• dmtalon@infosec.pub
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    2 days ago

    Part of my Christmas gift to my father this year was getting him a SSD, and install Linux on his PC, that doesn’t support Windows 11. But his Dell was very not friendly for upgrading. It has a proprietary PSU with only the connectors needed to run the one HDD and Optical drive (also a non sata connector).

    I had a plan in case there were issues, and had enough spare parts to build him a nicer used PC. It’s also an upgrade for him as his Dell was a 6th gen i5, now he’s got a 7th gen i7 :) and more ram.

    But I built it, and installed Fedora 41 KDE on it. He started setting it up here over the holidays then took it home and set it up there. He’s not run into any “problems” he hasn’t found solutions for. Mom is still using the Dell but Dad hopes he can eventually get her moved to the Linux box.

    I used to run ESET and really liked them ‘back in the day’ and glad to see them looking out for people.

      • dmtalon@infosec.pub
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        2 days ago

        Like a tiny proprietary connector, not Molex, not SATA. So the power supply had a single line running to the spinner HDD (standard SATA), and then piggy backed off that to the optical drive was this little connector. Kind of looked like a 4pin fan connector size. I didn’t bother investigating after my plan to just disconnect the optical drive was thwarted <sigh>

        • Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de
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          1 day ago

          Ah that rings a bell, some of my (older) PSU cables have one of those at the end after a daisy chain of SATA or Molex

          Something like the rightmost in these pictures?

          I think they are called Floppy connectors

          • dmtalon@infosec.pub
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            1 day ago

            That might be it, but would an optical drive run off that? Guess it’s all the same power wires.

            • Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de
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              1 day ago

              I never had an optical drive that had this connector, but it seems plausible that the relatively smaller pins could still carry enough power for it.

              The most power hungy bit would probably be the spinning motor, and the mass being spun is much lower in an optical drive than for a magnetic drive platter.

          • dmtalon@infosec.pub
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            2 days ago

            I’ve asked my dad to snap a picture if he doesn’t mind :) but it’s a bit of a pain to get to

            I didn’t have anything at the house to split off the sata power and I was ok getting rid of my spare stuff so it worked out better anyway

        • dmtalon@infosec.pub
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          2 days ago

          no, this thing had a separate power/data. It was a normal sized optical drive (old thick size). I’m going to see if I can get my dad to snap a picture. They’re 600 miles away so I can’t just do it real quick.