SUPER SIMPLE SYBERDECK

The screen is the Wisecoco 10.1 inch amoled. It displays 2k, plus a little extra height. I believe that it is the exact screen used on the 10.1 inch Samsung tablets, so that suits me just fine. 2K resolution seen on a 10 inch screen is just amazing in detail. It feels like the future, when i sit really close and let the screen pull me in to a light form of virtual reality.

 

I agonized for a few minutes, but finally drilled a few holes through the lid of this [once] waterproof box. a couple of screws go through some foam, and then into the 75 mm vesa mount holes in the Wisecoco. I found a very flexible HDMI cable with the smallest possible plug, and a petite USB c to USB a cable that could easily be routed past the screen, to end up in the lower box where they could attach to [in this case] a latte panda mu.

 

 

Really, nothing has been done to route the cables except to tuck them behind the screen. Plenty of room remains in the box, in case a battery and a USB hub and some solid state drives are needed.

 My 4 gig raspberry pi 5 works great in here, as does my 8 gig cm5 mounted to the Waveshare nano b carrier board. All 3 of these single board computers can send its sound signal out through the HDMI if you select that. So, there are the 2 quiet but usable speakers in the screen that come on. 

 

I have created a sound bar as well. It uses two 3 inch full range drivers and two 3 inch tweeters.

A 10 dollar amp is screwed to the side of this crude prototype. Until i figure out a battery, there is a 60 watt 12 volt AC power supply screwed beside the amp. This sound bar gets surprisingly loud, and sounds pretty darn good. 3/4 inch plywood forms the box, and the handle is a battery cable.

i have  a hot glue gun, so that i can screw a computer and power converter to a plastic sheet , and hot glue that sheet into the base of the Moocy box. Then, the box can be closed and carried around without damaging the screen. Obviously, the sound bar, or boom box is a much larger commitment. So far, i have only carried it outside the house to the porch.

I would like to thank the folks at Wisecoco, who replaced this screen when the first one came apart, and dropped into the lower case when i opened the lid. This screen seems to be glued together better, so that it can be inverted and shaken without coming apart.

people used to comment on these posts, but i guess that folks have quit visiting. They are written just for me!
 

gaming on a budget ... get the most equipment for the dollar and build it yourself

 

I have been tuning this setup for a few years. 2 monitors are common now, and I prefer a large 2k gaming oled and a tiny oled on which to monitor equipment and see how downloads are doing. In this case, i chose the 10.1 inch 2660 by 1600 oled from wisecoco.

 

To avoid confusion, i am using the kids mouse and the tiny keyboard that [along with the 10.1 inch screen] is part of my cyberdeck project. And, the tiny input devices leave more room for the 75% keyboard and small gaming mouse from endgame gear that are used with the larger 27 inch oled from dell.

 

The large screen needs a heavy duty arm from Haunuo, which is around 40 dollars on amazon. The smaller screen was chosen in part because it has a standard 75 mm vesa mount, so it can be attached to the less expensive generic arm. Both arms can be moved easily, to tune in their best locations over time.

 

 

For sound, I connect the line out of my gaming system to this 25 dollar 4 ohm amplifier from Drok. I selected this one because it can accept power from either a 12 or 24 volt system, and because it has a dedicated subwoofer output. I use an ordinary home light switch to turn it on and off, as the volume does not have a click to shut it down. I found that a standard 3 mm screw will self tap into this size of heat sink, so, using a spacer, i attached an 80 mm noctua fan. I powered the fan from the same 13.5 volt dc wire that is powering the amp, after interposing 3 of the noctua low noise adapters before the power cord. Each one reduces the speed of the fan, and I found that 3 could silently cool the amplifier.

 

Of course, i built my own speakers using 4 ohm drivers from the company Dayton. I used their 4 inch full range drivers, a simple crossover, and their 3/4 inch dome tweeters for the left and right channels. I deployed  their classic 6 1/2 inch subwoofer for the low notes. These components seem to balance fairly well, with nice bright treble, voices that are the right volume, and startling low bass when needed. I used 3/4 inch plywood for the boxes. The left and right boxes are not ported, and very small. The sub box is a 10 inch cube, and has two 2 inch ports that go half way into the box.

