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I recently purchased a used SuperMicro SuperServer E300-9A-4C because I had come upon a bunch of 64GB ECC RDIMM sticks from the e-waste pile and supposedly it could handle four of them.  This makes for a power efficient way to get 256GB of RAM in a homelab node, although it is a bit weak on CPU at 4 cores.  I would have preferred a SYS-5019A-FTN4 with 8 cores but couldn't find used ones for sale.

The used server from eBay of course did not come with a power supply so I had to order one and wait a while.  Finally that arrived so I stuffed in 4x Samsung M393A8G40AB2CWE sticks and booted up the Proxmox installer.  After a very long wait for memory training or something, it would get to the first screen where I could choose graphical or terminal install.  And then after choosing either one I would get the "Loading initial ramdisk" message and then it would freeze at a black screen.

Eventually I found some errors in the IPMI's Server Health Log.

Uncorrectable ECC @ DIMMB2 - Assertion

Sometimes it would be DIMMB1 too.  I swapped out both B1 and B2 and still had the same issues.  Then I ran the memtest86 program via the Proxmox installer's Advanced Options and sure enough it failed after less than a minute, right at the 130GB mark.

I swapped out for 4x 32GB SK Hynix HMA84GR7MFR4N-TF sticks and the memtest ran for a while.  Next I tried the Proxmox installer and that ran as expected too.

So 128GB of RAM in the system is good enough for me that I don't want to sink hours more into figuring out why the larger ones aren't working.  This has to be a very rare configuration for such a small server with low CPU power, so it wouldn't surprise me if there are hardware limitations.  Or I am simply not looking carefully at module speeds, timings, etc.

Our Hatch Rest+ 2nd gen lost all battery functionality.  If lifted off of the wireless charging base for a fraction of a second it would die.  It was replaced under warranty, and customer support even saw the second one on the same account and said it would eventually develop the same issue.  So they replaced that one too!  Great customer service, which is really what is necessary to make the best out of what I'm sure is a bad situation for them.

Most exciting for me about the whole situation was the opportunity to tear apart the old one!

Tearing off the rubber pad on the bottom reveals some screws, and then the wireless charging module comes out.  Also found here are the barrel jack, and the power and sync buttons.

Here is the component side of the wireless charging board:

With the removal of the two middle screws shown in the first picture, the top of the cone comes off.  There are some tight wires.  The battery and speaker ones each have three wires and seemed to pop off easily.  The single wire is for the metal touch ring and I think I stretched that one to a damaging extent.  I didn't plan to put it back together though.

Access through the top is by prying off the speaker grill:

The speaker is held on by a few screws:

And within there is the battery:

The battery is a single 18650 cell:

It has a BMS.  The voltage directly on the battery was effectively 0V.

Now the main board.  This picture is after I had pried the SD Card out.  You can see that I damaged the card holder, but the card itself was fine.  Like many of the cable plugs within, it had a small dab of glue on it.

The SD card is 16GB and has a FAT32 filesystem.  I found about 7GB of mostly files on there.  Curiously, it seems to have all of the files for several Hatch products.  Folders include:

• Rest_Sounds
• RestMini_Sounds
• Restore_Sounds
• Sleep_Sounds

Another folder is named Downloaded and contains two interesting files.  BeRIOTGameMusicTTR_20220607.mp3 is an hour-long rendition of what I think is the Peaceful Flute music.  And RIOT_BrownNoise_CGV3_20240115.wav is a short clip of white noise.

Removed the plastic ring:

Here is the 7 segment display.  It appears to be individual LEDs behind 7 slots.

Here is the flip side of that main board:

Espressif ESP32-WROVER-E processor: