Planned Cluster.

[Kim Branson]

Hi all,

Thought i'd check with the community and see if anyone has had any
problems with the hardware in this intended cluster.

The cluster will consist of 64 nodes, used for drug design applications
(molecular docking -pure parametric problem, computational chemistry
and molecular dynamics)

nodes: 
asus A7V socket A motherboard
64 Mb 168 pin 133 Mhz SIMM
Segate IDE 10.2 Gb ultra ATA66
AMD 1Ghz Thunderbird (donated by AMD)
3C905B-TX 
in a minitower ATX chenming case.

switch
HP Pocurve switch 4000m
with 64 ports

Head node
amd athlon 900 
256 133 SIMM
30 gig seagate IDE 
Abit ka7 mboard
HP scsi cdr 
adaptec scsi 39160 68 pin scsi card
Pioneer DVD 16X DVD 40X CD-ROM
elsa gladiac geforceII gts 8x AGP video card

The head node works fine, but people have mentioned problems with the 3com
network card. testing has shown no problems but the vendor has informed us
they have had problems with the 3com cards, "some batches don't seem to
work", they have offered intel EtherExpress PRO 10/100+ TX - PCI cards for
the same cost. 

I'm playing with a intel card today to see if there is any difference,
does anyone have any comments or suggestions?

I'd be grateful for any help.

Kim Branson


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Mr Kim Branson
Phd Student
Diffraction and Theory
Biomolecular Research Institute
343 Royal Parade, Melbourne Victoria
Ph 61 03 9662 7300
Email kim.branson at bioresi.com.au

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