From owner-freebsd-chat Tue Sep 16 13:55:54 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) id NAA19366 for chat-outgoing; Tue, 16 Sep 1997 13:55:54 -0700 (PDT) Received: from onyx.atipa.com (user21569@ns.atipa.com [208.128.22.10]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with SMTP id NAA19361 for ; Tue, 16 Sep 1997 13:55:51 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail-queue invoked by uid 1018); 16 Sep 1997 20:59:41 -0000 Date: Tue, 16 Sep 1997 14:59:41 -0600 (MDT) From: Atipa X-Sender: freebsd@dot.ishiboo.com To: David Langford cc: langfod@dihelix.com, mark@grondar.za, taob@nbc.netcom.ca, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: SMP motherboard advice... In-Reply-To: <199709162036.KAA00351@caliban.dihelix.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk On Tue, 16 Sep 1997, David Langford wrote: > I wasnt reall sure what they meant with "Dual slot 1" and the I > wasnt really sure what I was looking at picure wise. > > Damn clean board though :) Apparenty. They haven't arrived yet, so I'll let you know after I actually get to play with one. I know the P2L97 (normal) is very well-designed. > If you say this board is about $600 and the P2L97 is $300 why > the $300! difference. Doesnt seem like too much was done to the boards. > > -David Well, the AIC-7880 chips used for the Adaptec 2940UW SCSI controller are expensive. I think the main reason they chrge so much is that THEY CAN! :) They aren't running a charity, and they know people will shell out the bucks. For leading edge technology, I don't think they are that off the wall. Hardware developers are having an EXTREMELY difficult time maintaining margins unless they can fill a void. Commodity parts are just too cheap these days. Memory is down to about $3/meg, Hard disk space about $.05/meg, P-150's under $100, 4MB video cards under $50... The list goes on and on. It certainly is a buyer's market. Manufacturers (and distributors like ourselves) are working harder than ever to make less money than before. People who sell their brains for $50-$100 per hour maintaining systems know that the cost of the system is small compared to the TCO (total cost of ownership). Those people don't mind paying a little more for hardware that will save them several hours of labor and/or downtime. Oops.. I guess I digressed! :) Kevin