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In Reply to: RE: Moving up to the H61 boards & slimmed-system HW Questions & Musings... posted by theob on May 27, 2012 at 16:32:29
For both Theob & Dawnrazor...
A DOM (Disk On Module) is a small solid-state harddrive in a form-factor designed to fit directly on either the SATA plug or the IDE plug on a motherboard. The IDE ones are powered via the 5v IDE pins. The SATA ones supposedly have 2 flavors... Ones that are powered via a separate connection & ones that are powered via pin 7 on the SATA port. I don't understand the latter... As best I can find, there is no power on the SATA port. However, they sell them, so I must be missing something.
Several people have considered or gone to them... rickmcinnis@dogwoodfabrics.com, jackwong96, Mihaylov, and Douwe01nl. From the little info I can glean, using a small DOM (128Mb or so) for the boot volume of a slimmed-XP cMP setup can yield sonic improvements. Some useful reading on the topic are in the following:
http://www.audioasylum.com/forums/pcaudio/messages/10/109063.html
http://www.audioasylum.com/cgi/t.mpl?f=pcaudio&m=98676
http://www.audioasylum.com/cgi/t.mpl?f=pcaudio&m=101320
And the main source mentioned is:
http://www.memorydepot.com/ssd/listcat.asp?catid=satadomD150SV
Then for separate-powering a mouse or keyboard, the PS/2 connector provides +5v. Easiest way to separate-power them is:
1. Get a PS/2 extension cable.
2. Carefully strip back a couple of inches of the cable's outer insulation about 1" or so from the plug that goes into the motherboard.
3. Plug the cable into a powered motherboard.
4. Using a meter on DC voltage, carefully measure the red wire to ground on the PC (back of the case) to confirm it is the 5v wire. If it is not, measure the other color wires until you find the 5v wire. (Note that this is important... I used a PS/2-to-PS/2 power takeoff adapter I had from an old peripheral and it had the color code reversed!)
5. Also carefully measure the black wire to ground to confirm there is no voltage on it, then use the meter to confirm continuity between the black wire and ground on the PC.
6. Once you have the 5v wire and ground wire, cut the 5v wire and connect a 5v source to the side that will go to the mouse or keyboard. Easiest is a battery-holder for 4 D-cell batteries... Typically keyboards & mice are pretty low-power devices and while I've not tried them, 4 D-cells should last awhile... And likely be a pretty good sounding power source. Connect the ground of the 5v source to the ground wire, but do not cut it. Just carefully strip back some insulation. (I use the DIY 5v DC power supply that used to power my USB ports for the wireless mouse & screen's touchpad.)
7. Insulate your connections. These are low-voltage, so good electrical tape works as does heatshrink.
Note that generally the keyboard or mouse has to be plugged in and powered when you boot the PC for it to recognize the device.
I've found small SQ improvements by separate-powering either or both my mouse or keyboard. But I got larger improvements selecting mice... for me none was best, any mouse was worse than none, separate-powered or not.
I tried three mice, a new-ish PS/2 with a bright blue LED, an old USB via a USB-PS/2 adapter, and an old PS/2-connected trackpad. The new mouse sounded the worse, the trackpad was best... But still better was to just use the keyboard and leave the mouse disconnected
Note that I did NOT try various keyboards for SQ impact, but suspect the simpler, older ones will work better here too.
More later!
Greg in Mississippi
P.S. Theob, yah, listening to live music will ruin your stereo for you for awhile UNLESS you have a MUCH better stereo than most of us have (or can afford!)
Everything matters!
Follow Ups:
Thanks Greg
Thanks Greg,
DUH that all makes sense. I thought you were doing it at the mobo not at a cable.
One thing just to check my reading, is that the ground is still connected to the computer, you are just tapping in from the new psu right??
Afterwards we discovered faith; it's all you need
Dawnrazor,
Yes, you need to keep a ground connection between the mouse/keyboard and the motherboard AND also connect the 5v supply to that ground connection. The only connection you are cutting is between the motherboard 5v connection to the mouse/keyboard in the extension cable and connecting the mouse/keyboard side to the 5v supply.
Of course, if you wanted to get REAL fancy, you could setup an optical or GMR isolator on the data lines and break the ground. But I REALLY don't think that would be worthwhile. (Don't think I haven't considered it, tho!)
Later!
Greg in Mississippi
Everything matters!
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