My boss agreed to pay for a dedicated 384k SDSL line to host the forums here at work. The reasoning behind it is so I can begin to learn be a datacenter manager and everything in relation to that like security, configuring the box for performance, conserving bandwidth, etc. We would like to do some of that for profit in the future so this is a great way to learn. The papers were signed for the line just this morning.

NOW, I need some real hardware to run it off of. The best spare PC I have at work is a PII-233 with 64MB of RAM and a 3-4GB drive. That ain't gonna cut it. Peanuthead and a couple others said they may have some extra hardware laying around for this. We need processing power, memory, memory bandwidth, and at least 2 hard drives for mirroring. I will (again) be fully in charge of running the forums from top to bottom, with a little help from sr20deboston, eric96ser, and maybe a couple others to help manage the box and complain if the SDSL line goes down and such. I'm decent with linux, but not an expert by any means, so any linux gurus out there, we will need your help.

This also opens the door for other kinds of things such as expanding this site to be more than just forums. Articles, webstore, etc. is in my vision.

No more recurring costs! Cool huh? :) Say "Thanks Ben's boss!" :D

THANKS BEN'S BOSS!!!!!

Thats great news. I wish I had some spare computer part laying around, but I dont :(

Also, your vision of having articles, and stuff like that, sounds cool, and I'd like to see it done.

Hey I have an extra system. It's only a 333mhz processor though. It came from my girlfriends work. I don't know if you would be able to use it. Let me know if you're interested.

What about if the shirt deal goes through (haven't heard anything lately), and anyone that feels they would like could contribute an addtional amount of money w/ the actual cost of the shirts that could go towards hardware, or whatever would be necessary. The prices for the shirts seemed very resonable, so if everyone who spoke up included just $1 for every shirt ordered that would be atleast $100. That isn't much, but I'm sure other people might give an extra $5 or 10 to help out the forum. Just my thoughts.

Josh

I think if we open up another donation or sell something we can come up with enough money to build a pretty nice system. If you need my help to build it, set it up, or run it let me know Ben. Have had experience in it. But i think we can build a kicking machine for right around 500-800 dollars. In my experience of running boards, you need plenty of processor and plenty of space. Ram is good, but if you dont keep the board clear it will eat up hard drive space like mad. Let me see if my friend has sold his IBM server yet, it was a nice machine I dont know if he has already got rid of it or not, he was going to sell it to me cheap

Ben,

I have a box I could send up to you. Nothing special, just a clone case, power supply, motherboard, floppy, video card, and CD rom. It's either a PII or PIII, between 500 & 600Mhz. Add memory and drives, and you'll be good to go.

I'll take a look at it tonight.

Chris

I can check the HP/Compaq board for employee discounts. How about an Alpha powered server running Linux? Not likely they will have this but I will check it out. Rob

If I had any parts that would be of service to you, I would be more than happy to send you some. Everything I have lying around is several years old... THANKS BEN'S BOSS!

What is the forums being run on right now? Hardware, OS, line speed?? You might want something faster to handle the load of hits per day. Running my server is effortless since I use it for me only. When you get as many hits as this place does you want something with redundancy as well as mirroring. Might as well look into some sort of backup device for nightly backups just in case something does dhit the bed.

Since I just put back another server of mine I have no spare parts I am sorry.

i dont know if you have money to spend on parts right now but im building a computer and i've gotten all my parts through online auctions for pretty good prices i think...
If you know good prices try ubid.com and ebay can be good too. I got my 900Mhz CPU for just $80 on ebay and 60GB Hard Drive for about $100 at ubid.
good luck with it all and Thanks Bens Boss

Slightly OT but anyone seen www.cafepress.com we could do t-shirts and all kinds of other stuff there and jack up the price slightly to help buy something....

I can get 10% off dell through corporate discount.... hardware wise I don't really have anything that'd help....

Chris

We built a 1.8 p4 with raid mirroring in a case, 2 40 gigs and 512 ddr ram for like around 900 with win2k and 5 licenese that alone is like 300 dollars or so. We went though a little company that we use from time to time that sells nice stuff. I dont recomend buying though auctions even *** it might be cheaper, its not viable for a long life machine. Make sure you get stuff with full warenties and known good products. Find out if your bank has accounts with any shops/companies that build computers or sells parts, might be able to get discounts that way.

Running a board server is not a big pain other than backups. Id say atleast raid mirroring then the possiblity of setting up a tape drive. Do weekly backups to 2 tapes so we never are more than 2 weeks behind if a full crash occurs. The raid mirroring will take care of daily stuff, and get the tape drive to backup the data base weekly. Oh i know about backups, working at a mental health type place we have to keep our stuff backed up. We get very panicy if we dont get a weekly backup for one reason or another, as it has happened while working on that server...

Good point about the backup Peter. I think Ben told me the data on the forum was ~250mb. That could be copied nightly to either a third drive, or possibly to another machine. I may have an old Mountain external SCSI tape drive (2/4g?). I'll take a look tomorrow.

Also, I just cranked up the system that I can donate. It has an Abit BX6 motherboard, and a PIII500. The mobo can 'officially' support up to a 700mhz processor, but it's very easy to overclock chips with this mobo. So, if you need it, and it'll do the job, consider it yours.

C (:-)

Originally posted by hooligan NX2000
i dont know if you have money to spend on parts right now but im building a computer and i've gotten all my parts through online auctions for pretty good prices i think...
If you know good prices try ubid.com and ebay can be good too. I got my 900Mhz CPU for just $80 on ebay and 60GB Hard Drive for about $100 at ubid.
good luck with it all and Thanks Bens Boss

There are better places to get computer stuff and for cheap too... like www.newegg.com .... like my 1.1a celeron for $67

THANK'S BENS BOSS!!

Now on to stuff I can donate... I don't have much to donate really, I just bought that processor and a MB, so my Abit VA6 and celeron 500 won't be in use [well maybe I'll use it to build my sister a machine if I don't build a better one for me]. I have some old parts, but I'm sure they wouldn't be good enough... like a 2gb hard drive from '96, most of the rest of that computer.

I'm concerned also that the SDSL line will be enough, but it might. I've always thought that a Cable Modem would be better for more bandwidth, but for hosting a server like this, a T1 or T3 would be better. On a sidenote, I know it's probably too late, but my host www.dixiesys.com have been pretty good and they seem to have some nice hardware and connections.

Most cable modems are capped at 128k or 384k upstream (like mine running the sites in my sig). Anyways cable is great for downloading (T1 download speed or better at $30 bux a month, heck ya) but upload would be in the same boat as DSL.

I do have concerns that 384k wouldn't be enough, but at this point what can we do?

Since ben's boss is offering to pay for one, perhaps we could pay for a second one, and get a router to use both lines for a combined 768k that'd prolley be closer to on it...

Hardware wise, backups are a good thing. I'd personally suggest using HD to HD backup, cheap IDE drives are available, get a hotswap tray (40-60 bux) and two 20gb drives, do several days worth of backup on each drive or alternate every day. Either way, faster and more reliable than tape (don't get me started on the new SDLT drive at work thats clocking CRC errors on 8 out of 10 brand new, VERY expensive tapes... arrrrg).

Chris

Just my suggestions

Thanks Ben's Boss :D
I don't have any comp parts to donate but I'm in for purchasing the T shirts. Somebody fill me in on it. I'll even donate a little extra to help out ;)

Originally posted by domiguy

There are better places to get computer stuff and for cheap too... like www.newegg.com .... like my 1.1a celeron for $67

i guess, but not for the classic slot a's like the one i got.
they are still $92.25 there for a used one.

___________
edit:
nevermind your right i found cheapers ones... Damn.. too bad i didnt know about that place.. :(

Ben,

I'm trying to update my server right now. If it falls through I can donate my old server. It is a Dell Poweredge with dual 600 Xeon processor (motherboard is good for quad Xeon), 4 GB DDR ECC memory, and 5 x 18 GB hard drive with a Perc 3 di raid card. It is configured for raid 5 configuration. Dual power supply. This is a rack mount server. It does have a dual onboard nic and have it configured for "teaming." I will know more in about two weeks.

I'm not sure what I can help with but post or PM me what you need and I'll let you know what I can handle or contribute.

Wow. nismo91's server has my vote. :)

I just got rid of a Chrysler convertible, 400 or 600, needed alot of work and got a Nissan NX 200. 2 seats in front and very small back seat. I love it. I cant find much info on this. Anyone have a suggestion?