Need help with Quad Cards for GNS3 (Pics Included)

ITtech2010

Hey everyone,

Can you please tell me which quad cards I need to purchase for GNS3 that will fit my server? My colleagues and I want to build a CCIE lab and we already purchased the pc. This afternoon we're purchasing the power supply. Today I decided to just install the quad cards and come to find out they do not fit the motherboard.

Any help would be appreciated on purchasing three quad card that will fit this motherboard.

Multiple part numbers too and websites would help. Thanks!

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astrogeek

It looks like those cards are a different type of PCI that won't work, this wiki link should help: Conventional PCI - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hopefully those didn't run you too much or you can return them, but I would suggest buying 3 Adaptec quad nics. I built a lab pretty much just like yours and used two ADAPTEC ANA-62044 and one ADAPTEC ANA-64044LV. I don't have the slightest clue what the difference between the 64044LV and 62044 models are, but the LV version was half the price ($20) than the 62044. I haven't noticed any differences in my lab while using them so I'd go with the cheaper ones.

The Adaptec cards are PCI-X so they will have a long piece that hangs over, this won't be a problem as long as there aren't any capacitors or anything on the motherboard in the way. I would recommend using some non-conductive tape on the card where it hangs over though. While building my PC one of them must have touched part of the motherboard and as soon as I plugged the PC in I blew a fuse at my house. Thankfully the card and board weren't harmed though.

As you can see in the picture the motherboard I was using was ancient and I really just wanted to see if it would all work - it did, but eventually the board died and I bought a Dell 2850 server which fits the cards natively.

Here's a couple of shots of the PC I was building with the 3 Adaptec cards in them, sorry I didn't get any better shots of the actual cards though because it's hard to see where they hang over.

**Edit: I forgot to mention that the Adaptec cards are quite old and are not supported by Windows - The server I have now can dual boot into either Ubuntu or Windows 2008 Server and the Windows server doesn't even see these cards - but Ubuntu sees them no problem. There might be some 3rd party drivers to get them working on a windows box, but Linux has no issues with them at all.

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TheShadow

ITtech2010 wrote: »

Hey everyone,

Can you please tell me which quad cards I need to purchase for GNS3 that will fit my server? My colleagues and I want to build a CCIE lab and we already purchased the pc. This afternoon we're purchasing the power supply. Today I decided to just install the quad cards and come to find out they do not fit the motherboard.

Any help would be appreciated on purchasing three quad card that will fit this motherboard.

.

You have purchased 64bit PCI cards which is what a true commercial server board of the era would have used.

64-bit PCI slots.jpg

ITtech2010

astrogeek wrote: »

It looks like those cards are a different type of PCI that won't work, this wiki link should help: Conventional PCI - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hopefully those didn't run you too much or you can return them, but I would suggest buying 3 Adaptec quad nics. I built a lab pretty much just like yours and used two ADAPTEC ANA-62044 and one ADAPTEC ANA-64044LV. I don't have the slightest clue what the difference between the 64044LV and 62044 models are, but the LV version was half the price ($20) than the 62044. I haven't noticed any differences in my lab while using them so I'd go with the cheaper ones.

The Adaptec cards are PCI-X so they will have a long piece that hangs over, this won't be a problem as long as there aren't any capacitors or anything on the motherboard in the way. I would recommend using some non-conductive tape on the card where it hangs over though. While building my PC one of them must have touched part of the motherboard and as soon as I plugged the PC in I blew a fuse at my house. Thankfully the card and board weren't harmed though.

As you can see in the picture the motherboard I was using was ancient and I really just wanted to see if it would all work - it did, but eventually the board died and I bought a Dell 2850 server which fits the cards natively.

Here's a couple of shots of the PC I was building with the 3 Adaptec cards in them, sorry I didn't get any better shots of the actual cards though because it's hard to see where they hang over.

**Edit: I forgot to mention that the Adaptec cards are quite old and are not supported by Windows - The server I have now can dual boot into either Ubuntu or Windows 2008 Server and the Windows server doesn't even see these cards - but Ubuntu sees them no problem. There might be some 3rd party drivers to get them working on a windows box, but Linux has no issues with them at all.

Thanks I will try to find those. I forgot to mention that we are installing ubuntu. Like you said Ubuntu should see these as no problem to install. Thanks!

