GTA IV burnout = GEEK SPASM

I haven't played GTA at all today, which may be a suprise. But I think I played it just too much yesterday and so I had a geekery spasm instead after going out for a drive with the dog to vote and pick up some snacks (I know, I'm a fat bastard).

The old DLT7000 tape drive made some bad noises and then ate a tape last time I played with it, so I ripped it out of the Linux machine and replaced it with an Intel 5-drive SCSI cage. This takes up three 5.25" drive bays and has 5 caddies so you can install hot-swap SCA drives. I scored it unboxed but new on Ebay for £10.50, not bad since the cheapest I found it new online was £70.

I chucked some old drives in it to play with, three from the old Proliant and two that I was given by a guy in work. Five elderly 9.1gb SCSI drives running at 10,000rpm each generates quite a lot of noise and heat. Fortunately there is a space for a fan on the back of it but the only one I had spare is an inch too small. Still, it does generate some airflow. I think one of the drives may have issues but I'm not sure. There's usually quite a few bundles of pulled server drives on Ebay quite cheaply so I might look into that after next payday.

It's currently running Linux with software RAID enabled as the on-board SCSI built into the dual PIII motherboard doesn't support any form of hardware RAID. I still have the huge full-length PCI array controller from the Proliant which supports all sorts of RAID configurations in hardware, but I'm not sure if it can be configured outside of a Compaq server. Still, might try that some time.

The machine really needs a new case. It's currently in an ultra cheap and crappy black tower which I once savagely attacked with a screwdriver, causing dents and holes. This was quite a while ago when it had a newer but very flaky AMD motherboard in it. The much older PIII motherboard has been rock solid despite being repeatedly experimented on with occasionally bizarre configurations.