Can't believe I didn't realize this, but thank you all for pointing out that PS/2, unlike USB, is _only_ usable for keyboards and mice, so if you shut off all your USBs for security (which you SHOULD on an industrial pc) it's still usable. I realized that the stuff I said at the beginning about remotely managing Windows was lacking some context that not everyone would have, so let me clarify all that. I'm talking about remotely managing _a fleet of devices at completely uncontrolled customer sites,_ and that is a real can of worms. You're shipping the customer a gadget that they plug into their internet connection, over which you have no control. They _do_ have a firewall, and it _is_ managed by an MSP who won't return your calls, and if they _do_ call back they won't be willing to give you a port forward, and even if they do _that,_ you won't be able to track the IP address on the customer's dynamic-IP internet connection, and even after all _that_ it won't matter because it's a mall store in the middle of nowhere that only has LTE, and the WISP blocks all inbound connections. Brick wall. And by this point you're on your fifteenth phone call trying to get this resolved, rendering the customer unprofitable for the next year due to the wages it cost to get this all done. Then you get it all working, and six weeks later the MSP wipes the firewall and it all starts over from scratch. I did this for ten years, and I can assure you: Any fix you come up with won't stay fixed. What does keep working is Logmein. Now, you _can_ write a package for a Linux machine that reaches out to some central server and polls it, and that also fixes this issue - and it turns out, yes, products like that are common! It turns out that a lot of digital sign companies use things like BrightSign, a linux-based (I'm told) suite that runs on dedicated little custom units, uses a central server for management, and has a VERY powerful design system. It's so cool that I've actually bought one already, and I can't wait for it to arrive to see what it can do. And it's not the only product of its type. That said, several of the machines in this video came with Windows installed, booted up directly into slideshows, and did in fact have logmein or similar software on them, and this is something I've seen in the wild many times, so what I have to assume is that I'm just seeing a lot of devices from smaller or less organized companies. That would make sense too, because they've all been VERY simplistic - now that I've seen stuff like Brightsign I realize that "just runs a slideshow" is the bare minimum product. This isn't exactly meant to be The Digital Sign Show With Gravis, so I'm not gonna harp on it too much more in later videos, but I will be showing off several dedicated signage devices in future eps as I find them. I already have two in the mail, so it's pretty much a certainty.
It gets better! Even if your neck of the woods has ISPs other than mobile carriers, unless you're lucky enough to actually have cable, you're gonna be stuck with satellite because in America there are still places that have stores but completely lack cable infrastructure of any kind! And satellite basically guarantees that no matter who you are, you are gonna be using a CGNAT so open ports are just not even remotely possible.
Right. Windows is seen as the "easy button". It's the thing everyone understands - or more to the point, can be talked through using. Linux is infinitely easier to manage, esp. remotely, but the people in front of it won't be any help doing anything to it. Yes, remote "phone home" systems are just as available for linux as windows, but _again_ when things go wrong, the people who can touch it will be of little to no help. (I've been there, too. Don't bother with "phone support", just drive over and fix it. It's usually faster.)
@@CathodeRayDude I live in a rural area so until I moved back into a settlement with cable in late 2022 I had to deal with satellite internet and being the nerd that I am it fucking sucked.
Hah! That's pretty funny, and I guess I can see how it happened, once they'd established it back when that really was the distinction, it probably just stuck. I found this setting in every single machine I own in this sort of form factor, including one that has as a physical slide switch and another that has it as a jumper.
@@CathodeRayDudeit is probably beneficial in the type of environment they'd be used in. Imagine you have a power outage - when the power gets back on, you don't need to press any buttons, the machine just comes right on as it gets its sweet 19 volts.
Screw terminal power is fun! RIP to several industrial PCs destroyed at a past employer over the years when somebody wired up 120VAC (or in one notable case, 480VAC) directly into a screw terminal that wanted 24VDC. I can still hear the little *pop* of several hundred dollars going down the drain and another few days added to the project as we wait on a replacement. Good times!
I used to work in a lab with some instrumentation that was designed to work on 240 because they were European. Almost every time we had a pump or something serviced, they'd be switched to 120 while being serviced, then someone would plug them back into the original instrument and POP. We had a shelf designated for replacement transformers because it happened so often.
Reminds me of the time a blew up an Atari 2600 because I didn't know any better than to take the power lead that was missing the plug and wire 240VAC straight in to the poor thing.
@@ax14pz107I've done years of IT support for lab environments and was often greeted in the morning by the smell of magic smoke for exactly this reason. We started putting red zip ties around the end of plugs that were running 240 V since there is still a TON of lab equipment floating around out there without auto-switching or even full-range power supplies. Anyway that's the story of how I got to source an AT power supply last year to repair a mission-critical 486.
@@JohnVance I can't imagine having to do actual IT support for labs. So much janky software and bizarre configurations to get stuff to work. For one brand of instrumentation, the devs decided to use a random public IP address as the default management address. Just... Why?
Oh, wow! Something I know about! I'm a digital signage administrator, so I can confirm/elaborate on some of the stuff you mentioned at the beginning of this video: You're broadly correct that those little SD card media players aren't popular because somebody needs to swap the content manually. For one-and-done stuff, though, I've used those before, and I usually call them "JPEG to HDMI converters". They're great as a fallback input; if your primary device stops outputting video, commercial-grade displays can typically detect that and fall back to a secondary input, which is more often than not a device just like this one, sitting there and outputting a 1920x1080 JPEG of the company logo 24/7/365. In general, though, as you observed, most digital signage installations utilize Windows-based content players for actual playback. In my experience, this is because Windows is the easiest platform to develop for, and it has the best video playback/graphics acceleration capabilities. I know that some of the stuff I work with is HEAVILY reliant on 3D acceleration, which generally sucks to do on Linux, especially any content that uses interactive elements. A surprising amount of commercial stuff is actually built in game engines like Unity or Unreal and embedded into the signage program; if you've ever been to a place where you were shown a 3D wayfinding map that you could pan and zoom through, it's probably running in Unity. Further than that, I've also seen my fair share of Xbox Kinects pulling double- and triple-duty as no-contact control devices for interactive signs: the user's silhouette is mapped into the software and uses the same fist and open-hand detection from early Xbox games to activate menu options. Those systems got big during COVID, and Kinects are infamously difficult to use as an NUI input device on anything but Windows. A lot of the time, you'll see content players (and, actually, the screens that they connect to) with two network jacks because they have an integrated miniswitch for daisy-chaining hardware. If you've only got one Ethernet drop at your signage location, but you've got to connect your player, your display, and occasionally an occupancy/motion sensor to the network, it's much more efficient and space-saving to just link them to each other rather than cramming a 5-port miniswitch into the ridiculously tiny amount of clearance between the back of the display and the wall. You'd want all these things networked for the same reason: remote management. I can view, update, and control every single digital sign I manage from anywhere in the world, and can push new content to a sign (and expect it to be live) in around fifteen seconds. That's also where that crazy four-port RJ45 serial box comes in. I'd hazard a guess that a device like that was intended for a low-spec video wall or multi-panel array. You'd connect each of the commercial display panels to the box (video wall panels being far, far less featured than most TVs or displays), and it would be able to communicate with the screens over serial to adjust settings like color calibration, image offset, and power to the panels for things like scheduled on/off times. That VGA port, while it might seem puny, would likely be fed through a four-port multiplexer, which would split the image into four quadrants, for display on four panels in a grid arrangement (if that capability isn't already built into the panels themselves, which, most of the time, it is). Or, alternatively, it could be a multi-head controller, where the same content is duplicated across a variety of panels, like in a waiting room or a lobby.
Thank you so much for all of this info. "JPEG to HDMI converter" slayed me, but the rest of this is just fascinating. Kinects?? _Kinects???_ Do these still exist, can I find one, can you give me pointers on how to get one to make a video, I am _losing it_ over here! Interesting bit about the mini switch! I knew VoIP phones did that, the two ports are not actually independent interfaces but just a two-port switch specifically so you can daisy chain your PC. All the devices I own have independent NICs, so I wasn't thinking about it in those terms, but tbh I thought it over and I *don't* think any of them are actually DSCs on reflection. I'll do some digging when I shoot the video about the guy with the four ports and see if I can confirm that - I know there's a lot of RS232 going on in the world of commercial displays, and I totally get what you're talking about because I was _vaguely_ aware of devices like that - very similar to the matrox triplehead2go that actually got sold to the public. I'm also curious if you've had much experience with displays using OPS modules, apparently those are a thing in digital signage? I just learned about their existence, it seems like a brilliant idea but it also feels like something where "universal standard" is more of a "well, universal within a brand..." kind of thing. Would love to know more if you know more! Also if you know where I can get one cheap for a video, haha.
@@CathodeRayDude I used to work on sorting machines for USPS/FedEx/UPS, and it was super common to see the two-port switch (actually a three-port switch -- one of the ports is internal to the device) in that kind of use-case. Sorters tend to have long, skinny components (conveyors, cross-belt trains, etc), so you end up with a big controller on one end and then a daisy chain of potentially dozens individual controllers. The protocols can be regular TCP/UDP over IP, but often they're weird things like Profinet and EtherNet/IP (note that IP here stands for Industrial Protocol, not Internet Protocol).
Kinects are still widely available used for very cheap and the SDK for windows still works. They're still used by many for body tracking in VR for example. I recommend the first gen ones for the Xbox 360 rather than the ones made for the Xbox One, specifically they made Kinect for PC kits with the adapter required to connect it to a PC. They also later made the Azure Kinect but I don't think that got beyond a developer kit.
