WeaponsGradeCode

1. Install VS2005
2. Install Cygwin from here:
   • http://www.cygwin.com/
   • Install Cygwin options
     • devl->make
     • devl->g++
     • devl->bison
     • devl->gperf
     • devl->flex
     • devl->subversion
     • net->curl
     • interpreters->perl
     • archive->unzip
3. Update Perl:
   • In cygwin run:
     • perl -MCPAN -e shell
       • yes to autoconfigure
     • install Win32API::Registry
4. Set the following environment variables:
   • WEBKITOUTPUTDIR - An absolute Windows-style path pointing to the directory where you want the build products to go.
   • WEBKITLIBRARIESDIR - An absolute Windows-style path pointing to the WebKitLibraries/win folder in your WebKit checkout.
5. Install QucktimeSDK from here:
   • http://developer.apple.com/quicktime/download/
6. Extract the latest WebKit build into the cygwin’s ~ or user dir:
   • http://nightly.webkit.org/
   • That is, extract the package to your user dir and rename WebKit-XXXXX to simply WebKit
7. Drop the WebKit Support Library into the WebKit folder:
   • http://developer.apple.com/opensource/internet/webkit_sptlib_agree.html
8. Run this command:
   • WebKit/WebKitTools/Scripts/build-webkit

Official Instructions can be found here:

http://nightly.webkit.org/

Some tips can be found here:

http://trac.webkit.org/wiki/BuildingOnWindows

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My wife’s always had good computers, but always got the short end of the stick compared to what I had. If I had a dual 500MHz, she had a single CPU. If I had a 21″ monitor, she had the 19″. After one of my MythTV projects went south I had a spare 2.4 GHz Celeron system that was better than that 500MHz mentioned above so I traded it out. But with only 512MBs RAM and a REALLY memory leaky FireFox installation it was really slow. Then she got a nice 20″ panel display that the Intel chipset couldn’t drive properly. Finally the thing was noisier than a bat out of hell in her tiny office. She uses the computer heavily and for real work so I thought it was the time to get her a new, top of the line machine that’ll last some time.

We were going to buy a laptop and I’ve bought two through Dell recently and have been very happy. She’s a petit gal so I wanted a small machine like the XPS 1330 so it could be moved around but it was way out of my price range. Other requirements were and nVidia graphics card, Core 2 Duo > 2GHz, 2GB RAM, and a 7200 RPM drive. Anything short of that was a deal breaker.

This is the part I hate about Dell. You can’t build a good machine at a good price. It’s all about haggling. You spec the perfect machine and it comes in at $1800, then you see a slightly different machine on sale for $600 off, but it’s missing the nVidia card. Deal breaker. The XPS 1330 was always way out of reach. After going around in circles for a couple days I finally called. With little haggling I speced the perfect XPS 1330 for only a couple hundred more than I wanted to spend, but close enough due to it being an exclusive machine with the ever important Midnight Blue finish.

I ordered on Wednesday and it arrived Tuesday the next week. Not bad at all.

Here’s the box it came in:

Here’s the case it came with, remote control, and restore disks:

The Midnight Blue XPS 1330:

Sitting in Scrap Book Central:

The only thing I don’t like about the machine is that it only has two USB ports and the standard LCD display is unevenly lit from top to bottom, but not so bad that it’s unusable.

Otherwise it’s a great little machine. Very fast, light, looks good. All the extra that came in the case, the premium XPS three year warranty (US based support,) and knowing you have a premium product made the purchase worth it.

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In a day and age when you go to Frys and all the cases look like this:

…us old timers (mid thirties) yearn for a decent server case that doesn’t have neon lights and can hold a substantial number of hard drives. Sure, neon fans were cool when we were 18 and looking for a mate, but when you’ve got a couple terrabytes of “Baby Einstein” and “Wiggles” videos to serve on demand to a 15 month old, you need good case design and capactity.

When selecting the new server case for my MythTV/home server solution, my primary requirements were low cost and lots of hard drive space. This server would not have a CDROM or floppy, just hard drives as it would sit in the shed, spinning away, recording TV shows and serving content.

Several strategic newegg.com queries later I found the Antec Titan650 and purchased it.

It’s a reasonable size. A bit smaller than a mid-tower case, but longer (deeper.) If you’re like me, occasionally you come across some Extended ATX (EATX) motherboards and this case can handle them. Most cases can’t.

Here’s the back. It’s got the one big fan in back that I like.

I really liked the rubber grommits they placed on the drive rails. If you have a bunch of drives they should quiet things down a bit. They also shipped special screws for the rails.

The front door assembly was nice too. Here you can see the drive cage with the two fan mounts below. The front door cleanly swings away from the chassis.

