I have really geeked out. I've been selling & designing those high end disk storage systems for so long now, and even though I back up the disks on all my home & personal computers, I worry. Especially when I hear that high pitched whine coming out of the computers for no reason.

Last week, I started my search for a home,networked storage system, with RAID 1 or 5 protection (if a drive fails, I can recover the data). At the low end, commercial class ones are about $15,000 for 1 TB.

I am such a dinosaur that I remember the days when 1 TB would mean about 2000 huge disk systems in a data center. It would take about 120 hours to back it up to tape. Cost for the 2000 disks? They were 500 MB each and a MB was $30 in 1990. That's $15,000 per disk and a whopping $30 million. They were the size of washing machines.

Now I have 1 TB in a 10" square package - on my desk. It's an Iomega StorCenter and cost $750. This little thing plugs into my wireless-g router. I'll be digitizing more media and pictures, and backing up more storage.

Now that's the thing to plug into your media center and have all your tunes and movies in one place. Imagine this thing with a Tivo or a DV-R in front of it....

Amazing, isn't it?

Those of you with iPods and digital cameras have also benefitted from advances in technology. Think about this:

1 GB = 2 x 500 MB. That 2 GB iPod Nano would have been the equivalent of (4) $15,000 disk drives or $60,000. You paid $149 for it and look at the size compared to 4 washing machines.

Mind boggling.

Do you have a similar techno-geek thing that amazes you?

Yea, even cellphones have gotten as small as desired with more features than people even want and they are practically free. It's hard to buy a plain old cellphone these days.

Then there's cars. When I was in high school, in the late 70's, my family bought a new Import pickup truck, a Datsun 1300 cc, 4 cylinder, pushrod valve, gasoline engine that made a whopping 46 horsepower. It had drum brakes that were good for one stop from 70 mph when loaded with a half ton of driver/fuel/cargo, but it was scary, and a long smoky stop. If you didn't wait for fifteen minutes till you got going again, your next stop from 70 was going to be a lot longer, a lot smokier, and WAAAAY more scary... Getting back up to speed took a while too. It had tinny sheet metal, not too well protected from the elements. It cost $2040, new. It got around 26 to 30 MPG.

A new Import pickup now can have up to 310Horsepower, four wheel disc brakes with w/antilock on all four wheels, V-8 power, with overhead cams, fuel injection, corners at speeds that were only available to esoteric cars in 1970, and barely costs more when inflation is taken into consideration.

Back then tires lasted 20,000 miles if you were careful, and lucky, unless you were a really rich person that could afford Michelin-X radials, a new technology, newly available tire here in the US, and any tire you chose would not pull anywhere beyone about .7G, on any car.

New tires can easily go more than 100k miles, in passenger car use, bearing heavier loads, at higher sustained speeds, having much better traction in the dry, startlingly better traction in the wet, and levels of performance in the cold and snow that were simply a dream back when, all for about the equivalent price as those old era tires.

When is the last time you had to gap the valves, or synchronize the carbs of your car, or change plugs? We used to have to do those things about every 6000 miles, along with rotating and rebalancing the tires.

Look out Billy G! It's not just a thread, it's a WEB of geek-speak

run away - run away - run away

(hey Kat )

I remember in 1984 our shop received our first IBM PC XT complete with a 10MB hard drive (prior all our machines had two floppy drives if you were lucky). We too stood around it in total amazement and said we'll never fill this up. The storage ought to last for years. Just last week I added a 320Gb drive to my personal home machine for a total of just under 1 terabyte (and I'm already licking my chops over a new Seagate 750GB drive).

Billy G! a web of Geek-Speak? :rolleyes: :p

LOL.

I just find it to be amazing that we can buy and use this stuff in our everyday lives.

The first non-mainframe that I worked on was a VAX 11/780. It had 3MB of memory and was bigger than my entire bathroom. When it crashed, I would open the doors and tap the memory boards into place with a rubber mallet.

My first pc was actually a Commodore 64, which I traded in for an Apple IIc.

DW... you're talking about a blade server, only right now they don't have USB interfaces. Soon though.... just a question of time......

I'm shopping for a Gig-E network box for my house. Maybe in the winter, when it's quiet, I'll get around to building another media server for my music....

