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| Author |
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| 25 new of 547 responses total. |
cross
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response 27 of 547:
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Feb 27 18:53 UTC 2003 |
I think buying hardware now is wise.
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steve
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response 28 of 547:
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Feb 28 00:31 UTC 2003 |
Here is the second cute of the list. Sorry I'm so
late.
Approximate cost of a $2000 i386 Athlon box
--STeve 2/27/03
Here is the second cut of Grex's future hardware.
Quality always wins out over price. Given the state
of the world of computers at the moment, spending
extra makes sense. The amounts listed here are pretty
accurate, but things change.
Here is a short description of each item.
CPU - We want an Athlon over a Pentium. There are lots
of reasons for this; the easiest is that they simply
perform better. Given the cost differences, getting
the fastest one possible is reasonable.
Motherboard - We want two motherboards. Why? If the
motherboard fails we'll have an exact duplicate, and
be able to get back online *knowing* that we have
the same exact motherboard. Several times now, I have
been bitten by "small" changes in motherboards, ie
small revs on the artwork, etc that have made some
noticeable difference in the operation of the computer.
For $145 extra its an excellent investment. The other
parts, ram, disk controller, etc aren't nearly as
persnickety; we can get more of those on a demand
basis.
Ram - Ram is *cheap*. Having hordes of ram means that
we won't run out, and can work on some optimizations
like keeping binaries in ram disks, etc.
Box/power supply - THIS IS IMPORTANT. The power supply
is one of these overlooked thins which all too often
is of dismal quality. Antec goes against the grain
and still builds good power supplies. Spending half
this amount for a cheaper box is definitely possible
but is not reasonable.
Misc case fans - Heat is the killer of systems. I want
to be able to get several extra fans and over-engineer
the machine. It's cheap.
NIC - OpenBSD likes the intel nics. I've had excellent
results with them. This is a 100Mbit card. If we go to
1G, we'll have to do some research on this, and spend
more money. Good 1G cards cost a lot more than garden
variety ones do, so I'm assuming 100Mbit at this time.
SCSI card - We want SCSI over IDE for our main disks.
The card listed is a ultra 160 speed card. We want to
try and go with an Ultra 320 system if possible. This
is the biggest unknown for me at this time. The card
listed is Ultra 160, not a slouch.
Floppy/CD-rom - standard items; I like Sony stuff.
SCSI disk - I like IBM disks; when kept cool they are
excellent disks. These are Ultra 320 disks.
IDE disk - Perhaps not needed. This would be very
useful for file storage, such as /usr/local/src and
other things that we don't use often.
Monitor - I am really beginning to hate most of the
monitors out there. The viewsonic is OK and not too
pricy.
Keyabord - generic keyboard, perhaps found for less.
Misc items - Those things like cable wraps, cables,
etc.
Item Price Source Comments
CPU - Athlon XP 2500 $180 Newegg
motherboard $145 Newegg
motherboard $145 Newegg
RAM 512m $89ea $300 Crucial 3 512M, at $100ea
antec box/ps $250 Antec
misc case fans, etc $100 Antec
NIC Intel 100mbit $ 33 Newegg
SCSI card adap 29160 $194 Newegg
floppy (sony) $ 18 Newegg
CD-rom Sony, 48x $ 51 Newegg
SCSI disk ibm 18G $142 Newegg Ultra 160 15K rpm!
IDE disk IBM 80G $ 98 Newegg
misc items $150 misc
sub-total $1948
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cross
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response 29 of 547:
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Feb 28 03:48 UTC 2003 |
One question about the disk subsystem; why not go with a SCSI RAID
card, and do hardware RAID? OpenBSD supports quite a few RAID controllers
these days, and a RAID 5 setup would be a good investment.
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rheaumea
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response 30 of 547:
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Feb 28 06:24 UTC 2003 |
I would recommend Tyan or Asus boards I have always had very good luke
with them in the past.
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rheaumea
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response 31 of 547:
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Feb 28 06:24 UTC 2003 |
hahah luke=luck
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mdw
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response 32 of 547:
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Feb 28 10:10 UTC 2003 |
The pumpkin doesn't have any exterior walls. Cutting a hole in the
wall is only going to get us into somebody else's space.
I don't think we've had any other drives die from dust. So Scott may
very likely be right that this was mostly dust from a previous life.
While the space isn't ideal, I think it's far from the deathtrap some
people here seem to assume.
