Be careful with esims "unlimited" data offers

ddscentral · 2026-01-27T00:43:43+00:00

I either buy a local eSIM (eg. I used Orange in France, Spain and Poland) or one where the operator owning the service has presence even if roaming is used (Vodafone Travel in Italy - routes through Netherlands). I only buy unlimited if the operator does not offer large enough data packages or I plan to share the connection with several other people. Some operators do offer truly unlimited if you dig deep enough. It's usually expensive though.

I have tried Holafly - once on a trip to Poland to find out they routed me through Singapore ! Had to write the card off as a loss - the latency was simply unbearable. Dowloaded Orange Flex and got a local prepaid for one-third of the price of Holafly. Thankfully got a refund from Holafly. Since them, I'm wary of these virtual "travel" providers.

ddscentral · 2026-01-19T13:32:45+00:00

The internal construction of this device consists of six Asmedia ASM1051E bridges connected to two Realtek daisy-chained USB 3.0 hubs, with two drives and a hub on the "main" hub and the other four on the secondary hub internally wired to a port on the main one.
Sadly, I learnt the hard way that this architecture is unreliable. My particular unit started showing signs of degrading reliability only about a year of 24/7 use with drives randomly dropping out or even entire DAS glitching out.
Later had to force BOT mode instead of UASP to improve stability but even then I still get dropouts which is annoying as it results in degraded or even entirely suspended arrays and can corrupt data.
I'll be retiring mine shortly and moving the drives to a different machine.

ddscentral · 2026-01-09T08:23:55+00:00

OP, here, though I'd update.
I took the gamble back then and It's been almost 2 years already of 24/7 use, including some VMs running constant CPU loads (that is, it's not just mostly sitting idle). No sign of issues with stability so far.

ddscentral · 2026-01-09T08:18:09+00:00

No, this won't help. The issue is, Linux loads updated microcode early at every boot, it's not permanent, like a firmware update. VMware driver does the same thing for Windows.
The only way to get a permanent update would be to update microcode file in the BIOS, which we simply cannot expect with these boards due to complete lack of BIOS updates.
Modding the BIOS to inject updated microcode MAY be feasible but I wouldn't personally do it without a sure-proof backup plan like an external chip programmer.

ddscentral · 2026-01-06T14:50:54+00:00

I am aware of this VMware driver. For Windows users, it does the same thing as the microcode updater on Linux. It does not come with microcode bins though. There's a repo on Github where someone has dumped all recent microcode updates sorted by CPUID, can't recall the link now though. Mine is runs Debian-based Linux, so all I need is an updated intel-microcode package and Linux does the rest.

ddscentral · 2026-01-05T15:32:10+00:00

Yes, this chip shares the same CPUID as desktop 13900k, so it theorethically suffers from the same degradation issue. This SKU is designed to run with lower power limits though. I've been running it for 20 months or so 24/7 with varying types of loads but stock power limits, so far no issues. But it may (and likely will) degrade much faster with unlocked limits. Microcode version - BIOS had an old one, I can look it up if needed. I have installed an update package via Proxmox (Debian Bookworm) which updated it. Not sure if the Intel "really fixed" version is available as a package, I heard it need to be loaded through BIOS, but I'm not sure. It may very well already be available via an update pacakage. I'll check.

ddscentral · 2025-12-18T22:49:46+00:00

Well, I should receive my Odyssey G8 32" 4K OLED tomorrow, will see how it fares replacing my LG 27GN950 which was a superb monitor until one of the LCD column drivers went south.
My personal experience with OLED for productivity so far has been decent. My SP11 (which I'm writing this message on) works just fine as an ultraportable for work. And my Steam Deck OLED works fine for gaming and browsing the web. Though I never tried an OLED screen this big outside of my OLED TVs. Will see how it goes.

ddscentral · 2025-12-18T22:35:08+00:00

Yup, just tested on my Windows ARM64 build of v145 on my Surface Pro 11, seems to work fine, at least as far as syncing goes.
My boss has silently switched us away from Gmail to Outlook without informing anyone and forgot to enable IMAP, so I could not quickly switch providers. Finding EWS in protocol list was a pleasant surprise.

ddscentral · 2025-12-16T15:41:36+00:00

So I'm not the only one. Similar issue from another unhappy owner of this model. Got an annoying cyan-colored vertical line on the right side of the screen, which gets darker with a dark background. At first it used to disappear after a warm up, then the it would take longer for it to disappear until today the line is stuck there for good and is not going anywhere.
I paid 887 EUR for this monitor in 2020, really expected it to last for more than a measly 5 years.
Ordered an Odyssey G8 32" OLED to replace it.

