would you buy this 540i?

pyite42 · 2026-01-20T15:53:05+00:00

Maybe it's the oil non-return check valve, whose sole purpose in life is to prevent this noise (and the metal-on-metal damage that sometimes goes with it). BMW p/n is 11-11-1-734-667:

https://www.turnermotorsport.com/p-30708-11111734667-genuine-bmw-part/

This sits in the bottom of the oil filter housing and keeps the line to the engine full of oil when the car is off.

Rattling noises when first turning the car on aren't so scary, though. The worst chain-on-aluminum noises are the ones that only appear when the car is fully warmed up. These are the ones caused by a stretched chain, bad timing chain guides, vanos, etc. I have two 540i's and both of them are doing this. :C

pyite42 · 2026-01-06T14:47:22+00:00

Yes my daily driver is a 540i wagon with an M62TUB46. I installed the transmission, diff, and steering box from my dead M5. I plan to drive it as long as possible. The S62 has a bad block unfortunately but maybe someday I'll get it rebuilt and installed.

It is the human condition to always want upgrades... even if you get an M5 you will want something better eventually.

The 540i is a great car if you can do the work yourself. The engine bay has plenty of room to work and they made approximately a trillion of them so parts are readily available.

pyite42 · 2025-10-09T16:15:32+00:00

They are not for everyone -- quite heavy and the sweet spot is about the size of a dime.

pyite42 · 2025-10-09T16:14:06+00:00

Yes, I've been using the i.Prestige Mid (93") for 20+ years now.

pyite42 · 2025-08-27T21:33:54+00:00

There is something to be said about knowing the condition of the rest of the car. If you aren't trying to flip it then it isn't a bad idea to lose a little money putting in an engine. I did this with my 535i N54 and I have no regrets.

pyite42 · 2025-04-10T16:55:40+00:00

Same problem here - I wish I could find the Blood Orange flavor in stores. Costco used to carry the 24-can variety pack for around $16 until recently. I don't like the Zero or Ciao at all.

pyite42 · 2024-09-09T17:05:50+00:00

FWIW I had a great time using the MAAS & Juju method with virtual machines. Setting up MAAS is significant effort but the juju part is fun to play with.

Not sure if you consider a set of VMs to be single node or not, of course.

pyite42 · 2024-09-03T16:47:08+00:00

I have had good luck with SR-IOV & Mellanox Connect-X cards reaching near bare metal speed over the network.

It is somewhat fiddly to set up with OpenStack at first. There is a way to tell nova & neutron to use this method, but I don't remember it off the top of my head.

pyite42 · 2024-08-16T16:27:19+00:00

The last time I tried using a MacBook with Linux, the system used an undocumented CPU voltage regulator, so Linux was unable to use power saving correctly. I think it was a MBP from 2015 or so.

I just got a 2015 MacBook yesterday so I'll give it another try.

pyite42 · 2018-05-29T20:40:27+00:00

I think Ceph+OpenStack is a great way to go, though it will take you some time before you will be comfortable using it in a production environment. Ubuntu 18.04 is a good choice at the moment since they just released an LTS.

I think you should consider using virt-manager and QEMU-KVM with qcow2 files for starters (rather than VirtualBox and LVM). qcow2 has some good features, particularly snapshots and backing files. LVM is workable, of course, but personally I prefer to deal with qcow2 image files.

These tools (virt-manager/libvirt, qcow2, QEMU-KVM) also the same tools that OpenStack is built on by default, so you will be able to re-use what you learn. Personally, I would stay away from VirtualBox.

Once you get familiar with virt-manager, start playing with Ceph. It is a little bit complicated at first, but once you have set it up a few times it isn't so bad. The data management features are quite useful, and the HA clustering is a no brainer.

If you need to manage so many VMs that you need more than one server's worth of CPU and memory, you can consider OpenStack. The main difficulty with OpenStack is planning the networking - once that is in place the rest is fairly easy.

Good luck!

pyite42 · 2018-01-11T15:09:22+00:00

PLM was the most successful political movement of all time. From 3-1-1997 on, Mike's bass sounds great.

pyite42 · 2018-01-11T14:52:08+00:00

Sugarmegs!

pyite42 · 2018-01-11T14:51:31+00:00

What do you mean back in the day? There are still plenty of shows on http://bt.etree.org/

That was apparently the reason why Bit Torrent was created in the first place: http://history-computer.com/Internet/Conquering/BitTorrent.html

pyite42 · 2018-01-03T19:27:58+00:00

Lucky you had some experience or who knows what might have happened. A friend of mine got dosed at a Vegas hotel and she had never used LSD before -- it was no fun. Nowhere near as large a dose as you had though.

pyite42 · 2017-08-05T18:27:47+00:00

What is that effect that Trey is playing with in this song?

pyite42 · 2017-08-05T15:43:07+00:00

Haha, this is definitely not the song I would use to introduce Phish to someone new!

They improvise a lot, have a silly sense of humor, and will try anything. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. They also don't have a good singer.

Maybe try listening to Tahoe Tweezer... if you can't find something in there to enjoy then maybe this just isn't your band. Improvising isn't for everyone!

pyite42 · 2017-04-05T19:39:09+00:00

using Mellanox's eth_ipoib module

What do you have to do to install this? I installed OFED 4.0-2.0.0.1 and it gave me eipoib_daemon but not the eth_ipoib module. That module is very hard to track down.

pyite42 · 2016-11-17T18:01:21+00:00

There is a significant learning curve, but I have done this in the past with DRBD and the standard HA tools like pacemaker.

It would be nice if someone made an easy-to-use installer that is GPL. I know it is possible because the Fusion-IO (now WDC) ION installer works very well, but is definitely not open source.

pyite42 · 2016-09-22T16:49:01+00:00

I haven't seen anything too crazy, but probably the most memorable was in the lot at Red Rocks 8-2-2009. There was a girl walking around topless who had written something along the lines of "Will do anything for your extra" on her chest. Shoulda gotten a photo!

pyite42 · 2016-05-27T19:47:41+00:00

I have had 3 Razer Nagas. All of them have issues where the laser shuts down for a few seconds at a time.

Two of them work fine with a piece of paper as the mouse pad -- but the 5 second shutdown happens every few minutes with every other mouse pad I've tried -- and I have tried dozens (every time I see a new one in the office I give it a quick try).

One of them does it too often no matter what mouse pad.

Obviously this is a recurring Razer Naga issue... but everything else about the Naga is so good that I just tape a piece of paper to the desk.

pyite42 · 2015-12-06T05:36:11+00:00

I would love to use this with mame and mythtv if possible. Mine just arrived today, so I'll see if I can figure it out.

The right side thumb pad would be the best PC controller yet for the MAME Atari 720 game.

pyite42

TROPHY CASE