Re: [Emc-users] OT ultra-reliable, long life PC
In my experience hard drives that are kept running continuously often last longer than ones that are started and stopped on a regular basis. Les On 24/10/2010 10:38, Ian W. Wright wrote: Dell, replaced with Intel, and now Kingston... - He does use the machine quite intensively, 16 - 18 hours a day but I have cheap hard drives running in desktops which have been on permanently for over 4 years now so I would have expected much better. -- Nokia and ATT present the 2010 Calling All Innovators-North America contest Create new apps games for the Nokia N8 for consumers in U.S. and Canada $10 million total in prizes - $4M cash, 500 devices, nearly $6M in marketing Develop with Nokia Qt SDK, Web Runtime, or Java and Publish to Ovi Store http://p.sf.net/sfu/nokia-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] OT ultra-reliable, long life PC
On Monday, October 25, 2010 10:10:43 am Leslie Newell did opine: In my experience hard drives that are kept running continuously often last longer than ones that are started and stopped on a regular basis. Les I'll second that thought. I have a 1Gb seagate Hawk scsi drive running on a trs-80 Color Computer 3, that probably has about 15 years of running timer on it. Probably 300 reboots, but only 100 or less power downs in that time. That drive was originally the boot drive in an amiga A2k back in the early 90's. On 24/10/2010 10:38, Ian W. Wright wrote: Dell, replaced with Intel, and now Kingston... - He does use the machine quite intensively, 16 - 18 hours a day but I have cheap hard drives running in desktops which have been on permanently for over 4 years now so I would have expected much better. -- Nokia and ATT present the 2010 Calling All Innovators-North America contest Create new apps games for the Nokia N8 for consumers in U.S. and Canada $10 million total in prizes - $4M cash, 500 devices, nearly $6M in marketing Develop with Nokia Qt SDK, Web Runtime, or Java and Publish to Ovi Store http://p.sf.net/sfu/nokia-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users -- Cheers, Gene There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order. -Ed Howdershelt (Author) Many are called, few are chosen. Fewer still get to do the choosing. -- Nokia and ATT present the 2010 Calling All Innovators-North America contest Create new apps games for the Nokia N8 for consumers in U.S. and Canada $10 million total in prizes - $4M cash, 500 devices, nearly $6M in marketing Develop with Nokia Qt SDK, Web Runtime, or Java and Publish to Ovi Store http://p.sf.net/sfu/nokia-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] OT ultra-reliable, long life PC
Dell, replaced with Intel, and now Kingston... - He does use the machine quite intensively, 16 - 18 hours a day but I have cheap hard drives running in desktops which have been on permanently for over 4 years now so I would have expected much better. On 23/10/2010 23:15, Igor Chudov wrote: What was the brand of ssd? On Oct 23, 2010 4:54 PM, Ian W. Wrightwatchma...@talktalk.net wrote: FWIW, I've had to replace the SSD in my son's quite expensive notebook twice in less than 15 months. I've seen a couple of articles saying how they have only a limited number of read/write cycles before they are lible to fail - I don't think I'd like to trust important data to one yet... Ian I have a SSD in my office computer for the fantastic speed. However it did fail after less tha... -- Nokia and ATT presen... -- Nokia and ATT present the 2010 Calling All Innovators-North America contest Create new apps games for the Nokia N8 for consumers in U.S. and Canada $10 million total in prizes - $4M cash, 500 devices, nearly $6M in marketing Develop with Nokia Qt SDK, Web Runtime, or Java and Publish to Ovi Store http://p.sf.net/sfu/nokia-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users -- Nokia and ATT present the 2010 Calling All Innovators-North America contest Create new apps games for the Nokia N8 for consumers in U.S. and Canada $10 million total in prizes - $4M cash, 500 devices, nearly $6M in marketing Develop with Nokia Qt SDK, Web Runtime, or Java and Publish to Ovi Store http://p.sf.net/sfu/nokia-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] OT ultra-reliable, long life PC
At 01:47 PM 10/23/2010, you wrote: Mark Wendt (Contractor) wrote: You mentioned the Dells before, so when my shop box decided to take a crap, I hit the local computer warehouse here in the DC Metro area. They didn't have any Optiplex's, but I did manage to get a Dell Dimension 8400 (? - looking at the invoice - I'll check the model # when I get a chance to get out the the shop) with a P4 3.GHz CPU, 1 GB RAM, 40 GB HD and CD-RW. Jitter on this machine was in the 6000's with the hyper-threading turned off. Dimension is their home line, I think. I really don't know what the difference is between Optiplex and Dimension, but I think there may be a different grade of parts that went into them. If you run this computer 24/7, that may be significant. If you run it only when you are using the machine tool or whatever, then I suspect it will make much less difference. The jitter numbers sound real good! Jon We use Dimensions at work to. Feddle Gummint buys a lot of 'em. The Optiplex's were just the next step up. I had one that I ran 24/7 for years at work. Only problems with it were caused by Winbloze. All my servers at work are either Solaris, Redhat Linux, or HP/Compaq/DEC Unix (or whatever the hell they call it now). Mark -- Nokia and ATT present the 2010 Calling All Innovators-North America contest Create new apps games for the Nokia N8 for consumers in U.S. and Canada $10 million total in prizes - $4M cash, 500 devices, nearly $6M in marketing Develop with Nokia Qt SDK, Web Runtime, or Java and Publish to Ovi Store http://p.sf.net/sfu/nokia-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] OT ultra-reliable, long life PC
Any idea what caused the Microboxes to fail? I used to work for Siemens and about 2005 they had a really big mess on their hands when the Hitachi drives they used were found to be unreliable. Siemens sent crews of techs out to plants that had large installations of these PCs just to to replace hard drives. One Chrysler plant near me had a couple hundred of the Hitachi equipped PCs running a production line. They lost money on those PCs! I've used the Windows EWF manager with Window XP running off a CF card with good luck on industrial apps. One PC has been running nearly 3 years now - 24x7.Of course, it is not connected to the Internet. Dave On 10/23/2010 6:38 PM, RogerN wrote: At work we use Siemens Mircobox 427 PC's to control machines. They have a heat sink on the back and don't have a fan. Some of them are using compact flash for a hard drive and we use EWFMGR Enhanced Write Filter Manager to protect the CF cards because of the way windows is always writing to the hard drive, damaging CF cards in a few months. If you use EWF on the C: drive and store data to the D: drive it will prevent you from losing data changes on every reboot. I'm not sure if Linux has an equivalent to Windows Enhanced Write Filter but perhaps. Also, since this is about the reliability subject, I should mention that we had 10-12 Siemens MicroBox failures within the last year and only 1 Allen Bradley PLC processor, and we probably have 5 times as many AB PLC's as we do Siemens MicroBox PC's and the Allen Bradley PLC's are several years older than the MicroBox PC's. In other words, the Siemens MicroBox doesn't seem to qualify as an Untra-reliable PC! Roger Neal - Original Message - From: Ian W. Wrightwatchma...@talktalk.net To: Enhanced Machine Controller (EMC)emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net Sent: Saturday, October 23, 2010 4:51 PM Subject: Re: [Emc-users] OT ultra-reliable, long life PC FWIW, I've had to replace the SSD in my son's quite expensive notebook twice in less than 15 months. I've seen a couple of articles saying how they have only a limited number of read/write cycles before they are lible to fail - I don't think I'd like to trust important data to one yet... Ian I have a SSD in my office computer for the fantastic speed. However it did fail after less than 6 months which is rather worrying. It was replaced under warranty but it doesn't bode well for long term life. -- Nokia and ATT present the 2010 Calling All Innovators-North America contest Create new apps games for the Nokia N8 for consumers in U.S. and Canada $10 million total in prizes - $4M cash, 500 devices, nearly $6M in marketing Develop with Nokia Qt SDK, Web Runtime, or Java and Publish to Ovi Store http://p.sf.net/sfu/nokia-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users -- Nokia and ATT present the 2010 Calling All Innovators-North America contest Create new apps games for the Nokia N8 for consumers in U.S. and Canada $10 million total in prizes - $4M cash, 500 devices, nearly $6M in marketing Develop with Nokia Qt SDK, Web Runtime, or Java and Publish to Ovi Store http://p.sf.net/sfu/nokia-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users -- Nokia and ATT present the 2010 Calling All Innovators-North America contest Create new apps games for the Nokia N8 for consumers in U.S. and Canada $10 million total in prizes - $4M cash, 500 devices, nearly $6M in marketing Develop with Nokia Qt SDK, Web Runtime, or Java and Publish to Ovi Store http://p.sf.net/sfu/nokia-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] OT ultra-reliable, long life PC
A programmer from Siemens was in our plant when we had one of them fail, he said it's usually the power supply and that we should keep some in stock. It took forever to get Siemens to get us a part number and info so we could order power supplies but we finally got there. Now when a MicroBox quits we try a new power supply and have fixed some. A power supply is $120 versus over $2k for a new MicroBox. We bought a MicroBox 427B (Obsolete version) from Zeppelin (Hindenberg company) for $6K, they reamed us, more than 2X the cost from Siemens. RogerN - Original Message - From: Dave e...@dc9.tzo.com To: Enhanced Machine Controller (EMC) emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net Sent: Sunday, October 24, 2010 9:32 AM Subject: Re: [Emc-users] OT ultra-reliable, long life PC Any idea what caused the Microboxes to fail? I used to work for Siemens and about 2005 they had a really big mess on their hands when the Hitachi drives they used were found to be unreliable. Siemens sent crews of techs out to plants that had large installations of these PCs just to to replace hard drives. One Chrysler plant near me had a couple hundred of the Hitachi equipped PCs running a production line. They lost money on those PCs! I've used the Windows EWF manager with Window XP running off a CF card with good luck on industrial apps. One PC has been running nearly 3 years now - 24x7.Of course, it is not connected to the Internet. Dave On 10/23/2010 6:38 PM, RogerN wrote: At work we use Siemens Mircobox 427 PC's to control machines. They have a heat sink on the back and don't have a fan. Some of them are using compact flash for a hard drive and we use EWFMGR Enhanced Write Filter Manager to protect the CF cards because of the way windows is always writing to the hard drive, damaging CF cards in a few months. If you use EWF on the C: drive and store data to the D: drive it will prevent you from losing data changes on every reboot. I'm not sure if Linux has an equivalent to Windows Enhanced Write Filter but perhaps. Also, since this is about the reliability subject, I should mention that we had 10-12 Siemens MicroBox failures within the last year and only 1 Allen Bradley PLC processor, and we probably have 5 times as many AB PLC's as we do Siemens MicroBox PC's and the Allen Bradley PLC's are several years older than the MicroBox PC's. In other words, the Siemens MicroBox doesn't seem to qualify as an Untra-reliable PC! Roger Neal - Original Message - From: Ian W. Wrightwatchma...@talktalk.net To: Enhanced Machine Controller (EMC)emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net Sent: Saturday, October 23, 2010 4:51 PM Subject: Re: [Emc-users] OT ultra-reliable, long life PC FWIW, I've had to replace the SSD in my son's quite expensive notebook twice in less than 15 months. I've seen a couple of articles saying how they have only a limited number of read/write cycles before they are lible to fail - I don't think I'd like to trust important data to one yet... Ian I have a SSD in my office computer for the fantastic speed. However it did fail after less than 6 months which is rather worrying. It was replaced under warranty but it doesn't bode well for long term life. -- Nokia and ATT present the 2010 Calling All Innovators-North America contest Create new apps games for the Nokia N8 for consumers in U.S. and Canada $10 million total in prizes - $4M cash, 500 devices, nearly $6M in marketing Develop with Nokia Qt SDK, Web Runtime, or Java and Publish to Ovi Store http://p.sf.net/sfu/nokia-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users -- Nokia and ATT present the 2010 Calling All Innovators-North America contest Create new apps games for the Nokia N8 for consumers in U.S. and Canada $10 million total in prizes - $4M cash, 500 devices, nearly $6M in marketing Develop with Nokia Qt SDK, Web Runtime, or Java and Publish to Ovi Store http://p.sf.net/sfu/nokia-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users -- Nokia and ATT present the 2010 Calling All Innovators-North America contest Create new apps games for the Nokia N8 for consumers in U.S. and Canada $10 million total in prizes - $4M cash, 500 devices, nearly $6M in marketing Develop with Nokia Qt SDK, Web Runtime, or Java and Publish to Ovi Store http://p.sf.net/sfu/nokia-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https
