Question Quirks In A BIOS Setup Not Seen Before. Can They Be A Problem?

[BonzaiDuck]

Sometimes my posts can be TLTR. I'll really try and keep this short. A lot of the background to this can be found in "Memory And Storage" -- a recently active thread started by me about "Intermittent" random shutdowns and crashes in a time-series that might actually have made the problem source harder to diagnose. About 14 crashes, the average time between them was about 14 days. It appeared that the problem was the motherboard -- which had been an open-box purchase last year. Instead of building new with Rocket or Alder Lake and an appropriate motherboard, I just wanted to get the system fixed after a careless episode with a static charge and a vaping-pen charging in a front-panel USB port. To enumerate, there was the original board, the defective open-box replacement, and the RMA replacement that came from ASUS. I am now setting up this third motherboard.

I've been diagnosed with cataracts that require surgery in my left eye, and I've been more and more annoyed at what seemed like the ineffectiveness of my most recent eyeglass prescriptions. I have to visit the eye-surgeon end of this month to proceed with the surgery, eager to retrieve my pre-cataract vision. This, of course, has made it harder to perform a motherboard replacement. But it seems to have been done, and I'm setting up the BIOS.

While all boards may seem to have minor quirks and obstacles in completing a BIOS setup and configuration, I'm familiar with this make and model mobo and its BIOS. ASUS may have given me the latest BIOS revision for my Sabertooth Z170 S, and I notice differences -- some of them positive -- in how the system posts and (thankfully) boots.

I at first worried that I might have to resort to another Z170 board I picked up at EBay in my panic last year to get things back up and running -- an ASUS Z170 WS workstation board. Like the starter cartridges the characters in the "Flight of the Phoenix" used to start their makeshift airplane and get out of the desert, the workstation board is my last resource. I don't think I'll need it.

However. When I brought my box back into the house after the board replacement so that I could fire it up and test it, it would stop at boot-time with a message suggesting "Hit F1 and enter BIOS -- No CPU fan or minimum fan speed set too low". Not the exact wording, but that was basically what it said.

First, I discovered, because of my eye-sight, that I had connected the two CPU fan connections (one to a PWM bus) to "CPU_OPT" and "Water Pump". So I corrected that.

But it would throw the same error again. So I began to look at "Q-Fan Configuration", finally setting the minimum fan speed to "Ignore". Then, everything was fine. The BIOS didn't revert to its default settings, it kept my changes. I could shut down the system and boot up with no problem whatsoever.

But I had never seen this before. I'd usually set the fan-speed minimums to the largest value of 600 RPM.

Any ideas about what was going on with that? I've never encountered it before. But they wouldn't have put an "Ignore" option in those BIOS items unless it was a viable choice, and setting them up with "Ignore" still allows me to set fan curves in BIOS. System seems to boot up and run fine now.

It could take two weeks or longer to verify that I did indeed diagnose the correct part, but it is not likely anything else. I know that the cold startups and restarts occur in a way that gives me confidence over the original board used to build the system. It seems like this could be a sweet-running system, and I can move toward building a Z690 system later in the year -- after my eye-surgery.

 

[igor_kavinski]

That is SHORT???

 

[igor_kavinski]

It seems like this could be a sweet-running system, and I can move toward building a Z690 system later in the year -- after my eye-surgery.

Just go with Z790 and Raptor Lake. Should be out by November.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Just go with Z790 and Raptor Lake. Should be out by November.

I'll look into that, but I am constantly reminded of my own mortality and age as I provide eldercare for my 97-year-old Moms. The next box could be the last that I build. Eventually, I could punch my ticket when it's time or check into some sort of assisted care. Now -- this could happen in a matter of so many years, or in a couple decades -- I don't know. Nobody can tell you that they know unless they've been diagnosed to be terminal or unable to remember their personal details.

I also said in other posts that I incline toward benefiting from the bad experiences of others with new product releases. It would not likely be Intel, but even my preferred motherboard maker has products that need "BIOS maturity". I tend to follow the more cautious path. So -- maybe Raptor Lake -- maybe Alder Lake -- not sure yet.

