has a useless battery in it now.  Seems like every manufacturer just makes trash these days compared to older stuff.  One of these days I need to pull that old one apart and find the bad component to replace…just like I need to find the bad cap in my really old powered sub from college…someday™.

[Inkertus]

2 minutes ago, justpoet said:

My original BackUps RS1500 with the extended runtime external battery pack was AMAZING.  I bought it on a black friday sale at CompUSA…who have long since been out of business (though I think the name was bought by tigerdirect?).  It went through a good 20 years of heavy 24/7 use.  About 3 or so years ago though, it started telling me everything was undervoltage and wouldn't do anything but run the battery.  I bought a new replacement RS 1500 and plugged the same external pack in, which worked great.  The main unit already has a useless battery in it now.  Seems like every manufacturer just makes trash these days compared to older stuff.  One of these days I need to pull that old one apart and find the bad component to replace…just like I need to find the bad cap in my really old powered sub from college…someday™.

That Someday™ might get upgraded into a Soon™ if you get bored enough in the next couple weeks.

[justpoet]

1 minute ago, Inkertus said:

That Someday™ might get upgraded into a Soon™ if you get bored enough in the next couple weeks.

I've already got a HUGE Soon™ list.

That's just behind logging the back hill and stumping it so I can put in an over engineered patio (about 13ft square) to put 10 large solar panels on top of, facing south.  That should add another 4.2kW to my existing 3.1kW west facing system on the garage.  I installed the garage solar last year (it was supposed to be second), because I couldn't do the clearing work after blowing out my knee playing volleyball last Easter.

 

I've also got a long HoneyDo™ list that comes before Soon™ as well.  LOL

Oh, and I'm the primary care giver…so…I don't really get much more time during this anyway.

[Gorgon]

37 minutes ago, justpoet said:

You can't open the panel up without punching through drywall?  No external punchouts or extra wire runs should be needed.

Sure, it won't fix all the likely doubletaps and other issues, but you should be able to toss in some protection, even if tossed into the existing rats nest of bad wiring.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01AQAKRSS

 

Heck, if you have a SquareD box, one of theirs is nice and tidy inside a circuit breaker case.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B072PTGC5S

It is a commander panel and is full.  I have a two pole 20A from the old electric hot water tank free but that will become the replacement for the two SJ14/3 extension cords strung in the ceiling joists across the basement to feed my rigs and that is likely going to happen this summer when I have to shed load due to heat.

 

Im planning on putting in a Square D panel but have to sit down with my buddy who’s got his Master’s papers and will be pulling the license to figure out the sizing.

 

its a little complicated as it’s a 60A service fed by Aluminum and I want to change the arrangement outside as it goes transformer <-> underground duct <-> duct bank <-> meter base <-> fuse <-> feed that runs up the exterior wall, across the attic, and down through an interior wall <-> panel which is just ugly so i’d Like to re-run the feed and upgrade to a 100A service.

[justpoet]

1 hour ago, Gorgon said:

It is a commander panel and is full.  I have a two pole 20A from the old electric hot water tank free but that will become the replacement for the two SJ14/3 extension cords strung in the ceiling joists across the basement to feed my rigs and that is likely going to happen this summer when I have to shed load due to heat.

 

Im planning on putting in a Square D panel but have to sit down with my buddy who’s got his Master’s papers and will be pulling the license to figure out the sizing.

 

its a little complicated as it’s a 60A service fed by Aluminum and I want to change the arrangement outside as it goes transformer <-> underground duct <-> duct bank <-> meter base <-> fuse <-> feed that runs up the exterior wall, across the attic, and down through an interior wall <-> panel which is just ugly so i’d Like to re-run the feed and upgrade to a 100A service.

Dang!  I can't imagine only having 60A service and running all the hardware you do.  200A is standard for residential here, even in the rural areas.  Old original area farm houses sometimes have 100A.

[Gorgon]

1 hour ago, justpoet said:

Dang!  I can't imagine only having 60A service and running all the hardware you do.  200A is standard for residential here, even in the rural areas.  Old original area farm houses sometimes have 100A.

It’s only 2.5kW out of 14.4kW.  Before I got into all this we actually had really low power consumption. We’ve had energy efficient appliances since the get go and went from CFLs to LED lighting years ago and only run the electric dryer during off-peak.

 

The biggest electrical consumption is the A/C for the 6-8 weeks it’s needed here in the summer and that’s offset by lower Gas bills during that period.

[justpoet]

1 hour ago, Gorgon said:

It’s only 2.5kW out of 14.4kW.  Before I got into all this we actually had really low power consumption. We’ve had energy efficient appliances since the get go and went from CFLs to LED lighting years ago and only run the electric dryer during off-peak.

 

The biggest electrical consumption is the A/C for the 6-8 weeks it’s needed here in the summer and that’s offset by lower Gas bills during that period.

We're fairly low use here too, but having the 48kw pull available is nice comfort with electric appliances and a shop going into the garage, not to mention the computer and stereo equipment.  Hoping after this next solar project to be electric neutral, despite electric stoves and the like.

[cbigfoot]

8 hours ago, justpoet said:

You can't open the panel up without punching through drywall?  No external punchouts or extra wire runs should be needed.

Sure, it won't fix all the likely doubletaps and other issues, but you should be able to toss in some protection, even if tossed into the existing rats nest of bad wiring.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01AQAKRSS

 

Heck, if you have a SquareD box, one of theirs is nice and tidy inside a circuit breaker case.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B072PTGC5S

or Siemens (or in my case ITE which used their design and got bought by siemens)

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0052MG5K0

 

 

I get to claim my 100,000,000 Badge

https://stats.foldingathome.org/donor/49491

https://folding.extremeoverclocking.com/user_summary.php?s=&u=931449

 

(Note i did post on the badge forum)

[Bitter]

10 hours ago, justpoet said:

netgate, owners of pfSense, actually make and sell hardware for it.  Look at the SG1100 for a 3.5w gigE capable box.

$$$ vs free junk I already have and $ from ebay. I just wish that clamav was mulit threaded, it wasn't then.

[Guest]