baby server as desktop ? ....

OK well 2 things ...

1) Been having a load of grief for quite a while now with my olde worlde Centrino 1.8GHz (yup - its in a S479->S478 adapter) DIY mini-tower machine running Win XP ..... spurious BSOD's, registry corruptions, Firefox crashing loads ..... decided its GOTTA be hardware related, but buggered if I can track it down to anything.

2) Inherited a baby HP server .... Proliant ML110 G4 = Xeon 3040 1.8GHz 2GB RAM - just did a test install of Windows XP - went very nice and smooth = apart from a bit of hoop-jumping to get ethernet drivers as HP only provide for server OS's ......

Now this little server is neat .... mini-tower - fairly quiet (and the noise it DOES make is a re-assuring purring like proper professional piece of kit) ... I THINK the power consumption should be no more really than existing setup .... 1 x Allendale die = 2 cores running 65W max.

So - how would it go as a desktop machine ? Should damn well be reliable at least .... serverworks chipset ... ECC memory .... PSU + heatsink + fans etc. = proper !

Problem is - the on-board graphics is - (unsurprisingly) VERY lame (2MB )  - and I need to run 1600 x 1200 x 32-bit = 2Mpixels .... and there's no PCIe x16 slot. I do have a PCI NV280 card .... might check how well that works .... (only need reasonable 2D preformance). Matrox do a PCIe x1 card, but don't fancy springing for that .....

Would also need a soundcard of course .... nothing that special for me .... but then both of the 2 PCI slots would be full. No more room.

So 2 questions :-

1) Can anyone think of any snags/gotchas further down the road with this ? Just want a rock solid bit of hardware .... preformance is adequate for win xp for me.

2) It probably WOULD be better to have a conventional desktop machine really ..... don't suppose anyone's interested in a little server like this ? Would happily trade for something like a C2D desktop (prefer mini-tower) machine - just basic, working properly - could be without HD ....
Optiplex (or similar HP) C2D machine would be ideal ....

Hope this doesn't fall foul of the selling regs around here

Try Mr Shagnasty, he might have something lying around, might be rackmount though....

Oh yeah - forgot to ask .... will a PCIe x1 card work properly in a PCIe x4 or PCIe x8 slot ?

Thinking about it, I've got an Athlon XP2800 machine in a mini-tower I've just retired due to an upgrade.  Should still have a bit of life left.

levyte357 wrote: slaz wrote: Why is ECC memory = headache ? Extra cost, lack of availability. You can buy 8gb of Kingston DDR3 memory these days for £40 from ebay. How much would that cost in ECC mem, does XP32 support > 4gB? Have been running '7 X64 on main desktop for 18 months, no BSOD yet.

Nah .... just got 2 x 1GB ECC sticks for £17 (for both) from the bay .... just needs a bit of scouring.

Don't need >2GB ....

Well I ran XP32  for years with HARDLY any BSODs .... grief now is obscure h/w prob .... 99% sure of it.

I was planning on holding onto XP right up until MS drop support for it. However issues getting proper drivers loaded onto a new (old but new to me!) laptop forced me to put 7 on it. Hate to say it, but 7 runs a lot smoother. Going to load it onto my desktop next week as well!

For the soundcard, get a behry UCA 202. Stereo phono in and out, runs from USB 1 upwards and doesn't need drivers installing. Sound is good and even if the latency's a bit too high for mixing with it, it's less than £30. Can't go wrong!