[tech] Mermaid re-animated

[Ben Rampling]

> Another comment about memory for mako - if we're talking about buying it,
even
> if it will accept EDO - it is damn expensive.
>
> eg - it was cheaper to get a Celeron 400, motherboard (AT form factor),
> slot card and 128Mb PC100 DIMM ($520 inc tax) than to get 128Mb of EDO
DRAM
> ($580 inc tax for 4x32Mb at the tame time).  The EDO was "cost price" from
> the supplier who usually gives us the best memory prices.  People with
older
> stock still have slightly lower prices on EDO, but not too much.

Good point - why buy old expensive upgrades when we could buy new ones
that'll be useful for much longer. If Mako becames a C400/128, we'd solve
the problem of mailing lists and Moray's performance problems, Mako's
current performance problems, we'd be able to move to PostgreSQL, and we'd
have some of Mako's old hardware that could be used for something less
demanding. If Moray has the slots available, we could bump it up to 32Mb
with Mako's two 8Mb's.

If we want to look at buying a motherboard, 128Mb of RAM and the Celeron 400
in the next couple of weeks, I'm quite happy to donate the $200 or so that
the club would need to buy one of the 7200rpm Quantum drives previously
mentioned.

Regards,
Ben Rampling