[plug] Install

[Leon Brooks]

Daniel Pearson wrote:
> How many HD's can a machine take? :P

Two per IDE controller. Maybe six or seven per SCSI controller. "Normal"
IDE controllers allow primary" and "secondary" addresses. Some of the
dual controllers allow others. I think the default kernel limit is eight
IDE drives but AFAIK this can be changed by editing one parameter in one
source file. The next limit would be IRQs but Linux and most controllers
allow IRQ sharing and some PNP and oboard controllers allow arbitrary
IRQ numbers, so the next real limit would be power supply size. You
could (yuk) use two or more PSUs, at which point motherboard sockets
would be the barrier. If you had an 8-socket IDE motherboard, and used
one socket for the VGA card, filling all others with dual IDE controller
cards (no floppy, parallel or serial ports unless already on
motherboard) break out the soldering iron to configure them), you could
have 28 IDE hard drives, I guess. If you could scrape together enough
SCSI controllers and drive, running 7 drives on each controller, you
could have be 49 drives. But I wouldn't. (-: Even 49 drives, at
40MB/drive, only adds up to about 2G, and you can buy a *new* *fast*
6.4G HDD for about $200 plus tax wholesale :-).

-- 
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 -- Redmond proverb