macman007
Mcintosh..Made In USA
Temporary detour today. Close inspection revealed 5 Rubycon caps on the MB looking suspicious. The system POST's no problem with the HDD removed, no hiccups, or stutters. However I won't run it like that, even if there is a chance. It would be a false economy, and I'll be always looking over my shoulder worrying. I want this to be a solid no trouble, but no frills build. I ordered caps from Mouser to replace every single Rubycon, 22 in all, with better quality Panasonic caps.
It's very cheap insurance IMO. All the remaining caps on the MB are Nichicon, which are not on the bad cap list. Then again, these Rubycon weren't supposed to be either. It might be 100% coincidental or me being overly cautious. Both 8400's have a build date of late October 2008. The MB's may just have been manufactured earlier. I ordered identical sets for both computers. I can make short work of each with my Hakko desoldering station / solder station, no worries. An hour of work, tops.
While looking everything over, I verified each unit came with Windows XP Pro 64 bit. Since this means as I suspected both are 64 bit machines, running Daphile 64bit should not be any problem at all.
After I ordered the caps, I pulled 2 old DVR cable boxes down as well and opened them up. Each contained a nice clean Seagate 160GB HDD dated from 2012 inside.
QUESTION>. since these drive are free, can I run them in Raid 0 or whatever, along with the SSD? Yes, a new WD Purple 1TB HDD is only 75$ or 80$, but thats 75 or 80$ saved if running them in Raid 0 can be done. 320GB is a lot more storage than just the single 120GB SSD alone, for no extra $$. It saves money, and reuses stuff I have here anyway.
Tell me your thoughts about running both in Raid o if it is a good idea and works. Should I install them individually, or together but separate, and would do I do it. I've never set up HD's in Raid before, but I know it can be done on some machines in some instances, with a speed benefit. All of these drives are SATA, and there are 4 or 5 SATA sockets on the MB. I also have 2 optical drives installed in each tower, a SONY CD RW burner and Sony DVD RW burner.
QUESTION>. Would it be it better to use one only optical drive, remove the 3.5" floppy and one of the optical drives (which one would be best to keep installed?) . I can install the plastic bay covers over the 2 remaining open slots, assuming I pull the 3.5" and one Optical drive. I have 2 extras bay covers. Correct me if I'm wrong but removing the floppy and 1 optical drive will free up resources, or does it not matter in this configuration and fine to leave all 3 drives installed as it?
The OE HDD was a 160GB HDD Seagate as well. I thought both towers had 250 GB drives. The OE drives in both towers have stuff on them. I ESD bagged them both, later on I'll pull whatever I is on both, and back them up, then format both. That'll give me 2 more 160GB HDD's to run in the spare tower if I want or need to, or if I ever need spares. Storage is cheap today but free is still free.The idea was to do this on the cheap-cheap, right,? Or else build something better from scratch, that costs some $$, as some were folks were howling for me to do from the beginning, LOL!!. Later, down the road, guys, I will, I promise.
The caps will be here Wednesday or Thursday. That puts me back until next weekend. No biggie, I'm learning to be more patient as I get older. As my birthday is this week, on Thursday, this all will be more like a small BD present to myself. In the meantime, everything is clean, organised, and ready to go once the new caps are in. They may be fine, but again, it's very cheap insurance, plus I will sleep better nights, while the monster runs eating electricity 24/7/366.
Looks like I'll be going with Tidal or Spotify, as its been mentioned above Daphile doesn't run Amazon HD Music. That doesn't mean I won't try to run it anyway. If it doesn't run as said, at least there are other options. HDTracks is running some nice deals on Hi Res music 96/24 and 192/24. Acoustic Sounds also looks very promising, so for purchases and streaming I have some great options to pursue once were up and running.
I want to take just a moment to thank everyone who's participated in this project build and contributed to the thread thus far. Your help, tips, and advice, based on your own build experiences have been invaluable. The feedback and wisdom is excellent and I want to thank each and every one of you for your help and advice. My hope here is that this thread inspires and is helpful to others who comes along later, or maybe folks who are in the same position now wondering and wanting to try the same thing.