 

My best case is the T1 from Form d, although this case shipped with a delicate and too short gpu extension cable that has caused a lot of problems. I bought a b610 lightening mother board and an AMD 7600x processor for this build, and sadly, it was never able to send it's video signal through the cable. My older mother board is a flagship from gigabyte, bedecked with the 13th gen i5 processor. It has enough gpu signal to get through the infuriating cable.

 

 i have pulled the covers off, so that you can see the pny rtx 4070 that has been de-shrouded. If you tinker with gaming systems, you know that you can not increase the thickness of fans at your whim, but you can use a much larger diameter fan if there is ample room in the case. These 15 mm by 120 mm fans from noctua put about twice as much air on the card without making as much noise as the stock 90 mm fans. I use 14 inch zip ties a lot for tasks like holding these fans on. It is a lot easier than joining more than one zip tie.

 

For the top fans, I used the 30 by 120 mm fans from phanteks. For this use, they are set to the middle speed, for a maximum of 2000 rpm. The fans are propped up a bit using spacers, to make more room for cables under them, and to put them the correct distance from the top panel. It is important to put screens under the fans, so that they don't grind up the power cables. I have been gaming hard on this gpu since it released, and have not had to take it apart yet to change the heat transfer materials. In this set up, it games at around 60 degrees, and nearly in silence.

 

 

 

 The 13th gen i5 was a great processor if you got one without defects, which i did! It can use 140 watts for quite some time, so i configured the T1 case to allow for the 65 mm tall and 90 mm wide heat sink from Noctua. It is also possible to space the power supply out from the spine, leaving a nice central gap for heat to escape, and placing the psu fan at the correct distance from the side of the case to breath cool outside air. It should be noted that i used the 750 watt sff power supply from corsair, so the fan rarely turns its fan on [even while gaming].

 

I used to download at night with this powerful gaming system, but that uses up too much battery power. You may notice a raspberry pi 5 driving the small screen. It uses less than 10% as much power as my gamer, and can be left on for days or weeks or months. I have downloaded files like the wikipedia database, which is over 100 gigs, over the course of many nights, using the wifi from my cell phone. You are probably seeing a pattern here. not a penny wasted that could be used for a better screen, more realistic sound, or more frames per second of gaming.

 

I play a bunch of games, with the most played being doom 2016 and doom eternal. But, i also like Cyberpunk, Ratchet and Clank ripped apart, Metal Hellsinger, Halo infinite, and many others. The older games like doom 2016 and metal hellsinger run flat out on this combination of cpu and gpu, but the newer games do not run at their max speed. it is best to use a bit of the frame gen and scaling for the new games, at least until the 'super' cards come out for the rtx 50 series. Even though i bought a 4070, and then a low profile 4060, i have not pulled the trigger on the 50 series yet. The 5070 is not a lot faster than the 4070, especially since i won the silicon lottery with my particular 4070. The PNY will run steadily at 3000 mhz, and with it's memory boosted about 800 hz. It about time, because i lost big with both of the 3000 series cards that i bought. They gobbled power and made plenty of heat, but generated few frames. 

 

lastly, i am sure that you were hoping to see the most beautiful cat on this [or any] planet.

 

 

 Yang the cat says, 'i like it on top of the computer where it is nice and warm'

Yang suggests that i make a youtube video, and see if it goes viral. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sleep walking into world war

 The US is not immune from the oversight and action of the rest of the world. [Even though We think We are]

 

The current US administration has again and again blocked the United Nations, The International Criminal Court, and its own US courts, as each of them try to stop the US extermination of a native group in the middle east. Ironically, we host the United Nations in the US, so it has been possible to refuse to let the Palestinians enter the US to attend meetings. This is awkward, because most of the nations of the world are accepting Palestine as a country, even though Israel has engulfed it's people, and now intends to kill all of them.

Israel is not just our ally. They are a satellite country of the US, and must do what we say. It is ridiculous to suggest that Israel is simply defending itself. Israel was founded in a strikingly similar way to the founding of the US. The Israelis were driven there as refugees. Both European Pilgrims and holocaust survivors gained a foothold in their new area, and then violently superimposed their 'country' right over the holdings of the native inhabitants. 

In the early US and in early Israel, the natives were driven off the best land, and confined to ever-shrinking reservations/walled settlements. The US had famous wars with the Native Americans, and also tangled with the Mormons as they, in their own turn, were driven west by European expansion. But, over the decades and the centuries, both the Native Americans and the Mormons have been granted full citizenship. We stopped killing them!

