Re: PC suitable for HA controller?

["Paul Gordon" <paul_gordon@xxxxxxx>]

As with anything, it depends >how much< money....

Performance aside, (and I reckon it would be "adequate" for most
HA tasks,
but I wouldn't count on using it as an MP3 playback machine as well as
running anything else), for the right money, it may even be worth
purchasing
for component parts alone, - 128MB would still set you back about £50 (but
it would be faster PC133 memory..), a case & power supply can't be got
for
much less than £25. (but newer ATX case..)

So I might consider it an OK purchase for no more than about £50 (tops). If
you decide to use it as is, I recommend running NT4 workstation on that
spec
hardware, the P-Pro is especially good at NT, and especially crap at win9X
OS's. I don't know about the P-Pro with Linux, but as it reportedly has
much
lower requirements than windows OS's I presume it would run Linux just fine
as well... I'd be wary of running Win2K on it, purely because of its age,
lack of PnP support, and so on.... (plus a Win2K installation would eat up
600-700MB of that 1GB disk straight away!)

I used a P-Pro 200 with 128MB as my main NT4 PDC on my LAN for about 18
months before I upgraded it to twin Celeron 533's with 512MB about 6 months
ago. That spec ran just fine...

HTH

Paul G.


>
>I have a chance to get an old PC which I would like to use as a HA
>controller.
>
>Specification is Pentium Pro 200. 128mb ram, 1gb ide disc.
>
>Interestingly it has 4x PCI and 4xISA slots (1 shared), so loading it
>up with expansion cards such as Sound and Serial Ports is easy (i have
>an odd mix of cards around so the mix of slots is handy.
>
>Could someone advise on the pros and cons od using this PC for HA and
>also whether the system is actually worth paying  any money for?
>
>Thanks in advance
>
>Mick

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