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cross
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response 33 of 547:
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Feb 28 16:14 UTC 2003 |
One can only go with what one's been told. Having never seen the space
myself, I can't really judge except by what others have said. From what
others have said, it runs too hot during the summer. Perhaps newer
hardware will fix that; I really don't know.
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mdw
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response 34 of 547:
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Feb 28 16:48 UTC 2003 |
I think we have pictures up on the web somewhere.
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remmers
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response 35 of 547:
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Feb 28 17:14 UTC 2003 |
http://www.wwnet.net/~janc/grextech/pumpkin/
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cross
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response 36 of 547:
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Feb 28 20:05 UTC 2003 |
I wasn't aware that those pictures conveyed the sense of ambient heat in
the room.
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jep
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response 37 of 547:
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Feb 28 20:18 UTC 2003 |
re resp:28: STeve, you only listed 1 SCSI drive. Doesn't Grex want two?
$51 for a CD ROM sounds like a lot to me. I'll bet any number of us
have one or more around that Grex can have for free. Same with floppy
drives. Is there any disadvantage to getting such items donated?
Neither would be used often.
You didn't list a price for a monitor. Isn't that another item Grex
could easily get donated? I'm assuming few people use the console for
anything other than booting the computer. I wouldn't expect Grex would
even require a color monitor, if a mono VGA one can be had any more.
My point is that this is one more place Grex doesn't need to spend any
money.
No arguments on such "invisible" parts as fans, power supply and
memory; the things no one will ever notice unless there are problems.
It is not possible to have too much or too good of such things.
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cross
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response 38 of 547:
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Feb 28 20:21 UTC 2003 |
Hey, while you're at it, why not get a PCI multi-port serial I/O card
and ditch the terminal server? They're only a couple of hundred dollars.
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drew
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response 39 of 547:
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Feb 28 21:37 UTC 2003 |
Re cooling: Is there anything *below* the pumpkin? ISTR it's in the basement.
Maybe the floor can be used as a heat sink, if one is really needed.
Definitely get RAM, double whatever you planned to get. And make sure the
motherboards can handle as much as possible. A 32 bit processor should be able
to directly address 4 gigabytes.
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keesan
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response 40 of 547:
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Mar 1 00:14 UTC 2003 |
Steve likes new parts and he is putting in the actual time. We offered TWO
40X CD-ROM drives and we have several high-quality floppy drives which he
turned down. I would not try to argue with his personal preferences
considering he is the one going to be doing the work. Make him happy,
it might get the new grex built sooner.
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russ
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response 41 of 547:
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Mar 1 01:19 UTC 2003 |
Something to budget for might be some flanges to attach to equipment
fan outlets, and flexible tubing (dryer hose) to duct exhaust air
from equipment to whatever passage carries air out of the Pumpkin.
Probably wouldn't be more than about fifty bucks.
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keesan
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response 42 of 547:
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Mar 1 01:22 UTC 2003 |
Again this would mean a hole in someone else's wall. If grex is surrounced
by air conditioned offices, it might be sufficient just to reduce the amount
of heat generated.
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steve
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response 43 of 547:
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Mar 1 03:07 UTC 2003 |
Heating is not going to be a major issue. The Sun-4/670 monster
consumes several hundred watts of power and uses 35w SCSI disks.
The new system will be at least 100w less than that (more like 200w
I'll bet) and uses disks which will eat less than 10w of power.
The Pumpkin isn't great, but its certainly no worse than the
Dungeon was, and actually better than Ken's warehouse was. With
fans at the side of the case we'll be OK. The heat that we won't
dissipate with the new hardware will make us cooler, too. I
think we need to worry over the power more than heat, and we
have the Leibert UPS for that. All in all I'm pretty happy with
the physical condition of the pumpkin.
As for random hardware peices, I'm willing to use things like
donated monitors and keyboards, because if they fail the system
won't be affected. Things like CD drives are a different matter.
We need to get good NEW equipment here. Moving onto a new
platform is a major effort for Grex staff, and I simply do not
want to skimp on anything. For one thing, PC equipment is now
just about commodity stuff. It isn't that expensive, and while
finding high quality stuff can be a little drustrating at times,
it's out there. The second and more important reason to be
picky about things is to try and prevent every kind of hardware
failure that we can. Getting used equipment is more of a gamble
and more prone to failures. I could supply Grex with everything
but an Athlon and motherboard, but Grex really doesn't want to
go the cheap route. We're going to do this the right way.
