My FTP server has been in danger of getting full at least twice since I started it up. (Thanks Dave and Xclusive!)

Because of this, it has become necessary at least twice to add hard drives to the configuration.

Moving from 8 gigs to 40 presented only minor problems due to the old motherboard not recognizing larger hard drives. First a BIOS hack, and then an ATA66 controller card fixed this.

Unfortunately I eventually wanted more.

Adding the 80 gig drive created problems, because windows 2000 kept bluescreening. The problem, as I later found out, was due to a short on the ATA66 controller (later fixed), and later due to an IRQ conflict. I didnt' discover this until after I had picked up a new ATA133 controller card.

Now, seeing as how I like to think of the future, and how I had a bunch of spare parts, and seeing as how I've been in an alchoholically altered state of mind several times over the last few weeks (w00t!), I came up with a plan to add several more drives to the configuration.

You see, my problem was that I had dremelled out the servers extra internal drive bays when I modified it to hold the current motherboard. Plus, due to the age of the current Power Supply I didn't really want to be adding Y connectors to it for additional drives anyway.

An opportunity presented itself.

But first, the vital statistics.

System Specs BEFORE the modification:
• 500mhz AMD K6II processor in a Tyan motherboard.
• Case from a "DTK grafica" 486 server complete with oversized 250 watt power supply
• 80 gig and 40 gig hard drive in a spanned volume (on an ATA133 card)
• 8 gig primary drive
• ISA sound card
• 4 meg PCI video card
• 256 megs of PC100 RAM
• 10/100 3COM network card

Before pictures:

This machine is set up on a basement shelving unit.

Continued ---->