RAID 5 is what the big boys use. It has some overhead but if you spread the stripes across a lot of drives it isn't bad. This was crucial in AS/400s where the loss of one drive usually meant you lost all of them.
I'm lucky enough at work to have a RAID-5 setup with hot swap on my desktop machine (along with two 3+ghz P4 Xeons and 2GB ram). It just showed up on my desk a couple months ago because I guess we needed more machines for our simulations and I had the oldest computer. It's a 6 drive array, several hundred GB of SCSI drives. I don't even know what to do with it all. It's a little more than I think I'd do for a shop computer. My 5 year old HP is fine for that.
Greg wrote:
Software development machines can be expensive too. Multiple monitors, dual CPUs & max memory for running virtual machines, RAID for speed & fault tolerance, ...
-- Mark
been once before. Always thought it was for the tourists. They have quite an impressive early american furniture collection that I spent not nearly enough time looking at. Unfortunately, they don't let you touch it.
Jon E
I sorta have to stay somewhat near the bleeding edge, as I run Autocad on three workstations in my office. One finally died, so it gave me the justification (to myself, I guess) to buy new parts for two of them. So now, what was a Pentium 700 (the dead one) and an old Celeron 350 are now Athlon 2600+ with 1 GB memory, 80 Gb drives, and new CD-Rw's. Not leading edge by any means, but they are ssssssmokin' fast compared to the old ones.
Now I just need to scrape together my pennies for better monitors.
OBWW. Nada. Zip. Nothing. Oh well.
Jon E
Sucks, don't it? I have LDDT 2i, and they've given me until June to upgrade mine. I can't afford the damn extortion, but it's better than buying three new ones, I guess.
Jon E
The creation thereof is the basic permise behind the latest in CNC machinery. The problem is keeping the cost down. I would love to have a machine in the shop, that cost less than a grand, that you could basically program to create a ball-and-claw cabriole leg, and then walk away. Even When I was a kid, sometime in elementary school, the Stanley plant in town let us tour the shop floor. There we saw workers loading boxes full of wood chunks, essentially cubes or rounds, into a hopper, and removing totes full of completed tool handles from the other end. Inside, the machine spun several cutters and removed everything that wasn't programmed to be a tool handle.
Jon E
Well, yeah, that too. It takes me 50 minutes to do a complete build of Rosegarden. One of the guys just bought a new toy that can do it in 2.3 minutes. Ouch.
Careful, Tom. If that high horse you're on bucks, it's a long way to the ground. :)
Anyone who has spent a modicum of time on the wreck will notice that a lot of people just plane "get off" on the tools. Just try to wipe that shit-eating grin off my face when I'm blasting away with a pneumatic nailer. And how many of us will admit to getting a plane tuned to within a gnat's ass and reducing a board to a huge pile of curlies? I could go on with other examples, but I think you get my drift. Sometimes (sometimes, mind you) I don't ask for or desire anything deeper.
They don't let "the public" touch it. Try a different approach:
Write-- (write, don't just show up)-- and explain that you'd like to take some measurements during a quiet / slow / closed time that is convenient for the curator. Explain that you'll wear cotton gloves and use only a cloth tape measure to do your measuring. Assure them that you won't let a ball point pen anywhere near the furniture-- you'll do all your recording with a pencil.
A museum's purpose is not only to archive knowledge, but to disseminate it. If you show you have a real interest, I bet you'll be suprised at the positive response a respectful request brings you.
Michael
I built my first computer years ago. At that time, I had to program my operatg system inmachine language. Over the years, I have rplaced parts until today, none of the original parts are left.
The experience and learning led me into being a field service engineer for machine tool builders. After fifteenyears of getting on a airplane every Sunday, I took a job in R&D at McDonald Douglas. I acquired severl patents with machine tool modeling software programs. The sent me to colleg where I earned a BS degree in Computer Science. I retired after 10 years there.
I am on a P166 as we speak. I do have a faster machine but this is my internet cruiser.
Spelling apparently wasn't a criteria for employment... Nah... I didn't just say that...
Greg G.
The price of a well equipped fault tolerant and secure web server makes gaming machines look cheap. I'm setting one up now. It sits in my office so I need to design an attractice--and sound deadening--hardwood cabinet for it, getting back to the subject of this group.
Pete
Don't you hate it when you dig at someone for a spelling mistake, and then sme smartass comes along to point out your own spelling mistake?
The word "criteria" is plural. You can't have "a criteria." You have "a criterion."
Damn Greek words.
Failing that, try to take digital pictures with a known sized object in the photo. I've been known to drop a crisp dollar bill into a photo for scale purposes.
Digital cameras are also useful in "No Photo" areas, as they can be set to video mode, and held at your side. You can then pull the frame(s) you want later.
Barry
Just like the computer guys.
Barry
The first home computer that I saw was a Altair. It had toggle switches instead of a keyboard and programmed in binary , all for circa a thousand or so. I passed it up and hand built one that programmed in machine language. Next the CPM operating system came out and I rebuilt to accommodate it. Over the years parts and circuit boards were replaced. Today there is nothing left of the original machine. My upgrades were a learning curve and less expensive than trashing a machine every two years.
From my learned skills, I got a job as a field service engineer working on Bridgeport and Pratt and Whitney computer controlled milling machines. After fifteen years of getting on a airplane every sunday, I got a R&D job with Douglas Aircraft. They paid all expenses and put me through college where earned a AS degree in computer maintenance and a BS degree in computer science.
I retired about ten years ago and have a horse ranch on forty acres in Colorado with a nice barn and a forty two by fifty modern, shop. I'm busy learning C++ programming language and autocad. I have a couple of patentable ideas on the drawing board and am busier retired than when I worked.
Computers have enriched my life and haven't cost me very much.
Regards: Sumner Sargent
Umm. Hadn't thought of that. Since I am well acquainted with both the director and curator, I guess I'll just ask. I like the dollar bill trick that Barry gave.
Thanks.
Jon
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