It's cool that you guys upgraded your server, but a dual PPro 200 box? No offense, but that's *OLD*! PPros go for almost nothing these days. Why not go for some slightly newer hardware?

Actually it is very hard to get your hands on a real Pentium Pro. P2s are much more common but sucks in server applications.

The server was free and a huge improvement of our earlier one. Hence it is a huge improvement for us at no cost. Also, we do not need anything 'better', it is not Windows we are running after all (in which case we would need 20 times better hardware to make up for bad written software).

And also of course, processor speed is not at all very important in server appliances. You need a good and effective bus architecture, lots of memory (512+) and good disks (SCSI).

You can have many MHz you want, if you still use EIDE disks your machine will crawl under server load.

There is really no need for today's rediculous processor speeds in servers. Those processor speeds of the P4 is to make up for all the other crappy hardware, crappy motherboards, crappy hard disks, crappy NICs, and so on.

As a fnal note, our processors spend most of their time being idle as it takes much less than 400 MHz to run the site.

Is it just me or does it seem that every time a company comes out with a new computer or Microsoft comes out with new software they get less and less reliable? I know people who like the fonts "Pica" and "Elete" (typewriters) because they don't lock up, crash, dump your work, open the wrong file, loose a document, etc.

I agree with your logic of not using more hardware than you need to run the site, and I certainly always applaud the use of free hardware. However, in the interest of keeping the facts straight, here are a few notes:

"Actually it is very hard to get your hands on a real Pentium Pro. P2s are much more common but sucks in server applications."

I agree that it is hard to get PPros anymore. P2s are probably still more common, although they too are getting rather old and are no longer being produced. I'm not sure why you think P2s suck compared to PPros for servers. A P2 can have a 100mhz fsb, whereas the fastest PPro only had a 66mhz bus. P2 boards also support SDRAM DIMMs, as opposed to the slower EDO or FPM SIMMs a 440FX-based PPro board would use. In addition, P2s use nearly the same core as a PPro... the only differences are the addition of MMX on the P2 (which makes certain operations faster) and, of course, the higher clock speed of the P2. The really cool of feature of the PPro was that it had L2 cache on the cpu that ran at the full cpu clock speed. Admittedly, the L2 cache on a P2 runs at only half the clock speed of the cpu, but decently fast P2 (400-450mhz) is still going to have cache as fast or faster than a PPro and the cpu itself will be much faster.

The P2 sucks compared to a PPro at equivalent speed. Actually, a PPro beats a P2 at much higher clockspeed. But not at twice the clockspeed - you're definitly right there.

Also, the P2 scales *much* better in multi-CPU scenarios. IIRC, Intel built a box with 9000+ PPro CPUs back then (note: Did not run Windows. Nor Linux.). The generic p2 never scaled beyond 2.

This is a second post to beat the post length limit. :) To continue...

"There is really no need for today's rediculous processor speeds in servers. Those processor speeds of the P4 is to make up for all the other crappy hardware, crappy motherboards, crappy hard disks, crappy NICs, and so on."

To the first part of this, I would say that it depends on what type of server you're running. For a web server like yours, a more modern processor probably isn't necessary as you say. However, I can think of many server applications for which a dual Pro 200 box simply wouldn't cut it (consider the fact that you got the box for free, after all). And I certainly don't believe that todays cpus are as fast as they are simply because other hardware is "crappy". If you believe modern devices are poor, why not just use your old ones with a newer board and cpus? Personally, though, I think that a nice dual-channel DDR motherboard paired with 64-bit PCI-X nics and raid controllers won't need an incredibly fast cpu to overcome its "crappiness" as compared to older hardware.

There's a limit???

Yeah, a limit was placed on post lengths sometime after someone posted chapters from "War and Peace" on one of these forums about a year or so ago. I don't know if that's the reason for the limit, but it's probably one the reasons.

Actually, I was looking at replacement PPro CPUs for work about a year back. They go for around $2,500. (Assuming you want new, which you want for a production server at a professional organisation)

Umm... if you can find somebody willing to pay $2500 for any 200MHz x86 CPU, I've got a nice beach-front resort in Antarctica he or she might also be interested in. :)

Seriously though, I think you're going to have trouble finding a "new" Pentium Pro... according to Intel's site they're no longer being manufactured, and interactive support was discontinued on October 24, 2000 (this support would be discontinued AFTER the cpus stopped being manufactured, btw). If you're willing to go for used, then, you can easily find a pair of PPros for around 20-30 USD on a site like eBay.

This is why they are so expensive. Companies like IBM and HP/Compaq can still deliver them as part of service agreements, and outside. They have stockpiles.

Linux 2.2!? That's OLD as CRAP! You need to get a compiled and optimized 2.6.0-test6, it's a little faster and still stable. At least you could do stable 2.4.22! But 2.2 is old...

Notice that I'm talking about the old server, which although slow, could run these kernels perfectly.

Yes, we could've put at least 2.4 on it. On the other hand, 2.2 was rock solid on it (zero problems for years - except for the occasional security update). And changing the kernel level on a production server is not something to undertake lightly. And in the equation was the knowledge that we had a full hardware replacement in plan..

Also, 2.6.0-testing? On a production server? You have to be kidding. Sure, it's nice, but it's still testing. Going with the experience from preivous Linux versions, not until 2.6.10-15 or so, no thanks.
(Now, on a desktop or personal server, that's a whole different issue)

>2.6.0-test6

So you are suggesting to use a testing kernel on a production server? Not a good idea IMHO...

Who cares if it's old if it works!!! I have a 10+ year old computer at my grandparents and it has windows 3.1 and dos! OK, it's slow but it hasn't crashed yet. Just because it's newer and faster dosn't mean it's better.

Yes and I downloaded dosemu for my Linux box the other day... emulating a 386 on my 1.7GHz Celeron... happy memories...

I found a bootdisk and it booted from it, at poweron! 5.25", 1200K, DOS 4! Fun, eh?

Why don't you just stick a like to /pub right on the top bar? Label it "File Archives" or something. Remove one of those useless links, or just add it. It would probably make the site a lot more newb friendly. No more 5 clicks to get to /pub.

Yeah! I'd have to agree with that --- A LOT.

Good idea.

-MrM

Why do so many people depend on their mouse? Can't you just type in ticalc.org/pub/ instead of being lazy?

More than that, I type the whole thing out every time I browse the archives...

http:// www.ticalc.org/ pub/89/asm/games/, for instance. It saves a LOT of time... but now that the server is faster, I think I might not need to go to all that work.

Well, that works --- very well :-)

-MrM

Or you could just bookmark it.

but the keyboard uses more energy - with the mouse all you need to move is 1 finger! (or 1 hand if you don't have a touchpad/pointstick like a laptop has)

I type it out and it is much easier than moving the mouse around since I would need to move my arms to move the mouse and then get my hands back to the keys and if someone is talking to me I just use alt+tab from the keyboard. So even typing is a form of lazyiness

or they could add a button, and we could all be lazy... i like that idea much better mr. angleboy

You might like it better, but others might not

>>-MrM

M's are aesthetically pleasing, arn't they?

MWM

Yes. However, `MRM' happens to be my initials :-)

-MrM

While that is fine and dandy, Mr. Marshall's initials also happen to me M_M, with the middle initial being a W. I thought that it was a play on my initials at first, but it is not.

-W-

ME TOO!