From: mahmha@crl.com (Mark A. Horton) Subject: Re: [Q] Comments on my configuration of PC please... Date: 21 Sep 1993 07:01:30 -0700
Taek-Soo Kim (tkim@zonker.ecs.umass.edu) wrote:
: Hi there,
: After some survey and recommendation, I decided to purchase
: the following PC. Any comments would be very helpful.
: 486-DX2 66 (Comtrade)
: EISA
: 16MB RAM
: Adaptec 1742 scsi-2 controller
: 545MB HD
: Orchid Fahrenheit 1280+ or VA (32bit VLB) with 1MB.
: 17" Monitor (MAG or CTX).
WOW! what a box! How many users are you going to support?
: As you can see, I have not fixed the monitor and the video card.
: Any suggestion is welcome.
Get a bigger SCSI disk -- prices being what they are, you can
pick up a Toshiba 1.2GB 9ms. SCSI-2 drive for around $900. (us)
it's worth spending a little more from the price of the 545 MB
drive to get more storage. And it looks like you're sparing no
expense in setting up a killer system!
: I plan to attach scsi tape drive in the future, any recommendation
: on this would also be appreciated.
With the size disk you've got, get a large capacity one.. the
150s and 250s can get really annoying when you have to change
tapes all the time. If you expect your system to grow and can
afford it, get something like the Exabyte 8mm 2.3GB scsi drive
(it's external, but very good) It'll cost more initially, but
will be worth it in the future as you add more disk space. Also,
you can use those home-video 8mm cartridges which you can get for
as little as $3.00 each as opposed to 15-20 bucks each for the QIC
tapes! -- this adds up to big savings when you implement a decent
backup strategy. You can sometimes find the Exabytes used for very
good prices - since it's scsi, it doesn't matter who makes it. I'm
using one that came off a Sun workstation -- just plugged it into
the buss, entered the appropriate "find ..... | cpio -ovO /dev/rmt0"
command and it took off and ran fine! I am STILL trying to figure
out where they put all that data on those tiny little tapes!
Oh - if you go this route, don't let the salescritters talk you
into "data-quality" media as opposed to vcr type tape -- this is
utter bullshit - if it can record and reproduce a video signal, it
has far greater bandwidth and frequency response than is needed for
mere digital data!
Hope this helps, Taek-Soo
-- Mark
: Taek-Soo Kim
: ps. Thanks to those who responded on my previous posting
: "[Q] Diamond grapics card and tape backup"