ITtech2010

TheShadow wrote: »

You have purchased 64bit PCI cards which is what a true commercial server board of the era would have used.

My cards are perfect for that board ::sign:: i unfortunately bought the cards at the same time so i could not see what i was working with. Thank you!

ITtech2010

astrogeek wrote: »

It looks like those cards are a different type of PCI that won't work, this wiki link should help: Conventional PCI - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hopefully those didn't run you too much or you can return them, but I would suggest buying 3 Adaptec quad nics. I built a lab pretty much just like yours and used two ADAPTEC ANA-62044 and one ADAPTEC ANA-64044LV. I don't have the slightest clue what the difference between the 64044LV and 62044 models are, but the LV version was half the price ($20) than the 62044. I haven't noticed any differences in my lab while using them so I'd go with the cheaper ones.

The Adaptec cards are PCI-X so they will have a long piece that hangs over, this won't be a problem as long as there aren't any capacitors or anything on the motherboard in the way. I would recommend using some non-conductive tape on the card where it hangs over though. While building my PC one of them must have touched part of the motherboard and as soon as I plugged the PC in I blew a fuse at my house. Thankfully the card and board weren't harmed though.

As you can see in the picture the motherboard I was using was ancient and I really just wanted to see if it would all work - it did, but eventually the board died and I bought a Dell 2850 server which fits the cards natively.

Here's a couple of shots of the PC I was building with the 3 Adaptec cards in them, sorry I didn't get any better shots of the actual cards though because it's hard to see where they hang over.

**Edit: I forgot to mention that the Adaptec cards are quite old and are not supported by Windows - The server I have now can dual boot into either Ubuntu or Windows 2008 Server and the Windows server doesn't even see these cards - but Ubuntu sees them no problem. There might be some 3rd party drivers to get them working on a windows box, but Linux has no issues with them at all.

AstroGeek, which quad cards do you have? It seems the one you have is different from the part numbers i see. I looked up the adaptec cards but it doesn't look like the adaptecs would fit by motherboard. They look like the ones i currently have.

Thanks.

astrogeek

The model numbers I mentioned above are correct, but these are PCI-X cards so they look different than regular PCI cards, however these cards are compatible and will work in a PCI slot. If you look at the motherboard I had in the previous pictures you can see that the PCI slots are the same as yours, this was a really old motherboard so all it had were PCI slots and an AGP slot (yea, that old lol)

I've grabbed a picture online of what the cards look like and pasted an image of a regular PCI slot so you can see how the "teeth" match up.

You can also see the extra piece that doesn't plug into the PCI slot and will hang over. This is the piece I mentioned you might want to tape up to prevent a short if it gets too close to your motherboard. I want to again mention that I only had this setup for a short time - in fact I had it all running for about a day then the motherboard's BIOS died. I didn't have the cards taped up so I don't know if there was a short, or if the board just died from old age - but I ended up buying a server that had 3 PCI-X slots, the PCI-X slots are longer so all of the "teeth" will fit in.

I didn't know any of this when I bought the cards, I just saw their cheap price and bought them before realizing they were PCI-X - which is a slot you won't find in anything other than in servers (at least not 3 of them). These cards do get hot so if you go with them make sure your case has good airflow.

Right now I have the cards installed and cabled up in a Dell 2850, otherwise I'd plug them back into the old motherboard I was using to take better pictures.

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ITtech2010

Thanks Astrogeek. In this case none of the cards would fit this motherboard??

Newegg.com - MSI P67A-C43 (B3) LGA 1155 Intel P67 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard

That's the one my office bought

astrogeek

I think they should fit, the main reason I bought a server after my motherboard died is that most consumer motherboards these days that have 3 PCI slots have a capacitor or the southbridge just to the right of one or two of the PCI slots, so the cards wouldn't fit unless the extra tab was cut off. The motherboard you have looks like nothing would block them, but it's hard to tell unless you have the stuff right in front of you and are connecting them together.

Buying one of the cards to test it out wouldn't be too expensive - you should be able to get the LV version for $20, or you can take a chance and buy all 3. There may be other PCI quad nics out there that will work just as well, but the Adaptec cards are the ones I read about that seemed somewhat popular (and cheap).