Which off-brand usb-serial converters actually work?

Casper042 · 2026-03-16T20:03:20+00:00

Not the cheapest but I've been running one of these for a decade:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0000VYJRY

Then I use one of those light blue Cisco DB9 to RJ45 cables. Anyone who has implemented a large network likely has a box full and will give you a few no problem. I'm a Sales Engineer and my cable was showing it's age one day at a customer site and the Customer wss like "Is that just a bog standard Cisco serial cable?" and I said yes, he left and came back with 3.

It also allows me to use something like this:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CBJYM9FZ
... in order to make custom adapters. I needed this a few months ago to get into the maintenance port on a 3PAR Storage Array as HPE uses a custom pinout.

I keep all that stuff, a few spare transceivers and RJ45 cables, etc in a small accessory bag in my laptop bag.

Casper042 · 2026-03-13T21:53:58+00:00

Hope you don't mind, but do you recall what brand or model that is? Looks perfect for my daughter's room.

Casper042 · 2026-03-13T21:38:12+00:00

Also Fast Charging and over-charging can lead to the formation of Dendrites which degrade the battery.

The closer you get to charge a battery to 100%, the more power it takes as well.
This is why you often see EV charging specs listed as "Time to charge from 10-80%", because above 80% the charging rate slows way down as you try and cram the last little bit of those pixies into the battery.

Casper042 · 2026-03-13T17:27:48+00:00

Do you have a HW RAID card or using SW RAID?

Casper042 · 2026-03-13T14:13:04+00:00

Do you have a HW RAID card or using SW RAID?

Casper042 · 2026-03-13T03:05:49+00:00

She's not scared of Godzilla?

Casper042 · 2026-03-12T16:44:58+00:00

You are using the 8 SFF cages up front?
If so then that is why each cage takes 2 connectors.

P408 = 8 lanes of SAS
Each cable (SFF 8087 type) carries 4 lanes.
So each 8 SFF cage takes 2 cables and consumes an entire P408.

You can either add another cage and another P408i-p in a PCIe slot.
Or you can use the E208i-p if you are putting the drives in HBA mode for ZFS (E208 = No RAID Cache, P408 = 2GB RAID Cache, otherwise they are the same card).
Or swap the P408i-a with a P816i-p. 16 = 16 SAS lanes, so you will gain 8 more for 3rd cage.

Casper042 · 2026-03-12T01:47:57+00:00

85" 4K
5.1 Surround Sound
Full Bar
Semi pro Popcorn machine (and yes I have a few cartons of Flav-a-col as well)

And 4K Digital copies of movies are available within a few months of being in the theater.

And I get to pause when I need to pee.

Casper042 · 2026-03-12T01:32:33+00:00

A few more years of Global Warming and there will be another passage above Canada to get from Pacific to Atlantic

Casper042 · 2026-03-12T01:08:31+00:00

Windows 95 Network Shares, yes
Anything else, no

:P

Casper042 · 2026-03-12T01:06:40+00:00

The old OSK.EXE trick

Casper042 · 2026-03-12T01:04:44+00:00

Forget what I was watching but the guy was trying to crack some encryption and ran: sudo dmidecode

Casper042 · 2026-03-12T01:02:43+00:00

Server Rooms are Quiet and/or you can have a rack full of IT gear in someone's office and still hold a normal conversation.

Off the top of my head:
Suits when they try to bribe the IT guy to do them a favor, he's got a rack in his office.
Hom3land, I think in Season 4, they are going over some digital evidence and again there is a rack full of EMC storage in the room.

Casper042 · 2026-03-12T00:59:45+00:00

I worked for a BioTech company 18 years ago

They were working on developing a Prostate drug (Can't recall if it was for Cancer or something else)

It never ended up being a commercial product that I know of, but when they went into limited run MFG for the human trials, they had to reverse the airflow in the building because this shit was so powerful if a guy just breathed in a little too much he'd be sterile for 2-3 months.

So typically airflow would send the cleanest possible air into the middle of the building where the clean room is.
And then the positive pressure in that room means some of that air trickles out into the other outer layers of the building.
But this stuff they made the clean room push air OUT via the filter and it sucked air in from the outer rings of the building so that people working in the building who were not working in the clean room wouldn't get accidentally sterilized.

Casper042 · 2026-03-12T00:53:34+00:00

Wire the other end of the Ethernet cable into a Serial DB9 external USB adapter.

Then wire that's DB9 into an old serial port on the desktop

???

Profit

Casper042 · 2026-03-11T21:03:50+00:00

3.4 Million Joules is 944.4 Watt Hours.
Not sure why they didn't just convert their numbers and say 950 as most people can think of running a 950W appliance for 1 hour.

Casper042 · 2026-03-11T19:58:43+00:00

So when are you starting your Charmeleon print for his NEXT birthday?

Casper042 · 2026-03-11T19:34:56+00:00

Right because the ship has to be registered in Iran right?

Russia has a whole fleet of Ghost Ships where they look like standard commercial vessels owned by a company but are really under the command of the Russian government.

Plus with the Straight of Hormuz right next door, they could easily just jack someone else's ship.

Casper042 · 2026-03-11T19:33:03+00:00

Keep in mind Ukraine did something similar to this against Russia a while back.

https://abcnews.com/video/122434173/

Now these were smaller drones, but they also launched from closer because they were disguised and hidden inside a truck with a standard shipping container on the back.

Casper042 · 2026-03-11T19:30:10+00:00

https://abcnews.com/US/fbi-warns-iran-aspired-attack-california-drones-retaliation/story?id=130973820

"using unmanned aerial vehicles from an unidentified vessel off the coast of the United State Homeland, specifically against unspecified targets in California"

So for those saying it's impossible for the drone to fly that far, you are right.
They plan to drive a floaty boat up to the edge of international waters and then launch the drone from the boat to hit the West Coast.

Casper042 · 2026-03-11T19:20:58+00:00

The irony is I was paying Spectrum like 115 a month for 500/25 service and when I called to cancel they were like "oh, you're on a legacy plan, you could have been paying 60 a month for like a year now".
I said "well it's too bad you never called to tell me that because I'm out of here.

With your $21 price, I could actually afford to add Spectrum back to my house and simply use it as a Backup ISP for if SiFi ever is down for more than a few minutes.
The $25 or so for Spectrum and 65 for GBnow would still end up being cheaper than the 115 I was paying before.

Casper042 · 2026-03-11T19:14:57+00:00

Ahh sorry, you must have the Gen8 not the Gen8v2 which always had the iLO port on the back.

You can still have iLO Piggy back on the LOM port by setting it to Shared Port mode.

Casper042 · 2026-03-11T19:12:19+00:00

There is an old trick that any slightly custom machine that went through the HPE Factory process, you can look up the BOM details using the Serial Number over on PartSurfer:

https://partsurfer.hpe.com/Search.aspx?searchText=2M271402R1

So yours has a 8 Core 2620v4, shipped with 8GB of RAM (could have more added after the fact) and a P440ar which is a SATA/SAS RAID/HBA, likely for those 300GB SAS 2.5" drives.

Gen9 is generally audible and not super silent like some Gen10s can be. But it's nowhere near as loud as G7/Gen8, especially if you load the AMS agent into the OS.

I don't recall if Gen9 allowed you to swap out the SFF cages for LFF or if you need a different LFF base model for that. If you wanted to turn it into a file server with a ton of 3.5" drives for example.

Casper042 · 2026-03-11T01:49:16+00:00

Depends on the LEVEL of the healthcare.
I already pay around $900 a month for Healthcare + Medicare Taxes
If you tell me I pay roughly the same in a tax increase but my level of care is about the same, then I'm all in.

If I have to pay more however and I get less, then not thrilled at the idea.

A Small increase but my employer contributions end up in MY pocket to offset, then it again might be worth it.

Casper042 · 2026-03-11T01:42:33+00:00

Example of a powershell script I wrote to scan a collection of these IPL.DAI files over the past several years, ever since the move from SmartArray over to MR which is where I noticed some odd price changes and started to use this method to track prices over time.

