Foone🏳️⚧️
So I've got this fun luggable that I picked up this weekend. The screen is broken, and it may have other problems, but it's still neat to open up
(sorry this is going to be a very image heavy thread and I'm posting as I take it apart, so I'm going to skip image descriptions after this one)
Foone🏳️⚧️
And let's get back to what this thing is:
It's a FleXtreme NextDimension, that's what!
Foone🏳️⚧️
That's these people:
https://solutions.nextcomputing.com/
Apparently they started as Sun workstation supplier for government and military customers, and later started doing high-performance luggables for a variety of markets, including video production. Thus, this thing.
I can't find this model on their site, but they did a lot of custom things (and this thing is 12 years old: they might have just deleted it from their site )
Foone🏳️⚧️
The bottom of the device says it came with Windows 7 Pro Embedded, and it was manufactured in March of 2012
Foone🏳️⚧️
Their LVDS cables were too long (A problem NO ONE HAS EVER HAD BEFORE) so they just bundled them over here
Foone🏳️⚧️
okay, the (broken) display is an LG LP171WU5.
That's a 17.1"(43cm) laptop display, 1920x1200, LED backlight.
Foone🏳️⚧️
They found low-profile RAM, because otherwise it'd run into the PSU
Foone🏳️⚧️
The bracket for the power supply (yes, really) hides another board:
This DVI to LVDS board.
Foone🏳️⚧️
I'm starting to worry that they custom-made this heatsink.
This thing is very heavy. I don't have a scale nearby or I'd weigh it, but it's the kind of heavy YOU DON'T PUT IN PORTABLE COMPUTERS
Foone🏳️⚧️
And we're mostly in!
Foone🏳️⚧️
and really, what the fuck is this? Did you run out of the correctly sized fans that day?
Foone🏳️⚧️
The DVD drive is a Sony DVD/CD rewriter, apparently. An AD-7740H
Foone🏳️⚧️
Pulled the PSU. It's a Sparkle Power 480w PSU
Foone🏳️⚧️
hard drive is a 500mb Seagate Momentus.
and I think it may be dead.
Foone🏳️⚧️
I opened it anyway. The chips are mainly FPGAs and RAM, with a few other scattered about. I might come back and figure out what each of these are later.
Foone🏳️⚧️
And that top card. It's not a video card, it's a Winnov Videum RGB XPress!
That's a capture card too.
It doesn't capture DVI, though: it is supposed to have an octopus cable for each of those "DVI" ports.
BTW you might look at this image and go "foone you're showing us the back of the card, flip it over so we can see the chips"
Foone🏳️⚧️
NOPE! both sides are basically blank.
They build this fucker like a sandwich, with the good bits on the inside.
Foone🏳️⚧️
Here's the inside.
There's a PSU on the bottom left, a 2.5" hard drive on left, the full size motherboard on the back, and that tiny laptop DVD driver in the bottom-right, for some reason.
Foone🏳️⚧️
yeah...
Rather than buy a fan with the correct length cable, they bought a fan with a cable that's too long, and then included a spot on the PCB to wrap it around.
That's... impressively lazy!
Foone🏳️⚧️
But check out this part. See how the fan cable goes into those cuts inside the PCB?
Foone🏳️⚧️
And inside it has this card that I pulled out: A Winnov Videum 4x SDI.
It's a capture card for SDI video.
emily, blinkenlight witch
@foone YOU WOULDN'T DOWNLOAD A DEITY
Foone🏳️⚧️
I have their OBS config. I could make PIRATE CHURCH SERMONS!
especially if they didn't rotate their stream key between now and 2020
Foone🏳️⚧️
relatively recently means "up until march 2020", judging by file dates.
Foone🏳️⚧️
hard drive is not dead! but annoyingly it's bigger than the spare hard drive I have in my imaging machine, so I can't just copy everything over
Foone🏳️⚧️
okay so I rapidly found out some info.
This thing does have data on the hard drive. This used to be used by a church in the bay area, and it's one that boasts on their website that they livestream their services.
I bet up until relatively recently they were using this machine to do that
Foone🏳️⚧️
fun fact about this heatsink:
They did not, in fact, drill the screw holes at an angle. That was too hard, so they drilled them vertically, and just bent the screws.
Foone🏳️⚧️
oh god the church has a link to their sharepoint instance.
I was a bit iffy when my local church introduced powerpoint in the early 2000s, I think this fancy produced video stuff is extra bad, but Sharepoint? That's one of the layers of hell! It's in the bible*!
* it's not. I checked.
Foone🏳️⚧️
so @Lapsus figured out what heatsink this is. It's an actual product that was sold, not their custom thing (though the fan mount IS custom, they made their own aluminum bracket for it)
It's a Swiftech MCX478-V (or very similar, since that one is designed for a Pentium 4, and this is a Intel Core (non-duo)
Foone🏳️⚧️
oh hey there's another folder with another archive but this is the church's livestreams.
I can pirate the Jesus!
Foone🏳️⚧️
gaze into the heatsink of insanity
Foone🏳️⚧️
they're not hiring for any security positions. I checked.
Not surprised, really.
Foone🏳️⚧️
the machine runs IIS for some reason. I don't really feel like looking into what this does, but I think it's some weird SOAP thing
Foone🏳️⚧️
yeah this thing has 55 files in the Archive folder, and every one I've checked is an internal confidential NetApp presentation
Foone🏳️⚧️
fun fact about this:
in 2016 I was working for Pure Storage, one of NetApp's direct competitors
Foone🏳️⚧️
I am an expert at industrial espionage but I take the slow route
I just wait 8 years for your computers to get donated to a church and then thrown out, and then I pick them up and access your presentations that were foolishly left on the hard drive!
It's the perfect crime!
Foone🏳️⚧️
NetApp Confidential - Restricted Use
YEAH ABOUT THAT: MAYBE DON'T LEAVE IT ON A HARD DRIVE IN THE GARBAGE
Foone🏳️⚧️
uh. I think this thing might have been donated from someone who worked at NetApp, and didn't clear the hard drive.
There's some files from 2016 that are Net App All Hands presentations.
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