Hello,
can you upload files for this PBC somewhere ?
FWIW, here are a couple of pictures of the 5th SATA drive SSD installation on my DX4000:
This picture shows SATA cable in the connector on the board. Note that the connector on the cable, had to be filed down quite a bit to get it to fit and still have room to put the cover on. I actually have to partially install the cable before screwing the board down.
From there, the cable passes downward, sneaks under the fan and pops up on the other side of the chassis.
Inside the Sabrent enclosure, is a 128GB M.2 SATA drive. the enclosure converts that to standard SATA. You can see the SATA power cable routed up to J2 pins 2 and 4 for +5V and gnd respectively.
The drive is so light that it is held to the chassis with a thin strip of double-sided foam tape along the bottom edge. Not sure if that can be seen here. The particular M.2 SATA SSD inside the enclosure is pretty low power. So, thereâs not much danger that it will overtax the +5V supply on the main board. If you go with a high performance SSD, it could theoretically overwhelm the wimpy +5V supply on the main board and have brownout issues under conditions of high current draw.
You might think that the main board would have a really beefy +5V supply what with it supplying power for 4 big hurking 3.5" drives, but actually the +5V for the Raid drives is generated on a per drive basis entirely on the backplane. It is switched on/off for each drive individually. So tapping into it, really isnât feasible.
Hi there everyone,
I have been working on the DX4000 before I was aware of this thread, and I am writing a guide for installing Debian on this machine. I have most of the important parts of the guide done, however there are a few things missing which I was hoping someone here might be able to contribute to?
I still need to control the LCD text and contrast, the LEDs and the two buttons.
@Frozen001 I noticed you managed to get LCDproc working with this display? Would you be able to point me in the direction as to how? I have not succeeded with this. I assumed the LCD is using standard HD44780 wiring on the parallel port and tried sending commands using a python script but got nowhere.
@User000001 Thank you for the lead on the SuperIO chip controlling the LCD. Although I had no success it gave me some confidence as to how it might be connected.
You can see the work I have done so far (and even contribute if you wish) at GitHub - alexhorner/WD-DX4000: Running Ubuntu or Debian Linux on the Western Digital WD Sentinel DX4000
Youâve all done some really cool things here and Iâm happy others have seen the potential these boxes have,
Thanks in advance,
Alex
@ahorner. I never got it fully working before I gave up. Support is basically non-existing for LCDproc.
I actually reverted to a fully stock At this point as I built up my own NAS box. I was spending too much time trying to get it working with Linux that it was not worth it anymore.
Fully working? Did you manage to get any kind of info or change at all?
Been a while, but form e-mails to the support mailing list this is what I got it to show:
Line 1: Two solid blocks a space then âLCDproc Serverâ scrolling and then two more solid blocks the las block has a blinking heart on it.
Line 2: "Cli:0 Scr:0 "
I could not get any updates.
This might help:
https://sourceforge.net/p/lcdproc/discussion/312/thread/0401dd5a7f/?limit=25#575d/9f8c
This is exactly what I needed! This confirms my wiring suspicions and also gives some additional configuration information I need. Iâll certainly keep this thread updated with any progress I make, thank you for your help!
Search for your boat in quotes and youâll find a message about the windows LCD service if that any help help
@Frozen001 Hey there! I thought you may find this interesting. I have managed to get LCDProc working fully on my DX4000 now and have added instructions to my repository WD-DX4000/LCD.md at master · alexhorner/WD-DX4000 · GitHub
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Thanks for putting this together. I am having a crazy time getting this thing back up and running. Have an old one and was throwing an error. Tried to restore from the image from WD, but⊠thatâs been uneventful. Came across this, and Iâm definitely interested in checking out what you have.
How is everything running so far? You having any issues with getting the raid working? Running pretty decent so far with debian?
How difficult would it be to create a bootable image from what you have put together? Is there anyway to make that possible?
@dgmiller81 Hey, I assume youâre talking to me.
