Re: [BLUG] How cheap can you build a box? - redux

Hiya,
> >From Mark Warner
>>You can buy pallets of old P-IIIs for next to nothing on eBay.
>
> Wow.  This was a great tip.  The most questionable part of that
> statement, actually, is the P-III part.  I found P-IVs much easier,
> and they were still amazingly cheap.  Apparently the search term to
> use is "LOT" as in "LOT OF 10 pentium 4 2.8 GHZ P4, 512 DDR, CDROM"
> (starting bid $870, 0 bids so far, ends tomorrow evening).  Or "Lot of
> 34 Dell Optiplex GX260 PC Computer P4 40GB" (Buy it now
> $1,359.96.. that's $40 each!! shipping will probably make it a bit more,
> but still).  Mostly I'm averse to used hardware because we want the
> machines to be reliable, nearly identical, and require little labor to
> set up.  Buying lots of nearly identical hardware like this should
> address those concerns.  And the prices are amazing.
>

One more place to look for these is IU Salvage. From time to time
(every couple months) they have an auction, which typically includes
palettes of desktops and monitors. Their prices for individual
computers aren't very good, but it might be a different story for a
lot of 10. You could save on shipping :-)

-Thomas

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Re: [BLUG] How cheap can you build a box? - redux

David Ernst wrote:

>>From Mark Warner
>> You can buy pallets of old P-IIIs for next to nothing on eBay.
>
> Wow. This was a great tip. The most questionable part of that
> statement, actually, is the P-III part. I found P-IVs much easier,
> and they were still amazingly cheap. Apparently the search term to
> use is "LOT" as in "LOT OF 10 pentium 4 2.8 GHZ P4, 512 DDR, CDROM"
> (starting bid $870, 0 bids so far, ends tomorrow evening). Or "Lot of
> 34 Dell Optiplex GX260 PC Computer P4 40GB" (Buy it now
> $1,359.96.. that's $40 each!! shipping will probably make it a bit more,
> but still). Mostly I'm averse to used hardware because we want the
> machines to be reliable, nearly identical, and require little labor to
> set up. Buying lots of nearly identical hardware like this should
> address those concerns. And the prices are amazing.

Glad that helped. Common carrier freight on that should be in the
$150-250 range, depending on weight, volume, and distance, so it might
add $8 to the unit cost. If it were me, I'd count on 3-4 being DOA or
otherwise needing some TLC. If you got 30 good ones for around $1600,
you'd be looking at roughly $55 each. Not too shabby. Set one up, image
rest of the drives, and off you go.

Sounds like it would be a fun project. Then again, I'm kind of a
hardware tinkerer. Comes from cobbling together old junk to make
something usable -- there's some satisfaction in that. Heck, I'd even be
willing to roll up my sleeves and help if you bought the pizza.

--
Mark Warner
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Re: [BLUG] How cheap can you build a box? - redux

> Don't forget to take power consumption into consideration for
> budgetary and/or environmental concerns, though. Old PIV desktops will
> probably suck a lot of power to give you the same performance as that
> Android tablet, plus the power to run a monitor. (And the expense of a
> monitor; unless explicitly expressed, I doubt those LOTS come with
> display devices.)

About environmental concerns, I would say that reusing old stuff that
would otherwise be trash, saves many more CO2 emissions than what is
needed to build a new machine. At least, that's the case for cars.

http://www.letra.org/spip/article.php?id_article=3567

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Re: [BLUG] How cheap can you build a box? - redux

On Tue, Nov 9, 2010 at 9:09 AM, David Ernst <david.ernst@davidernst.net> wrote:
> >From Mark Warner
>>You can buy pallets of old P-IIIs for next to nothing on eBay.
>
> Wow.  This was a great tip.
> Mostly I'm averse to used hardware because we want the
> machines to be reliable, nearly identical, and require little labor to
> set up.  Buying lots of nearly identical hardware like this should
> address those concerns.  And the prices are amazing.

