Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2001 19:16:39 -0500 From: "Andrew C. Hornback" <hornback@wireco.net> To: <hardware@freebsd.org> Subject: Building the Workstation of the Gods... Message-ID: <005901c0a2ae$0db55250$0f00000a@eagle>
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Good afternoon everyone... I'm in the process of collecting parts for my "Workstation of the Gods" project, and am looking for a little insight and/or direction as to the components that I have chosen. The base machine is an ALR Revolution 6X6. For the uninitiated, this machine is capable of handling 6 Pentium Pro processors (I'm using the 200 MHz with 1 Meg of L2 version), and up to 4 Gigs of memory in DIMMs (currently configured using 64 Megs of SIMMs). When it comes to peripherals, I have a few pieces that I could not find on the FreeBSD Supported Hardware List, and thought that I would ask and see if anyone had any updated information concerning them. The first piece is the Turtle Beach Cancun FX daughtercard for the Sound Blaster AWE 32 that the machine will have. I am wanting to do some work with audio production and editing, and this card is used to upgrade the MIDI capabilities of the AWE 32. Is there anyone out there currently using a setup similar to this, or is there a driver out there that I would need to support this hardware? Secondly is the Equinox (which has just been purchased by Avocent) Megaport 12CS card that I have, with the accompanying 12 port Serial Distribution panel. This is an EISA card, and from what I can tell, it is similar to a DigiBoard or a Boca Multiserial board. Again, this is not listed in the supported hardware list. Their website lists drivers for SCO, Solaris and AT&T Unices for this card. This is not a required piece of hardware for what I want to do with the workstation, but it would make things a little nicer (i.e. I could keep all of my plotters attached at the same time without having to switch cables, etc.) The third piece of questionable hardware is an Intel Remote Server Management Interface. This card is the hardware side of Intel's LAN manager software. It allows the machine to be rebooted remotely in case of a problem, via modem or network. Intel is VERY shy about giving up any details about this component, but I do note that there are Linux drivers for it. As with the Equinox board, this isn't a requirement for what I want to do with this machine (and obviously, it's a workstation, not a server, in addition to the fact that FreeBSD would rarely cause a problem where the machine would need to be rebooted). Fourth on my list is a Berkshire PCI Watchdog card. I had heard about these cards from someone on the list and did some investigating and found that this would be a cheap insurance policy for the machine. Given the amount of money that I am spending on this box, I want all the insurance that I can get. Berkshire has a Linux driver for this card available, but since I learned about it from one of the FreeBSD lists, I'm wondering if someone "on this side of the fence" has ported it over or not. In fifth place, and probably the easiest to determine if it's compatible with FreeBSD or not is the Digitizer that I have for this machine. It's a simple CalComp 12"x12" serial with a 4 button puck. Since it's a simple serial device, I imagine that it should work fine under FreeBSD, but I thought that I'd ask first and see if anyone knew of any problems that I should look out for. Last on the list, this little monster is gonna need a backup setup. Right now, I'm looking at either a Seagate Hornet 10/20 Gig SCSI Tape or the Quantum DLT-2000. The machine is going to have three RAID arrays made up of 3 x 9 Gig IBM 10,000 RPM Ultrastar drives. Since each array is going to be RAID 5, I will get the effective drive space of approximately 18 Gigs per array, and would like to be able to back that up onto one tape per array. I was wondering if anyone could point out any reasons to go with one over the other, or any drawbacks of using either system to accomplish the backups. Thanks, --- Andrew C. Hornback To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hardware" in the body of the message
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