Re: [Emc-users] OT ultra-reliable, long life PC
Yes, Siemens has never really been setup to supply parts of an assembly, such as a PC. They normally want to sell you a new unit or have you send in the old unit for repair. I had a customer once who installed a number of flat panel screens and they wanted their field techs to be able to replace the screen backlight assembly during a normal service call if they noticed the screen going dim. It almost took an act of God to get Siemens to make that part accessible as a part number that could be ordered. They finally caved in after many emails and phone calls from me - and I was an employee of Siemens at the time. Siemens, Advantech, and other industrial computer suppliers are vunerable since they buy assemblies, like power supplies, hard drives, memory modules and incorporate them into their products like everyone else. However Siemens used to guarantee long term support and repair for their PCs. I'm not sure if they still do that or not. It used to be 7 years after the product was discontinued. However they never guaranteed that the price would be reasonable for that support and repair service. Dave On 10/24/2010 3:09 PM, RogerN wrote: A programmer from Siemens was in our plant when we had one of them fail, he said it's usually the power supply and that we should keep some in stock. It took forever to get Siemens to get us a part number and info so we could order power supplies but we finally got there. Now when a MicroBox quits we try a new power supply and have fixed some. A power supply is $120 versus over $2k for a new MicroBox. We bought a MicroBox 427B (Obsolete version) from Zeppelin (Hindenberg company) for $6K, they reamed us, more than 2X the cost from Siemens. RogerN - Original Message - From: Davee...@dc9.tzo.com To: Enhanced Machine Controller (EMC)emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net Sent: Sunday, October 24, 2010 9:32 AM Subject: Re: [Emc-users] OT ultra-reliable, long life PC Any idea what caused the Microboxes to fail? I used to work for Siemens and about 2005 they had a really big mess on their hands when the Hitachi drives they used were found to be unreliable. Siemens sent crews of techs out to plants that had large installations of these PCs just to to replace hard drives. One Chrysler plant near me had a couple hundred of the Hitachi equipped PCs running a production line. They lost money on those PCs! I've used the Windows EWF manager with Window XP running off a CF card with good luck on industrial apps. One PC has been running nearly 3 years now - 24x7.Of course, it is not connected to the Internet. Dave On 10/23/2010 6:38 PM, RogerN wrote: At work we use Siemens Mircobox 427 PC's to control machines. They have a heat sink on the back and don't have a fan. Some of them are using compact flash for a hard drive and we use EWFMGR Enhanced Write Filter Manager to protect the CF cards because of the way windows is always writing to the hard drive, damaging CF cards in a few months. If you use EWF on the C: drive and store data to the D: drive it will prevent you from losing data changes on every reboot. I'm not sure if Linux has an equivalent to Windows Enhanced Write Filter but perhaps. Also, since this is about the reliability subject, I should mention that we had 10-12 Siemens MicroBox failures within the last year and only 1 Allen Bradley PLC processor, and we probably have 5 times as many AB PLC's as we do Siemens MicroBox PC's and the Allen Bradley PLC's are several years older than the MicroBox PC's. In other words, the Siemens MicroBox doesn't seem to qualify as an Untra-reliable PC! Roger Neal - Original Message - From: Ian W. Wrightwatchma...@talktalk.net To: Enhanced Machine Controller (EMC)emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net Sent: Saturday, October 23, 2010 4:51 PM Subject: Re: [Emc-users] OT ultra-reliable, long life PC FWIW, I've had to replace the SSD in my son's quite expensive notebook twice in less than 15 months. I've seen a couple of articles saying how they have only a limited number of read/write cycles before they are lible to fail - I don't think I'd like to trust important data to one yet... Ian I have a SSD in my office computer for the fantastic speed. However it did fail after less than 6 months which is rather worrying. It was replaced under warranty but it doesn't bode well for long term life. -- Nokia and ATT present the 2010 Calling All Innovators-North America contest Create new apps games for the Nokia N8 for consumers in U.S. and Canada $10 million total in prizes - $4M cash, 500 devices, nearly $6M in marketing Develop with Nokia Qt SDK, Web Runtime, or Java and Publish to Ovi Store http://p.sf.net/sfu/nokia-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc
Re: [Emc-users] OT ultra-reliable, long life PC
SSD's have a very finite life. I can't go into details on what makes/models have longer lives, or ways that different companies extend SSD life, but any enterprise application using SSD's for performance reasons almost considers the SSD a consumable of the system. Even consumer products manufacturers are specifying lifetimes for SSD's that would surprise most people... (short!)... In most EMC type applications, they would probably last a very long time (especially if swap, syslog, etc were minimized). Many SSD's have all kinds of magic to refresh the data every so often, and need to be powered on to do this. On Fri, Oct 22, 2010 at 10:04 PM, Jon Elson el...@pico-systems.com wrote: Igor Chudov wrote: Jon, this is sad, but true. So, how would you approach building such a PC yourself? Based ENTIRELY on my personal experience, I would go with a used Dell Optiplex. One good thing about the used thing is that they come pre tested. Now, as for how much of their lifetime has been used up, I don't really know. But, I have sold a number of them, and have used them, and hauled some of them back and forth to a number of EMC meetings since 2001. I usually end up junking them due to performance rather than failure. In fact, I have never had a motherboard or PS failure on them. My EMC computers are not run 24/7, but my desktop and server are. I started with a 100 MHz Pentium Classic with 32 MB of memory and a 1 GB disk on my Bridgeport. I now have a 1 GHz Pentium III on the Bridgeport. This is mostly due to Linux bloat and to satisfy the demands of openGL for the Axis interface. One thing is to stay away from anything built in 2001 or 2002, that was when the capacitor debacle happened. We had one at work that fried the caps, I replaced them and it is still running. How about an Atom base mobo, SSD and a PicoPSU? Maybe with a space AC-DC adapter? I am a little leery of these SSDs. They do NOT have proven reliability. We know what the reliability of a name-brand hard drive (Maxtor, Western Digital) is, but these flash memory drives haven't been out there that long. Some of the mainframe makers have RAM-based SSDs that are likely to be amazingly reliable. They are made from WELL-tested technology, but of course need battery backup and hard drive backup to survive. The flash-based stuff has known problems, although most of that is wear-out from too many writes. I have a SATA drive on my desktop now, with an IDE-SATA adaptor that plugs into the 40-pin connector on the motherboard. So, it needs 5 V power from a drive power connector. This is the weak link! The crappy Chinese AMP-ripoff connectors don't make good contact, and every six months the adaptor loses power. I've fiddled with the connector to try to make a better contact. Next time it happens, I really have to replace the connector with a REAL AMP connector. So, these are the kind of things that can bite you, and it is real hard to get away from these cheap Chinese connectors, cables, etc. when building your own system. The Atom CPU is Intel's latest technology, and therefore the smallest feature size. I have heard it mentioned in the same context with short lifetime, but don't actually know for sure. It IS, however, a 45 nm feature size chip. Long-term reliability is not proven, they just came out with the latest generation in Dec 2009. I'm sure Intel has stress-tested them to gauge long term reliability, and has enough experience doing that that they know what can be expected. I suspect there is something that they have published, if you really want to do the research. Jon -- Nokia and ATT present the 2010 Calling All Innovators-North America contest Create new apps games for the Nokia N8 for consumers in U.S. and Canada $10 million total in prizes - $4M cash, 500 devices, nearly $6M in marketing Develop with Nokia Qt SDK, Web Runtime, or Java and Publish to Ovi Store http://p.sf.net/sfu/nokia-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users -- Nokia and ATT present the 2010 Calling All Innovators-North America contest Create new apps games for the Nokia N8 for consumers in U.S. and Canada $10 million total in prizes - $4M cash, 500 devices, nearly $6M in marketing Develop with Nokia Qt SDK, Web Runtime, or Java and Publish to Ovi Store http://p.sf.net/sfu/nokia-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] OT ultra-reliable, long life PC
I have to admit I like Dells as well. They seem to be pretty well designed. My network server has a fairly old motherboard with an AMD 500MHz processor. They don't run as hot as modern CPUs so it will run fanless with an oversized heatsink. I also have a 12V fan running on 5V just for peace of mind. The OS boots off a CF card but main storage is 2x 300GB mechanical hard drives. Every day it backs up one drive to the other. It has been running 24/7 for many years. The PSU is a 600W one with an oversized fan running on 5V instead of 12V. The computer probably only pulls around 100 - 150W so the PSU is hardly ticking over. I have a SSD in my office computer for the fantastic speed. However it did fail after less than 6 months which is rather worrying. It was replaced under warranty but it doesn't bode well for long term life. Les On 23/10/10 05:04, Jon Elson wrote: Based ENTIRELY on my personal experience, I would go with a used Dell Optiplex. One good thing about the used thing is that they come pre tested. Now, as for how much of their lifetime has been used up, I don't really know. But, I have sold a number of them, and have used them, and hauled some of them back and forth to a number of EMC meetings s -- Nokia and ATT present the 2010 Calling All Innovators-North America contest Create new apps games for the Nokia N8 for consumers in U.S. and Canada $10 million total in prizes - $4M cash, 500 devices, nearly $6M in marketing Develop with Nokia Qt SDK, Web Runtime, or Java and Publish to Ovi Store http://p.sf.net/sfu/nokia-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] OT ultra-reliable, long life PC
On 23 October 2010 05:04, Jon Elson el...@pico-systems.com wrote: Based ENTIRELY on my personal experience, I would go with a used Dell Optiplex. One good thing about the used thing is that they come pre tested. It is possibly even better than that. Assuming a bathtub curve of failure with time, all the ones prone to an early-life failure have already failed, so the second hand ones are already selected as the long life examples. -- atp -- Nokia and ATT present the 2010 Calling All Innovators-North America contest Create new apps games for the Nokia N8 for consumers in U.S. and Canada $10 million total in prizes - $4M cash, 500 devices, nearly $6M in marketing Develop with Nokia Qt SDK, Web Runtime, or Java and Publish to Ovi Store http://p.sf.net/sfu/nokia-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] OT ultra-reliable, long life PC
On 23 October 2010 04:00, Igor Chudov ichu...@gmail.com wrote: How about an Atom base mobo, SSD and a PicoPSU? Maybe with a space AC-DC adapter? If I was looking for extreme reliability I think I would avoid a PicoPSU, just because they cram so much power electronics into such a small space. -- atp -- Nokia and ATT present the 2010 Calling All Innovators-North America contest Create new apps games for the Nokia N8 for consumers in U.S. and Canada $10 million total in prizes - $4M cash, 500 devices, nearly $6M in marketing Develop with Nokia Qt SDK, Web Runtime, or Java and Publish to Ovi Store http://p.sf.net/sfu/nokia-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] OT ultra-reliable, long life PC
Igor: Others have outlined reasons individual systems likely will fail. Were I to set the same goal, I'd look into redundant, also known as high-reliability or fault-tolerant, computing. With the cloud become the next big thing there are now expensive commercial products being pushed out the door by CISCO and others, but you can roll your own. I was going to say think RAID (which originally mean redundant array of *inexpensive* disks) but a quick Google search just turned up a reference to RAID as redundant arrays of independent 'data centers' in an article about CISCO so I'm already a day late inventing my new marketing phrase. Regards, Kent -- Nokia and ATT present the 2010 Calling All Innovators-North America contest Create new apps games for the Nokia N8 for consumers in U.S. and Canada $10 million total in prizes - $4M cash, 500 devices, nearly $6M in marketing Develop with Nokia Qt SDK, Web Runtime, or Java and Publish to Ovi Store http://p.sf.net/sfu/nokia-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] OT ultra-reliable, long life PC
