Howdy all,

Glad to see this server project hasn't put on hold. I sent out a few  
more inquiries for funding over the summer but they weren't very  
successful. Still have a few more to check. I'd be happy to meet up  
before the semester starts to see if we can't order some parts in  
advance. If anyone else is down for donating some time, I can talk to  
Professor Bongard about getting some shipments underway.

First, for those who have time to kill -- what times / days do you  
guys and gals have available?

*ANDREW:* as always, your input has been insightful and informative.  
I've been doing a lot of stress testing on some machines at work and  
have come to realize (and appreciate) what can be done with limited  
RAM. I definitely put a big stink about going for 16 GB of RAM before  
but (if it comes down to it) I think 8GB would be sufficient for doing  
the trick.

Andrew, what did you have in mind for RAID schemes? RAID 10? Also,  
were we looking for hardware raid or software raid? I think your hard  
drive estimates are about right but it might be nice to look into  
4x1TB HDD's so we could potentially serve all of our CSSA tech talk  
recordings. Granted HDD's are easy enough (and cheap enough) to  
upgrade in the future. [I'll look into this and shoot an email out at  
a later point]

NOTE: I think it would make sense to keep future funding in mind when  
we get some of these parts. If we choose a CPU or graphics card that  
specifically ties into an area of research interest, we may be able  
raise CSSA awareness and see a little more green.

CHRIS: Nice work on getting those SUN's up, man. I know most of the  
remaining SUN's are suffer from a pretty serious case of obstinate  
defiance.

One the MEK side of Burlington, I managed to score us about 10 sticks  
of RAM (ranging from 128-512mb) so I'll bring those to the lab when I  
get a chance.

FINALLY -- anyone know the status of the machines in our lab? Haven't  
been able to tunnel into them in a while.

Sincerely,
- Michael E. Karpeles

-- 
UVM ACM Chapter
CSSA Vice President
CSSA Secretary
www.uvm.edu/~mkarpele