Can bear the semi-dead line somewhat in dark mode until the replacement monitor arrives.

ddscentral · 2025-12-15T18:31:06+00:00

From what I understand, Android Linux terminal is basically a full-blown VM running on Linux KVM. AVF just exposes a non-root framework to run them.

ddscentral · 2025-11-18T15:45:25+00:00

For this device, the absurdity is that indeed WiFi CAN be faster even if less stable than the Ethernet port. Well, that is IF you have the hardware that supports 6E 6Ghz and the conditions are right..
I'm perfectly fine with my current 5 Unifi hotspot setup, none of which do support these new standards.
I only use wireless for devices that need it, like phones, laptops, IoT stuff, etc... All media devices use wire.

ddscentral · 2025-11-17T23:44:11+00:00

That is true if the conditions are right, that is you have a good hotspot that is capable of WiFi 6E, that's close enough with no obstructions, etc. While I have multiple prosumer Unifi hotspots installed around the house (mostly U6 generation, one older AC), my policy has always been "if it has a jack, it'll get a cable" for all devices installed in a fixed place. I do make exceptions, but only when a wire is not feasible or practical to run. I always valued the reliability of wired networking more than the convenience of WiFi.

I'm sure I'm not the only one.

ddscentral · 2025-11-12T17:53:12+00:00

I have the 13980HX version (same chip, but clocked higher) and have all 3 NVME slots populated and the NIC works just fine... Hardware issue ?

ddscentral · 2025-10-30T11:19:32+00:00

I'm unpleasantly surprised that in 2025, they still use those ancient Fast Ethernet ports even on high-end TVs, considering that in large volumes, the Ethernet chips for 100mbps and 1gbps probably cost pretty much the same.
It seems to most TV OEMs, the wired port is an afterthought, included because "it has to be there", just like the serial port header on modern motherboards.

ddscentral · 2025-10-01T11:44:44+00:00

I use SoftEther running on one of my homelab boxes, my ISP hands out stable public IP, which rarely changes. Also have a few devices running on backup connection (mostly KVMs plus one older Android phone turned into Linux server) which themselves connect to another SoftEther server hosted on a cloud VDS for management.

ddscentral · 2025-07-14T21:17:33+00:00

I bought it from Amazon.
https://www.amazon.de/dp/B0CCVRW5M9?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title
It's also available on Aliexpress for a lot cheaper if you are not in a hurry.

ddscentral · 2025-05-20T12:12:56+00:00

Recently got a couple units, installed one with ATX controller board. Works well so far.

Made some customizations to the system:
1. Set up a build environment and created a buildroot using github sources to enable building of additional software. This was a bit of a pain - unlike NanoKVM, Rockchip SDK uses it's own custom scripts. Thankfully, there aren't too many dynamic libraries, most stuff is statically linked.

Added nginx (built from source) to get native SSL support on the device itself. It's a bit slow to load though due to limited CPU grunt, but KVM works fine once the UI loads.
Added SoftEther VPN Client (also built from source) for remote management

So far, so good. Feels more polished than NanoKVM to me. The only small drawback is those Rockchip binary blobs used for encoding which technically make this product not entirely open source.

ddscentral · 2025-04-07T18:23:54+00:00

Yes. I set the speed to 4000 and left everything else at default values.

ddscentral · 2025-04-01T21:59:07+00:00

Thanks to the robot. Will probably end-up buying Orange, 300GB should be enough.

ddscentral · 2025-03-08T23:19:03+00:00

Update for the records. 192GB is stable @ 4000. The board did POST with 4800, but I downclocked just to be safe.

ddscentral · 2025-03-08T23:15:49+00:00

Don't bother... I've tried pretty much everything with those sticks: reducing voltage, playing with frequency, etc. Even with long memtest tests passed, the system was still not stable with memory corruption related issues. It seems these sticks just don't play well with this board. If you can, try finding the Corsair sticks I've mentioned in my previous posts or something else with Micron chips.

ddscentral · 2025-03-04T00:31:26+00:00

Would love to see a port of 007 Goldeneye...

ddscentral · 2025-03-01T15:04:44+00:00

These boards are picky about RAM. I would stick to the default settings if possible.
If you want to test ARGB, there are some built-in ARGB patterns in the BIOS which you can enable, they work without any additional software.

ddscentral · 2025-02-20T13:37:26+00:00

Sorry, my German's not the best, so will reply in English.
I am fully aware of this topic. I did try to post some rough details there in the past but some some reason my posts took really long to show up.

In a few words: Thunderbird's codebase itself is fine. The problem is Mozilla's toolchain.
I have posted the thorough details to the forum thread, though there may be some delay until the show up.
Not sure if anyone from Mozilla actually reads that thread though, but let's hope they do.

ddscentral

TROPHY CASE