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Grex > Coop8 > #35: Grex long-range budget meeting for Sunday, March 24 | |
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| 20 new of 94 responses total. |
ajax
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response 75 of 94:
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Mar 29 18:41 UTC 1996 |
I was putting together a revised price comparison, and looked in
some motherboard manuals for PC power consumption. Only one listed
such data. It's for an older "typical configuration", and while it
doesn't list the specific 486 type, the motherboard was for 486-SX
25 MHz to 486-DX4 100 MHz (so at worst it's for an SX 25).
486, 4MB RAM, 256k cache, svga card, keyboard, mouse: 12.5W
120MB IDE hard drive: 3.5W
VGA monitor: 46W
(Not that we'd be using these last two....)
It doesn't say the power supply with fan are included in the power
measurement, but that's probably not a big power draw. Do these
numbers sound believable? If so, shall we guess a 486-40 with
32MB to use 25W? I'd guess they used four 1MB SIMMs, while we'd
probably use eight 4MB or four 8MB SIMMs, plus SCSI & net cards.
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rcurl
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response 76 of 94:
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Mar 29 20:34 UTC 1996 |
Speaking of "with fan" - now is the time to get and install an air
circulation fan for the dungeon, in preparation for summer. I don't know
if the Sun 4 generates more heat than the Sun 3, but won't there be other
additional equipment and a larger power consumption than last year?
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steve
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response 77 of 94:
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Mar 29 23:01 UTC 1996 |
There will be more, but not by a lot. This is not to say that
we don't have to do the work on installing the fan system, becuase
we do. Thanks for beinging it up again.
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nephi
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response 78 of 94:
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Mar 31 07:44 UTC 1996 |
Based on the troubles that my boss says he's had with our newsserver, I'd have
to vehemently agree with STeve and Greg. AccessUS started with all Intel
hardware, because it appeared cheaper, but it proved to be unacceptably
unreliable. Now, we are piece by piece replacing all our hardware with Sun
stuff.
Additionally, I should caution you to avoid Linux like the plague for the
news server. Ours is constantly crashing and "throttling" because of
instability in the OS. My boss spends a large percentage of his day just
babysitting the darned thing.
Also, I believe that some of you are underestimating how much of a chore news
is for a network nowadays. There's a tremendous amount of news for a news
server to keep up with -- over 25 thousand newsgroups. To keep just two
days worth of news requires 4GB of disk.
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tsty
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response 79 of 94:
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Mar 31 08:44 UTC 1996 |
WARNING - setting HERETIC MODE on
(please understant that this is simply for argument's sake, ok?)
Micro$oft is coming to town this Wednesday with their new NT 4.0
server OS, and included optins underneath. Ok, so I'm the regional
coordinator and AACS is doing this at Mendelssohn Theatre at 730pm.
Given that current stuation, how valuable would it be for staff/baff/borg
to drop on by and pose some pointly direct questions to the MS ppl
who are showing off this upgraded OS as it *might* apply to our news
machine selection?
The other reason i suggest this is because our usual attendance of
40-90 is *expectd* to bloom to 650, and, frankly i'm slightly in
pre-panic mode that AACS won't fill the place. CAEN just pronounced that
they have now installed NT 3.51 .... and here is 4.0, with free betas for
the asking.
And you get a nifty tour-t-shirt and a few chances to win raffle stuff.
Oh, and a Compaq P6 machine is also a raffle prize .... after teh
whole tour is over.o
<toasty can see a compaq p6 machine as teh Grex newsserver ....uh-huh ...
running FreeBSD ...right. > oh, well.
.
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ajax
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response 80 of 94:
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Mar 31 15:41 UTC 1996 |
TS, I can't think of a worse measure of an O/S than asking its sales
people how it performs. "How often does it crash?" "Oh, never, it's
rock solid!" "Has MS rescinded its non-compliance with ITF protocol
standards?" "Uh, well, uh...let me get back to you on that one." :-)
I put together some price estimates given newer information. This
assumes the news machine would be on a UPS, which it might not be.
I'm using $12.50/meg for memory, though I think it could be found for
less (4 meg SIMMs are under $12, but we'd probably need 8-16 meg SIMMs).
25W for PC power is based on the manual reference above. I also saw
some slimline PC cases have 60W power supplies, so it's probably a
reasonable guess. Sun 4 boards are $100 from Case Electronics.
