So, almost a year ago after finding out how light a simple command line linux running rtorrent was (here), I said I should put my old PII with 64MB of RAM working as a torrent box.
Today, it lives!!
Except the PII motherboard was not in working condition.
Do not be afraid! I still had a socket 370 board and my “pet” cpu from hell (Pentium III, 666Mhz, officially 667Mhz), both of which I was 70% sure were in working condition, now to find RAM that worked, out of 8 or 9 SDRAM modules only two worked, one 128MB and one 64MB (checked them with memtest86+, just in case). Now a HDD, well, first a Seagate 120GB then a Samsung 80GB, both were supposed to be broken…and they were (the seagate is stuck, the samsung seems like the board died); the last resort? a 15GB Seagate HDD, loud as hell, but in surprising good condition, not a single damaged sector.
Debian net install, install rtorrent and nzbget, file sharing on the network will be by SFTP and…
model name : Pentium III (Coppermine) stepping : 3 cpu MHz : 666.695
total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 177 174 3 0 0 151 -/+ buffers/cache: 21 155 Swap: 221 5 216
=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION === Model Family: Seagate Barracuda ATA II family Device Model: ST315320A Serial Number: 3CW02M1J Firmware Version: 3.17 User Capacity: 15,303,075,840 bytes
IT LIVES!!!!
Let’s see how long it keeps working, if I recall correctly this motherboard had some issues with random lock ups, I blame the SIS chipsets…
Only one thing irks me, lm-sensors doesn’t work with this motherboard, so I can’t check if the cpu is overheating. Although the CPU has a Cooler Master Aero 7+ with a normal 80 mm fan, should take care of it.
*edit*
After 3 or 4 hours under light load, I rebooted and used the BIOS to see the temperature, near 40ºC, sounds good.
Still, the case needs some “freestyle dremeling”, as…well the only position for the disk is upside down (case is from an old hp vectra vei8) and I don’t like it, maybe make a custom bay, closer to the fan at the front of the case. And reverse the PSU fan as it should be an exhaust fan. And this…and that…and…and…yeah, can’t stop making stuff up to improve.
*edit 26/sept/2011*
Short lived fun, it crashes constantly.