The Israeli expansion has been different, because there was no loosely defended land that natives could move into when Israel occupied  Palestine. The Palestinians were compacted or concentrated into unwanted areas within Israel, where they built low quality prison cities. In actuality, the 'Native Israelis' [If we can call the Palestinians that] are much more similar to their occupiers than Native Americans are similar to the typical European colonist. A White Europeans can easily be told from a Native American. But, Palestinians look like starved and frightened Jews. And Ex German Jews in Tel Aviv look like fat and relaxed Palestinians.

It is not good that this occupation has gone on since world war 2. There should have been enough time for the Palestinians to be fully integrated into the new country that had overlaid their own. It can not be said that the Native Americans have reached parity with their European occupiers. [It took 150 years for NAs to gain US citizenship.] Now, both NAs and LDS members hold land, vote, and have similar rights to other Americans. If some very bad crime happened on the Hopi reservation [I picked one of the most peace loving tribes for my silly example], we would not place the Navajos and Salt Lake city under siege, and bomb those areas until all buildings were rubble.

Enough time has elapsed, that we would not fight the LDS church, or the Navajo tribal police. There is no chance that we would encircle the Navajo reservation with a tall wall, and starve them to death while bombing their schools and hospitals and homes to complete destruction. We would use police, backed up by military, to root out those bad Hopis. We would not starve and bomb the civilian Hopis. We would understand that an armed criminal group can arise within a population. [It happened at the US capital!] It is not OK to murder all the civilians in a cultural group when a tiny faction of that group performs a terrorist act.

This is where we find ourselves. We Americans have funded and blocked the world from taking action against the siege and genocide of another countries displaced native population. The United Nations is likely to move out of the US because the country is no longer a good place for other nations to meet. We have begun a trade war with all nations including our long term allies. The trade war has forced our enemies and our former allies to be more friendly with one another. We have created sides for a world war. Our allies are the other far right wing dominated countries: Israel, Brazil, El Salvador, and several other countries that are currently ruled by corrupt rapists.

The US is being held by a far right minority, that has tricked the working class into paying for the ejection of millions of undocumented Americans. The US working class has lost health care and food assistance and education in order to build concentration camps and a large secret police force. If this sounds alarmist, please look on the news. For the first time in US history, the office of the president is ignoring the courts, and has actually pardoned thousands of people that tried to violently reverse a US election. For the very first time, the President has taken over the spending of tax money and the waging of war. The Senate and the House and the supreme court are all staffed with unqualified right wing flunkies who can be fired at a moments notice if they refuse a Trump order.

You can see other trends: California, Oregon and Washington have joined together to form a new health service that uses science and vaccines. How long will it be before these areas cease to pay taxes to an unfriendly federal government? A government that is currently sending troops from far right areas of the US [the new confederacy] to sanctuary cities [the new union]. This is a transparent and pathetic attempt to further divide the US population using simmering resentments left over from the US civil war.

It is impossible to ignore the similarities between Trump and Hitler. Trump was born a year after Adolf died. Trump has staged an overthrow of the election process, but was forgiven when it failed. Hitler staged an overthrow that failed, but he had to spend time in prison. Both guys developed a private army, and usurped power normally invested elsewhere in government. Both chose flawed lieutenants, guilty of the corruption and rape that they find very forgivable. Both despots selected scapegoat groups, starting with unpopular splinter groups, but proceeding on to more mainstream minorities. Where Hitler started with the Gays and the Gypsies and the blacks, Trumps has started with Transsexuals, because the gay or gay friendly population has exploded since 1940. For his Gypsies, he selected the criminals among the undocumented community. But, it was too hard to find criminals, so he had to send the new secret police to home depot, bus stops, active wildfires, immigration courts, and other places where workers can easily be encircled. Unfortunately, we are rounding up the workers and the law abiding immigrants that are working legally, going to their court dates, and playing strictly by the rules. And for his blacks, Trump has stuck with the African Americans. He has accepted illegal white migration from South Africa, but has discouraged legal immigration of darker skinned folk into the US. He sent troops to black lives matter protests, and forgave whites who broke into the capital,  or who shot or drove a car into crowds of peaceful protesters.

It is hard to imagine Trump stepping down willingly before his death. It is nearly impossible to imagine him telling the truth, or passing up a billion dollar bribe. From his behavior to date, it is most likely that he will continue down the path blazed by Hitler: More secret police and prison camps; A widening scapegoat hunt; and eventually, a world war. My father, who is 93, will get to see 2 world wars!

