am I growing a homelab?
Warning: this post is mostly just me sorting through my thoughts and may not be of interest to anyone else.
Whelp, back to writing, because at a certain point my brain buzzes with so much activity that all the wires get crossed and I can't focus on anything. The coffee probably isn't helping.
I'm just going down too many rabbit holes at once this winter and at some point I lose track of what I'm doing and why I'm doing it and I have to begin writing things down.
I'm going to break this down into short thoughts and long thoughts.
First, short thoughts:
1.) iMac 27" is being picked up for $20 today, to someone who is aware that I broke the display port off the logic board, he's using it for parts. Nice! Now my $40 iMac purchase became a $20 Apple Keyboard, Magic Mouse, and 1TB drive purchase, which I can justify in my mind as a good deal. I feel justified and glad this device is going to use and it won't be sitting there staring at me and reminding me of all my poor financial decisions.
2.) In February, to save money, I'm moving over to the Onio.Club domain name instead of Onio.Cafe, so change your links. The .cafe domain renewal is like 30 freaking dollars - that's the cost of a decent network switch!
Okay, long thoughts:
Why the heck did I spend 3 hours today learning about subnetting and how to translate IP addresses into binary and back? Granted that was super cool, but I'm no closer to understanding exactly what I need to create a local area network to connected 3 of my devices, and why do I even need a LAN in the first place? Well, duh, I want a home server. But why do I want a home server? The idea came when I replaced the MacBook Pro logic board with a far higher specced version, which cost me $50 and I was on the fence about doing, but I justified it by saying I'd make a YouTube video about it on my new Onio channel. Yes, I made a new YouTube channel just for my nerdy projects and this website. It's mostly going to be about messing around with old hardware, primarily ThinkPads, I think. Long story short I wound up with an extra logic board, my old logic board, that I realized I could use as a homeserver.
Now do I need a homeserver? No, I don't absolutely need a homeserver, seriously, I spend most of my time on one computer anyway. However, I do need a Linux computer, and right now my Linux computer is a ThinkPad T430, because I need to run Linux to flash the other ThinkPads I'm buying and reselling with Libreboot/Coreboot. I'm eventually going to switch my main pc over to Linux (no Windows 11 for me, thanks,) but until then, keeping the T430 around is probably going to be my main deal. Unless! I install Linux on my MacBook Pro... hmmm. Then I could sell the T430... But I want to bring my MacBook with me outdoors to write at cafes and stuff and if I turn the T430 into a server... but wait.. I'm turning the other logic board into a server.. or am I? You can tell I have a lot of options and I'm not keeping track of them all at once right now, which is why we write this down, people! So we can organize and crystallize our ideas! Let's try that again.
I don't need a home server, but it could be useful as 1.) a backup for files in general, 2.) transferring files from one device to the next privately and with ease (instead of using Google Drive or USB drives) such as images off my phone and what not 3.) storing relevant ThinkPad files such as .roms for flashing different ThinkPads, 4.) learning more about networking? And I guess I have two options here, one which is sort of ridiculous. The T430 is the straight forward option, although I bought this with the intention of refurbishing it and reselling it, now that I'm trying to build a new YouTube channel, there's a lot of content I could make about and with this device, and like I said before, I need at least one Linux device working to flash other T430s with.
The other option is the old logic board, which is why I got the idea of making a home server with it. I don't like the idea that the logic board is going to sit there unused, I don't want to throw it away, and I don't know if I want to put the effort into listing it and trying to sell it for $30 on eBay. I also want to justify the $50 logic board upgrade purchase, lol, and anything I can do with the extra logic board will help me with that. I already have two USB 3.0 drives that are formatted for Mac that I just don't use anymore, 1TB and 2TB drives. That's a decent chunk of space! I also have a 512gb SSD I can put into this logic board. I also have an old iPad I got for free that I could theoretically use as its display. I also have a deep set large custom built frame that I could mount this logicboard, the ipad, and the harddrives to, and hang it on my wall. This could be the coolest, jankiest server project ever, and totally unique. But I would probably need to spend $50 in parts for it, like $30 for the IO ports, magsafe 2 dc-in, 2 macbook fans, and then $20 on mounting supplies and some other missed expenditure. I don't know if I can justify $50 right now on this except for the fact that having a frame server on my wall made of ewaste would be freaking awesome. Of course, if I did this, I would keep it running on macOS, because I think I might need that for iPad display compatibility. I would also THEN have a good use for that $20 keyboard and magic mouse I purchased.
The other option is to list the magic mouse and keyboard combo for $30, list the logic board for $30, keep the free 1TB hdd for my main computer, and again, just use the T430 as my server. It's not necessarily as cool as making an ewaste home server out of Apple parts that hangs framed on my wall, but it opens up more options. Of course, the T430 has way more IO ports, I just don't know if I want to connect it to my other computers over WIFI or if I want to buy something like an ethernet switch to connect physically. Heck, I can still use the USB 3 storage devices, I just need to reformat them for use with Linux instead. I would sort of want to keep the T430 offline (not connected to the Internet) when it doesn't need to be online, and so I'm thinking about using ethernet cables I already have + a switch to connect my computer to the T430 + whatever ThinkPad I'm working on, because I'm not sure if I can send files over wifi from one computer to the next using my wireless router without it inherently being connected to the Internet as well? And how do I even get a Linux computer and a Windows 10 computer to even talk to eachother, to connect, to share files, over just an ethernet cable?
