About DataHamster

The Data Hamster stores facts and information in its capacious cheek pouches and regurgitates them from time to time.

2015-ish Retro Computing PC build

Earlier in the year my main PC failed. The board was dead and it wasn’t the PSU as I have a PSU tester and it tested out fine. The PC was long overdue an upgrade, so I went ahead with that. More on that in another post. The system was… Continue reading

Left mouse button doesn’t work after playing a game in Windowed Fullscreen mode

I’ve had a weird issue recently when playing some games in Windowed fullscreen mode under Windows 10 Professional. Specifically the Epic Games Store version of The Outer Worlds: Spacer’s Choice Edition and also Robocop: Rogue City, although I’m sure it’s not limited to those. The issue is that after Alt-tabbing to… Continue reading

Building another dual Xeon workstation from a Supermicro server

In a previous post I detailed building a dual Xeon workstation using a Supermicro X8DTL-3F salvaged from a used 1U server, and dual Xeon X5680 CPUs. That was 6 years ago now, and it’s time for some upgrades. I was finding that, with air cooling, CPU#1 was ingesting hot exhaust… Continue reading

Building a Xeon E5645 TrueNAS server with a Supermicro X8DTL-6F & SAS2008

In a previous post I detailed building a NAS from a Supermicro 1U server, using a X8DTL-3F motherboard and a Xeon E5645 CPU. I’ve made some big changes since then, so I decided that this warranted a new post rather than just an update to that post. Obviously, one change… Continue reading

Flashing the SAS 2008 on a Supermicro X8DTL-6F to IT mode

I recently updated the motherboard on my NAS server from a Supermicro X8DTL-3F to a X8DTL-6F, which is a pretty much identical motherboard only with an onboard LSI SAS 2008 controller on it. During the course of that update, I needed to flash the SAS 2008 to IT mode, and… Continue reading

Suncom F-15e Eagle tactical control stick

In the mid 1990’s Suncom Technologies released a series of serious flight sticks aimed to compete head-on with Thrustmaster and CH. Their F15e stick was modelled on the real joystick from the McDonnell Douglas (now Boeing) F-15E Strike Eagle fighter aircraft, and consisted of four models. All four were 2-axis… Continue reading

Corrado VR6

I used to host the Corrado VR6 Information Site at corrado-vr6.info However, the increasingly onerous task of running a separate website, with GDPR compliance, security updates, and the escalating cost of the domain name, meant that it was becoming simply not worth the time and effort to maintain it. Plus,… Continue reading

Mouse freezes on Ubuntu and Windows with Supermicro X8DTL

I have been regularly encountering an issue with a USB keyboard and mouse, where the mouse pointer freezes, and the keyboard experiences missed or delayed keystrokes. After approximately two seconds, it would unfreeze again, but the problem would reoccur almost immediately. Having now found a solution, I thought I would… Continue reading