[conspire] cabal

[Daniel Gimpelevich]

On Mon, 2012-04-02 at 13:31 -0700, Daniel Gimpelevich wrote:
> On Fri, 2012-03-23 at 16:54 -0700, Rick Moen wrote: 
> > Quoting Ruben Safir (ruben at mrbrklyn.com):
> > 
> > >  Well, I can tell you that.  Basically:  ultra-reliable, low power,
> > >  quiet, compact Telephone system.
> > >  Well, I can tell you that.  Basically:  ultra-reliable, low power,
> > >  quiet, compact media and entertainment center.
> > >  Well, I can tell you that.  Basically:  ultra-reliable, low power,
> > >  quiet, compact Game Server for the kids!
> > 
> > Along the lines of item #2, I've long thought that the household ought
> > to have a streaming-audio server on the inside network, instead of each
> > member of the household having a huge separate collection of mp3, m4a,
> > ogg, and FLAC files (along with residual m4p, boo).  I have an antique
> > Cobalt Qube 2 that was intended for that, but Cheryl's mp3 collection 
> > (in particular) is already bigger than the largest IDE drive ever made.
> 
> To my knowledge, that would be a 750GB drive, right? Or was there a 1TB
> one made? I don't remember, and I'm in too big a hurry at the moment to
> check the Western Digital website. I know for a fact WD made the largest[0]
> 2.5" PATA drive, but as for 3.5" PATA, I have a 750GB one from Seagate
> myself and speculate that maybe WD might have made a 1TB.

[0] https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2248460?start=0 and http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/SpecSheet/ENG/2879-701278.pdf

On Mon, Apr 02, 2012 at 02:05:57PM -0700, Rick Moen wrote:
> Quoting Daniel Gimpelevich (daniel at gimpelevich.san-francisco.ca.us):
> 
> [largest IDE drive ever made]
> 
> > To my knowledge, that would be a 750GB drive, right?
> 
> Yes, that's the biggest 3.5" PATA I can find mention of.  The biggest
> 2.5" unit seems to have been a 250GB.
> 
> The workaround, if one were utterly determined to use a Cobalt Qube 2 or
> similar ancient hardware, with current-production large hard drives, 
> would be a SATA-PATA conversion device, such as 
> http://www.amazon.com/SATA-PATA-Drive-Interface-Adapter/dp/B002Y2NI4M

The following notes have come to my attention by way of user "ex-parrot"
on Freenode: There is a PCI slot capable of holding a SATA interface
card. In this variant, the PATA interface uses a CF card for booting.
Squeeze was the last Debian release to officially support the device.
Wheezy and Jessie still have the needed "mipsel" repositories, but no
kernel. It needs to be cross-compiled.