netserver LH Plus

[Dan_51]

I have been presented with the challenge of making use of a Netserver LH plus someone picked up at an auction. I've never seen a netserver before, but okay I'll figure out what to do with it. Included inside was one 133mhz chip and two 32meg edo dimms. There are 4 4.2 gig hard drives in the scsi bays.

The data sheet indicates that the best I could do with this machine is dual p200, 256meg ram, and 6 9.1gig hard drives.

I'm wondering if its possible to replace the big mainboard altogether with something a little newer. Are there other boards that will fit into this case, or am I stuck with the LH boards only. I saw a board from an LC2 model, and it looked similar, any chance I could buy something like that(i saw it on ebay) and just rebuild this machine from the ground up.

If not, does this sound like a waste of time...to go about rebuilding an older server like this to use for something like a file server or whatever, I have no idea. Just looking for some opinions before I invest a lot of time in this project. Maybe some of you have similar machines in service right now.

[Theo Hill_1 · Accepted solution]

LH Plus specs

Processor: Pentium 133MHz and 166MHz,. 256kb cache. Dual ready (Pentium).

Memory: 60ns EDO ECC DIMMs, added 1 at a time. Maximum 512MB / 4X128MB

It could be upgraded to an LH Pro which would give you 200MHz proc and up to 1GB of memory. If you don't have a ton of people accessing large files, the system would work fine as a file server.

Here is a good link to start with. Make sure everything is up to date if you decide to go through with it.

http://www.hp.com/cposupport/swindexes/nslhpl5_swen.html

[Terri Harris]

If you think of the Netserver LH Plus as an older system with some proprietary hardware, then you have the correct picture. And the answer is almost always = not cost effective to try and upgrade. You would certainly have to replace more than the system board IF you could find a 3rd party system board which worked.
The LH Plus has been a real work horse. I would suggest trying to use it as is. Put it to work if you can, there are still a LOT of these Netservers out there working. Be happy to answer specific questions, otherwise. Good luck!