 

Gaze at the destruction in Gaza, and realize that this will happen to us in the United States. One does not require an angry God to experience an healthy serving of what one has done to others. This is a feature of the human mind. When the human mind is filled with hate and greed, It is not possible to make good decisions. Further, it is not possible to win a war. The classic example is Hitlers insane decision to attack his ally Russia while he was loosing the fight against Europe and the US.

 

I predict a very long world war, starting with conventional weapons. It will move to tactical nukes, and then to a full ICBM war with naval battles and boots on the ground.  My prediction is that those boots will stomp US cities, which will come to look similar to present day Gaza. I expect the war to loosely resemble ww2, with the US as Germany and Israel as Japan. I expect some of our allies to turn against us as happened when Russia changed sides in ww2.

 

We are in a state where we can not be trusted. The world has watched as the US election process was violently attacked,  and then, as the attacker was reelected as president. Our allies have seen us attack them, with disruptive tariffs and crazy military stunts like the naval encirclement of Venezuela and the pointless and ineffective bombing of Iran. And, of course, everyone who has a phone or a tv can watch us frantically rounding up undocumented workers and asylum seekers in a very brutal and cruel manner. The Hyundai raid just occurred. Trump forced south Korea to build electric cars and batteries here to avoid absurd tariffs, and then performed a military style raid on the South Korean company after they had complied. One wonders how much Trump was paid by oil and car companies to hamper electric car manufacturing, and to slow down the installation of solar panels and wind mills.

 

I do not recommend that foreign companies give in to Trumps bullying. Instead, I suggest that any country that does not like our funding of the Gaza war, or our brutal round up of their countries citizens, cease bargaining with this current administration. Anyone who meets with Trump will be harmed. He is that toxic. It would be best to accept the tariffs, match them, and start winding up your business in the US. Get your workers and factories out of the US, [before they are nationalized or attacked]. You don't need amazon or meta or google. These companies were set up to concentrate your money into just a few US pockets.  These companies are predatory, and will not be controlled by the current government because they paid to have them elected.

 

You will notice that American movies are often little more than US military propaganda, or brutal stories about American's abusing one another. Viewing such movies and social media, and using a biased search engine like google will infect you with the Greed and Hatred that currently afflicts the US people.  Also, these companies will rip you off in an organized way. The US institutions that once policed companies and improved world health have been shut down. Our economy is collapsing pretty quickly as is our health system. We are taking from our own poorest citizens to build a vast network of secret police and concentration camps. We have reduced food and health programs to create even more deadly weapons. Don't join with us in our war frenzy and national paranoia. If we continue with this behavior, we will start a world war that will make ww2 seem brief and not very damaging. There will eventually be war crimes trials like the Nuremberg event, only they will be held in occupied Washington DC, or some other rubble filled US city. If we win the war, it will be even worse. All countries will become second class satellites of the US. You will be forced to speak English, and your kids will learn the absurd lies that we currently tell our own students. You will experience apartheid.

 

So, in summary, I hope that humans outside the US will watch us carefully but stay away. Buy nothing American, and do not view our divisive propaganda. [It will make you mentally ill, as it has done to us!] Do not parrot our media because it is no longer independent or truthful. Make your own news reports that show us our own brutality and greed. Please, do not fall into the same traps. let all your people vote, police your companies to prevent cheating and monopolies, and elect bridge builders and humanitarians instead of rapists and cheats. Get ready to defend yourselves. As the US collapse continues, we will have no option but to attack, and take your stuff.

 

 

 

 

testing the best screen that i have found for raspberry pi

 

I am creating what is called a cyberdeck using the raspberry pi compute module 5 paired with the wisecoco 10.1 inch amoled display.

 

I am using this particular screen because it's resolution is 2560 by 1600, making it ideal for working with more than one window at a time.

Among the different implementations of this particular amoled display,  The Wisecoco screen has by far the best case for mounting to an arm, because it is machined from a single slab of aluminum, and it is tapped for the 3 mm screws on a standard 75 mm pattern. It is also tapped with the 2.5 mm holes to mount any of the pi family directly on the back of the screen. Perhaps best yet, for setting the screen into the lid of a plastic case, the ports are set back a few cm from the edge of the screen, leaving ample room for the power and data cables to be hidden behind the screen inside of the lid.

