The Story Of America Then

If you are theatre inclined, you’ll catch that the title of this post is from the tagline of Hamilton: An American Musical. That might strike you as an odd choice. But as we head into the 4th of July weekend, things are odd all around. Many of the usual big festivities that we are used to have been canceled, and circumstances have put a damper on many other activities.

However… one big thing happening this weekend that we can all do is watch the premiere of Hamilton on Disney+. Despite being a theatre aficionado, I have yet to see it, so you can count me among the many that will be tuned in.

Thinking about this also sent me back down the path of looking at our currency. I think most of us only ever really see the number on the bills. That’s a 20. That’s a 10. But if you look closely, they are pretty fascinating. The picture up top has pretty good detail. When we get really close though, check this out:

I don’t think I ever knew about that United States Of America Ten Dollars line above the name. The detail on the fabric is super cool too. This reminds me that I should really get a good shot of the pyramid/eyeball on the single. I’ll put it on the list.

Anyway, we will be closed tomorrow for the holiday. Stay safe and have fun!

More old PSU photos

If you are still running on an A-class server, you should know that parts are beginning to become scarce. Particularly, power supplies. The A class servers used an odd and specific power supply, and after all these years, more of them are starting to fail.

We have been looking at options, and one of those is having old failed power supplies repaired. In doing that research, one of the companies we are working with wanted a more detailed look at the components of the power supply, so I made the photo below.

To really get the effect, click this link to see it full size.

BTS (Thats a big modifier)

This is a short week at Genisys. We’ll be closed on Friday for the holiday. That, and other things, have me a bit behind as the week is getting started. But I did just grab a quick behind the scenes shot of where I do the macro photography.

What equipment gets used changes depending on what I am doing, but here you can see one of my Interfit strobes with a 24″ square softbox and the 48″ deep parabolic softbox attached to the Xplor 600 Pro strobe.

The white backdrop shots are done on this table with two pieces of cardboard. And the shots on black are on an old Genisys polo shirt. Also featured: A Manfrotto tripod, the cover for the flash tube on the 600 Pro, the 600 Pro charger, and a model 20 controller.

The more things change…

I have a pretty modern laptop for testing in the tech department, but it only came about when the pretty old laptop finally died. The holdup was twofold. Most obvious, it wasn’t broke, so no point fixing it. And that laptop is not called on to do any heavy lifting. The vast majority of its time is spent as a terminal for connecting to different things. So there was no rush.

And that gets us to the second part of the problem. Modern laptops just didn’t have the one spec I really need. I wasn’t terribly concerned with RAM, or CPU, or SSDs, or dedicated graphics. The number one thing I needed is a serial port. And that is tough to come by.

So what you see above is the solution. A USB to Serial adapter, that allows me to connect to pretty much anything. Servers, disk arrays, switches, printers, etc. Our computing world has become very modern, but there is still a surprising number of things that are best dealt with over 9600 baud.

Sooooo dusty

This is a bit of a tricky puzzle, because you have to have seen this specific piece of hardware before to get it. But I was so fascinated by just how dusty this thing is that I wanted to share it. This is a part from a system that just came in after being in service for a very long time. Like, 20 years? It could use a thorough dusting, but would likely be fine for several more years. Scroll below to see what this is.

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This is a controller from a Model 20 disk array. Along with the crazy amount of dust, I also like those angled slots for the memory. They were a necessary bit of engineering to fit the controller into the mounting slot in the shell of the array.

Another wayback find

That title is your clue that we are looking at a very old piece of gear today. If you are familiar with the Classic 3000 systems, this might look familiar. If not, you might be able to reason a guess just based on what you see. The bigger picture and some more details are below.

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This is a CPU board for a K-Class server. These were released in the mid 90s and had processors that ranged from a start of 100MHz to 240MHz at the top end. The CPU boards were unique. Rather than the traditional CPU slot on a system board we think of today, these were all in one boards that slid into the chassis and plugged into the system board.