Plus, if my time working split between a data centre and IT support is anything to go by, the cheap little boxes will be about as reliable in full service as a chocolate teapot, and the industrial computers will fair much better whilst also having actual support.
At my (small) college, they installed some new digital signage to hang in our cafeteria. They bought brand new 75" Google Smart TVs with ATSC 3.0 tuners built in for this purpose.. and a Lil Guy is plugged in to show a JPEG of the college logo, then the current time and temperature. Maybe there's bigger plans for the future, but it just cracks me up. I'm happy you are doing this series - I see a handful of these boxes come up and they've always piqued my curiosity.
At my university, most departments used Pi's for digital signage but engineering still used some incredibly overpriced "lil guy" system that came with its own software. When some of the older units broke down, we bought new ones from the same company and they actually came with Android -- somehow an even worse choice of OS than Windows (Jesus Christ, just use an immutable Linux image). I think this happened because engineering were actually the first to deploy digital signage, and then they forever stuck with their initial solution.
Industrial engineer/IT dude here, mostly on the plant control level. (Think multiple rack PLCs and everything around them.) To me, one of the key benefits of industrial PCs is - if you get good qualiy ones, like from Siemens or such - they're robust as hell, actually tested to operate in their environment specs, and the smaller ones snap neatly onto DIN rails you'll have in your cabinets anyways. 24V DC is also the common power used in such systems across the board - anything that doesn't need some real oomph will take like 10-30V no worries. There are probably two reasons for VGA and PS2 (and serial) still being a thing: 1) Industry equipment is built and meant to last 10, 15y+, so in order to be able to swap some unit out if it fails without redoing everything around it, you stick to the old stuff. 2) They just work; especially even despite a lot of EM noise! That's also why 10/100MBit is often used for field bus application. Use it over Cat 6e, and you've got a pretty damn robust transmission, even within a plant full of noisy and powerful frequency converters and such. Realiability and compatibility are THE cost factors in industrial application, and as such govern how these PCs are built and what gets used. "It's old" often times can be very much a positive thing here. It's tried and tested, and often more stable. There are even a few embedded systems using tiny 386 or 468 CPUs (but usually not built out to be usable as an actual PC and with custom firmware.)
I am also willing to bet they have a bunch of custom industrial keyboards with 50 extra keys on them that cost as much if not more than the PCs they are connected to. So they just re-use them over and over.
i worked at a taxi company that used alpha pagers ,in 2015 they were still using w3 \ dos to send to those pagers ,,it had never broke ,so it never got replaced,,he blew cand air in to it but thats it
I do like your graphic overlays - fonts, colours, the fact that you scroll Patreons slow enough that they can be read, use of a wall as a green screen etc. etc.. They give the channel a consisent, stylish let laidback feel suiting the quirky nature of what you cover and differentiate it from others in the retro-tech space. I'm sure you're like 'check, check' but thought I'd mention it.
thank you, I really appreciate that! it's the sort of thing I do that doesn't get many comments so I'm never sure if people notice it or not. particularly the patron credits - a lot of people run them so fast that they're illegible, and i always wonder what the point is. like, if patrons want to be seen in credits, then they want to be SEEN, not just *technically* be there, if you pause at the right moment. on channels where they don't run the names too fast, I often recognize people I know! that's kinda the point, I'd think. i think a lot of people probably don't realize that my stock spiel at the end of every video, the call to subscribe etc, would be much shorter if I wasn't deliberately slowing it down to leave time to scroll the credits. like, these people are my *entire* living - if the only thing I can get myself to deliver reliably is a name on the screen, I'm for damn sure gonna make sure it's not an afterthought!
@@CathodeRayDude It's SUCH a compliment. I really appreciate all the little homestar runner references and vibes you slip into your stuff because that played a big part in my childhood despite a lot of other people my very age not knowing what Homestar Runner is (tragic I know)
I have 40 of these devices, nobody is interested in them, couldn;t sell them , couldn;t give them away . I wish there were more people like you (ok they more than 10 years old by now, so I doubt they would be still useful, but i was trying to sell them like 5 years ago)
I have one of those little 1L guys on my desk right now as a linux development machine. It has an i7 6700T and 16GB of sodimm DDR4 inside. Plenty of power for running a couple of docker containers at a time while I work on something. It also used to be my NAS but I ended up needing more than the single 2.5" drive bay over time.
Yess I use one to run Home Assistant at home! It's low power, passively cooled and thus completely quiet. And it has enough USB ports exposed for zigbee, etc; and a 2nd NIC so I can put my networked smart home stuff in a physical 2nd network without internet.
I like this format. Coming at it from a position of "let's learn about this together" is sometimes more fun to watch than a heavily researched piece. Looking forward to seeing more little guys!
You're exactly right about the mPCIe slot being necessary for the cellular radio/SIM card slot to work. This one looks like it is specifically designed to take a cellular radio card, as those tend to be longer than the standard WiFi cards in my experience. Also, I always thought that moisture from the thermal pads was something like Cosmoline or something to prevent corrosion and the like. You learn something every day.
Thank you for giving me the image of a Russian warehouse full of old Pentiums just SOAKED in Cosmoline. And ads for Finnish- and Czech-made Pentiums that are infinitely better.
@@CathodeRayDude Lots of those little interfaces have built-in bodges that make them convenient, but difficult to keep straight or even understand in the first place, if you don't happen to cross paths with them often. At this point, if someone told me that a USB C port also has a secret NES Control Pad mode, I would have to believe it, because my intuition can no longer be trusted to say that couldn't be true.
Some feedback which you may or may not find interesting if you didnt know already... 1. Power supply permitting voltages between 10 and 26 has multiple advantages, including the ability to be used in a 12 or 24 volt vehicle, for example as a security DVR, or inventory machine etc. Probably just as likely however are "always on" systems such as intruder alarm systems which have 12v standby batteries, and typically run on 12 volts, so these machines can be used as an interface to the outside world, a protocol translator, a software front end server, a web server for mobile app hosting, or an outboard processor of some kind. Being able to run natively on 12v mean much more efficient running in an AC failure situation than would be possible with a conventional UPS, and in many cases, the need to monitor the power supply's status needs to be monitored and reported via the security system. 2. The serial port which contains 4 ports in one socket is something ive seen used in a lot of POS systems. In older days, these systems were often barely modified PCs, except for this funky serial port. Many even supply a 12v and 0v rail on the same port in order to drive things like barcode scanner, serial printer, cashier facing dot matrix, customer facing dot matrix. 3. The PS2 socket is also something commonly used in EPOS systems where some shops have paid for custom keyboards which contain just their own special keys, for example Argos in the UK, and previously Woolworths in the UK did this for certain. 4. VGA also points towards EPOS use, as again, special tiny monitors, even some small colour CRT screens are still actively used in shops. But of course you can always use vga and convert it to other protocols with massive loss of quality etc. 5. Of course expansion slots can be used for tons of things, but again, i know that many older EPOS solutions still rely on screens which have VGA input and have a custom expansion card for touchscreen input. Just my thoughts. Take them or leave them!
I work for a (rather small) electronics store chain that actually uses Raspberry PIs for the TV displays, showing a slideshow of pictures and videos. They just run off ordinary MicroSD cards with a custom slimmed and locked down version of Raspberry PI OS. The software that runs on boot just cycles through pictures and videos in a specific folder on the SD card, using hardware acceleration for smooth playback. The PIs are always plugged into network, so that an internal web application can add or delete files on the PI in groups via a simple drag and drop interface. And whenever one bugs out or the SD card kicks the bucket (which surprisingly doesn't happen that often) they are simply swapped out and sent back to the main IT department for re-flashing and reconfiguration. $35 + $5 for the hardware and barely any work hours for maintenance or upkeep of the system. It's great.
@@RonJohn63 That's true, the sales staff have at minimum some basic understanding of computers. Though I believe with some optimizations (like more reliable storage, remote flashing and perhaps printed visual guides on how to swap them when needed) that system could be adapted to non tech savvy environments
I want that 13" TV. I have zero use for it but I want it anyway. This particular Lil Guy would probably be a great choice for driving a CNC in a home shop. Even with that screen, on a lil VESA arm. The lack of fan-based cooling would be a huge plus in an environment like that; I used to do IT for a gov't agency with a few workshops and they put perfectly ordinary desktop PCs in the shops. Those had nasty, brutish and short lives before dying of being completely caked with everything you could imagine. Longest-lived one I saw was ancient and decrepit at about a year old and was at least 50% gunk, by weight, when I pulled it out and swapped in a super cheap book PC (which probably also died shortly thereafter, but at least it was cheap).
I have worked a lot with this company in the last 5 years. They used to be called Logic Supply but rebranded as OnLogic in 2019. I am about halfway through deploying almost 200 of their modern Karbon k800 series machines for my work. (Railroad Industry) They definitely design their motherboards in-house, and the modern ones do have branding on the boards themselves. The company has clearly learned a lot since building the machine in this video. They have made a lot of improvements to the board layout and cooling solutions, but it is cool to see where they came from, and I can definitely see some of that DNA in their modern machines. Separately, most of the computers on-board our locomotives boot off of CFast and you can just open a cover on the front to swap them out, I love this because if we need to replace the computer a lot of the times a mechanic can just swap the old CFast card in and not have to reconfigure the new computer.
