Folding Closet Pic

Here is a quick picture of my mesy folding/server closet in my basement. It has a bunch of tools and stuff sitting around, which will probably be moved as I need more space for diskless folder.

Right now there is one diskless folder on the first shelf in the eft corner, which is barely visable. The left most server is my DC, which isn't currently folding. The rightmost server is a dual P3 which is folding two instances, and also doing TFTP for the diskles servers. In the upper right you can see my switch, a Cisco 1901 24 port switch. It is only a 10Mbps switch, but should be fine for the small amounts of stuff the folding PCs need to send over the internet, besides which my ISP only gives 5Mbps anyway.

Right now the switch has only 2 ports being used, plus the 100Mbps uplink trunk. Plenty of room to add in more diskless folders as I get the parts/moeny.

It would appear that you are ready to jump on the ghetto wagon brother, especially with that setup. Quit hiding, come into the closet!

Nice, if you maybe wanted to clean up the wiring just a little bit maybe you could see if you could run them down behind the shelves instead of out front

Yep, but there is more to come. I am planning on filling up that closet with as many diskles folders as I can manage! With 22 free switch ports and plenty of room for motherboards that is probably a lot. The only concern would then be heat, well maybe if I make some ducting or something I can use it to heat the house in winter.

I'm sure ghetto can give ya some pointers.

nice, can't wait to see your progress!

LOL! I just posted in this thread like 3 minutes ago, and it vanished?

Anyway what I said was you might want to paint those shelves, and
make sure you have plenty of ventilation, (with some sort of air filtering like
I dont have ) The paint makes it easier to clean it all up, and the filter
will keep the dust away longer. All y'alls have to love those GIANT Cases!!

I can see that closet FULL of those cases, at least they would stack ontop of each other. You got room in there for ALOT more man, get going.

Possible future scenario:

::dials phone number of local power company::

"Ahem, Hi my name is ErikD and I will be needing to install 200amp service for my residential location...."

::dials phone number of local HVAC company::

"Hi, this is ErikD and I will be needing to upgrade the central air to a larger unit. I'll also need a dedicated vent in my folding room."

::chuckle::, way to go .

- Jim

Why is that closet still empty

Yes, Yes... I believe someone needs to put his shopping list together.

I just added another one to the closet. I had been using a PIII 1GHz in a case in my room. The case lights were bugging me, as was the fact that anytime I barely touched the KVM cables it would freeze up (probably from moving the video card around).

So I just pulled it out of the case and put it in the big case, HD still installed because I use it to monitor my other folders.

I am looking to buy the parts for another diskless folder as we speak. I have two PIII 733MHz and one 550MHz all slot 1 doing nothing. I will look for a dual board for those 733's, plus I have a single extra 256MB PC-133 stick on my desk. How much RAM is really needed for a diskless folder? Would that be enough?

After that I am looking at some better quality PCs to really get some work done. I am thinking low end cheap AMDs or Celerons. Whatever I can find a deal on with integrated NIC.

256MB is fine for non-bigpacket work... which is what you want those older cpus to do anyway.

I can't believe I'm saying this (seeing as I bleed AMD silicon)... those DC Smithfield and Presler cpus sure do give a lot of bang for the buck.