Colin Anderson
2004-Jan-16 11:22 UTC
[Asterisk-Users] ultra-cheap asterisk box -> sorta OT, more a bout Dell
FWIW: I order a lot of Dells. My boss is cheap. That being said, I *like* Dell, it's a very well designed box. It's been said many times that Dell does not innovate, instead they copy and improve and I firmly agree with the "improve" part - they are a dream to work on. Some things to watch out for with Dell: 1. They typically tack on a shipping charge of $139 Cdn (yes they are using the shipping charge as a profit center) - the shipping charge is not negotiable, *but* once in a while they waive the shipping if sales are slow, so it behooves you to check and order *just* before the end of the month when there is an internal push to meet sales targets and move boxes 2. Don't bother ordering RAM from Dell. Configure the box w/ 128mb of RAM, and as soon as you get the RAM, rip it out and buy 3rd party, which is as much as 50% cheaper and in most cases is *exactly* the same RAM as the Dell box. Your box dies? Take out your RAM, stick in your original 128mb, then call Dell. As an example, on the 400SC mentioned here, I can get a 512mb stick from a Vancouver place that I order from (ncix.com) for $102 Cdn!!! 3. First thing we do when we get Dells is throw away the driver disks because they are useless. Instead, we open up the box, determine what chipsets they use, and download new drivers from the OEM. Typically, they are more up to date, and in the Windows world, they aren't tied to a specific OS like XP (you can't install a factory Dimension broadcom Dell driver on Win2K, because it is XP-only, for example) 4. Dell loves to do hidden partitions on hard drives for their BIOS setups, like Compaq Deskpros, Prolineas and Proliants of yore. That means you can't press Del to enter a BIOS setup like you can on a clone AMI bios. You press F2 and the system boots from the hidden partition. This presents a problem if you re-image the drive with GHOST or install a distro and specify to re partition the HDD. What I do is GHOST the factory HDD to another HDD, re-partition it or re image it, and carry on with life. If I ever have to change the boxes BIOS, I pop in the original imaged of the HDD and boot off that. What makes this work well is Dell's killer design - you don't need tools to get in the case or remove the HDD. Takes all of 30 seconds to do a drive swap. -----Original Message----- From: David Mynatt [mailto:dmynatt@mortgagemfsi.com] Sent: Friday, January 16, 2004 7:08 AM To: asterisk-users@lists.digium.com Subject: RE: [Asterisk-Users] ultra-cheap asterisk box That's really good. Can you share the Dell contact info? -----Original Message----- From: asterisk-users-admin@lists.digium.com [mailto:asterisk-users-admin@lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of Paul Mahler Sent: Thursday, January 15, 2004 6:54 PM To: asterisk-users@lists.digium.com Subject: RE: [Asterisk-Users] ultra-cheap asterisk box I have a Dell 400sc sever on order. It will be shipped on the 27th. It is a 2.4GHz P4 with a 533 MHz front side bus, a 40GB disk, 128MB of memory, sound card, ethernet, and year of on-site next day maintenance. It is $318 delivered after rebates. Yes, $318. This is a real server, by the way, not a desktop machine. It also makes NO noise. I can't hear a thing with my ear right next to it. Why would you even THINK about getting anything else? Paul Paul Mahler mail:pmahler@signate.com phone: 650.207.9855 fax: 877.408.0105 -----Original Message----- From: asterisk-users-admin@lists.digium.com [mailto:asterisk-users-admin@lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of Chris Albertson Sent: Thursday, January 15, 2004 9:32 AM To: asterisk-users@lists.digium.com Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] ultra-cheap asterisk box I'm looking to do about the same thing, build very low cost systems. (I'm looking at putting Asterisk at some non-profit organizations.) but one thing you can't make a compromise on is reliabilty. It has to work and keep working for years to come. I was able to keep the price of a new PC to about $300 ad still use an ASUS mainboard and an AMD XP2600+ The trick is to add absolutly nothing not needed. No floppy, no CDROM so you can run off a 200W P/S. Next I'll experiment with a notebook sized IDE disk drives and to see if _underclocking_ the CPU reduces it's power comsumption enough that we can save one fan. Ideally Asterisk will be ported one day to Linux/ARM or some other very low cost platform. for VOIP you do not need the PCI slots. In theory Asterisk could run on a Lynksys router box with re-flashed EEPROM. After all Lynksys' latest wireless router runs Linux inside Low cost to me means "low total cost of ownership" To get this I don't think buying the lowest priced parts is the way to go. I want quality mainboard, and a quality power supply and, this is importernt: A low internal case temperature. for this reason I'll spend the extra $50 to go with Antec cases and ASUS mainboards over the generic ones. What I'm finding is that the PCs are so cheap that the cost of electric power to run them is now a large part of the cost. (assume 0.20/kwh times 200W times 365 days = $350. So you pay for the PC again every year in electric power to run it. Worse. In an office with airconditioning _all_ of that PC's 200W goes to heat and your A/C unit will use about 220W of power to remove that 200W of heat.) and at a small office they will not have a server room so noise from the fan is an issue. --- Roy Sigurd Karlsbakk <roy@karlsbakk.net> wrote:> hi all > > what about this... > I just put together a box on a web shop (komplett.no) that will cost > me NOK ~1850 (? 216) plus a small ?50 drive and cables, so say ?300. > This > consists of a cheap MB with a duron 1400, 256MB SDRAM and two HFC-PCI > cards (if capijod will finish off the zaptel-driver soon). This is > all > in a cheap PC case. > > What do you think? Should this be doable? as a product? With only IP > phones and potentially a fax solution? any ideas? > > thanks > > roy > > _______________________________________________ > Asterisk-Users mailing list > Asterisk-Users@lists.digium.com > http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users > To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: > http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users====Chris Albertson Home: 310-376-1029 chrisalbertson90278@yahoo.com Cell: 310-990-7550 Office: 310-336-5189 Christopher.J.Albertson@aero.org KG6OMK __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! 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