[conspire] Fwd: Another motherboard was _not_ burned out today

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Tony Godshall (togo at of.net):

> now that the pentium-iii boxen are over, what will be your next platform?

They're not quite over.  Soon.

Fixing the downed system's hardware problem (as opposed to the separate software 
problem created when it died in mid-software-upgrade) by deploying my
last spare Intel L440GX+ 'Lancewood' motherboard and my best leftover VA
Linux Systems 2230 chassis and PSU was the fewest-new-variables way of
doing it.  As I said, I have a strong prejudice in favour of changing
only one thing at a time -- strengthened by years of observing CABAL
attendees flailing away at a problem by just absent-mindedly changing
things, which practice is almost always worse than useless (likely to
complicate a bad situation and create new problems).

The next platform is a project that's been unfinished (parts sitting in
my office) because I want to do it right.  I talked about it here two
years ago:

  System unit:  
    CompuLab Intense PC, Celeron 847E 1.1 GHz dual-core, no HD
    Mushkin 16GB RAM (2 x 8GB SO-DIMM)

  External mass-storage (RAID1'ed):
    2 x  Samsung 840 Pro Series 128GB MLC SSD, 0.15 watts each
    Each SSD will live in a Vantec NexStar 3 enclosure, eSATA conneted,
    powered by an Apple A1265 5W AC-to-USB power dongle.

  No moving parts, no fans, cool-running, totally silent everything.
  Three really small enclosures, three power dongles, a few cables.   I'll
  have to measure power draw using my Kill-a-Watt, but expect around
  10-12 watts total.

  The 16 GB RAM will be handy for running a virthost setup (probably kvm),
  which among other things will make it easy to have a production
  system + a beta system being developed on the same box.

That is logically the next thing to complete.  I did _not_ want to do a
rushed migration/rebuild onto the CompuLab, as that would defeat the
purpose for which I bought it, which was to finally have a fully
configuration-managed, documented system rather than something I cobbled
together in a hurry after a hardware failure.


> will you go with ARM for power savings or with Amdintel for legacy
> compatibility and surplus availability?

Even though 64-bit ARM is finally a real thing, I have yet to see an
ARM-based system capable of more than 1GB of RAM, outside of specialised
HP blade units.  I respect funky little SoC boards, but cannot do
full-service Internet with less than 1.5 GB.  Maybe 1GB (e.g., Raspberry
Pi 2) if I really had to, but I'd rather not.