You'll never guess what i got to play with at work today! :)

[Confused]

Where i work is just down the road from loads of European and UK headquarters of loads of companies, such as Dell, HP, Novell, Macromedia (and those are the ones i can remember!), and the place where i work deals with Macromedia Europe!

Skipping back a couple of weeks, the head techie guy comes in from Macromedia, and spots the new Neon Case (click on "Workstations", case on the right) and instantly loves them! So i have to swap all the contents of his computer into the black case, with LED fans and a blue cold cathode! Also, i stealthed the DVD drive...remembering this is the head technical guy at Macromedia Europe!


Back to this week (well, today), and in from the suppliers arrives this huge box, contents of which is one SRSH4, quad Xeon board, in a black 4U rack mountable kit. Also passed my way was 2 1.4 GHz Xeons with 512k cache, as well as 6x 36.7GB 10,000 RPM Quantum SCA SCSI drives, and 2x 18GB 10k RPM SCA drives!

Taking this case apart to work on was so nice! The top slid off with a couple of thumb screws, and the cooling fans (2x 80mm for the PCI cards (directed at the 4 64-bit hot-swappable PCI slots) and the 4x 120mm Delta fans, which cool the processors, via a nice bright, Intel Green duct! Taking these fans off was a case of lift them out, and they go their power via a small connector block, no messy wires in sight!

Under the green duct showed through 2 603 pin sockets, and next to them was a piece of polystyrene covering the next 2! The 2 CPU's went into the first 2 slots, and the beefy heatsinks went on them too Then came the fun of putting the SCSI drives in! They all go in hot-swappable caddies, so just a case of screwing them in.

The 2 channel Ultra160 raid card wasn't there yet, so they were just plugged into the 2 onboard Ultra160 ports, and the system fired up! And other guys there thought that a 747 was taking off next door!

Windows 2000 Server will be going on there tomorrow when the Raid card comes in, so hopefully i'll get a chance to stress-test it (read: run Seti) on it until it has to go out the door (i think that it's going out Friday).

Just thought i'd share this experience with you all


Confused

 

[MoFunk]

Sounds like you had a fun day. Can't wait to hear how that thing crunches, I mean stress tests!

 

[Wiz]

That's so nice - coming from a fellow server monkey, wish I was there
Sounds like schweet equipment!!!

 

[deerslayer]

Sounds like fun!!!

Lots of cool stuff

 

[Mardeth]

Nice. I wonder if you could turn him into a SETier... Would be anice addision.

 

[Confused]

Originally posted by: Mardeth
Nice. I wonder if you could turn him into a SETier... Would be anice addision.

Well, i'm only there til the end of the week...but i'll see what i can do if i have a chance to talk to him

 

[ProviaFan]

Awesome server!

 

[LANMAN]

That's it?? :Q Sheeshh....


I like toys!!

--LANMAN

 

[Orange Kid]

/me wipes the sweat from his brow......................

that was like reading a geek romance novel

thanks

 

[Zim Hosein]

Originally posted by: Orange Kid
/me wipes the sweat from his brow......................

that was like reading a geek romance novel

thanks

LMAO Orange Kid

Confused, for the moment, I envy you

 

[kadajawi]

/me envys confused

Damn... and if you could get him to Seti (naw... better Folding@Home ) maybe he may recruit whole Macromedia!!! And then get him to join TA... I guess we would kick ass in whatever project they join

Ps: I think F@H should be the optimal stress test... it stresses the CPUs more than most other DC projects... even crashes a few boxes because they were running at their limit already... but only F@H pushes them OVER the maximum

 

[aberant]

niiiiice can i just ask, confused, am i reading right on that page ? cos it looks like there's a duron 1300 for £229 ??? surely that can't be right.............

 

[Confused]

Originally posted by: aberant
niiiiice can i just ask, confused, am i reading right on that page ? cos it looks like there's a duron 1300 for £229 ??? surely that can't be right.............

Prices are excluding VAT. That's still only £269 tho, for PC Chips 810L, 256MB PC133, 30GB hdd, 52x CD-ROM, sound/modem/ethernet/video onboard. I have one of these boards with a Duron 850 as my server! It's pretty stable running what i use it for!

Give us a call, ask for Dave in Sales (that's one of the guys there that i get on with really well, so will give him the credit ) and tell him i sent u to him if you're still interested!

Garry

 

[aberant]

well that sounds like a helluva deal. was gonna spend £90 on new mobo/cpu/ram but still wud need a new HD. taking this into serious consideration......... (where to find £270 from - must.......not.......use.....VISA )

 

[Confused]

Originally posted by: aberant
well that sounds like a helluva deal. was gonna spend £90 on new mobo/cpu/ram but still wud need a new HD. taking this into serious consideration......... (where to find £270 from - must.......not.......use.....VISA )

If you get the order in tomorrow, i may even get to build it for you! Cos i'm leaving there tomorrow, that'll be my last day!


Garry

 

[Assimilator1]

Originally posted by: Orange Kid
/me wipes the sweat from his brow......................

that was like reading a geek romance novel

thanks

LAMO too

Confused
Nice rig!:Q

Btw ,don't suppose they'll have a job going there will they?

 

[Confused]

A new guy started there on Monday, but no harm in sendin CV in tho!

I'll PM you the address, you'll never know what'll happen!

Garry

 

[aberant]

lol - checked it out on Dabs looks like i'll be able to use the stuff i've got lying around to do it in stages so i can't blag the 200 quid so guys on another topic, i need a little help here. Do i do Computing or Biology for my degree ? Anyone's input on their career would be good

 

[Assimilator1]

Not a clue mate ,whatever you prefer (which pays better?) ,its your choice.

 

[kadajawi]

well, another important thing is: In which one are you better and how would your chances to get a job be? Maybe bio-informatics (?) would be interesting... and imho its something where you can get a job later...

 

[Assimilator1]

That too

 

[aberant]

mmm - no way of knowing how good i'd be at bioinformatics, cos it's not the sort of thing you could experience easily ( u need a phd to do it.......) . I'm pretty good with computers, but i can't help thinking that buggering about with computers all day might lose its interest. I mean i love comptuers, and always have, and i've experienced computers before as a job. I use to work as a network technician, but the company was pretty sh**ty - their turnover was 10 mil a year, and they tried to pay me £7000 a year for internal IT support. So maybe i just had a bad experience, i dunno. Any input guys ? Maybe i should start a new thread get the input of the likes of Network Man etc....

 

[evilroot]

I like my dual Alpha EV6 667mhz (4mb DDR cache each) 4U server better.

Its almost completely silent to boot.

 

[MemnochtheDevil]

Just don't do what I did and major in Bio then decide med school isn't all that appealing. Graduate, get married, found an entry level (apprentice) programing job and started working. Now 2 years later I'm where I would have been if I had majored in comp sci and worked as an intern over the summer .

Ah well, I made enough to pay the bills and now I can afford to buy a new car, so I shouldn't complain. Just wish I could figure out what I really wanted to do a couple years ahead of time...

 

[aberant]

Mmm - see i'm kinda already there - most ppl in UK go to uni at 18 - i'm going to be 23 at this rate