Yeah, just buy twice as many as you need, and you'll have enough spare
parts to last you a good long while! They may be old and prone to die
at some point, but I've got an identical one at home I can swap it out
for if any part of it dies (just swap the hard disk over and voila).

Don't forget to take power consumption into consideration for
budgetary and/or environmental concerns, though. Old PIV desktops will
probably suck a lot of power to give you the same performance as that
Android tablet, plus the power to run a monitor. (And the expense of a
monitor; unless explicitly expressed, I doubt those LOTS come with
display devices.)

Just some thoughts.

Simón

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Re: [BLUG] How cheap can you build a box? - redux

Thanks to all of you who replied with suggestions about hardware for
the cheap appliance I'm talking about working on. I thought I'd
summarize the responses for easy reference (for me, my colleague,
and why not share it with you all too!).

>From Mark Krenz:
> Perhaps a Beagle Board would be an option: http://beagleboard.org/

I was so glad I'd asked BLUG about this just from this first
response. These look really cool. My gut feeling is that for our
proposed application there'd be too much labor involved per machine,
plus the end cost is going to be very similar to the EEE Touch screen
thing. But, still, I love knowing about things like this.

>From Chris Colvard
>You might also check out mini-ITX motherboards: http://www.mini-box.com/

Similar to the beagle board, looks extremely cool, makes me dream
about building waterproof devices for all kinds of weird
applications. But, also probably not-quite-cheap-enough and
too-much-labor for my current project.

>From Michael Schultheiss
>K-mart has Android tablets for $179.99: http://bit.ly/dwfUaV

>From Jonathan North Washington
>..Android pads for as low as $129.99: http://bit.ly/93oVKD

These are tempting, the fact that they are cheap and include a touch
screen already make them very attractive. The biggest problem is that
the screen is only 7" big. There are a lot of 7" android devices. I
can't picture them. My droid and other smart phones are down around
4", and I've seen lots of tablet like things at 10" and above (iPad,
my netbook, etc). But, I can't remember seeing anyone using something
7". Any clues?

10" Droid tablets are just starting to be released. There's a fair
amount of buzz about the Advent Vega, which is just being released in
the UK for just under $400 (not yet available in the US). Asus is
apparently on the verge of releasing one too. Hopefully in a few
months there will be lots of options and the prices will come down
even more.

>From Mark Warner
>You can buy pallets of old P-IIIs for next to nothing on eBay.

Wow. This was a great tip. The most questionable part of that
statement, actually, is the P-III part. I found P-IVs much easier,
and they were still amazingly cheap. Apparently the search term to
use is "LOT" as in "LOT OF 10 pentium 4 2.8 GHZ P4, 512 DDR, CDROM"
(starting bid $870, 0 bids so far, ends tomorrow evening). Or "Lot of
34 Dell Optiplex GX260 PC Computer P4 40GB" (Buy it now
$1,359.96.. that's $40 each!! shipping will probably make it a bit more,
but still). Mostly I'm averse to used hardware because we want the
machines to be reliable, nearly identical, and require little labor to
set up. Buying lots of nearly identical hardware like this should
address those concerns. And the prices are amazing.

>From Lord Drachenblut
>This might be a viable option http://www.norhtec.com/

Since the mid '90s I've been continuously surprised that network
computing never took off. Good to know that people are still making
these. Again, I can imagine applications for this that I would love.
However, I don't think it's my current application. I think these
would sit there with no network connection and panic. :)

Thanks VERY MUCH to everyone for your feedback!! It was extremely
helpful.

David

On Wed, Oct 27, 2010 at 02:33:40PM -0400, David Ernst wrote:
>General question, only tangentially linux related:
>
>I was talking with a colleague about the possibility of building a
>dedicated appliance for a certain application. They'd need to deploy
>a number of them, so they'd like them to be inexpensive. It would use
>a touch screen monitor, not necessarily have any networking, and not
>need impressive computing power. I thought "my netbook could do it",
>but then I thought, my netbook has all kind of things that we don't
>need, like fold-up portability, a webcam, etc. And we definitely
>wouldn't need the latest-greatest processor speed either. Although we
>wouldn't want used equipment either...
>
>So, the question basically comes down to: what's the cheapest system
>you could buy/build that would
>
>* run linux
>* attach to a monitor
>* have usb ports
>
>We really wouldn't need a Hard Drive, a 16G SD card would be fine.
>
>The simple, easy solution would be to get something like this:
>
>http://www.amazon.com/ASUS-ETP1602C-BK-X0163-Touch-Screen-Desktop/dp/B002VY8OS8
>
>so, if we can't significantly beat $380, there's no use. And that's
>including the touchscreen monitor, which will be at least $100, so
>with no monitor it's gotta be down well below $300, preferably below
>$200. But, couldn't you get a motherboard, a not-super-fast CPU, some
>kind of a case, and a USB Interface for less than that? Thoughts?
>
>Another option is an iPad, or preferably a iPad-like Android device,
>which seem to be "soon but not quite yet". Thoughts on those?
>
>David
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[BLUG] Is the future of SMB software/hardware bleak?

Apple discontinued their XServe line this week, I suspect that OS X Server is next.

While it's easy to point fingers at how generally a bad job Apple did in this area, I have to wonder whether this whole area was just viewed as a dying area of the industry in Apple's eyes in general, not worth the resources? There is an argument to be made there, I think...

There has always been a gap between consumer technology and technology designed for large business in both hardware and software. SMB seems to be about creative improvising and flirting with offerings and solutions within both industries. However, things seem to be changing.

Why would a company run a server in-house anymore when they can outsource this and use a VPS hosted elsewhere, run a web-based app/service run somewhere else, outsource services such as email to Google or the like, etc. The emergence of smart phones is surely to even further perpetuate web services as a replacement for in-house operations as companies can contemplate using cheaper devices (i.e. smartphones, the iPad, etc.) as input devices. Even services such as file backup and sharing that were traditionally done in-house seem to be trending towards the cloud.

Virtualization has also been a big part of this as it makes less and less sense to run physical machines dedicated to stuff. I can't think of any fathomable task that any small business owner would want to do that couldn't be virtualized. There is also little reason to run these VMs in-house (especially in companies that can benefit greatly from disk I/O that bests SATA)

As an Apple, Dell, or whomever looks at this market and seeing it getting smaller and smaller every day, is it not just a matter of time before we stick a fork in the idea of small companies running their own servers doing mission critical stuff? The fact that you can buy Mac Mini and Pro servers now makes me think that Apple sees a need within SMB doing very light utilitarian sort of tasks like running file backups or hosting an internal company wiki or something, in which case there really isn't much need for special hardware or software. Is this perhaps prophetic?

--
Joe Auty, NetMusician
NetMusician helps musicians, bands and artists create beautiful, professional, custom designed, career-essential websites that are easy to maintain and to integrate with popular social networks.
www.netmusician.org
joe@netmusician.org

Re: [BLUG] How cheap can you build a box?

Some places have Android pads for as low as $129.99:
http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=NBA7400ATP

Though I think this is the least cool of the options.

Btw, if you want an old PIII system, there are ways to get them
literally free. For example, you can check dumpsters around town,
especially at the end of the spring semester.

--
Jonathan

On 28 October 2010 10:02, Michael Schultheiss <schultmc@cinlug.org> wrote:
> David Ernst wrote:
>> Another option is an iPad, or preferably a iPad-like Android device,
>> which seem to be "soon but not quite yet".  Thoughts on those?
>
> K-mart has Android tablets for $179.99 [1]  I've heard mixed reviews
> about that particular tablet but it's a much better price point than the
> iPad.
>
> [1]
> http://www.kmart.com/shc/s/p_10151_10104_020W023705190001P?prdNo=3&blockNo=3&blockType=G3
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