23:48 - I heard somewhere, that this copyright date relates to architecture creation date. Therefore for instance Q9550 that was released in 2008 has " '06 " written on IHS. 1gen of Core i CPU's was created in 2008 so that would match.
@@CathodeRayDudeYeah. What's fun about that one is that you can get external enclosures for cellular modems, tear apart the OEM specific Windows drivers, and just install the important bits (or if that's too complicated, patch out the check for specific hardware and install the whole thing.). So, if your carrier doesn't block tablets or hotspots to connect without paying extra, you can use unlimited data without paying exorbitant limited hotspot fees.
i7-965 surprisingly has '08 which is the actual release year, i7-870 also has '08 and was released in 2009, i7-980X has '09 and was released in 2010, 2600K has '09 and was released in 2011, 3770K has '10 and was released in 2012, 4770K and 4790K have '11 and were released in 2013 and 2014, 5960X has '12 and was released in 2014. Broadwell, Skylake and newer don't have the copyright date on the CPU anymore
well done! experiencing a device "live" like this is a great way of creating a story - most people would do this much worse (in a "oh wow i think it kinda is like this maybe not lol" way) but your experience makes this unique and a great addition to your channel.
Thank you so much, I should be honest, I had already taken one run at this before because I found that discovering everything on the fly is not interesting to watch, I have tried it many times and it's just crap, but if I identify most of the information ahead of time, the critical stuff like the CPU type and the major parts and everything, then leave a few of the details to find out on the fly, the result is both a journey and coherent enough to not be a total mess of ums and maybes. It's a balancing act, and I'm really glad you like the result, I'm hoping I can maintain it for the future
You have a unique ability to make videos that are designed to showcase topics visually, yet are extremely “listenable” - easy to follow and learn from with just the audio. Some combination of your natural voice qualities and the words you choose come together really well to make that possible. Great video!
thing is, most thermal conductive materials are crystalline solids (eg. diamond is the best). but crushing diamond against your chips doesn't work so they grind it up real fine but the powder would just fall out so they add binders. For thermal pads, you need somehting that is thermally very inert, doesn't oxidize easily; and silicones are perfect for this. But silicones are usually liquid, so they make the silicone so it has little reactive bits on it ('vinyl groups') that can terminally stick to each other and hey presto, you have your highly thermally conductive composite ^^
@@jxh02 foams are great thermal insulators because gasses don't conduct heat. Your silicone is like the dough, and your thermally conductive filler is like the raisins or chocolate chips or whatever :) except it's more chip then cookie and there's no baking powder.
@@jxh02 giant molecule - yes that is quite correct Alloys - typically we speak of alloys when talking about a relatively homogeneous mix of dissimilar metals or (sometimes) polymers. That's not what's happening here.
As someone who worked retail for years, we didn't even press a button on any of the computers. Everything from basic troubleshooting to power cycling was done with an IT person on the phone. Signage and POS hardware is almost always hidden behind a panel that nobody knew how to open.
9:45 the weird thing about US highways is how you don't have fuel stations or other services alongside the highway itself, you have plain rest stops but they're just that. you actually need to get out at an exit to get fuel or a coffee, and that kinda explains why you need the giant signs, and we don't
There are a few places that integrate rest stops with gas stations. I want to say places in Illinois or West Virginia did that but it's been a long time since I drove around there.
@@ax14pz107 I live in the NE US and it's more common than not to have fuel, convenience stores, and half the time fast food places at the actual rest stop, but signage leading to those miles passed the exit exists as well
For the SIM port, what you said is exactly how it works on Thinkpads. You get the slot and necessary surface mount components, but you'd have to get the WWAN card as an option. At least that works like that on my T420.
So people know: The old comments that are older than the video are due to this being released early to patreons as a unlisted video. when the video is made public, the published date is reset, but the comments made when it was unlisted keep their original times
You are right on the money with the sim card slot talking to the minipci-e slot. There are some 'extra pins' in minipci-e for "application specific" purposes. In theory, this is supposed to make up for not having anywhere for you to put ports, so in theory you could have a NIC that connects off to an RJ45 on the back with one of these, or whatever. In practice, it has to be something the board manufacturer is aware of, so really only two uses emerged: SIM cards for cellular radios (as far as I know there isn't even actually a standard for this, it's just something the radio manufacturers and Little Guy manufacturers just did organically), and mSATA, where you just run those pins off to a port on your SATA controller because nvme hasn't been invented yet. Every other use basically fell into the abyss of 'well, if the motherboard needs a port for it, we the motherboard may as well include the circuitry to do it, and to hell with accessory boards'.
(Note, strictly speaking, minipci-e is *not* the same as msata and you are *hella* not supposed to cros-contaminate the cards, but some little guy manufacturers managed to make dual mode slots because of course they did)
@@EyeMWing Little guy manufacturers? Literally every mSATA slot I've seen on a motherboard also works as a regular mPCIe slot. Admittedly I only know this is the case on Lenovo and Intel but I'm sure this is everywhere. Actually the slot on my craptop might be mSATA only, I don't remember.
@@eDoc2020 Possible. I’ve definitely seen single purpose msata slots (in Little Guys) but the more limited real estate in laptops would make dual purpose make even more sense
I dont know why. But every time one of your videos comes across my feed, I get excited and just sit in awe at how much information you know about certain devices that we don't usually know about. Thanks man. You make the days easier.
The thermal pads have an unexpected benefit of being a volatile corrosion inhibitor inside an enclosed case like that. That oil coats everything over time. The same tech, although different formulations, are used in everything from transporting and storing metal to gun safes
Love your thoroughly-produced content but I love your improv, off-the-cuff style too. If it means more content for less work from you, consider this my vote in favour of this being a good addition to your repertoire. Not least of all because we get to see cat sometimes too. :3
From my experience at an industrial motor company, it is really common to not only have the pin out for the power supply using those boxy connectors (really cheap and easy to put together); but also for any DB connectors like the DB44 to have a weird pin out that requires a custom cable job. These industrial machines can also be used as smart motor controllers, from what I remember of CANBus, RJ45 Serial, and RS232 serial; but I had never seen them in use outside of a test bench.
Logic Supply is now known as OnLogic, it's a US company that started out selling Mini-ITX Car PCs of all things and gradually moved into industrial and digital signage and business services. They'll sell you a thousand of these with a custom OS load, branding and documentation. The motherboard is probably custom for them by a Taiwanese OEM.
Generally, the mPCIe slot has dedicated pins for the SIM slot, and the LTE card actually communicates via the USB pins in the mPCIe slot, there's also usually some GPIO pins there too to control the LTE radio "physically". With how many other SATA and PCIe ports are being used on the board, it's likely the mPCIe slot isn't even wired for PCIe, just like the mPCIe ports in most laptops. It may/may not have SATA wired for mSATA, though with the Cfast 2.0 port as well as 2x normal SATA ports it likely isn't left with any free ports on the CPU for it.
Regarding taking out and replacing that bottom pcie bracket screw, you're probably meant to use a 90° screwdriver. They're not used for much but when you need one there are a lifesaver so I always keep one in my tool pack
Five seconds before Soba appeared, my cat came meowing loudly into my home office, and demanded lap time. Two seconds after getting on my lap "hold on, I have a cat yelling at me." MY CAT KNEW!
@CathodeRayDude I can confirm that you are able to put an LTE card in a PCIe slot and have it talk to a SIM slot on the mainboard or another sub-board. I used to work in the repair department of a major laptop vendor and that's exactly how all of ours worked. As for whether or not that's how this unit works, I couldn't say.
Fun series idea! WRT weird little guys, 15 or so years ago I remember OpenBSD recommending a weird little guy manufacturer for hardware firewalls etc - Soekris. It looks like some of their machines go for about 25-60 on eBay. Always wanted one but by the time I had the cash/need for such a thing, uh, a little geode with a bunch of lan ports wasn't super appealing.
I love these little guys, especially your cat :) I know tower PCs have better airflow and cheaper components, but I can't help but build SFF PCs. Cramming as much power in as small a case as possible is a fun challenge and looks much nicer to me.
The copyright on the chip is '08 (BTW, 2008 is when the first gen i-series came out) because the name is what is copyright, not the chip; so Core i3, Core i5, and Core i7 are the copyrights, and they didn't change those for a while. If they updated the copyright (such as adding an X, or i9), then the copyright date would change. That first generation had a pretty long tooth with the XXX numbers going through the Nahalem > Westmere designs and the Bloomfield > Lynnfield > Gulftown productions before we finally landed on the Sandy Bridge 2nd generation in 2011 and the introduction of the yearly Tick-Tock cycle.
Just wanted to chime in and say your audio sounds *excellent* in this video. I've seen your posts about struggling with it and I think you got it beautifully down in this video, your voice sounds incredibly rich and full
Something I found out is that Spirit Halloween uses (for their TV's) is that they use a "branded" TV with a thumb drive hooked up straight to the USB port on the TV I managed to score 3 TV's for free from someone "recycling" the TV's 2 18in and 1 72in ones all three had a USB drive and the video on there ❤ keep up the awesome content crd!!
I like the "off the cuff" format, and I'd be down for more stuff like this. One idea if that graphics card does get too toasty in there is just to take off that other slot cover to let more air get in.
Love this stuff! Just an aside. Those green connectors that are used for power on this thing are generally called "Phoenix" connectors. They are mostly used (in my experience, which is admittedly limited) for power connectors. Keep up the great vids!
