Hello Roy.

20 Sep 03 12:05, you wrote to me:

 RT> Back around 1999 or 2000 or thereabouts,  when I was working at that
 RT> computer store in the area building systems,  this one guy there came
 RT> up with a board,  I think he'd found it on ebay or something.  I'm not
 RT> sure if it would've supported PIII or not,  though it did have two of
 RT> those kinds of slots.  _And_ it had all sorts of other stuff built on
 RT> to that MB,  including _three_ SCSI channels,  two regular ones and
 RT> one "wide".  And back then,  he ended up paying something
like $75 for
 RT> that board,  which was way less than what was typical for what those
 RT> guys were paying for MBs in those days.

That is cheap, even by today's prices.  A decent SMP S370 board, with
decent chipsets, SCSII, raid, 133MHz fsb (for the PIIIs), I have seen going
for over $100 USD, much, much more then that if they have both PIII's with
the board.

 RT> I might have snagged one,  but didn't care to lock myself into intel
 RT> stuff,  since I tend to favor AMD over intel.  Still do.  And if I go
 RT> beyond the hardware I have now,  I'll probably get something with an
 RT> AMD chip on it.

I wouldn't for SMP.  From what I've seen the PIII's are the best for
multiprocessing.  I don't really care much for the socket A SMP boards, not
that I have one.  For what I see going on the a-one servers PIII's seem to
be the way to go.  However, certain Intel chipsets they can keep but you
I've seen a few S370 SMP boards that really shine.  Like anything, buyer
beware.

As for AMD the last 32-bit CPU I like was the K6-2, and they don't
multiprocess although I once thought a cluster of them would be pretty
cool.  However it is difficult to find decent Super 7 boards (100MHz FSB). 
Too many crappy ones of those.

Anyhow I can wait as there is a bigger fish to fry at the moment.  Who
knows?  I just might decide to cluster a bunch of MachZ's or Transmetta
Crusoe's.  The low power consumption would make it possible to build a
tiny, power conservative super computer.  Expensive but way cheaper then a
Cray in both start up and runtime costs. :-)

That actually might be fun.

Maurice

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