What's The Most I can do with This Server

[mhalstern]

I dusted of an old Penguin Relion Server, with the intention of using it for Chess work and maybe some file storage. I tried to Load XP 64 bit, but was greeted with the message that the cpu will not support a 64 bit OS.

The Chip is an Intel Xeon 2.4 GHZ. It has 2 Gif Of Ram.

I was running Red Hat Linux on this years ago.

Will 32 Bit XP or Windows 7 run sluggishly on this old server?

Is there a recent Linux distro that would work well with this?

What is the most I can do with this?

Thanks

[Peter Skinner]

I dusted of an old Penguin Relion Server, with the intention of using it for Chess work and maybe some file storage. I tried to Load XP 64 bit, but was greeted with the message that the cpu will not support a 64 bit OS.

The Chip is an Intel Xeon 2.4 GHZ. It has 2 Gif Of Ram.

I was running Red Hat Linux on this years ago.

Will 32 Bit XP or Windows 7 run sluggishly on this old server?

Is there a recent Linux distro that would work well with this?

What is the most I can do with this?

Thanks

Windows XP should run fine, as should Windows Vista/7. I would think the major factor will be finding drivers for the system. If you can get them, put anything you want on there.

I would start with Windows Vista/7 as it will have a more complete driver base to get you started. Whatever is not installed initially, you can find via the Windows Update system.

As for Linux distros, anything would work. I would use Fedora or Ubuntu. Those are the most popular and would have the largest user base to help you through issues.

Peter

[bob]

I dusted of an old Penguin Relion Server, with the intention of using it for Chess work and maybe some file storage. I tried to Load XP 64 bit, but was greeted with the message that the cpu will not support a 64 bit OS.

The Chip is an Intel Xeon 2.4 GHZ. It has 2 Gif Of Ram.

I was running Red Hat Linux on this years ago.

Will 32 Bit XP or Windows 7 run sluggishly on this old server?

Is there a recent Linux distro that would work well with this?

What is the most I can do with this?

Thanks

Windows XP should run fine, as should Windows Vista/7. I would think the major factor will be finding drivers for the system. If you can get them, put anything you want on there.

I would start with Windows Vista/7 as it will have a more complete driver base to get you started. Whatever is not installed initially, you can find via the Windows Update system.

As for Linux distros, anything would work. I would use Fedora or Ubuntu. Those are the most popular and would have the largest user base to help you through issues.

Peter

I use Fedora (current version = 11) and it seems to work on all our old hardware as well as brand new stuff...

[mhalstern]

I dusted of an old Penguin Relion Server, with the intention of using it for Chess work and maybe some file storage. I tried to Load XP 64 bit, but was greeted with the message that the cpu will not support a 64 bit OS.

The Chip is an Intel Xeon 2.4 GHZ. It has 2 Gif Of Ram.

I was running Red Hat Linux on this years ago.

Will 32 Bit XP or Windows 7 run sluggishly on this old server?

Is there a recent Linux distro that would work well with this?

What is the most I can do with this?

Thanks

Windows XP should run fine, as should Windows Vista/7. I would think the major factor will be finding drivers for the system. If you can get them, put anything you want on there.

I would start with Windows Vista/7 as it will have a more complete driver base to get you started. Whatever is not installed initially, you can find via the Windows Update system.

As for Linux distros, anything would work. I would use Fedora or Ubuntu. Those are the most popular and would have the largest user base to help you through issues.

Peter

I use Fedora (current version = 11) and it seems to work on all our old hardware as well as brand new stuff...

The challenge will be to get the Raid recognized. I'm going to try installing Windows 2003 Server Tomorrow. Microsoft want people using their products, and they traditionally include a lot of drivers in their installs. I remember in the mid 90's at work, if we would have trouble getting a working driver for a modem, we would install Internet Explorer. The setup would always find a driver and get the modem working.

I have a few followup questions:

I am not too familiar with Raids. It is a "hot swappable" system with 3 SCSI Drives I'd rather have extra drive space, instead of redundancy. Are there normal SCSI Raid configuration options that will allow me to install the OS on 1 drive, and have the other drives available for additional data?

Also, the Motherboard has sockets for 2 Xeon Chips and 6 gig of ram. It currently has 1 chip and 2 Gig Of ram. If I install a second chip, how much stronger will chess engines be? I know that multi cpu chess engines take advantage of modern multi core cpu's. Will these engines be able to take advantage of 2 single core chips? If so, how much elo gain would some engines have. Also, what value would maxing out the Ram Have?

I understand that it would probably be a lot more cost effective buy a modern low end system that is much faster than this server. I enjoy reviving old equipment and if it not too expensive, would like to add more resources to this server.