  

I got to look into this screen very deeply, because when i mounted it into the lid of a pelican case, it fell apart the first time the case was closed. The glass did not break, but it seems that something was damaged, because the screen quit lighting up. I dumped the glass out again, and tried resetting the delicate backlight cable that had taken the weight of the falling glass. I tried a lot of times, actually, and finally got the screen working for a few days more.

 

But, eventually it quit entirely again, and I notified Wisecoco about the incident. I told them my screen was lacking either two sided tape or  glue on the machined surfaces where the back of the screen rests. Also, i had found a loose screw inside, besides the 3 that were holding on the display board.

 

Luckily, Wisecoco is one of those companies that care a lot about quality, and they very quickly shipped me another screen with all the useful cables.

The photo is of my home-made triangular desk after receiving the replacement screen, and mounting it to the arm next to my 27 inch oled screen. 

 

As far as machines that i have tested this screen with, I first tried the Lattepanda Mu module mounted to the official light carrier board. It worked perfectly, and provided beautiful gaming when i added a low profile rtx 4060 to the pci-e port of the light carrier board. The amoled screen is only a 60 hz screen, but that works well with the reduced performance of the 4060 when it's 8 lanes of pci 4 are bottle-necked through the 4 pins of pci 3 found on the Mu. 

The Mu [without the low profile gpu] fits well in the low volume case that is exactly the size of the 10.1 inch screen.  There is ample room for a large dc/dc voltage converter, a powered usb-3 hub, and some m.2 drives in enclosures.

 

I don't need that much power in my portable cyberdeck, so I next tested the raspberry pi 5 with wifi and 4 gigs of ram. This works flawless out of the box. The pi 5 has enough power to run both 2k screens at the same time, as well as a smaller dci screen that is driven directly from the pi5.

The pi5 lacks a headphone jack, but the sound comes through the hdmi cable along with the video, and the two speakers on the screen are loud enough if you boost the sound to 120 %. I created an icon on the desktop that boosts the audio to 120% with a single click.

 

I tried the wisecoco screen with the smaller pi zero 2w, but it did not work out of the box. The zero can not output larger than a 1080 pixel tall signal, and the wisecoco screen does not automatically downscale to 1080. I think that it would be fairly easy to get the zero configured manually to output 1280 by 800 pixels, but this screen is too nice to downscale it like that.

 

Currently, I am testing the Raspberry pi computer module 5 with 8 gigs of memory and wifi. It also works flawlessly with the high resolution screen, and the module allows for some nice improvements over the pi5 computer. The module has an external wifi antenae, so it gets a stronger signal. Also, using the waveshare nano b carrier board, I get a headphone jack as well as the ability to boot from a m.2 card.

 

I got very excited poking around in the aluminum housing of the screen, because it is ideal for making a version where the pi 5 compute module mounts directly to the display board. The maker is clearly able to machine to very small tolerances inside the case, so it would be possible to cool the cm5 with the aluminum of the whole case. A little thickness needs to be added, and, the ports would no longer be for signal input and power. They would be the io ports of the cm5, and 6 - 24 volts for charging a thin li polymer battery. And, there would be a place to attach several external antenae, in case the cm5 has wifi, or a cell module or software defined radio is added.

 

the current display board is only about half size, so increasing it to full size should provide ample room for mounting the cm5, and for the charging system,  and mounting for one or two m.2 drives.

 

I have checked very carefully, and there is no general purpose tablet kit for the cm5 that is silent, high resolution, and built from a single slab of metal. 

The cm5 is the correct module to base a long term tablet product on, because it has remained port compliant with the cm4, and will likely be compliant again with the cm6 in some years. Raspberry pi has amazing long term product availability as well as software support for every pi made since the first model. 

 

I have posted this early account of the testing for my cyberdeck, because Wisecoco reached out to me, saying that another customer can not get their screen to work with a pi5.  I have had the opposite experience. Aside from the surprise with the  missing 2 sided tape, this screen has worked out of box as a second screen for my gaming system. It is perfect for monitoring temperatures and downloads while gaming on the faster and larger screen. I could rotate the screen, and make it my main screen so that the i could use my mouse or touch to navigate.

 

It worked perfectly with each model of single board computer, except the pi zero 2w which lacks the compute to run the screen. The sound is adequate, about like a cheap laptop. It is the most readable screen that I have ever seen, and is just perfect for reading text or watching movies in bed. If i take my glasses off, i can focus to about 6 inches, and this screen becomes something like virtual reality. The screen has 5 levels of brightness, accessed by long presses on the single button. short presses turn the screen on and off.