PC Sun
-- ---
32MB 72-pin SIMMs $400 Sun 4 motherboard $100
486DLC-40 ISA w/CPU $58 Added UPS ability ~$100
Adaptec SCSI $89 Added cooling? (omitted)
25W @ .11/kwh ~~$24/yr 290W @ .11/kwh $279/yr
UPS power 10%?? ~~~$2/yr UPS power ~~~$28/yr
If we needed to add another 32 megs of RAM (for a total of 64MB):
32MB 72-pin SIMMs $400 Sun 4 32MB card ~~$200
Power ~~~5/yr Power $60/yr
(~ = approximate, ~~ = within factor of two, ~~~ = total guess)
So the two year cost for the systems with the above estimates would be:
PC Sun
w/32 megs $599 ($523 + 2*$26) $814 ($200 + 2*$307)
w/64 megs $1009 $1134
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nephi
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response 81 of 94:
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Mar 31 17:51 UTC 1996 |
So what it comes down to is a $125 difference?
Is it worth $125 to have an almost hot-swappable spare Grex?
Is it worth $125 to spare STeve the aggravation of having to constantly baby
sit the news server?
Is it worth $125 to have a news server that we can count on?
$125 over two years. That amounts to five dollars a month, or about fifty
cents per Gryps crash.
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srw
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response 82 of 94:
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Mar 31 21:16 UTC 1996 |
It's not practical to plan for the costs over more than a two-year period.
My pro-intel bias was based almost entirely on the electrical costs.
I really did not think the sun would run with 32MB on only 290W.
Even though that is a lot, I thought it was much higher.
We seriously need to move away from this VME architecture in the long run
because of power consumption and heat generation reasons.
I guess it won't happen just yet.
I don't think we are being very smart with our money, spending it all on
services. This feeling will not go away, but I'll yield.
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gregc
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response 83 of 94:
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Mar 31 22:36 UTC 1996 |
That's a fairly nice analysis Ajax, the only problem with your numbers
is your 25watt estimate for the 386machine. That's just *way* too low.
You can't just add up the low-voltage DC watts that each component uses,
becuase there is always heat/efficiency losses in the power supply, plus
a minimum amount that the PS is going to use for it's own purposes.
I suspect that a standard AT 250watt power supply will use about 20watts
of power all by itself with nothing attached. You have to measure the
final AC power to get something reasonable.
The other item to think about is that even if we did go with an AT based
News server, we would still probably buy another 4/200 CPU as a spare for
Grex. We *really* need to have that board. If our current board were to
fail, we would really be up a creek. So that takes the differnce down to
$25.00.
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steve
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response 84 of 94:
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Apr 1 01:23 UTC 1996 |
Nephi, I'm not surprised at that your boos found out. Lots of others
have found that out the hard way, too.
TS, I'm willing to go to the Dog & Pony show that MS is giving
out, but I don't expect to get anything really solid out of it.
It just isn't worth it, moving to yet another platform (software)
to handle news, *espically* one as suspect as Windows-anything.
250W AT power supplies draw about 23w in power on idle, at least
the good ones do. I measured a bunch of them a couple of years
ago. They were in the range of wanting 9% of ther rated capacity
when idle. So the AT box is going to draw more than 25w--more like
80 to 100W.
Steve (srw), keep this in mind: things like SparcStation 1's and 2's
are getting cheaper every month. I daresay that within a year to 18
months we could jump off the VME chassis for the news server and move
stuff over to a Sparcstation 2. That won't ever work for the main Grex
machine (not designed for multi-user work), but it will make a very
attractive path for things like news, mail and kerberos machines.
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scg
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response 85 of 94:
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Apr 1 04:11 UTC 1996 |
I haven't played with NT 4.0 at all. NT 3.51 isn't worth using, for Grex's
purposes. It's got some nice features, but it just isn't Unix.
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srw
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response 86 of 94:
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Apr 1 05:54 UTC 1996 |
I can't understand why we would want a sparcstation for kerberos, when we
could use an AT. Kerberos is not a demanding service.
Actually my preference is to see Marcus start with one of the ATs we have ,
configuring it as a Kerberos server.
I certainly would favor a Sparcstation over a VME chassis. To retrofit news
to such a machine, we'd have to compare the cost with the power difference,
and decide if the payout was short enough. I had been hoping we could bypass
the need for that by starting with a low-power-consumption machine.
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dang
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response 87 of 94:
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Apr 1 06:45 UTC 1996 |
What would your suggested pricerange for a SPARCstation 1+ be? Here at
Hope, we're upgrading all our 1+'s to 5's and 10's, and so Jipping is
selling the ones off. It's possible that one of htem might go to Grex.
I don't know what his price ranges are either, I'll ask tomorrow.
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tsty
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response 88 of 94:
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Apr 1 08:16 UTC 1996 |
good, steve, i'l look for you Wed evening ... and in fact ajax too! I can't
think of a BETTER place to pop in a critical, forcing question than in
an theatre setting, sales-ppl or no. I do hope tha MS has enough
experience with these sorts of things to send someone with more than
a sales-pitch mentality! GAwd, that would be horrid!