In the end, I believe that the efforts put forth will be more than justified by the results, which I have hopes that these will be better than excellent. if not, we'll try again, but using newer faster component parts as some of you have recommended !
It's very cheap insurance IMO. All the remaining caps on the MB are Nichicon, which are not on the bad cap list. Then again, these Rubycon weren't supposed to be either. It might be 100% coincidental or me being overly cautious. Both 8400's have a build date of late October 2008. The MB's may just have been manufactured earlier. I ordered identical sets for both computers. I can make short work of each with my Hakko desoldering station / solder station, no worries. An hour of work, tops.
While looking everything over, I verified each unit came with Windows XP Pro 64 bit. Since this means as I suspected both are 64 bit machines, running Daphile 64bit should not be any problem at all.
After I ordered the caps, I pulled 2 old DVR cable boxes down as well and opened them up. Each contained a nice clean Seagate 160GB HDD dated from 2012 inside.
QUESTION>. since these drive are free, can I run them in Raid 0 or whatever, along with the SSD? Yes, a new WD Purple 1TB HDD is only 75$ or 80$, but thats 75 or 80$ saved if running them in Raid 0 can be done. 320GB is a lot more storage than just the single 120GB SSD alone, for no extra $$. It saves money, and reuses stuff I have here anyway.
Tell me your thoughts about running both in Raid o if it is a good idea and works. Should I install them individually, or together but separate, and would do I do it. I've never set up HD's in Raid before, but I know it can be done on some machines in some instances, with a speed benefit. All of these drives are SATA, and there are 4 or 5 SATA sockets on the MB. I also have 2 optical drives installed in each tower, a SONY CD RW burner and Sony DVD RW burner.
QUESTION>. Would it be it better to use one only optical drive, remove the 3.5" floppy and one of the optical drives (which one would be best to keep installed?) . I can install the plastic bay covers over the 2 remaining open slots, assuming I pull the 3.5" and one Optical drive. I have 2 extras bay covers. Correct me if I'm wrong but removing the floppy and 1 optical drive will free up resources, or does it not matter in this configuration and fine to leave all 3 drives installed as it?
The OE HDD was a 160GB HDD Seagate as well. I thought both towers had 250 GB drives. The OE drives in both towers have stuff on them. I ESD bagged them both, later on I'll pull whatever I is on both, and back them up, then format both. That'll give me 2 more 160GB HDD's to run in the spare tower if I want or need to, or if I ever need spares. Storage is cheap today but free is still free.The idea was to do this on the cheap-cheap, right,? Or else build something better from scratch, that costs some $$, as some were folks were howling for me to do from the beginning, LOL!!. Later, down the road, guys, I will, I promise.
The caps will be here Wednesday or Thursday. That puts me back until next weekend. No biggie, I'm learning to be more patient as I get older. As my birthday is this week, on Thursday, this all will be more like a small BD present to myself. In the meantime, everything is clean, organised, and ready to go once the new caps are in. They may be fine, but again, it's very cheap insurance, plus I will sleep better nights, while the monster runs eating electricity 24/7/366.
Looks like I'll be going with Tidal or Spotify, as its been mentioned above Daphile doesn't run Amazon HD Music. That doesn't mean I won't try to run it anyway. If it doesn't run as said, at least there are other options. HDTracks is running some nice deals on Hi Res music 96/24 and 192/24. Acoustic Sounds also looks very promising, so for purchases and streaming I have some great options to pursue once were up and running.
I want to take just a moment to thank everyone who's participated in this project build and contributed to the thread thus far. Your help, tips, and advice, based on your own build experiences have been invaluable. The feedback and wisdom is excellent and I want to thank each and every one of you for your help and advice. My hope here is that this thread inspires and is helpful to others who comes along later, or maybe folks who are in the same position now wondering and wanting to try the same thing.
In the end, I believe that the efforts put forth will be more than justified by the results, which I have hopes that these will be better than excellent. if not, we'll try again, but using newer faster component parts as some of you have recommended !
Last edited:
