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Need advice before purchase.

Discussion in 'PC hardware help' started by JOAT, Oct 21, 2010.

  1. JOAT

    JOAT Member

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    Hi all,

    I am hoping that someone may be able to help me with what to ask before purchasing the PC mentioned below, as well as if it is worth the price. Being as there's not much information posted with the listing, I just put it all together. If you look carefully at the upper left corner of the bottom right picture you'll notice is says Ubuntu. The price is $50 (USD).

    [​IMG]

    I may want to add or upgrade the system. These updates would consist of 3-5 2TB HDD, a DVD±R/W, a AIO multi-card reader/writer, and possibly a Blu-Ray Burner or at least a DVD-ROM drive. Anything I purchase will connect via the SATA interface.

    This does raise some concerns for me though, as I'm unsure how I would go about upgrading as the case lacks free room. If you look at the upper right picture you are able to see that all of the hard drives are located in 5.25" bays. My upgrade would consist of removing the 3.5" diskette drive and replacing it with the AIO multi-card reader/writer, and removing at least 2 hard drives to install 2 optical drives. I would then remove the 17GB SCSI drive solely because of the capacity, but I would still need space to add 3+ drives.

    From the looks of things the motherboard doesn't appear to have any SATA ports on-board. The case looks like an old-school Antec or Chieftec case too.

    I will post any updated information I receive from the seller, as I'm awaiting a reply.

    I have asked the following questions to the seller:
    - May I get a complete list of the system specs?
    - Are there any boot/loading errors?
    - Does the system require any maintenance/repair to be fully operable?


    I need to get some rest before I have to take care of things today, so on that note I'm ending this post. I hope it's not too long for any of you (though I'm sure it is).

    Much thanks to anyone who contributes.
     
    Last edited: Oct 21, 2010
  2. KillerBug

    KillerBug Active member

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    I would not even consider it unless there were at least once PCIe x16 slot, and at least one more PCIe x8 or x16 slot. This will let you add a half-decent video card and a good SATA or SAS card as well.

    Also, find out how much ram there is; old server memory can get expensive.
     
  3. JOAT

    JOAT Member

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    Hi KB, thanks for the reply & the advice. I didn't really think about PCIe or SAS. It would make it a lot easier for me.

    While I know little about Linux, I did a little research and told him to run a few things and get back with me. Although, now after reading so much about Linux I find myself wanting to leave Windows. Don't get me wrong though, I love Windows 7 Ultimate. Beats XP/Vista. Anyway, back on topic.

    This is what I told them to run. Information is quoted from some other forum, can't remember where.
    Code:
    1. Open up Synaptic (system --> administration --> Synaptic Package Manager)
    
    2. Go into its preferences and enable the "universe" repository
    
    3. click the reload button in synaptic to download the list of packages in the universe repository 
    you just enabled.
    
    4. Search for wine and install it.
    
    That's it, although, you may need to run
    Code:
    
    winecfg
    
    after installing it. (press alt + f2 and type winecfg in the box)
    
    After that, wine is installed
    
    
    Set Wine to report Windows 98 in winecfg and cpu-z will run.
    
    Or this if it would not work for them.
    Code:
    cat /proc/cpuinfo
    
    cat /proc/meminfo
    
    sudo lspci -v
    
    sudo lshw -html > Myhardware.html
    


    Thanks again!
     

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