Got my new system together....

[Glenn B]

Finally the last piece got here today.
Here is a screen shot for those in to PC's:
http://www.glenn.baker.name/screenshot.jpg
Glenn

 

[Rev Den]

u suck.




Rev

 

[Glenn B]

u suck.




Rev

 

[Markm80521]

Glenn,

What do you do with that? That is amazing power! I have about half that i've strung together through various bits and pieces for a music composition/editing box as well as CAD designs. Something like that would yawn at it. Do you run it as a server?

Mark

 

[Glenn B]

Glenn,

What do you do with that? That is amazing power! I have about half that i've strung together through various bits and pieces for a music composition/editing box as well as CAD designs. Something like that would yawn at it. Do you run it as a server?

Mark

Thanks.
I do not use it as a server.... my web servers are Dual Xeons. What do I do with it? Aside from web browsing and email, I do tinker with some video/audio file compression/conversion (mostly Helix Producer, but doing some Windows Media), and I tinker with Photoshop and Dreamweaver Studio MX. Still learning that stuff, and need to learn a whole bunch more flash. When I am encoding video, or streaming, it tends to really use the CPU.

Most of my work is done with FTP, and SSH while managing the Web Hosting gig. None of these alone tend to require too much power, but I tend to be doing way too many things at once, and dragging previous builds down to a crawl.

This box started as an Athlon 800. Over the last couple years, it grew from that into an Athlon XP 2000, and now up to Intel power. I have not been able to really choke this newest build, so that makes me happy. I sit at this thing anywhere from 10-14 hours a day, so it was a good treat for me. Of course, I am never happy, so I try to squeek as much performance out as I can.... usually getting me in trouble at some point.

I just gotta keep the wife away. Hers is a 450 AMD, and I think she would steal mine if she tried it. I am going to upgrade here to the Athlon 2000 I removed from this one, but need to pick her up a new case first, as the Motherboard will not git in her current case.

I do love to tinker.
Glenn

 

[Markm80521]

I here ya. Computers are a blast. My main box is a 2000 xp with a gig of ddr. I do ALOT with music and probably have about 20 gigs in mp3 format cataloged so far. I have turntables attached as well so it can be a blast. I do a lot of composition for a friend of mines dance company and good stuff like that. I also have a 80 gig drive in my jeep so I throw a lot of skip free tunes in her.

The other random parts have built my girlfriends box and I just ran cat 5 out to my detached garage when I ran a subpanel so I've got the older stuff in there as more of a internet appliance.

I can see how you were bogging stuff down before with video encoding though... congrats on the new machine!

Mark

 

[Glenn B]

Thanks.
I need to get better at the Video stuff, but it is nice to not be able to blame my deficiencies on the machine.

There are a couple things I could have done better. My ram is only PC2700, and "no name" brand. Had I spent a little more money, I could run my ram in Dual Channel. Since I already had 512M from the AMD, I just stuck with that when I got another 512 stick. I just could not justify more money right now.

My hard drives are (2) Maxtor 40GB 7200rpm. The new ASUS motherboard can do Serial ATA, so I may look in to that when I need to replace or add drives.

Man, I wish I had my old album collection... converting that stuff to mp3 would have been cool. 80gb drive in the Jeep? Nice! Tell me more....
Glenn

 

[Tucker]

Totally awesome. Sandra marks off the scale, sheesh.

I'm so green I'm about ready to sprout.

(yeah, I said that)

Congrats!

 

[FitchVA]

grrr you make me sick

 

[ChiXJeff]

<grin> I may not be running 2.4gHz procs........</grin>

But the Linux machine on my desk is 2 1/2 years old, running dual 800s, a half gig of RAM......... and 3 different SCSI channels. The primary is Ultra160 with 3 drives.

 

[Glenn B]

<grin> I may not be running 2.4gHz procs........</grin>

But the Linux machine on my desk is 2 1/2 years old, running dual 800s, a half gig of RAM......... and 3 different SCSI channels. The primary is Ultra160 with 3 drives.

Yeah, I looked at SCSI, but the newer IDE drives, and the MOBO options.... made it prohibative. Would have loved to gone all the way.

BTW, what linux distro? I usually use RH 7.3
Glenn

 

[ChiXJeff]

SuSE 8.0 Pro. Probably going to get 9.0 in December. Not sure if I'm going to stick with SuSE after the Novell acquisition, though.

I can run a MUCH slower CPU with the SCSI and get better throughput. Besides, it's also running a Sony 8x4x32 CD-R, a Nakamichi 7 disc 4x changer, a Minolta Dimage Dual film scanner, and a DEC TZ877 7 slot DLT2000 tape drive.

I dare ya to do that with IDE........

 

[Glenn B]

SuSE 8.0 Pro. Probably going to get 9.0 in December. Not sure if I'm going to stick with SuSE after the Novell acquisition, though.

I can run a MUCH slower CPU with the SCSI and get better throughput. Besides, it's also running a Sony 8x4x32 CD-R, a Nakamichi 7 disc 4x changer, a Minolta Dimage Dual film scanner, and a DEC TZ877 7 slot DLT2000 tape drive.

I dare ya to do that with IDE........

I will concede to your dare. That was not why I posted this. I already said I would have done SCSI had I had the cash.....
You win that dare. Cool
Glenn

 

[ChiXJeff]

Sorry, man...... didn't mean to steal your thunder.

I'm just one of those wierdo geeks who tries to stuff as much as he can into a single machine. It's kind of a kick, though, doing a remote install and hearing the CD jukebox changing CDs automatically through the different NFS mounts.

I know what you mean about the cost, though. My drives are horrendously expensive. I've been picking up Seagate 50gb SCA drives with an adapter to HD68 for $67, and that's about a third of what I had been paying. It's hard to still run SCSI when 120gb IDE drives are $80. Take a look at the SCSI-IDE converters at http://www.acard.com. I may built up a new Linux box after the first of the year, with an IDE drive hiding behind that adapter.

I picked up the Nakamichi at Sam's Club of all places 5 years ago with a Trantor card for $190. It's served me well, completely recognized by WinNT 4.0, Win2K, and SuSE 6.x and up.

ChiXJeff

 

[Glenn B]

Naw, my thunder is fine. Just don't stop running.... it explodes at anything under 5.3MPH. Keep going...

Yeah, there are tons of goodies out there. Many I would love to have..... most I just dream about. It was different when I "worked for the man". Now that I work for myself, my priorities are a tad different. Hmmmm.... eat for a week, or new ram? Hmmmm. Damn right.... , get the ram. Eat the lawn. It needs mowed anyhow. hehehe

Aww, the greenies would like it though. I keep using as many components as possible from build to build.

Either way... fastest, slowest, pretty, ugly, dusty..... it is all fun.
Glenn

 

[Markm80521]

Glenn,

There was a euopean company (name eludes me at the moment) that first got into the market of in car mp3 systems before kenwood and others got into the market. The mainstream companies have made it expensive and difficult to modify. This other company had some parts from their first generation stuff that I was able to pickup cheap.

Nice thing about their first models are they used straight IDE drives. I put a 80 gig into the old case I got from them (case has a pin connect in back) and built an ide connect on an empty slot on my computer. Crank the computer with the drive and it sees as a hard drive. Load your music. Turn off, put it onto a tray under the seat. Similar pin connect just has RCA's tied into a chip board. Run a 12 volt wire and there you go. They had a damaged in-dash remote I was able to fix the connector and put in dash.

Not the prettiest display but I still giggle at the fact that I can run some pretty hardcaore trails and when I'm done the music is still playing along in the background. I've got my vinal and everything on it.

I think it was called Neo car jukebox or something. Not sure if they are still around or not but I had to pickup their rejects because the setup was so simple. I post a pic if I get around to it.

 

[RichP]

That ACARD company

Whats the performance like, how much of a hit does it take ?? I don't have time to look at all their stuff but will later.

 

[ChiXJeff]

Re: That ACARD company

Whats the performance like, how much of a hit does it take ?? I don't have time to look at all their stuff but will later.

I haven't done a full test on it, but the adapter apparently isn't the bottleneck. It'll run ATA-100 drives as fast as they'll go. I've tested a standard ATA drive on an Ultra160 channel, and Win2K was perfectly happy with it.

If you order one....... BE CAREFUL! Because it connects directly on the back of the drive, there are different versions. For instance, the adapter I have will work on hard drives but not CD or DVD drives. The IDE connector and the power connector tend to be adjacent, and the adapter will cover up the power port on the drive.

As a side note, at work I have a Yamaha CRZ-F1 drive hooked up to a positively ancient SGI Indigo2 workstation. It's an IDE CD-R drive with a custom IDE-SCSI adapter (I suspect is a custom ACard.) SGI's are finicky about SCSI, and it will do a full burn at 44x.

 

[Glenn B]

Have you had a chance to use the S-ATA drives yet? Any thoughts? Curious if they are mature enough yet, and worth the cost.
Glenn

 

[LRRH]

Have you had a chance to use the S-ATA drives yet? Any thoughts?

Yup.[work]..they're fast....but not fast enough for my own blood yet. i'm a cheap bastage so I've got a small 15000rpm SCSI drive that I boot off ...and 4x40G raid array for storeage. plus a few 60G drives...

then my Linux (RH9) box runs software raid over 2x30G drives.

That's a sweet dual machine you've built there. I plan on building something soon but I'm not sure what. I may just buy myself a dual G5 and reinstall linux.