Yeah a few months ago my file server just, out of the blue, decided it was time to stop working. Sometimes it would recognize the primary hard drive (OS) and sometimes it wouldn’t. It never recognized the secondary hard drive (Data) which somewhat undermined its utility as a file server.

This is the red server, by the way. My 2U box that I used to call Redserver and may begin calling either Urahara or Kurotsuchi* based on the data storage requirements of the box.

So in a panic I pulled the secondary HDD and put it in a removable USB drive cage thing. Luckily it still worked and well, I’m lazy so the damned thing just stayed there for about eight months. It isn’t that I’m suddenly overflowing with time, I mean I have to beat FFXII, school Disgaea 2, and lay in supplies for Blulicity, after all. And that’s just stuff that I’m not doing with my lady or my friends. So yeah, busy busy busy. What was I talking about? Right, the fileserver.

I benched the server. I pulled all devices from the box and one-by-one started adding them back in. Ram (stick by stick), then the floppy drive, then the hard drive, then the PC Geiger (no product page because they aren’t being made anymore). Then with all the devices in I noticed that it would boot fine, then after about 5 minutes, stop working and all three “lock” LEDs on the keyboard would start blinking. I repeated the process with removing and re-adding devices but no dice. Five minutes of use and it goes tits up. I look for the cost of a new L440gx+ motherboard and damn but they aren’t still being sold for $50-$125 a piece. I’d rather not have to sell my cherry copy of Valkyrie Profile just to buy a server board for a case with no top, thanks.

I still need to get a top made for this thing.

Luckily I started to think “I could probably flash the BIOS, that might do something.” So I downloaded all three BIOS flash disks. It turns out that this board needs three separate devices flashed to actually have all the relevant BIOS updates, so there you go. Then after running all three updates, clearing the CMOS twice and resetting any custom settings I may have made, then it starts actually giving me an error. Turns out my second processor is bad and when it is disabled by the BIOS, everything is golden.

Relatively golden that is. I’m still down one processor and only running on one 550mhz PIII with a gig of SDRAM. This should be functional for file serving over a home network though. I mean it is multi-client only because I have a laptop and desktop, and my roommate has the same. One day I’ll create a VPN box and will be able to hand out VPN access to trusted people. Of course I’ve also got Tim and Sandy, but as she is preggers I don’t think that there will be many LAN parties for the foreseeable future. Unless she kicks Tim out, that is.

So I’ll probably post again when I’ve got Server 2003 working. Then I’ll have all the fun of turning Active Directory back on and trying to figure out how to speed that login process up. Mmmmm, assigning usernames to friends and family while creating rights packages for each. Man I’m wierd.

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Yes, that is sarcasm. Apparently a Redhat install costs $150 in the store, something i had not anticipated. On top of that, their iso images for download seem to take about 48 hours a pop. And this isn’t on a wussy-ass dialup account either, this is on broadband. With six cd’s to download, i’m just not in the mood to wait that long. So if anybody has a decent reccomendation and/or CD’s to install said OS, i’d be more than happy to field try it out.

Until i can get an OS, the project is effectively stalled where it is. However it is beginning to look like i may need to remove and re-seat the motherboard, and this is actually a good thing. It will give me the excuse i need to dissassemble and photograph the steps i’ve taken to build this thing up. I’ve got a few interesting directions i’d like to take this thing, and they either entail selling what i have now and rebuilding the whole thing, or putting a number of band-aids on the many problems the box has (processors and 4 gb hard drive limit are the two big ‘uns). I may just overcome the size limit and get some OverDrive processors then work on the Linux thing from there. You never know what eBay may have for me.

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There we go, i’ve got the Geiger in the 5.25″ bay, and a hard drive sitting behind it all nice and sweet, and the drive in question is behaving quite nicely. It has fdisked and formatted just like a hard drive should, and i’m able to command prompt into the drive and take a look at what’s going on. I’m waiting now to find an operating system that’ll let me develop a knowledge of non-MS OS’s, but won’t be daunting as all hell. Yes, i’d like to start with a command line and move my way up to a GUI, thank you very much. I still use DOS, and i like knowing what my pretty pictures are actually doing underneath the covers so to speak.

In the meanwhile i’ve been playing star control 2. Lord i love that game.

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Finally i’ve gotten the thing to recognise a floppy, and i have to say i’ve never felt a sence of accomplishment this great. The fact that the company that makes the board is very out of business and the support documentation is almost non-existant, i think i’ve proven my expertise. Now that i’m done patting myself on the back, i think i’ll treat myself to that PC Geiger i was wanting back when i started this project. The fact that this case doesn’t seem to have any interior drive bays makes the Geiger a good choice, at it will make quite the drive faceplate.

This of course leads me to flashing the blazes out of the BIOS, as it currently has Revision 1, and Diamond hosts three revisions above that one. Revs 2 and 3 jump on with no problem, but 4 says its DMI chain is too large. This is a minor annoyance, as with the installation of revision 3 it now recognises the second processor, and all is well.

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Finally my new project has a home. An aluminum 4u rackmount kind of home. I have to say that this is an absolutely huge board. The damn thing takes up every inch of space in this Skymaster case. It looks smart though, and i have to say i am proud of how it has turned out.

I can’t get it to recognize a floppy drive though, and this is annoying. Add to this the fact that i can’t get the floppy that i rather like to even fit into the drive cage and i am rather pissed at the whole thing. Upon dismatleing an Intergraph machine at work today i came across quite a little find. Apparently in several of their boxes Intergraph installed these incredibly interesting little floppy drives. They are 3.5″ in size, but they are comprised of a thin laptop floppy drive and two PCMCIA slots. The only problem is that the slots connect to the back of the drive and the floppy to the side. The Skymaster case has a 3.5″ openning, but the drive is inclosed in this little cage that makes accessing the side connector impossible. Oh well, back to the drawing board… this thing will surely keep while i figure out a new plan of attack.

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Well, now the board has its second processor and two cooling fans. The damn thing is starting to look almost like a computer, too bad i don’t have a case yet, but i am working on that final addition. The fans are remarkably quiet, though this is less surprising when you consider the fact that these are 200mhz processors, compared to the 1.3ghz that is in my athlon box at the moment.

Not much more to say except that it is really being a pill at the moment, and refusing to give me the “Second Processor Initialized” message.

The second processor (matched to the stepping number of the first) ran me $25, and the fans cost $9 apiece, bringing the grand total up to $109.

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So it seems that people either don’t make PCI video cards anymore, or they just don’t want you to see them. It took me a few hours today to get anything resembling a PCI Vid card that didn’t set me back $100. This one’s a generic card, no geforce or TNT or anything, just a standard vanilla graphics card. It ran me $10 from the bargin bin at the CompUSA. This brings the total up to a whopping $20 for the whole shebang. I also scored a little power supply (ATX) at work for absolutely nothing, and a pile of motherboard standoffs for the same price.

It doesn’t boot though, no beep codes even with no ram, but i think it just doesn’t like the pc speakers i’m presenting it with. I should get a PC Geiger one of these days.

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