Chris Reece @car@cloudisland.nz

Every time Eben and the gang release a new gewgaw I spend a week being grumpy about their seemingly deliberately broken supply chain.

Ever grateful for the quiet, tireless effort that almost-powerless individuals expend trying to make the policies and actions of organisations less damaging.

I'm so tired of computers. Specifically, the impossibility of fixing things once.

Surprised to find that the stuff I was selling on TradeMe sold so quickly. Even more surprised that I'd accidentally listed it with a buy now the same as the minimum bid. Oh well, contractually bound now. 🤷

Well, it certainly made for a considerably more stable connection. Almost instant. Allowed the Bangle Apps manager to update four of the apps on there. Bricked.

Into the drawer with you.

Enough real estate there to fit 12 drives, fully populating the three four-port SATA hats.

The final vital piece has arrived. No excuse not to start the physical build of my three Pi Gluster cluster. (Except I'm on shift for the next four days.)

*sigh*

Can you guess what I did wrong?

I suspected the docking station power supply might be the issue, and found corrosion on the chassis as I stripped that, but no obvious blown or bleeding caps, and a healthy 5.1v and 12.1v on the ISA slots inside the chassis. Found a manual online that details error codes and diagnostics, but it doesn't offer any insight when the thing just won't boot, other than "get it serviced". Could do with a schematic. And some info on those proprietary pinouts.

This little thing is bristling with extras -- memory expansion, 287 math copro, Canadian modem, 20MB hard drive. Good news is that stripping it down and removing those extra got the screen to flash once, but it still isn't booting. Quick check with the voltmeter shows a weedy 4.2v across the board. That could be a problem.