[rescue] OT: Linux and USB on Intel

[Joshua D. Boyd]

On Sun, Apr 20, 2003 at 07:33:06AM -0400, Dave McGuire wrote:
> > PC hardware is perfectly usable with the right operating system.
> 
>    ...unless you have anything important to do, that is.

There are varying levels of important.  For levels of important that
tolerate some downtime, well, store the files remotely, and when the PC
smokes, grab the hot spare and resume work.  Obviously sub optimal, but
some people have trouble doing better.

BTW, Google and the Internet wayback machine use a similar strategy.  I
could be wrong, but even taking smoked machines and hot spares into
account, I find it hard to believe that you could do that work for a
similar budget on Suns.  Although, if one had the balls to commit to
trying it, I wonder if cheap 1U Suns + 1 IBM mainframe would do it.
Anyway, one of those places (I suspect the way back machine) dispenses
with normal PC cases and power supplies altogether, and just has
specially made racks with a custom power supply per shelf, where each
shelf holds one intel motherboard and CPU, and 4 of the largest IDE
disks available on the market at the time the shelf was filled.  This
way, the can pack the machine denser than 1U each.  I wonder how they
cool that intel crap though...