PCA Forums

What's faster 10/100lan and 56k modem or 133Cpu?
Also toss in a USB printer.

Here's my thought.
I have a old Pentium 133 and BIG tower case. Surely a 133mhz system is faster than a PCI 10/100 network card and a PCI 56k modem.

Why not make a server out of it? Sure I probaly will never get it to run full speed ATA133 drives, but then I don't think the 10/100 lan will transfer data that fast anyway!

It is a fully working system with I think 64 Mbs ram. Has PCI USB card.

I thought about using the AMD DX4 100, but it only has ISA SLots so I would be stuck with 10 cards only for the network with it.

Basically about the only thing I want it for is a file server, just let it run all the time so any other computer has access to those files. This is getting to be a pain having to run around and turn on several systems all the time. I don't let mine run, when they are off they are truely OFF.
I might also want to install the printers to that server so any other system can print at anytime also.

So Should that P133 keep up with the network and printers?
How would that effect the printer also, since the work system will proccess the data for printing, will the slowness of the 133 slow the printing, or just act as a passthough connection letting the printer run as fast as it gets the data from the network?

ya that 133 will do just fine as a file or print server. You could put a ata100 or 133 card in it and get the hdd's to actually transfer a lot faster than on the eide controller on that mobo.

If I add a cheap 133 IDE controller what am I gonna be able to use for drive size?

I hadn't looked but figure the bios for a old 133 wouldn't support a full size 60 or 80 gig in one partition, or does it?
Would it with a PCI controller card?

138g would be the max drive size unless you get one that does 48bit addressing.

Greg

Naw for just a file server on a pentium 60 0r 80 gig drives would be large as I would need.

ok, so any standuard ata100/133 card would do just fine 4 ya then.

Greg

lol thast what i thought and i now have 3 80 gig drives in my file server

umm... i have a 233 file server and it maxes out at around 2 megs.

I would rather run 3 80's or 4 60's anyway unless one large drive drops a ton in price!

My thought on this besides price is that not all drives will die at the same time unless hit by a lighting bolt or other serious problem. SO I would rather lose 40 gigs data than 200 gigs! Easier to keep a good back up on a 40 or 60 also compared to backing up a 200!

That and in using smaller drives I think I would like to have eack network system have it's on server drive. Mine would be C:, the kid D:, the wife E: etc... That way we have all our files sorted by who they belong to, but we can still all use them easily. I could do the same with partions but then we get back to if one dies they all die type thing again.

My only reall reason for not thinking about 20-40 gig drives is the price of a 60 or 80 is not much more. Might as well have the extra for the price.

Pugsley,
id not understand?

"umm... i have a 233 file server and it maxes out at around 2 megs."

You mean maxes out at 2 gig drives?
what O/s are you using that maxes out at 2gigs? WIN 2.0?? hee hee

Or did you mean something I missed?

i mean it can only transfer 2 megs a second... and its a 233Mhz computer.

heh, i got a 200MHz network server... it transfers as fast as my SCSI drives will transfer, and IDEs, at about 0.1% of cpu. Perhaps there is something wrong with yours?

yea... i dont have and ide or scsi card in it... im using the on board ones.

Shouldn't it still transfer faster tha 2mb?

I think I was getting abut 8-10mb on the 486 dx 4 100 with a 10mb network card. That does have a 32 bit ISA ide controller card though. Was top of the line in about 1994