 

 Notes on using the 10 inch amoled screen as a second screen:

 

O yea, this thing is perfect for a second screen. I have noticed that two 27 inch screens makes such a wide view that the neck becomes tired looking back and forth. In the above image, the 27 inch screen is the 360 hz gaming oled from Dell. The 10 inch screen actually presents a few hundred more pixels in height than the 27 inch screen, even though it is a little greater than 1/3 the diagonal measure. So, this screen makes an image or a video pop more than i have even seen before. There is no way at all to see a pixel, or to notice that you are viewing a screen instead of a color photo.

 

In fact, I now watch the news on the 10 inch screen in the morning, even though the 27 inch is right beside it. the Pi cm5 is already running, And it looks better if anything. A warning about oled screens: don't try one until you are ready to change over. After you use an oled, a movie or a photo on even the best of the old backlit screens will no longer look real. it will look like the old rounded tube tvs looked after we adjusted to flat screens. So, after you get a large oled that rivals your samsung or iphone in quality, all of your screens will need to be changed. It could cost thousands of dollars!

 

The screen uses about 10 watts of 5 volt dc current, and i have found that the standard 12 v to 24 v input and 5 volt output buck converter [about 8 dollars on amazon] works best. I have rigged a switch for the converter, so that i can shut the screen off very easily. 

 

In this shot, the 10 inch screen is mounted via a quick release to a super simple aluminum arm that was 25 dollars on amazon. I have found that the post of the arm is great for attaching switches, m.2 enclosures, a usb 3 dock, and a raspberry pi cm5 in the smallest possible configuration.

 

 The cm5 is attached to the Waveshare nano - b carrier board, which is the same size as the module.

A huge heat sink is attached to the processor, so that no fan is needed. It may be possible to stick the processor right to a the anodized aluminum of the arm. I have done that with a m.2 2230 enclosure. It used to get really hot, but now, it heats the whole arm.

 

When i travel, i will rig the 10 inch screen to the lid of a box that is exactly the same size, forming a sort of laptop screen for any sbc that i place in the bottom part of the box. The sbc can run on a power brick, as that is cheaper than setting up a battery and a charger. I am debating between trying to mount the little keyboard that also fits in the bottom of the box, or should i install a second screen? having 2 working touch screens would be nice, where you could work on different documents, or use the lower screen for a keyboard, and the upper for the website or document. Raspberry pi 5 handles screens super fluidly, so you could turn either of the 2 screens off,

or use them in conjunction with additional external screens. It is easy to add 2 hdmi screens which each need a data cable, as well as a power/touch cable, and 2 dci screens that each receive power and signal and touch from a dedicated dci cable.

 

 

In summary, this Wiscoco 10.1 inch amoled display is the single best made medium sized screen for desktop use and for projects. I dream of a tablet kit based on the Pi CM5. Then, there would just be a single slab of metal attached to the stand, with a single power wire leading to it. 

 

I would be very willing to help in the design and testing of such a tablet. I am a retired engineer, and need fun projects to do!

 

 

 

 

 

 

new favorite small computer!

 this is one of the two new 'nano' carrier boards from the company Waveshare.

Snapped to it is the raspberry pi cm5, that itself is wearing a heat sink and fan.

The cm5 is a full raspberry pi 5 computer, without any ports. 

  

 

 

In this case, it is snapped to the nano carrier board.

the carrier is the same size as the cm5, and has a power port, an ethernet port, a usb port, and an hdmi port.

 

  

You see a complete computer system, including a heat sink that is much larger than the other components, and a small fan. The result is only slightly larger than a match box.

 

you may notice the headphone jack, which is what got me all excited to try the nano b carrier board.

This thing is so packed! there is a port for a tiny pwm fan, a place to plug in a real time clock battery, 3 tiny switches, and 2 ports for a camera or a touch display.

On the back of the carrier is a holder for the micro sd card, and you can see it protruding from the upper left. there is also a place to attach the standard pci express cable, as well as headers for a second hdmi port, and an additional usb port. 

 

the card that is inserted is a 500 gig samsung, with the latest raspberry pi OS. I have installed the samba server, so that files in my shared directory are available to any other computer on the same wireless system.