When I was still younger and fulla beans, I was more eager for the latest and greatest.

That is SHORT???

Yeah -- I hear ya . . . I apologize again. I sometimes suspect that my fingers are faster than my mouth, and my brain barely keeps up with them. This is not a boast. It's just a condition that I live with, and which others suffer through . . .

The other suspected cause of this is caffeine. My health insurer says I should drink less because it affects blood pressure. Since the time I taught Asian grad students in 3-hour Sunday-morning classes, I've been of the opinion that it is a senior brain vitamin. I'd fix about eight shots of espresso and consume it before I got into the classroom.

Well, not so much. I just fell asleep at my keyboard with my fingers on the keys, and this post filled up with all sorts of nonsensical character strings until I woke up . . . .

But back to topic, I'm still a bit mystified as to the problem I described for actually setting a lowest fan speed, versus setting the item to "Ignore". Never seen that before, and not on this Sabertooth Z170 S and the two units before the current one (and hopefully the last).

 

[igor_kavinski]

Eventually, I could punch my ticket when it's time or check into some sort of assisted care. Now -- this could happen in a matter of so many years, or in a couple decades -- I don't know.

If you are serious about beating the odds, do the following:

1) Brisk walk at least 30 minutes, preferably early morning when you can feel the morning breeze on your face.

2) Eat less meat / less fried food / less supermarket food laden with preservatives and sodium.

3) Try to limit eating to just 6 hours a day. Have a good lunch at 12 PM and have your dinner at 6 PM. Rest of the time, don't eat anything. You may drink water / black coffee or tea, both without sugar and without cream.

4) Eat at least a pound of dark chocolate per week, plus moderate amount of red wine or port wine.

5) Learn something new, especially something hard that you think you cannot do but do it anyway. Force your brain to work hard. Prevents early dementia and other memory issues.

6) Avocado fasting. May help to regenerate cells in your body. Blend avocado with water without any other additive (no sugar!). Drink as often as you want for three or four days. Don't eat anything else (sugarless black tea/coffee allowed). After the fast, you may eat normally for 15 days. You can repeat the fast if you feel ready. Do this cycle regularly.

 

[igor_kavinski]

I tend to follow the more cautious path. So -- maybe Raptor Lake -- maybe Alder Lake -- not sure yet.

Raptor Lake is bound to have Alder Lake's kinks worked out so that would be the cautious choice in my opinion.

 

[igor_kavinski]

But back to topic, I'm still a bit mystified as to the problem I described for actually setting a lowest fan speed, versus setting the item to "Ignore". Never seen that before, and not on this Sabertooth Z170 S and the two units before the current one (and hopefully the last).

Maybe ASUS hasn't figured out how to make their Q-fan compatible with every fan out there so they provided the ignore option to get less people shouting at their support team.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Maybe ASUS hasn't figured out how to make their Q-fan compatible with every fan out there so they provided the ignore option to get less people shouting at their support team.

Sure, but this is the same model motherboard I bought in 2016. I may have upgraded the original board to the latest BIOS -- maybe not. But for a board of this age, they would've stopped creating BIOS updates.

The defective "open-box" board installed a year ago after my vape-pen-static-charge accident seemed to have the same BIOS options as my original board (which I may have upgraded, but I didn't keep a log-book). That board behaved the same as the original. the same, that is, except for the random shutdowns and resets I observed occurring on average every two weeks. I've posted more than one prolix thread about this in the PSU and Memory forums. Now I'm testing the last, good board in my parts locker -- identical to the first two, sent by ASUS to replace the first of them.

See, I've struggled with this box all year because of random shutdowns and resets with the open-box board, and my thoughts are on a whole lot of other things. That's why I'm not taking the time to build a new Rocket or Alder Lake system now. I just have to get this box back to its status that held until my vape-pen accident.

