PBW in the market for some new hardware

[Thermodyne]

A thought on the hard drives...We really don't need to put PBW on used drives. Most data loss is caused by failed IDE hard drives. So if you have a new drive, that would be cool. But a used drive with unknown amuont of hours on it is asking for trouble.

What would be really nice if if someone wanted to kick in a little PCI raid card. Then Geo could set the drives up in a mirror. Something like a little Fasttrack 2000 would work great.

[Thermodyne]

geoschmo said:
Fancy video card isn't really neccesary. I don't even have a monitor hooked up to it most of the time. I haven't looked at the specs on the MB Thermo is sending yet, but if it's got any sort of onboard video that will likely be sufficent.

I'd like to get a good writeable CD or DVD drive so I can start doing more regular backups. Those have really come down in price lately though so that shouldn't be too hateful for me to get on this end somewhere if noone has one.

I'll have to look at the memory in the current server. If that's what we need I could always move that over.

I'm guessing the box Thermo is sending already has a power supply in it.

The current server has a 40GB HDD, and I think Thermo said the new one will have two of those. I think that will probably be more then enough hard drive for the foreseeable future.

Of course donations are always accepted if anyone would like to do something like that Slykny.

Geoschmo

The mainboard has an onboard NVidia video chip and onboard LAN. It has sound too, for what it's worth.

[geoschmo]

Thermodyne said:
A thought on the hard drives...We really don't need to put PBW on used drives. Most data loss is caused by failed IDE hard drives. So if you have a new drive, that would be cool. But a used drive with unknown amuont of hours on it is asking for trouble.

With 80GB HDD's going for 50 bucks these days, you are probably right it makes sense just to buy a new one.

I can get another licensed copy of an operating system, so that's not a problem.

[TurinTurambar]

Oh, good. Cuz I was just going to offer my brand new OEM copy of XP-Pro SP2.....

.... and I really didn't want to!

TT

[Slynky]

Geo, that PayPal thing still working? I opened my PayPal account back up about half a year ago, so I can digitize that $50 for you later.

[Thermodyne]

geoschmo said:
With 80GB HDD's going for 50 bucks these days, you are probably right it makes sense just to buy a new one.

I can get another licensed copy of an operating system, so that's not a problem.

Ok system is ready to go, will ship it out next week.

For those needing to see things for themselves...see attached.

I put a pair of 40gig drives in it, they were imaged spares and have less than an hour of use. So you are good to go on drives. The system itself probably has about 50 hours if that. This was a demo system, showed it to several clients and I ended up building 175 of them. It's kind of funny, when I ordered the cases, I did a bulk purchase. They came on palets, with cardboard shrink wrapped around the whole stack, no indivirual boxes. I got home one day and it was sitting in the driveway! I was worng on the ram, I had pulled it at some point in the past. I scrounged up a 256 meg stick of ddr 333 to get you going. Memory is like beer around here. If it isn't being used by someone, it walks off. You can pick up a pair of 512 ddr 400's for less than 70 bucks. You'll need a CD reader (writer would be nice, then you could ghost it to cd's. And a floppy reader. For what they cost, perhaps some Empire will spring for new ones and write it off to foreign aid.
Memory
Burner
FDD

[Thermodyne]

Here's a look at the back. It should have everything you need. LPT-Serial-LAN-PS2-Sound-IR-Video-and a bunch of USB.

[Parasite]

We have a computer store that one week sold 200Gb hard drives for $90 with a $75 rebate. I got one, but since my motherboard has a maximum of 30Gb drives allowed that is what it is formated for. What a waste. :-( If I could get a 30Gig one and copy everything over I would be happy to trade.

[Thermodyne]

Parasite said:
We have a computer store that one week sold 200Gb hard drives for $90 with a $75 rebate. I got one, but since my motherboard has a maximum of 30Gb drives allowed that is what it is formated for. What a waste. :-( If I could get a 30Gig one and copy everything over I would be happy to trade.

There are two workarounds for that problem. Most boards have newer drivers that add support for drives larger than 30 gigs. And the drive suppliers have little apps to make the really big drives usable. Some boards need both, some just need the app form the drive company.

[Fyron]

geoschmo said:
With 80GB HDD's going for 50 bucks these days, you are probably right it makes sense just to buy a new one.

pffft, thats expensive per GB. How about $30 for a 200 GB drive (after rebates)? Or Parasite's.