On Sat, Oct 23, 2010 at 1:55 AM, John Murphy j...@wyosip.com wrote: SSD's have a very finite life. I can't go into details on what makes/models have longer lives, or ways that different companies extend SSD life, but any enterprise application using SSD's for performance reasons almost considers the SSD a consumable of the system. Even consumer products manufacturers are specifying lifetimes for SSD's that would surprise most people... (short!)... All I read (such as intel white paper), suggests that lifespan limitations of SSDs are all because of quantity of writes. For a use that I am considering, with limited writes, the lifespan would be tremendous. i In most EMC type applications, they would probably last a very long time (especially if swap, syslog, etc were minimized). Many SSD's have all kinds of magic to refresh the data every so often, and need to be powered on to do this. On Fri, Oct 22, 2010 at 10:04 PM, Jon Elson el...@pico-systems.com wrote: Igor Chudov wrote: Jon, this is sad, but true. So, how would you approach building such a PC yourself? Based ENTIRELY on my personal experience, I would go with a used Dell Optiplex. One good thing about the used thing is that they come pre tested. Now, as for how much of their lifetime has been used up, I don't really know. But, I have sold a number of them, and have used them, and hauled some of them back and forth to a number of EMC meetings since 2001. I usually end up junking them due to performance rather than failure. In fact, I have never had a motherboard or PS failure on them. My EMC computers are not run 24/7, but my desktop and server are. I started with a 100 MHz Pentium Classic with 32 MB of memory and a 1 GB disk on my Bridgeport. I now have a 1 GHz Pentium III on the Bridgeport. This is mostly due to Linux bloat and to satisfy the demands of openGL for the Axis interface. One thing is to stay away from anything built in 2001 or 2002, that was when the capacitor debacle happened. We had one at work that fried the caps, I replaced them and it is still running. How about an Atom base mobo, SSD and a PicoPSU? Maybe with a space AC-DC adapter? I am a little leery of these SSDs. They do NOT have proven reliability. We know what the reliability of a name-brand hard drive (Maxtor, Western Digital) is, but these flash memory drives haven't been out there that long. Some of the mainframe makers have RAM-based SSDs that are likely to be amazingly reliable. They are made from WELL-tested technology, but of course need battery backup and hard drive backup to survive. The flash-based stuff has known problems, although most of that is wear-out from too many writes. I have a SATA drive on my desktop now, with an IDE-SATA adaptor that plugs into the 40-pin connector on the motherboard. So, it needs 5 V power from a drive power connector. This is the weak link! The crappy Chinese AMP-ripoff connectors don't make good contact, and every six months the adaptor loses power. I've fiddled with the connector to try to make a better contact. Next time it happens, I really have to replace the connector with a REAL AMP connector. So, these are the kind of things that can bite you, and it is real hard to get away from these cheap Chinese connectors, cables, etc. when building your own system. The Atom CPU is Intel's latest technology, and therefore the smallest feature size. I have heard it mentioned in the same context with short lifetime, but don't actually know for sure. It IS, however, a 45 nm feature size chip. Long-term reliability is not proven, they just came out with the latest generation in Dec 2009. I'm sure Intel has stress-tested them to gauge long term reliability, and has enough experience doing that that they know what can be expected. I suspect there is something that they have published, if you really want to do the research. Jon -- Nokia and ATT present the 2010 Calling All Innovators-North America contest Create new apps games for the Nokia N8 for consumers in U.S. and Canada $10 million total in prizes - $4M cash, 500 devices, nearly $6M in marketing Develop with Nokia Qt SDK, Web Runtime, or Java and Publish to Ovi Store http://p.sf.net/sfu/nokia-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users -- Nokia and ATT present the 2010 Calling All Innovators-North America contest Create new apps games for the Nokia N8 for consumers in U.S. and Canada $10 million total in prizes - $4M cash, 500 devices, nearly $6M in marketing Develop with Nokia Qt SDK, Web Runtime, or Java and Publish to Ovi Store http://p.sf.net/sfu/nokia-dev2dev
Re: [Emc-users] OT ultra-reliable, long life PC
I kept looking and found this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856101096 This is a Atom based fanless PC with an external laptop style brick power supply (meaning it is easily replaceable) and a DVD drive. I would replace or supplant the 320 GB Sata drive with an SSD. If I keep the sata drive, it would be used to hold various backups. Because of its intended use (no graphics, no movie viewing, just modest data serving) it should not consume too much power. i -- Nokia and ATT present the 2010 Calling All Innovators-North America contest Create new apps games for the Nokia N8 for consumers in U.S. and Canada $10 million total in prizes - $4M cash, 500 devices, nearly $6M in marketing Develop with Nokia Qt SDK, Web Runtime, or Java and Publish to Ovi Store http://p.sf.net/sfu/nokia-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] OT ultra-reliable, long life PC
Those old PCs need to be refitted with new hard drives every time. I would expect this atom box to use 20-25 watts of power also. Reports of their reliability are overblown. I used a Dell Dimension 4100 on my Bridgeport Interact and it would occasionally fail to boot, for example. I still have this Dimension. i On Sat, Oct 23, 2010 at 12:14 PM, Kirk Wallace kwall...@wallacecompany.com wrote: On Sat, 2010-10-23 at 11:49 -0500, Igor Chudov wrote: I kept looking and found this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856101096 This is a Atom based fanless PC with an external laptop style brick power supply (meaning it is easily replaceable) and a DVD drive. I would replace or supplant the 320 GB Sata drive with an SSD. If I keep the sata drive, it would be used to hold various backups. Because of its intended use (no graphics, no movie viewing, just modest data serving) it should not consume too much power. i Just exploring another angle. Lets say you get a $50 Dell GX110 and use it as is for five years or how ever long it lasts and it uses 150 watts of power. Then compare it to this $300 PC at 80 Watts (guessing here). That leaves $250 to pay the difference in in power consumption. And saves all the new energy that is needed to make, transport (from China) and recycle (back to China) a new PC. I haven't thought about it much more than this, so I really don't know how this would turn out. -- Kirk Wallace http://www.wallacecompany.com/machine_shop/ http://www.wallacecompany.com/E45/index.html California, USA -- Nokia and ATT present the 2010 Calling All Innovators-North America contest Create new apps games for the Nokia N8 for consumers in U.S. and Canada $10 million total in prizes - $4M cash, 500 devices, nearly $6M in marketing Develop with Nokia Qt SDK, Web Runtime, or Java and Publish to Ovi Store http://p.sf.net/sfu/nokia-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users -- Nokia and ATT present the 2010 Calling All Innovators-North America contest Create new apps games for the Nokia N8 for consumers in U.S. and Canada $10 million total in prizes - $4M cash, 500 devices, nearly $6M in marketing Develop with Nokia Qt SDK, Web Runtime, or Java and Publish to Ovi Store http://p.sf.net/sfu/nokia-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] OT ultra-reliable, long life PC
Igor Chudov wrote: Jon, thanks. What I like about atoms and ssds, is that they are cool and thus are unlikely to suffer from temperature stress. There is also no dependency on rotating fans. Meaning almost no dust clogging the PC, no bearing failure etc. Additionally for SSDs, there are no moving platters. I would use an Intel Mainstream MLC SSD, which I already use in a lot of places (algebra.com database partition, Bridgeport mill, swap on my desktop and MySQL databases too, and at work). I tend to be VERY conservative with important stuff like disk drives, and never go for the latest generation of drives, but buy the later models of a generation from well-known manufacturers. This still doesn't avoid problems, but it improves your odds. If you have good long-term results with the Mainstream SSD, then that is good info to have. With the ext3 fs, especially, you don't have to worry much about CPU crashes messing up the fs. So, the rest of the system is expendable, although you want it to just work and not have to mess with it. But, the contents of the disk represent a fair bit of work, so you don't want to lose that. Too many writes is not an issue for the application that I have in mind (nameserver, CVS, DHCP). Actually it is difficult to come up with any realistic application that would write so much that it would overwhelm a disk with wear leveling. Depending on how much (or little) logging you have, it may be fine. My server actually logs a LOT of crap that I rarely look at. It can be handy for unwinding break-in attempts and the like, however. Jon -- Nokia and ATT present the 2010 Calling All Innovators-North America contest Create new apps games for the Nokia N8 for consumers in U.S. and Canada $10 million total in prizes - $4M cash, 500 devices, nearly $6M in marketing Develop with Nokia Qt SDK, Web Runtime, or Java and Publish to Ovi Store http://p.sf.net/sfu/nokia-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] OT ultra-reliable, long life PC
Leslie Newell wrote: The OS boots off a CF card but main storage is 2x 300GB mechanical hard drives. Every day it backs up one drive to the other. It has been running 24/7 for many years. Do you have a script that spins up the backup drive, runs the backup and then spins it down? If so, I'd like to see how you did that! If you don't spin down the backup drive, it may wear out at the same time as the main one. I have kind of planned on moving to an SSD with daily hard-drive backup, but haven't worked out the exact mechanics of how to do it. I just got a 250 gb SATA drive for the backup, but haven't figured out what SSD to get, they are still a bit expensive. If this works out, I might do the same on my server, too. I have a SSD in my office computer for the fantastic speed. However it did fail after less than 6 months which is rather worrying. It was replaced under warranty but it doesn't bode well for long term life. I don't have a huge turnover in files on my desktop system, but would be kind of afraid to do this without daily backup. I just was horrified to discover that if you recall an old backup project in K3B, it doesn't add any files that were created since the project was saved. I ASSUMED that it recalled only the directories, and backed up all files NOW in those directories! YIKES, glad I discovered this feature before I needed to recover files! Jon -- Nokia and ATT present the 2010 Calling All Innovators-North America contest Create new apps games for the Nokia N8 for consumers in U.S. and Canada $10 million total in prizes - $4M cash, 500 devices, nearly $6M in marketing Develop with Nokia Qt SDK, Web Runtime, or Java and Publish to Ovi Store http://p.sf.net/sfu/nokia-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] OT ultra-reliable, long life PC
On Sat, Oct 23, 2010 at 12:35 PM, Jon Elson el...@pico-systems.com wrote: Igor Chudov wrote: Jon, thanks. What I like about atoms and ssds, is that they are cool and thus are unlikely to suffer from temperature stress. There is also no dependency on rotating fans. Meaning almost no dust clogging the PC, no bearing failure etc. Additionally for SSDs, there are no moving platters. I would use an Intel Mainstream MLC SSD, which I already use in a lot of places (algebra.com database partition, Bridgeport mill, swap on my desktop and MySQL databases too, and at work). I tend to be VERY conservative with important stuff like disk drives, and never go for the latest generation of drives, but buy the later models of a generation from well-known manufacturers. This still doesn't avoid problems, but it improves your odds. If you have good long-term results with the Mainstream SSD, then that is good info to have. These are the real thing. The only thing to wear them out is data writes. Because they have wear leveling, it takes a lot of writing to exhaust the update ability of flash cells. A lot, here, means more than some http logs. Think about how much data do you need to write to, say, referesh the cells of the entire disk 100 times. That would be a lot. This is a somewhat big topic due to write amplification, but generally it is far more than a typical server would ever need to write. With the ext3 fs, especially, you don't have to worry much about CPU crashes messing up the fs. So, the rest of the system is expendable, although you want it to just work and not have to mess with it. But, the contents of the disk represent a fair bit of work, so you don't want to lose that. yep Too many writes is not an issue for the application that I have in mind (nameserver, CVS, DHCP). Actually it is difficult to come up with any realistic application that would write so much that it would overwhelm a disk with wear leveling. Depending on how much (or little) logging you have, it may be fine. My server actually logs a LOT of crap that I rarely look at. It can be handy for unwinding break-in attempts and the like, however. It is probably not a lot in terms of the ability of a SSD to absorb writes. i -- Nokia and ATT present the 2010 Calling All Innovators-North America contest Create new apps games for the Nokia N8 for consumers in U.S. and Canada $10 million total in prizes - $4M cash, 500 devices, nearly $6M in marketing Develop with Nokia Qt SDK, Web Runtime, or Java and Publish to Ovi Store http://p.sf.net/sfu/nokia-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] OT ultra-reliable, long life PC
