I just picked one an X2100 M2 a few days ago...
I'm running 2x 320GB Seagate SATA drives in it, no problem so it's
because they're only listing what they support, not what the hardware
supports.
There are HD sleds, well, more like HD rails. They do the job, and will
allow you to hot swap drives. You would need a slim optical drive, and
the cable they provide is not standard IDE. It appears to be a smaller
ide-like cable, probably what's used in notebooks but I haven't looked
too closely.
The same trick with disabling the broadcom nics used on the non-M2 works
with the M2 also. I haven't gotten around to testing out OpenBSD on
mine, just FreeBSD so far. The nvidia NIC's using the ported nfe driver
appears to be working with the e1000phy patch, so I imagine they would
work under OpenBSD. No luck getting serial console output through remote
management, or through the serial port in service processor mode. Serial
console output works fine if you force the serial port to system mode
instead.
By the way, anyone have any pointers on how one could make a quick hack
to have OpenBSD ignore the 2nd broadcom NIC, so you can still use the
1st one and still have the remote management working? I'm reasonably
familiar with C, but I haven't poked around the OpenBSD code enough to
know where to start (aside from if_nfe.c).
Cheers,
Han
Edvard Fagerholm wrote:
Hi,
Thanks for the input about the X2100 M2. This seems to be exactly what
I was looking for. I've still got two questions, which is OT regarding
OpenBSD...
On Sun's webpages you'll only find options for a 250GB and 500GB SATA
drive. Their manual also states that the M2 only supports drives of
250GB and 500GB. This seems like they're only listing the hardware
that they provide support for and not what the BIOS actually supports?
It does have an MCP 55 Pro chipset, so it should support any SATA
drive, right? As I've got some 36GB WD Raptor SATA I drives, I was
going to use them instead of the drives Sun provides.
The second question is that are the drive bays empty or do they have
HD sleds in them? Also can you install any DVD-drive you want into it
and does the DVD require SATA or a PATA connection? I'm only going to
need a DVD for installation.
Sun didn't want to answer the first question, so I hope some of you
who have seen the box could answer these questions.
Thanks,
Edvard
