[Chester LUG] A few bits and pieces

[David Holden]

On Friday 19 Jun 2009, Stuart Burns wrote:
> Hi Everyone,
>
> Firstly, does anyone have a usb floppy drive I could borrow. I made the
> mistake of getting a iDeq mini system and it has a major issue where if you
> try and do any sustained data transfer to a USB device it just crashes out
> hard.
>
> I am hoping the bios update will fix it but it can only be done from a
> floppy drive. How 1980s is that!
>
> Secondly, and this is where it will get your geek juices really really
> flowing.
>
> At work we do a lot of GIS reporting (creating reports based on 3d maps)
> Now I was just speaking to the guy who runs these reports (They get a dozen
> a week to run or so, depending on what is happening) can't cope.
>
> Until now they have been running on a core duo laptop with 1 GB of ram. I
> kid you not. Each report takes 48 hours. I suggested they get a super
> machine ;)
>
> The data set (40 GB) comes from a SAN.
>
> Can anyone suggest a high end rig (Money more or less no object)

Wish we all lived in that world ;)

> Put simply
> each 10% quicker it can go, it could save up to two weeks of peddle to
> metal computing per year.
>
> I was thinking along the lines of a top of the line AMD (This program can
> do 64 bit computing but doesn't do multiple cpus that efficiently)
>
> Around 24 GB RAM
> 2 * 15K SATA 500 GB in a raid stripe config.
> 1 GB NIC as the data comes from a fibre
> bonded FC4 Fibre cards.
> 1 GB Dual head video card with onboard acceleration.

http://www.transtec.co.uk/GB/E/products/servers/CALLEO300/calleo_340_Intel.html

configure to your hearts content.

>
> Lastly, does anyone have any experience of add in Compute boards. I am
> interested to know, but not going to splash out 2.5K on a board that may or
> may not improve performance.
>
>  Anyhow, interested to know peoples thoughts.
>
> Stu


-- 
Dr. David Holden.

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