[KLUG Members] Re: New machine - Linux hardware?

[Adam Williams]

>>As big as possible.
>"Big" is not always "better."  The _most_important_ rating on a
>power supply is the 3.3+5V rating.  AMD maintains a good list of
>"Athlon Approved" power supplies, which include the all-important
>3.3+5V rating here:
>http://www1.amd.com/athlon/power

I was referring to the case.  I lust after one of those two power supply
fifteen drive bay double wide monster cased.  Too bad they cost more
than the rest of my computer combined.

>>More drives the better.  If you use IDE stick to one drive per bus. SCSI
>>is cheap these days and will maintain performance while you saturate the
>>processors compiling OpenOffice.
>With UltraDMA, ATA/IDE is fine for single-user workstations.  No
>sense in going SCSI and it can be slower for such purposes.  If you
>need ultra-performance, you'd be surprised how good ATA/IDE-RAID is
>using _real_ RAID controllers like the 3Ware Escalade with its
>on-board microcontroller (so it looks like a SCSI target from the
>system/OS perspective).  They Escalade cards start at just over
>$100.  There was a recent review on the Escalade 6000-series (the
>7000 is now out), the Adaptec 2400A and the Promise SuperTrak (not
>the software-BS "FastTrak"):
>http://www.zepa.net/hypermail/elug/hardware/2001/06/0028.html

I've looked at IDE Raid devices and for the same controller cost I can
get a very nice SCSI Raid controller. SCSI has other advantages as well:
more devices per bus, more types of devices, and external devices and
cabinets. IBM ServerRAID III triple-channel PCI cards with PowerPC
processor and cache memory sell on E-bay for less than $100, and they
FLY!!!!

On E-Bay I got an eight bay drive tower with fans and redundant power
supplies for ~$100.  This is great for both expanded capacity and heat
management (the drives aren't in the case, at least not all of them
anyway).

Also (this is ancedotal), in my experience, my IDE drives have a
drastically shorter average life span than their SCSI equivalent,
althought they are supposed to be the same physical drive unit.

>SCSI starts kicking in at a half-dozen processes, which is great for
>servers or A/V workstations.  Linux (as well as NT/2000/XP, although

In my experience a power user with a powerful box can reach this point
quite easily.  But it all depends on what you do.  If your a compiling,
number crunching, SQL query-ing fool then IDE, to put it bluntly,
stinks.

>>hitechcafe.com and compgeeks.com always have a supply Fujitsu and IBM
>>drivers,  buy no other brands.  Nothing will ruin your day like a flaked
>>out drive (except flaked out memory).  I can reliably bake a PC brand
>>hard drive in six months, Best Buy started to get real annoyed with me.
>The "only way to be sure" with HiTechCafe is to call them.  I've had
>web-based orders get lost with them.  You have to "nag" them to get
>answers (and usually wait for days).
>CompGeeks is, for the most part, good (although a billing snafu too
>2 months to straighten out with them once).  They are very good on
>returns though.

I've had multiple (I loose count) transactions with both companies and 
had no problems with either.  But obviously YMMV.

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Ximian GNOME, Evolution, LTSP, and RedHat Linux + LVM & XFS
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