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From: dillon@best.com (Matthew Dillon)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Please suggest "best" FreeBSD workstation <= $4000
Date: 16 Oct 1996 23:56:52 -0700
Organization: Best Internet Communications, Inc. (info@best.com)
Lines: 55
Distribution: world
Message-ID: <544lbk$b41@flash.noc.best.net>
References: <53rflp$o27@lex.zippo.com> <326269E6.15FB7483@FreeBSD.org> <DzE1u6.GJt@rockyd.rockefeller.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: flash.noc.best.net
:In article <DzE1u6.GJt@rockyd.rockefeller.edu>,
:Dan Ts'o <dan@dnn.rockefeller.edu> wrote:
:>Jordan K. Hubbard <jkh@FreeBSD.org> wrote:
:>: U. Kislev wrote:
:>: > I am allowed to spend up to US$ 4000 on a FreeBSD capable system
:>: > It would have to boot Windows95 too. Monitor included.
:>: If you're using it for development work, then you want a nice monitor.
:>: Find out what a nice 17" monitor costs, at the minimum, or a 21" if
:>: you're truly serious about your display hardware. Then spend whatever
:>: you have left on a P6/200 system with as much memory and hard disk space
:>: as you can afford. :-)
:>
:> I don't think you can get a good P6/200 system with sufficient disk
:>and memory, plus a good 21" monitor, for under $4000. It will be close.
:>Under $5000, would definitely be doable.
:> I'm a Gateway fan, bought 20+ of them over the years and have been
:>very happy. I would suggest getting Gateway's P6/200 package, ditch the
:>EIDE drives and get SCSI (I think Gateway will sell you an Adaptec 2940UW
:>plus a decent SCSI drive, I'd suggest a 2Gb), and be careful about getting
:>a video card that will work well with Xfree. Also get 64Mb of memory.
:>
:> You can configure a system on the Web at http://www.gw2k.com.
:>
:> I just did and the above came to $4034, with their Vivitron 21"
:>color monitor. If that is the Sony, then it is not bad. I included a SCSI
:>CDROM. You can play with the configuration to go under $4000...
:> I'm a little concerned about the cache on the system. It appears to
:>be only the 256KL2 on chip cache. Have to check this out...
You'd be surprised... I threw together a pentium pro 200 system for myself
about a month ago for around $3000 not including the monitor. So
add $X extra for the monitor and you are there.
one scsi 4G disk (barracuda)
asus something-or-other pentium pro motherboard.. one of the latest ones
pentium pro 200
64MB ram - four 16MB parity SIMMs (EDO is faster, but doesn't have parity)
case, power supply
scsi cdrom
dec 10/100base-t pci ethernet card
adaptec pci SCSI card - fast narrow in this case, one can get better
(e.g. ultrafast), but I got only one disk so...
some cirrus chipset based video card
etc...
Don't ask me where I got all the stuff from, it's something I can't
repeat... but the big tick item is memory and memory is *real* cheap
these days.
-Matt
--
Matthew Dillon Engineering, BEST Internet Communications, Inc.
<dillon@best.net>
[always include a portion of the original email in any response!]