This whole networking thing is like a whole body of knowledge that is so foreign to me, I keep bumping into new information and so many cool ideas and things you can do with it. I learned what a "home lab" is and how that's just a computing environment you can experiment with and can be made up of a bunch of stuff. I learned NAS is network attached storage, and it's not always the same as a home server. I learned that a home server can do lots of things, from collecting data from my ESP32s that I might place outside with sensors to monitor weather patterns, that's pretty sweet. But then those connect over wifi/bluetooth, and there's security risks with that, and I'd need a far more comprehensive understanding of cyber security if I'd want to do something like that. I can set up streaming services at home. I can create a PiHole, my own ad and tracker blocking device at home. I learned that there's something called docker containerization? So I can contain all the services I run separately? I kinda understand the concept behind it but I don't know all of its pros and cons and the full extent of what you can do with that.
And then, of course, I could port forward a server to host my own website, which is awesome. But with all the security risks and some information I wouldn't want to be stolen from a server, it makes me think maybe I want multiple servers? And that's where something like that framed macbook server comes into play? Maybe I could still make the macbook server and just use it to host webpages?! Then I could have a website that is literally sitting on my wall in a custom picture frame XD I'm still not 100% confident I need a home server (or the LAN that it would require) but I feel like they're so cool and you can do so much with them. But then I need to switch ISPs, because my ISP doesn't offer port forwarding, but that would be a good thing because it would save a lot of money per month, because I recently found out our ISP is kinda screwing us and we get frequent service outages anyway. I learned that switches basically just add more ports, but then there are managed switches which add extra security, and then that's different from a router, and that a lot of routers come with switches built in, and that routers assign each device connected to it its own private IP through a process called DHC? And then translates that private IP into the public facing IP that the ISP gives the router? I think? I have so much to learn..
And do I even need to learn all of it? Right now, all of this came about because I got interested in flipping ThinkPads, modding them, refurbishing them, and reselling them, because they're fun and you can do a lot with them. And I'm just waiting for the most recently refurbished one to sell so I can buy parts for the other 2 ThinkPads I have just sitting around, so I can make YouTube videos about those and then resell them at all, and continue the cycle, hopefully profitting with each one so I can make a cooler Thinkpad each time. GAH.
I think it's safe to say, I'm beginning to compute as a hobby, and no longer just using them as a tool, and that's kind of scaring me. Thanks to writing this all down, I now want to make 2 servers and 1 ethernet based LAN. The T430 I want to keep offline and turn into my NAS server, wireless connections removed, connect it to my main computer and use it for programming my other ThinkPads as well as using it as my cheap storage with its built in UPS. I'll probably keep critical data like stored uncorrupted ROM files of different Coreboot distributions on there for each model of ThinkPad I plan to work on, as well as different distributions of Linux that I can easily flash my USB devices with. It'll probably get its own continuous spot on my desk. Btw, I found out with Linux, you can configure the battery in the T430 for specific charging values, to only charge up to say 70% and begin recharging it at like 40 or 50% so that it's always in that sweet spot, and that way if power ever goes out, the server stays online for an hour or two and shuts down safely, which is DOPE. I won't connect this one to the Internet. Then I'll build my macbook logic board server inside of my wall frame and use that as the port forwarded webserver, and any of my IoT experiments like archiving local weather with ESP32s and sensors outside can connect to that thing. I'll just have to learn how to set that network apart from my main network (subnetting?) so that if the macbook or the esp32s ever get compromised, my main devices and my LAN NAS can stay secured and my phone can stay secured... If I did all this, would I have, what they would call, a home lab??
I guess my first piece of gear for my 'homelab' came in today, a $10 outlet energy monitor that I'll be using to test all my equipment to see how much energy it's soaking up. Right now my monitor is taking up 50 watts of energy... maybe it's time to use a different monitor.
I'm so glad I have a personal website, I would've never written this out as a social media post on Facebook lol.
Speaking of websites, I've had thought abouts my the Onio Network (onio cafe, vibe fish, etc) too, which has been around for 3 years now. I didn't do a whole lot with it in 2024 until the last month, but I really experimented and became very active with my personal sites in 2025, and I feel like I'm really beginning to grow into my personal site, like it's becoming my homebase on the web and it's feeling more natural to expand and modify it. It's also just amazing seeing people actively use the chatroom, the layout is finally getting consolidated (with iframe implementation ofc lmao) and I'm organizing it all in a way that makes sense for me. I'm excited to learn a lot more this year about privacy, Linux, networking, and more, so much so that I'm building up a whole 'nother "secret" half to my website that I'll eventually use to share everything I'm learning and making along the way. I meant to have this built in time to celebrate 300 followers, but we just blew right past that number before I could do that. Like 318 followers, whaaat? We were at like 250 a month ago.
I'm hoping to clear out a lot of webpage gunk, deleting unused pages, adding more features. I really like iFrames. I like how my links page and thoughts pages can be a lot smaller without the layout and just fit neatly inside of the front page. Even the chatroom and the div 'modules' to the right of them exist on their own page now. It's fun to me! I'd like to add a poll somewhere on the site, maybe on the "dark side" of the site. I'm also thinking about reconverting the 'homespace' page back into the Onio System, linking all of my personal projects together.
-Onio