Elbereth's Journal: I'm so happy!

I'm gonna get almost a grand back from Uncle Sam! I've got a rich uncle that loves me! This makes me feel kind of bad that I waited until 10pm on April 15th to file my taxes (electronically, of course).

I'm really not sure what I'm going to do... there're so many possibilities! Wow, that word looks so wrong. I even went to www.dictionary.com to check it, and that's really how you spell "possibilities". I'm not sure why it looks so very wrong to me. Have you ever felt like something was wrong in some way that you couldn't really put your finger on? It feels so weird. I probably sound like a pothead or something. Oh well.

I'd like to grab some Xeon CPUs off of ebay from my quad Xeon ProLiant. Right now, it's still only got one CPU (400 MHz Xeon) in it. Also, I'd like to get a Parhelia. Heh. I still haven't upgraded my ancient DDR Radeon. I did, however, order a Matrox G450 from Newegg. I plan on putting that in my Tyan Tiger MPX. I think I might want to upgrade from dual 1.2 GHz Athlon MPs to something like an MP 2000 or MP 2400. I dunno. Maybe not.

Argh. So many possible upgrades...

Here's what I've got now:

System #1, the "Wintel" game machine
Generic (but nice) Enlight case
Epox KT133A motherboard
800 MHz Duron
768MB PC133 RAM
20GB Maxtor 5400 RPM hard drive
21" KDS VS21 monitor
32MB DDR Radeon (now called the Radeon 7200, apparently)
Generic Linksys NIC
Turtle Beach Santa Cruz (OEM)
Generic Firewire adapter
Generic TV input card
Lexmark Z53 inkjet printer
Logitech Z560 4.1 speakers
Firewire webcam
Windows XP

System #2, the Linux server
Antec SX1080B case
Tyan Tiger MPX motherboard
Dual 1.2 GHz Athlon MPs (real MPs, not XPs)
512MB DDR PC266 ECC RAM
Tekram DC390U2W SCSI controller (Ultra2 LVD)
36GB Seagate 15K.3 Cheetah (Ultra 320, SCA, in an internal 3.5" hotswap bay)
Four 4.5GB IBM 7200 RPM U2W LVD SCSI drives
40GB Maxtor 7200 RPM EIDE drive (ATA 100)
80GB Maxtor 7200 RPM EIDE drive (ATA 133)
Promise ATA 133 hard drive controller (66 MHz PCI)
SMC 10/100 NIC with two RJ45 ports (66 MHz PCI)
Matrox G450 (when it arrives)
Sound Blaster Live! Value (OEM)
Viewsonic A70 17" monitor
Gentoo

System #3, the Linux experiment
stock Apple Blue & White PowerMac
400 MHz G3 CPU
512MB RAM
Adaptec U2W SCSI controller
Quantum Viking 4.5GB SCSI hard drive
ATI Rage 128
Yellow Lab Linux
OS X 10.1 (not 10.2)

System #4, the OS X machine
stock Apple Blue & White PowerMac
450 MHz G3 CPU
512MB RAM
Adaptec U2W SCSI controller
Quantum Atlas 10K 9.1GB SCSI hard drive
ATI Rage 128
MacOS X 10.1 (not 10.2, as I can't afford that)
Yellow Lab Linux

System #5, the Spare Parts PowerMac Experiment
Apple PowerMac 9500
266 MHz G3 upgrade card
512MB RAM
Combo Firewire/Ultra Wide SCSI card
ATI video card (Rage Pro? I don't know)
Currently, no hard drive
Currently, no OS (I might install OS X and/or PPC Linux on this)

System #6, the old Linux server
Antec SX1080B case (actually a Chieftec case with a retail Antec power supply)
Asus P3C-D motherboard (i820 -- remember that?)
Dual Pentium III 450 MHz CPUs (Katmai, not Coppermine)
256MB RAMBUS RAM
Currently, no hard drive
Currently, no video card
Currently, no OS

System #7, the Quad Xeon
stock Compaq ProLiant 5500
One 400 MHz (512k) Xeon processor, four Xeon processors maximum
Currently, no hard drive (it was removed before I got this system)
Currently, no OS (but I'll install Gentoo Linux on it)

System #8, the Dual PPro
stock Compaq ProLiant 2500
Two Pentium Pro 200 MHz (256k) processors, two processors maximum
Several (four?) SCA 4.5GB UW SCSI hard drives in an SCA backplane
onboard crappy video
Windows NT 4.0 server

