[gentoo-amd64] Re: Machine recommendations?

[Duncan]

Thanasis posted on Sat, 14 Mar 2015 15:09:28 +0200 as excerpted:

> On 03/14/2015 01:43 PM, Duncan wrote:
>> ...  And there's the single 16x PCIE slot @ 4x speed, perfect for the
>> quad-port Ethernet card.
>
> http://www.ebay.com/itm/HP-634025-001-629133-001-Ethernet-1-GB-4-
PORT-331FLR-Adapter-HSTNS-BN71-Card-/371258575339

Yeah.  While I'm having trouble with that link ATM... (Firefox keeps 
consuming memory on it until it's killed, lynx stalls, links seems to get 
it tho of course I see text only and due to that/cookies/scripts 
permissions I'm not sure which, I get basically all the bid outcomes, 
etc, all shown at once.)

There's several models of HP quad-port gig-ethernet and at least one Sun 
model, on pricewatch.com, showing up as $80-100.  I spent way too much 
time on this last nite so I'll probably wait a day or two before doing 
much besides replying here, but most of them seem to be posted by the 
same company, allhdd, and at least for the one I looked at, they had 
three prices available, new-in-retail-box ($110 or so IIRC), new-in-bulk-
unit-box (the price quoted on pricewatch, since I had new-only set), and 
used/clean-tested, $50.

Based on that I'm guessing they have the same three categories for the 
other models as well, and I'll have to do some further research before 
deciding which to get, but I'll likely get a used/clean-tested one, 
whatever model I ultimately pick.

And, googling the model I did check on, the kernel has mature drivers, 
and HP certifies the model in its servers running RHEL, OpenSuSE, etc.  
Which is more or less what I expected, since ethernet cards tend to have 
about the best Linux support of any hardware out there, because it's so 
heavily used on net-connected servers and the like.

One thing I /did/ come across, not for that NIC, but actually from 
someone running the am1 as a router with a /different/ NIC, was that he 
had made the mistake of buying a bypass-supporting card.  The idea is 
that if the machine is off (but I'd guess with power still available), 
these cards flip to bypass mode and act like simple Ethernet hubs (or 
possibly switches, I'm not sure).  While that doesn't interest me, he 
thought it was a neat idea, and bought one.

The problem is that these cards apparently require special proprietary 
drivers to switch out of bypass mode, and he couldn't get that driver to 
work, so the card was stuck in bypass mode. =:^(

Naturally after reading that, I wanted to ensure that whatever model I 
ended up with didn't have similar issues, and on at least the model I 
checked, there was no hint of such a thing in either the HP stuff I read 
or in the kernel driver option help, so I expect it'd be fine.

The one thing I did see is that at one point they had a bad firmware, 
that was triggering machine lockups after some amount of uptime.  Tho it 
was fixed by later firmware, it's possible that's why this vendor has all 
those used cards to get rid of...

So obviously, I want to do a bit more checking on the other models as 
well, to see what's up before I decide.  Between the bad firmware 
possibility and being a bit confused about the difference between models 
at this point, I've some further research to do.

But that research will likely have to wait a few days to a day off... or 
at least until I catch up some after last nite...


What I *DID* finally come up with last nite, is a general cost breakdown 
and reasonable/ballpark final total.  The local Fry's Electronics has 
pretty much everything in stock but the quad-port NIC (the site lists one 
model of those too, but at $300, IIRC... pretty much blows the project 
out of the water at that price), at a couple dollars difference from the 
net price both on pricewatch and at newegg.  So I'll probably get most of 
it there, and just order the NIC.  Anyway, here's what I got, based on 
those frys prices.

$$	item
85	quad-eth (obviously if I do the used, this will drop to ~$50)
60	am1 apu (frys about $5 high, here)
30	msi am1 mobo (right on price)
40	4-gig ddr3 (seems to be running a bit under ~$10/gig pretty much 
all over, and fry's doesn't seem to do under 4 gig sticks, now, so call 
it $40, 4 gig)

----
215	subtotal

Less sure on these items, but picked a number based on what I was seeing, 
to have one...

70	case/power (that newegg $50 incl 250W PS would bring this down...)
40	60 gig ssd

---
110	subtotal

325	total


Obviously I could drop this a bit.  $35 on the NIC, $5 on the APU, say 
$20 on the RAM as I could order online and should do just fine with 2 
gig, $20 on the case/power, might actually go burned dvd for permanent 
storage just so I'm sure no crackers are going to store anything on it 
even if they get in, and players are $30 or under last I looked, so 
another $10 there.  Or I could simply use a spare USB stick...

So I could drop it $100 or so... more if I downgraded the APU, but at 
$55-60 I don't see the need, particularly as it'd still be a 25W part, 
just less powerful.  So if I had to, I could do it @ 200 or so, but 325's 
already toward the lower end of the $300-400 I was thinking it'd cost 
earlier... plus tax/shipping/whatever, of course.

And $325 is comparable to some of the higher end wifi routers out there, 
$300 or so, that this sort of matches against, altho they're higher end 
in entirely different areas.

If I decide to throw in a wifi card/antenna (USB since the PCIE will be 
taken by the wired net), which I reasonably could at some point, perhaps 
after getting the netbook/chromebook I asked about in the original post 
as well such that , it'll still come in under $400, which is what I was 
definitely hoping to do.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman