SR-2 Adventures, Part II

So after hauling the SR-2 back across campus (if you ever run into a girl carrying large wads of aluminum with Apple logos on them, that's me!), I removed the system from the case mod and tested it. This was something that had to be done as soon as possible because Bayley blew up one of his processors and the return window would expire later that week -- the recommended procedure is to test the processors under high load to detect for defective samples.

I ran the processors at full load with the full 24GiB of memory with LinX, a benchmark wrapper for LinPack, the de facto Linear Algebra system. After a continuous 72hr run, the processors were fine, albeit a little toasty. I stopped worrying about them.

At this point, there were two things to be completed: the power supply mod into the G5 power supply enclosure and the rear IO panel. Although the power supply mod was not documented as much, it was the easier of the two tasks because I did not have the parts handy for the rear IO panel.

The power supply mod works as follows. Since the G5's original proprietary power supply was enclosed in a 1U-esque case, I had to replace its internals with an ATX power supply, specifically a Corsair 850W semi-modular unit.

To cut the chase, I blew up my power supply when it accidentally hit an exposed standoff and thus shorted itself to death. How did I know? When Bayley plugged it in for me (because I'm that big of a scaredy-cat), it sparked and buzzed. On my second try, I covered the entire enclosure with nonconductive tape. All was well.

Unfortunately, that was all I got done before I left MIT (yes, tooling a bit harder this term did yield better grades). As I rushed to pack for my journey back to NJ, I forgot several pieces of equipment, leading to some impulse Amazon buys: a USB header, a PS2 to USB adapter, and a USB to Ethernet. Furthermore, I also forgot an IEC cord, but I forgot to buy it on Amazon. It turns out that not many things around the house use IEC cables, but I eventually found one lurking in the kitchen. I plugged it in, and voilà!

The setup.

System profiler.