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Thread: Possible alternatives to Thecus NAS firmware?

  1. #17
    pvdven777
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    Re: Possible alternatives to Thecus NAS firmware?

    So while I was browsing around in despair trying to find any kind of info for cracking this software issue I noticed something on a picture in this review :
    http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/nas/n...n2200-reviewed

    While I have hade a look inside my N2200 unit I didn't open the whole thing up.
    I noticed on the picture of the PCB in this review that at the top left there's a header.

    Anyone any clues, could it be a serial terminal interface ? A way in : ???
    Do any of the other models have that ?

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    Re: Possible alternatives to Thecus NAS firmware?

    Quote Originally Posted by Horgi View Post
    already done, look at:
    http://www.onbeat.dk/thecus/index.ph...0PRO_Resources
    http://naswebsite.com/wiki/Main_Page
    on some post I read exp that add VGA connector, but why you need that if QNAP already has.
    Hi, thanks for the reply. I'm well aware of the naswebsite site, I've been populating content for the M3800 there. But I couldn't find any references there to VGA outputs or cables. Could you provide a more specific link ? Also, I'm not sure I understand your QNAP comment.

    cheers
    -poolshark

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    Re: Possible alternatives to Thecus NAS firmware?

    Quote Originally Posted by poolshark View Post
    Hi, thanks for the reply. I'm well aware of the naswebsite site, I've been populating content for the M3800 there. But I couldn't find any references there to VGA outputs or cables. Could you provide a more specific link ? Also, I'm not sure I understand your QNAP comment.

    cheers
    -poolshark
    sorry, I write about intel-based platform, not 2200 ARM-based, where console port linked 2 com off course.
    Just 4 sample funny Windows instalations on 5200: http://social.microsoft.com/Forums/e...c-9cf441467c2a

  4. #20
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    Re: Possible alternatives to Thecus NAS firmware?

    Quote Originally Posted by Horgi View Post
    sorry, I write about intel-based platform, not 2200 ARM-based, where console port linked 2 com off course.
    Just 4 sample funny Windows instalations on 5200: http://social.microsoft.com/Forums/e...c-9cf441467c2a
    Interesting link. Of course, he has it easy, since the box already has a serial port and a place-holder for the VGA connector. The N3200PRO and M3800 are AMD Geode based, and have none of the above. There's an IDC-10 pin connector on the board itself, visible on this picture to the left of the CPU :

    http://www.poolshark.org/thecus/img/M3800_SiI3114.jpg

    which, based on what I know about the Geode CPU and Geode-based boards, must be the VGA connectors for the on-board Geode VGA video driver.

    So looks like I'll have to build a special cable for it. i'll post my findings on the NAS website and over here.

  5. #21
    pvdven777
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    Re: Possible alternatives to Thecus NAS firmware?

    Just pulled the board out of my own N2200 out of curiosity.
    Upon closer inspection the 10 pin header is labelled as "UART1" suggesting that there really is a backdoor.

    I also find a J1 marked 2-pin header which isn't jumpered and a J3 marked 3 pin header which is jumpered on pins 1/2. No indication whatsoever what these last two headers are for. No sign of header J2 so far.

    Let me just see if I can find an adapter cable in the attic to stick on it and see what happens. Keep you posted.

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    Re: Possible alternatives to Thecus NAS firmware?

    An update on this: I successfully connected to the VGA port of my M3800, usinga custom cable and a breadboard :-) I've posted the pinout info at http://naswebsite.com/wiki/Thecus_N3...rdware_Hacking

    I was then able to go into the BIOS and change the boot order, to have external USB devices first in boot order. From there on, no problem to boot the M3800 into a linux distro on an external disk.

  7. #23
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    Re: Possible alternatives to Thecus NAS firmware?

    great way! what the next? opensolaris NAS? http://sourceforge.net/projects/velitium/files/

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    Re: Possible alternatives to Thecus NAS firmware?

    Its funny, I bought a n4100 several years back, and it was great at the time (loaded it with seagate 700gb's, gave me the storage I needed at the time).

    Started to run out of space, so I bought a n5200 and loaded that with 1TB drives (seagate), again, rock solid device.

    Then I decided to go for the n8800 - and given WD 2TB green drives (WD20EADS) drives were out (first 2TB drives on the market), and were **LISTED ON THEIR SUPPORTED LIST**, I went that route.

    **BIG MISTAKE**

    The 8800 has often randomly decided to hang (totally unresponsive, even the LCD display stops changing), the WD20's drop out regularly, luckily I have most of the data still on the 5200 because the 8800 wound up with major EXT3 filesystem errors and corrupted stuff.

    Now, I'll be honest - maybe going with the WD20EADS drives was a bad idea, and I can understand them not being "enterprise/raid class" drives - but quite honestly *they should not have gone on the list without proper testing*. (Even Adaptec RAID controllers need new firmware, and say to jumper the drives to 1.5gbit, so I'll admit a good part of it is the drives).

    Then I look at the firmware - give me a break, I go to the Thecus site and...
    THE ONLY FIRMWARE AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD IN THE NORMAL GUI, WHERE MOST AVERAGE USERS WOULD GO, FOR *MONTHS*, WAS A 3.0.x ***BETA*** RELEASE???

    Who in their right mind would do this?? There was no option to download a 2.x release anywhere, the only available option to the average user was a 3.x BETA. Not one single "approved" production release, no past versions, etc. This is what you expect customers to use?? Their choice is - a beta, or nothing?? Even now, the only release available on the main site is 3.0.8c, which reading here in the forums has issues. Why on earth is there no 2.x release available for download (for average users), only buggy 3.x releases?

    Instead of focusing on the quality of the firmware, now they're focusing on foo-foo Ajax GUI crap. And worse yet, if I go to the GPL area of the Downloads directory - there isn't even *GPL source* (hello?) for the 2.x version of the 7700/8800 firmware anymore (Does anyone have a copy of this? At this point I'm *more* than willing to take a copy of the 2.x GPL source and maintain it myself).

    FYI, technically this is *illegal*, in violation of the GPL - I can go download a copy of 2.01.10.14 (what I'm running on the 8800 now, since the Ajax GUI crap is... crap, to me), yet I cannot anywhere download a copy of the GPL source.

    I agree with the other posts here, they seem to be declining heavily on their stability. At this point, given my experiences with the 8800, I would not recommend a Thecus product to anyone.

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    Re: Possible alternatives to Thecus NAS firmware?

    Quote Originally Posted by czth View Post
    The 8800 has often randomly decided to hang (totally unresponsive, even the LCD display stops changing), the WD20's drop out regularly, luckily I have most of the data still on the 5200 because the 8800 wound up with major EXT3 filesystem errors and corrupted stuff.

    Now, I'll be honest - maybe going with the WD20EADS drives was a bad idea, and I can understand them not being "enterprise/raid class" drives - but quite honestly *they should not have gone on the list without proper testing*. (Even Adaptec RAID controllers need new firmware, and say to jumper the drives to 1.5gbit, so I'll admit a good part of it is the drives).
    It's ok, I bought FYBS 2.0 tb WD drives that *ARE* Enterprise drives and WERE on the supported list for a 7700. Same problems as you in the Thecus. I wasn't going to deal with this cr*p, so I got a Dell 1950/WD1000/W2K8 Storage Server Edition combination and plugged the 2.0 tb drives in there. Except for some DRIVE FAILURES (WD, you listening), which they replaced no questions asked, the NAS/iScsi has been rock solid. No failures whatsoever in quite a while now.

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    Re: Possible alternatives to Thecus NAS firmware?

    Quote Originally Posted by philhu View Post
    It's ok, I bought FYBS 2.0 tb WD drives that *ARE* Enterprise drives and WERE on the supported list for a 7700. Same problems as you in the Thecus. I wasn't going to deal with this cr*p, so I got a Dell 1950/WD1000/W2K8 Storage Server Edition combination and plugged the 2.0 tb drives in there. Except for some DRIVE FAILURES (WD, you listening), which they replaced no questions asked, the NAS/iScsi has been rock solid. No failures whatsoever in quite a while now.
    Gives new meaning to "RAID" - Redundant Array of INEXPENSIVE disks, when you are being told you have to spend more on the enterprise versions (inexpensive?), and then even those don't work. :-P

    What amazes me isn't that a new drive had issues, I can expect that (even the 1.5tb seagates had firmware issues) - what amazes me is that its been a *year*, and I have yet to see on their site or on the board even a *technical description of the problem* with the WD drives, nor a fix (which, of course, is most likely impossible if you *don't understand what the problem is*).

    My impression of Thecus is a couple of hacks who probably couldn't write a kernel driver if their life depended on it, slapping together a box with linux on it, with zero idea how to support a product or run a successful company.

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    Re: Possible alternatives to Thecus NAS firmware?

    Horgi - thanks for recommending velitium.

    I would appreciate any feedback that you or others have - the email address appears in the FEEDBACK file in the src download.

    ps - hoping to release a web gui for velitium by the end of march, then we will come back to the 88se6340 driver for the 7700...

    Cheers,

    Darren Mackay
    (project lead for velitium embedded kit for opensolaris)

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    Re: Possible alternatives to Thecus NAS firmware?

    Quote Originally Posted by czth View Post
    Gives new meaning to "RAID" - Redundant Array of INEXPENSIVE disks, when you are being told you have to spend more on the enterprise versions (inexpensive?), and then even those don't work. :-P

    What amazes me isn't that a new drive had issues, I can expect that (even the 1.5tb seagates had firmware issues) - what amazes me is that its been a *year*, and I have yet to see on their site or on the board even a *technical description of the problem* with the WD drives, nor a fix (which, of course, is most likely impossible if you *don't understand what the problem is*).

    My impression of Thecus is a couple of hacks who probably couldn't write a kernel driver if their life depended on it, slapping together a box with linux on it, with zero idea how to support a product or run a successful company.
    I have come to the conclusion that Thecus cannot identify the problem because they use software raid/linux. They can't test as they are just using a packaged Linux kernel/driver-base with a locally written front end.

    The 2.0 TB WD Enterprise drives are not cheap ($330 EACH) and WD did replace the 'early-adopter ' failures What really irks me is that I BOUGHT these drives due to them being on the supported list. Then they got pulled from the list and my raid went sour. Their answer, BUY MORE DRIVES! I just spent a ton on these due to their recommendations (We bought over 40 at once), and we were about to buy 4 more Thecus 7700 boxes!!

    They must be pretty standard drives, because my Dell reports that they are not Dell-ceritifed drives on every reboot (In the log), but runs them without ANY incidents. Just in case, I've got them in Raid-6 config, with a standby hot spare. Alot of redundancy, but with it, I am sure I won't get a 3 drive failure at once! The MD1000 Dell box allows 15 drives, so actually, the cost of buying 5 Thecus boxes became only buying 3 Dell, so the price was only about 15% higher.

    As I've mentioned, the 1 Thecus we have has been relegated to 7 1tb drives as a DR backup of a DR Backup NAS and a doorstop. (It really holds the internal IT Closet Door open!). I sometimes use it for large temp storage, and with 1tb drives it 'seems' stable with little usage.

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    Re: Possible alternatives to Thecus NAS firmware?

    What amazes me isn't that a new drive had issues, I can expect that (even the 1.5tb seagates had firmware issues) - what amazes me is that its been a *year*, and I have yet to see on their site or on the board even a *technical description of the problem* with the WD drives, nor a fix (which, of course, is most likely impossible if you *don't understand what the problem is*).

    My impression of Thecus is a couple of hacks who probably couldn't write a kernel driver if their life depended on it, slapping together a box with linux on it, with zero idea how to support a product or run a successful company.
    Unfortunately, this seems to be the false economy of dealing with these guys. The units are competitively priced, but you can't trust them for data storage, so what's the point? Might as well buy 3 of each and hope one is always working. ergo no more price advantage.

    Just saw another post explaining how the posters ticket is stalled due to chinese new year. Around the time of a recent firmware (buggy) release, no contact could be made because of the 'happy lucky dragon boat festival' or some similar event. Are we dealing with professional software engineers, or some halfassed company operating out of a basement in Taipei? Oh wait, I have version 3 here.. I think I know the answer already.

    But woooo the AJAX stuff looks really nice...

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    Re: Possible alternatives to Thecus NAS firmware?

    This is unfortunate, because the hardware looks good enough to me. I was happy with the M3800, because the hardware was almost exactly was I was looking for.

    It's unfortunate we don't seem to have enough traction to create a community of developers to work on an open-source firmware revision. It wouldn't be rocket science really. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with linux/raid (i work in storage sw), but Thecus didn't exactly pick a slam dunk version of it: they decided to do their own version of the kernel which they clearly are not qualified for (and 2.6.23 ? wtf ?).

    A simple respin of the firmware with the latest RHEL5 kernel would almost certainly be a very good improvement wrt raid issues and spurious rebuilds. Unfortunately I can't work on this without loosing my HDMI output...

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    Re: Possible alternatives to Thecus NAS firmware?

    Quote Originally Posted by darrenmackay View Post
    Horgi - thanks for recommending velitium.

    I would appreciate any feedback that you or others have - the email address appears in the FEEDBACK file in the src download.

    ps - hoping to release a web gui for velitium by the end of march, then we will come back to the 88se6340 driver for the 7700...

    Cheers,

    Darren Mackay
    (project lead for velitium embedded kit for opensolaris)
    Thanks 4 thanking Darren, but I do not to do anything, u have great job (4 hobby?).
    I think u job is what looking 4 peoples used Thecus NAS in proffesional enviroment.
    As I see (poosible not right), thecus not have strong positions in low level OS support. Old linux kernel, trying change and test sata drivers in task to fix HDD problems, than hands off... More focus in nice view of user interface. I think, u can do a good cooperations project and can do the branch of the new fw 4 proffesional use (for n8800-n4400 platforms), whithout (or whith) web GUI. Try to connect thecus headoffice with this offer, who know, may be you get sponsor for your project and the best NAS in the market.

    WBR

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    Re: Possible alternatives to Thecus NAS firmware?

    Is it possible to use the N8800 as an eSATA enclosure? I've been thinking of just putting an eSATA RAID card in my server and getting an enclosure for the drives and using the N8800 as a doorstop. But then I thought, could I somehow disconnect the sata cables in the N800 from the motherboard and connect them back to an eSATA card? Thus bypassing all the Thecus firmware issues and using a well known hardware raid controller.

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