So I'm an enthusiast who has stepped away from his enthusiasm since I built the system. that was the year -- 2017 -- when my Moms had her accident and I began to have a whole s***pile of concerns and responsibilities that took my time away from "being an Enthusiast". When you build a system as good as this one had been and under such circumstances, your memory gets stale, you don't keep up or remember what you had done five years earlier with BIOS settings etc. etc. You don't have to fiddle around with BIOS settings in a perfectly stable system, and if your attention is turned elsewhere for five years and you use the system for practical day-to-day things, there's a paradox that all your enthusiast skills get stale.

The system is essential for practical things I do to manage the household, finances, communication, appointment scheduling -- everything in the changed status of my life since I became Moms' caretaker.

Now I'm thinking slowly and deliberately. This board has been sitting in a cardboard box for an entire year. All of these symptoms would indicate to me that I need to replace the CMOS battery, no? I should start by going into BIOS and resetting the real-time clock to the current time. Windows says 1:10PM, but it's 3:31PM. Then I should turn it off, unplug it, and see what happens. In fact, I think I'll go out to the garage refrigerator and retrieve an unused Lithium 2032 wafer battery so I can just stick it in there and see what happens.

In soliciting comments, does this seem correct to any readers here? I think that the CMOS battery is the problem.

What do you say? I guess I'm going to find out. I'm old. I get tired of pulling the case apart, even for these simple little fixes. And my eyes are shot -- I'm going to have cataract surgery done this summer -- and the sooner the better. This has been a bad week, struggling to do the board replacement as I continue filling pill bottles, changing diapers, feeding and taking care of my Moms. Tomorrow is Mother's Day, and I got her a whole pound of chocolate walnut fudge and a half pound of dark chocolate mints -- like those Yorks. I want this hassle with my Sky/Kaby Lake system to be over. I think I'm almost there . . .

 

[igor_kavinski]

I got her a whole pound of chocolate walnut fudge and a half pound of dark chocolate mints

Bless your kind soul. That's so considerate of you.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Bless your kind soul. That's so considerate of you.

I have come to a profound conclusion that I owe my Moms everything. This eldercare duty has really taken a toll on me, and I'm beginning to prepare for the day when I don't change diapers, do frequent laundry and all the other tasks. People say that caring for someone with dementia or Alzheimers can be a profoundly spiritual experience, and I have to agree. I might raise my voice or shout at Moms when she's making unreasonable demands or refuses to eat all of a dinner that I worked hard to prepare, but I'm determined that she be otherwise happy during her final sunset years. Moms goes through bananas like a gorilla on a food binge, but there's one thing she likes more: chocolate. And who doesn't like chocolate fudge? Or York peppermint patties? These patties are dark chocolate mint patties from See's Candies. Price of fudge is shooting up because of the economy, but if I didn't already say, I bought Moms a whole pound in one, big fat slab.

ABOUT THE MOTHERBOARD THROWING "Hit F1 -- failed to detect CPU fan . . . " etc.

This has been resolved. My cousin, a career car mechanic now retired, had e-mailed me about his frustration over taking cell-phone pictures of assemblies so he would know how to put them back together. This is the same sort of thing.

There are three PWM fan headers above the processor on the motherboard -- in this order: "CPU_FAN", "CPU_OPT_FAN", and "Water Pump" -- left to right. After inspecting the connections, I realized that the connector for a Swiftech PWM fan bus had formerly been connected to CPU_FAN, the rear exhaust fan connected to "OPT". I had them switched around. Why it is that a simple Noctua IPPC exhaust fan throws this error, I cannot say. All I know is that I reversed them so they had the orientation of my original assembly and computer build.

Suddenly, this system halt and error message no longer appears at boot-time.

Of course, the CMOS CR2032 battery also needed replacement. After I put the new one in, even with the F1-enter-BIOS Setup halt message, the motherboard no longer reverted back to its "optimized" ASUS settings, but kept the XMP, VCCIO and other changes I had made. So there were really two problems that are now fixed.

So as far as I'm concerned, this motherboard is perfectly installed and operating properly. Other than playing with overclock settings when I have time, I am "back in bidnis".

I think I"ll go to the refrigerator and finish the last chunk of a "Bhanng! Cherries & Cream Cannabis Chocolate Bar. Thus begins my part of a celebration for Mother's Day, and a celebration for successfully restoring my beloved (old) 2017 Sky (now Kaby) Lake computer.