The front drive access door had a cool hinge that allowed it to swing completely out of the way.

The inside, as shipped.

All the great stuff you get including different drive rails for all the 5 1/4 and 3 1/2 drive bays.

Here’s the drive cage with two 750GB drives mounted in it. Note the fan mount swings away and off to allow access to the drives. This case now has four 750GB drives and four 400 GB drives. Six drives in the cage, two more in the 5 1/4 bays.

This is a fantastic case for the money. If you need a server case, buy this without hesitation.

Antec TITAN650 Black Server CaseAntec TITAN650 Black 1.0mm SECC Server Case 650W 4 x 5.25″ (one with 5.25″ to 3.5″ adapter) External 5.25″ Drive Bays

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The service is going in and out now. I’ve reset the router and problems persist. I’ll go out for 10 minutes then back again. Out for 2 minutes and back… We’ve lost service a couple other times this week too but either I didn’t witness them or waiting a couple minutes resolved the problem.

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Very fast response on a Saturday morning from the Broadstripe VPs. They confirmed the Internet outage and are looking into the support outage.

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Called Mark at support and he claims every thing’s hunky dory. There were no outages in my area. Made some ‘changes’ to my account and would not tell me what they were.

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2/8/2008 9:30pm
Lost internet for an hour.
Called tech support three times and after navigating phone tree got busy signals.

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An eternal challenge with home file servers connected to MythTV systems is disk space. Any new space is typically consumed within months.

About eight months ago, while dealing with space issues, I researched all the hardware raid solutions under $1000 on the market. Generally, the reviews tended to lean in the direction of 3Ware products. Unfortunately, they were all SATA & PCIe solutions meaning I would have to completely upgrade my server system. That meant a new PCIe motherboard, processor, RAM, and case for about $500, and the 3Ware 9650SE for another $500, plus new drives, about $1000. That’s a $2000 system. I just couldn’t lay that cash out at the time so I stalled.

Weekly I would evaluate my position to see if I could buy the system. After Christmas, it was clear that I had to do something. So I bought all the gear from Newegg.

Setting up the system was a piece of cake. Everything installed easily and came up the first time. I had three 750GB drives, one with 750GB of data that I needed to save. So I configured the two 750’s in a RAID 0 configuration with the intention of copying the data from the third 750 to it, then migrating to a RAID 5 configuration.

Big mistake. The migration on this state of the art machine was taking forever. The math led to the migration taking over 120 hours. I called 3Ware support and they said that’s normal and expected: it’s all good. That’s a data migration rate of 3 MB/s putting it in the MFM hard drive range. (That’s from the 80286 era… back in the mid ’80s)

OK fine, I’ll migrate rarely. Good enough. I’ll back the data up again to another drive, build a RAID 5 array from the get go and be on my way.

After running through the hoops and getting the system built and closed up, I realize that it’s now _very_ slow. Like, it takes seven seconds to return from running ls on the root folder. I googled around and discovered others having the same problem.

After some diagnosis, I discovered the problem. Building a RAID 0 array with the on board write cache on or off was __really__ fast. On the order of 180MB/s write speed. Glorious really. Moving to RAID 5 without the on board cache brought write speeds to less than 9 MB/s. Abhorrent. Turning the cache back on sped things up a bit.

A quick call to 3Ware tech support confirmed the numbers.

So there you have it. A state of the art machine with a $500 hard drive controller card on a 4x PCIe bus and 300MB/s SATA drives gives write speeds resembling that of my Amiga back in the 80’s.

3Ware’s position is to get the battery backup and enable the cache which is a $150 option. Unacceptable, as any modern dedicated RAID card should be able to sustain a 20MB/s write rate without cache.

One could run a RAID 5 configuration with write cache and without a battery backup, but if the power fails, power supply fails, or system crashes, you’ve lost everything.

The whole thing was unacceptable and very disappointing. I’d been looking forward to owning this card for months and now I’m returning it after investing months saving/planning and weeks of testing. The card, specially selected motherboard and CPU all went back to Newegg for a full refund. Newegg’s one of the best online stores I’ve worked with. Buy from them.

Price/Value, the 3Ware 9650se was one of the worst electronic products I’ve ever purchased.

Soon, I’ll post the solution to this whole mess.

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Gotta like free. This was a good one which, of course, makes up for all the less than optimal trades found on Craigslist.

I haven’t booted it up yet but it’s got three 2GB drives, one 18GB, a bunch of RAM, two tape drives, dual 75MHz processors, graphics card, a wide SCSI/NIC card and some other card I can’t identify, probably another SCSI card. That 18GB drive will likely find its way into my SGI O2.

The system:

Logo:

Back:

Guts:

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