[NCLUG] Need a new Linux box

[Bob Proulx]

Paul H. Wehr wrote:
> I use my Linux box primarily as a test web server for development,  
> running apache, php, MySQL, Perl, and whatever else I think might be  
> interesting or useful. I'm currently looking at what appears to be a  
> 2002 IBM/LENOVO Netvista 2.4ghz Minitower. The price is in my budget  
> range for this at just over a hundred dollars.

Seems reasonable.

I happened to be looking at Craig's List today and I see that CSU is
selling some of their old desktop gear.  If you are looking for a deal
on a budget you might want to check them out.  From the pictures it
looked like what you would expect to find in the back storage room of
the IT closet.  I am sure there is a lot of tired old equipment.  But
there are probably some reasonable and useful deals there too.

> I've got some RAM I can pull from the old machine that might work,  
> several hard drives, optical drives, and even an extra micro floppy  
> disk drive! I also have a better video card but won't be using it much  
> as I'll access this machine via LAN from my primary machines.

Sure.  I do that all of the time.

> Any caveats about the hardware, the version of Linux to install? The  
> only shortcoming I see is lack of support for SATA drives, but this is  
> not going to be top-of-the-line production environment.

It is the new hardware that causes the most problems.  Vendors go
cheap and include on the motherboard some new but inexpensive to them
chipset that the world has never seen before.  MS-Windows drivers
included with the motherboard.  That is bad for us.  But after a few
years and a few linux kernel releases then it magically works because
someone else has worked through the driver issues.

Because of this it means that older hardware usually doesn't have the
same problems of new hardware.  Older hardware almost always falls
into the "just works" category, with some exceptions.  I am still not
happy with Marvel onboard gig-e for example.  But if you have slots
you can always install any of the typical problem devices.  I
routinely ignore the onboard and their associated problems and install
one or more of a soundblaster card, a network adaptor, a graphics card
for anything that gives me a problem.  Those can all be cheaply had or
scavenged and then the system is fully operational.

The same goes for SATA ports if you want them and the motherboard does
not support an SATA port.  But SATA adaptors are still expensive and
would probably blow your budget.  For that I would probably hold out
for a motherboard that actually has SATA ports onboard.  For older
machines during the transition period even if they shipped with IDE
drives they may still have SATA ports onboard.  Open it up and look.
If there are SATA ports available then you should be able to convert
to SATA by just plugging into those ports.  I have done that several
times already without problem.  AFAIK the onboard SATA ports all use
standard drivers.

Bob