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OffTopic > Chicken is dead, long live the Chicken !

#151445 - nipil - Tue Feb 26, 2008 2:34 pm

Out of topic : My good-ol' home server, named "poulailler" (aka "hen house" in french) just got his retirement ticket ! This uber-Pentium75, 64M Ram and 1.6G drive has served me well since 1995 : ssh, mail, cvs, file/web/php/sql server, firewall, proxy, router, he's almighty. It even granted me with an astonishing availability : not a single hardware failure nor any hw upgrade in 13 years of 24/7 usage ! Plus, it was a natural fanless, and was very power-friendly. Praise the chicken, Hurray !
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#151451 - elwing - Tue Feb 26, 2008 8:54 pm

nipil wrote:
Out of topic : My good-ol' home server, named "poulailler" (aka "hen house" in french) just got his retirement ticket ! This uber-Pentium75, 64M Ram and 1.6G drive has served me well since 1995 : ssh, mail, cvs, file/web/php/sql server, firewall, proxy, router, he's almighty. It even granted me with an astonishing availability : not a single hardware failure nor any hw upgrade in 13 years of 24/7 usage ! Plus, it was a natural fanless, and was very power-friendly. Praise the chicken, Hurray !



RIP

#151452 - simonjhall - Tue Feb 26, 2008 9:36 pm

Ah reminds me of being at uni, 'cept we had hardware failures galore! I think some RAM died every month! Two free P200s + mobos gaffa-taped into the same AT case and six tiny hard drives software raided together to make a mammoth 40 gig drive for choons :-)
Lived in the living room and one drive was so noisy that we had to log in and hdparm it to sleep every time we wanted to watch the TV.

It's surprising how attached you can get to these shitty PCs :-)

edit: 1000th post!
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#151453 - elwing - Tue Feb 26, 2008 9:57 pm

simonjhall wrote:
edit: 1000th post!


woot, gg

remind me my first pc... it was a 386... i only add a commodor 3036 PET before... lol I started computer adventure quite late...

#151471 - Lynx - Wed Feb 27, 2008 3:01 pm

I tossed out my Apple ][e and ][gs and they were both still working.. After lugging them around for 15 years.. I just got tired of it.. Back when computers were made to last more than 3 months.. :/
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#151485 - Rajveer - Wed Feb 27, 2008 7:06 pm

This thread makes me wish I kept my old Pentium 90 as a fileserver :(

#151633 - gauauu - Sat Mar 01, 2008 7:41 pm

Lynx wrote:
I tossed out my Apple ][e and ][gs and they were both still working.. After lugging them around for 15 years..


Speaking of which, any old-computer geeks out there that want my Apple IIc that's still in the closet?

#151813 - nipil - Wed Mar 05, 2008 10:07 am

Update & info :

After moving poulailler's guts into my new server, namely moving 3 IDE 300G+ hard drives from misc PCs into the 3" case slots, i ran into an issue : temperature. In my old server, i only had a single 500G drive, which, even when stressed, didn't heat much due to it being alone, and due to the P75 being unable to have it reach max troughput on the drive. Now i have 3 of 'em, located next to each other ; this was ok in my own ventilated case, but doesn't work well in my old case.

Namely, the drives are almost ok when idle (around 35?C each), and heat up when under load. After a full week of serving, i noticed all drives were within a 50-58?C range! Red alert ! Problem was that even after being back at idle for a long while, the disks temperature wouldn't drop, not even by a single degree ! That was due to a heavy under-ventilating in the poorly designed IDE bay... Recurrent case problem imho. By the way, the flat IDE cables were too short to move the drives elsewhere, which anyway wouldn't have improved ventilation.

Why do i tell all this ?
Because the solution i choose/found was to buy some round IDE cables, and a 5" 1/4 ventilated drive rack (HDD kit), model EX-33A (the manufacturer's website description is wrong : this model uses three 5"1/4 slots, and has a 120mm fan). Here's a picture of the item itself, and here for a review. As said, this one uses 3 bays for 3 drivs, but there are version using 2 bays for 3 drives, or 3 bays for 4 drives. Installation was simple. There's an washable dust-filter in front of it. Drives are "fixed" using non-metalic latex (?) isolation, and the cooling fan is 120mm, for a better air circulation. There's no native fan regulation system (direct molex connection), so it produces some noise, but you couldn't avoid it. There's certainly a way to monitor the fan speed based on drive temperature, but i don't need it myself (who would put a server in a sleeping room ? ;)

All in all, my drives are now cooled to around 28?C (dropping from 50+ !) and even under full simultaneous load won't go above 42-45?C, depending on the drive's placement in the rack. And this system contributes to the overall case ventilation. And it even looks quite nice. For 35 euros, i could only recommend it !
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#151908 - Lynx - Thu Mar 06, 2008 3:43 pm

Is there a reason you chose that over installing HDD mobile racks with fans? Did you need to keep them internal, or not have room for mobile racks?
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#152120 - nipil - Mon Mar 10, 2008 9:43 am

Lynx wrote:
Is there a reason you chose that over installing HDD mobile racks with fans? Did you need to keep them internal, or not have room for mobile racks?

I prefer to keep them internal (cleaner-, one-box, Power-RJ45 solution)
And, regarding noise, i prefer one big fan to many small ones !
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NDS Lite Gold/Silver, MK5/R4DS, MSI PC54G2, D-Link DI-624

#152184 - lord_hardware - Tue Mar 11, 2008 11:48 am

my computer... what was once a STEAL at 2grand is not worth less then 200 :)

i feel comforted knowing that it serves its purpose as an Xbox 360 extended harddrive :D
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