Computer Genius Blog :: aka “TheGarage”

In my last entry on the $1,000 workstation we built a brand spanking new general purpose workstation that will be able slice through productivity apps, IDE applications (integrated development environments, like eclipse) and video editing like a hot knife through butter.

I thought since I will be pre occupied with this project for several days it would be fun to continue with a few more entries outlining the process as I go forward. The next step is to break down the dead workstation and slam the hard drives into one of the old PC’s I have laying around so I can access and move my data.

When I get my old workstation tore down I’ll post the parts list to give an idea of the magnitude of this upgrade.

OKAY, I CLEARED THE BENCH. FOLLOWING IS the configuration I had been trudging along with for about the past five years.

I built the above, now deceased rig almost five years ago as a temporary, general purpose workstation, just like the $1,000 configuration I built the other day. It probably cost about $1,000 when it was built. Stuff happened and I never got around to building the dream machine I wanted and my temporary workstation turned out to be just my workstation. Which in a way is good because everything now is so much better and so much cheaper it’s ridiculous. I don’t even think in terms of a dream workstation any more. I just built it for $1,000. Spend another $750 and it’d be surreal.

No, no more lofty thoughts of stable, high-performing ergonomic PC workstations. Now I dream of internet application servers, unlimited bandwidth, and high-tech media production systems.

So now I’ve gutted my semi faithful companion, what to do with the remains? Ahh, the donor card is signed.

The other month ago, my brother dropped two PC’s that were a bit long in the tooth over to my house. I had helped him restore these machines to working order on an occasion or two in the past but when you let kids of any age have unrestricted access to your computers and the internet your stuff will become fubar very quickly. No exceptions to this.

He said he had given up hope on fixing them and did I want them. Sure.

Eventually I got around to putting them on the bench, gave them life and began the diagnosing process. Ahhh. Windows 98 on both machines. I formatted the drives and loaded Win XP Pro and both machines work fine. Too bad they can’t all be like that. Funny, huh? Little bro kinda frowned when I told him. Which made it even kinda funnier.

He said to me, “Oh yeah, cool I’ll swing by and pick them up.”

Having forseen this tact I said, “Okay, bring your checkbook, there’s a service bill owing.”

Thanks to my brother I have onw low-end and one middle-to-low-end PC sitting around with nothing to do. Waiting. Waiting for something to do. So I grabbed this one:

I marked with an asterisk where I scavenged from the dead PC to the new temporary PC. Now here is what sucks. The machine I just put into temporary service has everything the one that just died had plus an extra 40 gig hard drive storage and a pristine WinXP installation. Not only that it’s much peppier than the dead one was. I could live with this machine–temporarily.

Buggers. That’s negative thinking. The new machine is going to be great. With it I will be able to dip my toes into video casting, live streaming and such. And I have some pretty big toes.

Also on the project list I have a Dell PowerEdge 6300 server with dual Intel Xeon processors and Raid 5 disk array that I use as my primary web server. A reader donated it to the cause. He had it laying around. It didn’t work. Did I want it? Sure.

It took me a couple of days to sort this beast out but since I could not detect any hardware malfunctions I downloaded the latest drivers for every component and flashed the BIOS with the latest revision. MS Server 3000 was installed but since I didn’t have admin authoritry it was useless so I reformatted the boot partition and put a fresh install of Windows NT 4, service pack 297. NT4 is a solid OS. Rarely does this machine need attention.

The Dell 6300 limps along at the ridiculously slow speed of 400 mHz but the Intel Xeon processors are workhorses and I have two working together. Tomorrow I am going to find out what it will take and how much will it cost to beef the bad boy up a tad. I’ll have to research the motherboard specs to determine the fastest processor supported then go shopping. I think I can go from the current 450 mHz to 1,000 mHz. A significant boost I think.

The big question is the cost. The ASUS P5B Deluxe mobo I just bought formy new workstation supports RAID and certainly a Core 2 Duo can give a couple of 1 gHz Xeon P2 processors a run for their money. Thus, the processor upgrade will have to come in less than five or six hundred bucks to be cost efficient.

But that’s tomorrow…

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