So like the character Ray Lucca in the 1980s crime drama "Crime Story" says to the FBI men -- "I'm back, I'm bad -- I'm on top! . . . ."

[What a relief!]

 

[Shmee]

Kinda an unusual odyssey of issues to be caused by having fans attached to the wrong headers. The fix, now that it is finally found, seems pretty simple. Weird stuff. Anyway, enjoy the OCing of the 6700k which lies ahead.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Kinda an unusual odyssey of issues to be caused by having fans attached to the wrong headers. The fix, now that it is finally found, seems pretty simple. Weird stuff. Anyway, enjoy the OCing of the 6700k which lies ahead.

I'd replaced the i7-6700K with an i7-7700K. "Curiosity kills the enthusiast cat -- can you dig it?" Both of them went through Silicon Lottery's de-lid/re-lid process. The i7-6700K is mounted on an ASUS Z170 WS workstation board, which has a zillion PCIE slots and ample PCIE lanes provided above what is otherwise featured on other Z170 boards. I'd purchased a dual NVME PCIE card which does its own bifurcation, taking advantage of PCIE x8 bandwidth. And there are a couple SK Hynix "Gold" 1TB NVME drives already fitted to the board. I'm either going to turn at least one of those into a plug-in USB3 device, or I'm going to build another box with the WS board and use both.

HERE'S A QUESTION: I looked at all the Z690 ASUS boards, and they at most feature the traditional three PCIE x16 slots (the bottom one probably only good for x4 or x8). Why don't they have a workstation board similar to the Z170 WS? I don't NEED a workstation board, but the Z170 WS had a good reputation and I snatched it up during my vaping-pen-accident panic. Of course, this also means that if something goes wrong with the RMA Sabertooth Z170 S replacement, I've got an extra "cartridge" left to fire up my "Flight of the Phoenix". [If you don't know the movie plot, download the old version with Jimmy Stewart and Ernest Borgnine. The Dennis Quaid and Giovanni Ribisi version features the same kind of dilemma, I think. the remake is almost equal to . . . ]

By the way, folks. You can "DISS" me for fiddling with Gen 6 and 7. But you don't need to advise me of the Z790 forthcoming. That's too early in my strategy. A Z690 would be fine with Alder Lake, if I even get around to it . . .

ANOTHER OBSERVATION: You would want a feature-rich motherboard if you incline to ASUS, even if you don't have the time or won't go to the trouble to overclock. There's a multi-core enhancement over and above spec Intel Turbo, and of course the "auto overclocking" which will probably give the CPU more voltage than needed.

Also, and again -- I agree that the fan-header and fan-recognition feature seems loopy. The fix was what I'd originally configured, and I don't remember experiencing this quirk with the original Sabertooth board. How would you expect a Swiftech PWM fan bus to work properly over the simple PWM connect of one Noctua iPPC 3000 fan? The Swiftech connection only has PWM and tach wires -- powered as it is off the PSU SATA. Truth is, I could add the IPPC to that bus with plenty free to spare (8 fan ports). Then I would only be able to monitor the speed for one of either two models of fan, but not both. All the fans connected to the bus are currently the same model AKASA VIPER 140mm. Three of them. I think I could run the tach wire to the CPU_OPT_FAN port, and the PWM wire to the bus with the other two wires (power and ground, I think). Then I could have the best of both worlds. Less power draw for fans on the motherboard.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Why don't they have a workstation board similar to the Z170 WS?

Supermicro X13SAE Workstation (Intel W680) Motherboard Review

We get our hands-on the Supermicro X13SAE, our first Intel W680-based workstation motherboard. Join us as we check it out.

www.tweaktown.com

That's the only workstation mobo review available for Alder Lake so far (at least that I could find). ASUS's WS mobo may come in a few month's time. Intel and maybe even AMD have gotten into the habit of announcing/launching stuff way too early before product availability it seems.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Supermicro X13SAE Workstation (Intel W680) Motherboard Review

We get our hands-on the Supermicro X13SAE, our first Intel W680-based workstation motherboard. Join us as we check it out.

www.tweaktown.com

That's the only workstation mobo review available for Alder Lake so far (at least that I could find). ASUS's WS mobo may come in a few month's time. Intel and maybe even AMD have gotten into the habit of announcing/launching stuff way too early before product availability it seems.

