Intel 810e slim client as a low power home server?

[Danglerb]

Epia seems a bit extreme to me, too expensive, too wimpy, did I mention
too expensive? So I have been snooping around for something cheap to
play with, and brought home a old Micron PC Clientpro I found at a
recycle place. So far it looks promising, but I haven't dug too far
into what it can and can't do.

Intel 810e motherboard, socket 370 with a 667 Celeron, no memory, but a
handy stick of pc133 256MB is working fine, 10 GB hard drive isn't
staying (but does have XP pro installed, if I could ever get past login
password), a CDrom, floppy, and dual I assume USB 1.0 ports front and
back. Tiger 140 watt PS, in a FlexLP case, and only 400 left on the
pallet this one came from.

Motherboard seems to support two low power modes, a instant on keep ram
alive mode, and conventional save ram to hard drive and more fully
power down. The PCI backplate slots are short, but other than a second
NIC, or USB 2.0 I don't think I need any expansion.

Some flavor of Linux I guess will be going on it, but I am kind of new
to the low power stuff, and Linux other than some cookbook NetBSD
routers I put together a few years ago.

Not sure really what I will have it do, maybe just act as a scheduler
to wake up more powerfull systems to record video etc., but guessing it
should be able to handle light print and file server duties.

**************************** Posting here since I don't know a better
low power PC place.

 

[kony]

Epia seems a bit extreme to me, too expensive, too wimpy, did I mention
too expensive?

Too expensive compared to what?
It's quite cheap for an entire platform.
"Wimpy" is simply due to it's target, low power computing.
It's good for a fileserver, kiosk, other dedicated single
purpose uses, especially in a small and quiet case.

So I have been snooping around for something cheap to
play with, and brought home a old Micron PC Clientpro I found at a
recycle place. So far it looks promising, but I haven't dug too far
into what it can and can't do.

Hmm, I suppose you're about to go into deal of what you want
it to do below, but generally that's the target of the
purchase too.

Intel 810e motherboard, socket 370 with a 667 Celeron, no memory, but a
handy stick of pc133 256MB is working fine, 10 GB hard drive isn't
staying (but does have XP pro installed, if I could ever get past login
password), a CDrom, floppy, and dual I assume USB 1.0 ports front and
back. Tiger 140 watt PS, in a FlexLP case, and only 400 left on the
pallet this one came from.

Yes, USB1.1, IIRC.

It probably uses shared system memory for video, so unless
you're going to use it headless (then turning down
resolution, color to minimal levels) you'd be best off
putting *any* video card in it.

Motherboard seems to support two low power modes, a instant on keep ram
alive mode, and conventional save ram to hard drive and more fully
power down. The PCI backplate slots are short, but other than a second
NIC, or USB 2.0 I don't think I need any expansion.

.... depends entirely on the uses... offhand a Gigabit NIC
might be nice.

Some flavor of Linux I guess will be going on it, but I am kind of new
to the low power stuff, and Linux other than some cookbook NetBSD
routers I put together a few years ago.

What do you really need in a power saving mode?
If it's running from integrated video, an ACPI capable OS
like Windows or Linux, it's going to be pretty low powered
already, especially without a monitor running and hard drive
spin-down interval set.

Not sure really what I will have it do, maybe just act as a scheduler
to wake up more powerfull systems to record video etc., but guessing it
should be able to handle light print and file server duties.

Sure, even a Pentium 100 is fine for light print and file
server off 100Mb lan or slower, with PCI IDE card for higher
capacity drive support. PCI ATA133 RAID card would be
useful in either type system for same capacity benefit plus
the RAID1 or 5 option for file storage.

Depending on what you have set up for video recording, there
may not be any need to have this box wake up another... If
your video capture card uses MPEG2 hardware compression this
box should be able to record, "maybe" even moderate
resolution soft-codec MPEG2 but certainly not MPEG4 at any
decent resolution.

 

[Danglerb]

***************** Sorry for the double post, Google glitched, and it
only showed as posting once to me.

Expensive compared to my Fry's $79 combo system I am typing on now, or
compared to the old Clientpro that was $20 (I know I paid too much,
blame it on ATM machines and a language barrier). It does have a legal
98se CD Key stuck to the case, which I can use on some other old PC
that won't be Linux only.

Mostly what troubles me about the Epia stuff is the total lack of any
"good" deals on any of it, from motherboards to power supplies. The
market is far from mature, so its very reasonable to me since I am not
running off photocells in the jungle, to pick some lower front end cost
gear to test the low power water with. In a couple years the situation
will be much better I am sure.

I don't need to squeeze more than the 24/7 part out of this Clientpro,
since we have PCs and even macs all over the house, including a PC I
setup a year or so ago with 160 GB of hard drive and a Radeon All in
Wonder card, plus we just added a SA 8300HD DVR from the cable company
with its own 160 GB drive.

**************** For now I would be happy to get the Clientpro ...

Sorted with respect to the 10 GB drive it came with, its noisey (not I
am about to fail noisey, just I am a 5 year old tech drive noisey). It
does have some software I would like to be able to keep and use, but
that isn't essential, so I may just pull the drive and put it in a
static bag with a note for future attempts and pop in a cheap new 80 GB
drive.

Generally just get it going so I can play around with it. Nothing worse
than a PC that only knows how to boot to the XP login. I always think
yes this time I will try some Linux thing, but chances are fair in a
day or so it may have 98se running on it. Just something running mostly
headless on the network doing the 24/7 jobs like minding our Epson
Color 880 printer off the parallel port etc. Maybe an IRC chat bot, or
some light file serving. I have kind of always wanted a local DNS too.

Video I believe uses main memory for the boot VGA stuff, but then
switches or something. I know this board has some video issues with
adding another card and shutting off onboard video.