Re: Microsoft to force new Outlook on Windows 10 PCs

On Thu, 1/16/2025 7:27 PM, rbowman wrote:

On Thu, 16 Jan 2025 12:28:47 -0600, chrisv wrote:
 

I think us DIY guys tend to overspend and overbuild our systems.  So we
don't save any money, but they are better-built.

 
I keep looking at the Antec Sonata case gathering dust and think I should
do something with it. The case is probably as obsolete as whatever is in
it. It does have an upgraded PS since the heavily hyped Antec PS was one
of a batch with a high failure rate.
 
Then reality sets in. What would I do with it? I'm not a gamer. That
reality set in when the video card failed and all I could find in the
local shops were Hyper-Phaze Mark 7 Dual Thrusters that were about $200
more than I was going to pay for a generic card.
 

That's a fine case. I own two of them. One of them seems to be older
than the other, and the older one has weird slots for the addin cards.
You can't add a two-slot wide video card, because a "bump" on the inside
side of the case, conflicts with the two-slot-wide flat faceplate on the video card.

But other than that, it has the excellent trays system. One generation
of trays has black rubber cushions (not very thick), and the later one
is silicone rubber and a bit thicker.

The holes in the tray support legacy drives (like up to 6TB in capacity).
The Helium drives (up to 24TB) have the holes in a different place. One
guy on the Internet, used his 3D printer to make an Antec compatible tray
with the holes in the correct place for the Helium drives. But I don't have
any of those, so the 6TB is about the largest drive I can use in that PC
(without using the inconvenient 5.25" bays in the top front).

The Test Machine (ten years old), the trays have been sliding in and out
of that thing for ten years. The SATA cables see a lot of use.

I would not throw the Antec away. If anything, put it up on Ebay (with trays)
and sell it to someone who likes those.

For those who don't know about the trays, they slide out towards you,
and compared to the hell of mounting drives in 5.25" bays, they are
a dream to use. You still use four screws to fit the tray to the
drive, but that's not hard to do, and I keep a Philips head screwdriver
on the desk, to change drives.

Don't use the USB2 ports on the Sonata case, because the wiring is
a bit off on those. Antec didn't seem to have someone with an electrical
background, to verify their front panel connectors. Buzz out the wiring on
the assembly, and see if you can spot the swap. Fortunately, they
never reversed VCC and GND on their wiring, so there were no "fireworks".

   Paul