Building a PowerNAS G4 MDD

[anodos]

Don't worry, giant squids are very good electrical engineers. Cthulhu will gladly help you along and teach you the basics of Capacitors and Inductors.

Oddly enough that sounds more enticing / enjoyable than learning it in power school like some people here.

 

[joeschmuck]

Don't worry, giant squids are very good electrical engineers. Cthulhu will gladly help you along and teach you the basics of Capacitors and Inductors.

The funny thing and cyberjock can relate, I am a squid, a nuclear one at that. And I did have to look up that reference to Cthulhu to make the connection.

And my first thought to giant squids and electricity was to think about Jules Verne.

 

[DaNilePharaoh]

Anything I say here would be pure speculation.
As for the timer module you listed, I didn't see any specs on the delay time and you really don't want a 10 second minimum delay.
To simplify things for you try this approach...
Hook up +5VDC to POK and see if the computer boots fine under load. Maybe all will be fine.

This was my plan A :) will try the delay circuit in case i couldn't boot the system properly as a plan B.

2200 ohm 1/4watt (or 1/2 watt) resistor and a 470uF 10V (or higher voltage) capacitor.
If you have to make changes in the parts, a larger capacitor is better than a higher resistor value.

will take a look at the above parts in a local store :) thaaaanx for everything, its good to have an Electrical Engineer at your back when you mess around with an old PSU

 

[DaNilePharaoh]

Cool project. Not sure if you've looked at sfx or tfx or even flex power supplies... but they make awesome small gear that will likely fit with no additional mods, in addition to running quiet and cool. I might hack it up as well. But it would be a coin flip if I spotted something that would fit on the shelf and wasn't just playing.

Thanx :) actually as you said in the beginning i was planing to get a SFX / Micro, Flex ATX / Mini ITX or even a normal ATX PSU and try to fit it inside the housing of the original PSU, but when i made the paper clip test and it worked, i decided not too as i needed to keep the build as original as i could.

Fun to watch @joeschmuck in his native habitat.

Obvious that this is where he exceeds, thumbs up for the good old man

 

[DaNilePharaoh]

Don't worry, giant squids are very good electrical engineers. Cthulhu will gladly help you along and teach you the basics of Capacitors and Inductors.

The only deep magic here is hidden inside that PSU.

Agree with you 100%

 

[DaNilePharaoh]

PowerShopping G4:

Today, I wrote a shopping list, actually i combined 3 or more that i wrote before in one very loooooooooooong shopping list.

CPU
Used the phone and the internet trying to locate a seller for the CPU, but i failed to find the AMD FX-4300 or any of the FX Family, in the near by places that i know, because its kinda outdated.

So, I drove like 50km, in 110 minutes :) !! yes its the Egyptian @#$% hour, also known as rush hour.

Finally I reached my destination, a famous huge multi-floor tech & pc mall, for new and used gear, located down town, near the world famous Egyptian Museum & Tahrir Square.

Like the Egyptian Museum, you can find in this mall, Hardware parts dated 6000 bc :) but you simply have to excavate and dig it out, because mostly the sellers don’t know whats in store, specially for used parts.

Sadly, the FX-4300 was out of stock!!! and most of the FX family, took my phone visited the @joeschmuck list of AMD FX Microprocessors and chose the FX-6300 as a better alternative,

Frequency: 3.5/4.1GHZ (Base/Overdrive)
Cores: 6
Cache: 6/8MB (L2/L3)
Power Wattage: 95W

finally I found a new piece in a very small shop, the seller told me its the “Black Edition, Mr.” trying to convince me to make a purchase but instead he confused me and made me hesitate! which one do i need the black edition or the whatever else edition!? so I LEFT :)

Went to a near by cafe, made an online search and it turned out to be that AMD is just messing with me :) the black edition is the only edition AMD made of the FX-6300, no red or white or whatsoever editions looool , I went back to the shop and bought it, payed $120 happily.



PSU Cables
Found the 24 Pin extension cable easily, also got myself a nice set of 6 sata cables with molex/Sata power cables, HDD activity, Power On LED & Power switch cables.

