Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2007/09/06
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Brian, I am sincerely happy for you.
Of course, I have absolutely no idea what any of that
means, except for the bottom line launch times. Pretty
cool.
When can I get one? (who has recently been buying old
dual-processor G4s and adding USB 2.0 cards to have
fast scanners and image transfer for the kids at
school)
--- Brian Reid <reid@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us> wrote:
> This is utterly off topic, but I'm the barkeep here
> and I don't rant very
> often.
> I just finished some risky modifications to a
> brand-new computer and I am
> utterly delighted. I suspect that what I have to say
> here is of interest only
> to performance freaks and computer engineers.
>
> My daughter had a summer job working at Apple, and
> as a (part-time) employee
> she was entitled to buy a small number of things at
> significant discounts,
> and, further, she is explicitly allowed to buy them
> for relatives. So I gave
> her some money to buy me a Mac Pro with the maximum
> processor power that the
> law allows, one 500GB disk, and enough memory to be
> bootable. Since I already
> had a working computer, I felt free to dissect it
> and make changes.
>
> I found some certified Mac Pro memory for $100/GB in
> 2GB parts and filled all
> 8 memory bays: 16GB of PC3500 RAM. The 2GB parts are
> dropping in price
> because the 4GB parts are starting to ship (at
> $600/GB; no thank you!).
>
> I also got my hands on the new Mac Pro RAID card,
> and 3x750GB/eSATA/7200RPM
> disks. I built a 3-disk RAID 5 array out of it, and
> benchmarked it to drool
> over how fast it is.
>
> So far this is just hardware diddling. Now came the
> scary part. I put my home
> directory on the RAID. I didn't want to risk making
> the whole system run on
> the RAID, so boot and system functions still run on
> Disk0, which is
> standalone.
>
> The Unix sysadmin in me wanted just to make
> /Users/reid be a symlink, but I
> have enough scars and wounds from Mac OS that I knew
> it couldn't be that
> simple. A quick remedial reading of the Netinfo
> Manager "documentation" gave
> me the courage to go muck with that; changing the
> Netinfo resource for the
> home directory for user "reid" from /Users/reid to
> /Volumes/HindolvestonRAID/reid" did the trick. I put
> in the symlink, too, as
> an act that is partly superstition and partly "can't
> hurt; might help".
>
> Shut down, restart, move all of my files to it with
> Retrospect, restart again
> just for good measure, and log on.
>
> Zooooooooooom. I've never experienced anything like
> it. You doubleclick a big
> klunky application like Dreamweaver or Illustrator
> or InDesign and it comes
> up before you finish blinking. The RAID card tickles
> all of the disks, so
> there's a lot of very quiet disk noise for a
> fraction of a second while these
> applications are launching. Safari launches in an
> unmeasurably short
> interval. Photoshop launches in about 4.5 seconds
> and opens a new image in
> about 0.1 second. Lightroom launches in 3 seconds.
>
> I think I can learn to live with this performance. I
> have to decide whether
> I'm going to be totally anal and do Retrospect
> backups of the RAID 5 to
> protect against fire and earthquake and other
> catastrophes.
>
> Brian Reid
> giddy with power
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Leica Users Group.
> See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for
> more information
>
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