...but I'm slowly getting back into the swing of things!
I'm in the process of completely rebuilding my main PC, so I need to make sure that I have everything I need to recover for the fresh installs in an accessible place, which means a lot of work at my end! As it stands, I have been more active on Twitter, but I've also been active on Mastodon too, mostly on my GU account, although I'm hoping that this year, I'll get a better system going, though for now, most content will be served from my GU account, at least till I get a schedule going for non-GU stuff at least; I'm hoping to get some gaming content uploaded in early April, and if you want to check that out, be sure to follow me if you aren't already, as I'm going to try to get things organised there soon!
Eventually, I plan to have a proper schedule up for all Stormhaven Media-related things, but that won't happen for a few months at least, disregarding my Let's Play content. In any case, I'm hoping the next time I post here (and maybe on my GU account), the transfer will be complete, and I can then focus on content creation, as well as planning a new version of Raiden (follow-up PC), because it's taken me so long to upgrade Zeus (current main), that I may as well just give the 2 SSDs intended for Raiden to Zeus (I also have a 4TB HDD to use for Zeus as well, which was always intended to replace the 2TB SSHD, which will replace my "work" laptop's 500GB HDD), and give the 2 SSDs intended for Thor to Raiden, because by the time I'm ready to even build for Thor, I expect both DDR5 and USB 4.x to be out and affordable, and potentially m.2/NVMe SSDs to be much cheaper as well, so I can then just use 2 of those instead of the 2.5in SSDs that both Raiden and Thor will use!
Of course, this also means that Zeus will get Raiden's motherboard, and also the CPU (already intended as Raiden was going to get an i7-4xxx) and the RAM assigned to it; the GPU (Nvidia T600, a cut-down GTX 1650), wireless card (WiFi 6), the USB 3.x card, and the case will be all that remains of Zeus in my new plan, along with the card reader that's in almost every case, apart from the one assigned to Summanus, which is essentially a combination of a few new parts (case, card reader, USB 3.x card, and a WiFi 6 card), with the motherboard, CPU, GPU and RAM that used to be with it! I'm replacing the case because quite frankly, it's crap! The USB 3.x card is because I don't have a 4x slot available on any of my builds, and the WiFi 6 card is because it will only work in Windows 10, so I may as well just make it a Win10 build, so the parts can at least be used somewhere... I plan to do a video of building it, so that will be something for my non-gaming geeky channel; at the rate I'm going, I'll be able to also film a build for Raiden too, though, for the sake of expediency, I'm just going to get the rebuild of Zeus out of the way!
Given that Raiden and Thor are both a while off, I can plan ahead to film them in the future (along with a timeline for parts acquisition), and verify I have everything I need before I film with Summanus; I ideally want to find another 8GB of RAM to install into it, but it's not a priority either at this point, as it can be a later upgrade, depending on how things go! Naturally, given the change of plans, Raiden will now instead be using DDR4 RAM (minimum of 16GB), and at minimum an i5-8xxx CPU, though likely it'll be an i5-9xxx as it makes more sense to go with newer parts! Additionally, I'm now also going to just get the one WiFi 6E card rather than two, as I suspect that WiFi 7 may also be out by the time I can build Thor, so it makes little sense to have a 6E card till I'm sure what is going on in that regard. This also means that I semi-wasted my purchase of 2 USB 3.x cards, seeing as it's now spare, though perhaps I can find some use for it still!
In any case, I have to now rethink everything, in order to make things work! With Raiden, the case, and the system/gaming drives (2x SSDs, 500GB+1TB), a card reader (installed in case), power supply, and a USB 3.x card (if more ports are needed) are all available, but I now have to get RAM, a CPU, and a motherboard. Also, I need to source a working internal BD-RW (just the one drive - I can use an external if I need to copy anything) to go into the case, as Zeus will be getting my old dual optical drive (ROM & RW) setup, and Raiden is getting a single drive as I still make use of optical media, although Thor will only have access to external drives! At this point, it is an unnecessary expense to kit out all my systems with optical drives, with Raiden representing the final system I'll be using them in, though Zeus will still be available for disc copying tasks if needed, though by that point, I imagine Windows 10 will be near or past its EOL state, so instead I'll be sticking Linux on it, configured more to rip/burn optical media as and when I need to, although equally, Raiden can still rip discs too, then burn the images!
Other than that though, I have expanded my wireless network plans as I now have a pair of mesh routers, the RT-AX56U (current main), and the TUF Gaming AX5400, both from Asus. The AX56U will be redeployed into my living room and will be connected to the AX5400 via Mesh, with the latter taking over the role of being the main router as it has similar - and in some cases superior - functionality to the former; the only issue for me is that it does not support the Merlin firmware like the AX56U does at present, meaning that as well as being a Mesh AP for my living room (meaning no wires needed to connect the routers together!), it will also be the one handling DHCP as well, because it also is configured to use a hosts file, so I don't need to recall the IP address of each device on the network! The Nighthawk will also see some use in the future too, but no idea what exactly it'll cover yet, although I have been looking at using it as either a dedicated AP for my IoT/smart devices, or using it for my servers, or even both!
Either way, any prior planned stuff will not be interrupted overall, although I would like to have a replacement 4G router at some point, as well as to work out what to do with my retro setup, as that's something else that needs to be sorted out! It may be that I hook up the retro router (with 5 port switch) to the planned smart switch in my living room and physically separate it from the main network with VLANs, as well as having a reserved port for the same in my bedroom, for when I need to work on something in there, but again, these are all just ideas right now! Either way though, the older devices have to be sectioned off because they're not going to have the latest OS versions on them (typically) as they're intended for retro experiences, although them having their own dedicated VLAN will allow them to be able to access files on my NAS without the need to be online to get files!
This also means that they can be configured for LAN gaming as well, but that's something I'll talk about in the future, as that needs its own video, or series of videos as the case will be regarding retro stuff, as I have expanded the scope of my retro stuff to include PowerPC Mac laptops, which nicely slot in as the Dell laptops' contemporaries, given that they were released between 2003-2005, so it'll be interesting to see how cross-platform play works out there for certain games, such as Heretic II, which I now have copies of for Linux, Mac (PPC), and Windows! there will be a couple of other games I can do that with too, though I need to have a look at things again to remember what I have, although I'm at the point now where I'll also be burning some discs rather than getting the software, as it's either too expensive or otherwise difficult to get Mac versions of games I have for Linux and/or Windows!
But yeah, I'm going to leave it here for now... I'll try to get some stuff ready over the next couple of weeks, but I also have a lot to be getting on with, so it may be closer to the end of this month or very early next month I have any further updates. All that said though, I'm a lot more active on Twitter and Mastodon, given the format, so be sure to check me out on there too, as it's the same username!
But yeah, that's it for now... take care and see you all later on!