System #9, the Multia
stock DEC Multia
166 MHz DEC Alpha CPU (soldered, unfortunately)
128MB ECC RAM
1.2GB external SCSI hard drive
3X external SCSI CDROM
One PCI slot, already being used for the Fast SCSI card (NEC 53C810)

System #10, the testbed
Generic Inwin or Enlight Mid-Tower case
Generic i430VX motherboard (low cost version of the i430TX)
Pentium 233 MMX (I don't think it will accept a K6 or K6-2)
64MB RAM (I think it's SDRAM, but it could be 72 pin EDO)
Adaptec Ultra SCSI controller
Dual 4.5GB IBM 7200 RPM Ultra SCSI hard drives
Generic S3 video card
(this used to be really, really fast back in its day)
SCO OpenServer 5 (haha... don't flame me; it's for work)

I could even dig up more computers, if I REALLY wanted to.

Mostly, here's what I want:

A good 15" or 17" LCD monitor (my eyes are getting very bad... seriously)
A high quality video card for my "Wintel" system (maybe a Parhelia)
An Ultra160 or Ultra320 64 bit SCSI controller for my Tyan Tiger MPX
A small hard drive for my old Linux system (the P3C-D)
A small hard drive for my PowerMac 9500
A small hard drive for my ProLiant 5500
A potential upgrade for my Athlon MPs (not really high priority)
A potential upgrade for my Pentium IIIs (not really high priority)

The MPX can support any Athlon XP or MP, but I don't want to put an XP (modified or otherwise) in it. I only want Athlon MPs. I'm old now and I like doing things by the book. :)

The P3C-D can take any Katmai or Coppermine Pentium III processor. It can not accept Tualatin processors. Yeah, I love Tualatin, too. Too bad, eh? BTW, this is Slot 1 motherboard. I may have my old Asus P2B-D (slot one) around here, too, if I look hard enough. Ahh, i440BX! Those were the days.

I wouldn't mind it if a 1.0 GHz Pentium III fell into my lap. Or maybe two of them. But don't they still cost a fortune? Like over $200? Funk dat.

My P3C-D takes RAMBUS RAM. Don't flame me, please. I've only got 256MB of PC800 RAM in it right now. I guess I could upgrade it to 512MB, but RAMBUS RAM is still a little pricey.

I, uh, sort of broke the plastic arm off of the CPU socket on the Epox motherboard. That means the Duron 800 is wedged in there, permanently... I think. Is it possible to get that CPU out? I'd love to stick a 1.4 GHz Thunderbird processor in there. According to Epox, I can't use the Athlon XP in this board, not even if I flash the BIOS. Funk dat. Epox sucks.

I guess I could just buy a nForce2 board and stick in a Parhelia and XP 1600 or XP 1800 from Newegg. They always run specials on those older CPUs. I bet I could get an nForce2 board for $75 and XP CPU for $50. The RAM would cost at least $50, too. Oh well. That's starting to sound like more money than I'd like to spend, especially when you add the cost of the Parhelia! Fucking Matrox. Why can't they make an inexpensive video card?

I guess I could settle for an ATI or Nvidia card, but once you go Matrox, it's soooo hard to go back to those crappy ATI cards. I don't have a problem with Nvidia, really, but they aren't typically very high quality... just fast. I want something with brilliant visual quality, comparable to a Matrox card. Oh well. Maybe I should just get a damn Radeon 9000 and save my money. I hate ATI.

Oh yeah. I've got some decent speakers. Logitech Z560, those monster speakers that everyone on Newegg was raving about. They're THX rated. I don't really like them that much. There's too much bass, and I always get complaints when I play DVDs or games. Anyone want to buy them from me? I like Creative Labs speakers much better. I think I might downgrade to a $50 set of CL 5.1 speakers. I'm too old to have such loud speakers.

The Viewsonic A70 is my secondary monitor, and it is on a KVM. I use a Microsoft USB keyboard and a generic USB mouse (plugged into the keyboard) to complement the KVM. Basically, every computer but the "Wintel" system is running headless, with no keyboard/mouse. :) I manually plug the USB keyboard into whatever system needs it.

I guess I could buy a new KVM that supports USB keyboards, but... I dunno.

Mainly, I guess I need a new video card and an LCD monitor. My first choice would be the Parhelia and KDS Radius monitor. *sigh* Talk about expensive. There goes the entire $900.