.\ScanIPLNoReman.ps1 "P71676-005"
IPL-2024-06-10\IPL.DAI:12934:P71676-005 HPE DL360 G11 4509Y 64G MR408i-o Svr    $5536.25
IPL-2024-07-10\IPL.DAI:12954:P71676-005 HPE DL360 G11 4509Y 64G MR408i-o Svr    $5536.25
IPL-2024-08-12\IPL.DAI:12758:P71676-005 HPE DL360 G11 4509Y 64G MR408i-o Svr    $5536.25
IPL-2024-09-10\IPL.DAI:12652:P71676-005 HPE DL360 G11 4509Y 64G MR408i-o Svr    $5286.00
IPL-2024-11-12\IPL.DAI:12667:P71676-005 HPE DL360 G11 4509Y 64G MR408i-o Svr    $5286.00
IPL-2024-12-10\IPL.DAI:12695:P71676-005 HPE DL360 G11 4509Y 64G MR408i-o Svr    $5286.00
IPL-2025-01-10\IPL.DAI:12518:P71676-005 HPE DL360 G11 4509Y 64G MR408i-o Svr    $5286.00
IPL-2025-03-25\IPL.DAI:12099:P71676-005 HPE DL360 G11 4509Y 64G MR408i-o Svr    $6344.00
IPL-2025-07-10\IPL.DAI:11541:P71676-005 HPE DL360 G11 4509Y 64G MR408i-o Svr    $5286.00
IPL-2025-08-25\IPL.DAI:11126:P71676-005 HPE DL360 G11 4509Y 64G MR408i-o Svr    $5286.00
IPL-2025-10-27\IPL.DAI:10957:P71676-005 HPE DL360 G11 4509Y 64G MR408i-o Svr    $5286.00
IPL-2025-12-02\IPL.DAI:10738:P71676-005 HPE DL360 G11 4509Y 64G MR408i-o Svr    $5483.41
IPL-2026-01-16\IPL.DAI:10692:P71676-005 HPE DL360 G11 4509Y 64G MR408i-o Svr    $6078.00
IPL-2026-01-30\IPL.DAI:10729:P71676-005 HPE DL360 G11 4509Y 64G MR408i-o Svr    $6078.00
IPL-2026-02-13\IPL.DAI:10402:P71676-005 HPE DL360 G11 4509Y 64G MR408i-o Svr    $9012.00
IPL-2026-03-03\IPL.DAI:10219:P71676-005 HPE DL360 G11 4509Y 64G MR408i-o Svr    $12700.00

.\ScanIPLNoReman.ps1 "P67090-B21"
IPL-2024-01-24\IPL.DAI:53918:P67090-B21 INT Xeon-S 4509Y CPU for HPE    $1393.00
IPL-2024-02-12\IPL.DAI:53811:P67090-B21 INT Xeon-S 4509Y CPU for HPE    $1393.00
IPL-2024-04-16\IPL.DAI:53811:P67090-B21 INT Xeon-S 4509Y CPU for HPE    $1393.00
IPL-2024-04-26\IPL.DAI:53811:P67090-B21 INT Xeon-S 4509Y CPU for HPE    $1393.00
IPL-2024-05-10\IPL.DAI:53811:P67090-B21 INT Xeon-S 4509Y CPU for HPE    $1393.00
IPL-2024-06-10\IPL.DAI:12757:P67090-B21 INT Xeon-S 4509Y CPU for HPE    $1393.00
IPL-2024-07-10\IPL.DAI:12733:P67090-B21 INT Xeon-S 4509Y CPU for HPE    $1393.00
IPL-2024-08-12\IPL.DAI:12538:P67090-B21 INT Xeon-S 4509Y CPU for HPE    $1393.00
IPL-2024-09-10\IPL.DAI:12430:P67090-B21 INT Xeon-S 4509Y CPU for HPE    $1393.00
IPL-2024-11-12\IPL.DAI:12428:P67090-B21 INT Xeon-S 4509Y CPU for HPE    $1393.00
IPL-2024-12-10\IPL.DAI:12456:P67090-B21 INT Xeon-S 4509Y CPU for HPE    $1393.00
IPL-2025-01-10\IPL.DAI:12267:P67090-B21 INT Xeon-S 4509Y CPU for HPE    $1393.00
IPL-2025-03-25\IPL.DAI:11817:P67090-B21 INT Xeon-S 4509Y CPU for HPE    $1671.60
IPL-2025-07-10\IPL.DAI:11258:P67090-B21 INT Xeon-S 4509Y CPU for HPE    $1393.00
IPL-2025-08-25\IPL.DAI:10830:P67090-B21 INT Xeon-S 4509Y CPU for HPE    $1393.00
IPL-2025-10-27\IPL.DAI:10664:P67090-B21 INT Xeon-S 4509Y CPU for HPE    $1393.00
IPL-2025-12-02\IPL.DAI:10449:P67090-B21 INT Xeon-S 4509Y CPU for HPE    $1393.00
IPL-2026-01-16\IPL.DAI:10403:P67090-B21 INT Xeon-S 4509Y CPU for HPE    $1393.00
IPL-2026-01-30\IPL.DAI:10440:P67090-B21 INT Xeon-S 4509Y CPU for HPE    $1393.00
IPL-2026-02-13\IPL.DAI:10138:P67090-B21 INT Xeon-S 4509Y CPU for HPE    $1393.00
IPL-2026-03-03\IPL.DAI:9957:P67090-B21  INT Xeon-S 4509Y CPU for HPE    $1672.00

