[rescue] Re: OH YEA??? [was: Re: Ultra?]

[Robert Novak]

On Sat, 3 Aug 2002, George Adkins wrote:

> And a Yugo can go faster than a forklift, but which would you rather
> move a refrigerator with?  Load and IDE Bus and watch the performance
> plummet, not to mention that annoying wait as the OS grinds to a halt,
> waiting for the Disk activity to finish.

My daily work on my desktop involves ssh, web browsing, the occasional
management program (networker, network gear)... far from moving a
refrigerator.

There are applications where an Ultra 5 or Ultra 10 is quite acceptable.
George, even you know this even if it's not cool to admit. 

Sure, if I'm moving a refrigerator worth of data I'm not putting a 270mhz
U5 or a SB100 on the task. But for telnet/ssh/xterm I wouldn't be stupid
enough to waste an E450 on the task if it cost real money.

Hmmm, that hyperbole thing does feel kinda good first thing in the
morning. *gets a bit closer to understanding the trolls on the list*

> Unless of course you were talking about capacity...  In which case, I can 
> hang a 711 or a 911 case off of an SS10 and fill it with 36G or 75G drives 
> for say...  300Gigs or more of storage without even breaking a sweat.  How 
> many UDMA drives can you stick in that U5? How many can you hang of the 
> outside without resorting to a ...(wait for it...) SCSI Controller?

Well, it depends on your budget. George, we've beaten this dead horse
before. 72/73GB disks are still pretty expensive ($249+). A nice home mp3
server would be far better served by IDE than by SCSI when you have budget
and/or spousal influences to consider. 

You know, what would really kick some serious butt would be Solaris/SPARC
drivers for the Promise SX6000.

	http://www.promise.com/product/subsys_detail_eng.asp?pid=86&fid=2

128MB ECC cache, 6 drives (drive channels), $250ish on Pricegrabber, Linux
driver source code is available (so if someone was bored and talented they
might be able to get there). 

3ware has an Escalade 7500 series with up to 12 drive channels, 8 channel 
runs $300ish.

The downside, obviously, is the U5 and U10 cases will not handle that many
disks without serious hacking. But it could be cool to hack a U10 into a
hotswap-ready rack case and do it from there. 

> IDE belongs in PeeCees, not Workstations.

Not every desktop system or appliance is a Workstation. 

--Rob

Robert Novak, Indyramp Consulting * rnovak at indyramp.com * indyramp.com/~rnovak
	"I don't want to doubt you, Know everything about you
      I don't want to sit Across the table from you Wishing I could run."