For some perspective, the board you are looking at here is roughly 14″ x 9″ and the heatsink from the top photo is about 2.5″ wide. They are huge and, by all modern standards, very slow. But you could put up to six of them in a system, depending on which model you had.

As you can imagine, the K-Class chassis was also quite large. They measure roughly 18″ wide x 26″ high, and 23″ deep. Weight depended on your configuration, but you didn’t want to pick one up by yourself. It’s fascinating to look back on these systems that seem almost archaic given our modern computing world. Especially when you realize that this really wasn’t that long ago in the big picture.

It’s Vintage

This is an interesting one. The photo above is a close-up of a common item, not necessarily related to computing. The interesting part of the story though, is that relationship to computing for this particular example. That’s not much of a clue, but if you haven’t guessed what this is, the answer is down below.

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It’s the closure mechanism for a locking latch. Here is a better picture of the latch itself.

What makes this one particularly interesting is the case it is attached to. This is a very old field service case from McDonnell Douglas. It’s actually slotted to carry specific boards. An interesting relic from our computing past.

Tiny Power

I think this is a pretty easy one, because of the very obvious hint included in the photo. Most will be able to reason out what kind of thing this is. And a few will be able to note the specific model of thing that it is. That is a much bigger ask. Either way, the big picture is below.

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If the + and – tipped you to battery, you are correct! And if you are a Canon user, you might recognize those connections as being from the LP-E66 battery. This one has been something of a workhorse. Canon has been using it in many of their prosumer cams for years (5DII, 5DIII, 5DIV, 5DS, 6D, 6DII, 7D, 7DII, 60D, 70D, 80D, R, and probably something I have forgotten).

The battery has become so ubiquitous by being in so many Canon cameras that other companies have started using them to power their devices. You will find lights, monitors, and even cameras from other brands that are using the LP-E6.

Technically… this is an LP-E6N, from the EOS R, which is the newest version of the LP-E6. The biggest difference is a slightly higher mAh rating (1865 vs 1800), but it remains compatible with all of those earlier cameras.

There’s Your Problem

This is a fun little picture puzzle, that relates directly to a recent service repair. That’s your clue that this is again in the realm of computer parts. I’ll also add that this is far from the latest and greatest of equipment, so put on your wayback caps. Do you recognize this? The answer is down below.

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That is the ‘fuzzy button’ from a processor. A 550MHz processor for an A500, to be exact, but you will find these same buttons on processors in the Ns, Ls, and Js as well. They were even still in use when the first of the cell based servers came out in the RP7410.

What is interesting to note here are those little missing dots you see on the button. That is one of the tricky bits in doing repairs to any of these old systems. Often you will find that the processors have been in that system for years, and years. Over that time, the button has started to cook to the system board.

When I pulled this processor, those missing buttons stayed stuck to the system board, rendering this button useless. The processor itself is fine. it fits on the back side of what you are looking at here. But it’s not going to function until you get a replacement button for it.

Flash… Ahhhh… Ahhhh

We are having a slow start on the blog this week. There was an emergency with a customer server, so I have been occupied with those repairs. Because of that, I didn’t have any free time to put together an image for a post. Fortunately, one new system board later, and a bit of shenanigans with some fuzzy buttons (if you have dealt with A, L, and N class processors you will know what I mean), and the server is now humming along.

We’re still against the clock today, so fun macro shots and puzzles will resume shortly. Just a quick shot today, of the newest bit of lighting kit. I just added this Flashpoint XPLOR 600 PRO, and it is kind of amazing. It’s actually lighting itself in this shot.

This is a 600 watt second flash that has all the TTL and high speed sync bells and whistles. It also has a T.1 flash duration as low as 1/10,000 of a second, which I am looking forward to experimenting with. If you are in the market for off camera lighting, I highly recommend taking a look at the Flashpoint line.