Cemetech 1 will be down for maintenance until further notice. I estimate between one and two weeks of downtime. While this maintenance is occuring, wordNet and the SAX-AIM linkup will be offline. Turns out some of the parts I scavenged from a server were actually still in use.

Kerm, what were you thinking?

Well, I was told it was a decommissioned box. Turns out the person I asked was misinformed.

haha, sucks for you. Speaking of "decommissioned" machines, I just got Ubuntu Server running on an old 600mhz P3 w/ 128MB of RAM (in one of them "slim" vertical computers - its an HP eVectra) - I, uh... "liberated" it from a dumpster

yeah, I keep getting old computers donated to me to donate. I just got two PII the other day (and the one appears to be an SMP board with one slot open).

Heh, yeah, I have a few really old computers also (the newest of them uses win95). I've always wanted to do something with them, but while I have had the time and equipment I've never had the space to set them up.

My oldest computer is a 1998 Toshiba Sattelite, it now runs slow as mud =P, eg. *clicks MS paint* , *goes and gets coke, watches 10 minutes of myth busters, throws coke away, comes back to computer*, meanwhile MS paint is still opening =P

There's your problem. Throw a copy of DSL on it. I was AMAZED at what I could do on my 266mhz proc and 32mb of RAM. (I had to upgrade to 96mb of ram to use firefox, but dillo worked just fine with the 32)

www.damnsmalllinux.org

I have tons of outdated boxen I could use, but I wanted something pwnsome. Ah, well, I guess I'll have to wait until I can afford 4GB of uberfast RAM on my own.

your porbably not even going to come close to using 4 gigs of RAM unless you do stuff like watch full-length HD/BluRay DVDs and ASM and videochat all at the same time.... Its just not logical. A 2gbs would work just fine for ASM or even BL probably, just 4gigs is overkill and unneccessay if you aren't going to be using it constantly to the fullest extent. I am using 1 gb on my good one and .75gb on the bad one and everything is just perfect. Ok, the loading of the normal DVD's are slow, but then agiain, I have a bad DVDRom...

um, he is building a server, he needs more RAM there, 4GB is low in the server world.

And HD-DVD, DVD, and/or Blue-Ray playback isn't RAM intensive, just CPU/GPU intensive - slow loading of any is the result of your drive and CPU - in fact, none of what you listed is RAM intensive.... (not sure what you mean by "ASM" - surely it can't be programming Z80 ASM as that takes so little power its not even funny )

/me directs Kerm towards dual quadcore 3.0Ghz processors and 16GB of RAM


apple prices are down by $8K (a maxed out Mac Pro vs a maxed out PowerMac)

I figured he meant executing ASM - because we all know that's extremely CPU-intensive. Programs go much faster if you don't run them in machine language.

Sarcasm?

no. of course not.

I'll take that as a yes.

Why buy an Apple? He can build his own for less (granted he can't buy a "factory 3ghz Xeon" - but a $300-400 water cooling setup and some over clocking will fix that ) - and by less I mean much less. I priced it out on newegg, and for a similarly spec'd machine the Apple cost $11,941 vs. $8,299.83 from NewEgg. Specs are 2x quad-core Xeons (3ghz in Apple, 2.66ghz from NewEgg - definitely a reachable over clock w/ water cooling), 8x 2GB DDR2 RAM, 4x 750gb 7200RPM SATA hard drives, and an nVidia Quadro FX (512MB 4500 in Apple, 1GB 5500 from NewEgg). So in the end the stock speeds from Apple's CPUs win out, but the video card from the NewEgg wins. Just take the ~$3600 you saved by building your own and buy two Vapochill phase-change units and over clock them Xeon's to 3ghz+

EDIT: Oh, and I feel I should point out that it is possible to get motherboards that support up to 64GB of RAM from NewEgg (16x 4GB)

EDIT2: The custom build has a 1200W PSU that can maintain a real-world average of 85% efficiency at high-loads (120v, 45C) - no idea what sort of generic, crappy PSU that mac comes with

you realise that half the reason I said that was to get on your nerves right?


and for a server like he needs (as in without OS X client licensing, modem, .mac account) the prices are much closer--especially when you figure in Apple Care which is certainly worth the price and the dual 30" displays :p

What is your processor type?