On Sat, Oct 23, 2010 at 12:43 PM, Jon Elson el...@pico-systems.com wrote: Leslie Newell wrote: The OS boots off a CF card but main storage is 2x 300GB mechanical hard drives. Every day it backs up one drive to the other. It has been running 24/7 for many years. Do you have a script that spins up the backup drive, runs the backup and then spins it down? If so, I'd like to see how you did that! If you don't spin down the backup drive, it may wear out at the same time as the main one. man hdparm I have kind of planned on moving to an SSD with daily hard-drive backup, but haven't worked out the exact mechanics of how to do it. I just got a 250 gb SATA drive for the backup, but haven't figured out what SSD to get, they are still a bit expensive. All I know is that Intel SSDs are very honestly made. If this works out, I might do the same on my server, too. I have a SSD in my office computer for the fantastic speed. However it did fail after less than 6 months which is rather worrying. It was replaced under warranty but it doesn't bode well for long term life. I don't have a huge turnover in files on my desktop system, but would be kind of afraid to do this without daily backup. I just was horrified to discover that if you recall an old backup project in K3B, it doesn't add any files that were created since the project was saved. I ASSUMED that it recalled only the directories, and backed up all files NOW in those directories! YIKES, glad I discovered this feature before I needed to recover files! I use rdiff-backup, it is great and is incremental. i Jon -- Nokia and ATT present the 2010 Calling All Innovators-North America contest Create new apps games for the Nokia N8 for consumers in U.S. and Canada $10 million total in prizes - $4M cash, 500 devices, nearly $6M in marketing Develop with Nokia Qt SDK, Web Runtime, or Java and Publish to Ovi Store http://p.sf.net/sfu/nokia-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users -- Nokia and ATT present the 2010 Calling All Innovators-North America contest Create new apps games for the Nokia N8 for consumers in U.S. and Canada $10 million total in prizes - $4M cash, 500 devices, nearly $6M in marketing Develop with Nokia Qt SDK, Web Runtime, or Java and Publish to Ovi Store http://p.sf.net/sfu/nokia-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] OT ultra-reliable, long life PC
Hi Jon, I used hdparm to tell the drive to spin down after 5 minutes of inactivity. The backup is simply rsync running as a cron job. The SSD I used in my office machine was a Kingston. I have to say I was impressed by their customer service. I emailed them on Monday and got an RMA number within an hour. I sent the drive back and had the replacement by Thursday. They offer a 3 year warranty so they must expect them to be pretty reliable. To be honest, even if the SSD is as unreliable as a hard drive, I would still use it. The computer feels so much more responsive with an SSD. Les Do you have a script that spins up the backup drive, runs the backup and then spins it down? If so, I'd like to see how you did that! If you don't spin down the backup drive, it may wear out at the same time as the main one. I have kind of planned on moving to an SSD with daily hard-drive backup, but haven't worked out the exact mechanics of how to do it. I just got a 250 gb SATA drive for the backup, but haven't figured out what SSD to get, they are still a bit expensive. If this works out, I might do the same on my server, too. I have a SSD in my office computer for the fantastic speed. However it did fail after less than 6 months which is rather worrying. It was replaced under warranty but it doesn't bode well for long term life. I don't have a huge turnover in files on my desktop system, but would be kind of afraid to do this without daily backup. I just was horrified to discover that if you recall an old backup project in K3B, it doesn't add any files that were created since the project was saved. I ASSUMED that it recalled only the directories, and backed up all files NOW in those directories! YIKES, glad I discovered this feature before I needed to recover files! Jon -- Nokia and ATT present the 2010 Calling All Innovators-North America contest Create new apps games for the Nokia N8 for consumers in U.S. and Canada $10 million total in prizes - $4M cash, 500 devices, nearly $6M in marketing Develop with Nokia Qt SDK, Web Runtime, or Java and Publish to Ovi Store http://p.sf.net/sfu/nokia-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] OT ultra-reliable, long life PC
FWIW, I've had to replace the SSD in my son's quite expensive notebook twice in less than 15 months. I've seen a couple of articles saying how they have only a limited number of read/write cycles before they are lible to fail - I don't think I'd like to trust important data to one yet... Ian I have a SSD in my office computer for the fantastic speed. However it did fail after less than 6 months which is rather worrying. It was replaced under warranty but it doesn't bode well for long term life. -- Nokia and ATT present the 2010 Calling All Innovators-North America contest Create new apps games for the Nokia N8 for consumers in U.S. and Canada $10 million total in prizes - $4M cash, 500 devices, nearly $6M in marketing Develop with Nokia Qt SDK, Web Runtime, or Java and Publish to Ovi Store http://p.sf.net/sfu/nokia-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] OT ultra-reliable, long life PC
What was the brand of ssd? On Oct 23, 2010 4:54 PM, Ian W. Wright watchma...@talktalk.net wrote: FWIW, I've had to replace the SSD in my son's quite expensive notebook twice in less than 15 months. I've seen a couple of articles saying how they have only a limited number of read/write cycles before they are lible to fail - I don't think I'd like to trust important data to one yet... Ian I have a SSD in my office computer for the fantastic speed. However it did fail after less tha... -- Nokia and ATT presen... -- Nokia and ATT present the 2010 Calling All Innovators-North America contest Create new apps games for the Nokia N8 for consumers in U.S. and Canada $10 million total in prizes - $4M cash, 500 devices, nearly $6M in marketing Develop with Nokia Qt SDK, Web Runtime, or Java and Publish to Ovi Store http://p.sf.net/sfu/nokia-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] OT ultra-reliable, long life PC
Looks really bad! On Sat, Oct 23, 2010 at 5:38 PM, RogerN re...@wildblue.net wrote: At work we use Siemens Mircobox 427 PC's to control machines. They have a heat sink on the back and don't have a fan. Some of them are using compact flash for a hard drive and we use EWFMGR Enhanced Write Filter Manager to protect the CF cards because of the way windows is always writing to the hard drive, damaging CF cards in a few months. If you use EWF on the C: drive and store data to the D: drive it will prevent you from losing data changes on every reboot. I'm not sure if Linux has an equivalent to Windows Enhanced Write Filter but perhaps. Also, since this is about the reliability subject, I should mention that we had 10-12 Siemens MicroBox failures within the last year and only 1 Allen Bradley PLC processor, and we probably have 5 times as many AB PLC's as we do Siemens MicroBox PC's and the Allen Bradley PLC's are several years older than the MicroBox PC's. In other words, the Siemens MicroBox doesn't seem to qualify as an Untra-reliable PC! Roger Neal - Original Message - From: Ian W. Wright watchma...@talktalk.net To: Enhanced Machine Controller (EMC) emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net Sent: Saturday, October 23, 2010 4:51 PM Subject: Re: [Emc-users] OT ultra-reliable, long life PC FWIW, I've had to replace the SSD in my son's quite expensive notebook twice in less than 15 months. I've seen a couple of articles saying how they have only a limited number of read/write cycles before they are lible to fail - I don't think I'd like to trust important data to one yet... Ian I have a SSD in my office computer for the fantastic speed. However it did fail after less than 6 months which is rather worrying. It was replaced under warranty but it doesn't bode well for long term life. -- Nokia and ATT present the 2010 Calling All Innovators-North America contest Create new apps games for the Nokia N8 for consumers in U.S. and Canada $10 million total in prizes - $4M cash, 500 devices, nearly $6M in marketing Develop with Nokia Qt SDK, Web Runtime, or Java and Publish to Ovi Store http://p.sf.net/sfu/nokia-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users -- Nokia and ATT present the 2010 Calling All Innovators-North America contest Create new apps games for the Nokia N8 for consumers in U.S. and Canada $10 million total in prizes - $4M cash, 500 devices, nearly $6M in marketing Develop with Nokia Qt SDK, Web Runtime, or Java and Publish to Ovi Store http://p.sf.net/sfu/nokia-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users -- Nokia and ATT present the 2010 Calling All Innovators-North America contest Create new apps games for the Nokia N8 for consumers in U.S. and Canada $10 million total in prizes - $4M cash, 500 devices, nearly $6M in marketing Develop with Nokia Qt SDK, Web Runtime, or Java and Publish to Ovi Store http://p.sf.net/sfu/nokia-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] OT ultra-reliable, long life PC
Igor Chudov wrote: Those old PCs need to be refitted with new hard drives every time. I would expect this atom box to use 20-25 watts of power also. Reports of their reliability are overblown. I used a Dell Dimension 4100 on my Bridgeport Interact and it would occasionally fail to boot, for example. I still have this Dimension. Dimension is the home-use class of machines. I have never understood what the difference is, but people who ought to know tell me there really IS a difference in the parts. Jon -- Nokia and ATT present the 2010 Calling All Innovators-North America contest Create new apps games for the Nokia N8 for consumers in U.S. and Canada $10 million total in prizes - $4M cash, 500 devices, nearly $6M in marketing Develop with Nokia Qt SDK, Web Runtime, or Java and Publish to Ovi Store http://p.sf.net/sfu/nokia-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] OT ultra-reliable, long life PC
Igor Chudov wrote: man hdparm OK, thanks. Wow, too many options there! But, I think I see that it is the APM settings that I want to change. I use rdiff-backup, it is great and is incremental. OK, have to read up on that. Thanks! Jon -- Nokia and ATT present the 2010 Calling All Innovators-North America contest Create new apps games for the Nokia N8 for consumers in U.S. and Canada $10 million total in prizes - $4M cash, 500 devices, nearly $6M in marketing Develop with Nokia Qt SDK, Web Runtime, or Java and Publish to Ovi Store http://p.sf.net/sfu/nokia-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] OT ultra-reliable, long life PC
The objective here is low power, cool temperature, and absence of any rotating parts. Sounds a bit like my EMC2 machine, (Intel D510MO), I have that running from SSD with passive cooling and a PicoPSU. Finding a suitably reliable 12V supply might be the tricky part. Alternatively a second-hand Mac Mini with a HD swap might be worth a look. (You can run other OSes, but MacOS would do what you want happily too) -- atp -- Nokia and ATT present the 2010 Calling All Innovators-North America contest Create new apps games for the Nokia N8 for consumers in U.S. and Canada $10 million total in prizes - $4M cash, 500 devices, nearly $6M in marketing Develop with Nokia Qt SDK, Web Runtime, or Java and Publish to Ovi Store http://p.sf.net/sfu/nokia-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] OT ultra-reliable, long life PC
2010/10/22 Igor Chudov ichu...@gmail.com I apologize in advance that this is somewhat off topic. I am beginning to feel a need to have a PC/server, to run Linux, that would be extremely reliable and long lasting. ... Our labs at work consists of nothing but hardware made for difficult environments, and very few of them are fanless nor solid states. If you're looking for something that survives, you should look for a Wincor Beetle, slow like a turtle but runs 24/7 for 8 years with no problem. On the other hand you're able to build at least two fast machines yourself for the cost of one Beetle. Extremely reliable power source and a stable motherboard are the keys if you want uptime, and then I'm not talking about a year or two, I mean 8-10 years constantly powered. /S -- Nokia and ATT present the 2010 Calling All Innovators-North America contest Create new apps games for the Nokia N8 for consumers in U.S. and Canada $10 million total in prizes - $4M cash, 500 devices, nearly $6M in marketing Develop with Nokia Qt SDK, Web Runtime, or Java and Publish to Ovi Store http://p.sf.net/sfu/nokia-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] OT ultra-reliable, long life PC
