Mike Kaply needs a new build mozilla nightly build machine

He has plenty to keep him busy without fussing over hardware. He's agonizing
over solving the problem with the current machine. On my suggestion he read
http://blog.eracc.com/2008/04/07/building-a-modern-ecomstation-os2-personal-comp
uter/ and asked Gene for a quote. I told him if Gene either pre-installs or
guarantees installation that whatever was quoted should be fine. I
also told him I don't buy WD or Asus and why, and so personally would not buy
the particular quoted hardware.

Anyway, if anyone has any suggestions or recommendations, wants to offer a
quote, or any other way to ease the hardware burden I'm sure Mike would find
them welcome. He's usually on irc://moznet/#warpzilla during weekday
business hours or via the email address he uses in Bugzilla.
-- 
"Either the constitution controls the judges, or the
judges rewrite the constitution." Judge Robert Bork

 Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409

Felix Miata wrote:

> He has plenty to keep him busy without fussing over hardware. He's
> agonizing over solving the problem with the current machine. On my
> suggestion he read http://blog.eracc.com/2008/04/07/... and asked Gene for
> a quote.

I appreciate the suggestion to Mike.

> I told him if Gene either pre-installs or guarantees installation that
> whatever was quoted should be fine.

You say the above and Mike gets my quote ...

> I also told him I don't buy WD or Asus and why, and so personally would
> not buy the particular quoted hardware. 

... then you say this. Either what I quote should be fine or it should not
from the start.

There is no problem with Western Digital hard drives and there is no problem
with ASUS motherboards. The Western Digital hard drive I quoted is the
fastest SATA drive on the market that I know of and should be very quick
which is desirable for a build machine. If you know of something similar
from another manufacturer of which you approve then let me know.

The ASUS M2N-E motherboard is one of the few modern motherboards with
standard components that will work well with current eComStation GA. I do a
LOT of research to find parts that work with eCS and the motherboard is the
most troublesome. ASUS has one that DOES WORK and I really am not pleased
to see it being slandered when I am offering pre-loaded eCS systems based
on that board. If you folks don't want pre-loaded eCS personal computers
then please, continue to do this.

I have built personal computers and servers for nearly 20 years. EVERY
hardware manufacturer has had "stinkers" at one time or another. None
of
them are truly "better" than others in any way that is objective. I
have
sold Western Digital drives as well as Seagate drives for years. I know
people who "hate" WD and I know people who "hate" Seagate.
None of them are
correct.

It appears I now have some "damage control" to do since I have not
heard
back from Mike since sending him his quote. Now I know why.

Gene Alexander
Owner
-- 
ERA Computers & Consulting

On 2008/04/11 11:43 (GMT-0500) ERACC apparently typed:

> Felix Miata wrote:

>> I also told him I don't buy WD or Asus and why, and so personally
would
>> not buy the particular quoted hardware. 

> ... then you say this. Either what I quote should be fine or it should not
> from the start.

"Personally" means if I was building a machine myself I would not buy
ASUS. This should be irrelevant to those who buy their computers at retail
instead of building their own. I find ASUS' web site to be one of the worst
on the web, and so like to minimize any possible need to use it. If you are
a retail system builder, that's your problem, not your customers'.

ASUS support personnel also have a bad attitude/reputation among non-M$
users of their products:
http://web.archive.org/web/20070710235530/http://mozillaquest.com/Linux04/Asus_S
ucks_Story-01.html
http://209.85.207.104/search?q=cache:e5OgQlSsr68J:mozillaquest.com/Linux04/Asus_
Sucks_Story-02.html+%22asus+sucks%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=5&gl=us&am
p;lr=lang_en

> There is no problem with Western Digital hard drives

Maybe, maybe not. They've consistently disimpressed me for well over a decade.

I've spent a lot of time over the years fixing broken and recycling puters.
I've heard more death rattles from WD drives than all others put together,
which surprises me none, as as a group each has weighed less than others of
equivalent form factor and capacity.

WD is, or at least was, making "EIDE" drives rather than the ATA
drives
everyone else made, the winmodem wannabe of HDs. Civilme, the author of
the following, was a senior Mandrake Linux developer at the time he wrote
it: http://www.mail-archive.com/expert@linux-mandrake.com/msg54128.html

HD brand should also be a non-issue for those who don't build their own puters.
But for those who do, mix & match with other brands can mean trouble. At
the
very least, they jumper differently than all others. Everyone else has one
single jp off for slave, and that same jp on for master either with or without
slave present. WD has one jp on for slave, another jp on for master if slave
present, and no jumper if master without slave.

Last I checked retail WD PATA & SATA still only have 3 year warranties.
Seagate
has 5. This for me is reason enough to buy only Seagate under normal
circumstances.

Maybe things have changed since the advent of SATA. I don't know. I bought
my very first new WD ever about a month ago, but only because of an obscenely
low price, $48 at Circuit City for retail 320G PATA with only 8M cache and no
included 80 pin cable.
-- 
"Either the constitution controls the judges, or the
judges rewrite the constitution." Judge Robert Bork

 Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409

ERACC wrote:

> Felix Miata wrote:
> 
> [...]
>> Last I checked retail WD PATA & SATA still only have 3 year
warranties.
>> Seagate has 5. This for me is reason enough to buy only Seagate under
>> normal circumstances.
> [...]
> 
> Felix,
> 
> Here is the warranty as detailed by my distributor on the "Western
Digital
> Raptor WD1500ADFD 150GB Serial ATA 10,000RPM Hard Drive w/16MB Buffer"
I
> quoted to Mike:
> 
>      Warranty provider: WESTERN DIGITAL
>      Warranty Part: Covers 5 year parts
>      Warranty Labor: Covers 5 year labor
> 
> So, it appears your data is a bit out of date. :) I have said before, this
> is the fastest SATA drive I know of (for people needing a fast, non-SCSI
> drive). It should do quite well for someone needing a speedy hard drive
> for compiling software.

I have a similar bias against WD drives but I'm several years out of date. 
The one comment I would make is that there are several advantages to
multiple spindles regardless of drive maker or technology.  Especially when
dealing with build systems, sharing the load between source/target drives
provides noticeable increases in throughput.  Multiple drives will also
generally provide for enough space to duplicate/restore the functions of
one drive when (not if) it fails without the lost time spent acquiring a
replacement.  Based on several years in a large development environment,
even the cost of a good RAID system is dwarfed by the cost of lost
productivity, but dual drives are a reasonable compromise.

-- 

Felix Miata wrote:

[...]
> Last I checked retail WD PATA & SATA still only have 3 year
warranties.
> Seagate has 5. This for me is reason enough to buy only Seagate under
> normal circumstances.
[...]

Felix,

Here is the warranty as detailed by my distributor on the "Western Digital
Raptor WD1500ADFD 150GB Serial ATA 10,000RPM Hard Drive w/16MB Buffer" I
quoted to Mike:

     Warranty provider: WESTERN DIGITAL
     Warranty Part: Covers 5 year parts
     Warranty Labor: Covers 5 year labor

So, it appears your data is a bit out of date. :) I have said before, this
is the fastest SATA drive I know of (for people needing a fast, non-SCSI
drive). It should do quite well for someone needing a speedy hard drive for
compiling software.

Gene Alexander
-- 
ERA Computers & Consulting