Other than the three PCIE-x16-length slots on the SuperMicro, what are the additional PCIE ports? X2? X4?

I have four Hitachi 3TB drives in my server (Z77) and a spare -- that makes five. I'm thinking I could find a license and install for Win Server 2016, and replace my Z77, IB i7-3770 and RAM. But it would almost seem that the WS board, RAM and CPU would be wasted just to rebuild my server. Gotta think about it . . .

I really have to think about breaking free of my "home server" addiction, but it's a useful item, even for a single user with a couple other working PCs.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Other than the three PCIE-x16-length slots on the SuperMicro, what are the additional PCIE ports? X2? X4?

X13SAE | Motherboards | Products | Supermicro

www.supermicro.com

2 PCI-E 5.0 x16 slots (16/NA or 8/8)

2 PCI-E 3.0 x4

1 - 5V PCI 32bit

So two x8, two x4 and one useless PCI slot, unless you have some good use for that.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

X13SAE | Motherboards | Products | Supermicro

www.supermicro.com

2 PCI-E 5.0 x16 slots (16/NA or 8/8)

2 PCI-E 3.0 x4

1 - 5V PCI 32bit

So two x8, two x4 and one useless PCI slot, unless you have some good use for that.

For the PCI -- maybe a Creative Labs SoundBlaster Audio card? I don't even know if I still have it.

I'm starting to clear out my parts lockers of cyber-junk that I'll never be able to use, filling up the bed of my departed brother's truck for the eventual run across town to the county e-waste recycling facility.

This ASUS replacement Sabertooth Z170 S board I got from them under warranty last year seems to be really good. The anomaly with the fan port could actually be the fan itself -- I can't say. But if it behaves properly with the Swiftech PWM fan bus, that's good enough.

The Swiftech unit . . . lemme see if I can find it . . . yeah . . . Swiftech 8-way PWM splitter

You can see there are only two wires ending in a standard 4-pin PWM plug for the motherboard connection. They're for the PWM wire and the Tach wire. If the motherboard also senses a voltage draw for whatever reason it needs, maybe that could cause it some confusion -- my naive speculation here. The fan whose connection was generating the F1 error halt condition was a Noctua PWM iPPC 3000, and I incline to say those are top-end fans. Once the system is up, all the monitor software reports its RPM at the full range for which it's capable.

I could start collecting wagers now as to whether the random shutdown problem of my first Z170 S motherboard swap-out with the open-box unit has been resolved. (There's still the CPU, GFX, NVME PCIE cards to consider -- but -- no . . . ) Yes -- I feel confident enough that I would make wagers now on what happens over the next three weeks.

 

[igor_kavinski]

I'm starting to clear out my parts lockers of cyber-junk that I'll never be able to use, filling up the bed of my departed brother's truck for the eventual run across town to the county e-waste recycling facility.

If there is some vintage hardware, you could make a little profit on eBay. Better someone is able to use it rather than it being turned to waste.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

If there is some vintage hardware, you could make a little profit on eBay. Better someone is able to use it rather than it being turned to waste.

I perfectly understand that, but I'm talking about low-end graphics cards, USB 2.0 PCI cards, some old fans, motherboards and processors that nobody in their right mind would want. Some DDR2 RAM sticks! For instance, I was going through the Rubbermaid parts lockers today, to assure that I had the proper ThermalRight duct for an LG Macho cooler. Those things were about $6 each when I bought them, and I'd picked up a pair that were molded to fit a 140mm exhaust fan, but I use exclusively cases with the usual 120mm exhaust fan hole. They take up space in the Rubbermaid tubs. Putting them up for sale at EBay is too much trouble for what I'd get for them. Turns out that I'd already installed the proper duct on the workstation Z170 assembly. Didn't need to go through the Rubbermaid tubs to find it.

Then, there's all the USB cables, harvested wiring from old PCs, old PSU cables, KVM switches that only feature VGA, 3.5" IDE floppies and IDE ODDs, low-capacity HDDs, rolls of coax-cable, pre-gigabit or 250 mb/s 5-port switches -- stuff like that. Who wants to buy an old switch like that, when you can get a 5-port gigabit switch at Amazon for $18? And pay shipping? For a used one?

I belong on an episode of "Hoarders".

 

[igor_kavinski]

I perfectly understand that, but I'm talking about low-end graphics cards, USB 2.0 PCI cards, some old fans, motherboards and processors that nobody in their right mind would want. Some DDR2 RAM sticks!

Low end GPUs, mobos, processors and DDR2, someone may find a use for them. Maybe consider donating them?

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Low end GPUs, mobos, processors and DDR2, someone may find a use for them. Maybe consider donating them?

I can agree to what you say, but you'd need to look at the state of our home right now to understand my view about this. My brother, who lived with me and our Moms, died in January. For five years after his diagnosis, he couldn't stand on his feet for more than a half hour. Like Moms and I, he had his own hoarding behavior. His room was crowded. Moms could no longer sleep in her room upstairs; she wasn't able to get up and down the stairs after 2017. She also had her own specific hoarding behavior. I slept downstairs with my book collection and my computers, and I have a specific hoarding behavior. Since I build computers, I acquired lots of parts.

The long and the short of it is -- the upstairs rooms look like a homeless encampment or a FEMA disaster zone. Downstairs, my room and work area looks like the depiction of Burt Munro's little New Zealand one-room cinder-block house in "The World's Fastest Indian", littered with motorcycle parts and tools. My parts aren't motorcycle parts, but you can see the parallel. The three cleanest rooms in the house are Moms' room -- formerly the den -- the kitchen, and the downstairs bathroom. Oh. I forgot the inner patio and my vegetable garden. The patio is fairly clean -- an example of order. I could tell you about the neglect of my Eureka lemon tree and how it has been restored, but I think you'd get the picture at this point.

My priority is to find things I don't need and get rid of them, or stow them if I "think" I might need them so they're out of sight but accessible. Given my schedule with Moms' care, I haven't much time to do more than either go to the Good Will, or make a monthly run to the county e-recyclers.

Anyway, the problem with old computer parts, despite the mere possibility that somebody, somewhere, might want or need them, is that this possibility diminishes in proportion to the parts' obsolescence. I could take time to offer them up at EBay, but I have much bigger fish to fry, as they say.

This year-long experience with my 2017 Skylake build has ended with success in its restoration, or I'm confident about that. It took a chunk out of my effectiveness in dealing with Moms' care and other things here, but it seems that the ordeal is over now. It often seems that we have ambitions to make progress going forward, but some unlucky choice or situation means that we take two steps back before going forward one step again.

For the time being, I think I'm now clear of that experience. But -- you just never know. Also, as they say, "Shit happens."

Anyway, Igor, I've enjoyed our exchange here. I seem to be baring my soul these days to several people. I feel overwhelmed. I seem to stay calm through it. I just hope that I can have my eye-surgery this summer and continue to provide care for Moms. But since I've been bound to this duty for five years, I suspect it has taken its toll on my health, and I'm almost at the end of my string. It won't be long before Moms will have to go somewhere for 24/7 care. I'm just not eager to see that happen.

 

[Shmee]

I perfectly understand that, but I'm talking about low-end graphics cards, USB 2.0 PCI cards, some old fans, motherboards and processors that nobody in their right mind would want. Some DDR2 RAM sticks! For instance, I was going through the Rubbermaid parts lockers today, to assure that I had the proper ThermalRight duct for an LG Macho cooler. Those things were about $6 each when I bought them, and I'd picked up a pair that were molded to fit a 140mm exhaust fan, but I use exclusively cases with the usual 120mm exhaust fan hole. They take up space in the Rubbermaid tubs. Putting them up for sale at EBay is too much trouble for what I'd get for them. Turns out that I'd already installed the proper duct on the workstation Z170 assembly. Didn't need to go through the Rubbermaid tubs to find it.

