Hardware on disfinder.com 🇺🇸

Even More Storage

Sat, 11 Jan 2025 00:19:29 -0500

The drives I ordered for the new NAS were a bit of a surprise choice.

Terra Nas

Thu, 05 Dec 2024 03:53:19 -0500

Hunger Is No Joke#

As we know, you can never have too much space. To the green Barracuda — once the biggest at 8TB — three red IronWolfs at 12TB each were added, replacing the 4TB WD drives. But all good things come to an end, and inevitably so did the free space on all those disks. For quite a while I had an expansion unit on my wishlist — a box that lets you connect a few extra drives to an existing Synology. And then Black Friday 2024 arrived.

Best Choice Jeep Upgrade

Mon, 22 Apr 2024 19:57:21 -0400

A ride-on toy car for kids.

Wheels/tires#

The minimal upgrade is to replace the plastic wheels with rubber ones. What’s needed: measure the wheel and axle diameters, purchase wheels, and attach the motor drive to the new wheels.

Power 12V#

Instead of the built-in battery, you can connect a 12 or 20-volt battery from power tools. Reports say the motors work fine, but to avoid burning out the electronics (radio/Bluetooth and lights) a step-down converter is required.

Canada Days, the finale.

Sun, 21 Feb 2021 17:00:00 +0000

The “Canada Days” trend was born in my booze blog, and I kept trying to remember what else Canadian from the past month (besides the beer and whisky) I had forgotten — and here it is.

Video on the Go

Tue, 02 Feb 2021 16:00:00 +0000

When you’re riding through beautiful scenery, you want to capture it and share it — but you can’t pull out your phone while driving. So the photo arsenal has finally gained a tool for shooting on the go. Stay tuned for new videos on the YouTube channel!

Shovel!

Tue, 26 Jan 2021 16:00:00 +0000

The absence of snow in these parts had made me a bit complacent — but that won’t do, so a shovel was finally bought and put in the trunk.

another axe

Mon, 18 Jan 2021 16:00:00 +0000

The older axe (who, by the way, is named Ira) has been joined by a smaller one. Still unnamed and without any mods for now, but I think we’ll sort that out come summer.

Branded screwdriver set

Wed, 19 Aug 2020 16:30:00 +0000

And who just received this adorable little Chinese screwdriver set? That would be me

The case is magnetic and holds every bit in place. It’s also a metal-and-plastic combo — a metal sleeve slides over the plastic tray. Finally I have a Torx with a hole! No more having to snap out those miserable pins in screws!

The set is mostly small-to-micro sizes With a few non-standard bits…

A Little Cleanup

Thu, 30 Jul 2020 20:07:00 +0000

This is what the insides of a six-year-old laptop look like

Need more fan!

Mon, 08 Jun 2020 12:00:00 +0000

The joke about forced ventilation has come true — it’s not even peak summer yet, and the equipment shelf is already showing +38ºC.

So a quick Amazon search turned up the smallest (80mm) decent consumer fan I could find — USB-powered, a 3-speed gearbox, and advertised as quiet.

The result: 30ºC on the first gear. Ready for summer!

Looking for a Switch

Sat, 16 May 2020 12:00:00 +0000

Working from home has shown that Wi-Fi can sometimes be unstable — it’s still unclear whether it’s the microwave oven or something else. So I’m going to try connecting the laptop the good old way, with a cable. The one catch is that my router only has 5 Ethernet ports, and all 5 are currently occupied. I decided to tackle the problem systematically — first draw out what’s connected where, then figure out where to plug what, whether to get a PoE switch or a plain one, whether to save money and go with Fast Ethernet or go for Gigabit after all… The price range runs from $10 for the simplest 100 Mbit switch to $60 for a Gigabit one with PoE. While the deliberation is still ongoing — here’s what a simple home network diagram looks like. Of course, there are still a few components missing from it; I’ll keep adding them little by little….

Squeezing the Unsqueezable

Mon, 11 May 2020 12:00:00 +0000

I’m obviously not going to connect just one NAS to the UPS — that would be both unfair and unwise.

Power Supply Must Be Uninterrupted

Sun, 10 May 2020 13:00:00 +0000

Well, look who’s here! My first UPS! Having lived on laptops for over a decade, I never felt the need for one — if the power goes out in the building, the ISP’s equipment will most likely go down too, and if it’s just a blown fuse, the router will reboot in a few minutes, no big deal.

And one ring to rule them all!

Sat, 09 May 2020 13:00:00 +0000

Several little gadgets arrived today — groceries and toilet paper get logistics priority over hardware, so the wait was long. But this thing with 12 outlets + 5 USB ports should significantly reduce the entropy of my little cabinet. Life in the 21st century demands constant charging, and not just physical exercise to keep the belly in check, but electrical charging too.

turn signals

Sun, 18 Jun 2017 11:54:00 +0000

NAS or nettop?

Mon, 24 Oct 2011 21:02:00 +0000

My long-held, if somewhat forgotten, dream of setting up a home NAS was rekindled by a post from Tivasyk.

Work Machine Upgrade

Tue, 07 Jun 2011 12:10:00 +0000

Now instead of this set of sticks

2 GB each, I have this “sweet pair”:

DDR3 1333MHz, 4 GB each.