I just bought a 6GB memory card for my Nikon camera.... that's 12 of those big washing machine sized disk drives from 1990.

I too am amazed how far memory has come. The first computer I ever programmed on was Data General NOVA minicomputer. I was programming firmware for a Litton Systems device. I had all of 16k (not meg) to work with to program the device. I learned to become very creative with assembler language.

My first personal computer was a Timex-Sinclair 1000 . I still have it and it still works. I taught myself Basic on it. It has a total of 2k of on-board memory. All of my home PCs have 1 gig of memory. Times sure have changed.

I remember my first recording session in the 80's, it took a while to mix the drum sound. Now, all a drummer has to do is lay a track, and pro tools does the rest. Heck, now you can split a 'quence and pro tools running from a laptop to triggers on your drums on a live gig. and, with the Roland Custom Session V's, You can do almost any accoustic gig with them!

hey Dwill...
I have a couple of 500GB drives in my PC, and then some external USB drives to backup the file systems. But the USB was sloooowwww..... and Ghost would wig out during the backup. So I started using Retrospect, which runs on both Windows and Mac - and solved a lot of problems.

The NAS storage solves a lot of sharing headaches between Windows and Mac, too. I mounted the Windows shares as NFS as well.... so the Macs are now connected.

I looked at the Seagate Mirra last week... as well as a couple of other RAID arrays.

http://www.seagate.com/products/retail/mirr

It's a CDP (continuous data protection) box - you tell it which folders/shares to watch and it wakes up on a timed basis and copies new or changed files to itself.

There are 750GB drives on the home system market - single external USB or firewire. Early next year, there will be 1 TB single drives - already on the market in the commercial space. Basically, the bits are perpendicular to the platter - and you can pack the bits more densely, so you get more data on a drive.

(breathe deeply Billy G, I know that was a lot of geek speak).

But I wanted a RAID array...

I also looked at some wacky box that CompUSA had - I would have had to add (4) 250GB or 320GB SATA II drives to the enclosure - and would have come out over $1500. My USB external drives are Iomega, so I went with it. iomega storcenter

However, in the commercial space, the vendors only OEM from 2 sources - Seagate & IBM. (Seagate bought Maxtor).

I did find a Linksys Gig-E switch for about $300. To use the Gig-E switch, I have to put new NIC cards in all my machines.... then I have to figure out what to do for a router for the cable modem... and how to serve up DHCP addresses back to the computers on the switch. The wireless-g router & cable modem at 3 Mb becomes the bottleneck for systems on the switch running at 10 Mb. But I am not going to -no-no-no - look at business class service yet.

Here's a network speed test:
http://www.auditmypc.com/internet-speed-test.asp

Billy G... I know you are really horrified and running fast by now.

I have turned into an ultimo-geek....

and while DWbass is waiting for that Windows blade pc, take a peek at the Mac mini! It's $599 with a 60GB drive. It's dual core. A dual core Windows machine starts at $1000! And you can run Windows in a partition on a Mac....

My Brother seems to think that I will -ahem - get him one for Christmas.

I might get one for me...

Size and weight

* Height: 2 inches (5.08 cm)
* Width: 6.5 inches (16.51 cm)
* Depth: 6.5 inches (16.51 cm)
* Weight: 2.9 pounds (1.31 kg)

Processor and memory

* 1.66GHz or 1.83 Intel Core Duo processor
* 2MB on-chip L2 cache
* 667MHz frontside bus
* 512MB of 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM (PC2-5300) on two DIMMs; supports up to 2GB

(and unlike Windows, you can address that 2 GB of memory)





Mac mini

I agree, too - I want a Bluetooth monitor. My printers, keyboards, mouse(s) are wireless.... I think the graphics issue is similar to high-def TV and what to do about connecting to dv-r, satellite, etc. The multi-pin signal problem.

Hold on - before you cross over to the "dark-side" take a look at Shuttle\'s X100 . It starts at a tad more than the mini-MAc but it does have a few more features: on-board storage (250GB 7200-RPM SATA vs 80GB 5400-RPM SATA), Integrated 4-in-1 card reader, slightly larger power supply. In addition I think the integrated video and audio are better. Check-it out.

