Does anyone know if it is posible to do the windows server install on a N4200 please?

Thanks,
Stuart.

I would also like to thank you guys for identifying the hardware and making it easier to find drivers for everyone else here.
If it can be done some human will try it. No matter how dumb or smart.
I have a loose copy of home server a solder sucker I will do this next weekend.
Fit the vga socket permanently install the OS and rebuild the raid.
INSTALL the MAIL SERVER. which should have been an option.
If the speed is too slow I will remove the CPU and replace it with something faster.
(its nice having the tools to do the job)

Andrew

Just a few notes from my own project.

Mine started when a firmware upgrade went wrong and killed my DOM. I recovered it in Linux, but while I had the box open, I started exploring. It’s now got a 2.5″ SATA drive to replace the DOM and is booting Windows Home Server with a RAID 5 storage area for my media.

So - on to the comments.
The VGA connector - Jaymz is right - it’s a bitch to get in, and if there’s any pressure from the monitor cable it pops out. You can tack-solder it at the two clips, but not the pins if you want to take it out again. Filing the slot on the back of the case to have a permanent VGA socket was very easy though, and makes maintenance a breeze.

The 20×2 LCD module - ymboc, it’s not a crystalfontz device. It’s made by SDEC in Taiwan. The model is LMC-S20201 and a data sheet is here
http://www.sdec.com.tw/downloadfiles/LMC-S20201.pdf

It looks as though it could be driven directly by parallel, but I’m yet to try.

Once you’ve installed the SuperMicro driver for the MV88SX6081, RAID 5 is possible under XP. The workings are all there, but the function has been removed. The good news is that it is simple to put back with a hex editor.
There’s an old guide on how to do this at
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/windowsxp-make-raid-5-happen,925-2.html

It covers the files in Service pack 2 - but simple enought to modify for SP3 files. Alternatively, for SP3 there is a simple how-to, including edited downloadable files at
http://www.optimiz3.com/low-cost-and-reliable-network-attatched-software-jbod-raid-0-1-or-5/

Video is just an Intel 82854 GMCH adaptor, and it uses 32Mb of your RAM by default. You can modify the .inf file from the Intel 830M driver with the device ID used by the Thecus box - ie, change the line
%iMGM% = iMGM, PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_3582
to
%iMGM% = iMGM, PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_358e

It seems to work in my limited testing (i did it last night) but I haven’t given it a good run yet. Don’t blame me if you try and it breaks - just reboot in VGA mode!

Finally - installing to the 2.5″ IDE drive from a bootable USB disk was made a whole lot easier using the program WinToFlash from Novicorp (wintoflash.com). It sets up your thum drive to boot and install Window, and has a very simple GUI.

Hope this helps someone. If anyone else has any luck with the LMC-S20201 display, pleas post!

Cheers,

Mullie

Windows runs very well. My networkspeed is around 40 MB/s and is very stable.

I also have a solution for the ide0 bug. You have to disable the UDMA Mode in the BIOS.

Do you have any solution for the ide0 controller error?

This may actually be a stupid question. I have an idea that windows server will import the raid volume from linux. is that a possibility in this case?

I really like this project because my network performance on Gb with cat6 shielded cables and Gb switch was shocking… 4.11Mb/s MAX… insane. Hopefully this will be better. At least I know windows well.

tomorrow I want try to install Windows Server 2008 on my Thecus 5200 Pro! I Upgraded the CPU to a 2 GHz version. Tomorrow I’ll get a IDE drive and a 1 Gig RAM Chip.

Is there any solution for the vga driver? Isn’t it a Intel driver?

I’ll report here when its done. ;)

An update from me.

I have an 5200 (non pro,non router)

I have soldiered in the vga connector, although the one i had was too long so the rear of the case doesn’t fit correctly (will remove when happy so not an issue)

I have installed a 250gb 2.5inch ide drive - there are four holes in the top of the drive cage that allows a 2.5inch drive to be fixed! just take out the hot swop drives to get screw access.

I have install 1gb mem stick (see previous post)

I have installed Windows Server 2008 onto a 20gb partition on the 2.5inch drive which i boot from. I used a usb stick to do this (google install xxx from usb, where xxx is your os of choice)

I used the sata drivers above in a previous post by ‘Dave’ (Cheers bud) (no bios mods as i boot from IDE)

I’m just creating a RAID-5 volume in windows on my 5×400gb disks in the hot swop cage, currently ‘resyncing’ (will take a while)

I use Remote Desktop to remote admin server.

Happy so far - except:

Hardware issues:
Video drivers - Uses standard vga or the like but shows an issue - however it works
Target USB - Not required (used by Thecus to allow a pc to connect via USB and see Thecus as a usb HDD)

Other issues:
I seem to get occasional ‘ide0′ controller errors in the event log. Not sure why…

I want to test how reliable windows is when a disk is removed etc.. before i load my files…. Thecus OS was good if you accidental removed two disks - all was well when returned to normal.

Thanks all for your help to get me this far!