[conspire] Last Year's Supercomputer

[Edmund Biow]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Bill Moseley" <moseley at hank.org>
To: "Mark S Bilk" <mark at cosmicpenguin.com>
Cc: <conspire at linuxmafia.com>; "SVLUG List" <svlug at lists.svlug.org>
Sent: Sunday, June 08, 2003 12:05 PM

> I've got a XP 1800+ and a P4 2.4 sitting right next to each other with
> otherwise the same hardware (well, the P4 has an extra 80GB drive).  I'm
> amazed how much more heat the Athlon produces.  Just something to think
> about.
>
> I think I read the newer Athlons produce less heat, but I don't
> have any references for that -- so something you might look up if you
> care about such things.

Newer do indeed produce a lot less heat than the older models.  A
Thoroughbred XP1800+, for instance, uses 51 watts, compared to 66w for the
older Palomio XP1800+.
http://www.cpuscorecard.com/cpuprices/aaxp.htm
By comparison the PIV 2.4 GHz uses 58w.
http://www.cpuscorecard.com/cpuprices/ip4.htm

> I'm also interested in trying the VIA C3 (I think Fry's
> has $200 VIA C3 systems) and set up diskless with LTSP just for fun.

I bought one of these CPUs for $35 at http://www.softwareandstuff.com/ in
Santa Clara (its now $50) along with a $20 Asus 810 chipset motherboard
(integrated video, but I had to pony up $7 for a nice-sounding Vortex audio
card, since it didn't have integrated sound).  The CPU goobles 7-12 watts.
For a while I ran it without a fan, only a heat sink, but it would start to
act funky on hot days, so I added a cheesy $3 fan, and now it does fine for
as long as I care to run it (it will actually crank out a command line SETI
unit in only 50 hours!)

The VIA C3  draws so little current that the system works well with a
feather-light crummy "MaxPower" (wasn't that Homer's adopted name in a
Simpsons episode?) 300 watt power supply that came with a $15 ATX case. The
whole rig with 512 MB of Kingston PC133 ($40), $40 after MIR 40 GB HD & a
$20 after MIR IDE CD-RW probably didn't cost me much more than Rick would
routinely shell out on a nice SCSI burner.

BTW, I've installed dozens of IDE burners and only seen one that would
occasionally freeze a system (labeled Imation, but I don't remember what it
really is).  So we replaced it for $30 and it now resides unplugged in a
tech machine with an open case at a place that I do volunteer work refurbing
donated computers for use in the Cuban medical infrastructure.
http://www.cubasolidarity.net/whoarewe.html
If someone needs a disk burned, we shut the machine down, unplug the 4x
CD-ROM, and plug this unit in, then reboot, burn the disc and then reverse
the procedure.  Not ideal, but it works well enough in the circumstances.

My Via C3 box has Redhat 8, which I put on it at an InstallFest, but I just
bought SuSE 8.2 Personal for $30 from Amazon.  There was an earlier thread
about acquiring SuSE last week.  I called SuSE hoping to buy it from their
Oakland HQ so my geld would directly benefit the developers, but they
apparently don't sell media from their office and directed me to CompUSA,
where SuSE claimed it was $40, but it turned out to be priced at $50, but
Amazon has free shipping and I got the box within a few days.



Ed