X100 - mini-Mac comparison

Dwill... I like the specs on the XPC....

time for Gig-E in my house...! And a new media server.

Help! Help!...Somebody save me....

I'm a retired AT&T Service Manager. Remember when they tried to buy into the computer technology industry and started throwing fax machines and computers at everybody (courtesy of their purchasing Burroughs & Olivetti) We had crash courses and did tons of wiring for some of those HUGE mainframes. I absolutely H-A-T-E-D those climate controlled rooms with the elevated floors (reminded me of walking on jello). With all the in and out and up and down and crawling all over wearing esd bracelets, shoe covers, special coveralls. da dah da dah da dah.

Now we throw away more tech than we could build in a month back in those days. I saw it come in when we started replacing the old 1A Key systems (the big elephant phones with the lighted buttons) using 25,50 & 100 pair cables eventually whittled down to the Dimension System 75, 85, 25, Merlin, with wiring from 25 pair to 4 pair down to 2 pair and still conducting data and voice transmissions and that brings us to fiber...

Gosh Kat. Guess I'm just an old geek! (Or old geezer)

I'm also amazed by increasing memory capacity in a shrinking package. In high school I remember using the community Syquest drive to save my files, then in college lugging around eight or so Zip discs for all my design files (because a backup was essential in case you heard the Click of Death!)- not to mention the audio CDs in books to listen to while working in the lab. Now I have many times that capacity on my iPod and music to boot! If only I had that in art school.

Yea, and it's only going to get better. Chips were currently only able to be put on boards 2 dimensionally but 3D chip technology is just about ready to go to market. When this happens the real estate on boards required for memory and speed will shrink dramatically (as if it isn't small already). My brother is an IC designer for an engineering firm and this is exactly what he is working on.

This is the place he works and the project area.
Sounds like a bunch of mumbo jumbo to me???

http://www.tezzaron.com/OtherICs/Super_8051.htm

You don't need to be in an episode of the "Jetsons" to witness the future today. As a matter of fact, a few year ago, I was watching the Discovery Channel, and they did a topic on technology for military and law enforcement. Well, they stated that just like in the movie "Predator", they can now bend light and use it as camoflage for people and equipment, a form of invisibility so to speak.

Looks like we could be getting closer to what you're looking for!

Linutop (web site)


Here\'s a video explaination (it\'s in english)

ahhh linux comes to the home market, finally!

I couldn't find one of these goobers in CT, but I found it in Cambridge last week.... near MIT. A Gig-E router for the home.... I'll be using it for that 1 TB storage array.


NetGear Gig-E

It was $200. 10 years ago, the cost would have been about $15,000. A Gig-E switch goes as low as $49.

Apparently gamers want Gig-E.

They apparently want Power over Ethenet, too - because I found powerline modules as well. PoE reduces the amount of electical outlets needed to power your equipment - there is usually special cabling to carry the CSMA net work signal and in the same bundle, the power.

Anyhow, these products aren't quite PoE, but they deliver Ethernet thru your home's electical wiring.



PowerLine

Well,tonight - It's been a real geek fest here.

I hooked up the Gig-E router, and things are flying along - even with the Fast-E (100 Mb) card in my desktop. I have to dissect it to install the Gig-E card plus I bought a lightscribe combo cd/dvd unit - that's a project for another day.

I also configured my backups for my windows machine and my mac. So it was the backups where I saw the speed - going from my desktop to that 1TB storage server on the LAN. I expected that.

The bonus is on the Internet side of things.

The linksys wireless-g router really seemed to slow down the full bandwidth of the broadband modem. The broadband was slower than the router - after all, the speed is rated for the LAN ports, not the WAN ports.

I think it was how the Linksys negotiated with the network. It must have been buffering packets, because even though the cable modem is nowhere near as fast as the router - everything is flying along.

I can see it when I watch flash photo galleries loading... there are some speed tests out there in which the time to load a graphic is measured.

