250 GB Hard Drive Upgrade for the Gaming Box, Area 51

I'm working with Blake on upgrading the gaming computer, Area 51, by adding a 250 GB hard drive, a Western Digital Caviar SE (7200 RPM) Model WD2500JBRTL with 30-day installation support and 1 year warranty, starting today, I hope.

We plucked the 15 MB boot drive, and left the 80 GB data drive installed as the slave. The hardware installation went smoothly and the BIOS recognized the unformatted drive as the new master on the next boot.

No operating system, of course, so it's time to install Windows XP. Here's the rub: pre-service pack, for both 2000 and XP, Windows can't recognize a volume larger than 137 GB. So, we boot from the handy Western Digital Installer CD, which allows me to format the entire volume. Tech note: the CD boots to DR-DOS and runs some nifty batch files which install the required drivers. Then, you use the keyboard to run a virtual GUI environment to format the drive with FAT 16, FAT 32, or NTFS partitions.

Here's what I did:

• Created a 4.2 GB FAT 16 partition for Windows 2000 (32 K allocation blocks, I believe).
• Devoted the remaining 245 or so GB to an NTFS partition (4 K blocks).

This way, after I install Win2K on the small (4.2 GB) boot partition, I can install

I set up Windows 2000 with a trivial password (admin/admin) and set up my personal account.

Windows XP Pro, New Installation advanced setup: Advanced Options, Choose partition and drive letter; Don't upgrade partition to NTFS (it already is)

Install ATI DVD Drivers

For the Radeon All-in-Wonder 9000

1. Start at the ATI
   Drivers
   and Downloads page.


2. Read ATI
   Software Download and Installation Instructions


3. Download href="http://ati.com/support/drivers/winxp/radeonwdm-xp.html?type=xp&prodType=graphic&prod=productsXPdriver&submit.x=13&submit.y=5&submit=GO%21">CATALYST
   Windows XP 3.10 - Driver Download


4. Download new software for the href="http://ati.com/support/drivers/winxp/radeonopt-xp.html?type=xp&prodType=mm&prod=aiwWINXPdriver&submit.x=14&submit.y=6">Radeon
   All-In-Wonder 9000 on Windows XP .
   
   

Optional

Install for Windows XP:

• href="http://ati.com/support/products/pc/remotecontrol/remotewonderdriver.html?type=xp&prodType=remote&prod=remotedriver&submit.x=19&submit.y=9&submit=GO%21">REMOTE
  WONDER Software & Drivers


• href="http://ati.com/companyinfo/glossary/hydravision/index.html?type=xp&prodType=hydra&prod=hydravisionXPdriver&submit.x=13&submit.y=8&submit=GO%21">HYDRAVISION
  
  

NFS on Casper

Ran redhat-config-nfs from ssh command line.

For reference, check out the Linux
NFS-HOWTO on The
Linux Documentation Project website.

On Casper, the file server, we added to /etc/exports the following
line:

/home/net/               192.168.1.1/255.255.255.0(rw,sync)

Note: we used redhat-config-nfs to do this.

Then, on the Linux client, we added the following line to /etc/fstab:

192.168.1.23:/home/net /home/casper nfs rsize=8192,wsize=8192,nosuid,soft 0 0

But, I can't write files with my "neilj" login. I created a new
login and made sure the user ID matched on both machines.

Mozilla Plug-ins for Linux

Use Help > About Plug-ins
to open about:plugins

Click on http://plugindoc.mozdev.org/
or go to Linux directly.

Where is your plugin directory? First, start Mozilla. Then, in a
terminal, enter:

$ ps aux | grep moz
$ cd </path/to/mozilla-bin>
$ ls plugins

Important: if you don't see
a plugins directory, you have two choices:

1. Install the plugins in ~/.mozilla/plugins


2. Root creates a new plugins directory in the same directory as
   mozilla-bin, and installs plugins there.

Configuring Windows Domains on Samba

The latest version of O'Reilly's Using Samba, 2nd Edition includes an updated Chapter 4 Windows NT Domains that covers our current versions of both the Samba software and Windows clients. I still need to make the changes specified to the smb.conf file described in that chapter, but at this point, we have basic file sharing going on with the Windows XP Home clients. Note that is as good as it's going to get for Win XP Home: "You have our condolences if you are trying to use the Home edition of Windows XP in a domain environment! Microsoft has omitted support for Windows NT domains from Windows XP Home, resulting in a product that is ill-suited for use in a domain-based network."

Configure Samba on Casper

The goal is to set up Casper as the PDC for our network. We were able to set up file sharing, but we did as much luck with the PDC configuration. The Samba book I have covers version 2.0, and Windows OSes through NT 4.0. We are using version 2.2.7a (with RH9), and the clients include Win2K and Win XP Home. Finally, on the Samba site, I found Using Samba, 2nd ed., which covers version 2.2 and all WIndows OSes out now.

Configure NICs on Casper

I worked with Haikel today to configure Casper to run network services, specifically Samba. First, we needed to configure the network cards, or NICs. I had de-activated the cards and since there were two, we needed to pick which one to use. Using the old-fashioned trial-and-error method, we selected the 100-mbs card, which is configured as eth1 with the IP address of 192.168.1.23. The other card, eth0 at 192.168.1.22, only supports a transfer rate of 10 Mbs, so I pulled the cable and deactivated it. I used rehat-config-network to set up the cards.

Install RH9 on Casper

Casper is a Compaq Presario 5724 with a Pentium 500Mhz CPU, an Intel i810 chipset for video (1 MB shared RAM) and 256MB of RAM total installed.

Buy Samsung 256MB 800Mhz Rambus RIMM 184PIN for ~$89 each. for the Pavilion 9870.

Could test the new RAM w/ the C-RIMM circuit chip, but where is it?

Also try RAMBUS 256MB, PC600 WITH ECC from Upgrade Solution.

Memory Upgrades for HP Pavilion

The HP Pavilion 9870 Desktop PC uses 256MB PC600 RDRAM RAMBUS RIMM; NON-ECC is required. Samsung is currently installed. Read the memory installation FAQ.

The
HP Pavilion 505n Desktop PC uses 184 pin, DDR SDRAM, up to 2 x 512MB (1 x 256MB installed)

• Google Directory Price Comparisons
  
  
• Best prices from Price Watch
  
  
• 256 MB RAMBUS PC600 NON-ECC MAJOR BRAND @ $45, purchased, order # K111591.
  
  
• Compare:
  
  Upgrade Nation: Samsung @ $95