G3 B&W server question
I am looking into buying a B&W as a personal server, more or less a big harddisk with a computer around it. It will hold my iTunes library connected to the stereo, some DVDs and serve some webpages and files (very light use). I´ll be using panther on it and will probably only use it with remote video software via my iBook and no screen. So I have some questions:
I have read that I should make sure its a 2.gen. Why?
I have heard it can have problems accepting HDs. Anyone have details on that one?
How many HDs can it accept?
And lastly:Anything I should be aware of?
Hope someone can help me.
I have read that I should make sure its a 2.gen. Why?
I have heard it can have problems accepting HDs. Anyone have details on that one?
How many HDs can it accept?
And lastly:Anything I should be aware of?
Hope someone can help me.
Comments
Originally posted by Anders
[snippage]
I have read that I should make sure its a 2.gen. Why?
Something about problems with the open firmware, I think. I've never experienced any problems.
I have heard it can have problems accepting HDs. Anyone have details on that one?
It won't see capacity much beyond 120GB unless you buy a pci HD controller for it
How many HDs can it accept?
if you run with the built in controller only, 2;
if it happens to have a SCSI card, 4;
if you buy another ATA controller card, 4.
And lastly:Anything I should be aware of?
We've been running a B&W G3 350 at work as a file and backup server for about 6 months. It's serving three machines doing DTP/Photoshop type stuff (and their iTunes stuff), and performing very robustly; it's backing up about 18 machines and 100GB of data. It performs like a trouper - no problems yet, and 108 days of uptime at the moment (although I'll probably take it down to do security patches sometime this week).
I'd say go for it. If you're really thinking about hosting large amounts of data, it might be worth thinking about an Acard or Sonnet ATA controller card.
Oh - and have a look at the reports at xlr8yourmac.com, if you haven't already. Drive reports.
Originally posted by staphbaby
It won't see capacity much beyond 120GB unless you buy a pci HD controller for it.
Is that per drive or in total? Can that somehow be boosted?
Originally posted by hack4ev3r
were trying to.. why buy a b&w any way?
Why not? It meets my needs. I don´t have any use for a G4 and I can get a B&W for $150 and g4s run for three-four times that.
B&W is a describtion of the colours yes, but it also a describtion of a certaint kind of G3 Powermac, the last generation before the G4.
I had a rev 2 with 3 HD's on the motherboard ATA busses. The 3rd drive went where the zip-drive was supposed to be with some light case modification. (you don't even have to do that if you want to buy a longer IDE cable.) Other than potential cooling problems, I don't see why you couldn't dump the optical drive and put 4 in there. (After all your software is installed of course...
Originally posted by hack4ev3r
i dunno if you already buy a comp you rather have it color
*LAUGH*
B/W refers to 'Blue & White', the colors of the *case*. At the time it came out, everything else (except the iMacs) was beige, including other G3 towers.
Everyone else: he thought B/W meant 'black & white', as in 'black & white television'. We tend to forget that was the original meaning...
Originally posted by Paul
the B&W's have firewire right?
Yes they do, but just FYI, they can't boot in firewire target disk mode.
I remember when I was shopping around for a Mac to see if they were all they were cracked up to be, I thought B&W meant Black and White too, but I couldn't find any pictures of this Black and White Mac. I had a different interpretation though, I thought maybe the PowerMacs went through a phase where you could tell a lot about it by looking at the color... like iBooks for instance. Hey, I was learning.
Rev.1 B&Ws don't support master/slave drives on the hd bus.
Rev 2s come with a U-bracket to mount them and a master/slave cable to connect them.
Rev 1s have data corruption problems on drives larger than 12 GB.
And both have the 128 GB hd limit.
Originally posted by GraphicUmp
You totally want a rev 2.
Rev.1 B&Ws don't support master/slave drives on the hd bus.
Rev 2s come with a U-bracket to mount them and a master/slave cable to connect them.
Rev 1s have data corruption problems on drives larger than 12 GB.
And both have the 128 GB hd limit.
Just to clarify, since noone else has, that's a per drive limit.
Didn't know about the other rev.1 problems. That's pretty bad. But ATA controller cards are <$200 anyway.
Originally posted by GraphicUmp
You totally want a rev 2.
Rev.1 B&Ws don't support master/slave drives on the hd bus.
Rev 2s come with a U-bracket to mount them and a master/slave cable to connect them.
Rev 1s have data corruption problems on drives larger than 12 GB.
And both have the 128 GB hd limit.
Oh, and based on the info re. U-brackets, I'm working on a Rev.2
I have my ipod hooked up and a firewire CD Burner.
Its used as a Music server and CD archiving Server with about 40 concurrent users. Doesn't need CPU just file serving which it does fine.
Dobby.
Originally posted by staphbaby
Oh, and based on the info re. U-brackets, I'm working on a Rev.2
Yep, me too. But both my hard drives (30 + 80 GB) are on a SIIG Ultra ATA 100/133 pci card.
Originally posted by GraphicUmp
Yep, me too. But both my hard drives (30 + 80 GB) are on a SIIG Ultra ATA 100/133 pci card.
Me too ? I've got two 180GB harddrives on an Acard ATA 100 card. The boot drive is still the original disk.
It's actually a Rev A, 350Mhz. It runs Panther just fine, at least as a server.
It has a 60GB Deskstar drive hooked up to the ATA33 controller. There's also an ATA100 PCI board in there as well as 640MB of RAM. I bought it on eBay for $295 several months ago. I'm putting in an 80GB drive pretty soon to complement the 60GB one. . .
Now I am using a ACard HardwareRaid controller card with 4x 80GB (set up as 2x 160GB volumes in Raid0) connected. Because of space issues had to put the disks outside the case but no problems. I am still using the 2 internal disks for backup jobs.