LANBandwidth comparison
10Mb/s LAN 9.600 Mb/s
100Mb/s LAN 96.000 Mb/s
1Gb/s LAN 960.000 Mb/s

Compared to wireless LAN speed:
802.11b 5.6 Mb/s
802.11a 24.8 Mb/s
802.11g 24.8 Mb/s
802.11n 49.6 Mb.s
802.16a 73.6 Mb/s

Compared to modem speed:
Connection Type Connection Speed
28.8 Kbps Dial-up 28.8k
33.6 Kbps Dial-up 33.6k
53.3 Kbps Dial-up 56k
384.0 Kbps DSL/Cable 384k
768.0 Kbps DSL/Cable 768k
1500.0 Kbps Cable/DSL 1.5Mbps
1544.0 Kbps Full T1 1.544Mbps

And unlike every router I have ever bought (mostly Linksys, but a couple of D-links, and a netgear) - this puppy came up without configuring.

While I could have bought a wireless Gig-E router, I bought a wired one. My condo sits pretty close to the parking lot, and I started thinking about people stealing data from the wireless.

So that means my beautiful wireless printer - is now tethered. Yes, I can use a wireless printserver to connect it, but I like to keep things simple. (stop laughing) :p

so what I'd like to hear about.... is your experiences with service for the commodity PC manufacturers....

Dell
HP
Gateway
Sony
Toshiba

Or some of the newer brands like e-Machine.....

And what you're hearing about Microsoft Vista compatibility.....

I've used Sony a few times the past year and I think they are terrific. Very fluent English speaking people, a very easy menu to get where you want minus the cluster-f***, circle jerk of getting bounced around to several people/departments.

Off the rack PCs, I cut that cord years ago. I’ve been building my own machines (non-laptop) for about 10 years now. So in a small sense I'm my own customer service. Vista: this one I'm taking a wait and see approach, I have not downloaded any of the betas yet. Mico$oft has a lot riding on this one and if they stumble they could pay a big price (OS wise). Linux looks like it is ready to make a serious challenge to the long-standing dominance of M$. No Linux will not conquer Balmer and company anytime soon but they could see a serious increase in market share especially with movement from Oracle, Suse\Novell and the very popular Ubuntu. What I hear come from those who are mostly on RC2 of Vista. The most common comment is that Vista is a serious resource hog. Unlike anything seen in previous releases. I frequent the sites where users build there own machines so compatibility is based more on the motherboards used (Tyan, Asus, MSI, etc.). So far compatibility seems good. The main issues are with video drivers where ATI seems to be the usual suspect. Most are using machines built within the last 3 years or so. There you would fine CPUs in the P4 for Intel class and Athlon 64 & Opteron class for AMD. 64-bit OS users seem not have any more concerns than 32-bit users. I can't help but think that MicroBuck$ have bitten off a large bite here trying to satisfy many with this release (security types, media types, 64-bt types, Linux curious, etc.). We'll have to wait and see.

Apple TV announced

The advancement of tech. I'm gonna see 'bout gettin' one to download concerts if possible. Amazing.

Speaking of Apple, am I the only one that doesn't "get" the video Ipod? Unless you are a frequent traveler that uses a plane or a train I see no purpose for this device.

I guy here at work just bought one for the hell of it and he's acting like it's the greatest thing since the walkman but he doesn't travel at all and he already has 4 TV's in his house. Watching Lord of the Rings on a 1.5" screen just doesn't appeal to me.

I don't get it but it sounds like they are flying off the shelves. What am I missing??

I'm with you Steve. Maybe there is some value in major metro areas with lengthy commutes.
When I travel, I want to see stuff along the way, not TV.

Steve, you're missing the same thing I am missing. Forget Lord of the Rings, I don't even want to see the weather report on a screen smaller than a credit card. Such devices are, IMO, useful only to those who absolutely must have the latest whatever it is. I don't know, maybe there's a bit of keeping up with the joneses.

Yea, even those $100 portable DVD players with a 7" screen are too small unless they're sitting on your tray top on an airplane.

Even though I'm a huge Apple/iPod person I am totally with you guys on that. My eyes are not great, and I can't imagine how people can stand to see something that small, that long. It's one thing if it's a clip or music video, but I could not watch a three hour movie that way!

My (now old school, I guess) iBook makes a great portable player. It saved me from going berzerk my last flight... nothing like being a slight female stuck in the middle seat between two uncomfortably large gentlemen and kids kicking your seat behind you. :rolleyes: