My N40L Experience (and question)

[CrazyBernie]

Firstly... a big thanks to Jun and Polanskiman for the installer/instructions.  You guys are awesome!

 

Recently I "rescued" an HP N40L system from a site that I was working at (I'm a wandering Healthcare IT guy).  It was originally meant to replace an aging NAS (an old Iomega W2k3 box) back in 2012, but it was never utilized - it was plugged in but never actually turned up.  So... six years later it was slated to be recycled but I convinced them to let me have it (we put in a new Gen8 Microserver in its place).  I pulled the two, still technically new WD Red 500GB drives and threw in 4 2TB drives I had handy.  After some research I decided to put DSM on it so I could move my movie collection off the single external drive I was using as well as leverage it for future VM storage.

 

I initially utilized Jun's 1.01 loader with the 6.0.2 build.  The install process went smooth, with the exception that I couldn't find it through the find.synology.com site.  I used my router's connected devices page to find the IP and had no problem connecting direct.  After the initial setup screen, the reboot occurred, and then.... nothing.  The machine disappeared from my network without a trace.  I re-ran the installer several times with the same outcome.  I went back and followed Polanskiman's tutorial, setting the VID/PID/Serial/MACs, and tried the regular and AMD installs to no avail.  After a couple of hours of frustration, I walked away.

 

The next day I pulled the machine apart, took out the remote access card, installed 8GB of RAM, and dropped back to version 5.2 build 5967 and the installation went flawlessly - or so I thought.  The OS loaded, updated and performed great, except for this one tiny notification: my gigabit NIC was running @ 10/100.  I spent several hours googling the crap out of the issue and was unable to find a resolution.  Video streaming-wise, performance was still great; I was able to stream 5 simultaneous 1080p streams to different devices with no discernable slowdown.  But the file copying.... ugh.

 

After much additional research, I decided to give 6.1 a shot.  I figured it must be a driver issue, and others had successfully installed or upgraded to 6.1.  I downloaded Jun's 1.02b loader, the 6.1 build 15047 pat file, and again followed Polanskiman's instructions.  The upgrade (and subsequent updates - currently running 6.1.3-15152 Update 3) went flawless- no loss of files/apps/settings... but still the 10/100 connection issue.  Finally I went all Tech101 on the problem and replaced the patch cable... and voila! 1000Mbps, Full Duplex, MTU 1500, looking superb.... or not?

 

Even with the recognized gigabit speed, I seem to be hitting the 10/100 cap of 9-11MBps (downloads from it are actually in the 5-6 range).  I've rebooted everything, but no dice.  I have gigabit internet service, and 802.11ac wifi (Nighthawk X4S)... and I get about 540mbps on my desktop through internet speed tests (that info was more to show that my wireless network isn't the limiting speed factor, I'm not copying over the internet).  Am I missing a checkbox somewhere? I'm planning on installing the modded BIOS and adding a couple of 128GB SSD's to the box (read/write cache for the VM usage), but if I can't figure this speed problem out, I may need to look at picking up a new NIC as well.

 

Thanks in advance for any help!

 

 

[CrazyBernie]

*sigh*  Of course I rebooted everything.... except the router.  Getting 60MB/s now across my wireless network.  Problem solved!

 

I'll post an update once I flash the bios and slot in those SSDs... woot! 

 

Edited September 7, 2017 by CrazyBernie

[Polanskiman]

You want to update your question ou should I close it?