Pentium 200 w/64megs -What OS for a server?

[drag]

Ya, I didn't know the issues behind the harddrive size limits, but on a PC that old it's hard to tell.

What if it originally was sold as a 120mhz machine and later was upgraded to a 200mhz machine thru playing around with the buss speeds? The computer is so old it could be completely cobbled together with weird hardware, or it could be a bottom-budget affair, or it could be something relativly new that was sold with a slightly obsolete CPU for marketing reasons?

Hell it may even use DIMM's for memory, I have a old machine like that laying around somewere.

I figure it probably would work, but I wouldn't go out a plunk down 200 dollars for a new 300gig harddrive without making sure that it would work. 🙂

 

[bunker]

I ran a file server on a P133 with 64mb ram and win2k for a year w/out any problems.

 

[kEnToNjErOmE]

Use Linux without a GUI

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

I've never seen evidence that it is a hardware issue on the host-controller side.

The fact that the controller has to know how to use 48-bits for addressing instead of 28-bits, might be a problem. I would guess that anything even semi-recent would have a BIOS/firmeware update to support LBA48. That and I believe you need an 80-pin cable too.

No, the 80-wire (but still 40-pin, to be pedantic) cable is only needed for speeds above ATA-33/UDMA mode 2, which is independent of 48-bit LBA support.

 

[Nothinman]

But, as far as I know, the fact still remains that the controller and the drive has to support LBA48.

 

[drag]

Originally posted by: Nothinman
But, as far as I know, the fact still remains that the controller and the drive has to support LBA48.

A quick google "I feel lucky" result showed this:

cobalt hacking FAQ

Q: What size disks can I put in my Cobalt?
A: All Cobalt systems used LBA24 disk controllers. This means that the
largest disks you can put into a Cobalt are approximately 137 GB. Even
if you put LBA48 capable disks into your system, it will not work. In
fact, putting LBA48 disks on an LBA24 controller may cause some kernel
version not to boot at all (see 'My Cobalt hangs at "Partition check:"')

So you need to have hardware support for you to simply access the sizes past 137gigs. Which is a fairly usefull size for today's home file server.

Anything past that I'd bet you might as well get a IDE to PCI adapter if you want to run bigger drives, but 120gig drives can be had for 80 bucks, so you can easily run 480gigs of disk space on a old computer for 320 bucks, just as long as it supports LBA24.

Now what older chipsets support LBA48, I have no idea whatsoever. Worst case is that you'd just have to buy a extra adapter for 30 dollars or so. May even help out performance on older computers that may only support DMA33 or DMA66.