Ah, I recognise the little guy you picked up at 0:45, it's a Fit-PC 3 or 4, from the early 2010s. I used the Fit-PC 2 when it came out around 2009 because we needed a really small industrial windows PC and it was one of the smallest in the world at the time. Unfortunately it was powered by an Intel Atom which made it almost unusably slow. I tried the Fit-PC 3 when it came out which was a fair bit bigger and slightly faster but still pretty painful to use.
Loved this upload. Totally had flashbacks when I saw those compact flash cards too, I haven't thought about those in years. Though perhaps, that's as it should be...
I love the fact that you're not the tiniest bit stressed and just doing what you like geeking out about stuff most people don't think is any cooler than a cardboard box lol good content, will be back for more😊
I'm immediately fascinated by this genre of machines. There's so many things in my line of broadcast work that are Dedicated Widgets that could be replaced by something like this, and it's wild that NOTHING like this has crossed my desk that's smaller than full-length 1RU.
Fun fact, some industrial PCs (larger than these) still contain ISA slots or conventional PCI, even with relatively new CPUs and chipsets 10:09 These cables are pretty common, as long as it's wired to the standard which I forget the name of. I have like 5 or 6 cards and machines with connectors like that which all use the exact same breakout cable 13:58 CF cards of decent speed were so expensive at one time that you could get multigigabyte hard drives in the exact same form factor that were drop in replacements for cheaper I work on deli scales and meat wrappers for a living, and until VERY recently, all of our machines were running Geodes with CF cards as boot devices. I did a video on one, the second most recent model, the HLX. Got one brand new in box for free! 16:28 The SIM slot was probably for a cellular radio that this wasn't optioned with. 26:32 Always great to see Senor Cardcage in the flesh
Hyped for this series, because I'm shopping for something like this. I've got a little foldaway desk in my study that'd hold a tiny PC and a 15" - 17" LCD monitor. I'll probably wind up with an off-lease Lenovo ThinkCenter Tiny of one vintage or another, but there's some really impressive newbuild stuff available out there too.
Sweet, covering Logic Supply (now known as ONLogic). I use one of their newer NUC style fanless computers to run my astrophotography telescope and cameras. Works great in freezing and fairly warm temperatures. The modern ones are much less wonky than this.
love this, it's fun, interesting, and you're really entertaining. I've probably gone through most of your videos by now and I've thoroughly enjoyed them all. Thanks ❤
@@Gatorade69 They are, especially the AMD ones. Absolutely insane how much power they have. We use them now for boardroom setups at work cause of their form factor.
Love seeing the supersonic TV - it had a cousin here in Australia with the “Vivo” brand, which I have many memories of selling new for anywhere between 79 - 99 AUD for a couple years from 2011 - 2013 when I worked in consumer electronics. Despite how concerningly light they were, I remember them being shockingly reliable!
I love industrial/purpose built PCs like this because they generally tend to be better built and more reliable than consumer PCs. I never used this specific brand/model but I've installed quite a few machines like this over the years, mostly in digital signage and interactive kiosk type settings. (for the interactive kiosks I paired them with a ruggedized touchscreen monitor) A lot of them are in rather harsh environments too. They're deployed as kiosks for boaters (both recreational and commercial) so that they can get updated marine weather info, so they're sitting out in full sunlight next to large bodies of corrosive salt water, near fuel vapors (a lot of them are set up near where boaters go to gas up) etc. I visit some of them every now and then whenever I'm able to, and most of them are still alive and kicking. They built these things well. I can honestly say that before today I have never heard of either CFast or CFExpress. And having a SATA based flash card medium is hilarious. I wonder if people will start making SATA to CFast adapters, like they do with CF to IDE adapters already... Nah, probably not. The machines I set up all booted off CF card and ran off a very customized/stripped down Linux. Also did you count how many serial ports the OS sees? I once had an old Thinkpad laptop that came with a built-in cellular modem, and that device showed up as a bog standard serial device that emulated an actual modem, which you could send AT commands to. Never did figure out how to use it tho. It's possible that the cellular modem component in your device is similar. Also I have a monitor almost exactly like yours, albeit mine is smaller (9 inch.) Super cheaply built, but it has ALL TEH INPUTS. Composite, VGA, and HDMI (which I can use with DVI devices with an adapter.) It is my go-to test/diagnostic monitor. Got it because I was sick and tired of unplugging my big monitor and lugging it over to whatever of my normally-headless machines is misbehaving itself and I need to do testing/diagnostics on. And now that I am starting to get back into vintage/retro computers, the composite inputs come in very handy for hooking up to those older machines so that I can test them.
35:40 yes the answer is yes. The mini PCI slot is for Wi-Fi or cellular and then there's pins that connect over to the SIM card slot. But alas we also have the standard where the Sim card is on the modem versus off the modem so sometimes you need another adapter dongle board. That way you can substitute your own band compatible region specific modem.
"Logic" is the predecessor brand to "OnLogic". Very much a "lil' guy" supplier for other companies that don't make computers, but need to fill the need described at the start of the video. As far as I know they don't make their own electronics, they've used AsRock Industrial boards in some of their other boards. No idea about this one, but they're usually all pretty well made.
43:37 these bleeps when (un-)plunging USB devices, even with different pitch for different USB mass storage keys: common on (older) SuperMicro Server boards. really helpful when troubleshooting without the display in sight in a rack.
![Little Guys: Episode 2 [Wyse 3040]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/LADsGBvB_ns/mqdefault.jpg)
![Little Guys: Episode 2 [Wyse 3040]](/img/tr.png)
Can't believe I didn't realize this, but thank you all for pointing out that PS/2, unlike USB, is _only_ usable for keyboards and mice, so if you shut off all your USBs for security (which you SHOULD on an industrial pc) it's still usable.
I realized that the stuff I said at the beginning about remotely managing Windows was lacking some context that not everyone would have, so let me clarify all that. I'm talking about remotely managing _a fleet of devices at completely uncontrolled customer sites,_ and that is a real can of worms.
You're shipping the customer a gadget that they plug into their internet connection, over which you have no control. They _do_ have a firewall, and it _is_ managed by an MSP who won't return your calls, and if they _do_ call back they won't be willing to give you a port forward, and even if they do _that,_ you won't be able to track the IP address on the customer's dynamic-IP internet connection, and even after all _that_ it won't matter because it's a mall store in the middle of nowhere that only has LTE, and the WISP blocks all inbound connections. Brick wall. And by this point you're on your fifteenth phone call trying to get this resolved, rendering the customer unprofitable for the next year due to the wages it cost to get this all done. Then you get it all working, and six weeks later the MSP wipes the firewall and it all starts over from scratch.
I did this for ten years, and I can assure you: Any fix you come up with won't stay fixed. What does keep working is Logmein.
Now, you _can_ write a package for a Linux machine that reaches out to some central server and polls it, and that also fixes this issue - and it turns out, yes, products like that are common! It turns out that a lot of digital sign companies use things like BrightSign, a linux-based (I'm told) suite that runs on dedicated little custom units, uses a central server for management, and has a VERY powerful design system. It's so cool that I've actually bought one already, and I can't wait for it to arrive to see what it can do. And it's not the only product of its type.
That said, several of the machines in this video came with Windows installed, booted up directly into slideshows, and did in fact have logmein or similar software on them, and this is something I've seen in the wild many times, so what I have to assume is that I'm just seeing a lot of devices from smaller or less organized companies. That would make sense too, because they've all been VERY simplistic - now that I've seen stuff like Brightsign I realize that "just runs a slideshow" is the bare minimum product.
This isn't exactly meant to be The Digital Sign Show With Gravis, so I'm not gonna harp on it too much more in later videos, but I will be showing off several dedicated signage devices in future eps as I find them. I already have two in the mail, so it's pretty much a certainty.
It gets better! Even if your neck of the woods has ISPs other than mobile carriers, unless you're lucky enough to actually have cable, you're gonna be stuck with satellite because in America there are still places that have stores but completely lack cable infrastructure of any kind! And satellite basically guarantees that no matter who you are, you are gonna be using a CGNAT so open ports are just not even remotely possible.
Right. Windows is seen as the "easy button". It's the thing everyone understands - or more to the point, can be talked through using. Linux is infinitely easier to manage, esp. remotely, but the people in front of it won't be any help doing anything to it. Yes, remote "phone home" systems are just as available for linux as windows, but _again_ when things go wrong, the people who can touch it will be of little to no help. (I've been there, too. Don't bother with "phone support", just drive over and fix it. It's usually faster.)
@@daemonspudguy oh I forgot about satellite, oh God, don't make me remember working with customers who had satellite, oh god
@@CathodeRayDude I live in a rural area so until I moved back into a settlement with cable in late 2022 I had to deal with satellite internet and being the nerd that I am it fucking sucked.
99% sure wireguard would work perfectly for this, though that's a fair bit newer than this machine.
Setting the power-supply to "AT" is industry-speak for "the computer should turn on, when I plug in the power lead, just like in the good old times".
Hah! That's pretty funny, and I guess I can see how it happened, once they'd established it back when that really was the distinction, it probably just stuck. I found this setting in every single machine I own in this sort of form factor, including one that has as a physical slide switch and another that has it as a jumper.
@@CathodeRayDudeit is probably beneficial in the type of environment they'd be used in. Imagine you have a power outage - when the power gets back on, you don't need to press any buttons, the machine just comes right on as it gets its sweet 19 volts.
