Not really, these were subsidized by a contract for converting from CD and (re)mastering to DVDs and CDs for archival purposes ;)

But I blew my "profit margin" though... as I really only needed 1 machine with more storage. But the company likes the idea of two machines capable for just about the same price to them.

What I really mean is:

I bought 2 identical machines, barring the "Data Storage":

Per machine:
1 - Viewsonic P225f 22" Monitor
1 - Kensington Orbit Trackball
1 - IBM "PC102" Keyboard
1 - InWin IW-Q2000 ATX Dual 300W PS
1 - Tyan S2466N
2 - XP1900+ Athlon Processors (with a paint dab somewhere)
2 - Thermaltake Volcano 7+ Processor Heatsinks & Fans
2 - Thermaltake A1280 Case fans
1 - 5-1/4" Slot Intake Fan
2 - Crucial PC2100 DDR - 512MB ECC Registered CT6472Y265
1 - PNY GeForce2 MX-400 64MB
1 - Teac Internal 3.5" Floppy Part#FD235HF7291/CS
1 - Standard single position Floppy Drive cable
1 - Intel E100 PILA8460C NIC
1 - Seagate Scorpion DDS-4 20GB/40GB Ultra SCSI STD2401LW
1 - Plextor PlexWriter 12/10/32S CD Burner SCSI
1 - Plextor UltraPleX Wide CD reader SCSI
1 - Pioneer DVR-S201 DVD Burner SCSI
1 - Pioneer DVD-305S DVD reader SCSI
1 - Adaptec AHA-29160 for Tape, CD and DVD drives
1 - External U2W SCSI HD Cable
1 - Active HD U2W SCSI Terminator
1 - Maxtor 6L080J4 DiamondMAXplus D740X 80GB ATA133 for "system"
1 - UDMA-6 24" Single Drive IDE cable
3 - 3.5" to 5.25" Drive mounts
various assembly items needed
Subtotal: $4,482 x 2 for both machines

Storage setup:

Machine 1:
1 - IBM ServeRAID-4H Ultra160 SCSI Controller 4-channel 37L6889
8 - IBM 73LZX 73GB 10K RPM IC35L073UWD210
4 - Adaptec 5 position u160 braided active terminated internal SCSI cable
Subtotal: $8,500

Machine 2:
1 - 3ware Escalade 7850 8 Channel ATA133 Controller
8 - Maxtor 6L080L4 DiamondMAXplus D740X 80GB ATA133
8 - Certified UDMA-6 18" Single Drive IDE cables
Subtotal: $1,840

And major pieces I had laying around:
2 - HP powered External UW SCSI Storage unit 7-bay non-hotswap
Charged: $900 each

Machine 1 My Cost Total: $14,082

Machine 2 My Cost Total: $7,422

Original Contract Total: $25,000

includes: Machine, initial support and training

New Contract Total: $30,000

includes: Machines, initial support and training

Well, before you all get to flaming me, you all know exactly why I bought these.

Gonna try and Bonnie or {insert your favorite benchmarking program} them to death before I commit them to the job.

If ya'll got some ideas on how I could crush these things lemme know, rebuilds are likely before the commit, so blowing up the OS is an option... *SMILE*

Oh BTW, the OS is either going to be Linux, Linux or .... Linux.

For the record, company already has a setup running on an HP-UX machine which dogs it every time they run the processing. It doesn't have enough memory to easily do everything they want it to do. So for the cost of just adding memory to the HP and still possibly slowing it down, they have 2 machines that should be able to do duplications as well. Time-frame to cut-over is projected to be early to mid May. So I have time to play.

Edit: Put in costs, edited a few thing I noticed were wrong. And GEEZ these things weigh a ton and a half!

Too many things to think about. But here is the "why":

The place I bought them from gave me a great price for buying 10 drives at a time

I can have multiple versions of the OS installed for those "oops" happenings,

Yes, being fast for the system is good

Blah..Blahh...

Yeppers!

XP1900+ (not MP)

According to [link|http://www.hardwarezone.com/articles/articles.hwz?cid=2&aid=393&page=1|This article at Hardware Zone] confirmed my suspicion. That is why I wrote:

2 - XP1900+ Athlon Processors (with a paint dab somewhere)

Also, I tried without the dab of paint, MB won't Use Both Processors. Both will Heat-up and appear to be running. But the BIOS only says 1 processor. Both CPU's have to have the dab of paint to work properly.

Currently running both machines though "[link|http://sourceforge.net/projects/va-ctcs|(VA-)CTCS]" or "[link|http://sourceforge.net/projects/va-ctcs|Cerberus Test Control System]" as it is really called. Monitoring errors and the heat-buildup, SCSI system is currently leading in heat-buildup. But well within operating paramters. Other than that nothing wrong yet.

Mainly cause I am intimately familiar with them. I have them in my Netfinity x250 Chassis, x350 Chassis. I use them with the internal-->external converters for those chassis to connect to XP300s. For the internals Drive arrays on the Netfinitys, I use either a 4Lx Single Channel or 4Mx 2-Channel. Depending on how I want to configure the SAF-TE backplanes.

In one Netfinity 7000/M10, I have two 4H and one 4Lx... eight channels of array for data, one channel for the system (the 4Lx).

Now we also have an ESS on-site too, but that is a horse of a different color. I won't go into the "I told you so"'s about it only conecting at UW Differential SCSI (40MByte/Sec).

On this particular machine:

2 - 73GB drives per channel, 4 channels used

Raid 5 with Hot-Spare in Write-Back mode, not a DB machine but pure storage and retrieval... Although when running the conversions it should probably be using write-through for integrity... But the raw data comes in on DVD or CD anyway so no big deal anyway.

On a side-note... I am really liking the ServeRAID update CDs... imagine my surprise one day seeing a Penguin show up on the screen in frame buffer mode!!!

Currently I have (I think, ouch that hurts) 15 ServeRAID controllers at REAL work. 3H, 4Lx, 4Mx and 4H. The OS agents make it nice to manage the storage on the machine, all from my little-O-linux machine...