i was thinking of using one of theseCF to IDE adaptors in my Desktops to remove heat and go "Solid State" with a hot-swappable HDD Tray in my computer to use the HDD only for data when needed i run Linux Mint 9 on my machines and i was wondering what luck preformace wise you have had with these over HDDs? Faster? Slower? please let me know
@Matthew55904 I would say that "most" CF cards are slower than hard disks and proper SSDs. There are some higher speed models available, and those may well do better.
I have not done any hard and fast benchmarks to compare the two.
@uxwbill this sounds like its perfect for this kind of application am i mistaken? Team 8GB CompactFlash: High compatibility High read/write speed Stores data, music, image and video files Compatible with ATA Full IDE operation mode Supports operations at 3.3V/5V
I had to throw out a Computer I bought new last month. It went obscolete! ;-( Somebody told me it was old, A month old, and there was no use for it. All I used it for was internet, Documents, and gaming. Maybe downloading music and such. I guess there is a time that computers expire. A month after you bought it or something!
@uxwbill yeah, Im kidding. LOL,, Im still running 10 year old computers that are surfing the net fine. I do office type things, list on ebay, Message. Ive actually had less problems with the older computers than the newer ones.
Nice job on Re-Purposing an obsolete piece of hardware. I have trouple throwing anything out these days for this very reason, you just never know when you can reuse something. =)
@HardTrancid Oh, that's just the thing. If I throw something out, I know that I will soon find just the thing that would have been perfect to do with it. Such is life I guess...
I don't want to argue, but it seems 1. you have to put a serial ata in this junk, 2. you have to replace a fan, 3. you have to use ducktape, 4. you have to have space for this junk, 5. you have to use a VGA monitor to see what is going on, 6. you have to have a CF card, with an IDE (!) harddrive 7. Are you kidding me???
The idea of this makes me just thinking this is not a NAS computer anymore, it is toying with the possiblity of making this computer fly high in the sky and let it EXPLODE!!!
@daniellikahong To put it very simply, this project (or "junk", if you'd rather) actually turned out very well. It's much more stable than the product Apple sells for this job. The only thing that ever restarts it is a power failure and power draw is the *same* as my Linksys NSLU2 with two drives.
It does not run with a monitor attached, only a terminator plug on the video card. When you get a computer like this, sometimes you do have to fix it in creative ways due to its value.
@TableWolfMusic I did not end up using the CF card due to issues with the onboard ATA controller. As it is, it would be only rarely written to here...it only boots the OS and then sits idle for most of the time after that.
@uxwbill This is a cool server you've made. I saw somewhere in the comments that you ran it through a electricity meter. Now that is a good! If you have the OS only on the flash, then, as you say it would be written to rarely, maybe with the exception of a swap partition which would suffer very excessive wear. Also possibly the VAR folder depending on how old the *nix system is and how it's partitioned. For example, in older Free BSD setups, one might partition var to avoid DOS attacks.
It's worth noting that this should only be done as a fun project. In practice a computer that old uses so much power and is so slow that you can do it cheaper and faster with a modern low-power system, and the vast majority of the price of a NAS is the drives you put in it anyway.
@ghelyar That's not correct. I have tested the power usage of this system, with everything powered up and running normally. The power consumption is within a few watts either way of a Linksys NSLU2 and its hard drives.
@MagnusVideos I'm not sure what you mean by "forgiving".
This CF card adapter was fine and worked well. It's just that the whole CF card thing didn't go over well with the Intel PIIX ATA hardware in this machine and the ATA driver that FreeNAS uses.
@Michael324335 FreeNAS (0.)8 installs the same way as 0.7 did for the most part. You burn a CD using the ISO image files they provide--one for 32-bit machines and one for 64-bit. Download the one that matches what you have and burn it to disc. Then start the computer you plan to use with the disc you burned. (If that computer has any data on it you wish to save, stop now and back it up first!) The installer will guide you through the process.
@HBeagley FreeNAS (0.)8 is a great update to the FreeNAS project, but it isn't finished yet and doesn't do a lot of the things that the 0.7 releases did. I've been running FN0.8 and been pretty happy with it, but it hasn't reached the point where I'd move up to it. It wouldn't run on this system anyway.
@LunaVorax The card is based on a VT6421A SATA controller. That's the most important thing to know. All cards based on this chip appear to follow a common design. One should be as good as any other.
@Leroyjokins Unfortunately no :( Minecraft servers can take beefy processor to its knees at points. I reccomend a minimum of a pentium4 (or a socket 754 amd processor) to run as a minecraft server.
@uxwbill yeah, spammers have a tend to be mildly to moderately annoying at the very least. once I get things started I may make a response video showing how it came out.
I just wanted to say that this is a very clever utilization of older hardware. Ever since I watched this, my head has been filled with Ideas. the os is called freeNAS? I have a couple old Pentium 4s that would be perfect for this sort of thing. Could you tell me the url for the Freenas homepage? I want to get started asap.
@Brolyfanatic777 FreeNAS will come up with a web search, it's one of the first matches that most any search engine will return. That's the best I can do, because it's impossible to post a URL in a Youtube comment. (Thank spammers yet again.)
@nipperoid Within a few seconds of the present, 71 day(s) 21 hour(s) 33 minute(s) 55 second(s). The last time it went down was due to a power outage. Prior to that, it was up for over 150 days.
Hey i am kinda new to haveing an account but but i am absoloutly fasinated by "freenas" I have been researching this and how to turn an old pc of mine into one.Now i have an old" ASrock K7VM4" not sure about the cpu. I would love it if you can help me run down a short list of parts. Please email me at markatkinson1973@yahoo.com i will look for uxwbill in the header thanxs
@abigail101173 I suggest visiting the FreeNAS forums if you want to know which parts work well and if anyone has used the same motherboard as you have. The board you have takes Socket A processors - I'd not consider it "all that old" in the grand scheme of things. I'd recommend starting with at least 512MB of RAM if you can get it and a VT6421 PCI SATA card if you want to use serial ATA disks. The Silicon Image cards generally work but are sometimes unstable.
Hey i am kinda new to haveing an account but but i am absoloutly fasinated by "freenas" I have been researching this and how to turn an old pc of mine into one.Now i have an old" ASrock K7VM4" now my knowledge about gigabyte cards and eathernet cards raid cards and wether or not i can boot from flash or pen drive. Now all exept the choice in drives is what i need help with. I also likke your video terminater plug idea. Something i would like to do.
@brandonlacavera The only real cost was the disk drives, which you'd have to buy anyway. On part two of this video, if you read the comments, you will see that I did do a cross-comparison of power usage against a Linksys NSLU2 and its two disks. The results were very similar between the two.
I had a computer that was sitting in my garage for 4 years since 2005. The reason why is because the graphics card broke on the computer almost 7 years ago, but in January, 2009, I decided to get the piece of hardware out and restore it. My old PC had an AMD K2/300 Processor, 96MB PC-100 RAM (576MB PC-100/133 RAM later on to run Windows XP and Windows 98SE), nVidia GeForce MX 4000 128MB GDDR Video Card, Western Digital 6.4GB (6.0GB Actual storage) HDD (Win98SE), Maxtor 6Y080L0 80GB HDD (WinXP)..
