Very Computer

A few days ago I posted a message regarding the ideal system for a linux
server.  Here is a compilation of some of the answers, and my further
questions regarding them.

Quote:> CPU
> Intel Pentium 133 or better Triton-II chipset
> 512k Processor cache RAM
> no substitutes

Quote:> Controller Card
> BusLogic 948/958 SCSI
> No substitutes

Quote:> Network Interface Card
> DEC Tulip (21140)
> No Substitutes

Quote:> RAM
> 2 32 megabyte EDO RAM
> No Substitutes

Motherboard - true intel, or will any do?

Video card - not critical, but nice.

CD-ROM - not critical, but nice.

Sound Card - less critical than CD-ROM or Video card.  This would be the
             first thing to get cut if over budget.

Hard Drives:  SCSI-2 was a reoccuring theme....what's the difference
between SCSI-2 and Ultra SCSI?  Are Barracuda drives the only "choice"?
Does having two drives improve performance over one?

| > CPU
| > Intel Pentium 133 or better Triton-II chipset
| > 512k Processor cache RAM
| > no substitutes
|
| Will two 133's be better than a single PP 180?

If you have lots of little processes, yes. Things like HTTP or news
reading have many processes, mail usually runs as a daemon but can
start more processes depending on configuration. NFS might use
multiple processes, printing uses little cpu and probably doesn't
matter.

| > RAM
| > 2 32 megabyte EDO RAM
| > No Substitutes

Depends on the motherboard. On a board which supports interleave you
may get better performance with 4x16. I wouldn't do that if I only
had four sockets, but with eight I might.

| Motherboard - true intel, or will any do?

No, and no. You don't *need* to buy Intel to get a good SMP board,
but there are lots of poor one's out there which are not reliable.
Check the archives of the SMP mailing list, there have been a LOT of
reports of problems.
|
| Video card - not critical, but nice.

Since you call this "not critical" I would suggest an S3 card, since
they are well supported by the Xfree group, will do truecolor, and
are dirt cheap ($82 w/ 2M for the last one I bought, PCI or VLB).
|
| CD-ROM - not critical, but nice.
|
| Sound Card - less critical than CD-ROM or Video card.  This would be the
|            first thing to get cut if over budget.

I might consider having a sound card to use an ATAPI CD. The cost of
sound+CD might be close to SCSI-CD, and it saves a device number for
future use.
|
| Hard Drives:  SCSI-2 was a reoccuring theme....what's the difference
| between SCSI-2 and Ultra SCSI?  Are Barracuda drives the only "choice"?
| Does having two drives improve performance over one?

Almost every time you gain by using more drives. Unless bays are a
problem, spreading head motion is a win, separating swap and heavy
disk apps is a win.

Now... you left off the tape drive, and if you think you're going to
backup some GB to floppies, HAH! Get one large enough to run
unattended, 1.9G DAT is cheap, and that should do one full
filesystem and incremental the rest. Look at the cost of tapes as
well as drives, and don't use 8mm video tape for data! All 4mm is
digital, so the temptation isn't there.
--

"As a software development model, Anarchy does not scale well."
                -Dave Welch

Invalid media.  Hmm, that means that the media descriptor byte
in the first sector of the partition pointed to by the partition
table for your DOS partition has a bad media value or that the dos
boot record has a bad check-sum or some such.

The steps to recover from such a thing involve using Norton
disk doctor, but first you have to insure that your
partition table is accurate and that your BIOS hasn't switched
its drive access modes from Normal to C/H/S Large or LBA mode
or visa versa--the bios access mode must be exactly the same
as when you installed Dos.  When this bios disk mode is straight,
then Norton Disk doctor can be set to Diagnose disk C:.  You
have to make sure that the Norton Utilities version that you are
using is up-to-date with the version of DOS / Win95 that is in
use on your disk.  In norton disk doctor, see what the doctor
recommends.  If it can't make heads or tails of what you've got,
then have it search for your DOS root directory, or Dos partition.
If it finds exactly what you had, then permit Norton to recover
the info.  Next re-boot, then at the time the computer displays
Starting MS-DOS or Win95, press the function key that puts you
at the command prompt and by-passes config.sys and autoexec.bat.
Next do a scandisk or similar from Norton Disk Doctor.

Keep in mind that some software that ran in your PC or hardware
fault did this to you, so try to determine what
the cause was so that you can avoid it in future.  

Maybe comment out appropriate lines
in config.sys or autoexec.bat or win.ini or system.ini.

Check the IDE cable connectors:  a poor or intermittent
connection can produce much woe.

Under no circumstances should you permit your PC to write further
info to your disk before checking out the situation and
running NDD.

Hope this helps for next time at least.  Regards, Chris K. Skinner.