NAS Hardware

Here is an old desktop, once built for my parents to surf internet and look at their grandchildren pictures.

Part	Details
CPU	Intel Core 2 Duo 65nm E4300 Allendale 1.8GHz 800MHz FSB LGA 775 65W
Motherboard	MSI G31TM-P21 LGA 775 Intel G31 Micro ATX. Onboard video, 4x SATA ports on ICH7.

It is now souped up. RAM is maxed out to 8MB. New hard drive cage is installed. It proved to be loud enough to do something about it. Just disconnecting the cage fan results in HD temps raising to 50C within an hour, and that’s with just 2 of them installed. Placed an order for a fan controller - hope that will help. The cage is also designed so that the connectors - all of them - are on the farther side so that after installation none of these are accessible in my case. Hence I installed it upside down.

Network is upgraded to a switched 1Gbit. HTPC and a NAS box are old enough to require a NIC upgrade. I hope for the NAS to boot from flash and got a PATA to flash adapter. Making this work on Solaris 11 (and even booting from it!) seems like a long shot though.

Originally published here.