@WinVistaUser2 CD-ROM, DFI P5BV3+ Rev. B+ Motherboard with BIOS year 2001 (for the Maxtor HDD), PS/2-6R Keyboard, Microsoft Scrolling Mouse (USB & PS/2), IBM 2115 15" Monitor (still have the monitor today), 3COM FastLink III ISA Ethernet Card 10-BaseT, RealTek PCI Network Card 10-BaseT, ESS Maesreo 2 ES1968 Sound Card (Still have the card), PCI to USB 2.0 3-port PCI card (still have it), and an HP DeskJet 3740 (broke). RIP 1998-2004, 2009-2009
It's working better than a $500 piece of hardware sold by Apple Computer that does the same thing. Kind of sad when you think that a PC this old makes a better "Time Capsule" than the real thing.
i cart stop laughing i wouldn't say that 200mb is blister and a hdd thats 2.1 GB is good tbh not having a dig just saying its funny hehe you should take a look at this site and no people this aint a site referal just advise overclockers co uk good site but sadly dont think they deliver to USA but good video i will give a trying on my spare computer thats got 4TB
@gmax341 Links can't be posted to comments with "munging" them, due to comment spam. Some web searches with any reputable search engines will turn up what you are looking for--try "FreeNAS", "FreeBSD", and "PC-BSD" for some good starting points. The Wikipedia article on FreeBSD may also prove useful.
@uxwbill Ive got several nice older machines sitting around that were well tekan care of and work pretty good, most of them just need minor little things done to them here and there, have got a couple of Windows 3.1 machines too and a couple of spare Pentium Pro CPU's still in the wrapper that look like new, have most likely never been used. Let me know if you ever want some of them ill see about sending them your way. I have 2 machines im using right now but dont need the other 7 of them lol.
I had problems with my CF2IDE-Adapter. An older PC didnt boot up the OS from that. I got an "Read Error". Dont know from where that came... A "newer" PC had no problems to boot. I read somewhere that it depends on the mainboard.
@Grafikbug Hard to say...but it was mostly likely a BIOS related problem with the reported disk geometry. It might well be that the PC was old enough that it couldn't handle a disk (or CF card) larger than a certain amount...or that any such options were not on by default. Hard to say for sure.
@numbell It does look nice. The second one of two that I administer died a few days ago. (The first had died a long while back.) Bloated caps everywhere in the power supply. Come on, people...that Time Capsule didn't manage to outlive or work as well as a positively grey-haired computer (still going to this day).
Thanks for posting this great video. I am constructing a NAS box using a PC with a PIII 1GHz processor and an Intel 810e chip set. The PC does not have a USB boot option. If I use a CF card for the OS install, and it somehow fails; will I simply be able to replace it with a new card, install a fresh copy of the OS, remount the drives, and access my existing data? Or is all my data is lost? Is installing the OS on a hard drive the preferred option? Thanks in advance for answering my questions.
@Romulus6cbc Basically, yes. The CF card only ever holds the OS (although FreeNAS will let you create a data partition on it with whatever--if any--space is left over) and configuration. Back up your configuration file. You don't have to do that, but it will save you time that would otherwise be spent reconfiguring all your services, remounting volumes and setting up networking.
First, the processor is clocked at 200Mhz, not 133! Second, it is no waste at all because the processor speed covers all the needs for an RSync server! Third, 3,5" single-disk NAS enclosures have way lower processor power and RAM and now serve terabyte harddisks with their too simplistic firmware!
@WackoX1337 Why? This is actually a 200MHz Pentium Pro, and that's really all the processor power that's required to do a perfectly acceptable job of acting as a network attached storage appliance. Plus, since it's a generic x86 computer system, I can easily add software and resources (memory, disk, maybe even a a faster CPU) to it later.
Although some little purpose built NAS devices can run custom software, they're nowhere near as expandable.
What if I stop my nas server and started it up, wil I lose my data? becuase that what happend to me. I rebooted my system and now I can't see my disk.
@Webwabi If you stop it properly by shutting down the operating system, there should not be any data loss. Just flipping the power switch may cause a disaster. It depends a lot on the underlying operating system for your NAS. No operating system can prevent something bad from happening if the disk is busy at the time it loses power.
Unix and its derivates all assume that the disk will not go away unexpectedly and they cache writes by holding them in RAM and flushing them later.
@uxwbill Thank you for your reply. I was thinking of putting all my files (4TB) on a freenas server, but I'don't think I'm gonna do that, unless I do a backup, and backing 4TB up is not easy or cheap.
@Webwabi It isn't yet, but I'll bet it gets a lot cheaper in the near future. Two 2TB disks don't cost all the money in the world. To me, the hardest thing to deal with is the amount of time it takes. More intelligent copying programs like rsync (and its ability to do "delta" copies) are a lifesaver in this case.
That is going to be crazy inefficient... so only slightly less useless, and much more expensive on the utility end. If you do one thing, get rid of that crazy inefficient PSU.
@DavidH373 It's not as inefficient as one would think. It compares extremely favorably to my Linksys NSLU2 and its two external drives. There is a comment about that somewhere in here.
The PSU should be very high quality, most older computers had one that was overbuilt and/or conservatively rated. It's safe to say that it could be better than most of the ones that show up in countless generic beige boxes. This one was made by NMB/Minebea, a company that does not cheap-skate on this stuff.
I had to scrap the CF card idea, there are seemingly serious bugs in the ATA drivers when used with the Intel 440 chipset. In particular, the CF card indicates that it can't handle DMA, the chipset rejects attempts to enable DMA and the underlying BSD barfs.
@uxwbill, It just occurred to me, why not try the 1 inch microdrives instead of a CF card for such a system? The advantages would be 2; small low power CF form factor, and a true hard drive that the PPro probably wouldn't complain about.
@TakingTheCake233 I tried the microdrive and it runs into the same problem that the CF card does. After some experimentation, I can say with reasonable certainty that the problem is between the Intel 440FX PIIX (PCI IDE "Xcelerator") and FreeBSD. When I manually forced the card into its True IDE mode, the boot process for FreeNAS got much further, until it appeared to reset the card's operating mode to the default. If I hit it again with the jumper wire on the pin at the right time, it worked.
I'm curious how you got the CF card to work as an IDE drive. I bought a Transcend 2GB CF card and an CF-IDE adapter card and my 200Mhz/1MB L2 cache Pentium Pro unit will not recognize the drive. Did you have to fiddle with the BIOS for a while, or it just worked?
Most but not all CF cards default to working as pseudo-IDE/ATAPI devices. However, I have a seen a few that did not, and therefore wouldn't work for this application. There are multiple modes in which a CF card can operate, but I've forgotten the details. Card makers can program the default for their cards.
Your system could have a BIOS limit on the maximum capacity of an attached IDE device.
@uxwbill, It just occurred to me, why not try the 1 inch microdrives instead of a CF card for such a system? The advantages would be 2; small low power CF form factor, and a true hard drive that the PPro probably wouldn't complain about.