@@in_sound_mind In industrial applications they normally just boot when you turn on the main power switch
The good old days of AT - your front-panel power switch carries full mains voltage and god help if you forget to unplug your PC before opening it up.
@@Longlius house burner 9000
Screw terminal power is fun! RIP to several industrial PCs destroyed at a past employer over the years when somebody wired up 120VAC (or in one notable case, 480VAC) directly into a screw terminal that wanted 24VDC. I can still hear the little *pop* of several hundred dollars going down the drain and another few days added to the project as we wait on a replacement. Good times!
Oh my GOD, that's incredible
I used to work in a lab with some instrumentation that was designed to work on 240 because they were European. Almost every time we had a pump or something serviced, they'd be switched to 120 while being serviced, then someone would plug them back into the original instrument and POP.
We had a shelf designated for replacement transformers because it happened so often.
Reminds me of the time a blew up an Atari 2600 because I didn't know any better than to take the power lead that was missing the plug and wire 240VAC straight in to the poor thing.
@@ax14pz107I've done years of IT support for lab environments and was often greeted in the morning by the smell of magic smoke for exactly this reason. We started putting red zip ties around the end of plugs that were running 240 V since there is still a TON of lab equipment floating around out there without auto-switching or even full-range power supplies. Anyway that's the story of how I got to source an AT power supply last year to repair a mission-critical 486.
@@JohnVance I can't imagine having to do actual IT support for labs. So much janky software and bizarre configurations to get stuff to work. For one brand of instrumentation, the devs decided to use a random public IP address as the default management address. Just... Why?
Oh, wow! Something I know about!
I'm a digital signage administrator, so I can confirm/elaborate on some of the stuff you mentioned at the beginning of this video:
You're broadly correct that those little SD card media players aren't popular because somebody needs to swap the content manually. For one-and-done stuff, though, I've used those before, and I usually call them "JPEG to HDMI converters". They're great as a fallback input; if your primary device stops outputting video, commercial-grade displays can typically detect that and fall back to a secondary input, which is more often than not a device just like this one, sitting there and outputting a 1920x1080 JPEG of the company logo 24/7/365.
In general, though, as you observed, most digital signage installations utilize Windows-based content players for actual playback. In my experience, this is because Windows is the easiest platform to develop for, and it has the best video playback/graphics acceleration capabilities. I know that some of the stuff I work with is HEAVILY reliant on 3D acceleration, which generally sucks to do on Linux, especially any content that uses interactive elements. A surprising amount of commercial stuff is actually built in game engines like Unity or Unreal and embedded into the signage program; if you've ever been to a place where you were shown a 3D wayfinding map that you could pan and zoom through, it's probably running in Unity. Further than that, I've also seen my fair share of Xbox Kinects pulling double- and triple-duty as no-contact control devices for interactive signs: the user's silhouette is mapped into the software and uses the same fist and open-hand detection from early Xbox games to activate menu options. Those systems got big during COVID, and Kinects are infamously difficult to use as an NUI input device on anything but Windows.
A lot of the time, you'll see content players (and, actually, the screens that they connect to) with two network jacks because they have an integrated miniswitch for daisy-chaining hardware. If you've only got one Ethernet drop at your signage location, but you've got to connect your player, your display, and occasionally an occupancy/motion sensor to the network, it's much more efficient and space-saving to just link them to each other rather than cramming a 5-port miniswitch into the ridiculously tiny amount of clearance between the back of the display and the wall. You'd want all these things networked for the same reason: remote management. I can view, update, and control every single digital sign I manage from anywhere in the world, and can push new content to a sign (and expect it to be live) in around fifteen seconds.
That's also where that crazy four-port RJ45 serial box comes in. I'd hazard a guess that a device like that was intended for a low-spec video wall or multi-panel array. You'd connect each of the commercial display panels to the box (video wall panels being far, far less featured than most TVs or displays), and it would be able to communicate with the screens over serial to adjust settings like color calibration, image offset, and power to the panels for things like scheduled on/off times. That VGA port, while it might seem puny, would likely be fed through a four-port multiplexer, which would split the image into four quadrants, for display on four panels in a grid arrangement (if that capability isn't already built into the panels themselves, which, most of the time, it is). Or, alternatively, it could be a multi-head controller, where the same content is duplicated across a variety of panels, like in a waiting room or a lobby.
Thank you so much for all of this info. "JPEG to HDMI converter" slayed me, but the rest of this is just fascinating. Kinects?? _Kinects???_ Do these still exist, can I find one, can you give me pointers on how to get one to make a video, I am _losing it_ over here!
Interesting bit about the mini switch! I knew VoIP phones did that, the two ports are not actually independent interfaces but just a two-port switch specifically so you can daisy chain your PC. All the devices I own have independent NICs, so I wasn't thinking about it in those terms, but tbh I thought it over and I *don't* think any of them are actually DSCs on reflection.
I'll do some digging when I shoot the video about the guy with the four ports and see if I can confirm that - I know there's a lot of RS232 going on in the world of commercial displays, and I totally get what you're talking about because I was _vaguely_ aware of devices like that - very similar to the matrox triplehead2go that actually got sold to the public.
I'm also curious if you've had much experience with displays using OPS modules, apparently those are a thing in digital signage? I just learned about their existence, it seems like a brilliant idea but it also feels like something where "universal standard" is more of a "well, universal within a brand..." kind of thing. Would love to know more if you know more! Also if you know where I can get one cheap for a video, haha.
@@CathodeRayDude I used to work on sorting machines for USPS/FedEx/UPS, and it was super common to see the two-port switch (actually a three-port switch -- one of the ports is internal to the device) in that kind of use-case. Sorters tend to have long, skinny components (conveyors, cross-belt trains, etc), so you end up with a big controller on one end and then a daisy chain of potentially dozens individual controllers. The protocols can be regular TCP/UDP over IP, but often they're weird things like Profinet and EtherNet/IP (note that IP here stands for Industrial Protocol, not Internet Protocol).
Kinects are still widely available used for very cheap and the SDK for windows still works. They're still used by many for body tracking in VR for example. I recommend the first gen ones for the Xbox 360 rather than the ones made for the Xbox One, specifically they made Kinect for PC kits with the adapter required to connect it to a PC. They also later made the Azure Kinect but I don't think that got beyond a developer kit.
Plus, if my time working split between a data centre and IT support is anything to go by, the cheap little boxes will be about as reliable in full service as a chocolate teapot, and the industrial computers will fair much better whilst also having actual support.
Awesome video!
At my (small) college, they installed some new digital signage to hang in our cafeteria. They bought brand new 75" Google Smart TVs with ATSC 3.0 tuners built in for this purpose.. and a Lil Guy is plugged in to show a JPEG of the college logo, then the current time and temperature. Maybe there's bigger plans for the future, but it just cracks me up.
I'm happy you are doing this series - I see a handful of these boxes come up and they've always piqued my curiosity.
At my university, most departments used Pi's for digital signage but engineering still used some incredibly overpriced "lil guy" system that came with its own software. When some of the older units broke down, we bought new ones from the same company and they actually came with Android -- somehow an even worse choice of OS than Windows (Jesus Christ, just use an immutable Linux image).
I think this happened because engineering were actually the first to deploy digital signage, and then they forever stuck with their initial solution.
Industrial engineer/IT dude here, mostly on the plant control level. (Think multiple rack PLCs and everything around them.) To me, one of the key benefits of industrial PCs is - if you get good qualiy ones, like from Siemens or such - they're robust as hell, actually tested to operate in their environment specs, and the smaller ones snap neatly onto DIN rails you'll have in your cabinets anyways. 24V DC is also the common power used in such systems across the board - anything that doesn't need some real oomph will take like 10-30V no worries.
There are probably two reasons for VGA and PS2 (and serial) still being a thing:
1) Industry equipment is built and meant to last 10, 15y+, so in order to be able to swap some unit out if it fails without redoing everything around it, you stick to the old stuff.
2) They just work; especially even despite a lot of EM noise! That's also why 10/100MBit is often used for field bus application. Use it over Cat 6e, and you've got a pretty damn robust transmission, even within a plant full of noisy and powerful frequency converters and such.
Realiability and compatibility are THE cost factors in industrial application, and as such govern how these PCs are built and what gets used. "It's old" often times can be very much a positive thing here. It's tried and tested, and often more stable. There are even a few embedded systems using tiny 386 or 468 CPUs (but usually not built out to be usable as an actual PC and with custom firmware.)
I am also willing to bet they have a bunch of custom industrial keyboards with 50 extra keys on them that cost as much if not more than the PCs they are connected to. So they just re-use them over and over.
i worked at a taxi company that used alpha pagers ,in 2015 they were still using w3 \ dos to send to those pagers ,,it had never broke ,so it never got replaced,,he blew cand air in to it but thats it
I do like your graphic overlays - fonts, colours, the fact that you scroll Patreons slow enough that they can be read, use of a wall as a green screen etc. etc.. They give the channel a consisent, stylish let laidback feel suiting the quirky nature of what you cover and differentiate it from others in the retro-tech space. I'm sure you're like 'check, check' but thought I'd mention it.
thank you, I really appreciate that! it's the sort of thing I do that doesn't get many comments so I'm never sure if people notice it or not. particularly the patron credits - a lot of people run them so fast that they're illegible, and i always wonder what the point is. like, if patrons want to be seen in credits, then they want to be SEEN, not just *technically* be there, if you pause at the right moment. on channels where they don't run the names too fast, I often recognize people I know! that's kinda the point, I'd think.
i think a lot of people probably don't realize that my stock spiel at the end of every video, the call to subscribe etc, would be much shorter if I wasn't deliberately slowing it down to leave time to scroll the credits. like, these people are my *entire* living - if the only thing I can get myself to deliver reliably is a name on the screen, I'm for damn sure gonna make sure it's not an afterthought!