Couldn’t find the 4 Pin 12v/Molex converter, so i went back to the used section and bought a DEAD PSU!!
payed $1.5 for it and now i regret buying the $4 PSU 24 Pin cable extension :) also i feel that the $1.5 i spent on this DEAD PSU is the best $1.5 i spent in my whole life as i got a free working 80mm fan and the 4 pin 12v cable i wanted.



Accessories
Also i bought some accessories including Tools, PSU tester, Cleaning brush (dunno why), cables, cables, cables and some extra cables.



TO BE CONTINUED....

 

[joeschmuck]

I think you are on your way towards the completion of a very nice project.

I was glad to see you bought a PSU tester. I would have advised to have that and an O'scope but the O'scope is a bit pricy, plus if you don't know how to use one some of them can be a real pain to work with. Very smart buy getting that old PS. Save the extension just in case you actually need to someday. Not sure how well you solder but do it right and make proper connections. If you can find it, heat shrink tubing to go around the solder joints is much better than electrical tape.

The FX6300 is fine, too bad you couldn't find a 4300 and saved yourself a few bucks. The extra cores will not give you any benefit. Do not overclock the CPU. The Black edition means it's unlocked and allows you to overclock it easier. Tey are actually very popular, even mine is a black edition but I will not overclock it, there is no need in a FreeNAS application.

 

[DaNilePharaoh]

I think you are on your way towards the completion of a very nice project.

Thanx, i still have a lot of work to do :)

I was glad to see you bought a PSU tester. I would have advised to have that and an O'scope but the O'scope is a bit pricy, plus if you don't know how to use one some of them can be a real pain to work with. Very smart buy getting that old PS. Save the extension just in case you actually need to someday. Not sure how well you solder but do it right and make proper connections. If you can find it, heat shrink tubing to go around the solder joints is much better than electrical tape.

I knew it would come very handy and it did. please check the next post :)

 

[DaNilePharaoh]

PSU Surgery
Now that I have most of the cables i need to convert the MDD PSU to an ATX PSU, I started working immediately, as i was so excited about this project.
First i compared both 24 pin sockets and i found that they are exactly the same, i can use the original socket, all i have to do is to relocate the pins and rearrange them as an ATX PSU.
removing the pins (Wiring Harnesses) was a very painful, time consuming operation as those pins have a locking mechanism to prevent them from sliding out, similar to the wall fisher.



by Inserting a sharp tweezers in between the pin (Wiring Harness) and the side of the socket from one side then doing the same from the other side and gently pulling i managed to get the first one out. then repeated this operation until i took most of them out, coz around 3 or 4 stayed in the same location.



Another painful operation was to reopen the locking mechanism of the pins (Wiring Harnesses) to snap back in place securely, I used sewing pin to do so.

PSU Pinout
I had no problem with the (Purple) +5v, (Green) Power On, (orange) +3.3v, (Blue) -12v as they were equal in numbers and (White) +25v which i isolated and ignored.

Problem 1:
I had one extra (Black) Ground pin
and 2x (Yellow) +12v pins
Solution:
Which i used to make the MB 4 Pin +12v socket. (I took the 4 Pin +12v socket from my dead PSU)

Problem 2:
I needed 2x extra (Red) +5v wires that did not exist on the MDD
Solution:
so i took 2 red (Wiring Harness) from the dead PSU hooked them up to a red cable from one of the MDD molex connectors.

Problem 3:
I needed a +5v POK/PG Grey wire which did not exist on the MDD
Solution:
So i took 1 red (Wiring Harness) from the dead PSU hooked it up to the same molex red cable.



I used a sheet of paper (inserted it in the center), and the extension cable i bought as a color guide and rewired the 24 pin cable again.



The Moment of truth
I brought my cheap China made ATX PSU tester, read the manual.
In brief a single beep would mean success and a long continuous beep will mean failure.
I connected the PSU to the power supply tester and powered it on. then i was like “BEEPING” IN MY PANTS :)
I heard the longest ugliest continuous beep ever in my whole life, I fast checked the readings on the tester, everything was OK except that @joeschmuck was right, its not speculations :) .


The blinking number was PG/POK reading which was 0/ms, NO DELAY.
So the POK trick didn't fool the PSU tester...

Will it fool my Motherboard and CPU? that is what I’m about to discover.

TO BE CONTINUED....