@uxwbill, It just occurred to me, why not try the 1 inch microdrives instead of a CF card for such a system? The advantages would be 2; small low power CF form factor, and a true hard drive that the PPro probably wouldn't complain about.
The Microdrives don't operate in the right mode by default (although they can be switched by shorting a pin at power on) and that causes problems for FreeNAS when running on the Intel 440 chipset. It's probably a software issue, but I don't think they'll expend much effort to fix an issue on hardware this old.
i love seeing old computer being used for something useful like this. ANd a nice surprise to hear that latest freeNAS supports TimeCapsule.. I'm going to check it out.
Hello I am also vintage computers collector. I bought several Transcend IDE flash disks, (the temperature (-10) where the computers are operated kills the hard drives) one of them fried in the old machine after second boot-up, do you think CF solution is better and much more reliable?
@etoEthomeSk Flash memory cards generally do not care about temperature or all but the most extreme vibration. It should work fine, if the problem is really with the disks.
I am wondering about that, because I have run a lot of computers in an unheated house and garage. None have ever lost a hard drive, and I can definitely say that the temperature went well below -10 (C) many a time.
@ledjohnnyboy It's a card sold under the Masscool brand and based on a VIA VT6421A controller card. It has two SATA connectors and a PATA controller as well.
I have no complaints with it. The VT6421A is revised to handle negotiating SATA 3.0gb disks to a 1.5gb rate instead of hanging up and not finding any drives.
It also handles hot-swaps perfectly, after unmounting a disk from within FreeNAS.
Bill, I am in the process of looking for a NAS solutions for my new townhouse. I had the whole house rigged with Cat 6 and all running to my Office. I have a connection at each tv. I want a solution to rip all my movies and dvd's and music and have it available to anywhere in my house. Have popcorn hours that will recieve the data for tv. Would this work or be too slow to push the 720-1080p video data??
FreeNAS could certainly store the data, and it shouldn't have a problem relaying it in time. I would assume that since you went with Cat5 cable, you are using gigabit networking. (If not, you should. GbE cards are cheap and switches are not too bad.)
If you had all the TVs going at once, or you were ripping while watching, that might push things a little too hard. But mainly it'll be a question of how fast the network goes--and any decently fast PC running the NAS OS won't be the limter.
(Oh, that should read "Cat 6" cable. (Almost made the same typo twice...))
A good platform for FreeNAS could be the Intel D945GCLF2 motherboard, with its dual core Atom CPU and built in gigabit Ethernet adapter.
I don't know much about Popcorn Hours, this is the first I had heard of it. Looks interesting, if I could remember the last time I turned a TV on. :-)
you're absolutely right. almost every computer can be used for something. my old zx spectrum + is faithfully controlling the lights and electronic circuits in my house. i trust it more than anything, since i wrote the program for it. :)
I am experimenting with several DOS machines that way. So far I am working on the computer side, are you willing to share some info about controllers with which you control lights?
It is unique. It slides forward and off of the underlying chassis. Two latching arms (one on each side of the case) can be lifted up and then it slides right off.
Getting it back on is more of a trick, as you have to make sure the outer shell fits into two tracks cut into the chassis.
Kind of like the IBM aptiva sitting in the corner of my computer room, eh? i got it as a birthday gift from my personal trainer's husband, who worked at IBM for a while. He told me a bit about OS/2 and how he had to head down to Boca Raton periodically to retrieve experimental printer parts.
I tried doing this after seeing your video on my old HP Brio 500mhz Celeron. I ran into an issue with it not detecting the drives on my SATA card. I tried both a RAID card and a SATA host with no raid. So far had no luck. But the freenas started right up!
And was the RAID card you used a real, hardware RAID card?
(Anything from Silicon Image, VIA, lower end Promise Technology chipsets, Initio and to a lesser extent HighPoint Technologies are all "fake RAID" implementations that let their drivers and the boot BIOS on the card do all the magic.
Interestingly, the VIA VT6421 card I used is not bootable, although it has a boot ROM and the Vectra BIOS knows it is a "storage controller". (Pretty amazing!)
Bill knows well enough I have plenty of machines here, especially quite a few IBM PS/2 and early 5150/5160/5170 machines but I also have some PPro, PII and PIII machines I could do this on. I have an early CDROM NAS that has a SCSI to ethernet adapter in a cabinet of 14 cdrom drives - this would make a perfect addition to it, maybe even replace the cdrom tower by putting the contents of the cd's on the hard storage, I've been needing to see FreeNAS in action, good video of it working.
A network attached storage server is what you have when you take a bunch of computer disks (usually hard drives) and put them in a computer or other device that runs specialized software.
The special software makes the disks (and whatever might be stored on them) available to users on a computer network.
You can make one like this, or you can buy one that is ready made in a store if you want an easier (though usually less featureful and possibly less reliable) way to get such a thing.
Now come on, that's in the video. Not only do I say things that can be searched for, but I also showed some of them happening! :-)
This will be used to store backups made by Macintosh computers running Mac OS X 10.5 or later. It will also be used to back up computers with a utility known as rsync.
rsync runs on many different types of computers and makes regular backups of selected information. You should do a web search if you want to know more about it and what it does.
Bill, you're making me think twice about trashing a few machines before I move to my new house. I've got an old Athlon Tbird 900mhz rig, an old AthlonXP 1600+ (Tbred B no less), and an old Celeron 2.4ghz Emachines sitting around here... but they all need RAM and HDDs to get going.
HDDs are no problem, but RAM for these baddies sure is getting expensive. Some places want 50 bucks for a stick of PC133 or PC2100 DDR. Sheesh!
Well, here's what I'd do. If you've got some computer parts/repair stores around, you might try to get to know the manager or the employees. Ask them to keep you in mind when they get some pieces that they might otherwise toss out. It's worked for me.
If that won't work, try hitting some flea markets. I bought a whole box of PC133/PC2100/PC2700 modules in varying capacities for about $35.
Deals don't abound on eBay, but they do show up from time to time, so watch there as well.
And if you've got any friends or family that have old computers, ask them if you could any "dead" systems. Chances are you'd get a few that might be able to donate parts.
I fondly remember those AMD processors (still have a few of them running) and despite everyone's hating the Celeron, I really do like them and think they're great little processors--especially the 2.4 and 2.8 versions. The 2.5 is nice because of its 533MHz FSB speed.
I've heard it said that doing so is bad, but my own experiences don't bear it out. I've had systems running for years (including a Dell Dimension L550r in this same room, running since 2004) with no monitors attached and they seem OK. At least when I go to hook a monitor up, the video output is fine.
What I'm going to do is make a video terminator plug for this system, using 75 ohm 1/4W resistors, so as to "fake it out" into thinking that a monitor is hooked up. It needs a video card to POST.
I'd really like to have some small monitors that work, though. The IBM display you might have seen in the video is the only one I've got, and it's hooked up to that PS/2 Model 50 TR bridge.
I had a nice little color one with an 8" CRT that would sync up to 800x600. And then it fell off a computer I was testing. I'm not sure what happened. The CRT still has vacuum, but I don't think its heater is operating. The circuit board is not broken.
