xdaniel

Hey there~

πŸ“œ Hobby programmer, ROM hacker, retro computers & consoles, anime & manga fan, sometimes NSFW?

🌐 πŸ‡©πŸ‡ͺ/native, πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡ΈπŸ‡¬πŸ‡§πŸ‡¦πŸ‡Ί/good, πŸ‡―πŸ‡΅/へた

πŸ”’ @xdn-desync

πŸ“· via Picrew by 🐦kureihii https://picrew.me/image_maker/1272810


🌍 Website
xdaniel.neocities.org/
🐦 Twitter
twitter.com/xdanieldzd
⌨️ GitHub
github.com/xdanieldzd
⛏️ The Cutting Room Floor
tcrf.net/User:Xdaniel

I have a little homeserver-ish system running here, basically just an old Fujitsu Futro S900 thin client with a small SSD for the OS and HDDs over USB 3.0 for data. Histoire here, or Histy for short (yes, that Histy), has been serving me pretty well, but has drawbacks aplenty.


Namely, Histy1 has drawbacks like...

  • idle temperatures that are currently around 60Β°C due to passive cooling
  • expanding storage being difficult as there's only two USB 3.0 ports, which are both already in use
  • while there is one PCIe slot available, it's already in use by the card that provides the two USB 3.0 ports to begin with
  • any extended operation - i.e. copying data over the network - spikes CPU usage and temperatures
  • in short, well, Histy is a thin client! Thin clients weren't meant to be used this way!

So I've started planning/ordering/building a replacement and/or parts for one, whichever combinations of words are applicable. The foundation is set in stone already, as I either have the parts in question, or they're on the way - it'll be a 4th gen Core i3 with 8 GB RAM on a basic-ish MSI Micro-ATX board2 (which is on the way), inside an Antec mini tower (which I have here already) that can hold plenty of 3.5" HDDs.

The storage situation, on the other hand, isn't figured out 100% yet. For the OS, I'll most likely be going with a cheap 120 GB SSD, probably a SanDisk, but the data drives are... well, I'm not made of money, unlike the Mollusk that bought the bird site, and something like a WD Blue 2 TB looks to be around 60-70€ per drive - let alone the Reds meant for NAS use at 85€-ish.

One idea I've had was buying three "used-ish" 500 GB drives to start with - I'm looking at some for 10€ each from a German online store dealing mostly in Lenovo stuff, with them coming out of demo units or somesuch. They would come with a one-year warranty from the store, too. Then, over time, I'd be replacing each of these HDDs with a new 1 or 2 TB drive, copying all the data over from the old one. A thrifty idea, I'd say, tho maybe not the smartest...

... sooo, yeah, that's about where I'm at with this project right now. If you've got any suggestions ex. regarding the storage situation, feel free to comment/reply. Maybe not regarding the CPU/board/RAM/case tho, as I specifically got those for this build already, so that'd be a bit too late ^^"

btw, fun fact: Histy has a little motd script showing specs & temperatures, local weather, stuff like that on login. I've hacked that together back in 2019, when I first setup the system, and it's available as a Gist on GitHub.


  1. AMD G-T40N, 1.0 GHz dual-core; 4 GB RAM; 16 GB SSD; external HDDs are one 1 TB and one 2 TB

  2. Core i3-4150, 3.5 GHz dual-core, 4 threads; MSI H81M-P33, OEM version but flashable w/ retail BIOS; 8 GB Crucial DDR3-1600 RAM, 2x 4 GB


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