{"id":3220,"date":"2005-05-24T16:35:55","date_gmt":"2005-05-24T15:35:55","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2013-01-30T11:53:55","modified_gmt":"2013-01-30T11:53:55","slug":"jukebox-server","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/automatedhome.com\/av-distribution\/jukebox-server.html","title":{"rendered":"Jukebox Server"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n(click to enlarge)<\/span><\/span><\/a>
\nParty! The “Bits” Arrive<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

[UPDATE<\/strong> – After you’ve read this, jump to our updated JukeBox MkII article<\/a>]<\/p>\n

Old Timer<\/strong><\/span> – Since ripping and centralising all our DVDs and CDs a few years ago our “Jukebox” server had grown and grown and was in need of replacement. With 5 years of digital photographs taking up 10s of gigabytes alone and ripped DVDs taking anywhere from 3gig to 9gig each!, no matter how much disk space you have it never seems quite enough.<\/p>\n

The donated ancient motherboard and RAM that I had received three years ago had performed well. Despite being a lowly Pentium Pro 200 with 128meg, it had coped admirably with serving multiple PCs, Xboxes and other IP clients. However the drive bay configuration in the old AT rackmount case (that had been “modified” with a hacksaw to allow the ATX board to be fitted) meant there was no room left to add any more hard disks, and keeping the drives that were already in there cool was becoming a major issue too.<\/p>\n

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\n(click to enlarge)<\/span><\/span><\/a>
\n<\/span>The “Old Timer” Retires<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n
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NASty <\/strong>– In my hunt for a replacement I considered buying the Buffalo Terastation<\/a> NAS (network attached storage) device. This gives you 1 terabyte of drive space in a small, quiet, stand alone box for under \u00a3700. A nice option, but more than I wanted to spend. I also have plenty of large drives to re-use out of the old Jukebox, as well as some smaller 120gig and 160gig drives that I wanted to utilise too.<\/span><\/p>\n

Hardware<\/strong> – After getting some input from the guys on our Mailing List<\/a> and IRC Channel<\/a> I finally settled on the Compucase S411 4U Rack mount case from xcase.co.uk. There are many better, beautiful rackmount cases out there with caddies included etc, but they are way beyond my budget. This case costs under \u00a390 and allows me to fit 6 drives in caddies all accessible from the front of the machine, with space for at least another 6 drives internally if required. Be warned this is a full depth case and requires a large rack to accommodate it. It also weighs 23Kilos with the 8 drives fitted.<\/span><\/p>\n

I chose an EPIA motherboard with the VIA M10000 (1Ghz) Nehemiah CPU. This tiny little main board is a big improvement in terms of speed on the previous VIA machines I’ve owned (500Mhz and 800Mhz). Although it only has one PCI slot (it can take a dual riser in the appropriate case) it already features pretty much everything you need on-board – 10\/100 LAN, USB2, Firewire, Graphics, Sound. The PCI slot is used for the Promise TX2 IDE controller card I was already using in the old Jukebox machine.<\/p>\n

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\n(click to enlarge)<\/span><\/span><\/a>
\nSome of the Caddies in Place<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

This card along with the 2 IDE channels included on the motherboard allowed me to connect up 8 IDE devices. To reach the full potential of 12 drives in this case, you would need to replace the IDE controller card with a more expensive one with more channels. You could also change the IDE controller for a SATA one if you are buying new drives. One of the biggest advantages of this setup is the running costs. The EPIA board is a miser when it comes to electricity usage when compared to most modern boards\/CPUs. In a server running 24\/7 that has to be a consideration. <\/span><\/p>\n

I had some old IDE caddies spare which I used for this project. Using caddies has several advantages:-<\/span><\/p>\n