Well, I just bought two never before used IBM monochrome VGA Point Of Sale monitors. They'd been in their sealed boxes for a decade!
They're so nice, clean and perfect that I almost hate to use them. And no screen burn! I'm so used to clunky, half-worn-out, dirty mono VGA monitors with terrific screen burn. I'm not going to let that happen to these, nor will I let them get burned in, although I will have to fashion a base so they won't fall off of something.
i was thinking of using one of theseCF to IDE adaptors in my Desktops to remove heat and go "Solid State" with a hot-swappable HDD Tray in my computer to use the HDD only for data when needed i run Linux Mint 9 on my machines and i was wondering what luck preformace wise you have had with these over HDDs? Faster? Slower? please let me know
Matthew55904 2 days ago
@Matthew55904 I would say that "most" CF cards are slower than hard disks and proper SSDs. There are some higher speed models available, and those may well do better.
I have not done any hard and fast benchmarks to compare the two.
uxwbill 2 days ago
Comment removed
Matthew55904 2 days ago
@uxwbill this sounds like its perfect for this kind of application am i mistaken? Team 8GB CompactFlash: High compatibility High read/write speed Stores data, music, image and video files Compatible with ATA Full IDE operation mode Supports operations at 3.3V/5V
Matthew55904 2 days ago
I had to throw out a Computer I bought new last month. It went obscolete! ;-( Somebody told me it was old, A month old, and there was no use for it. All I used it for was internet, Documents, and gaming. Maybe downloading music and such. I guess there is a time that computers expire. A month after you bought it or something!
Dreambro1 5 days ago
@Dreambro1 I really hope you're kidding.
uxwbill 5 days ago
@uxwbill yeah, Im kidding. LOL,, Im still running 10 year old computers that are surfing the net fine. I do office type things, list on ebay, Message. Ive actually had less problems with the older computers than the newer ones.
Dreambro1 4 days ago
Nice job on Re-Purposing an obsolete piece of hardware. I have trouple throwing anything out these days for this very reason, you just never know when you can reuse something. =)
HardTrancid 2 weeks ago
@HardTrancid Oh, that's just the thing. If I throw something out, I know that I will soon find just the thing that would have been perfect to do with it. Such is life I guess...
uxwbill 2 weeks ago
i love this ..... ^_^
mckey73 3 weeks ago
I don't want to argue, but it seems 1. you have to put a serial ata in this junk, 2. you have to replace a fan, 3. you have to use ducktape, 4. you have to have space for this junk, 5. you have to use a VGA monitor to see what is going on, 6. you have to have a CF card, with an IDE (!) harddrive 7. Are you kidding me???
The idea of this makes me just thinking this is not a NAS computer anymore, it is toying with the possiblity of making this computer fly high in the sky and let it EXPLODE!!!
daniellikahong 3 weeks ago
@daniellikahong To put it very simply, this project (or "junk", if you'd rather) actually turned out very well. It's much more stable than the product Apple sells for this job. The only thing that ever restarts it is a power failure and power draw is the *same* as my Linksys NSLU2 with two drives.
It does not run with a monitor attached, only a terminator plug on the video card. When you get a computer like this, sometimes you do have to fix it in creative ways due to its value.
uxwbill 3 weeks ago
Great project and video. Worth noting that flash memory (e.g. CF cards) have a limited number of write cycles.
TableWolfMusic 3 weeks ago
@TableWolfMusic I did not end up using the CF card due to issues with the onboard ATA controller. As it is, it would be only rarely written to here...it only boots the OS and then sits idle for most of the time after that.
uxwbill 2 weeks ago
@uxwbill This is a cool server you've made. I saw somewhere in the comments that you ran it through a electricity meter. Now that is a good! If you have the OS only on the flash, then, as you say it would be written to rarely, maybe with the exception of a swap partition which would suffer very excessive wear. Also possibly the VAR folder depending on how old the *nix system is and how it's partitioned. For example, in older Free BSD setups, one might partition var to avoid DOS attacks.
TableWolfMusic 2 weeks ago
hey thanks for the video I have a few computers I love to turn in to nas systems.
mccunecp 1 month ago
think about why you might be the only one though lol
Yvescorbeil4life 1 month ago
@Yvescorbeil4life ...except I'm not. Lots of people are using FreeNAS for many different things.
uxwbill 1 month ago
i just like the case
pcpik3r 1 month ago
It's worth noting that this should only be done as a fun project. In practice a computer that old uses so much power and is so slow that you can do it cheaper and faster with a modern low-power system, and the vast majority of the price of a NAS is the drives you put in it anyway.
ghelyar 1 month ago
@ghelyar That's not correct. I have tested the power usage of this system, with everything powered up and running normally. The power consumption is within a few watts either way of a Linksys NSLU2 and its hard drives.
uxwbill 1 month ago
love ur videos, and ur voice rocks man!! thats why i love ur videos :D
MrRelentess 2 months ago
There is no such thing as a useless computer!
TheEPROM9 2 months ago
Which is the best CF Card adapter around these days? Is there a more forgiving version of the one shown at 03:05 ?
MagnusVideos 2 months ago
@MagnusVideos I'm not sure what you mean by "forgiving".
This CF card adapter was fine and worked well. It's just that the whole CF card thing didn't go over well with the Intel PIIX ATA hardware in this machine and the ATA driver that FreeNAS uses.
uxwbill 2 months ago
@uxwbill
wow the idea of having an sd card as primary is pretty good. its like a cheap SSD hard drive
stevomwa1 2 months ago
does the keykeeper still have that old Compaq Deskpro EN?
IamFat32 4 months ago
@IamFat32 Not as his primary computer. It's sitting mostly idle right now.
uxwbill 4 months ago
This has been flagged as spam show
uxwbill you right i took my old gateway pc and i used it as a free nas and its better that than 500 dollar apple stuff
and i just want to say great videos
NoriesW 4 months ago
uxwbill you right i took my old gateway pc and i used it as a free nas and its better that than 500 dollar apple stuff
and jut want to say great videos
NoriesW 4 months ago
uxwbill you right i took my old gateway pc and i used it as a free nass and its better that than 500 dollar apple stuff
and jut want to say great videos
NoriesW 4 months ago
why not use usb harddrive ?
roffpoff 5 months ago
@roffpoff What if you have 6 tb of data?
BurtonInfectedSoul 2 months ago
1:02 I still use that exact hard drive on my computers!
supercow9001 5 months ago
Nice vid, but for the love of God, please clean your Kitchen!!!
calvindurandt 6 months ago 10
this is soooo cool
DAVERUKY 6 months ago
you can't even Install windows xp on a 2 gb HDD aahhaha
LittleJohnEnterprise 6 months ago
I need a free nas 8.0 install video anyone have one ?
Michael324335 7 months ago
@Michael324335 FreeNAS (0.)8 installs the same way as 0.7 did for the most part. You burn a CD using the ISO image files they provide--one for 32-bit machines and one for 64-bit. Download the one that matches what you have and burn it to disc. Then start the computer you plan to use with the disc you burned. (If that computer has any data on it you wish to save, stop now and back it up first!) The installer will guide you through the process.
uxwbill 7 months ago
FreeNAS 8 has full Apple Time Machine functionality. Which is awesome as I am building a NAS (build 2).
