Silas to KarlendorfAuthor: jawapro
Date: Fri 17/10/2008 06:40 PM
Earlier in the year, I did a dash to Burnie to collect Silas – a computer that I sort of owned. Basically we’d bought it and donated it to Seabrook Christian School with the proviso that it would come back to us when it was no longer needed. As it had died – they had no use for it, so I went and picked it up.
It was a dual-P3 but had a dead motherboard. All I really wanted was the case anyway.
Well – skip forward a few months. I’ve moved house and things – and Silas was still as it was. I had grand plans to buy a mobo, cpu, and everything else and install in the case.
Unfortunately – since I am now paying off my home-loan, I’m not as flush with money as I was, and I didn’t want to spend too much – so I’d put it on hold.
But I eventually bought a second hand mobo/cpu combo from a guy I knew in Launnie. I got Klutz to pick it up, as I wasn’t in Launceston at the time.
Well – the next day, a server crashed at work with a dead PSU (power supply). I managed to rectify it by using parts of an old retired server. As the old server was now lacking a PSU and still surplus to requirements, work told me I could have it.
This server had a slightly better speced mobo and CPU than the one I’d just bought – so I contacted someone else who had been interested in the original one, and sold it again for a slight profit.
I never even saw it – Klutz picked it up for me, and the new buyer picked it up from him.
Things actually worked out really well. I had bought some other stuff with the mobo/cpu – but didn't include them in the second deals so I made $5 PLUS a gig network card, 512mb of DDR1, and an ancient floppy drive. Not bad for a few emails flying back and forth eh?
So that left me with the server from work (code-named Fatso). It was a rack-mountable server, but full length, which made it too long for my newly built rack.
All I wanted was the innards anyway. I had a spare PSU, and this had everything else I needed.
The insides of Fatso were insanely clean. I’ve never worked on a computer this clean. Even brand new PCs are rarely this dust-free. That’s the beauty of being kept in a Server room I guess.
So after a week of on-and-off working on the project, I got it all into the Silas case, and got the OS up and running with the necessary drivers etc.
So I am pleased to Introduce KARLENDORF – my new server.
The innards of Fatso, the case of Silas, and some extra bits for around the place, Karlendorf will be my new Domain Controller and VM server.
It was shockingly loud when I turned it on (Fatso had been too) so I assumed it was the CPU fan – but it turns out it was actually just a cooling fan. I knew the ones from Fatso were just as bad, but when I had a look in my parts cupboards, I found I had 3 brand new ones.
Still don’t know where these guys turned up from – but they were just what I needed for Karlendorf.
So now that it’s no longer louder than my vacuum cleaner – Karlendorf’s about ready to be put in production.
Looking at the front – I’ve filled him up with a strange array of devices.
Going down they are:
1 x SCSI drive caddie
1 x SCSI drive caddie
1 x IDE drive caddie
1 x CD/DVD drive
1 x 5 1/4 Floppy Disk
1 x some form of tape drive
1 x regular floppy drive.
Half the stuff isn’t actually running at the moment – but it’s still cool to have it sitting there.
So that’s what I’ve been working on lately.
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