Reco me on PC

[JucyTEC]

Just got off a on-site job from some small time company.
Turned out they were actually a contracted company AT&T, well, now Cingular.

Anyways, they had 3 Main PCs 2 of which were running NT 4.0 Server...
They generate Billing staments for UPS and Cingluar, and here comes the funny part...

The fasted machine was Dell Power Edge 2300 Dual Xeon 400 MHz, The Primary Domain Controller running RAID 5, BUT... got struck by lightning and the SCSI backplane was fried.

Backup controller: Compaq Proliant? lol Never even hear of it... 4 x SCSI HDs all 6 Gigs each. Yea, and it was SO loud.

Production Workstation: 120 MHz EDO Ram Generic Mobo...

I corrected the problem and everything BUT... I strongly recomanded that they really should get Cingular to give them some funds... (the money they got chaarged to fix the systems were enough to buy 3 desktops) they have 5 other NT Workstations that hook up to the server but... each of them are configured with individual external IPs provided my the ISP.

With that in mind, they don't really need a server, and only thing they need are 1 - 2 computers that can run Windows NT, 4.0 (because their software has compatibility issues with 2000 and up.)

So finally canibalizing their old but still expensive equipments, i need to build a new machine....

Already have the following:

Seagate DDS Tape Backup Drive (SCSI)
3x Fujitsu 16 gig SCSI HDs (They all suck and prolly not using them)
Adaptec 2940AU SCSI Pci card.

What i want...

some video card even onboard would be fine.
2 x HD SATA or ATA but MUST BE reliable and the MOBO must support Raid 0 (Mirror)
Mobo, something stable, like Intel and proc. obviously Intel.
a DL DVDRW for fast backups... man DDS tape restore is a pain and a half (maybe because the machine itself was so slow)

i guess as long as its compatible with NT 4.0 it'll do, i mean even a PIII machine would be a HUGE upgrade for them but yea i'm trying to get them at least a 2.4 northwood..

Suggestions would be very helpful... please keep in mine stability is key, these machines never go off. the 120 MHz machine even was on for 7 years. lol

oh and one last thing... it could even be a OEM system from Dell. not necessarily a server, i'm not a big fan of scsi drives or devices, only because i've been using them for so long and had so many annoying problems... anyway, thanks for all yer help...

 

[TheMostWantedPolishTwin]

amm.. just FYI - RAID 0 is stripping, RAID 1 is mirroring...
anyways.. if these are going to be on 24/7, you need a case with good airflow - preferably 120mm fans with filters - I work at computer shop and often see how those stock Intel HSF get filled with dust causing CPU to overheat...

 

[JucyTEC]

amm.. just FYI - RAID 0 is stripping, RAID 1 is mirroring....

You know what i meant. anywayz Bump for more responses...

 

[Rune75]

Backup controller: Compaq Proliant? lol Never even hear of it

Im sorry, you have been in the computer industry *how long*?

With that said, you are rather stuck with using the excellent 2940 scsi card if you need to keep the same tape backup and costs down. And almost any decent system that could be built will give good stability. Since this company values stability over speed, you might reccomend using 5400rpm high capacity HDs instead of their 7200RPM brothers to keep heat and wear down. I am rather curious as to why you picked the 2.4GHz NW intel cpu. As I recall (Im an AMD guy), thats a great overclocker... why pick that chip in an environment that needs stability and longevity; not a great OC. Perhaps a basic Dell would be nice and a giant up from everything they have. Just a couple thoughts. Hope I didn't piss ya off.

 

[JucyTEC]

Hope I didn't piss ya off.

You didn't, and obviously i'm young, and still got ways to go, the reason why i picked 2.4 GHz is because I have had one used as a server for a few years now with no stability issue, anyway, your info was a big help. thanks