Hardware and Geeky Equipment

I have an assortment of various machines with different tasks and purposes.

Since I just moved this page over to WP on 2005 09 23, I can’t imagine it’s very timely. Perhaps I’ll update it. I just purchased a new Sempron 2800 64-bit Socket 754 based system, for example. I have a dual 17″ setup running as well on my workstation.

…

My internal LAN is protected by Rebecca, my firewall box. A modest machine, she has enough to get the job done. The previous box’s hard disk finally died, my old Quantum Fireball 1.2GB 3.5″ disk, in fact, so I finally retired that Baby AT box. She now runs on a Celeron 333MHz with 128MB of PC100 and a 4GB Seagate Ultra Wide SCSI disk. I have a quad port Adaptec PCI network adapter connecting to the Internet and two separate internal networks. One of those two plugs into a nice 802.11g access point. Rebecca’s OS of choice is Debian GNU/Linux. Mine as well.

Nebula is my internal server. It runs IMAP, Apache, MySQL, Samba, NFS, BIND9, and NTPd, just to name a few services. The box is driven by a SuperMicro 370DLE board with dual P3 733MHz Coppermine CPUs and 768MB of PC133 ECC registered memory. The operating system resides on a SCSI controller with a Seagate 18GB SCSI drive. The box’s primary storage array is a 3Ware 7500-4 ATA RAID card, with a RAID 5 configuration with four Western Digital 120GB 8MB/cache EIDE drives. The box has an Intel Fast Ethernet adapter on-board. Nebula runs Debian GNU/Linux, of course.

Sarah is my backup server and wireless gateway. It literally handles snapshot backups using Dirvish. It’s also on stand-by running backup DNS, firewall, and NTPd duties. It’s powered by a Pentium III 600MHz slot 1 CPU and 320MB of RAM. It’s running an Adaptec 2940UW with a 17GB IBM Ultrastar 50-pin SCSI drive as the OS disk and Linux software RAID with two Seagate 300GB drives in a RAID 0 (stripe) configuration as the backup storage array on a 3Ware 7810. Sarah boots the Stable distribution of Debian GNU/Linux.

Rachael is my Microsoft Windows ™ 2000 laptop. I employ it for critical mobile applications, like sitting out by the pool and surfing the Web. I also use it to play whatever games it will run. It has an Intel Celeron 1.4GHz CPU. It has a mere 640MB of RAM and a 20GB ultra quiet disk. The 14.1″ TFT display and 32MB on-board Intel shared RAM video card are enough to get the job done. Ethernet is achieved via an on-board 100Mbps network adapter.

My workstation, Faith, is currently an Athlon 1800 XP+ on a SiS 735 chipset board, the ECS K7S5A. I have outfitted it with 1GB of PC2700 DDR. The board has an AC97 audio chipset and on board 100Mbps Fast Ethernet. I am currently booting it with a NVidia Ti4200, AGP 4x, and 128MB on the card. The operating system resides on a 9.4GB Quantum Atlas 10K2 Ultra2 SCSI disk on an OEM Adaptec 2940U2 SCSI adapter. The box has a modest 40GB Western Digital disk for storage. The secondary IDE channel holds a NEC 8x DVD-/+RW burner. She currently boots Debian GNU/Linux.

My old Inspiron 3800, now called simply media, sits downstairs where it plays all manner of media over 802.11g. It hiccups only occasionally, forcing me to kick the 11g network.

My latest addition is a Socket 754 based AMD Sempron 64-bit CPU system. It runs Windows 2000 and services my gaming needs, mostly Battlefield 2 these days. It has a 1GB of PC3200, a 80GB Western Digital hard disk I picked up on the cheap, and a modest GeForce 6600GT 128MB video card. It’s suitable for modern games at modest resolution and detail levels.