Then, there's all the USB cables, harvested wiring from old PCs, old PSU cables, KVM switches that only feature VGA, 3.5" IDE floppies and IDE ODDs, low-capacity HDDs, rolls of coax-cable, pre-gigabit or 250 mb/s 5-port switches -- stuff like that. Who wants to buy an old switch like that, when you can get a 5-port gigabit switch at Amazon for $18? And pay shipping? For a used one?

I belong on an episode of "Hoarders".

If it is good DDR2, like higher speeds / capacity, it might still be worth something on ebay or something to someone who wants to upgrade / revive an old hobby system. I seem to remember that DDR2 was around for quite a while, and it ranged often from 256 MB DIMMs @ 533MHz, to 2GB DIMMs @ 1100MHz and more. So there was a wide variety of it, including voltage as well, similar to DDR3.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

If it is good DDR2, like higher speeds / capacity, it might still be worth something on ebay or something to someone who wants to upgrade / revive an old hobby system. I seem to remember that DDR2 was around for quite a while, and it ranged often from 256 MB DIMMs @ 533MHz, to 2GB DIMMs @ 1100MHz and more. So there was a wide variety of it, including voltage as well, similar to DDR3.

Well, Wey-ull, Pil-grum! I can consider that. For one thing, the RAM sticks don't take up a lot of space, either in the parts-locker or in a shipping box or envelope.

Something just dawned on my before I came back to this thread a half hour ago.

I'm rebuilding our television access with Roku streaming devices. There are things I don't like about how Roku presents your menu of viewing choices -- too busy with tiles filling the screen. I'd just prefer a list. However --

I can get 50 digital OTA TV stations from LA, and another 50 from San Diego. I wish I hadn't discarded my Radio Shack OTA digital antenna, but -- water under the bridge. I can buy another one -- just not from Radio Shack. There is a network appliance or device that receives the digital OTA antenna signal through coax, feeds it to the network, and is recognized by Roku.

I need to retrieve some coax cable from the bag fulla-e-shit sitting on the other patio. I'm glad I remembered that. Even if the cable is cheap, why pay for another cable after throwing one just as good away? So tomorrow, I'll sort through the discard bag once more.

I freed up some space in my Rubbermaid parts lockers, or just about enough room for anything else I retrieve that's laying around the house. Mostly, the discards include AC power cables for a couple dozen computers long ago dead, piles of IDE cables or floppy cables, some old PCI 5-port USB cards -- stuff like that. Oh -- and the spare Molex and SATA cables from PSUs retired long ago. I made sure that I saved an unused and rather long digital audio cable! Then there are old fans -- 92mm, 120mm etc. that were pulled out of computer cases before building -- fans I doubt I'll ever find use for. Oh! Here's one for you. I just retired a 15-year-old Centrino C2D Gateway laptop -- going to recyclers. I'd actually purchased the LCD screen replacement for it in 2014 -- for about $50. No! I'm not going to put it up for sale at EBay. I could imagine some use for it in an exotic project of some kind, but I don't have time for exotic projects now.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I belong on an episode of "Hoarders".

You and me both, Bonzai, you and me both.

I'm slowly getting rid of my collection of blank DVR-R disc spindles.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

You and me both, Bonzai, you and me both.

I'm slowly getting rid of my collection of blank DVR-R disc spindles.

I think my departed brother left me a PS3, PS4 and a mountain of games. If they go to Good Will, smeobody else will make money off them.. If I make money from them, I'll have to offer them up at EBay and here at "Sale and Trade".

I find it difficult to let go of old technology that nevertheless works and I've grown accustomed to using. I still put optical drives in my boxes, although they are laptop slimlines installed in the upper half of an ICYDOCK ODD+2x2.5" 5.25" drive bay. And nothing wrong with laptop ODDs. They seem to work just as well. Only thing is, they may be getting harder to find, as many laptops or all laptops today are sold without any.