MediaSmartServer.net
http://www.mediasmartserver.net/forums/

SHAWSHANK'S Redemption
http://www.mediasmartserver.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=5045
Page 10 of 13

Author:  dbone1026 [ Sat Dec 18, 2010 3:40 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: SHAWSHANK'S Redemption

dbone1026 wrote:

Hopefully tomorrow as today I am on kid duty all day #-o

My next project after I upgrade the CPU (hopefully successfully) on Shawshank is to run some Coax/Cat6 in my bedroom. Right now I already have a cat6 and coax line in my bedroom where my TV is, However, we decided to rearrange the furniture so now the TV will be on a different wall. I am going to split off the current lines and run them to the other wall where the TV will now go, and do this by running the lines through the attic. I have run Cat6/Coax lines in my house before, but never through the attic so this should be interesting! I am just waiting on my monoprice order to show up with the tools needed. The benefit of rearranging the furniture is the wife agreed t hat by doing so where the TV will go now is too small, so just picked up a new TV :mrgreen:


More thoughts on my next project here

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=9759

Author:  coldrider [ Fri Jan 07, 2011 4:06 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: SHAWSHANK'S Redemption

dbone1026,

Well I just got my Chenbro 5 in 3 Hotswap HDD Cage today.. Just a part of the DYI build.. The question I have for you what would you recommend on MOB & CPU to have a system do everything yours can do, but allow to play or stream movie to two different room at the same time. I was thinking about a Intel chip... but AMD seems to better pricing.

Video would be SD.... I already have Cat6 running through the entire house.

thank you

Author:  dbone1026 [ Fri Jan 07, 2011 4:11 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: SHAWSHANK'S Redemption

coldrider wrote:
dbone1026,

Well I just got my Chenbro 5 in 3 Hotswap HDD Cage today.. Just a part of the DYI build.. The question I have for you what would you recommend on MOB & CPU to have a system do everything yours can do, but allow to play or stream movie to two different room at the same time. I was thinking about a Intel chip... but AMD seems to better pricing.

Video would be SD.... I already have Cat6 running through the entire house.

thank you


Shawshank allows for multiple video streams to be played at once. I have confirmed two streams at once but I imagine I could push it to 3 or 4 streams. I know folks who do this with the current Media Smart Servers. The only potential issue would be if you are running CPU intensive programs (streaming is not, but something like on the fly transcoding is) which would definitely have an impact on your streaming. I upgraded my CPU to a quad core because I do have some transcoding going on at times (to mobile devices)

Author:  coldrider [ Fri Jan 07, 2011 4:34 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: SHAWSHANK'S Redemption

Good to know your current setup supports multiple video streams.... Yeah I would like to do some on the fly transcoding and not to take away from streaming. So a quad core cpu would help out on transcoding (to mobile devices)? Why did you go with a AMD & not Intel?

Thank you for your help

Author:  dbone1026 [ Fri Jan 07, 2011 4:41 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: SHAWSHANK'S Redemption

coldrider wrote:
Good to know your current setup supports multiple video streams.... Yeah I would like to do some on the fly transcoding and not to take away from streaming. So a quad core cpu would help out on transcoding (to mobile devices)? Why did you go with a AMD & not Intel?

Thank you for your help


I would have gone with a core i5 or core i7 BUT that would have required me replacing my motherboard (which I did not want to do). My mobo only supports AMD which is why I upgraded to a quad core AMD CPU. If you look at my holiday project writeup you will see I discuss the upgrade and the performance with transcoding. When I was using the dual core CPU I had a difficult time getting a stream to play on my wife's iPad/iPhone. Also, if I was streaming a movie to one of my HTPCs/players, transcoding to a mobile device struggled heavily. I haven't had a chance to do too much testing, but initial tests show much improved performance with the quad core (also may come in handy down the road if I decide to move some tv recording/commercial cutting processes over to Shawshank from my desktop)

Author:  dbone1026 [ Fri Jan 07, 2011 4:46 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: SHAWSHANK'S Redemption

coldrider wrote:
dbone1026,

Well I just got my Chenbro 5 in 3 Hotswap HDD Cage today..


One thing I forgot to mention (I think I did discuss somewhere in this thread). I had issues with the Chenbro 5 in 3 Cage when I first received. I ordered three of them and two were defective. I ended up having to return the two defective ones to only get two more defective ones. Finally after returning the second defective batch the following batch worked fine. The defective ones I had contained a bad sensor (there is an option to mount a fan to the back of the cage which I did not do, but the cage thought I did mount and the fan was defective so an alarm would sound). Just bad luck on my part when I received initially, but I have had zero issues since (knock on wood)

Author:  coldrider [ Fri Jun 03, 2011 5:32 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: SHAWSHANK'S Redemption

How's the system running now... Anything new to report?

Author:  dbone1026 [ Fri Jun 03, 2011 5:56 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: SHAWSHANK'S Redemption

coldrider wrote:
How's the system running now... Anything new to report?


