New MB recommendations

[Bill Campbell]

On Mon, Feb 26, 2007, Tony Alfrey wrote:
>Bill Campbell wrote:
>> On Mon, Feb 26, 2007, Tony Alfrey wrote:
>>> I think it's time to get a faster box 'cause I have some linux CAD apps 
>>> that want more speed.  Towers are clearly cheaper than laptops.  I have 
>>> SCSI drives on my present Pentium II box.  Does it make sense to try to 
>>> get a fancy new fast MB, and attempt to plug in these drives or is this 
>>> silly?
>> 
>> Given the probably age of a PII box, I would say that the life of any SCSI
>> drives in it are a bit suspect.  I would strongly suggest getting a new
>> drive for the installation, perhaps using your existing drives as well.
>> 
>> You're probably better off installing a system on a new hard drive, then
>> mounting your existing drives after everything is up and running.
>
>This sounds like a good idea.
>
><snip>
>> 
>> I just spent a good bit of the weekend fixing one of our servers here that
>> had four SCSI drives of approximately the same vintage as yours and a fifth
>> newer SCSI drive.  This box had a main board transplant a couple of years
>> ago, replacing the Pentium II main board with one with an Athlon 64.  
>
><snip>

>I was hoping to avoid a lot of this tweaking, hence wanting to replace just
>a MB.  The existing SCSI drives are relatively new.  I think that my
>greatest fear is to not break my current box:  I would be really hosed.

>It may cause me less stress to go out and buy a tower with a SCSI
>controller and then swap in my old drives one at a time.

Be aware that not all SCSI controllers are created equal, and there can be
``interesting'' problems with geometry and such.

You might want to build a new machine with something like the 400GB Seagate
SATA drive I bought at Fry's for about $190 several months ago.  Install
Linux on this, then copy your data from the old machine to the new SATA
drive, then move the SCSI controller and drives to the new machine after
you're sure everything is working properly on the new machine.

Bill
--
INTERNET:   bill at Celestial.COM  Bill Campbell; Celestial Software LLC
URL: http://www.celestial.com/  PO Box 820; 6641 E. Mercer Way
FAX:            (206) 232-9186  Mercer Island, WA 98040-0820; (206) 236-1676

``It's not what you pay a man but what he costs you that counts.''
    Will Rogers