Go to www.mini-box.com they have lots of 12 V DC power supplies for the Mini-ITX main boards. Gary Fiber K8IZ -- Nokia and ATT present the 2010 Calling All Innovators-North America contest Create new apps games for the Nokia N8 for consumers in U.S. and Canada $10 million total in prizes - $4M cash, 500 devices, nearly $6M in marketing Develop with Nokia Qt SDK, Web Runtime, or Java and Publish to Ovi Store http://p.sf.net/sfu/nokia-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] OT ultra-reliable, long life PC
What seems to kill PCs these days are bad capacitors and bad power supplies. Hard drives simply wear out after a while. A SSD with wear leveling gets rid of that problem. Server grade hardware seems to last a long time - SuperMicro boards in particular seem very well built.I sold a customer over 20 systems and not one motherboard has failed in 3 years. However they have lost some power supplies. That said, you can buy several D510MO boards for the price of a SuperMicro motherboard and CPU. I would install a fan in the chassis. A really good one, preferably a large fan that runs at a low speed. If the fan costs $3.00 keep looking. ;-) That will help minimize board hotspots and keep the temps down. Put a filter on the fan intake or plan on blowing out the computer to get the dust out every year or so. With good parts - 3-5 years should be easy and 7 years or more likely IMO. The trick these days will be finding a power supply that is made to last.If you can find a mini-itx board with premium capacitors - you be in even better shape. Dave On 10/22/2010 12:27 AM, Igor Chudov wrote: I apologize in advance that this is somewhat off topic. I am beginning to feel a need to have a PC/server, to run Linux, that would be extremely reliable and long lasting. I would use it for 1) Holding a personal CVS repository 2) Running a nameserver 3) SSH port tunneling 4) Possibly serving files from an attached external storage device. None of the above tasks requires a great deal of CPU and file writing. I will not need a GUI on this machine. My own thinking about this includes: 1) A SSD to hold the data (as I said, I do not anticipate a lot of repetitive writes). 2) A fanless power supply 3) A very low power consumption CPU, like Intel ATOM. The objective here is low power, cool temperature, and absence of any rotating parts. Any thoughts on this? Thanks guys, and again, sorry for the OT post. i -- Nokia and ATT present the 2010 Calling All Innovators-North America contest Create new apps games for the Nokia N8 for consumers in U.S. and Canada $10 million total in prizes - $4M cash, 500 devices, nearly $6M in marketing Develop with Nokia Qt SDK, Web Runtime, or Java and Publish to Ovi Store http://p.sf.net/sfu/nokia-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users -- Nokia and ATT present the 2010 Calling All Innovators-North America contest Create new apps games for the Nokia N8 for consumers in U.S. and Canada $10 million total in prizes - $4M cash, 500 devices, nearly $6M in marketing Develop with Nokia Qt SDK, Web Runtime, or Java and Publish to Ovi Store http://p.sf.net/sfu/nokia-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] OT ultra-reliable, long life PC
Supermicros are great. I have a 5 1/2 year old Supermicro based server from Thinkmate that I keep colocated at my ISP. The hard drive is showing errors (as they are all wont to do), but the box itself is great. I will soon take it home for a refit with a new HD and SSD and Ubuntu 10.04 (It runs Fedora at this time). Guys, what do you think about advantech boxes like this one: http://buy.advantech.com/product/industrialComputer/system-3293.htm Those are fanless, have low power consumption everything, Atom CPU, and take 24 VDC in. Again, I will use it for high importance, low power needs, like to host my CVS, be a nameserver, maybe a file server from a USB attached device. I want this box to last for, say, 10 years or more. i On Fri, Oct 22, 2010 at 9:48 AM, Dave e...@dc9.tzo.com wrote: What seems to kill PCs these days are bad capacitors and bad power supplies. Hard drives simply wear out after a while. A SSD with wear leveling gets rid of that problem. Server grade hardware seems to last a long time - SuperMicro boards in particular seem very well built. I sold a customer over 20 systems and not one motherboard has failed in 3 years. However they have lost some power supplies. That said, you can buy several D510MO boards for the price of a SuperMicro motherboard and CPU. I would install a fan in the chassis. A really good one, preferably a large fan that runs at a low speed. If the fan costs $3.00 keep looking. ;-) That will help minimize board hotspots and keep the temps down. Put a filter on the fan intake or plan on blowing out the computer to get the dust out every year or so. With good parts - 3-5 years should be easy and 7 years or more likely IMO. The trick these days will be finding a power supply that is made to last. If you can find a mini-itx board with premium capacitors - you be in even better shape. Dave On 10/22/2010 12:27 AM, Igor Chudov wrote: I apologize in advance that this is somewhat off topic. I am beginning to feel a need to have a PC/server, to run Linux, that would be extremely reliable and long lasting. I would use it for 1) Holding a personal CVS repository 2) Running a nameserver 3) SSH port tunneling 4) Possibly serving files from an attached external storage device. None of the above tasks requires a great deal of CPU and file writing. I will not need a GUI on this machine. My own thinking about this includes: 1) A SSD to hold the data (as I said, I do not anticipate a lot of repetitive writes). 2) A fanless power supply 3) A very low power consumption CPU, like Intel ATOM. The objective here is low power, cool temperature, and absence of any rotating parts. Any thoughts on this? Thanks guys, and again, sorry for the OT post. i -- Nokia and ATT present the 2010 Calling All Innovators-North America contest Create new apps games for the Nokia N8 for consumers in U.S. and Canada $10 million total in prizes - $4M cash, 500 devices, nearly $6M in marketing Develop with Nokia Qt SDK, Web Runtime, or Java and Publish to Ovi Store http://p.sf.net/sfu/nokia-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users -- Nokia and ATT present the 2010 Calling All Innovators-North America contest Create new apps games for the Nokia N8 for consumers in U.S. and Canada $10 million total in prizes - $4M cash, 500 devices, nearly $6M in marketing Develop with Nokia Qt SDK, Web Runtime, or Java and Publish to Ovi Store http://p.sf.net/sfu/nokia-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users -- Nokia and ATT present the 2010 Calling All Innovators-North America contest Create new apps games for the Nokia N8 for consumers in U.S. and Canada $10 million total in prizes - $4M cash, 500 devices, nearly $6M in marketing Develop with Nokia Qt SDK, Web Runtime, or Java and Publish to Ovi Store http://p.sf.net/sfu/nokia-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] OT ultra-reliable, long life PC
I have wished I could buy a reliable computer for work projects. I find that industrial computers are not any more long-lived than commercial computers. Additionally, I have had some bad experiences with the level of support, particularly bios support is non-existent and they are poorly tested before release. I have bought quite a few computers from Advantech, they do seem to be some of the best, but I avoid them if I can. For the price of one industrial computer, I can buy many commercial computers. The only reason I would go with an industrial computer is for the form factor. Eric Keller On Fri, Oct 22, 2010 at 12:47 AM, kurniadi kurniadi2...@gmail.com wrote: Maybe you look for industrial pc, like from http://www.advantech.com/, http://www.industrialpc.com/, or maybe server specification like from http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/ATOM/ couse Industrial pc or server more reliable than consumer desktop pc. 2010/10/22 Igor Chudov ichu...@gmail.com: I apologize in advance that this is somewhat off topic. I am beginning to feel a need to have a PC/server, to run Linux, that would be extremely reliable and long lasting. I would use it for 1) Holding a personal CVS repository 2) Running a nameserver 3) SSH port tunneling 4) Possibly serving files from an attached external storage device. None of the above tasks requires a great deal of CPU and file writing. I will not need a GUI on this machine. My own thinking about this includes: 1) A SSD to hold the data (as I said, I do not anticipate a lot of repetitive writes). 2) A fanless power supply 3) A very low power consumption CPU, like Intel ATOM. The objective here is low power, cool temperature, and absence of any rotating parts. Any thoughts on this? Thanks guys, and again, sorry for the OT post. i -- Nokia and ATT present the 2010 Calling All Innovators-North America contest Create new apps games for the Nokia N8 for consumers in U.S. and Canada $10 million total in prizes - $4M cash, 500 devices, nearly $6M in marketing Develop with Nokia Qt SDK, Web Runtime, or Java and Publish to Ovi Store http://p.sf.net/sfu/nokia-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users -- Nokia and ATT present the 2010 Calling All Innovators-North America contest Create new apps games for the Nokia N8 for consumers in U.S. and Canada $10 million total in prizes - $4M cash, 500 devices, nearly $6M in marketing Develop with Nokia Qt SDK, Web Runtime, or Java and Publish to Ovi Store http://p.sf.net/sfu/nokia-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users -- Nokia and ATT present the 2010 Calling All Innovators-North America contest Create new apps games for the Nokia N8 for consumers in U.S. and Canada $10 million total in prizes - $4M cash, 500 devices, nearly $6M in marketing Develop with Nokia Qt SDK, Web Runtime, or Java and Publish to Ovi Store http://p.sf.net/sfu/nokia-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] OT ultra-reliable, long life PC
Just to be more clear than I was in my previous post, if that Advantech works out of the box, which is not guaranteed, I wouldn't expect it to work problem-free for 5 years. Out of over 20 computers I have bought from them, I don't think any of them have worked that long without becoming flaky. I have been able to nurse most of them to 10 years, but it has taken a lot of extra effort. Eric On Fri, Oct 22, 2010 at 11:10 AM, Igor Chudov ichu...@gmail.com wrote: Supermicros are great. I have a 5 1/2 year old Supermicro based server from Thinkmate that I keep colocated at my ISP. The hard drive is showing errors (as they are all wont to do), but the box itself is great. I will soon take it home for a refit with a new HD and SSD and Ubuntu 10.04 (It runs Fedora at this time). Guys, what do you think about advantech boxes like this one: http://buy.advantech.com/product/industrialComputer/system-3293.htm Those are fanless, have low power consumption everything, Atom CPU, and take 24 VDC in. Again, I will use it for high importance, low power needs, like to host my CVS, be a nameserver, maybe a file server from a USB attached device. I want this box to last for, say, 10 years or more. i On Fri, Oct 22, 2010 at 9:48 AM, Dave e...@dc9.tzo.com wrote: What seems to kill PCs these days are bad capacitors and bad power supplies. Hard drives simply wear out after a while. A SSD with wear leveling gets rid of that problem. Server grade hardware seems to last a long time - SuperMicro boards in particular seem very well built. I sold a customer over 20 systems and not one motherboard has failed in 3 years. However they have lost some power supplies. That said, you can buy several D510MO boards for the price of a SuperMicro motherboard and CPU. I would install a fan in the chassis. A really good one, preferably a large fan that runs at a low speed. If the fan costs $3.00 keep looking. ;-) That will help minimize board hotspots and keep the temps down. Put a filter on the fan intake or plan on blowing out the computer to get the dust out every year or so. With good parts - 3-5 years should be easy and 7 years or more likely IMO. The trick these days will be finding a power supply that is made to last. If you can find a mini-itx board with premium capacitors - you be in even better shape. Dave On 10/22/2010 12:27 AM, Igor Chudov wrote: I apologize in advance that this is somewhat off topic. I am beginning to feel a need to have a PC/server, to run Linux, that would be extremely reliable and long lasting. I would use it for 1) Holding a personal CVS repository 2) Running a nameserver 3) SSH port tunneling 4) Possibly serving files from an attached external storage device. None of the above tasks requires a great deal of CPU and file writing. I will not need a GUI on this machine. My own thinking about this includes: 1) A SSD to hold the data (as I said, I do not anticipate a lot of repetitive writes). 2) A fanless power supply 3) A very low power consumption CPU, like Intel ATOM. The objective here is low power, cool temperature, and absence of any rotating parts. Any thoughts on this? Thanks guys, and again, sorry for the OT post. i -- Nokia and ATT present the 2010 Calling All Innovators-North America contest Create new apps games for the Nokia N8 for consumers in U.S. and Canada $10 million total in prizes - $4M cash, 500 devices, nearly $6M in marketing Develop with Nokia Qt SDK, Web Runtime, or Java and Publish to Ovi Store http://p.sf.net/sfu/nokia-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users -- Nokia and ATT present the 2010 Calling All Innovators-North America contest Create new apps games for the Nokia N8 for consumers in U.S. and Canada $10 million total in prizes - $4M cash, 500 devices, nearly $6M in marketing Develop with Nokia Qt SDK, Web Runtime, or Java and Publish to Ovi Store http://p.sf.net/sfu/nokia-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users -- Nokia and ATT present the 2010 Calling All Innovators-North America contest Create new apps games for the Nokia N8 for consumers in U.S. and Canada $10 million total in prizes - $4M cash, 500 devices, nearly $6M in marketing Develop with Nokia Qt SDK, Web Runtime, or Java and Publish to Ovi Store http://p.sf.net/sfu/nokia-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net
