On Thu, Aug 24, 2006 at 03:20:09PM -0400, Bob Mariotti wrote:

dtutty@porchlight.ca wrote:

...

I'm wanting to switch from the comodity/x86 arch to the RS/6000 to get reliability-by-design instead of reliability-by-cheap-replacment-parts-when-frequently-break.

With the newer POWER arch pSeries out, the older RS/6000s are in the same price ballpark as a current Pentium 4. In my case I can get the H50 the H50).

Opinions on using an RS/6000 vs Pentium 4 for general desktop stuff is also appreciated. Other PPC mailing lists are quite MAC specific.

Doug;

Havings been a long time AIX devotee I too thought like you when it came to Linux deployment (why not use my old RS6K servers...).

I got a tremendous amount of helpful information on this topic from this site: http://www.solinno.co.uk/7043-140/ and even though it refers to the -140, most of it was also applicable to the '50 models of which the H50 falls.

I did try and eventually got both my 140's and B50 booting and working but quite frankly the performance, for what ever reason, what never quite as good as when it was running AIX. Furthermore, the sheer amount of effort required just to boot and load these monsters was just impractical. I finally simply shut them down and purchased AMD XP and now AMD Opteron boxes which load in a snap and performance wise are great (and cheap).

So, just my $.02 worth but just ask yourself "what is YOUR time and effort (and frustration) worth?".

Good luck,

Bob

Thanks Bob. I can't afford an AIX license. You say the performance on Linux was less than AIX. How did the performance compare on linux between the PowerPC and the AMD? I eventually want to use USB (assuming someone gets a USB PCI card working for them [comment please]) with a video-capture dongle to transfer from VHS to DVD, store and retouch digital camera images, watch DVDs, etc. That takes more power than my 486! I was figuring that the H50 with 4-way 604e would do it. What do you think? Assuming that it boots in the first place to get linux installed. Thanks, Doug.