[ Just a couple of comments on this ]

Mike Smith wrote...
> > 4) Has anyone used any of the Supermicro boards e.g. P6DBS with the builtin
> >    Adaptec Dual Channel UWSCSI ? or got suggestions for other suitable
> >    motherboards (preferably ones with will take up to 1Gb RAM) I should 
> >    point out that 'the management' would REALLY like to use a commercially
> >    available box rather than me build one out of bits !

	One thing to keep in mind is that the P6DBS has an Adaptec AIC-7895
on board.  This means that it will only work with FreeBSD and the CAM
patches (ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.ORG/pub/FreeBSD/cam/README) or a fairly recent
Linux kernel.

[ ... ]

>  - If you want more than 512MB of memory, you need to use Pentium Pro 
>    processors.  (This may change with new PII models; I'm a few months 
>    out of date.  Be very certain to check this carefully.)

	For the 233-333MHz versions of the Pentium II, you are correct.
However, the 350 and 400MHz versions can cache up to 4GB.  See:

http://developer.intel.com/design/pentiumII/datashts/24365701.pdf

	Look on page 9.  If you're up for waiting a bit, though, I would
probably wait for a Slot 2 processor and the 450NX chipset.  You will be
able to do 4-way SMP with the 'Xeon' processors, and the cache will run at
the same speed as the processor.

Ken
-- 
Kenneth Merry
ken@plutotech.com