 

The CM5 uses the least power of any in the raspberry pi5 generation, so it is ideal for leaving on for very long periods.  

This example is the model with 8 gigs of memory and wifi, so it was over 100 dollars. the nano b carrier board is 25 dollars. The heat sink is 7 dollars, and the fan is 3 dollars.  I wanted the 8 gig model for running a server, but also watching youtube videos, playing old games, and downloading for days at a time. And, doubling the memory increases the processor speed and snappiness of the cm5.

 

As far as i know, no case exists for this baby, outside of several 3d prints that are available on line.

A great case might be a worthy project! 

 

 

Which countries are US allies now?

We have elected a president that promised to become a dictator, and to somehow stop America's fast decline. A supposed business genius that we now find is simply a con man and liar. 

Have we indeed become great? let us look at some things that have changed. 

 

 

1. low income US citizens are loosing rural mail service, free medical care, and much of the safety net that the US was once respected for. It is a kind of corporate downsizing, where the lower wealth US citizens will be made homeless, driven from place to place by militarized police, and finally expelled from the US or killed. Our willingness to pay for the Israelis to drive surviving native Israelis into Egypt foreshadows the plans for the continental US. Perhaps here, homeless Americans could be driven south into Mexico? The small share of national wealth that was held by the lower half of the US economy will be passed to the super rich as tax savings and lucrative government contracts. Elon will be able to continue heating up and harming the earth, and will likely get to play rocket man with the money that was once used to control monopolies, and feed, house and medicate the poor. He will fly to mars on food stamps! 

 

2. We have paid the Israelis to continue bombing Gaza, so that their prime minister can continue to ignore the will of his own constituents. They have turned Palestinians, who are basically the native Israelis, into non humans who should be killed or driven off. Much like the Native Americans and the undocumented in the US, these unwanted natives have been hunted and pushed from place to place for 75 years or more. Where they used to run rural farms, they are now jammed into walled cities, and may not leave. This is very obviously the most cruel thing that the US has paid for and participated in since we chased the native Americans around, killed them and destroyed their food supply. Amusingly, we colonizers killed off our own food supply as well, so that cows would dominate the landscape instead of deer and buffalo. We had essentially privatized the free meat! 

 

3. We have purposely hurt our allies, and driven them to deal with our enemies and competitors. Now, Canada will be buying from China and Europe instead of from us.They have sent us back our Tennessee sipping whiskey and our hated Tesla cars.They are currently talking about charging us to go to Alaska by road, or even blocking our land access entirely. The reason for our attacks against Canada are totally absurd, as most fentanyl goes from the US to Canada, and not the other way around. Who will benefit from these trade wars? certainly not ordinary middle class citizens. Their wages will drop, many will loose jobs, and prices will go up. Homeless populations will soar in the US and in the lands of our trade war enemies. As I have predicted for years, poor people will soon be hordes of zombies, driven from place to place, but denied entrance into cities or towns. Instead of help, they will get bullets and tear gas. 

 

4. We have betrayed NATO, which is our strongest group of allies. NATO uses our super expensive and slightly better f35 jet as it's main air workhorse. Common use of this jet made the US rich, and allowed NATO forces to coordinate well, and to easily maintain this one kind of machine. Like the Tesla car, the f35 is now a symbol of the the cruel and abusive trump regime. Unless we change our behavior, NATO will let it's f35s age out without much maintenance. They will replace them with much cheaper, and only slightly more visible and less lethal planes. 

 

5. It is clear to the rest of the world [although, strangely, not to us?] that a coup has occurred, where the biggest companies in the US have literally taken over the federal government. Nothing about the coup was secretive.The plan was published long before the election. The company heads paid for trumps election, and stood behind him from the start. Social security would be de-funded. The early warning health care system that we set up for the entire world would be abandoned. We would shutter pretty much every government department meant to control monopolies and discourage fraud and corporate cheating. We would abruptly stop assisting the poor all over the world, leaving a huge gap for china to stroll into. China will now get the good will and raw materials of the third world nations that we abandoned. 

