Malcolm wrote:

~misfit~ wrote:
<snip>

I've just spent virtually the whole day building a system. Nothing
like yours though. I had an old (three years old) Abit BX133-RAID
board I was given that had died of the dreaded "crap capacitor"
syndrome. It would only run for 20 seconds or so and then die. It
had 10 bulging caps. I replaced them all with caps I removed from a
bunch of P1 boards I had lying around, I had to put a couple on
'legs' as they were too fat to fit next to each other, three in a
row, the middle one is flush but the other two are leaning over.

The end result is currently handling the internet gateway for my LAN,
crunching SETI units (looks like 7-8 hours/unit) and playing my mp3
collection on random through the stereo. It's just a Celeron 900 on
a 112Mhz FSB (Just so I could break the gig mark <g>). It seems to
be running sweetly, I tested it with Prime95 for a few hours set up
on the desk before putting it in a full tower case. I've always
liked the BX boards but they were limited to ATA33 controllers. This
board has a Promise ATA100 RAID controller on it as well. I'm not
using it in a RAID configuration, just have a Maxtor 20GB ATA133
drive as my system drive running on the Promise controller. LOL, I
know this is ancient stuff but I'm amazed at how fast it is compared
with other systems of similar vintage, due to the fast disk access.
Now I can use all these 10-20GB drives I have lying around. I can
use up to eight IDE devices in it. mp3 and DivX storage.

Well, I'm pleased anyway. :-)  My main machine is an XP1800+ Tbred B
running at 2.1Ghz on a 200Mhz FSB, dual-channel RAM, nForce2
Ultra400 board. It takes about 2 hours 15 minutes a unit on average.

What fun ay?

Sounds like you have been having fun :)

Have a few more bits lying around here, will try and have another
clean-up and send them up your way if your interested? Also have a
  SPARC station 20 motherboard with a 75MHz cpu (1MB cache),power
supply and 128MB of RAM if you can find a 6.4 or 9.1GB SCSI (50 pin)
drive, would make a nice project if your interested in playing with
Solaris? I have one here running (2 x 75MHz cpus though ;) ) runs
Solaris 9 and runs jSetidoor for my Seti cache. No video, just use a
serial port and the CLI.

Hell yeah I'm interested! :-) I'd need a bit of info about the set-up and a
copy of the OS but it sounds like a project I could really get into. I have
a 2Gb SCSI drive and a SCSI CDROM, both 50pin. I could probably scrounge up
a bigger HDD if needed. Anything you have spare I'm interested in, as you
can tell, I like playing with hardware. LOL, I've just serviced a 486DX/2 80
for a student who does the same course as my g/f. An old DSE machine, still
going strong. I've done a few old machines since she's been on this course,
the slowest one I was asked to do was a 33Mhz 486. I just gave them a
Pentium 120 back instead. Of course I fix 'em up for nothing, sometimes get
a wee gift. I do it for the love of it.

Do you still have my email addy? If not the one in the headers can be
un-mung-ed, I don't check it often but will make a point of it for the next
day or two.

Cheers Malcolm.
-- 
~misfit~


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