[CrackMonkey] Picking your collective brains

[Kevin Doherty]

And thus spake Bernard, on Fri, Aug 11, 2000 at 02:16:27PM -0700:
> List life seems quiet at the moment so I don't feel too guilty
> about asking.  Also, BALUG seems to have unilaterally dumped
> me from the mailing list (big loss).
> 	So....
> 
> 1) Friend asking about recommendation for small (eg. 8 port)
> dual speed switches.  Will be for networked printers and 3 - 4
> Linux and Win9x boxes.  I see prices over a 2-fold range
> (eg. $100 - $200).  Any recommendations or things to avoid?
> My guess is that they'll need some kind of expandability
> in the future but 8 ports should be fine now.

I've had good luck (as have friends of mine) looking on eBay for such
things. Standard eBay practices should apply (avoid no-name brands,
don't jump at the first thing you see, check feedback), though I don't
have any specific recommendations (I have an SMC 12 port I got for 50$
that's worked like a champ, but it's only 10bt, not 10/100).

> 2) Also asking about recommendations for tower cases.  I have
> heard horror stories about not accepting standard motherboards,
> crappy power supplies and requiring advanced degrees in engineering
> to assemble/disassemble.  Space for ATX board, Slot1 CPU,
> and good cooling for fast SCSI drive(s).  At least two full-size
> external bays (more is a plus).  Again, any recommendations or
> things to avoid?  A store in the Bay area would be a plus.

I've had decent luck with Inwin cases. I own a Q500A, with dual celerons
(300as overclocked to 450) as well as 2 SCSI cards, a SCSI CD-R, IDE
hard drive, IDE CD-ROM, G200, etc. The CPUs run at around 42 degrees
Celsius, which is on the warm side, but I've made little effort in terms
of cooling, so I wouldn't blame the case. On the other hand, in a review
done by Ars Technica (http://arstechnica.com/reviews/1q99/q500a-1.html),
they seemed to have more problems with heat. They also reviewed a newer
revision of the Q500, the Q500N, which apparently fixed several problems.
http://arstechnica.com/reviews/4q99/q500n/q500-2.html

If you're looking for a mid-tower (the other one is a full), I also have
essentially the mid-tower version of the Q500, which I'm fairly happy
with, but haven't messed with much (it's running a K6-2 350).

--
Kevin Doherty, kdoherty at cosanostra.net
"There's much to be said for laboring in obscurity"
		-- "Tilt-A-Whirl", Galactic Cowboys