HBeagley 8 months ago
@HBeagley FreeNAS (0.)8 is a great update to the FreeNAS project, but it isn't finished yet and doesn't do a lot of the things that the 0.7 releases did. I've been running FN0.8 and been pretty happy with it, but it hasn't reached the point where I'd move up to it. It wouldn't run on this system anyway.
uxwbill 8 months ago
MMM peanut butter
hheintze1 8 months ago
It may be late to ask you this but what are the exact reference of the Sata PCI card you bought ?
Thanks in advance for your answer.
LunaVorax 9 months ago
@LunaVorax The card is based on a VT6421A SATA controller. That's the most important thing to know. All cards based on this chip appear to follow a common design. One should be as good as any other.
uxwbill 9 months ago
minecraft sever for the win
Leroyjokins 9 months ago
@Leroyjokins Unfortunately no :( Minecraft servers can take beefy processor to its knees at points. I reccomend a minimum of a pentium4 (or a socket 754 amd processor) to run as a minecraft server.
TheOnlyDuST 6 months ago
@uxwbill yeah, spammers have a tend to be mildly to moderately annoying at the very least. once I get things started I may make a response video showing how it came out.
Thank you for replying.
Jim
Brolyfanatic777 9 months ago
Hello! =]
I just wanted to say that this is a very clever utilization of older hardware. Ever since I watched this, my head has been filled with Ideas. the os is called freeNAS? I have a couple old Pentium 4s that would be perfect for this sort of thing. Could you tell me the url for the Freenas homepage? I want to get started asap.
Thanks for reading!!
Jim
Brolyfanatic777 9 months ago
@Brolyfanatic777 FreeNAS will come up with a web search, it's one of the first matches that most any search engine will return. That's the best I can do, because it's impossible to post a URL in a Youtube comment. (Thank spammers yet again.)
uxwbill 9 months ago
@Brolyfanatic777
foxofinfinety 9 months ago
Pentium Pro's are awesome
Whats the uptime on it thus far?
nipperoid 9 months ago
@nipperoid Within a few seconds of the present, 71 day(s) 21 hour(s) 33 minute(s) 55 second(s). The last time it went down was due to a power outage. Prior to that, it was up for over 150 days.
uxwbill 9 months ago
@uxwbill Wow, thats reliable!
nipperoid 9 months ago
What kind of power supply in it and what watts
MixerVM 10 months ago
@MixerVM It's an HP power supply, made by NMB/Minebea IIRC. I think it's rated for 150 watts output or thereabouts.
uxwbill 9 months ago
@uxwbill And what does IIRC mean?
MixerVM 9 months ago
@MixerVM "If I Remember (or Recall) Correctly"
uxwbill 9 months ago
Would a "2603 MainStreet V.35 Data termination" from "NEWBRIDE" be helpfull in this setup or not ?
abigail101173 10 months ago
@abigail101173 No, not unless you were going to use V.35 protocol and ports to exchange data, which seems fairly unlikely.
uxwbill 10 months ago
Hey i am kinda new to haveing an account but but i am absoloutly fasinated by "freenas" I have been researching this and how to turn an old pc of mine into one.Now i have an old" ASrock K7VM4" not sure about the cpu. I would love it if you can help me run down a short list of parts. Please email me at markatkinson1973@yahoo.com i will look for uxwbill in the header thanxs
abigail101173 11 months ago
@abigail101173 I suggest visiting the FreeNAS forums if you want to know which parts work well and if anyone has used the same motherboard as you have. The board you have takes Socket A processors - I'd not consider it "all that old" in the grand scheme of things. I'd recommend starting with at least 512MB of RAM if you can get it and a VT6421 PCI SATA card if you want to use serial ATA disks. The Silicon Image cards generally work but are sometimes unstable.
uxwbill 10 months ago
Hey i am kinda new to haveing an account but but i am absoloutly fasinated by "freenas" I have been researching this and how to turn an old pc of mine into one.Now i have an old" ASrock K7VM4" now my knowledge about gigabyte cards and eathernet cards raid cards and wether or not i can boot from flash or pen drive. Now all exept the choice in drives is what i need help with. I also likke your video terminater plug idea. Something i would like to do.
abigail101173 11 months ago
Lots of big words, i only play video games on computers and maintain a high amount of ram to prevent a crash.
Commander800 11 months ago
you should get an Atom of a Pentium 3 if you dont have cash.
because old PC eat fucking much power . (150,350Watt)
hitachi088 11 months ago
its not pronounced FREE N ASA its Freenas. :s And yea. i cant belive it can run on only 200 mhz!
iToasterman 11 months ago
nice job, i would do the same if had any old machine
4NEOFEAR 11 months ago
I bet the 2gb seagate would have worked perfect in that nas for years. old seagates are the best.
dq476 11 months ago
serriel ata controller, smart so smart it ca work .. .. :)
xXjack4522Xx 1 year ago
Greatly presented and interesting video mate. I look forward to watching some more of your videos.
jasonked1 1 year ago
nice!
PCsrot 1 year ago
Wow that computer is built like a tank!
MasterNaruto1214 1 year ago
this looks like way more money and would use more power then anything
brandonlacavera 1 year ago
@brandonlacavera The only real cost was the disk drives, which you'd have to buy anyway. On part two of this video, if you read the comments, you will see that I did do a cross-comparison of power usage against a Linksys NSLU2 and its two disks. The results were very similar between the two.
uxwbill 1 year ago
I had a computer that was sitting in my garage for 4 years since 2005. The reason why is because the graphics card broke on the computer almost 7 years ago, but in January, 2009, I decided to get the piece of hardware out and restore it. My old PC had an AMD K2/300 Processor, 96MB PC-100 RAM (576MB PC-100/133 RAM later on to run Windows XP and Windows 98SE), nVidia GeForce MX 4000 128MB GDDR Video Card, Western Digital 6.4GB (6.0GB Actual storage) HDD (Win98SE), Maxtor 6Y080L0 80GB HDD (WinXP)..
WinVistaUser2 1 year ago
@WinVistaUser2 CD-ROM, DFI P5BV3+ Rev. B+ Motherboard with BIOS year 2001 (for the Maxtor HDD), PS/2-6R Keyboard, Microsoft Scrolling Mouse (USB & PS/2), IBM 2115 15" Monitor (still have the monitor today), 3COM FastLink III ISA Ethernet Card 10-BaseT, RealTek PCI Network Card 10-BaseT, ESS Maesreo 2 ES1968 Sound Card (Still have the card), PCI to USB 2.0 3-port PCI card (still have it), and an HP DeskJet 3740 (broke). RIP 1998-2004, 2009-2009
WinVistaUser2 1 year ago
Can this run CRYSIS on 60 FPS ?
Bilalol3 1 year ago
@Bilalol3 Not at all. It doesn't need to.
