I rather think that Robert's point is; for each box there is some cost
that you have to pay -- RAM, case, PSU, display cards, etc. I have a
plethora of dual PPro boxen, and love them -- been using them for more
than two years now, and plan to continue using them to the fullest, as
an experiment in PVM-- but the price differential between dual PPro180
(at $90 per) and dual PII300 (at $200 per) is not $255 ($75 for MB) vs
$529 ($129 for MB-- Computer Geeks is selling the Tyan Thunder II real
cheap, with sound, PCI LAN and AHA7880 SCSI on-board), but, assuming a
cheap 4 gig SCSI drive from Onsale, say, at $150, a panasonic CD-R for
$240, fair ATX tower case for $150, display card for $180 (and Matrox
Mill 2, the best choice for PPro based Linux boxen, is going out!) RAM
at 128MB for $180-- 4x$40 32MB Parity EDO SIMMs from Net Express for a
PPro machine, one ECC PC100 128MB SDRAM stick for the PII. Now we are
talking some $1200 vs $1500 for 1.5+ times the performance, with cost
of a monitor still not factored in. So unless old case, SIMMs, NIC et
al are all salvageable and you are ditching your old board, I think it
is clear that Robert's right-- it's no longer economic for dual PPros.
Comments? PS, what does people think of buying the $540 PII-333-OD to
upgrade dual PPro boxen?
B.Y.
