Yee-haw!
Finally got all the ducks in a row and the install (the last of *several* attempts) went extremely smoothly- I guess practice makes perfect!
Big THANK YOU to TigerJimmy for expert guidance!
I now have 'gobsOspace' running happily- unfortunately, the newer machine got jealous of the attention and the 80GB drive that is currently holding all of my gold is threatening me with problems.
When the 80GB drive is not acting up, I can transfer about 50MB/min to the Debian machine.
Total ca$h invested <$300 (including new router!)
The basic setup is outlined in my above post- further additions/lessons:
- Netgear router (on sale! $30 no rebate! Woot! Network Empeg access!)
- PCI NIC -old ISA card was a no-go for Linux (on sale! $10 no rebate! Woot!)
- motherboard video and the Debian installer don't get along- had to go back to the PCI video card that was in there before.
- Next step: UPS
- Yet to be resolved: Debian is continually accessing the drives- even when no data is being transferred. With Jim's help we determined that SWAP was not involved. Does anyone have an idea of what could be causing this?
I would think that the drives should spin down if nothing is going on...