 

[joeschmuck]

I'm certain the MB will be fine with the PG/POK connection as is, it's just you take some risk of the initial power fluctuations when the PS is turned on by the power on trigger and it's under load. You might be okay. The worse thing is really a stability issue. Take it one step at a time.

 

[DaNilePharaoh]

I'm certain the MB will be fine with the PG/POK connection as is, it's just you take some risk of the initial power fluctuations when the PS is turned on by the power on trigger and it's under load. You might be okay. The worse thing is really a stability issue. Take it one step at a time.

Yup, one step at a time is the way to go, i'm planning to boot the system first with a PSU (Cooler Master 750w), 2x 4gb gskill Ripjaws X ram, 1tb hd, Sapphire Radeon HD 6870 borrowed and functional from my hackintosh, just to make sure that the motherboard and cpu is functional, do some tests, then i'll try to boot with the MDD power supply.

 

[joeschmuck]

When you test your system it is my personal belief that you should run MemTest86 to pass at a minimum of 3 times, however a few days is not a terrible idea. Also ensure that you enable ECC RAM in the BIOS and I believe there are three or four settings for the speed of how fast the ECC RAM is tested, the default will generally test your entire RAM in a 24 hour period or less. It weighs little on your system resources. The CPU tests should be something like Prime95 or similar stress test, just do not tun it longer than 2 hours. No need to kill your CPU.

So after all that on your Coolmaster PS, then you get to do it again using the PS you expect to put into the chassis. I would ensure you had all the loads you expect to have if possible and then run the tests to ensure everything is stable.

Looking forward to your next report.

 

[cyberjock]

The Intel Burnin test is better than prime95. It's designed by Intel to seriously hurt their designs. Apparently they use it when they make engineering samples to find bugs and such.

 

[joeschmuck]

I've never used that test. Curious how it would work on an AMD CPU. I"ll have to give it a try.

 

[mjws00]

Heh. For some reason those caps triggered <deep sarcasm>. Very witty Mr. Schmuck.

 

[cyberjock]

I've never used that test. Curious how it would work on an AMD CPU. I"ll have to give it a try.

If I remember, the binaries won't run on AMD. If you get the source (which an old version apparently exists) you can hack it, but it doesn't stress AMD CPUs like Intel's because they aren't architecturally the same chip.

 

[DaNilePharaoh]

When you test your system it is my personal belief that you should run MemTest86 to pass at a minimum of 3 times, however a few days is not a terrible idea. Also ensure that you enable ECC RAM in the BIOS and I believe there are three or four settings for the speed of how fast the ECC RAM is tested, the default will generally test your entire RAM in a 24 hour period or less. It weighs little on your system resources. The CPU tests should be something like Prime95 or similar stress test, just do not tun it longer than 2 hours. No need to kill your CPU.

So after all that on your Coolmaster PS, then you get to do it again using the PS you expect to put into the chassis. I would ensure you had all the loads you expect to have if possible and then run the tests to ensure everything is stable.

Looking forward to your next report.

Will do a MemTest86 when i get my ECC sticks, my ripjaws does not support ECC, for the time being i'll be checking the MB and CPU functionality as its new hardware i just wanna make sure they are not defective or something. also i need to try booting with the MDD PSU to decide, will i use it in this system or try finding an alternative, a flex PSU as an example.

 

[DaNilePharaoh]

but it doesn't stress AMD CPUs like Intel's because they aren't architecturally the same chip.

that's why I'm more for prime95

 

[DaNilePharaoh]

Heh. For some reason those caps triggered <deep sarcasm>. Very witty Mr. Schmuck.

didn't get this one :)

 

[cyberjock]

that's why I'm more for prime95

Oh yeah.. you are one of those guys going with AMD.

I do have concerns that AMD users may have problems with 9.3. Two AMD users so far have messaged me asking for help with 9.3 in the last week. I'm hoping this isn't a sign that lots of hardware out there isn't compatible. Even my FreeNAS Mini needed a BIOS update to the latest just to boot FreeNAS. I'm hoping this is an isolated situation, but I'm fearful that this is going to be a real deal-breaker for many people. Been concerned about this for some time and people seem to be hell bent on saving money with hardware that isn't particularly supported. We shall see....