Re: [Emc-users] OT ultra-reliable, long life PC
OK, thanks for saving my A$$ and giving me your first hand user experience. I will look for something else. Which is kind of sad really. How hard is it to put together a fanless system that consumes at most 20 watts and has a reliable power supply? i On Fri, Oct 22, 2010 at 10:30 AM, Eric Keller eekel...@psu.edu wrote: Just to be more clear than I was in my previous post, if that Advantech works out of the box, which is not guaranteed, I wouldn't expect it to work problem-free for 5 years. Out of over 20 computers I have bought from them, I don't think any of them have worked that long without becoming flaky. I have been able to nurse most of them to 10 years, but it has taken a lot of extra effort. Eric On Fri, Oct 22, 2010 at 11:10 AM, Igor Chudov ichu...@gmail.com wrote: Supermicros are great. I have a 5 1/2 year old Supermicro based server from Thinkmate that I keep colocated at my ISP. The hard drive is showing errors (as they are all wont to do), but the box itself is great. I will soon take it home for a refit with a new HD and SSD and Ubuntu 10.04 (It runs Fedora at this time). Guys, what do you think about advantech boxes like this one: http://buy.advantech.com/product/industrialComputer/system-3293.htm Those are fanless, have low power consumption everything, Atom CPU, and take 24 VDC in. Again, I will use it for high importance, low power needs, like to host my CVS, be a nameserver, maybe a file server from a USB attached device. I want this box to last for, say, 10 years or more. i On Fri, Oct 22, 2010 at 9:48 AM, Dave e...@dc9.tzo.com wrote: What seems to kill PCs these days are bad capacitors and bad power supplies. Hard drives simply wear out after a while. A SSD with wear leveling gets rid of that problem. Server grade hardware seems to last a long time - SuperMicro boards in particular seem very well built. I sold a customer over 20 systems and not one motherboard has failed in 3 years. However they have lost some power supplies. That said, you can buy several D510MO boards for the price of a SuperMicro motherboard and CPU. I would install a fan in the chassis. A really good one, preferably a large fan that runs at a low speed. If the fan costs $3.00 keep looking. ;-) That will help minimize board hotspots and keep the temps down. Put a filter on the fan intake or plan on blowing out the computer to get the dust out every year or so. With good parts - 3-5 years should be easy and 7 years or more likely IMO. The trick these days will be finding a power supply that is made to last. If you can find a mini-itx board with premium capacitors - you be in even better shape. Dave On 10/22/2010 12:27 AM, Igor Chudov wrote: I apologize in advance that this is somewhat off topic. I am beginning to feel a need to have a PC/server, to run Linux, that would be extremely reliable and long lasting. I would use it for 1) Holding a personal CVS repository 2) Running a nameserver 3) SSH port tunneling 4) Possibly serving files from an attached external storage device. None of the above tasks requires a great deal of CPU and file writing. I will not need a GUI on this machine. My own thinking about this includes: 1) A SSD to hold the data (as I said, I do not anticipate a lot of repetitive writes). 2) A fanless power supply 3) A very low power consumption CPU, like Intel ATOM. The objective here is low power, cool temperature, and absence of any rotating parts. Any thoughts on this? Thanks guys, and again, sorry for the OT post. i -- Nokia and ATT present the 2010 Calling All Innovators-North America contest Create new apps games for the Nokia N8 for consumers in U.S. and Canada $10 million total in prizes - $4M cash, 500 devices, nearly $6M in marketing Develop with Nokia Qt SDK, Web Runtime, or Java and Publish to Ovi Store http://p.sf.net/sfu/nokia-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users -- Nokia and ATT present the 2010 Calling All Innovators-North America contest Create new apps games for the Nokia N8 for consumers in U.S. and Canada $10 million total in prizes - $4M cash, 500 devices, nearly $6M in marketing Develop with Nokia Qt SDK, Web Runtime, or Java and Publish to Ovi Store http://p.sf.net/sfu/nokia-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users -- Nokia and ATT present the 2010 Calling All Innovators-North America contest Create new apps games for the Nokia N8 for consumers in
Re: [Emc-users] OT ultra-reliable, long life PC
I would agree with Eric, I have used Advantech computers and I think their biggest plus is form factor and convenience for industrial applications. I think Advantech's reliability is less than good server hardware but probably not better than standard commercial grade PCs. I have worked with a company that uses a lot of Advantech PCs for their panels as they are convenient to mount, but when it comes to the data center of the system they use high end server hardware mounted in an air conditioned panel with hot swap drives setup in a raid configuration for redundancy.The Advantech PCs are used as clients to the data server. If they die they get swapped out but the data is still safe. With the availability of good MicroITX boards and good chassis I think Advantech type hardware is less relevant. I think you would be better off looking at high reliability server hardware if you really want reliability and are willing to pay for it. Otherwise I think you are stuck with Mini Itx boards with fans and a search for a really good power supply. You might want to look at Mini Itx board that have onboard raid support. I think there are a few out there that have that built in. Even so if you can avoid the bad capacitor situation and get a good power supply and fan you should still be good for 5+ years. Dave On 10/22/2010 11:10 AM, Igor Chudov wrote: Supermicros are great. I have a 5 1/2 year old Supermicro based server from Thinkmate that I keep colocated at my ISP. The hard drive is showing errors (as they are all wont to do), but the box itself is great. I will soon take it home for a refit with a new HD and SSD and Ubuntu 10.04 (It runs Fedora at this time). Guys, what do you think about advantech boxes like this one: http://buy.advantech.com/product/industrialComputer/system-3293.htm Those are fanless, have low power consumption everything, Atom CPU, and take 24 VDC in. Again, I will use it for high importance, low power needs, like to host my CVS, be a nameserver, maybe a file server from a USB attached device. I want this box to last for, say, 10 years or more. i On Fri, Oct 22, 2010 at 9:48 AM, Davee...@dc9.tzo.com wrote: What seems to kill PCs these days are bad capacitors and bad power supplies. Hard drives simply wear out after a while. A SSD with wear leveling gets rid of that problem. Server grade hardware seems to last a long time - SuperMicro boards in particular seem very well built.I sold a customer over 20 systems and not one motherboard has failed in 3 years. However they have lost some power supplies. That said, you can buy several D510MO boards for the price of a SuperMicro motherboard and CPU. I would install a fan in the chassis. A really good one, preferably a large fan that runs at a low speed. If the fan costs $3.00 keep looking. ;-) That will help minimize board hotspots and keep the temps down. Put a filter on the fan intake or plan on blowing out the computer to get the dust out every year or so. With good parts - 3-5 years should be easy and 7 years or more likely IMO. The trick these days will be finding a power supply that is made to last.If you can find a mini-itx board with premium capacitors - you be in even better shape. Dave On 10/22/2010 12:27 AM, Igor Chudov wrote: I apologize in advance that this is somewhat off topic. I am beginning to feel a need to have a PC/server, to run Linux, that would be extremely reliable and long lasting. I would use it for 1) Holding a personal CVS repository 2) Running a nameserver 3) SSH port tunneling 4) Possibly serving files from an attached external storage device. None of the above tasks requires a great deal of CPU and file writing. I will not need a GUI on this machine. My own thinking about this includes: 1) A SSD to hold the data (as I said, I do not anticipate a lot of repetitive writes). 2) A fanless power supply 3) A very low power consumption CPU, like Intel ATOM. The objective here is low power, cool temperature, and absence of any rotating parts. Any thoughts on this? Thanks guys, and again, sorry for the OT post. i -- Nokia and ATT present the 2010 Calling All Innovators-North America contest Create new appsgames for the Nokia N8 for consumers in U.S. and Canada $10 million total in prizes - $4M cash, 500 devices, nearly $6M in marketing Develop with Nokia Qt SDK, Web Runtime, or Java and Publish to Ovi Store http://p.sf.net/sfu/nokia-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users -- Nokia and ATT present the 2010 Calling All Innovators-North America contest Create new apps games for the Nokia
Re: [Emc-users] OT ultra-reliable, long life PC
On Thu, 2010-10-21 at 23:27 -0500, Igor Chudov wrote: ... snip I am beginning to feel a need to have a PC/server, to run Linux, that would be extremely reliable and long lasting. ... snip I am not an expert, but ... I agree with other comments about how equipment is marketed has nothing to do with how reliable it is. I would assume that whatever you get is going to fail at any time and design your system with that in mind. If your computer ends up lasting ten years, so much the better. I would think that in five years any present computer is going to be embarrassingly out of date anyway. I would consider having a very low power server for everyday use, have high quality mains power with backup, data backup for on-site and off-site, and a back-up computer ready to swap in when the primary fails. The back-up computer could be powered up occasionally to do the data backup. By not going with DC supplies, fanless, solid state or small form factor, you can buy redundancy for the same price as fancy. Also look into RAID and on-board diagnostics for the hard drive(s). Heat, dirt and bad mains power I think are the big killers of electronics. High quality or over rated components can tolerate more abuse, but I think most manufacturers generally put in the cheapest parts and adjust the warranty to a tolerable level. The other side of this is that you might have more fun building a system with all the latest fancy parts and hopefully we get the benefit of your experience :). Also, you might consider getting a Kill-A-Watt to get a better idea of where your Amps are going, and how many. An old slow DELL P3 with an old hard drive spun down most of the time may draw less than you think. Another path may be to use an NSLU2 with a pair of 2.5 drives set up in an RAID. I think this would draw about a Watt or two. I have one set up as an SNMP server. It goes down every once in a long while, but a watchdog script that runs from cron every five minutes could fix that. -- Kirk Wallace http://www.wallacecompany.com/machine_shop/ http://www.wallacecompany.com/E45/index.html California, USA -- Nokia and ATT present the 2010 Calling All Innovators-North America contest Create new apps games for the Nokia N8 for consumers in U.S. and Canada $10 million total in prizes - $4M cash, 500 devices, nearly $6M in marketing Develop with Nokia Qt SDK, Web Runtime, or Java and Publish to Ovi Store http://p.sf.net/sfu/nokia-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] OT ultra-reliable, long life PC
