# Questions about an old system



## jdallen5 (Mar 15, 2011)

I'm thinking about getting my old sony VAIO PCV-R553DS system running again as a samba/ print server and I was wondering if any of you guys are familiar with the old ultra AA/66 hard drives.  I'm pretty sure it doesn't support 48bit LBA so will I have problems putting more than 127gb of hard drive in this thing?  If so, can I get around it by installing one of those PCI SATA controller cards or would it still have that limitation?  

Thanks in advance for any info/help-

Jim

PS- here's a list of the specs-

*Model*
PCV-R553DS
*Processor*
IntelÂ®
PentiumÂ®
III Processor 650 MHz
â€ 
*Cache Memory*
128 KB Integrated On-Die Level 2
*Standard RAM*
128 MB PC-100 SDRAM, expandable to 256 MB
*Hard Drive*
30 GB
â€ â€ 
Ultra ATA-66 Hard Drive
*DVD/CD-ROM Drive
*16X max. DVD-ROM
40X max. CD-ROM
*CD-RW Drive*
32X max. CD-ROM read, 8X max. CD-R write, 
32X max. CD-R read, 4X max. CD-RW write, 
8X max. CD-RW read
*Floppy Disk Drive*
3.5" 1.44 MB Floppy Disk Drive
*Video & Graphics*
IntelÂ®
810 Chipset (Direct AGP)
*Modem*
V.90 Modem
*Ethernet*
10/100Base-T Ethernet card
*Expansion Slots*
Four PCI (three occupied)
*Expansion Bays*
Two External 5.25" Half-Height (two occupied)
One External 3.5" (occupied)
Two Internal 3.5" (one occupied)
*Port Connectors*
Two USB (one front/one rear)
One PS/2Â®
Mouse
One PS/2 Keyboard
One VGA
One Serial
One Parallel
One Game/MIDI
One 6pin i.LINK
One 4pin i.LINK
One Headphone Out
One Line In
One Microphone


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## Carpetsmoker (Mar 15, 2011)

My server was a P3 800 until about a year ago ... I had little problems other than the speed limitation of ATA and the NIC.

I had a 400GB drive. I used the 400GB drive on my AMD K6 300Mhz before that without problems (Not as boot drive though).


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## jdallen5 (Mar 15, 2011)

Ok, sounds good.  I may just pull the trigger on a larger PATA drive then.  I can always use it on one of my other systems if it doesn't work out.  Have you had any experience with those PCI controller cards?  I know they don't write as quickly as a normal SATA but I really only need the space not the speed.


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## Carpetsmoker (Mar 15, 2011)

Well, PCI is 133MB/s max. Also remember that the (onboard) NIC also runs through the PCI bus. So your speed is severely limited by today's standards ...

Other then that, I have little experience with PCI SATA cards on FreeBSD ...


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## wblock@ (Mar 15, 2011)

jdallen5 said:
			
		

> Ok, sounds good.  I may just pull the trigger on a larger PATA drive then.  I can always use it on one of my other systems if it doesn't work out.



Since FreeBSD doesn't use the BIOS after booting, I'd think it wouldn't have a problem.  Can't say I've tried it with a large PATA drive, though.  (Actually, I'm pretty sure I ran FreeBSD on systems that had smaller limits--32G?--and used larger drives maybe 40G or 80G.  Details are fuzzy, CRS syndrome strikes again.)



> Have you had any experience with those PCI controller cards?  I know they don't write as quickly as a normal SATA but I really only need the space not the speed.



Probably not a serious bottleneck.  SAMBA itself isn't very fast.  And a SATA drive plus controller might be cheaper than a PATA drive alone.  Be careful, last I saw a lot of the cheap SATA boards had Silicon Image controllers that were reputed to, well, suck.


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## Pushrod (Mar 16, 2011)

The 137GB limit is an address limit, so there is a good chance that limit will be hit. That said, you can still put in any size drive and still use it, up to 137GB.


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