<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">Hey Everyone,</font>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">Sorry I haven't been on the list for
a while, but I would like to thank Greg Smith for bringing me onto a new</font>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">project: OLPC Uruguay.
He's asked me to post our progress on building an XS server for this project.</font>
<br>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">We will be hosting this machine in the
USA, and having myself and admins from Uruguay administer it</font>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">remotely.</font>
<br>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">My first task was building the machine
from parts, based on specifications from Greg, Wad and others.</font>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">Here is what I put together today:</font>
<br>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">(1) Started with an ASUS Barebones System
(V3-M2A690G) which has nothing but a black-and-silver tower </font>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">case, AMD AM2 socket motherboard, and
power supply. It came with one IDE master/slave cable, and one</font>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">18" SATA cable. The motherboard
has 8 USB ports, built-in 10/100 Ethernet NIC, firewire, and multi-card
reader.</font>
<br>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">(2) I added an AMD Athlon 64 X2 dual-core
processor and fan assembly. For those not familiar with this process,</font>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">it is not something that has to be done
correctly. I watched several videos on YouTube before I performed
this</font>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">myself.</font>
<br>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">The Athlon 64 X2 is two core, each core
is 2.3Ghz. For about $30 less was</font>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">the AMD Sempron single-core 1.8Ghz,
but the salesman talked me into the faster processor. Both would
probably</font>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">do the job for our purposes, so I erred
on the safe side on this. I had verified that Fedora 7 supports both.</font>
<br>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">(3) Next was the DIMM, the motherboard
supports 533, 667, and 800 speed memories, and they were all the</font>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">same price, so I got a single 800-speed
2GB DIMM. The motherboard has slots for 4 of these. The trick
is</font>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">figuring out which slot to put it
There are two yellow and two black DIMM slots. I called the store,
and they</font>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">told me to put the single DIMM into
the slot closest to the motherboard. This appears to work fine.</font>
<br>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">(4) Next were the NIC cards. Greg
wanted 3 NICs, there is one built-in to the motherboard, and two extra</font>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">PCI slots for additional cards, so adding
two more NICs worked. I got the RealTek/TrendNet 10/100 PCI.</font>
<br>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">(5) I got a Lite-On DVD-RW burner. This
comes with both BLACK and BEIGE face plates to match any</font>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">tower case. I changed the DIP
switch to be "MASTER" instead of SLAVE. The IDE on the
motherboard</font>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">has two cables -- one for Floppy Disk,
and the other for Master/Slave. In theory, you would have the HDD</font>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">on Master, and the DVD-RW as SLAVE,
but since my HDD will be using SATA instead, I went ahead and</font>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">made the DVD-RW the MASTER.</font>
<br>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">(6) Instaling the HDD was a bit difficult.
The Barebones system put the "Card Reader" in the middle
of the</font>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">3.5" bay, and I have two 160GB
SATA drives, so I put one above the card reader, and one below. The</font>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">Barebones system came with ONE 18"
SATA cable, and I had purchased two extra 24" cables, just in case,,
but the</font>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">problem was that there was only one
SATA (black) power cable. I am going to have to see if I can get
a white-to</font>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">black (IDE to SATA) power converter
cable adapter. There were four SATA connections on</font>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">the motherboard, and I could not tell
what was SATA 1, 2, 3 or 4. two are red, and two are black. I
guessed</font>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">wrong, as my BIOS tells me I have one
HDD in SATA 4 and none in the other three slots. (the second</font>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">drive is installed, but without power
or SATA signal cables attached).</font>
<br>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">(7) I also ran out of screws. The
Barebones system came with a few screws. The DVD-RW came with</font>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">its own screws. The HDD did not
come with any screws, so I used up the ones from the Barebones sytem,</font>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">and was left with only two to put the
case back together. I will have to go back to the store to get more</font>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">screws.</font>
<br>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">Just to test out the system, I booted
from an Ubuntu 8.04 LiveCD and ran the memory test. This takes</font>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">a while, but I want to make sure all
the systems are running properly. The processor and fan seem to</font>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">be working, the DVD-RW is able to read
my LiveCD. It appears I might have to fix the SATA cable</font>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">problem to put it on SATA 1 or it won't
let me access the HDD.</font>
<br>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">The Barebones system motherboard comes
with Hardware-based RAID-1 mirroring, so that two</font>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">drives will contain identical contents
as a form of built-in backup. In the event either drive fails, the</font>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">system will continue running from the
surviving drive.</font>
<br>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">It also supports RAID-0, which combines
the two drives into one big 320GB by spreading the</font>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">data back and forth between the two
drives. This can improve performance but would mean the</font>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">entire system fails if either drive
goes bad.</font>
<br>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">The store is closed already, so the
best I can hope for is a trial install on a single drive, that I would</font>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">then wipe clean when I get the extra
power cable needed for the second SATA drive.</font>
<br>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">Tony Pearson</font>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">Tucson, AZ - USA</font>