Amateur IT and DIY activities

My original intention was to build a NAS device from an old Novatech PC (the machine is described here ). Unfortunately, I could not get the machine to post and it seemed likely the motherboard was faulty. Diagnosing and repairing faulty motherboards is currently beyond my capabilities. On top of that, I don't have a proper workspace set up. Prevarication I decided to build a secondary Linux box. Partly with existing parts, partly with second user ones. I got most of the parts some time ago but put off building it for various reasons. It wasn't the only build delayed. Initially I didn't have much of an idea of what I was going to do with it other than it wasn't going to be a NAS box - the case has very few drive bays. After deliberation and various technical mishaps, it will eventually live in my garage/workshop for playing media and web browsing. I suspect I'll be watching a lot of repair videos. Hardware I already had a Athlon II X3 425 and 16 GB of DDR3 RAM. I bo...

My home network is slow. There are both Wifi and powerline networks. Because of various projects, had to spend some time thing about how to improve it. The business of not having much in the way of a budget means an incremental approach. Needs Only three of my machines need a very fast connection between them, although I could get away with just two having the fast connection. The main driver of this wanting to considate fast SSD storage onto one machine and an eye on having a decently performing NAS.  Various other desktops and laptops, fast networking is less of an issue. Most of the time, can get by with relatively slow powerline networking or wifi but there are times when it's irritating. Although my house isn't huge, I do have a  garage and shed that have mains power and lighting. The shed will be home office type set up, garage more of a workshop but they could be thought of a "home lab". They need networking. Also, decent wifi in the garden would be good, espec...

I plan to build a FreeNAS box in the near future. I have an old Dell Poweredge server I can repurpose for this but for a number of reasons I can't do this yet. One reason is that I intend to use 2.5" hard drives harvested from other machines but they currently have data on them. I have a bunch of other drives of varying sizes doing nothing. I intend to build another NAS box with desktop bits and bobs and transfer the contents of the 2.5" to that secondary box. It's only an interim solution. Bear in mind, these projects are very low budget. They are also about learning.  Low end machines I've two old desktops that I don't currently use for anything. They aren't the most modern machines. Arguably the better of the two is a Novatech machine with 4GB of RAM and an Athlon II X3 425 (actually a quad core chip with one core disabled).  The micro ATX case has two 5.25" drive bays (one occupied by a SATA optical drive) and two 3.5" drive bays. The PSU is ...

I've always been one for thinking about small IT and related DIY projects. Don't always do them and those I do don't always happen as quickly as I would like and some don't turn out the way I want either. Even so, researching and planning for abortive projects does provide some satisfaction and can result in learning. Some things have got out of hand. Whilst I do have increased enthusiasm for undertaking small projects, not kept either my garage or powered shed particularly tidy and in the latter case, maintained. There is no room to undertake projects. I'm effectively prohibited from undertaking most of my projects in the house. Sure, software projects I can do anywhere but, at the moment, can only use the Windows dev (among other things) box intermittently. And that box needs some attention. Getting the garage and shed themselves back into order are projects in themselves but they are necessary to enable to enable other projects. Garage is the priority as it is th...