Re: [PLUG] Looking to buy new dual-processor system

[Jeff Dean <jdean@ieee.org>]

While this certainly isn't a recent account, it may be of interest to those 
looking at this topic.  About 18 months ago I did a piecemeal system 
myself.  It started when I found a Tyan dual PII-333 board, including 
onboard dual Adaptec ultra-wide SCSI, for about $150.  The Adaptec 
interface is the equivalent of an AHA-3940UW, which was going on the street 
at the time for a little under $400.  This seemed like a very good deal, so 
I bought it (onsale.com).  I had a generic ATAPI CDROM, and added an ATAPI 
Zip-100.  The case is a typical ATX case with some nice easy-access 
features, but I have no idea who made it.  I got two 333s from a little 
house I found on Pricewatch who was willing to bundle fans.  I bought a few 
PC-66 DIMMS and a 2XAGP 16MB card (don't recall which right now) from CDW 
(I think).  I kept my eyes open looking for UWSCSI disks, and found a 
10000RPM IBM drive for about $350 on onsale.com (they're still retailing 
for more than $250 today).  I liked the idea of the faster transfer rate 
running on SCSI, but I pay the penalty in heat.  To handle that I have a 
few extra fans.  I also installed a removable IDE cartridge thingie so I 
can swap in/out disks as needed.  The one piece I had the most trouble 
finding was an internal-to-external UWSCSI adapter for the back of the 
PC.  I wanted to bring one of the two SCSI channels out to the back to use 
with external SCSI-I things, like my DDS-2 tape drive, CD-RW, and 
scanner.  I looked everywhere, but didn't find one until I started asking 
guys at a computer show in KoP, and he had just the part to go with my 
existing cable.  I've had no trouble with the system since assembling it, 
and regularly run Linux with two SETI@home processes (one for each CPU), 
VMWare with Win98, etc. etc. etc.

jd

At 05:03 PM 9/14/00 -0400, you wrote:
> I would be interested in seeing what specificly people have done. In
> other words, I'd love to see some stories that might be
> reproducible. ("I bought this component here for this price, this
> there for that much, etc.")

jdean@ieee.org


______________________________________________________________________
Philadelphia Linux Users Group       -      http://www.phillylinux.org
Announcements-http://lists.phillylinux.org/mail/listinfo/plug-announce
General Discussion  -  http://lists.phillylinux.org/mail/listinfo/plug