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Re: Dell workstation offer on BALUG's hardware list



On Sunday, February 14, 2021 at 6:41:13 PM UTC-8 rick wrote:
Quoting goossbears (acoh...@gmail.com):

> Am offering to give away a Dell Precision T5400 desktop tower Workstation
> PC (system box only).
> Listing is at the bottom of Michael P's/BALUG's Offered/Wanted: Hardware,
> etc. wikipage
> https://www.wiki.balug.org/wiki/doku.php?id=balug:offered_wanted_hardware_etc
> Note that email listing is using my SDF.org address for correspondence.

BTW, am giving away the Precision T5400 thru the BALUG HW venue for both selfish (S)
and unselfish (U) reasons as follows .......
S1: This unneeded tower clunker is quite heavy and takes up a bit of space.
S2: Do not wish to put more money into upgrading the Precision T5400, e.g., with
more RAM or SSD drive(s), as per Rick M's suggestions below.
S3: By listing it via a LUG, can reduce such frequently-asked questions as "What
is Linux?"/"What is this Debian Linux?", "Can I also install Windows on this PC?",
"How do I use the Linux and Open Source Software already installed on the
computer?", ... etcetera :-\

U1: It certainly is "a pretty sweet premium-workstation-class box, circa 2007" that
am hoping someone else can benefit from by "paying it forward" for Tom L's
generous donation last week of the Lenovo desktop -- for which I'm still grateful :-)
U2: Should whoever takes the Precision T5400 decide to max out the RAM with
"eight 4GB ECC sticks, total 32GB", then am hoping that the taker will wish to further
"pay it forward" by donating the pre-installed and unneeded DDR2 667 MHz ECC RAM
sticks to Michael P in order to "Help upgrade hardware BALUG & SF-LUG runs on
regularly but not most of the time" as per the very first wanted listing at
https://www.wiki.balug.org/wiki/doku.php?id=balug:offered_wanted_hardware_etc
:-)

-Aaron


Further quoting rick <rick at linuxmafia.com> ...
In case people are not adept at reading about hardware, this is a pretty
sweet premium-workstation-class box, circa 2007. The 8GB of ECC RAM is
particuarly impressive for the era. Expandability is medium-good
(again, for its era): It has two PCI-E (8 GB/s) slots and some USB 2.0
ports, An guessing that you add RAM in banks of four matched sticks
(eight sockets, and I assume they're currently each occupied by a 1GB
stick of DDR2 (aka PC2-5300) fully-buffered 667MHz 240-pin 1.8 volt ECC
SDRAM DIMMs.

(Specs note that "NOTICE: Full-length heat spreaders (FLHS) are required
for all DIMMS.) RAM for this motherboard _must_ be ECC, fully buffered
DDR2 sticks marketed for servers. You cannot used 'regular" desktop DDR2 memory.
And I take it they're serious about the heat spreaders.

In these cases, one question I always ponder is 'If I wanted to max out
system RAM (which in this case is eight 4GB ECC sticks, total 32GB), how
much would it cost?' Why? Because in my experience, the most important
limiting factor for effective service life is usually RAM capacity. You
find yourself say 'Damn, I wish I had more RAM' long before you say that
about CPU grunt or I/O capacity.

Answer: $60 + tax plus shipping. Example:
https://www.amazon.com/Komputerbay-FB-DIMM-DDR2-PC2-2RX4-240-Pin-Heatspreaders/dp/B005HIWD5U

If you do that and put a cheap SSD SATA or SAS) into this thing you
might be happy for most of this decade without new-and-shiny envy.

Anyway, a box that was really good 14 years ago, available for free
today, is IMO excellent and still useful.

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