not sure if hardware questions are the go on here or not, but here goes anyway.
I have just picked up an old intel SC5200 rack chassis with an intel SE750CW2 motherboard and dual Xeon processors. It was cheep, due to its age I guess.
My intention was to use it to get a handle on server hardware (only been using desktop stuff in anger until now) and to try and setup some virtual machines on it to have a play.
Now, I discovered early on that its only a 32 bit system and doesn't have any virtual layer in hardware (my bad).. and I should have checked the specs a bit more (not that there were any in the auction) before putting my money down as neither ESXi nor Zen will work on it (atleast current versions).
I tried the 32 bit version of ESXi but found that it doesn't like the scsi controllers (LSI something.. don't have that detail at my finger tips).. but anyway, I can see the array in a normal linux, but not in the ESXi install.
So.... my question is.. can I put a different mother board into the chassis? I'm thinking that I should be able to pick up either a desktop MB or perhaps a different server MB to drop in and hopefully get it all happening with some more modern hardware.
I'm not sure about the drive bays or the front panel buttons however, these look to me like potential problems.
Thanks in advance.
Peter.