Re: low-MHz server

On Wed, Jan 30, 2008 at 08:43:13PM -0500, Douglas A. Tutty wrote:
email check. My 486 isn't used right now since it only has 32 MB ram
and an 850 MB hard drive. The backup set size right now is around 2 GB.

I often used big modern IDE disks on 486 and pentiums. Sometimes I had
to disable them in the bios (and so they are non suitable for the boot
loader). No such compatibility problems arise on powerpc.

like to get a box (or boxes) that is (are) reliable, run at e.g 133 MHz
(certainly less than 200 MHz), with lots of ram, and lots of hard drive
space.

You could consider old beige g3 mac powerpc computers (but I do not
recall what was the minimum MHz for the cpu), and IBM powerpc computers
of the same age (surely there are some with older CPU than g3, and so
with the frequency you want. They had ide interface for disks, beside a
scsi one, lige beige g3). Perhaps also more modern machines with arm
cpu, but I have no experience with them.

My beige g3s (233MHz cpu) still work reasonably well with etch and (but
sarge was faster in some things).

The IBM I have (90MHz cpu, "carolina" motherboard) still runs woody (and
linux 1.4.19); I do not think it would run smoothly with etch.

Check google for the hardware specs of these models (and installation
howtos).

My boxes all use the software you listed (plus some more software for
framebuffer graphics: fbi, links2, dvifb ... They also have X only to
experimentally prove that grapics in console is much faster to use).

Multiple CPU so that multiple apps can run better on limited individual
CPUs, running under 200 MHz

I think IBM also had multiprocessor models.

If you want an intel architecture, you could consider pentium-pro (not
pentium, not pentium II) SMP biprocessor motherboards.

Probably PCI bus.
Paralell port for the printer (or I would just use a USB adapter)

the IBM had it. Not the beige g3, but you can add a USB (or others) pci
card to them.

USB for future needs
serial port for console

the serial on beige g3 is (suitable for serian console towards another
mac, but) NOT compatible with the serial of intel architecture.

multi-port serial for terminal(s) and my external 3Com Courier modem.

Ah. No idea here. Are USB-serial adapters suitable for this?

10 or 10/100 Ethernet
Multiple hard drives: IIRC, the older boxes had 9 GB SCSI drives. I
don't know if one can plunk new eg. 250 GB SCSI drives in them.
SCSI HBA for a tape drive

no problem for the remaining things (if you buy yourself extra disks; I
do not know how much difficoult could be to find compatible SCSI disks
now, but IDE ones are surely still available).

--
Chi usa software non libero avvelena anche te. Digli di smettere.
Informatica=arsenico: minime dosi in rari casi patologici, altrimenti letale.
Informatica=bomba: intelligente solo per gli stupidi che ci credono.


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