Chapter-4

Black-Edges Sorcery Chapter-4: Cost of AI (EEPROM and soldering)

Zhang Ming was still thinking about how difficult the higher-grade solder wire was to use.

“I never thought the more difficult solder wire could make so much difference. Is this the hardest to use?” Zhang Ming said.

“It’s mostly all heat control — that’s why there is a precision soldering iron. People with prior soldering knowledge and skills just need a few months of practice. But for Xinyi, it’s still too early. I think there is a conductive pen she could play with first, if mine hasn’t dried up,” Dong Yang said.

“Found the location of the whitelist. Do you want me to add the ID of the NIC into the code now, or you could add it yourself,” Dong Dong said.

After some counting and writing on his notebook, Dong Yang started typing on the keyboard.

“It is done. The new WSON8 chip is on the adapter board, connected to the programmer. Since it’s 32 megabytes, it should write into it in about two minutes — with all the verifying, no more than five,” Dong Yang said.

“This is faster than I thought,” Zhang Ming said.

“Well, the RT809 is a fast programmer. Did you expect to wait for two hours for all the writing and verifying?” Dong Yang said with a humor.

“There is another RT809 here. I bought two because I thought it would be unreliable like the CH341 — which is flaky, with all the verifying fails and stuff. It still gives me the habit of verifying twenty times because of that,” Dong Yang said.

“It is done,” Dong Yang said after seeing no errors on the checking.

Dong Yang removed the chip from the adapter board and soldered it onto the motherboard.

“Why would there be over twenty times of verifying? Do those things fail a lot?” Xinyi asked.

“Twenty times isn’t actually needed with current setups, since it’s soldered on an adapter PCB. But writing and reading can fail with DuPont wires or adapter sockets — it’s a common issue when you use CH341 USB boards,” Dong Yang explained.

His hands moved carefully, like a surgeon’s, as he set the newly written GigaDevice chip into place.

“It’s done. Test if it boots before you put it in the case,” Dong Yang said.

Dong Yang moved to another cardboard box full of large anti-static bags. Inside was a test-bench setup: a Great Wall 1250-watt power supply, with a copper heatsink in a smaller anti-static bag beside it.

“Great Wall Dragon… it won’t blow up, will it? You do have a fire extinguisher, right?” Zhang Ming asked, looking at the 1250-watt Great Wall Dragon.

“It has gone through some really hard reliability testing, many years ago,” Dong Yang said.

Dong Yang set up the test bench. He took out a tube of Shin-Etsu X-23-7921-5, put a decent chunk of it on top of the CPU, and placed the copper heatsink on top without mounting it. He then wired the 24-pin and the 8-pin CPU connectors, connected the HDMI on the motherboard, and shorted the power-on pins.

“It works,” Dong Yang said when he saw the Dell logo on the screen, before powering the motherboard down on the test bench.

“Now let’s test the network card,” Dong Yang said while slotting the NIC card into the second PCIe slot.

The Dell logo lit up the screen again. Dong Yang then smashed the F2 key on the keyboard connected to the motherboard, and the AMI BIOS interface appeared. He navigated to the Advanced and PCIe configuration menu — and the NIC card’s name showed up in the menu.

“It loads now,” Dong Yang said.

“So it’s fixed now?” Xinyi asked.

“Yes — so now you understand why it would need a hardware fix. There isn’t any shop nearby for a problem like this,” Zhang Ming said.

“You can set up the computer now, and let’s boot it into the OS after that, and see if it really works,” Dong Yang said before moving back to his computer desk.

“Dong Dong! How many tokens did you use to find the whitelist location?” Dong Yang asked Dong Dong with a cracking voice, looking at the context usage rate near 99% on the context usage icon.

“Let me check… Roughly 34 million input tokens. For your information, roughly one byte is a token, and the BIOS image itself is close to 29 megabytes — that alone is close to 29 million tokens. Also, my context length is limited to a one-million-token window, so I had to read it in chunks and revisit the candidates; that’s why the total ran higher than the image alone,” Dong Dong explained.

“That’s just over 300 yuan in tokens… I guess AI isn’t replacing humans anytime soon,” Dong Yang said, trying to laugh it off.

“Dong Dong is that expensive?” Xinyi look at the speaker on the wall while asking Dong Yang.

“Yes, My current models cost 9 yuan per million input token during perk hours.” Dong Dong Replied to Xinyi.

“I was thinking of setting up an AI as well, on this device.” Zhang Ming said while putting the PC back together.

“It wasn’t easy to setup back then, it’s a lot simpler now. Just start an SSHD service and ask Dong Dong to install another OpenClaw gateway on this machine will do.” Dong Yang said jockly.

Zhang Ming pass the completed Machine to Dong Yang. And Dong Yang then connect the machine to the monitor and keyboard. Clicking the power button, Booting into the operating system, Passing the keyboard to ZhangMing before the login page.

“I have a switch over there with dualplex multimode LC 850nm. Or you can try slot in one of the modules to the empty SFP+ slots. The fiber is over there too.” Dong Yang said pointing at a switch below the PC hanging on the wall.

ZhangMing found an unused SFP+ switch and Connect the C14 cord into the switch before sloting the module with the fibler into the empty SFP+ ports. Zhang Ming then hot plug the module into the SFP+ slots on the NIC.

“It works” Dong Yang look at the Network adaptor beside the Network and sharing center window on the monitor.

“Nice, I thought this card would be gone for good.” Zhang Ming said.

“Actually Why do you actually need a Network card on this PC? For most user a single onboard RJ45 is all they need. I haven’t seen people using them often since the onboard RJ45 already offload the loads from CPU.” DongYang asked.

“Oh, I was thinking of setting up a Media server on this computer. With Wifi7 speeds can go up to 5Gbps. Those old card are just about just right.” Zhang Ming said.

Zhang Ming ran a speed test and download a few small torrents as a test, seeing everything works fine.

“So that will be 400 yuan right?” Zhang Ming open the transfer on Alipay.

“No way, a entry level board in used market only cost a bit over 100 yuan. And with a bit over 200 yuan you can get a flagship boards. It’s 100 Yuan as usual since there is no existing working Bios. It’s common for repair to eat the cost during the first hand repair.” DongYang said.

“But Dong Dong alone cost more than 300 yuan.” Zhang Ming said.

“There are still rules that shoudlnt be broken. Although I’m not a repair shop, but there are still rules to follow.” Dong Yang said.

“Sure, but no argue on Xinyi’s tutuion fee rent and living expence. You still have apartment unrented right?.” Zhang Ming said.

Authors notes:

Eat the cost during the first hand repair: In PC repairs the first hand repair (unmolested) risk and cost is handle by repair. Example the board haven’t been though BGA and soldering of other repair service before hand, the risk is taken by the repairer, but component that have been touch by another shop and unsucceful all parts or cost used for the rapair will be paid by the owner regardless of success.