Re: Migrating 32 -> 64

[Stan Hoeppner <stan@hardwarefreak.com>]

On 8/11/2013 4:08 PM, Bob Proulx wrote:
> David Christensen wrote:
>> Gregory Seidman wrote:
>>> I have a low-cost (i.e. old and refurbished) server at home, but it's
>>> showing indications of impending hardware failure (e.g. the on-board NIC
>>> was being reset automatically every 2 seconds for a while because it was
>>> hanging).
>>
>> Install a Gigabit NIC into the old box and turn off the motherboard
>> NIC in the BIOS.  Get the new NIC working.
> 
> This would be my vote.  And then simply stop there.  Once you have
> disabled the onboard network card, put a new network card into the old
> box and set it up, then your old machine should be fully operational.
> Stop there.

I recently went through the exercise of putting a GbE NIC into an old 32
bit x86 machine w/PCI only.  The first card I purchased, a $10 USD
TP-Link w/RTL8169, couldn't power on.  It is a 3.3v only card that the
manufacturer claimed was universal.  Universal cards are 5v and 3.3v.
This is a guessing game with most cheap RTL and Marvel based cards.  The
motherboard in this case is PCI 5v only.

I ate the $10 NIC putting it on a shelf because return shipping +
restocking fee is almost $10.  Second time around I emailed the e1000
driver list.  An Intel engineer responded and verified that the
universal model of the Pro/1000 GT should work.  Ordered one for $32 +
shipping, plugged it in, and it works great.  So I spent $42 + shipping
times two to get a GbE NIC into this machine.

Moral of the story?  The OP may need to spend ~$30 USD for an Intel PCI
NIC to guarantee it'll work on the first go.  He probably gave not much
more than this for entire used machines.  Factor in that you can get a
brand new mobo/cpu/RAM combo with GbE and GPU today for ~$100 USD, and
spending any money for just the GbE NIC for the old machine seems not a
prudent investment.

In my case I upgraded and kept the machine in question running due to
sentimental reasons.  Otherwise I'd have swapped the entire guts for
about 3x the money and had a much faster and more power efficient machine.

-- 
Stan