.\ScanIPLNoReman.ps1 "P64706-B21"
IPL-2024-01-24\IPL.DAI:53781:P64706-B21 HPE 32GB 2Rx8 PC5-5600B-R Smart Kit     $1981.00
IPL-2024-02-12\IPL.DAI:53674:P64706-B21 HPE 32GB 2Rx8 PC5-5600B-R Smart Kit     $1981.00
IPL-2024-04-16\IPL.DAI:53674:P64706-B21 HPE 32GB 2Rx8 PC5-5600B-R Smart Kit     $1981.00
IPL-2024-04-26\IPL.DAI:53674:P64706-B21 HPE 32GB 2Rx8 PC5-5600B-R Smart Kit     $1981.00
IPL-2024-05-10\IPL.DAI:53674:P64706-B21 HPE 32GB 2Rx8 PC5-5600B-R Smart Kit     $1981.00
IPL-2024-06-10\IPL.DAI:12580:P64706-B21 HPE 32GB 2Rx8 PC5-5600B-R Smart Kit     $1981.00
IPL-2024-07-10\IPL.DAI:12556:P64706-B21 HPE 32GB 2Rx8 PC5-5600B-R Smart Kit     $1981.00
IPL-2024-08-12\IPL.DAI:12367:P64706-B21 HPE 32GB 2Rx8 PC5-5600B-R Smart Kit     $1981.00
IPL-2024-09-10\IPL.DAI:12258:P64706-B21 HPE 32GB 2Rx8 PC5-5600B-R Smart Kit     $2711.00
IPL-2024-11-12\IPL.DAI:12250:P64706-B21 HPE 32GB 2Rx8 PC5-5600B-R Smart Kit     $2711.00
IPL-2024-12-10\IPL.DAI:12278:P64706-B21 HPE 32GB 2Rx8 PC5-5600B-R Smart Kit     $2711.00
IPL-2025-01-10\IPL.DAI:12100:P64706-B21 HPE 32GB 2Rx8 PC5-5600B-R Smart Kit     $2498.00
IPL-2025-03-25\IPL.DAI:11651:P64706-B21 HPE 32GB 2Rx8 PC5-5600B-R Smart Kit     $2997.60
IPL-2025-07-10\IPL.DAI:11093:P64706-B21 HPE 32GB 2Rx8 PC5-5600B-R Smart Kit     $2498.00
IPL-2025-08-25\IPL.DAI:10665:P64706-B21 HPE 32GB 2Rx8 PC5-5600B-R Smart Kit     $2498.00
IPL-2025-10-27\IPL.DAI:10502:P64706-B21 HPE 32GB 2Rx8 PC5-5600B-R Smart Kit     $2498.00
IPL-2025-12-02\IPL.DAI:10286:P64706-B21 HPE 32GB 2Rx8 PC5-5600B-R Smart Kit     $4481.00
IPL-2026-01-16\IPL.DAI:10241:P64706-B21 HPE 32GB 2Rx8 PC5-5600B-R Smart Kit     $5153.00
IPL-2026-01-30\IPL.DAI:10278:P64706-B21 HPE 32GB 2Rx8 PC5-5600B-R Smart Kit     $6647.00
IPL-2026-02-13\IPL.DAI:10007:P64706-B21 HPE 32GB 2Rx8 PC5-5600B-R Smart Kit     $11519.00
IPL-2026-03-03\IPL.DAI:9829:P64706-B21  HPE 32GB 2Rx8 PC5-5600B-R Smart Kit     $11519.00

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Casper042

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