It's working better than a $500 piece of hardware sold by Apple Computer that does the same thing. Kind of sad when you think that a PC this old makes a better "Time Capsule" than the real thing.
uxwbill 1 year ago 8
@Bilalol3 ... thats getting really old.
dq476 11 months ago
My emachine laptop won't turn on no power lights nothing what is the problem my email is adamcampbell1221@yahoo.co.uk
adam97100 1 year ago
my Pentium 2 has 612 mb of ram 128 mb of n videa graphics and a 40 gb hdd
kaveenr1 1 year ago
what? old computers useless? ... you can still write a thesis on quantum mechanics on a TRS-80, might just take a few floppies however... lol
A computer is a computer.
OBSysteme 1 year ago
would make a good candidate for a museum or a recycling center. probably $30 worth of gold whole unit.
circusboy90210 1 year ago
i cart stop laughing i wouldn't say that 200mb is blister and a hdd thats 2.1 GB is good tbh not having a dig just saying its funny hehe you should take a look at this site and no people this aint a site referal just advise overclockers co uk good site but sadly dont think they deliver to USA but good video i will give a trying on my spare computer thats got 4TB
neo11uk 1 year ago
@neo11uk Do you know what sarcasm is?
nicktabus1000 1 year ago
>.<
neo11uk 1 year ago
could you give me a like to the Free OS? free BSD? based network operating system? Free NAS?
gmax341 1 year ago
@gmax341 Links can't be posted to comments with "munging" them, due to comment spam. Some web searches with any reputable search engines will turn up what you are looking for--try "FreeNAS", "FreeBSD", and "PC-BSD" for some good starting points. The Wikipedia article on FreeBSD may also prove useful.
uxwbill 1 year ago
@uxwbill Ive got several nice older machines sitting around that were well tekan care of and work pretty good, most of them just need minor little things done to them here and there, have got a couple of Windows 3.1 machines too and a couple of spare Pentium Pro CPU's still in the wrapper that look like new, have most likely never been used. Let me know if you ever want some of them ill see about sending them your way. I have 2 machines im using right now but dont need the other 7 of them lol.
MrCryptica82 1 year ago
Very nice!
I had problems with my CF2IDE-Adapter. An older PC didnt boot up the OS from that. I got an "Read Error". Dont know from where that came... A "newer" PC had no problems to boot. I read somewhere that it depends on the mainboard.
Grafikbug 1 year ago
@Grafikbug Hard to say...but it was mostly likely a BIOS related problem with the reported disk geometry. It might well be that the PC was old enough that it couldn't handle a disk (or CF card) larger than a certain amount...or that any such options were not on by default. Hard to say for sure.
uxwbill 1 year ago
The coke or whatever with ice made me really thirsty for soda. I think i'll have to survive with ginger ale for now :|
16mmDJ 1 year ago
I see a lot of "How To" Videos on FreeNAS but this one's my favorite! I Like your Style!
yenomeerf 1 year ago
agree, time capsual only makes trouble, but it looks nice,
I have an bsd box for downloading and file sharing, it works great but it's huge and ugly.
numbell 1 year ago
@numbell It does look nice. The second one of two that I administer died a few days ago. (The first had died a long while back.) Bloated caps everywhere in the power supply. Come on, people...that Time Capsule didn't manage to outlive or work as well as a positively grey-haired computer (still going to this day).
uxwbill 1 year ago
@uxwbill maybye it over heated mine never gave trouble
Armaangandevia1 1 year ago
You better hand onto that Pentium Pro as they are getting very rare and worth a bit of money because of that.
MrKillswitch88 1 year ago
@MrKillswitch88 I still have an FDIV-bug Pentium 66 CPU as well. It's not going anywhere. Not that I expect it to ever be hugely valuable!
I have a few of these Vectra systems.
uxwbill 1 year ago
Thanks for posting this great video. I am constructing a NAS box using a PC with a PIII 1GHz processor and an Intel 810e chip set. The PC does not have a USB boot option. If I use a CF card for the OS install, and it somehow fails; will I simply be able to replace it with a new card, install a fresh copy of the OS, remount the drives, and access my existing data? Or is all my data is lost? Is installing the OS on a hard drive the preferred option? Thanks in advance for answering my questions.
Romulus6cbc 1 year ago
@Romulus6cbc Basically, yes. The CF card only ever holds the OS (although FreeNAS will let you create a data partition on it with whatever--if any--space is left over) and configuration. Back up your configuration file. You don't have to do that, but it will save you time that would otherwise be spent reconfiguring all your services, remounting volumes and setting up networking.
uxwbill 1 year ago
You are gonna put a 500gb HD inside a 133mhz PC? that's a BIG waste!
WackoX1337 1 year ago
@WackoX1337 :
First, the processor is clocked at 200Mhz, not 133! Second, it is no waste at all because the processor speed covers all the needs for an RSync server! Third, 3,5" single-disk NAS enclosures have way lower processor power and RAM and now serve terabyte harddisks with their too simplistic firmware!
Bandicoot803 1 year ago
@WackoX1337 Why? This is actually a 200MHz Pentium Pro, and that's really all the processor power that's required to do a perfectly acceptable job of acting as a network attached storage appliance. Plus, since it's a generic x86 computer system, I can easily add software and resources (memory, disk, maybe even a a faster CPU) to it later.
Although some little purpose built NAS devices can run custom software, they're nowhere near as expandable.
uxwbill 1 year ago
What if I stop my nas server and started it up, wil I lose my data? becuase that what happend to me. I rebooted my system and now I can't see my disk.
Webwabi 1 year ago
@Webwabi If you stop it properly by shutting down the operating system, there should not be any data loss. Just flipping the power switch may cause a disaster. It depends a lot on the underlying operating system for your NAS. No operating system can prevent something bad from happening if the disk is busy at the time it loses power.
Unix and its derivates all assume that the disk will not go away unexpectedly and they cache writes by holding them in RAM and flushing them later.
uxwbill 1 year ago
@uxwbill Thank you for your reply. I was thinking of putting all my files (4TB) on a freenas server, but I'don't think I'm gonna do that, unless I do a backup, and backing 4TB up is not easy or cheap.
Webwabi 1 year ago
@Webwabi It isn't yet, but I'll bet it gets a lot cheaper in the near future. Two 2TB disks don't cost all the money in the world. To me, the hardest thing to deal with is the amount of time it takes. More intelligent copying programs like rsync (and its ability to do "delta" copies) are a lifesaver in this case.
uxwbill 1 year ago
sorry but no offense, but ur house looks like a junkyard
Revanchist8525 1 year ago
@Revanchist8525 None taken, you can live in a house or look at it. I chose to live in mine. :-)
uxwbill 1 year ago
@uxwbill putting that aside though i love ur computer vids
Revanchist8525 1 year ago
Cool!
Robobbly 1 year ago
That is going to be crazy inefficient... so only slightly less useless, and much more expensive on the utility end. If you do one thing, get rid of that crazy inefficient PSU.
DavidH373 1 year ago
@DavidH373 It's not as inefficient as one would think. It compares extremely favorably to my Linksys NSLU2 and its two external drives. There is a comment about that somewhere in here.