And CAEN broadcast that they were now on 3.51 .. and i sent my friend,
the editor, the AACS release....she replied that there might be some
CAEN sorts decending to Mendelssohn, if they are intersted.
ajax, i also like your analysis and I most certainly would WANT you
to ASK that question about non-compliance with the ITF protocol!
(side note, a salesppl alone with you is a danger ... a salesppl fielding
random questions from,a nd in front of, a large audience better have
it together, imnsho.)
Also note that there is an evaluation form everyone receives so that
the entire evening can be critiqued .. it's also the form for getting
the beta, if you want one, and probably the same form for the P6
machine raffle. Bring a pen ....
set HERETIC MODE off and DRIFT OFF ...
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steve
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response 89 of 94:
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Apr 1 15:13 UTC 1996 |
Steve, at some point sparcstations will become cheap enough that
won't make sense not to use them. Although this is older technology
which we aren't using, Sun-3/50's and 60's can be had *for under $100*.
No memory, no disk, no monitor. But we don't need a monitor, memory
isn't that expensive and both memory and disk are needed for either
box, anyway.
Greg and I have been stripped down sparc station 1's in the area
of $500. I know they're cheaper now. It isn't going to be that long
before they're in the general price range of 3/50's.
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ajax
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response 90 of 94:
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Apr 1 16:51 UTC 1996 |
I was uncertain about AT power consumption, that's why I asked
about it a couple days before in this item; no response then, though.
I looked into SPARCstation 1's a bit too. The price for barebones
SS1s from Case Electronics is $300, and SS1+s are $350...better deals
occasionally pop up from non-dealers. It seems to me, since Grex
wants a spare 4/200, it makes sense to try news on that system. Once
we know whether 32 megs is adequate or not, it would make deciding
when to switch to a SIMM-based machine easier. (Not that SIMMs are
the reason to switch, but anything we'd likely switch to uses SIMMs,
and memory will probably cost more than the rest of the computer).
If 32 megs is enough, then I think sometime within a year (as prices
drop), it will make fiscal sense to switch systems.
One oddity in memory prices of late is that new 72-pin SIMMs have
been dropping a few percent per week, but the older 4+ meg 30-pin
SIMMs are lagging a bit...both new and used are pricier than new
72-pin SIMMs. By the way, new 16MB 72-pin SIMMs are selling for
$200 ($12.50 a meg) now.
Would any cards be needed on a bare (case, power supply, motherboard)
SS1 or 1+? How many SIMM slots do they have? Do they take 4MB SIMMs?
One other factor to consider in a two-year analysis of costs is
major equipment costs like SIMMs will probably still be worth a bit
(if memory is $4 a meg in two years, that would be $256 for 64M),
while power costs just go up in smoke.
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dang
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response 91 of 94:
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Apr 1 19:21 UTC 1996 |
Well, I talked to Jipping about our SS1+'s, and he said thatthey are
getting rid of 2 this year, and two next year, and I'm the third person
on the list. There's also a possibility thathe could get a few more
elsewhere. He siad he usually sells them for under $500 with monitor,
and around $350 without it, varying with memory and disk. That estimate,
and most of the machines are this way, is for a 1+ with 16 MB and 1/2 gig
of disk. I think I'll stay on the list, even if Grex doesn't want it,
because then I'll take it. :)
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steve
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response 92 of 94:
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Apr 1 19:36 UTC 1996 |
Yes Rob, Grex definitely needs a spare 4/200 card, and we already
have everything else (except disk) for the news machine so at this
point it doesn't make sense to jump to a ss1. But it will in time.
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scott
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response 93 of 94:
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Apr 1 22:03 UTC 1996 |
I'd like to announce that we have gotten our new modems for Grex, but we are
working thru some compatilibity issues with the updated model that we got.
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tsty
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response 94 of 94:
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Apr 3 23:22 UTC 1996 |
Fyi : regarding tonight's meting ... i had Tom Phillips dialing
in to Grex about an hour ago ...761-3000 ... but the phone wouldn
pick up. He was (and will be) at Mendelssohn tonight: Here is
what MS sent us about tonight's presenters ...
Subject: Double Presenters
Date: Wed, 3 Apr 1996 10:18:14 -0800
X-Mailer: Microsoft Exchange Server Internet Mail Connector Version 4.0.837.3
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Status: R
Just wanted to let you know that Tom Phillips will be doing the
presentation in tandem with Dave Sawyer. Both are Architectural
Engineers, and Tom is a veteran speaker on the Tour, so you should be in
for a treat. Kevin Phaup, program manager, will also be there to answer
all of your program management questions. So, I think that you can
definitely say that there will be some knowledgeable people in the
house!
Francesca
... hope to see yah here ... he was going to answer ajax's question
on line, but alas ... no asnwer.
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