Thanks Jon. I would like a small form factor and SSD for rock solid reliability. What do you guys think about these Mini-Boxes, I believe some people are familiar: http://www.mini-box.com/Mini-Box-M300 Igor On Fri, Oct 22, 2010 at 10:47 AM, Dave e...@dc9.tzo.com wrote: I would agree with Eric, I have used Advantech computers and I think their biggest plus is form factor and convenience for industrial applications. I think Advantech's reliability is less than good server hardware but probably not better than standard commercial grade PCs. I have worked with a company that uses a lot of Advantech PCs for their panels as they are convenient to mount, but when it comes to the data center of the system they use high end server hardware mounted in an air conditioned panel with hot swap drives setup in a raid configuration for redundancy. The Advantech PCs are used as clients to the data server. If they die they get swapped out but the data is still safe. With the availability of good MicroITX boards and good chassis I think Advantech type hardware is less relevant. I think you would be better off looking at high reliability server hardware if you really want reliability and are willing to pay for it. Otherwise I think you are stuck with Mini Itx boards with fans and a search for a really good power supply. You might want to look at Mini Itx board that have onboard raid support. I think there are a few out there that have that built in. Even so if you can avoid the bad capacitor situation and get a good power supply and fan you should still be good for 5+ years. Dave On 10/22/2010 11:10 AM, Igor Chudov wrote: Supermicros are great. I have a 5 1/2 year old Supermicro based server from Thinkmate that I keep colocated at my ISP. The hard drive is showing errors (as they are all wont to do), but the box itself is great. I will soon take it home for a refit with a new HD and SSD and Ubuntu 10.04 (It runs Fedora at this time). Guys, what do you think about advantech boxes like this one: http://buy.advantech.com/product/industrialComputer/system-3293.htm Those are fanless, have low power consumption everything, Atom CPU, and take 24 VDC in. Again, I will use it for high importance, low power needs, like to host my CVS, be a nameserver, maybe a file server from a USB attached device. I want this box to last for, say, 10 years or more. i On Fri, Oct 22, 2010 at 9:48 AM, Davee...@dc9.tzo.com wrote: What seems to kill PCs these days are bad capacitors and bad power supplies. Hard drives simply wear out after a while. A SSD with wear leveling gets rid of that problem. Server grade hardware seems to last a long time - SuperMicro boards in particular seem very well built. I sold a customer over 20 systems and not one motherboard has failed in 3 years. However they have lost some power supplies. That said, you can buy several D510MO boards for the price of a SuperMicro motherboard and CPU. I would install a fan in the chassis. A really good one, preferably a large fan that runs at a low speed. If the fan costs $3.00 keep looking. ;-) That will help minimize board hotspots and keep the temps down. Put a filter on the fan intake or plan on blowing out the computer to get the dust out every year or so. With good parts - 3-5 years should be easy and 7 years or more likely IMO. The trick these days will be finding a power supply that is made to last. If you can find a mini-itx board with premium capacitors - you be in even better shape. Dave On 10/22/2010 12:27 AM, Igor Chudov wrote: I apologize in advance that this is somewhat off topic. I am beginning to feel a need to have a PC/server, to run Linux, that would be extremely reliable and long lasting. I would use it for 1) Holding a personal CVS repository 2) Running a nameserver 3) SSH port tunneling 4) Possibly serving files from an attached external storage device. None of the above tasks requires a great deal of CPU and file writing. I will not need a GUI on this machine. My own thinking about this includes: 1) A SSD to hold the data (as I said, I do not anticipate a lot of repetitive writes). 2) A fanless power supply 3) A very low power consumption CPU, like Intel ATOM. The objective here is low power, cool temperature, and absence of any rotating parts. Any thoughts on this? Thanks guys, and again, sorry for the OT post. i -- Nokia and ATT present the 2010 Calling All Innovators-North America contest Create new apps games for the Nokia N8 for consumers in U.S. and Canada $10 million total in prizes - $4M cash, 500 devices, nearly $6M in marketing Develop with Nokia Qt SDK, Web Runtime, or Java and Publish to Ovi Store http://p.sf.net/sfu/nokia-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list
Re: [Emc-users] OT ultra-reliable, long life PC
On Friday, October 22, 2010 03:12:03 pm Igor Chudov did opine: OK, thanks for saving my A$$ and giving me your first hand user experience. I will look for something else. Which is kind of sad really. How hard is it to put together a fanless system that consumes at most 20 watts and has a reliable power supply? i The main problem, Igor, is the quality of the capacitors used. And without actually specifying to the maker that your device is to be made only with very low ESR, 105C rated capacitors, and paying that custom built premium price, then one generally has to take his chances with new hardware. Switching power supplies, (whether in a tin can called a PSU, or wrapped around the CPU socket on the motherboard) which often have several hundred watts worth of power being shuffled around through these capacitors, with the load absorbing only 15% of that at any one time, and of course the actual power input is, after getting everything running at powerup, is only that 15% scaled to the efficiency of the circuit at that load level. At low load levels that efficiency is often far less than the 85% or more claimed for a full load situation, sometimes as low as 10%. The bottom line is that these caps must have a _vanishingly_ _small_ ESR (Equivalent Series Resistance) because it is this characteristic that determines 90% of the power losses (the other 10% usually being the ohmic and iron losses in the inductors) of the heat generated within the individual capacitor. The greater the heat generated from this resistance, the shorter the life of that capacitor will be. Those capacitors can be had, but at a 2 to 5x premium price that most mobo and psu makers can't afford if their product is to be competitive. We buy those better caps in bulk at the tv station, and routinely replace the elcheapo crap used in quite a bit of the stuff sold through the channels to broadcasters, often within 6 months of placing something into service. Usually its a one time and forget it deal. [...] -- Cheers, Gene There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order. -Ed Howdershelt (Author) Old Japanese proverb: There are two kinds of fools -- those who never climb Mt. Fuji, and those who climb it twice. -- Nokia and ATT present the 2010 Calling All Innovators-North America contest Create new apps games for the Nokia N8 for consumers in U.S. and Canada $10 million total in prizes - $4M cash, 500 devices, nearly $6M in marketing Develop with Nokia Qt SDK, Web Runtime, or Java and Publish to Ovi Store http://p.sf.net/sfu/nokia-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] OT ultra-reliable, long life PC
Dave, this is a great idea, use a 12v mobo and a linear power supply instead of SMPS. I am not totally sure that I want to go this far, just because it becomes a big project, but maybe I will. I know that I hear a lot of bullshit from PC makers, but none of them really cares about reliability beyond 5 years. i On Fri, Oct 22, 2010 at 10:54 AM, Dave e...@dc9.tzo.com wrote: Just a thought, but Jetway sells a 12 volt DC supply Mini Itx motherboard that has an onboard PS. If you fed that with a small linear power supply (which are low voltage, low tech, and extremely reliable) perhaps you can avoid the crappy PC power supply situation that way? Industrial linear power supplies oftentimes go for 20+ years.. You might want to research the reliability of that Jetway board and if it is very good, that might be a good solution for utmost cheap reliability ?? Dave On 10/22/2010 11:35 AM, Igor Chudov wrote: OK, thanks for saving my A$$ and giving me your first hand user experience. I will look for something else. Which is kind of sad really. How hard is it to put together a fanless system that consumes at most 20 watts and has a reliable power supply? i On Fri, Oct 22, 2010 at 10:30 AM, Eric Kellereekel...@psu.edu wrote: Just to be more clear than I was in my previous post, if that Advantech works out of the box, which is not guaranteed, I wouldn't expect it to work problem-free for 5 years. Out of over 20 computers I have bought from them, I don't think any of them have worked that long without becoming flaky. I have been able to nurse most of them to 10 years, but it has taken a lot of extra effort. Eric On Fri, Oct 22, 2010 at 11:10 AM, Igor Chudovichu...@gmail.com wrote: Supermicros are great. I have a 5 1/2 year old Supermicro based server from Thinkmate that I keep colocated at my ISP. The hard drive is showing errors (as they are all wont to do), but the box itself is great. I will soon take it home for a refit with a new HD and SSD and Ubuntu 10.04 (It runs Fedora at this time). Guys, what do you think about advantech boxes like this one: http://buy.advantech.com/product/industrialComputer/system-3293.htm Those are fanless, have low power consumption everything, Atom CPU, and take 24 VDC in. Again, I will use it for high importance, low power needs, like to host my CVS, be a nameserver, maybe a file server from a USB attached device. I want this box to last for, say, 10 years or more. i On Fri, Oct 22, 2010 at 9:48 AM, Davee...@dc9.tzo.com wrote: What seems to kill PCs these days are bad capacitors and bad power supplies. Hard drives simply wear out after a while. A SSD with wear leveling gets rid of that problem. Server grade hardware seems to last a long time - SuperMicro boards in particular seem very well built. I sold a customer over 20 systems and not one motherboard has failed in 3 years. However they have lost some power supplies. That said, you can buy several D510MO boards for the price of a SuperMicro motherboard and CPU. I would install a fan in the chassis. A really good one, preferably a large fan that runs at a low speed. If the fan costs $3.00 keep looking. ;-) That will help minimize board hotspots and keep the temps down. Put a filter on the fan intake or plan on blowing out the computer to get the dust out every year or so. With good parts - 3-5 years should be easy and 7 years or more likely IMO. The trick these days will be finding a power supply that is made to last. If you can find a mini-itx board with premium capacitors - you be in even better shape. Dave On 10/22/2010 12:27 AM, Igor Chudov wrote: I apologize in advance that this is somewhat off topic. I am beginning to feel a need to have a PC/server, to run Linux, that would be extremely reliable and long lasting. I would use it for 1) Holding a personal CVS repository 2) Running a nameserver 3) SSH port tunneling 4) Possibly serving files from an attached external storage device. None of the above tasks requires a great deal of CPU and file writing. I will not need a GUI on this machine. My own thinking about this includes: 1) A SSD to hold the data (as I said, I do not anticipate a lot of repetitive writes). 2) A fanless power supply 3) A very low power consumption CPU, like Intel ATOM. The objective here is low power, cool temperature, and absence of any rotating parts. Any thoughts on this? Thanks guys, and again, sorry for the OT post. i -- Nokia and ATT present the 2010 Calling All Innovators-North America contest Create new apps games for the Nokia N8 for consumers in U.S. and Canada $10 million total in prizes - $4M cash, 500 devices, nearly $6M in marketing Develop with Nokia Qt SDK, Web Runtime, or Java and Publish to Ovi Store http://p.sf.net/sfu/nokia-dev2dev
Re: [Emc-users] OT ultra-reliable, long life PC
And by the way, running PCs into very old age without rebuilding, just was not possible before due to use of rotating platter hard drives. So even old PCs, like Jon's Optiplex, had to be rebuilt to be used beyond 5 years. With SSDs, the situation is principally different and, in the absence of massive writes, SSDs with wear leveling essentially are good forever. The uses that I had in mind (running my personal CVS and nameserver), should easily be supportable by a PC that is 10 years old. I had motherboard troubles with my basement desktop, that also serves as a CVS server, and hated it because essentially I could do no software development of my own for a day. i -- Nokia and ATT present the 2010 Calling All Innovators-North America contest Create new apps games for the Nokia N8 for consumers in U.S. and Canada $10 million total in prizes - $4M cash, 500 devices, nearly $6M in marketing Develop with Nokia Qt SDK, Web Runtime, or Java and Publish to Ovi Store http://p.sf.net/sfu/nokia-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] OT ultra-reliable, long life PC
Igor Chudov wrote: OK, thanks for saving my A$$ and giving me your first hand user experience. I will look for something else. Which is kind of sad really. How hard is it to put together a fanless system that consumes at most 20 watts and has a reliable power supply? It may be very hard. As the semiconductor industry has moved to ever smaller dimensions on their chips, and ever thinner gate oxide, the reliability has gone down. The high current densities have made electromigration a problem that used to be entirely theoretical but now is a real failure mode after several power-on years. Hot electron trapping in the gate oxide has also caused degradation of logic level margins after a couple years. Industry pundits predict that the 45 nm chips may have a lifetime of about 3 years. Keeping them seriously cool should help, but this is a very worrisome progression. I was showing my microVAX to the kids a couple days ago. The hard drive (or possibly controller) has croaked, but it still tried to boot. It ran continuously for 22 years as my main computer, and then running a legacy environmental monitoring application in and around my house. I retired it just in time, I hadn't got all the data off it before the drive quit. That kind of reliability was something I used to count on, and it is sad that the mainstream manufacturers no longer thinks that is important. CD players and cell phones are mostly powered off and just wake up every once in a while, so they avoid the early wearout. SuperMicro motherboards seem to be fairly reliable, the National Superconducting Cyclotron Lab at MSU (East Lansing) uses racks and racks of them. We have one of theirs at work, and the main bus bridge chip on it burned up, got a charred spot on it. It probably had 5 years running time on it by then, though. Jon -- Nokia and ATT present the 2010 Calling All Innovators-North America contest Create new apps games for the Nokia N8 for consumers in U.S. and Canada $10 million total in prizes - $4M cash, 500 devices, nearly $6M in marketing Develop with Nokia Qt SDK, Web Runtime, or Java and Publish to Ovi Store http://p.sf.net/sfu/nokia-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] OT ultra-reliable, long life PC