The PSU should be very high quality, most older computers had one that was overbuilt and/or conservatively rated. It's safe to say that it could be better than most of the ones that show up in countless generic beige boxes. This one was made by NMB/Minebea, a company that does not cheap-skate on this stuff.
uxwbill 1 year ago
uxwbill, good video. I also see that you may be going green. Are those the 13WATT energy saver bulbs on top of that container of Parmesan cheese?
7941series 1 year ago
@7941series They are some kind of energy saving CFL bulb. I don't recall exactly what they were rated for in terms of energy use.
uxwbill 1 year ago
lol for quote "blazing 200MH/z"
benteta 1 year ago
Good move with the IDE-CF card implementation. That's what I used when I setup my FreeNAS server and it's working without any issues.
I first setup freeNAS in 2007, but just for testing on a pentium 200-MMX system with a 4GB HDD and it worked.
I decided to go to FreeNAS permanently a few months ago after 3 failed hard drives caused by crappy external USB HDD cases over the last 2 years.
and lastly...Is that Parmesan cheese or garlic powder in that green can on the left side of the PC? :)
7941series 1 year ago
@7941series It's parmesan cheese.
I had to scrap the CF card idea, there are seemingly serious bugs in the ATA drivers when used with the Intel 440 chipset. In particular, the CF card indicates that it can't handle DMA, the chipset rejects attempts to enable DMA and the underlying BSD barfs.
uxwbill 1 year ago
Comment removed
poopskinTheLiar 1 year ago
@uxwbill, It just occurred to me, why not try the 1 inch microdrives instead of a CF card for such a system? The advantages would be 2; small low power CF form factor, and a true hard drive that the PPro probably wouldn't complain about.
TakingTheCake233 1 year ago
@TakingTheCake233 I tried the microdrive and it runs into the same problem that the CF card does. After some experimentation, I can say with reasonable certainty that the problem is between the Intel 440FX PIIX (PCI IDE "Xcelerator") and FreeBSD. When I manually forced the card into its True IDE mode, the boot process for FreeNAS got much further, until it appeared to reset the card's operating mode to the default. If I hit it again with the jumper wire on the pin at the right time, it worked.
uxwbill 1 year ago
Is that a Jack and Coke?
HairyTwater69 1 year ago
No. Although I'm not opposed to drinking at all, I don't do it very often.
uxwbill 1 year ago
I'm curious how you got the CF card to work as an IDE drive. I bought a Transcend 2GB CF card and an CF-IDE adapter card and my 200Mhz/1MB L2 cache Pentium Pro unit will not recognize the drive. Did you have to fiddle with the BIOS for a while, or it just worked?
TakingTheCake233 1 year ago
Most but not all CF cards default to working as pseudo-IDE/ATAPI devices. However, I have a seen a few that did not, and therefore wouldn't work for this application. There are multiple modes in which a CF card can operate, but I've forgotten the details. Card makers can program the default for their cards.
Your system could have a BIOS limit on the maximum capacity of an attached IDE device.
uxwbill 1 year ago
@uxwbill, It just occurred to me, why not try the 1 inch microdrives instead of a CF card for such a system? The advantages would be 2; small low power CF form factor, and a true hard drive that the PPro probably wouldn't complain about.
TakingTheCake233 1 year ago
@uxwbill, It just occurred to me, why not try the 1 inch microdrives instead of a CF card for such a system? The advantages would be 2; small low power CF form factor, and a true hard drive that the PPro probably wouldn't complain about.
TakingTheCake233 1 year ago
The Microdrives don't operate in the right mode by default (although they can be switched by shorting a pin at power on) and that causes problems for FreeNAS when running on the Intel 440 chipset. It's probably a software issue, but I don't think they'll expend much effort to fix an issue on hardware this old.
uxwbill 1 year ago
And ISA slot !
SynthesizerUniverse 1 year ago
i love seeing old computer being used for something useful like this. ANd a nice surprise to hear that latest freeNAS supports TimeCapsule.. I'm going to check it out.
up0 1 year ago
Hello I am also vintage computers collector. I bought several Transcend IDE flash disks, (the temperature (-10) where the computers are operated kills the hard drives) one of them fried in the old machine after second boot-up, do you think CF solution is better and much more reliable?
etoEthomeSk 1 year ago
@etoEthomeSk Flash memory cards generally do not care about temperature or all but the most extreme vibration. It should work fine, if the problem is really with the disks.
I am wondering about that, because I have run a lot of computers in an unheated house and garage. None have ever lost a hard drive, and I can definitely say that the temperature went well below -10 (C) many a time.
uxwbill 1 year ago
whats the model of you sata controller?
ledjohnnyboy 1 year ago
*your
ledjohnnyboy 1 year ago
@ledjohnnyboy It's a card sold under the Masscool brand and based on a VIA VT6421A controller card. It has two SATA connectors and a PATA controller as well.
I have no complaints with it. The VT6421A is revised to handle negotiating SATA 3.0gb disks to a 1.5gb rate instead of hanging up and not finding any drives.
It also handles hot-swaps perfectly, after unmounting a disk from within FreeNAS.
uxwbill 1 year ago
I wouln't show those videos of your house if I were you. The police might show up thinking you are a elderly person living in his own feces.
latengocomoburro 2 years ago
His basement is his work room. You try having a work room that isn't messy!
poopskinTheLiar 1 year ago
It will work with 720p and 1080p
ThePsychoBoiz 2 years ago
Bill, I am in the process of looking for a NAS solutions for my new townhouse. I had the whole house rigged with Cat 6 and all running to my Office. I have a connection at each tv. I want a solution to rip all my movies and dvd's and music and have it available to anywhere in my house. Have popcorn hours that will recieve the data for tv. Would this work or be too slow to push the 720-1080p video data??
Would there be an alternative solution?
ffactoryxx 2 years ago
FreeNAS could certainly store the data, and it shouldn't have a problem relaying it in time. I would assume that since you went with Cat5 cable, you are using gigabit networking. (If not, you should. GbE cards are cheap and switches are not too bad.)
If you had all the TVs going at once, or you were ripping while watching, that might push things a little too hard. But mainly it'll be a question of how fast the network goes--and any decently fast PC running the NAS OS won't be the limter.
uxwbill 2 years ago
(Oh, that should read "Cat 6" cable. (Almost made the same typo twice...))
A good platform for FreeNAS could be the Intel D945GCLF2 motherboard, with its dual core Atom CPU and built in gigabit Ethernet adapter.
I don't know much about Popcorn Hours, this is the first I had heard of it. Looks interesting, if I could remember the last time I turned a TV on. :-)
uxwbill 2 years ago
you're absolutely right. almost every computer can be used for something. my old zx spectrum + is faithfully controlling the lights and electronic circuits in my house. i trust it more than anything, since i wrote the program for it. :)
bamdadkhan 2 years ago
That's pretty cool. And I'll bet it's very reliable.
uxwbill 2 years ago
I am experimenting with several DOS machines that way. So far I am working on the computer side, are you willing to share some info about controllers with which you control lights?
etoEthomeSk 1 year ago
Comment removed
psivewri 2 years ago
how do you open the CPU CASE?
mismomirmo 2 years ago
It is unique. It slides forward and off of the underlying chassis. Two latching arms (one on each side of the case) can be lifted up and then it slides right off.
