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Introduction While writing the blog on my latest dual Xeon workstation, I discovered I hadn't written a post on earlier single and dual Xeon builds. So, a quick post on them using photos from earlier. The first was a single Xeon workstation for my son while he was studying mechanical engineering and doing airflow simulation using Solidworks. I used an "engineering sample" (ES) Xeon to cut costs. The details are in the photos. E5-2650 v4 (30M Cache, 2.20 GHz) Having done the single Xeon, I tried a dual Xeon machine. At first, I used ES V4 Xeons, but from different eBay suppliers. I subsequently discovered they weren't exactly the same and would not work. In hindsight, two ES Xeons (same stepping and printing on the case) from the same supplier might work. ES processors only work with some motherboards. I then used two older generation Xeons, V3, with success. E5 2683 V3 2.0 GHz The Micro Systems dual motherboard is not very friendly for running Windows 10, but I ...

I like building and playing with very fast computers but I can't afford new ones. In the past, I have built a dual Xeon from components but even that was quite expensive. However, it is possible to buy old servers and workstations for a reasonable cost and upgrade them with modern components, first off, an SSD. Xeon The machine I bought was a Dell Precision T5610 Workstation 2 x XEON E5-2650 v2 CPUs 64Gb 240Gb SSD 1Tb HDD $900 on eBay AU March 2020. It was first available in 2014 but still quite capable with a total of 16 cores and 32 threads. The machine was booting to a cheap 2.5" SSD via a RAID card. The RAID card is of limited use now as a RAID 1 mirror can be achieved with two nvme SSD drivers in Windows "Storage Spaces". Raid 0 stripping is of little use now as the speed of nvme drives is high. So I removed the RAID card and installed a nvme SSD drive on a cheap generic pci express card. Windows 10 on NVME SSD The first job is to get Windows to run...

After a long time, I have found what I was searching for; improving photographs with computers via multiple frames. I am interested in video for DATV (Digital Amateur TV) and was impressed with some of the image processing in CCTV security systems. However, most of this was based on single images. I had investigated improved day and night, long-distance photography as our house has panoramic views on the Queensland Gold Coast. Most of these techniques used multiple photos from a DSLR and post-processing with Photoshop or similar. Optical astronomers are well advanced. However, the real progress seems to be driven by smartphones. Most people use their phones for photos now, with DSLRs a rarity outside tourist destinations. But phones have tiny cameras with small lenses and image sensor. Computational photography has allowed these small cameras to perform very well for particularly for images, but also video. Smartphone photography, mainly iPhone (Jan 2019) https://theconversation.c...

Amateur Radio Books and Magazines: Recent and Archive Current amateur radio magazines, as of 2019.  Practical Wireless (UK) Radio User (UK) Radcom (RSGB UK) QST (ARRL USA) CQ (USA) CQ-TV (UK amateur TV) FunkAmateur (German) Amateur Radio (WIA Australia) Silicon Chip (Aust) The Spectrum Monitor US$20/yr subscription https://www.thespectrummonitor.com/index.aspx Sources for recent magazines Be aware that the sites show covers of all types of magazines from around the world, including rude ones! Search for each magazine title. For most current titles. https://www.worldmags.net/       From Novafile (free? and subscription) http://www.ebook3000.com/        Use longfiles link and wait 5 sec for the link. Free. Plus books. https://www.pdfmagaz.in/language/english/  From Novafile (free? and subscription) Books on any subject, including radio http://gen.lib.rus.ec/ Free https://www.scribd.com/ modest subscription, the "...

Running Apple macOS Mojave in a Virtual Machine on Windows 10 Over the decades I have managed to get a number of "Hackintoshes" going on PC hardware. I recently had some interest in having an Apple Mac again and have discovered that it is relatively easy to do it as a virtual machine under Windows. The procedure uses Oracle's Virtualbox and some tweaks. Initial install The procedure to get the basic macOS going that I used (Nov 2019): https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/macos-windows-10-virtual-machine/ Summary of the procedure: Install Virtualbox. Download a prepared image and use that within Virtualbox along with some settings. Execute some Command Processor lines; just cut and paste from the article. The Virtualbox USB routines referred to in the article need to be installed. Boot macOS and set it up. This gives a working Mac. Restart after install and again if there are any errors.  Enter your AppleID in the Appstore. The main problem is a low display resolution but...

Introduction Live video for amateur TV or streaming (local or internet) has progressed considerably since I last looked a few years ago. The big change is NewTek's NDI, an open standard for video streaming released in about 2015?. NDI is for fast streaming video over ordinary wired or wireless networks with little lag and compression of a variety of devices and operating systems at relatively low cost. Newtek NDI software https://www.newtek.com/downloads/  All Newtek software without having to request it. NewTek NDI Camera Apple or Android app Turns an Apple or Android mobile device camera into an NDI source. $20 for app but can be used on multiple devices connected to same Apple/Android account. I have tried it with an iPhone and iPad and it works very well. Very good camera and image quality. As for low-cost cameras, an old iPhone with no sim card and possibly an iPod Touch may be an option, costing maybe a couple of hundred dollars. This is quite reasonable for a ful...

Introduction We have moved to a two-story house with no network cabling. I need both full wifi coverage and wired network for the devices that don't have wifi. The solution is remarkably simple, the new Telstra EasyMesh router gen 2 and WiFi extender gen 2, with wired switches connected to either or both the router and extender. Using the WiFi Easymesh extender with a network switch attached allows non-wifi devices to connect to the router via wifi. A very neat solution. Easymesh Wi-Fi CERTIFIED EasyMesh™ is a new WiFi standard for mesh wifi available in 2019. Previously, mesh wifi was proprietary, not standardised. Telstra is one of the first to offer Easymesh devices in the world. Easymesh consists of a router and multiple extenders (access points or boosters), up to 4 with Telstra, that share the same wifi name and auto-switch between the 2.4 and 5 GHz wifi bands. https://www.wi-fi.org/discover-wi-fi/wi-fi-easymesh Wired switches too! Not obviously documented, but ...