Still plugging along. As far as streaming performance I have had zero issues streaming all my content (including high bitrate Blurays) since I shut off demigrator. I am sitting around 26TB currently. I may do a server recovery soon though. I am getting some errors with my NIC (I think some settings may have gotten screwed up somewhere) and I have noticed that my WHS console has become a little unstable with some of the add ins. If I do a recovery I will report back

Author:  dbone1026 [ Sun Jul 24, 2011 12:34 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: SHAWSHANK'S Redemption

So I went to access Shawshank and it became non responsive. Shut it down, turned it back on, everything would start to load and I would get to the WHS logo and loading screen. Then I would just get nothing but a black screen. Pulled the O/S drive out and put it into my PC, no errors on the drove. I decided to format the drive and do a server recovery. With WHS installed on a USB drive I start going through the process. The first step when it asks to add drivers I add the floppy disc with the SASLP drivers. 2 of the drives appear but then WHS pretty much locks up on me. Rebooted, and this time I decided to load the SAT2-MV8 drivers first. No issues, driver loads and all drives appear. So I then load the SASLP drivers, and same issue, a few drives appear and then WHS locks up. If I leave WHS alone I eventually get a blue screen.

So I am thinking that the SASLP card went bad. What is odd is that when i first boot up WHS in the DOS screen it shows the SASLP card spinning up all drives without issue. Given this is where the WHHS install hangs up I can't imagine it is anything else. Ideas on what else t o troubleshoot? Otherwise I will just have to buy a new card

Author:  Comp1962 [ Sun Jul 24, 2011 12:49 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: SHAWSHANK'S Redemption

I just want though an issues with one of my MV8's which caused a BSOD and would drop out drives. Since it was a new build I wondered if I may have caused the issue with an incorrect BIOS Setting so I reset the BIOS back to Optomized Settings and the server would start to boot see all the cool cards and then Crash with a BSOD. Soooo I set the BIOS to its Defaults and the server booted fine. I shut it down and reconfigured the BIOS back where I had it and rebooted the server but the issue I encountered with the drives returned so I RMA'd the card and swapped it out and no more problems.

Author:  yakuza [ Sun Jul 24, 2011 12:53 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: SHAWSHANK'S Redemption

Sounds like the card may be bad, though it would be interesting to try it in another system to see if it misbehaves there as well. Have you tried booting with the card in but no drives connected to it?

Author:  dbone1026 [ Sun Jul 24, 2011 1:07 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: SHAWSHANK'S Redemption

yakuza wrote:
Sounds like the card may be bad, though it would be interesting to try it in another system to see if it misbehaves there as well. Have you tried booting with the card in but no drives connected to it?


Well, disconnected all drives from the card. I can load the driver without issue and WHS doesn't freeze

Author:  dbone1026 [ Sun Jul 24, 2011 1:32 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: SHAWSHANK'S Redemption

dbone1026 wrote:
So I went to access Shawshank and it became non responsive. Shut it down, turned it back on, everything would start to load and I would get to the WHS logo and loading screen. Then I would just get nothing but a black screen. Pulled the O/S drive out and put it into my PC, no errors on the drove. I decided to format the drive and do a server recovery. With WHS installed on a USB drive I start going through the process. The first step when it asks to add drivers I add the floppy disc with the SASLP drivers. 2 of the drives appear but then WHS pretty much locks up on me. Rebooted, and this time I decided to load the SAT2-MV8 drivers first. No issues, driver loads and all drives appear. So I then load the SASLP drivers, and same issue, a few drives appear and then WHS locks up. If I leave WHS alone I eventually get a blue screen.

So I am thinking that the SASLP card went bad. What is odd is that when i first boot up WHS in the DOS screen it shows the SASLP card spinning up all drives without issue. Given this is where the WHHS install hangs up I can't imagine it is anything else. Ideas on what else t o troubleshoot? Otherwise I will just have to buy a new card


Yeah, I think the card went bad. Is it sad that I am tempted to basically replace everything when all I need is just a replacement one card !!!

Author:  Comp1962 [ Mon Jul 25, 2011 3:34 am ]
Post subject:  Re: SHAWSHANK'S Redemption

Not as sad as those who bring their servers out to the drive way and run them over a few times. I got less then 2 weeks out of the MV8 which I RMA'd. I generally do not run into many issues but with this new build I am doing I have already RMA'd 3 items, the MV8, a backplane because of an LED issue and a WD 2TB Black. I do not have the option for the drive way solution because my Mazda is to low to get on top of the beast.

Author:  dbone1026 [ Mon Jul 25, 2011 2:43 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: SHAWSHANK'S Redemption

Comp1962 wrote:
Not as sad as those who bring their servers out to the drive way and run them over a few times. I got less then 2 weeks out of the MV8 which I RMA'd. I generally do not run into many issues but with this new build I am doing I have already RMA'd 3 items, the MV8, a backplane because of an LED issue and a WD 2TB Black. I do not have the option for the drive way solution because my Mazda is to low to get on top of the beast.


If it was a battle between Shawshank and my 2003 Passat, Shawshank would win!

Page 10 of 13 All times are UTC - 7 hours [ DST ]
Powered by phpBB® Forum Software © phpBB Group
http://www.phpbb.com/