Old 2009 News

	8-29-2009 20:06 EST
			Tape Drives Removed - I purchased a Seagate ST310005EXA101-RK 1TB USB drive for backups about a month ago. I am slowly phasing out my tape backup solution. The Compaq (Sony) SDX-500C 50/130GB AIT-2 Ultra2 Wide SCSI tape drive in my main workstation and the Quantum DLT2000XT 15/30GB DLTIIIxt SCSI-2 tape drive in my secondary workstation have both been removed. In addition, each Adaptec AHA-29160 Ultra-160 SCSI PCI-X controller in each workstation has been removed. Each setup page has been updated appropriately to reflect these changes.
	8-8-2009 01:54 EST
			New Secondary Workstation - Seems the bad ground I had in May caused more damage than I thought. The result... a new secondary workstation! It includes an AMD Athlon X2 7850 Black Edition 2.8GHz dual-core CPU, 4GB Kingston HyperX DDR2-800 SDRAM (KHX6400D2LL, 4 CAS, 4-4-4-12), an Asus M4A78 Plus motherboard, and two Western Digital 160GB SATA-II drives. There is a new setup page to reflect these upgrades.
			Hauppauge TV Tuner Reused - The remote to the Sabrent SBT-TVFM PCI TV tuner quit working. I have brought the old Hauppauge 697 HD PCI TV tuner out of retirement for now.
	7-6-2009 00:03 EST
			New TV Tuner - I realized recently I had not mentioned changing out the TV tuner in my secondary workstation. The Hauppauge WinTV 697 PCI card had been changed out sometime ago to an ATI basic PCI tuner. That was changed out a couple of months ago to a Sabrent SBT-TVFM PCI TV tuner.
			Hard Drive Swap- You gotta love spontaneous issues. The 36GB Quantum Atlas 10K II drives in my secondary workstation decided to quit responding, causing the system to no longer boot. I have replaced them with two IBM/Hitachi Deskstar 120GXP 60GB ATA-100 drives. The appropriate web page has been updated to reflect this change.
	6-21-2009 12:18 EST
			New Main Workstation - The house developed a bad ground around the beginning of May. I had two bad power supplies and a bad monitor as a result. Then, my main workstation seemed to have a bad motherboard. The result... a new workstation! It includes an AMD Phenom II X4 940 Black Edition 3GHz quad-core CPU, 4GB Kingston HyperX DDR2-800 SDRAM (KHX6400D2LL, 4 CAS, 4-4-4-12), an Asus M4A79 Deluxe motherboard, a PNY GeForce 9800 GTX+ PCIe video card, and two Western Digital 250GB SATA-II drives. There is a new setup page to reflect these upgrades.
	5-18-2009 08:49 EST
			Upgraded RAID - I was attempting to upgrade the RAID controller in my file server to an IBM ServeRAID 6M, but the motherboard would not talk to it correctly. However, I was at least able to get in an upgrade to the capacity to six 73GB drives (from four). The appropriate web page has been updated to reflect this change.
	4-24-2009 22:18 EST
			CyberTekit Back Up - A bad 110V power line brought down the website for about 20 hours. Everything is back to normal.
			New Power Supply - The ePower Zumax ZU-550W power supply in my main server fried, possibly from the power surge as a result of the bad power line. It has been replaced with a BFG BFGR550WGXPSU 550W unit. The appropriate setup page has been updated to reflect this change.
	3-31-2009 18:07 EST
			New Power Supply - The Ultra X-Connect 500W Blue power supply in my main workstation started making a funny noise under heavy CPU load. Not wanting to take chances, I changed it out for an ePower Zumax ZU-550W unit. The appropriate setup page has been updated to reflect this change.
	2-16-2009 22:39 EST
			Updated Links Page - It's been awhile, but I have gone through and updated my links pags. It appears ePox is no longer in business (but the website still exists), as well as Amptron. I also added several graphics card vendors. Snap Solutions was purchased by Overland Storage in July 2008.
	2-1-2009 11:01 EST
			Upgraded Drives - The two Quantum Atlas 10K 18WLS drives in my secondary workstation have been replaced with Quantum Atlas 10K II 36GB drives. The appropriate setup page has been updated to reflect this upgrade.
	1-20-2009 13:49 EST
			End of an Electronics Store Era - As many of you know, Circuit City is going out of business. While I do most of my computer shopping on the Internet, I would occasionally go to their store and pick something up. It is always nice to be able to actually see what you want in person as well. My sympathy goes out to the 34,000 employees who will lose their job.
	1-10-2009 21:12 EST
			New Benchmarks - I have completed some benchmarks using Wintune. I know it's an old program, but I think it still gives some good basics. New ones are posted for my file server, main workstation, secondary workstation, and both of the Dell laptops.