Dave wrote: Just a thought, but Jetway sells a 12 volt DC supply Mini Itx motherboard that has an onboard PS. If you fed that with a small linear power supply (which are low voltage, low tech, and extremely reliable) perhaps you can avoid the crappy PC power supply situation that way? Modern switching power supplies from good manufacturers are also good, and will run a lot cooler. Get a Lambda switching supply from MP Jones or some other surplus source, they will probably still be running in 40 years. Jon -- Nokia and ATT present the 2010 Calling All Innovators-North America contest Create new apps games for the Nokia N8 for consumers in U.S. and Canada $10 million total in prizes - $4M cash, 500 devices, nearly $6M in marketing Develop with Nokia Qt SDK, Web Runtime, or Java and Publish to Ovi Store http://p.sf.net/sfu/nokia-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] OT ultra-reliable, long life PC
Jon, this is sad, but true. So, how would you approach building such a PC yourself? How about an Atom base mobo, SSD and a PicoPSU? Maybe with a space AC-DC adapter? i On Fri, Oct 22, 2010 at 9:16 PM, Jon Elson el...@pico-systems.com wrote: Dave wrote: Just a thought, but Jetway sells a 12 volt DC supply Mini Itx motherboard that has an onboard PS. If you fed that with a small linear power supply (which are low voltage, low tech, and extremely reliable) perhaps you can avoid the crappy PC power supply situation that way? Modern switching power supplies from good manufacturers are also good, and will run a lot cooler. Get a Lambda switching supply from MP Jones or some other surplus source, they will probably still be running in 40 years. Jon -- Nokia and ATT present the 2010 Calling All Innovators-North America contest Create new apps games for the Nokia N8 for consumers in U.S. and Canada $10 million total in prizes - $4M cash, 500 devices, nearly $6M in marketing Develop with Nokia Qt SDK, Web Runtime, or Java and Publish to Ovi Store http://p.sf.net/sfu/nokia-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users -- Nokia and ATT present the 2010 Calling All Innovators-North America contest Create new apps games for the Nokia N8 for consumers in U.S. and Canada $10 million total in prizes - $4M cash, 500 devices, nearly $6M in marketing Develop with Nokia Qt SDK, Web Runtime, or Java and Publish to Ovi Store http://p.sf.net/sfu/nokia-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] OT ultra-reliable, long life PC
Igor Chudov wrote: Jon, this is sad, but true. So, how would you approach building such a PC yourself? Based ENTIRELY on my personal experience, I would go with a used Dell Optiplex. One good thing about the used thing is that they come pre tested. Now, as for how much of their lifetime has been used up, I don't really know. But, I have sold a number of them, and have used them, and hauled some of them back and forth to a number of EMC meetings since 2001. I usually end up junking them due to performance rather than failure. In fact, I have never had a motherboard or PS failure on them. My EMC computers are not run 24/7, but my desktop and server are. I started with a 100 MHz Pentium Classic with 32 MB of memory and a 1 GB disk on my Bridgeport. I now have a 1 GHz Pentium III on the Bridgeport. This is mostly due to Linux bloat and to satisfy the demands of openGL for the Axis interface. One thing is to stay away from anything built in 2001 or 2002, that was when the capacitor debacle happened. We had one at work that fried the caps, I replaced them and it is still running. How about an Atom base mobo, SSD and a PicoPSU? Maybe with a space AC-DC adapter? I am a little leery of these SSDs. They do NOT have proven reliability. We know what the reliability of a name-brand hard drive (Maxtor, Western Digital) is, but these flash memory drives haven't been out there that long. Some of the mainframe makers have RAM-based SSDs that are likely to be amazingly reliable. They are made from WELL-tested technology, but of course need battery backup and hard drive backup to survive. The flash-based stuff has known problems, although most of that is wear-out from too many writes. I have a SATA drive on my desktop now, with an IDE-SATA adaptor that plugs into the 40-pin connector on the motherboard. So, it needs 5 V power from a drive power connector. This is the weak link! The crappy Chinese AMP-ripoff connectors don't make good contact, and every six months the adaptor loses power. I've fiddled with the connector to try to make a better contact. Next time it happens, I really have to replace the connector with a REAL AMP connector. So, these are the kind of things that can bite you, and it is real hard to get away from these cheap Chinese connectors, cables, etc. when building your own system. The Atom CPU is Intel's latest technology, and therefore the smallest feature size. I have heard it mentioned in the same context with short lifetime, but don't actually know for sure. It IS, however, a 45 nm feature size chip. Long-term reliability is not proven, they just came out with the latest generation in Dec 2009. I'm sure Intel has stress-tested them to gauge long term reliability, and has enough experience doing that that they know what can be expected. I suspect there is something that they have published, if you really want to do the research. Jon -- Nokia and ATT present the 2010 Calling All Innovators-North America contest Create new apps games for the Nokia N8 for consumers in U.S. and Canada $10 million total in prizes - $4M cash, 500 devices, nearly $6M in marketing Develop with Nokia Qt SDK, Web Runtime, or Java and Publish to Ovi Store http://p.sf.net/sfu/nokia-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] OT ultra-reliable, long life PC
Jon, thanks. What I like about atoms and ssds, is that they are cool and thus are unlikely to suffer from temperature stress. There is also no dependency on rotating fans. Meaning almost no dust clogging the PC, no bearing failure etc. Additionally for SSDs, there are no moving platters. I would use an Intel Mainstream MLC SSD, which I already use in a lot of places (algebra.com database partition, Bridgeport mill, swap on my desktop and MySQL databases too, and at work). Too many writes is not an issue for the application that I have in mind (nameserver, CVS, DHCP). Actually it is difficult to come up with any realistic application that would write so much that it would overwhelm a disk with wear leveling. Low power consumption means less stress on the power supply. A point that you make, that Atom and SSD is a long term unproven technology, is a good one. I cannot really counter that. At work, I have a whitebox PC that is by now 9 years old. It works great. Of course I changed the disks in it once. Igor On Fri, Oct 22, 2010 at 11:04 PM, Jon Elson el...@pico-systems.com wrote: Igor Chudov wrote: Jon, this is sad, but true. So, how would you approach building such a PC yourself? Based ENTIRELY on my personal experience, I would go with a used Dell Optiplex. One good thing about the used thing is that they come pre tested. Now, as for how much of their lifetime has been used up, I don't really know. But, I have sold a number of them, and have used them, and hauled some of them back and forth to a number of EMC meetings since 2001. I usually end up junking them due to performance rather than failure. In fact, I have never had a motherboard or PS failure on them. My EMC computers are not run 24/7, but my desktop and server are. I started with a 100 MHz Pentium Classic with 32 MB of memory and a 1 GB disk on my Bridgeport. I now have a 1 GHz Pentium III on the Bridgeport. This is mostly due to Linux bloat and to satisfy the demands of openGL for the Axis interface. One thing is to stay away from anything built in 2001 or 2002, that was when the capacitor debacle happened. We had one at work that fried the caps, I replaced them and it is still running. How about an Atom base mobo, SSD and a PicoPSU? Maybe with a space AC-DC adapter? I am a little leery of these SSDs. They do NOT have proven reliability. We know what the reliability of a name-brand hard drive (Maxtor, Western Digital) is, but these flash memory drives haven't been out there that long. Some of the mainframe makers have RAM-based SSDs that are likely to be amazingly reliable. They are made from WELL-tested technology, but of course need battery backup and hard drive backup to survive. The flash-based stuff has known problems, although most of that is wear-out from too many writes. I have a SATA drive on my desktop now, with an IDE-SATA adaptor that plugs into the 40-pin connector on the motherboard. So, it needs 5 V power from a drive power connector. This is the weak link! The crappy Chinese AMP-ripoff connectors don't make good contact, and every six months the adaptor loses power. I've fiddled with the connector to try to make a better contact. Next time it happens, I really have to replace the connector with a REAL AMP connector. So, these are the kind of things that can bite you, and it is real hard to get away from these cheap Chinese connectors, cables, etc. when building your own system. The Atom CPU is Intel's latest technology, and therefore the smallest feature size. I have heard it mentioned in the same context with short lifetime, but don't actually know for sure. It IS, however, a 45 nm feature size chip. Long-term reliability is not proven, they just came out with the latest generation in Dec 2009. I'm sure Intel has stress-tested them to gauge long term reliability, and has enough experience doing that that they know what can be expected. I suspect there is something that they have published, if you really want to do the research. Jon -- Nokia and ATT present the 2010 Calling All Innovators-North America contest Create new apps games for the Nokia N8 for consumers in U.S. and Canada $10 million total in prizes - $4M cash, 500 devices, nearly $6M in marketing Develop with Nokia Qt SDK, Web Runtime, or Java and Publish to Ovi Store http://p.sf.net/sfu/nokia-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users -- Nokia and ATT present the 2010 Calling All Innovators-North America contest Create new apps games for the Nokia N8 for consumers in U.S. and Canada $10 million total in prizes - $4M cash, 500 devices, nearly $6M in marketing Develop with Nokia Qt SDK,
[Emc-users] OT ultra-reliable, long life PC
I apologize in advance that this is somewhat off topic. I am beginning to feel a need to have a PC/server, to run Linux, that would be extremely reliable and long lasting. I would use it for 1) Holding a personal CVS repository 2) Running a nameserver 3) SSH port tunneling 4) Possibly serving files from an attached external storage device. None of the above tasks requires a great deal of CPU and file writing. I will not need a GUI on this machine. My own thinking about this includes: 1) A SSD to hold the data (as I said, I do not anticipate a lot of repetitive writes). 2) A fanless power supply 3) A very low power consumption CPU, like Intel ATOM. The objective here is low power, cool temperature, and absence of any rotating parts. Any thoughts on this? Thanks guys, and again, sorry for the OT post. i -- Nokia and ATT present the 2010 Calling All Innovators-North America contest Create new apps games for the Nokia N8 for consumers in U.S. and Canada $10 million total in prizes - $4M cash, 500 devices, nearly $6M in marketing Develop with Nokia Qt SDK, Web Runtime, or Java and Publish to Ovi Store http://p.sf.net/sfu/nokia-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] OT ultra-reliable, long life PC
Maybe you look for industrial pc, like from http://www.advantech.com/, http://www.industrialpc.com/, or maybe server specification like from http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/ATOM/ couse Industrial pc or server more reliable than consumer desktop pc. 2010/10/22 Igor Chudov ichu...@gmail.com: I apologize in advance that this is somewhat off topic. I am beginning to feel a need to have a PC/server, to run Linux, that would be extremely reliable and long lasting. I would use it for 1) Holding a personal CVS repository 2) Running a nameserver 3) SSH port tunneling 4) Possibly serving files from an attached external storage device. None of the above tasks requires a great deal of CPU and file writing. I will not need a GUI on this machine. My own thinking about this includes: 1) A SSD to hold the data (as I said, I do not anticipate a lot of repetitive writes). 2) A fanless power supply 3) A very low power consumption CPU, like Intel ATOM. The objective here is low power, cool temperature, and absence of any rotating parts. Any thoughts on this? Thanks guys, and again, sorry for the OT post. i -- Nokia and ATT present the 2010 Calling All Innovators-North America contest Create new apps games for the Nokia N8 for consumers in U.S. and Canada $10 million total in prizes - $4M cash, 500 devices, nearly $6M in marketing Develop with Nokia Qt SDK, Web Runtime, or Java and Publish to Ovi Store http://p.sf.net/sfu/nokia-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users -- Nokia and ATT present the 2010 Calling All Innovators-North America contest Create new apps games for the Nokia N8 for consumers in U.S. and Canada $10 million total in prizes - $4M cash, 500 devices, nearly $6M in marketing Develop with Nokia Qt SDK, Web Runtime, or Java and Publish to Ovi Store http://p.sf.net/sfu/nokia-dev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