Iâve had no issues with the software RAID. The performance is comparable to that of more than one raspberry pi Iâd say, totally usable for a database and webserver which is what I am running for OwnCloud. Over the network I have achieved speeds of 100 MegaBYTES per second via Samba using windows to transfer a large disk image.
Thereâs no doubt a bootable image would be possible however that is beyond my skillset for now - if anyone wanted to make one and then contribute to my repository feel free.
If you have all the kit ready, set aside about 2 hours and youâll have the entire guide complete from installation to software RAID, fan control and LCD control. Any questions do feel free to reply or email me directly
Err, sorry folks, I meant to upload all the mods I just posted earlier in the year. Just been busy, so forgot about it.
@ahorner, I sorted out whatever mods I did and just published them on my git: GitHub - dudeitssm/wd-sentinel-mods: WD Sentinel NAS related mods
I would like to attempt adding an LVDS screen next, because I can probe the lines going to the motherboard. So there is a strong possibility that LVDS would work, just have to do the pinouts.
Yes, sorry for the delay, I just did so on my git: GitHub - dudeitssm/wd-sentinel-mods: WD Sentinel NAS related mods
Good evening!
I thought it may be beneficial for consistency sake to update on my repository. I now have an installation walkthrough for both Ubuntu and Debian from stock machine to fully configured for fan control, LCD control and software RAID. Since this is pretty much on the first page of Google for DX4000 Ubuntu, I just wanted to make this information accessible with ease for people looking to get into modding these boxes, so I thought a bump wouldnât hurt. GitHub - alexhorner/WD-DX4000: Running Ubuntu or Debian Linux on the Western Digital WD Sentinel DX4000
excellent work, thank you (pity only for the need of soldering which will probably prevent many people to try this option, but nothing is for free 
)
Unfortunately this is the only real downside. Though if you think you can hot glue or even balance something on the pads (maybe even find some conductive putty etc) you could theoretically do this without soldering, its just painfully fiddly. I have no soldering skills really, if you look at my soldering work its awful and looks disgusting, however with a bit of poking and a boxknife to clean up did the job it was intended to do
Indeed it is possible the most challenging issue is time 
I have to admit I opened the DX4000 quite a number of times either because I tried to increase RAM from 2 to 4 Mb (never succceded to find a suitable chip - but maybe the issue was some BIOS message which stopped the boot and that I could not see) or to replace broken fans. And even with this relatively simple tinkering it is easy to damage something like e.g. the thin electric cables. Unit is very compact but probably due to this reason assembly/disassembly is not exactly stupid proof.
The LCD ribbon isnât too bad and the fan cable is robust. If you look at my repo at Hardware.md you will find a hardware overview section where I have taken numberous photographs of the boards. Youâll see my RAM stick in there too, which is a 4GB stick, so maybe try getting that specific one? I think mine was 2GB but I upgraded it, canât be certain though as it was so long ago
Hi Guys,
First of all, thank you for the great job you did there.
In my case Iâm not able to get any video or color from the VGA output.
Should I change the LDVS parameter in the bios to eDP (External Display° or just let it how it is on Int-LVDS (Internal display)?
I think that I will have to double check my VGA connector soldering and trouble shoot the signals on the motherboard like User000001 just explained around D10 (not present in my case)
Regards!
Hi All,
Regarding the VGA output, Iâve just wired it like it is in the Following pinout ( 
Big thanks and all credits to User000001 ! 
)
Most difficult thing was to find the ribbon flex cable with the good VGA port that will suits to our mod.
I didnât wanted to take those VGA port with the pins at 90°
So I took the one from old vga graphic card (LR2A1H) I had at home , so I used it as donor :
Just keep in mind that the image is blurry , but it is more than enough to see whatâs going on there, and to perform your install not in blind mode.
Here are some pictures of my DX4000 :
You will notice that Iâve also added an SATA port to be able to install OMV on SATA SSD.
