On Tue, 22 Feb 2005 07:58:09 +0000
"Eric Schurman" <eric_schurman@hotmail.com> wrote:
> I'm not a BSD guy, but a very good friend is. She runs a server that
> is a great community resource, and I took up a collection to fund a
> replacement for her current machine. I've identified what I think is a
> good machine for her at our price point (~$1900 total) and needs
> (_really_ reliable hardware, 2U, capacity for several easy access
> drives, etc., 1 gig ram, standard PCI slots, SATA preferred, good
> warantee preferred) and vetted some of the components from the
> hardware compatibility list, but am having problems with a few
> components. She's running 2.0, specifically
> 
> blood% uname -a
> NetBSD blood.byz.org 2.0 NetBSD 2.0 (GENERIC) #0: Wed Dec  1 10:58:25
> UTC 2004
> builds@build:/big/builds/ab/netbsd-2-0-RELEASE/i386/200411300000Z-obj
> /big/builds/ab/netbsd-2-0-RELEASE/src/sys/arch/i386/compile/GENERIC
> i386
> 
> I'm considering purchasing a SuperMicro superserver with the following
> 
> motherboard

I use SuperMicros for doing financial transactions in a high capacity,
high availability environment and have no problems.  This is a very good
server.

> SATA
>   6300ESB (Hance Rapids) SATA Controller
>   RAID 0, 1, JBOD support

I use SCSI but I don't see why this wouldn't work.

> Graphics
>   ATI Rage XL SVGA PCI video controller with 8 MB of video memory

I don't use the graphics on these systems (they are remotely
administered servers) so I can't comment on the quality but the card
should definitely work.

Can you try before buy?  You can create a live CD and check everything
out without installing NETBSD on the system itself.  You can get details
and pointers at http://www.netbsd.org/gallery/products.html#netbsd-live.

-- 
D'Arcy J.M. Cain <darcy@NetBSD.org>
http://www.NetBSD.org/