 

6. US Judges are the last line of defense. If Trump can safely ignore their decisions, or fire the ones that will not cooperate, the US will quickly change its form of government. We will be done with the rule of the people, and will be lead by the wealthiest Americans. It seems likely that there will be attempts to rebel. Ironically, Trump will have to disarm the people of the US, even though a love of private gun ownership was a hook used to fool the working class into electing the despot. To sum this up, i will answer my title question. Israel is our last remaining ally. After both the US and Israel further infuriate the world with epic misbehaviors, This strong partnership will have to fight the entire world. I don't see how we can win a war like that. It is so strongly reminiscent of WW2, where Germany and Japan took on the entire planet. You can only fight the whole world when your country is ruled by hate and division. Hate starts wars, but does not win them. Hate always turns on itself in time, as it did for Germany. Hitler started strong, but later turned against his strongest ally. Does this sound similar to our present situation? I believe so. i want to leave you with an image:

 

Imagine the leaders of many countries meeting to decide how to oppose, and even destroy, the US of A. Instead of a period of glorious prosperity, we are headed for world war. It will be fought right here, in US cities and rural areas. Because our weapons are more powerful, it will not be as quick as ww2. i believe that it will drag on for decades, until folks forget why they are fighting. Remember that during world wars, we also have pandemics, internal race wars, and increasing natural disasters. 

 

So, for your safety, i will provide the following:

 

 You can translate "can I have some food?" to Chinese as 

 

"我可以吃点东西吗？" (Wǒ kěyǐ chī diǎn dōngxi ma?). 

 

Here's a breakdown: 

我可以 (wǒ kěyǐ): "I can" or "I may". 

吃 (chī): "to eat". 

点 (diǎn): "a little" or "some". 

东西 (dōngxi): "things" or "food". 

吗？ (ma?): question marker. 

 

 also please memorize: 

 

我其實是一個美國原住民。我在第三次世界大戰期間強烈反對唐納德·特朗普 

 

Wǒ qíshí shì yīgè měiguó yuán zhùmín. Wǒ zài dì sān cì shìjiè dàzhàn qíjiān qiángliè fǎnduì tángnàdé·tè lǎng pǔ

 

 which means: 

 

i am actually a native American. i strongly opposed Donald Trump during ww3.

 

 In the present day, over 30% of Germans think that their family was anti Hitler, and helped to hide Jews during WW2. It is time to come up with the story that you will tell your grand kids when they ask you why you supported trump. Why you took no action while the education system was purposely crippled, immigrants were rounded up and sent to torture prisons in El Salvador, and when we turned against our own allies in a trade war, and why we then took on the combined armed forces of the planet Earth.

revised best gaming rig

 

this is my new amd 7600x and rtx 4070 moved to a larger box so that i could plug the graphics card right into the asrock a620 mini itx board.

I originally tried it with case fans on the bottom, and another set of thin fans strapped to the pny graphics card. But, it is cooler and more quiet with just a single set of  25 mm thick fans strapped to the 4070. The noctua quiet fans act as both gpu fans and intake fans for the case.

 

there is room for a larger cooler, but that starts to block the air flow in the case. Also, the AMD 7600x surges up to about 100 watts, but typically games at 60 watts, and shows a 4k movie using about 40 watts. So, a huge cooler is not needed. this 90 mm low profile noctua does the job, especially with the 120 by 15 mm noctua fan just above it vacuuming the hot air quickly out of the case.

The 4070 peaks at only 200 watts, and games at more like 150. So it is relatively easy to keep cool.

 

The hdplex 500 watt atx power supply provides ample power, and also leaves room for more airflow lanes through the case and a 3.5 inch data center drive.

this is peak case airflow, with all fans facing up.

it is true that these cases where the gpu plugs right into the mother board typically have hot spots, compared with sandwhich style cases that use a riser cable to house the graphics card in its own private compartment. 

The hard drive is rarely heard, as i use the data center drive as a long term backup for the pair of 2 tb m.2 drives on the motherboard. you can see the samsung drive on the top.

 

the cooling is so good in this sliger case that extra overclocking headroom is enjoyed. I am able to use +237 mhz on the gpu chip, and +900 mhz on the gpu memory. in this mode, the low power chip speeds along, with little delays when it hits its feeble power limit of 200 watts at 1.1 volts. 

the gaming is amazingly quiet, with the 90 mm fan on the cooler being the only fan smaller than 120 mm. And, non gaming operation is silent. you actually have to look for the light on the power button to find out if the system is on.

 

The new AMD graphics cards are out, and it looks like they have hit it out of the park in terms of value. i am eying a small form factor card like the powercolor reaper 9070xt, which could drop right into this system. We will see when the wildly inflated GPU prices fall toward MSRP.