[geeks] Ultra 20 thoughts

[Charles Shannon Hendrix]

Bill Bradford wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 01, 2005 at 07:17:05PM -0400, Charles Shannon Hendrix wrote:
> 
>>    - it has only two drive bays
> 
> 
> Just like the Ultra 60.  I *like* the way how Sun mounts the drives 
> "sideways" and still uses spud brackets.

I'm not sure what the mounting has to do with the number of drives.

I like the mounting too, I just want more of them.  The case is big 
enough for more, so it would be nice to have that option.

My small Lian-Li tower has a 5-drive bay, leaving all of the external 
bays free.  It's cooled with forced air and keeps me from having to 
resort to expensive and space-eating external enclosures.

> I dont know of any systems that have PCI-X *and* PCI-E

HP, Asus, Intel, Tyan... they all have boards with both.

The U20 is still in the interim period between PCI-X and PCI-E, so it 
would have been nice to be able to use the PCI-X cards out there.

I noticed today that newegg no longer lists PCI-X busses as a search 
option.  It's just PCI and PCI-E.

I suppose in the long run it is a good idea, it's just that at this 
moment the PCI-E x1 I/O boards are more expensive and harder to find.

It's really fun searching for boards too, since everyone seems to have 
their own naming convention:

	- PCI-E x<N>
	- PCIEx<N>
	- PCI-Ex<N>
	- PCI-E-x-<N>

To me, it would make more sense to say PCIE-<N>.  The x part seems to be 
redundant.