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All the New Stuff:
October 7, 2002:
A few weeks ago, I wrote an essay about the current state of the
art in PCs. At that time, I specified a new computer for Wesoomi
Publishing. I also promised a progress report on the building
of that new computer. After many interruptions, I finally did
begin putting the parts together. This is the first report on
the new system and the stuff I have learned. Here are the parts
I specified.
Motherboard
ABIT NV7-133R Socket A; Front side bus 200/266; 4 IDE controllers,
2 with RAID 1, 0, 1 + 0; ATA 133; 5 PCI slots; 1 AGP 4x slot;
3 DDR slots for up to 1.5 GB; 2 USB-2 ports, 2 PS2 ports; 1 Serial
port; 1 Parallel port; On board audio; On board LAN.
Processor AMD Athelon XP 1800
RAM 2700 DDR; 1 GB. PC2700 SDRAM 512 MB modules 2 required
HDD 80GB, 7200 RPM, ATA100, Mode 5. HDD removable drawer is included
4 req.
HDD cables ATA100. 18" 2 required
HDD cables ATA100. 24" 2 required
HDD cables ATA 100. 36" 2 required
Floppy LS120
52 X internal IDE CD-ROM drive
CD-RW Yamaha CDW3200, 24-10-40 EIDE
Video driver board ATI Radeon 7000, 64 MB APG-4
Cabinet 320W, drive bays 5 ext 5"; 1 ext 3"; 2 int 3".
Extra 12 fan, 8cm 2 required
PS2 Keyboard
PS2 Mouse
Surge arrester power strip
Window XP home edition upgrade.
The first thing I am happy to report is that all of this hardware worked. I am very methodical in these things. It took some time to assemble and test these parts, but when I did they were as advertised. The motherboard was not too difficult after I got used to the manual. My guess is it was written by an oriental person who thought he knew English. This is not a serious criticism. In fact, I admire the effort. I would not even attempt to write in a foreign language. Besides, most manuals are like that now.
One good thing about the motherboard is that it came with its own backplate shield. That means I did not have to figure out what I needed after I got it then order it. The shield that came with the cabinet would not have worked for this particular motherboard. Everything else that I checked worked okay. In truth, I did not check the audio. If I ever need it, I will make it work. The local area network adaptor worked on the first try.
I installed three 80 GB hard drives on the RAID controllers. These controllers support all of the ATA transfer standards up to ATA 133. However, the Western Digital hard drives only support up to ATA 100. That is still very fast compared to the old ATA 33 transfer standard.
The main advantage to installing the drives on the RAID controllers is for automatic backup. I installed one drive (C) as my boot drive on the first RAID controller. That will contain all of the software I will use. It will not be automatically backed up. I installed my fixed data (D) drive and another (E) drive on the second RAID controller. The E drive is mounted in a removable drawer. When I begin to use this system, I will set up the removable E drive to mirror the fixed D drive.
In fact, I have two drives mounted in drawers. My plan is to swap them each day and keep one of them in a hidden place. This is in case the government decides that Willie Gaffer has too big of a mouth. If they take all of our stuff we will still be able to recover after we get out of prison. All joking aside (I hope), it is a good idea for a business to have a remote backup.
Another advantage to using the RAID controllers for the hard drives is the regular IDE controllers are still available for other devices. I put one CD reader, one CD-RW, and my LS120 floppy on the regular controllers. They are all very slow devices. One thing we are advised against is mixing slow devices and fast drives on the same controller.
Now, about the hard drive cables. I had to buy new cables to assure that my very fast hard drives would work correctly. The difference in these new cables is they have 80 wires instead of 40. Each data wire has its own ground wire next to it. This insures against crosstalk and data corruption. The cool thing about the cables I bought is they are round instead of flat ribbon cables. This greatly reduces the rats nest look of the innards of the computer case. It is much cleaner. I only needed a few cable ties to make a very neat setup. Also, since I bought several different colors of cables, it's a piece of cake to see where each one goes.
Another neat piece of hardware I bought is called a keyboard video mouse (KVM) switch. This is also sometimes called a computer switch. Let me explain. When I started building my new system, I took the monitor from my oldest system. This meant that my oldest system had no monitor. I could have bought an inexpensive monitor for it, but that takes desktop real estate. My solution was to buy this KVM switch. This allows me to keep my old backup/server computer in service while I build the new one. Later, I may make the old system a CD server and just have it running in the background.
What the switch does is allow me to switch one KVM set between two computers. One keyboard, one monitor and one mouse for two computers. Once it is connected it's all automatic. All I need do to look at the other computer is press a button. The next time the switch does a scan, a few seconds, I will be looking at my other computer. It really is that simple. The switch can also be operated by hot keys, but I hate hot keys. With five thumbs on each hand, I am sure to invoke them when I don't intend to. I do that too often with WordPerfect and I usually don't know exactly what I did.
As I indicated, I also bought and installed Microsoft Windows
XP. That was an interesting, if not unexpected, adventure. Some
things never change. In total candor, I don't know if XP is better
or just different. To be fair, I will reserve judgement until
I have some experience with it. When I do, I will have a follow
up report on XP and anything else I learn in the interim. I will
also report any problems or successes I have with RAID.
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