[G4] G4 Xserve newbie!

[John Niven]

Well I don't know if I'm lucky or stupid.

A while ago I won a copy of Panther Xserver s/w from
eBay for a bargain price. I was going to put it on one
of my G4 dual 450MHz GigaE machines but someone local
was selling a Xserve rack, which I got for $200. I
thought that was fair as it was advertized as a 1GHz
Single G4 basic machine. It turns out it has an extra
512 memory stick (on top of the standard 256), and an
extra 120Gb second disk drive. That alone is worth
$150 on eBay! The standard 60Gb drive is there also.

Fired it up yesterday, and here's the downside: it's
incredibly noisy :-( but it works perfectly :-).

So is this normal? Anybody have experience of these
things? Should I look at new fans? The system monitor
shows the cpu is keeping really cool (~28C). Can the
fans be slowed? Will I have to dedicate a whole room
in my house to it alone :-)?

Since I have two drive modules, how big a hard drives
can I put in them? Is there a 128Gb limit? Some
documention I found at apple suggested that if I had
Tiger I could go to 240Gb otherwise its 180Gb max. Is
this correct (I don't think I can afford Tiger server
just yet)?

Would two 180Gb drives, mirrored, be the best option
for a family file server?

Thanks for any help.

John (with ear-plugs) 


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