Getting it back on is more of a trick, as you have to make sure the outer shell fits into two tracks cut into the chassis.
uxwbill 2 years ago
Kind of like the IBM aptiva sitting in the corner of my computer room, eh? i got it as a birthday gift from my personal trainer's husband, who worked at IBM for a while. He told me a bit about OS/2 and how he had to head down to Boca Raton periodically to retrieve experimental printer parts.
poopskinTheLiar 1 year ago
ill be gettin rid of a comp soon u want it
naterade21 2 years ago
What is it?
It'd have to be pretty good to offset any shipping costs.
uxwbill 2 years ago
its a dell demension 4100 runs perfectly no problems ill even throw in the monitor for free
naterade21 2 years ago
I tried doing this after seeing your video on my old HP Brio 500mhz Celeron. I ran into an issue with it not detecting the drives on my SATA card. I tried both a RAID card and a SATA host with no raid. So far had no luck. But the freenas started right up!
moldymac 2 years ago
What kind of chipset was on the cards?
And was the RAID card you used a real, hardware RAID card?
(Anything from Silicon Image, VIA, lower end Promise Technology chipsets, Initio and to a lesser extent HighPoint Technologies are all "fake RAID" implementations that let their drivers and the boot BIOS on the card do all the magic.
Interestingly, the VIA VT6421 card I used is not bootable, although it has a boot ROM and the Vectra BIOS knows it is a "storage controller". (Pretty amazing!)
uxwbill 2 years ago
Bill knows well enough I have plenty of machines here, especially quite a few IBM PS/2 and early 5150/5160/5170 machines but I also have some PPro, PII and PIII machines I could do this on. I have an early CDROM NAS that has a SCSI to ethernet adapter in a cabinet of 14 cdrom drives - this would make a perfect addition to it, maybe even replace the cdrom tower by putting the contents of the cd's on the hard storage, I've been needing to see FreeNAS in action, good video of it working.
rhblakeman 2 years ago
200MHz was pretty darned fast for them days.
Markworth 2 years ago
It sure was. The mainboard actually has jumper settings for Pentium Pro processors clocked at 233 and 266MHz that were never released.
I'm told the Pentium Pro overclocks pretty well. I reckon these switches would do it. But I don't see a need to do so with this system.
uxwbill 2 years ago
what NAS?
dardraa 2 years ago
he only said it like 3 times
NorthStarOlds 2 years ago
FreeNAS, as in "free software" and "free to use".
Check the description and find it at finer FreeNAS official web sites in your area if you are interested in using it.
uxwbill 2 years ago
what is a network attached storage server?
dardraa 2 years ago
A network attached storage server is what you have when you take a bunch of computer disks (usually hard drives) and put them in a computer or other device that runs specialized software.
The special software makes the disks (and whatever might be stored on them) available to users on a computer network.
You can make one like this, or you can buy one that is ready made in a store if you want an easier (though usually less featureful and possibly less reliable) way to get such a thing.
uxwbill 2 years ago
oooo, ok ty, what r u using yours for?
dardraa 2 years ago
Now come on, that's in the video. Not only do I say things that can be searched for, but I also showed some of them happening! :-)
This will be used to store backups made by Macintosh computers running Mac OS X 10.5 or later. It will also be used to back up computers with a utility known as rsync.
rsync runs on many different types of computers and makes regular backups of selected information. You should do a web search if you want to know more about it and what it does.
uxwbill 2 years ago
Yes Bill. Very nice.
But what about the Chevy C60?
scarlebloke 2 years ago
I know it's been a while. We're all very busy. It's something we've been trying to get back to, and given the time I'm sure we will.
uxwbill 2 years ago
i like computer videos!
Intellmac 2 years ago
I like turtles (LOL)
rhblakeman 2 years ago
I put a sata card in a 100mhz pentium IBM
tghbenz99 2 years ago
I think that trumps my putting one in a Pentium Pro!
uxwbill 2 years ago
Bill, you're making me think twice about trashing a few machines before I move to my new house. I've got an old Athlon Tbird 900mhz rig, an old AthlonXP 1600+ (Tbred B no less), and an old Celeron 2.4ghz Emachines sitting around here... but they all need RAM and HDDs to get going.
HDDs are no problem, but RAM for these baddies sure is getting expensive. Some places want 50 bucks for a stick of PC133 or PC2100 DDR. Sheesh!
Great video, rated 5 stars!
Noxtek 2 years ago
thats because they are considered "vintage" now and cost more since they aren't mass produced like they might have been when they were standard.
(i have a 930Mhz Gateway)
jmoyet 2 years ago
Well, here's what I'd do. If you've got some computer parts/repair stores around, you might try to get to know the manager or the employees. Ask them to keep you in mind when they get some pieces that they might otherwise toss out. It's worked for me.
If that won't work, try hitting some flea markets. I bought a whole box of PC133/PC2100/PC2700 modules in varying capacities for about $35.
Deals don't abound on eBay, but they do show up from time to time, so watch there as well.
uxwbill 2 years ago
And if you've got any friends or family that have old computers, ask them if you could any "dead" systems. Chances are you'd get a few that might be able to donate parts.
I fondly remember those AMD processors (still have a few of them running) and despite everyone's hating the Celeron, I really do like them and think they're great little processors--especially the 2.4 and 2.8 versions. The 2.5 is nice because of its 533MHz FSB speed.
uxwbill 2 years ago
200 mega hertz omg that so owns the core i7
portugal0are0da0best 2 years ago
you do relise running a computer with out a monator attached is a good way to fry youre display card bill.
i would just hook up a smal one and leave it turned off
itscool1968 2 years ago
I've heard it said that doing so is bad, but my own experiences don't bear it out. I've had systems running for years (including a Dell Dimension L550r in this same room, running since 2004) with no monitors attached and they seem OK. At least when I go to hook a monitor up, the video output is fine.
What I'm going to do is make a video terminator plug for this system, using 75 ohm 1/4W resistors, so as to "fake it out" into thinking that a monitor is hooked up. It needs a video card to POST.
uxwbill 2 years ago
I'd really like to have some small monitors that work, though. The IBM display you might have seen in the video is the only one I've got, and it's hooked up to that PS/2 Model 50 TR bridge.
I had a nice little color one with an 8" CRT that would sync up to 800x600. And then it fell off a computer I was testing. I'm not sure what happened. The CRT still has vacuum, but I don't think its heater is operating. The circuit board is not broken.
uxwbill 2 years ago
Well, I just bought two never before used IBM monochrome VGA Point Of Sale monitors. They'd been in their sealed boxes for a decade!
They're so nice, clean and perfect that I almost hate to use them. And no screen burn! I'm so used to clunky, half-worn-out, dirty mono VGA monitors with terrific screen burn. I'm not going to let that happen to these, nor will I let them get burned in, although I will have to fashion a base so they won't fall off of something.
uxwbill 2 years ago