korith

In a 2 story house as well with a basement, ended up putting one router on the top floor and one in the basement, so we could wifi coverage everywhere in the house. For the the enclosure, if you don't want to go with a rack. At a friend's place, we hung up a spare kitchen cabinet on the wall of the basement office to hide the patch panel in, along with the router, modem and phone, and a small ups. Another useful tool, you can pick up or possibly borrow, a wire puller (electricians fish tape), so you can limit number holes you end up punching in the walls. Another thought, a friend moved into an older home and we ended up running cable thru the old central vac tubing to save time, since he had no plans to use the central vac.

Just need a wallet that can support the cost of the drive.

Cat5e is good enough. Figure out where you plan on to you put your switch and server, then figure out all the points in the house where you want the cable run to. May even want to run a few cat5 to the same room. Get an idea of how you are going to route all the cables thru the walls and the house. Guesstimate the amount of cable you'll need, can buy 1000ft cat5 in a box, read the various reviews on the brands and go with something that looks good. Get a good set of crimpers, a punch down tool, some wall plates, a bag of rg45 connectors. Depending on how many cables you end up with, may want to get a small patch panel as well. For sure check out some youtube vids to get an idea of how to crimp the wires.

Switched over to quantum on all the computers last month, and remembered this thread. Just thought I'd tack a link into this thread. It's a custom Userchrome.css for firefox that has a ton of options in it that you can adjust, in a text editor, very easy to do. So you can change the way firefox looks, acts and works. https://github.com/Aris-t2/CustomCSSforFx

I still use an older hp n40l and a n54l microserver. A year ago could find a used n40l for about $100-125. Small size, its quiet, I don't hear it in the room. 4 drives in the bottom bays, and you can stick a parity drive in the top. So 5 drives easy. About once or twice a year, I open it up and clean out any dust. Here is a huge thread on the hp microservers,

this site will help ya generate a userChrome.css file if ya want to change up the url bar https://www.jeffersonscher.com/gm/url-bar-tweaks.html

I didn't realize how much of an improvement quantum was over v56. The loading speed just blows it away. I think the speed is a bit more noticeable on older systems. Been using firefox so long, gotten used to some of the addons. I still need to get a few replacements for some addons I had in v56, before I can swap over to quantum for good. Some of the customization you have to do with css. I'm a creature of habit, been using firefox for over a decade now, took me a few hours to make it look like the old setup I was used to. Don't think I'll ever get used to tabs on top, above the url! By the way you can download a portable version of quantum, that won't mess up your regular profile if you just want to test it out.https://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable

Good deal for sure. Not in the states anymore else I'd be grabbing a few.

Oddly enough, the reason I end up shutting them down every 6 months or so, is so I can blow the dust out of them.

using firefox, grabbed an addon that adds in a night mode option. not perfect but it seems to do the job.

Great price I think, shouldn't take long to get a buyer. If I was still in the states, I'd have grabbed them.

Went from living 5min away from microcenter, now I'm 23hours away from the same store, sigh...

when I click on it, it takes me to a link to https://goo.gl/AAqtR

Check out http://pcpartpicker.com/ you can look up parts, there is usually a price history graph at the bottom of each page. for example http://pcpartpicker.com/product/rkV48d/western-digital-internal-hard-drive-wd40efrx

Found this thread, looks like it may have what you are searching for...

Thanks. Themes, that was the word I was after, display style was all I could come up earlier. Sad considering I used to set up forums for folks years ago and dealt with this stuff all the time.

I can't seem to find the option if there is one, to change the display style. Was hoping to find one that doesn't have the white background. A bit hard on the eyes.

I been using http://torguard.net/ for I think 4 or perhaps 5 years now. Mainly use them for streaming from diff countries or when traveling, and of course for torrents. Speeds are good, think they have servers in like 40 or 50 countries, but I usually just connect thru the ones in Canada. They allow 5 devices to be connected at once. Cost is decent $60 a year, but if you follow them on twitter, they usually post up a promo code during most holidays, that drop the price in half. With christmas and new years approaching, there should be another promo coming. I think I'm paid up till 2018. They just had a black friday promo end. Never had any real issues with them, service has been great with them. The few times I've had questions or problems connecting to certain servers, they've replied to trouble tickets in an hour or two. Oh one nice feature I like is, if you pay like 5 or 10 bucks more, you can get a regular dedicated ip to use.

Checkout this part of the wiki http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php/Hardware_Compatibility#PCI_SATA_Controllers . Not sure how up to date it is, but it is worth a quick read and should give you a good starting point on the different terms and basics. The wiki has a list of some cards that have worked for folks as well, though the forum is probably more up to date on that. You can also motherboards with more than 6 sata ports.

I've got a n54l and a n40l. Many times when I see a deal posted up, I start considering an upgrade, problem is once you start adding up all the parts you're well over the cost of the hp microserver. I suppose it really depends on your needs, if you need a cpu with more power, or need to fit in more drives it's probably worthwhile.

Thanks for the link. Looks like an improvement over the 150w in the original n40l.

Remember to apply the bios mod to it so the drive in the top bay will run at full speed. You can add one more drive there easily enough.

Followed a link from homeservershow and came across to this page. Anyone try adding a nic to their box to boost performance? from the wiki page "A cheap alternative for users wanting to boost the standard 1Gbps of the Microserver is the Intel EXPI9301CTBLK EXPI9301CTBLK. " http://n40l.wikia.com/wiki/Network_Interface_Cards_%28NICs%29

That seems to be the universal key. Also paperclips work well.

In the u.s. ? I can see if I can get a key made, if the store carries the blank.