SGI Fuel ATX Adapters - not made by me spotted on the market
All, It has come to my attention that there are alternative SGI Fuel ATX adapters on the market, I've discovered a sale that happened on eBay, shipped from Czech Republic.
The adapters I've seen are VERY basic, basically a bundle of wires made using 24 pin and 8 pin ATX extenders, including Fan signal generator.
This is a very similar design to my first prototype from year 2011 or so.
I haven't had them in hand, so I cannot confirm whether the seller designed their own, or used my design in any way (not an accusation).
There was a time when I could have sworn it didn't make sense to evolve my design further, but ultimately, in the light of easier assembly and other features, I have designed PCB that would serve the purpose.
The design has come a very long way, my first PCB were two-piece, with nasty blobs of solder added on for greater current capacity.
Today's design (version 4), is a single-PCB design that snaps in, with several additional features that tens of users have found helpful, such as:
*) kickstart button - helps you force the Fuel to start even if the motherboard won't
*) status LED's (standby and power), help you see what's actually happening before you even power the machine up
*) additonal fan signal carried out, in case you needed to use it and feed it in place of another fan
There are more features I'm planning as well, currently finalizing the redesign, stay tuned.
Buying adapters from me, you have guarantee of the highest quality product (and if not, I always make the buyer whole, and I have to admit, I've done it a handful of times). Product backed by over 10 years of my work, hundreds of hours of engineering and research.
Not to mention, *YOUR* help, with feedback and questions, and a legacy of the ol'good Nekochan, for better or worse.
Virtually all the features of my adapters resulted from customer feedback and suggestions.
I've sold well over a hundred units, many of which went to professionals, made it to hospitals, CT/MRI machines etc.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not claiming these other adapters are copycats or accusing anyone.
I see a seller on eBay from the same country refurbishing a lot of SGI machines and it's entirely possible they decided to make their own.
I respect anyone who puts their time into keeping the SGI dream alive, even if it's stepping on my toes. I'd just prefer if they spent their time on other "undiscovered" topics.
Remember, if you *found* me, this usually means that your Fuel is broken, with bad Power Supply, or other problems that are common (such as monitoring chips). My adapters are a solution that will help you diagnose whatever it is.
You're dealing with a computer that costs thousands of dollars these days, would you prefer to bet on a bundle of wires, or a professionally designed circuit board backed by over 10 years of my expertise in designing and constantly improving them ?
Update as of July 2023, I got to see these "wire bundle" adapters' output, and I'm actually concerned by the design of the fan signal generator. My adapters were meticulously designed to match the reported signal as closely as possible to the actual value reported by the Power Supply in "normal state" which is approximately 1800-2000 RPM.
The other adapters I've seen in the wild are running as high as 2800 RPM, which although may be within acceptable range, might be putting unnecessary stress on the machine that's constantly trying to lower the fan speed since during normal operation the fan shouldn't be spinning that fast. I would be even more concerned if the machine ended up lowering other fan speeds to match and resulted in overheating.
This is not a proven behavior since we don't know exactly how do these machines work internally, but it's a reasonable hunch based on my experience.
Thank you all for supporting my product.
P.S. I have new stock coming up shortly.
Cheers
(This post was last modified: 07-11-2023, 06:18 PM by kubatyszko.)
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