19990325: upgrade qusetions

>From: "Bill Gustin" <address@hidden>
>Organization: California University of PA
>Keywords: 199903242043.NAA27463

Bill-

>Thanks Don.  Could you suggest a list of components that we should have on
>the ingesting machine if it were a new one:
>
>amount and type of memory

   128 MB or more

>type and size of hard drives

   SCSI drives - at least one 9 GB.  If you go with EIDE (which are
   cheaper), I suggest getting 2 - one for software and one for data.
   I would get an 8 Gb for the software and a 10 GB one for data.
   For IDE drives, there is an 8Gb limitation for the boot drive.

>type and memory of video card
>CD-ROM drive
>network cards

   See the list of supported hardware for Red Hat Linux:

     http://www.redhat.com/support/docs/rhl/intel/rh52-hardware-intel.html

   I would suggest a 3 button mouse since Unix makes good use of using
   3 buttons.

>We have just received a couple of ne Princeton monitors that can display in
>1600 x 1200, so we should
>not need a monitor.  

    That will cut down on your costs.

>Are there any PC vendors that will install the Linux
>(Dell, Gateway, Quantex, etc.)?

    Dell just began selling RH Linux preinstalled on selected workstations
    (Precision line), but these are the higher end (ie: higher cost)
    workstations.  Gateway does not install Linux, nor does Quantex
    from what I see on their Web site.  IBM might start loading Linux
    on their systems since they have recently announced support on
    their workstations.
    
>Also, the other OS/2 systems do not have larger than 520 MB IDE drives in
>them.  Will these have to be upgraded before we move to Linux on them.

    If you can upgrade them, that would be best.  One thing you could
    do is mount the McIDAS binaries off of the ingester instead of installing
    them on each machine.  Then you would just need space for Linux and
    if you didn't install everything, you would have enough space on the 520
    MB drives.  If you upgrade, they don't need really big drives - a
    couple of GB should suffice.  (Remember when that used to be a lot
    of disk?)

Don
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Don Murray                               UCAR Unidata Program
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(303) 497-8628                              Boulder, CO 80307
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