@@CathodeRayDudei actually appreciate the fact that you slow them down, i like reading every single name! (I’m an odd person lol)
The homestar runner energy on the "lets ask the internet" jingle oh my god
every time I compose something people say it has h*r energy and it's such a huge compliment
@@CathodeRayDude It's SUCH a compliment. I really appreciate all the little homestar runner references and vibes you slip into your stuff because that played a big part in my childhood despite a lot of other people my very age not knowing what Homestar Runner is (tragic I know)
it's also nearly the cardiacs chimes :D
i want to see more "let's ask the internet" jingles! it's so refreshing!
im obsessed with the idea of taking industrial PCs out of their natural habitat and using them for frivolous purposes
They can take a punch that's for sure
I have 40 of these devices, nobody is interested in them, couldn;t sell them , couldn;t give them away . I wish there were more people like you
(ok they more than 10 years old by now, so I doubt they would be still useful, but i was trying to sell them like 5 years ago)
I have one of those little 1L guys on my desk right now as a linux development machine. It has an i7 6700T and 16GB of sodimm DDR4 inside. Plenty of power for running a couple of docker containers at a time while I work on something. It also used to be my NAS but I ended up needing more than the single 2.5" drive bay over time.
Yess I use one to run Home Assistant at home! It's low power, passively cooled and thus completely quiet. And it has enough USB ports exposed for zigbee, etc; and a 2nd NIC so I can put my networked smart home stuff in a physical 2nd network without internet.
Please don't do this while they are still at work though. We might need said industries to keep doin' what they are doin' ;)
Yay for Soba, let her stay on set! She needs to Supurrvise you lol
she is so in the waaaaay
@@CathodeRayDude meow
She'd probably try to lick the forbidden thermal juice
@@CathodeRayDude Cat Scan required on all kit ,shes your safety officer.
@@CathodeRayDude No, you're in HER way
I like this format. Coming at it from a position of "let's learn about this together" is sometimes more fun to watch than a heavily researched piece. Looking forward to seeing more little guys!
You're exactly right about the mPCIe slot being necessary for the cellular radio/SIM card slot to work. This one looks like it is specifically designed to take a cellular radio card, as those tend to be longer than the standard WiFi cards in my experience.
Also, I always thought that moisture from the thermal pads was something like Cosmoline or something to prevent corrosion and the like. You learn something every day.
I've since learned that there are dedicated pins for the sim interface! I had no idea!
Well, you beat me to that explanation @just_some_bird! I can honestly say that I don’t miss working on the ToughBooks that used them.
Thank you for giving me the image of a Russian warehouse full of old Pentiums just SOAKED in Cosmoline. And ads for Finnish- and Czech-made Pentiums that are infinitely better.
@@UENShanixWait so does that make AMD NATO standard?
@@CathodeRayDude Lots of those little interfaces have built-in bodges that make them convenient, but difficult to keep straight or even understand in the first place, if you don't happen to cross paths with them often.
At this point, if someone told me that a USB C port also has a secret NES Control Pad mode, I would have to believe it, because my intuition can no longer be trusted to say that couldn't be true.
Some feedback which you may or may not find interesting if you didnt know already...
1. Power supply permitting voltages between 10 and 26 has multiple advantages, including the ability to be used in a 12 or 24 volt vehicle, for example as a security DVR, or inventory machine etc. Probably just as likely however are "always on" systems such as intruder alarm systems which have 12v standby batteries, and typically run on 12 volts, so these machines can be used as an interface to the outside world, a protocol translator, a software front end server, a web server for mobile app hosting, or an outboard processor of some kind. Being able to run natively on 12v mean much more efficient running in an AC failure situation than would be possible with a conventional UPS, and in many cases, the need to monitor the power supply's status needs to be monitored and reported via the security system.
2. The serial port which contains 4 ports in one socket is something ive seen used in a lot of POS systems. In older days, these systems were often barely modified PCs, except for this funky serial port. Many even supply a 12v and 0v rail on the same port in order to drive things like barcode scanner, serial printer, cashier facing dot matrix, customer facing dot matrix.
3. The PS2 socket is also something commonly used in EPOS systems where some shops have paid for custom keyboards which contain just their own special keys, for example Argos in the UK, and previously Woolworths in the UK did this for certain.
4. VGA also points towards EPOS use, as again, special tiny monitors, even some small colour CRT screens are still actively used in shops. But of course you can always use vga and convert it to other protocols with massive loss of quality etc.
5. Of course expansion slots can be used for tons of things, but again, i know that many older EPOS solutions still rely on screens which have VGA input and have a custom expansion card for touchscreen input.
Just my thoughts. Take them or leave them!
I work for a (rather small) electronics store chain that actually uses Raspberry PIs for the TV displays, showing a slideshow of pictures and videos. They just run off ordinary MicroSD cards with a custom slimmed and locked down version of Raspberry PI OS. The software that runs on boot just cycles through pictures and videos in a specific folder on the SD card, using hardware acceleration for smooth playback. The PIs are always plugged into network, so that an internal web application can add or delete files on the PI in groups via a simple drag and drop interface.
And whenever one bugs out or the SD card kicks the bucket (which surprisingly doesn't happen that often) they are simply swapped out and sent back to the main IT department for re-flashing and reconfiguration. $35 + $5 for the hardware and barely any work hours for maintenance or upkeep of the system. It's great.
@@RonJohn63 That's true, the sales staff have at minimum some basic understanding of computers. Though I believe with some optimizations (like more reliable storage, remote flashing and perhaps printed visual guides on how to swap them when needed) that system could be adapted to non tech savvy environments
I want that 13" TV. I have zero use for it but I want it anyway.
This particular Lil Guy would probably be a great choice for driving a CNC in a home shop. Even with that screen, on a lil VESA arm. The lack of fan-based cooling would be a huge plus in an environment like that; I used to do IT for a gov't agency with a few workshops and they put perfectly ordinary desktop PCs in the shops. Those had nasty, brutish and short lives before dying of being completely caked with everything you could imagine. Longest-lived one I saw was ancient and decrepit at about a year old and was at least 50% gunk, by weight, when I pulled it out and swapped in a super cheap book PC (which probably also died shortly thereafter, but at least it was cheap).
> I have zero use for it but I want it anyway.
Isn't this for what we all live for?
I have worked a lot with this company in the last 5 years. They used to be called Logic Supply but rebranded as OnLogic in 2019. I am about halfway through deploying almost 200 of their modern Karbon k800 series machines for my work. (Railroad Industry)
They definitely design their motherboards in-house, and the modern ones do have branding on the boards themselves. The company has clearly learned a lot since building the machine in this video. They have made a lot of improvements to the board layout and cooling solutions, but it is cool to see where they came from, and I can definitely see some of that DNA in their modern machines.
Separately, most of the computers on-board our locomotives boot off of CFast and you can just open a cover on the front to swap them out, I love this because if we need to replace the computer a lot of the times a mechanic can just swap the old CFast card in and not have to reconfigure the new computer.
The little ditty that you play every time you ask the internet something is now living in my head rent free
23:48 - I heard somewhere, that this copyright date relates to architecture creation date. Therefore for instance Q9550 that was released in 2008 has " '06 " written on IHS. 1gen of Core i CPU's was created in 2008 so that would match.
Huh! That makes sense I guess!
@@CathodeRayDudeYeah. What's fun about that one is that you can get external enclosures for cellular modems, tear apart the OEM specific Windows drivers, and just install the important bits (or if that's too complicated, patch out the check for specific hardware and install the whole thing.).
So, if your carrier doesn't block tablets or hotspots to connect without paying extra, you can use unlimited data without paying exorbitant limited hotspot fees.
i7-965 surprisingly has '08 which is the actual release year, i7-870 also has '08 and was released in 2009, i7-980X has '09 and was released in 2010, 2600K has '09 and was released in 2011, 3770K has '10 and was released in 2012, 4770K and 4790K have '11 and were released in 2013 and 2014, 5960X has '12 and was released in 2014. Broadwell, Skylake and newer don't have the copyright date on the CPU anymore
"Oil bleeding phenomenon" is one of the most horrific phrases I've ever heard.
Robola
I've seen it a few times open up one of these 'little guys' and thought who spilled oil on this and how.
I hear that was a problem with one of those low-fat frying alternatives, too.
Me when i pick the funny perk in a Holy Mountain
Silver lining: of all the potential phenomena that could be described by “oil bleeding phenomenon”, this is about the most benign I can think of.
6:29 oh yes! A free Windows 7 Pro license! Immediately screenshoted
considering microsoft keeps giving out free upgrades id say it's a free windows 11 pro license too
I still use windows loader to crack 7 then install 11 straight over the top of it for a free digital license. Microsoft are so generous.
@@talibong9518Microsoft makes all their cash off enterprise licensing anyway, it basically subsidizes their consumer Windows business.
@@dee_fox Microsoft stopped that in October. I believe there are workarounds but it's not automatic like it used to be for the past 8 years.
@@talibong9518Cracked Windows? I guess these days it's cheaper and easier to just get a legit license off a pile of old laptops in the dumpster.
well done! experiencing a device "live" like this is a great way of creating a story - most people would do this much worse (in a "oh wow i think it kinda is like this maybe not lol" way) but your experience makes this unique and a great addition to your channel.
Thank you so much, I should be honest, I had already taken one run at this before because I found that discovering everything on the fly is not interesting to watch, I have tried it many times and it's just crap, but if I identify most of the information ahead of time, the critical stuff like the CPU type and the major parts and everything, then leave a few of the details to find out on the fly, the result is both a journey and coherent enough to not be a total mess of ums and maybes. It's a balancing act, and I'm really glad you like the result, I'm hoping I can maintain it for the future
You have a unique ability to make videos that are designed to showcase topics visually, yet are extremely “listenable” - easy to follow and learn from with just the audio.
Some combination of your natural voice qualities and the words you choose come together really well to make that possible.
Great video!
I really like the idea of more off-the-cuff videos like this. Hi Soba!!
Agreed
50:56 Believe me, we can tell - part of what kept me coming back for every video is the level of quality and effort put into your channel!
thing is, most thermal conductive materials are crystalline solids (eg. diamond is the best). but crushing diamond against your chips doesn't work so they grind it up real fine but the powder would just fall out so they add binders. For thermal pads, you need somehting that is thermally very inert, doesn't oxidize easily; and silicones are perfect for this. But silicones are usually liquid, so they make the silicone so it has little reactive bits on it ('vinyl groups') that can terminally stick to each other and hey presto, you have your highly thermally conductive composite ^^
So is this thing a mixture, a foam, a solution, an alloy, or a gigantic polymer molecuie?
@@jxh02the closest material description I can think of is a very thick grease.
@@jxh02 foams are great thermal insulators because gasses don't conduct heat.
Your silicone is like the dough, and your thermally conductive filler is like the raisins or chocolate chips or whatever :) except it's more chip then cookie and there's no baking powder.
@@jxh02 giant molecule - yes that is quite correct
Alloys - typically we speak of alloys when talking about a relatively homogeneous mix of dissimilar metals or (sometimes) polymers. That's not what's happening here.
As someone who worked retail for years, we didn't even press a button on any of the computers. Everything from basic troubleshooting to power cycling was done with an IT person on the phone. Signage and POS hardware is almost always hidden behind a panel that nobody knew how to open.
A new series of completely obscure tech, and we're starting with a 50 minutes video? Holy molly, count me in
I love smol pc's to an irrational degree I cannot describe for reasons I can likewise not describe
"Forbidden thermal juice." Yes please
9:45 the weird thing about US highways is how you don't have fuel stations or other services alongside the highway itself, you have plain rest stops but they're just that. you actually need to get out at an exit to get fuel or a coffee, and that kinda explains why you need the giant signs, and we don't
There are a few places that integrate rest stops with gas stations. I want to say places in Illinois or West Virginia did that but it's been a long time since I drove around there.
@@ax14pz107 I live in the NE US and it's more common than not to have fuel, convenience stores, and half the time fast food places at the actual rest stop, but signage leading to those miles passed the exit exists as well
Also, capitalism. If BP puts a huge sign, and Shell doesn't...
The whole point of the interstate system is to not have connections on the roads themselves. Every connection adds more traffic.
Soba is adorable!
For the SIM port, what you said is exactly how it works on Thinkpads. You get the slot and necessary surface mount components, but you'd have to get the WWAN card as an option. At least that works like that on my T420.
And more often than not, the bios will be modified to accept only the one WWAN modem the laptop vendor happens to sell at an inflated price.
And Dells and HP’s. Pretty much any laptop with a WWAN card works this way. Those WWAN ports can also be mSATA ports for a mSATA SSD.
@@andreasu.3546Surprisingly, Lenovo did it weirdly -- the wifi card on the T420 is bios locked, but the WWAN slot was not.
This channel makes me so seeking my dreamjob at the electronic waste reception and also never approaching it again. Keep it coming!
So people know: The old comments that are older than the video are due to this being released early to patreons as a unlisted video.
when the video is made public, the published date is reset, but the comments made when it was unlisted keep their original times
I don't believe you. I know the real reason why... They are time travelers ! You're not going to gaslight me !
@@Gatorade69 That's me, I'm a time traveller.
@@bennyfactor I knew it !
Every... single... video... "This was just posted 1 day ago, but this comment is a week old?" I'm sure there's one here, even despite the PSA.
You are right on the money with the sim card slot talking to the minipci-e slot. There are some 'extra pins' in minipci-e for "application specific" purposes. In theory, this is supposed to make up for not having anywhere for you to put ports, so in theory you could have a NIC that connects off to an RJ45 on the back with one of these, or whatever. In practice, it has to be something the board manufacturer is aware of, so really only two uses emerged: SIM cards for cellular radios (as far as I know there isn't even actually a standard for this, it's just something the radio manufacturers and Little Guy manufacturers just did organically), and mSATA, where you just run those pins off to a port on your SATA controller because nvme hasn't been invented yet. Every other use basically fell into the abyss of 'well, if the motherboard needs a port for it, we the motherboard may as well include the circuitry to do it, and to hell with accessory boards'.
(Note, strictly speaking, minipci-e is *not* the same as msata and you are *hella* not supposed to cros-contaminate the cards, but some little guy manufacturers managed to make dual mode slots because of course they did)
@@EyeMWing Little guy manufacturers? Literally every mSATA slot I've seen on a motherboard also works as a regular mPCIe slot. Admittedly I only know this is the case on Lenovo and Intel but I'm sure this is everywhere. Actually the slot on my craptop might be mSATA only, I don't remember.
@@eDoc2020Dell does it too on many of their laptops of the time, with HP’s though it’s more hit or miss afaik.
@@eDoc2020 Possible. I’ve definitely seen single purpose msata slots (in Little Guys) but the more limited real estate in laptops would make dual purpose make even more sense
I dont know why. But every time one of your videos comes across my feed, I get excited and just sit in awe at how much information you know about certain devices that we don't usually know about. Thanks man. You make the days easier.
The thermal pads have an unexpected benefit of being a volatile corrosion inhibitor inside an enclosed case like that. That oil coats everything over time. The same tech, although different formulations, are used in everything from transporting and storing metal to gun safes
Love your thoroughly-produced content but I love your improv, off-the-cuff style too. If it means more content for less work from you, consider this my vote in favour of this being a good addition to your repertoire.
Not least of all because we get to see cat sometimes too. :3
oh and trust me you will be seeing cat. she gives me no peace, haha
From my experience at an industrial motor company, it is really common to not only have the pin out for the power supply using those boxy connectors (really cheap and easy to put together); but also for any DB connectors like the DB44 to have a weird pin out that requires a custom cable job.
These industrial machines can also be used as smart motor controllers, from what I remember of CANBus, RJ45 Serial, and RS232 serial; but I had never seen them in use outside of a test bench.
Can't wait for the Lil Brudder pc, heart of a champion! He'll be a quarter back some day
More of a sixteenthback, really
I love the diversity in content. The names for all the sub shows are really fitting
The "Let's ask the internet" ditty is gonna be on loop in my brain until the end of time :)
Logic Supply is now known as OnLogic, it's a US company that started out selling Mini-ITX Car PCs of all things and gradually moved into industrial and digital signage and business services. They'll sell you a thousand of these with a custom OS load, branding and documentation. The motherboard is probably custom for them by a Taiwanese OEM.
Motherboard was probably made by Foxconn or Pegatron. (Or some other company)
Generally, the mPCIe slot has dedicated pins for the SIM slot, and the LTE card actually communicates via the USB pins in the mPCIe slot, there's also usually some GPIO pins there too to control the LTE radio "physically". With how many other SATA and PCIe ports are being used on the board, it's likely the mPCIe slot isn't even wired for PCIe, just like the mPCIe ports in most laptops. It may/may not have SATA wired for mSATA, though with the Cfast 2.0 port as well as 2x normal SATA ports it likely isn't left with any free ports on the CPU for it.
Regarding taking out and replacing that bottom pcie bracket screw, you're probably meant to use a 90° screwdriver. They're not used for much but when you need one there are a lifesaver so I always keep one in my tool pack
Loved this and cannot wait to see more of this series! It's a little bit like a next-gen version of the workbench vids, especially thanks to Soba!
Love the Tunic sticker on the little Monitor :3
Love the little "consult the internet" jingle, haha.
Five seconds before Soba appeared, my cat came meowing loudly into my home office, and demanded lap time. Two seconds after getting on my lap "hold on, I have a cat yelling at me."
MY CAT KNEW!
@CathodeRayDude I can confirm that you are able to put an LTE card in a PCIe slot and have it talk to a SIM slot on the mainboard or another sub-board. I used to work in the repair department of a major laptop vendor and that's exactly how all of ours worked. As for whether or not that's how this unit works, I couldn't say.
As a man of a whopping 5'3", I had to click on the video instantly. Yay for the lil guys. :3
I feel like your content brings me back to the same computer fascination I had as a child. It's like a cozy blanket for me. Thanks for what you do. 😊
Fun series idea! WRT weird little guys, 15 or so years ago I remember OpenBSD recommending a weird little guy manufacturer for hardware firewalls etc - Soekris. It looks like some of their machines go for about 25-60 on eBay. Always wanted one but by the time I had the cash/need for such a thing, uh, a little geode with a bunch of lan ports wasn't super appealing.
oh yeah soekris was a name for *so* long, I think they did a lot of rebrands for other network appliances.
Gosh, yeah, I always drooled over those Soekris boards.
Buy one anyway, throw caution to the wind.
babe wake up, new crd series just dropped
im gonna like this
I love these little guys, especially your cat :)
I know tower PCs have better airflow and cheaper components, but I can't help but build SFF PCs. Cramming as much power in as small a case as possible is a fun challenge and looks much nicer to me.
The copyright on the chip is '08 (BTW, 2008 is when the first gen i-series came out) because the name is what is copyright, not the chip; so Core i3, Core i5, and Core i7 are the copyrights, and they didn't change those for a while. If they updated the copyright (such as adding an X, or i9), then the copyright date would change.
That first generation had a pretty long tooth with the XXX numbers going through the Nahalem > Westmere designs and the Bloomfield > Lynnfield > Gulftown productions before we finally landed on the Sandy Bridge 2nd generation in 2011 and the introduction of the yearly Tick-Tock cycle.
Just wanted to chime in and say your audio sounds *excellent* in this video. I've seen your posts about struggling with it and I think you got it beautifully down in this video, your voice sounds incredibly rich and full
Excited about this series, dude. Love me some little guys.
I'm in for all this. Finding new uses for old tech is becoming my thing.
So far, any topic, any format you do is just really enjoyable, educational and entertaining so please do more!
Something I found out is that Spirit Halloween uses (for their TV's) is that they use a "branded" TV with a thumb drive hooked up straight to the USB port on the TV I managed to score 3 TV's for free from someone "recycling" the TV's 2 18in and 1 72in ones all three had a USB drive and the video on there ❤ keep up the awesome content crd!!
Looking forward to this series, been about my entire life oblivious to this class of non-NUC-but-not-ITX computers.
I just gotta say that the sticker on that little monitor is cute.
These episodes are the perfect treadmill partner. 1 hour to forget the world, make some exercises and nerd about tech
I super like looking at these machines. Thank you for covering them.
I like the "off the cuff" format, and I'd be down for more stuff like this.
One idea if that graphics card does get too toasty in there is just to take off that other slot cover to let more air get in.
28:40 maybe a kinda heat insulation? 45:11 maybe for the mini-pci slot when u use storage instead wireless module ... love your videos
Love this stuff! Just an aside. Those green connectors that are used for power on this thing are generally called "Phoenix" connectors. They are mostly used (in my experience, which is admittedly limited) for power connectors. Keep up the great vids!
Holy shit, I hit the jackpot. UA-cam notified me of an upload from you for the first time
This was absolutely great! I look forward to more of these! Your normal videos are awesome, but I really enjoyed this style also!
this will be the best hour of my day
Ah, I recognise the little guy you picked up at 0:45, it's a Fit-PC 3 or 4, from the early 2010s. I used the Fit-PC 2 when it came out around 2009 because we needed a really small industrial windows PC and it was one of the smallest in the world at the time. Unfortunately it was powered by an Intel Atom which made it almost unusably slow. I tried the Fit-PC 3 when it came out which was a fair bit bigger and slightly faster but still pretty painful to use.
We need more of this. A ton more of this. Perfect production.
You were right and the SIM slot would be wired directly into the WWAN mini PCIe slot so the modem can directly talk to it
its crazy how many different things chips do and the amount of them is just crazy ! i love Tech
Loved this upload. Totally had flashbacks when I saw those compact flash cards too, I haven't thought about those in years. Though perhaps, that's as it should be...
I love the fact that you're not the tiniest bit stressed and just doing what you like geeking out about stuff most people don't think is any cooler than a cardboard box lol
good content, will be back for more😊
Babe wake up, new Cathode Ray Dude series just dropped
I have almost no idea what half of the things you're talking about are but damn you make this interesting!! Well done buddy
I'm immediately fascinated by this genre of machines. There's so many things in my line of broadcast work that are Dedicated Widgets that could be replaced by something like this, and it's wild that NOTHING like this has crossed my desk that's smaller than full-length 1RU.
Fun fact, some industrial PCs (larger than these) still contain ISA slots or conventional PCI, even with relatively new CPUs and chipsets
10:09 These cables are pretty common, as long as it's wired to the standard which I forget the name of. I have like 5 or 6 cards and machines with connectors like that which all use the exact same breakout cable
13:58 CF cards of decent speed were so expensive at one time that you could get multigigabyte hard drives in the exact same form factor that were drop in replacements for cheaper
I work on deli scales and meat wrappers for a living, and until VERY recently, all of our machines were running Geodes with CF cards as boot devices. I did a video on one, the second most recent model, the HLX. Got one brand new in box for free!
16:28 The SIM slot was probably for a cellular radio that this wasn't optioned with.
26:32 Always great to see Senor Cardcage in the flesh
Thank you for making high quality, inter personal videos for us all.
I enjoyed the video and it was made even better with the addition of Soba. What a sweet kitty!
Hyped for this series, because I'm shopping for something like this. I've got a little foldaway desk in my study that'd hold a tiny PC and a 15" - 17" LCD monitor. I'll probably wind up with an off-lease Lenovo ThinkCenter Tiny of one vintage or another, but there's some really impressive newbuild stuff available out there too.
yeah defo need this series to continue. damn didn't know we could connect 2 serial ports the way you did. looking forward for more
Sweet, covering Logic Supply (now known as ONLogic). I use one of their newer NUC style fanless computers to run my astrophotography telescope and cameras. Works great in freezing and fairly warm temperatures. The modern ones are much less wonky than this.
love this, it's fun, interesting, and you're really entertaining. I've probably gone through most of your videos by now and I've thoroughly enjoyed them all. Thanks ❤
5:34 CRD: saying things about the the about which there is nothing to say.
That is why this channel is ace.
Oh CRD, you're spoiling us with thus content
I was really curious about the thermals, really interesting device. Also PET THE DAMN CAT
I PET HER AT LENGTH BUT SHE GOT IN THE CAMERA SO IT WASN'T VISIBLE i will correct this in the future
Love these little systems. Recently found these little powerhouse computers such as the Beelink SER5 systems.
Some of those Beelink/Minisforum computers are incredibly powerful for how small they are.
@@Gatorade69 They are, especially the AMD ones. Absolutely insane how much power they have. We use them now for boardroom setups at work cause of their form factor.
Love seeing the supersonic TV - it had a cousin here in Australia with the “Vivo” brand, which I have many memories of selling new for anywhere between 79 - 99 AUD for a couple years from 2011 - 2013 when I worked in consumer electronics. Despite how concerningly light they were, I remember them being shockingly reliable!
I love industrial/purpose built PCs like this because they generally tend to be better built and more reliable than consumer PCs. I never used this specific brand/model but I've installed quite a few machines like this over the years, mostly in digital signage and interactive kiosk type settings. (for the interactive kiosks I paired them with a ruggedized touchscreen monitor) A lot of them are in rather harsh environments too. They're deployed as kiosks for boaters (both recreational and commercial) so that they can get updated marine weather info, so they're sitting out in full sunlight next to large bodies of corrosive salt water, near fuel vapors (a lot of them are set up near where boaters go to gas up) etc. I visit some of them every now and then whenever I'm able to, and most of them are still alive and kicking. They built these things well.
I can honestly say that before today I have never heard of either CFast or CFExpress. And having a SATA based flash card medium is hilarious. I wonder if people will start making SATA to CFast adapters, like they do with CF to IDE adapters already... Nah, probably not. The machines I set up all booted off CF card and ran off a very customized/stripped down Linux.
Also did you count how many serial ports the OS sees? I once had an old Thinkpad laptop that came with a built-in cellular modem, and that device showed up as a bog standard serial device that emulated an actual modem, which you could send AT commands to. Never did figure out how to use it tho. It's possible that the cellular modem component in your device is similar.
Also I have a monitor almost exactly like yours, albeit mine is smaller (9 inch.) Super cheaply built, but it has ALL TEH INPUTS. Composite, VGA, and HDMI (which I can use with DVI devices with an adapter.) It is my go-to test/diagnostic monitor. Got it because I was sick and tired of unplugging my big monitor and lugging it over to whatever of my normally-headless machines is misbehaving itself and I need to do testing/diagnostics on. And now that I am starting to get back into vintage/retro computers, the composite inputs come in very handy for hooking up to those older machines so that I can test them.
This was a lot of fun! I love the scripted, studio shot videos but I'd love to see more of this too!
35:40 yes the answer is yes. The mini PCI slot is for Wi-Fi or cellular and then there's pins that connect over to the SIM card slot. But alas we also have the standard where the Sim card is on the modem versus off the modem so sometimes you need another adapter dongle board. That way you can substitute your own band compatible region specific modem.
"Logic" is the predecessor brand to "OnLogic". Very much a "lil' guy" supplier for other companies that don't make computers, but need to fill the need described at the start of the video. As far as I know they don't make their own electronics, they've used AsRock Industrial boards in some of their other boards. No idea about this one, but they're usually all pretty well made.
Very cool industrial PC. Thanks for sharing this!
What a delightful episode. Thanks for all you do :)
43:37 these bleeps when (un-)plunging USB devices, even with different pitch for different USB mass storage keys: common on (older) SuperMicro Server boards. really helpful when troubleshooting without the display in sight in a rack.
Love this video, never seen a computer leaking juice before and what a great tunic sticker on the monitor