What to do with an old machine.
in [UK Linux]
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From: Martin Gregorie on 6 Jan 2008 16:03 PeeGee wrote: > Martin Gregorie wrote: >> Neil Sluman wrote: >>> On Jan 4, 6:33 pm, Chris Whelan <cawhe...(a)prejudicentlworld.com> >>> wrote: >>>> Neil Sluman wrote: >>>>> I recently resurrected an old machine. A K6-2 running at 300MHz. >>>>> Seems I might as well install Linux on it. >> > >> I have a very similar box - 300 MHz K6, 384 MB RAM, 2 x 6.4 GB drive >> (Award BIOS won't handle disks over 6.4 GB), 3COM NIC. >> > [snip] > > Provided you boot from partitions that meet the BIOS limitations, the > disk size shouldn't matter. My K6-2/500 has Award 4.6 (32GB max)and runs > quite happily on a fully utilised 40GB Quantum (with Suse 7.3 or later). > Its BIOS dependent: I wanted to make the machine dual boot, so I left the original 6.4 GB disk in place as IDE master and added a 40 GB disk as slave. The BIOS couldn't see it so its partitioning (which, BTW I organized to put /boot in low order cylinders) was irrelevant. As GRUB uses BIOS services for its disk access it couldn't see the second disk either, which I double checked by making a GRUB boot floppy and driving that interactively. I solved the problem by getting a used 6.4 GB disk off eBay and putting Linux on that. I think my Award BIOS is older than yours. I bought the box in 1996. At the time 300 MHz was the fastest K6 on offer and the Diamond Stealth V550 graphic card was state of the art. This BIOS is definitely limited to a 6.4 GB disk size. -- martin@ | Martin Gregorie gregorie. | Essex, UK org |
From: Bernard Peek on 6 Jan 2008 18:31 Martin Gregorie wrote: This BIOS is definitely limited > to a 6.4 GB disk size. The limit is probably at 8Gb, but you can get round it by adding a cheap IDE controller card. > > -- bap(a)shrdlu.com
From: Damian Walker on 6 Jan 2008 04:37 Quoting Neil Sluman's message of Friday: > Trouble is, I have no idea what to do with this thing. Anyone have > any thoughts? It's too slow for video. And doesn't really have > enough disk space to use as a file server. (Yes, I know you have no > idea what I'm interested in. I'm after random ideas here!) OK, I have an old machine with twin 333 CPUs, which I (in some cases try to) use for the following local services: * File server * NNTP server * Development web server * Mail server * Print server * General dial-up server and firewall * NTP server * Name server for hosts on the local network Some of them work better than others. Currently it only has a 4GB hard drive, but that's plenty big enough for what I keep on /home. It managed most of these services well enough before I added the second CPU, so I imagine it's comparable to your machine, though I'm not sure if the fact that it's SCSI has a significant impact on the performance of the things I have it do. Oh, and it only has 128MB RAM, which is one reason why there's no X server on it. -- Damian - http://damian.snigfarp.karoo.net/ Put "sausage" in the subject of email replies to avoid my spam trap.
From: PeeGee on 7 Jan 2008 05:01 Martin Gregorie wrote: > PeeGee wrote: >> Martin Gregorie wrote: >>> Neil Sluman wrote: >>>> On Jan 4, 6:33 pm, Chris Whelan <cawhe...(a)prejudicentlworld.com> >>>> wrote: >>>>> Neil Sluman wrote: >>>>>> I recently resurrected an old machine. A K6-2 running at 300MHz. >>>>>> Seems I might as well install Linux on it. >>> > >>> I have a very similar box - 300 MHz K6, 384 MB RAM, 2 x 6.4 GB drive >>> (Award BIOS won't handle disks over 6.4 GB), 3COM NIC. >>> >> [snip] >> >> Provided you boot from partitions that meet the BIOS limitations, the >> disk size shouldn't matter. My K6-2/500 has Award 4.6 (32GB max)and >> runs quite happily on a fully utilised 40GB Quantum (with Suse 7.3 or >> later). >> > Its BIOS dependent: I wanted to make the machine dual boot, so I left > the original 6.4 GB disk in place as IDE master and added a 40 GB disk > as slave. The BIOS couldn't see it so its partitioning (which, BTW I > organized to put /boot in low order cylinders) was irrelevant. As GRUB > uses BIOS services for its disk access it couldn't see the second disk > either, which I double checked by making a GRUB boot floppy and driving > that interactively. I solved the problem by getting a used 6.4 GB disk > off eBay and putting Linux on that. > > I think my Award BIOS is older than yours. I bought the box in 1996. At > the time 300 MHz was the fastest K6 on offer and the Diamond Stealth > V550 graphic card was state of the art. This BIOS is definitely limited > to a 6.4 GB disk size. > > Now I think further about it, I had a motherboard (ABIT AX5 + Cyrix M2/300 IIRC) which would not "see" a disk over 32GB even with the last BIOS revision, so I swapped in a 20GB as it was running Win98SE. I don't recall if it was only one manufacturer, though. -- PeeGee The reply address is a spam trap. All mail is reported as spam. "Nothing should be able to load itself onto a computer without the knowledge or consent of the computer user. Software should also be able to be removed from a computer easily." Peter Cullen, Microsoft Chief Privacy Strategist (Computing 18 Aug 05)
From: Ian Rawlings on 7 Jan 2008 05:43
On 2008-01-07, Paul Martin <pm(a)zetnet.net> wrote: > Our peering NNTP server is still a Pentium Pro 180MHz with 128MB of > RAM. It copes. When I ran a peering NNTP server at an ISP it was the discs that were the slow point, the machine itself was a single processor Sun Sparc clocked at a whopping 300MHz. It did have half a gig of RAM, which was immense at the time. Ah good old INN! -- Blast off and strike the evil Bydo empire! |