[conspire] (forw) June 25 MP installfest upgrade RH 7.3 PC to Centos56

[Rick Moen]

I wrote:

> The Adaptec controllers -- the real, full-featured AHA-2940 PCI and
> preceding AHA-1542 series, not the low-end crud -- are one of several
> sorts of components I never regretted acquiring, because they had
> incredibly long useful service lives, and could be usefully migrated
> from obsolete machines to their replacements.

The point being that, even if it is deemed not worth spending $15 on an
AMD Duron-based CPU, it is still arguably an excellent expenditure of
$15 to buy a used Adaptec AHA-2940, on account of its long-term (well,
medium-term, at this point) prospects for re-use in other units.

Christian Huebner, who was among the people attempting to help Eddie,
made the point that U320 SCSI, with or without low-voltage differential 
cabling, is itself obsolete, just like PATA.  He would favour scrapping
all investment in those old buses and going either all SATA or all SAS
(the successor to U320 that uses SCSI device addressing over SATA-type
cabling and voltage levels, and is essentially a superset of SATA).

_That_ is certainly an arguable viewpoint, and becoming more so with
passing time.  It's really a question of whether you're willing to spend
$15 to perpetuate 10-year-old technology for another few years, or are
willing to shell out a large amount more to scrap everything and upgrade
to current technologies.