The CD drive might not be a little used item, too. There
are schemes that we will investigate where we may boot off
the CD, and having that fail would not be good.
So it isn't a case of making me happy, but building a
system that is as reliable as possible. These days is means
building it yourself, using the best possible parts. Grex
has never used inferior equipment, and it shows. Our Sun-4/670
is a marvelous beast. I can only hope that our i386 platform
will be as reliable as that has been.
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jep
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response 44 of 547:
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Mar 1 04:34 UTC 2003 |
But STeve, getting things working is what *makes* you happy! I'd
assumed the CD ROM would only be used for installation and then never
used again. I don't mind Grex spending money on anything that will
make any difference. I understand your goals, and support them.
This is going to be a single CPU? No firewalls or mail servers? I
know little about either of those things, but am curious as to why.
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keesan
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response 45 of 547:
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Mar 1 16:07 UTC 2003 |
If there were TWO floppy drives and one failed you would have a backup. Are
two currently good used ones as good as or better than one new one?
I have never had a floppy drive fail and I use mine constantly. But we have
been given machines with bad drives.
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cross
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response 46 of 547:
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Mar 1 16:41 UTC 2003 |
Regarding #45; This isn't 1987 anymore; grex isn't going to store data
on floppies.
A floppy drive is about 10 bucks; a CD-ROM about 30. That's not going
to break the bank, so why bother worrying about it?
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keesan
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response 47 of 547:
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Mar 1 17:49 UTC 2003 |
Steve's figures were actually about double that. But I am seriously
suggesting that two used drives would give more reliability than one new one
- put them both in the machine and you have a backup that does not require
opening up the case. Same for CD-ROM drives, build with two of them. Or does
this complicate the software?
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steve
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response 48 of 547:
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Mar 1 18:57 UTC 2003 |
Sindi, you aren't getting what I'm going for here. I want the
next hardware to be as reliable as I can make it. I *don't* want
to have a backup for something because I think I'll need it; we
will have a backup for the motherboard because of its unique nature
in the list of hardware. I want to get equipment which is new, that
we can break/burn in, and have the highest factor of confidence in.
If we start using used parts here and there, we might be OK. It's
certainly possible that nothing would go wrong, etc. But if I can
get new parts for a piece of Grex which increases its reliability
then its the right thing to do.
You'll notice that I omitted the keyboard and monitor from the
list of things to buy. This is because of either fail, they won't
affect the running of Grex immediately. We can boot the system up
without a monitor (indeed, nost of my OpenBSD machine have only
had a monitor on them during the initial install and upgrades),
and we have spare keyboards in the pumpkin already. So those
are of a nature where a failure means we have to drag something
over to Grex and use that instead.
But other components--including a CD and floppy--are different.
Those may not be used a lot, but when they do need to be used,
there is a fairly high chance that they are really critical. And,
if we adopt a system where Grex boots off the CD, that becomes
even more critical.
The bottom line here is that Grex needs to run as well as it
possibly can. We don't have a full-time staff to work on things.
Any real disaster means that someone is going to spend quality
emergency time working on the system rather than sleeping, working,
or living their life, and I'd like to see that be a minimum. By
using the Sun-4/670 we've done about as well as possible. We have
a commercial quality system in terms of its reliability, and I'd
like to see us keep that level of on the new hardware.
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steve
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response 49 of 547:
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Mar 1 19:02 UTC 2003 |
As for having two floppies in the unit, that just atrikes me
as "wrong". If something like a floppy, which costs so little
is seen as being untrustworthy, it makes more sense to me to buy
a good one. Again, the idea here is to do it "right". Grex may
be a hobby, but a large number of people see Grex as a utility.
We should not cur corners when we do something right. The one
large advantage of the i386 platform is that most parts are
fairly cheap. We have the possibility of doing things pretty
well for not a huge sum of money, so I want to do that.
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drew
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response 50 of 547:
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Mar 2 23:56 UTC 2003 |
Consider booting from compact flash? I *think* I've seen a 512K one at Best
Buy for not *too* much.
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russ
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response 51 of 547:
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Mar 3 04:08 UTC 2003 |
I would suggest a removable IDE bay.
IDE, because it's cheap.
Removable, because big IDE drives are downright cheap these days
and we could use the same bays for doing backups. Just dd copies
of the other partitions to the removable, and take it home for
off-site security.
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