Apple External Optical Drive and PCI Chassis

[Trekkie]

Hmm, interesting thought.

Chew on this:

1) IBM Makes the PowerPC 970

2) IBM Makes servers that use Power4 CPUs the PowerPC 970 is based off of

3) IBM's Power4 based servres have 'I/O Drawers' that are nothing more than drive bays, and PCI slots....

4) Didn't IBM make the chipset as well as the processor for Apple? (Not sure on this)

5) Said Chipset may have an interconnect feature in it we don't know about....

Just my $0.02

 

[Trekkie]

Originally posted by tazo
I think to only have 3 pci slots will really throw off the switcher who comes from a pc world with normally 5 or 6 pci slots.

and 5 of them are empty because the network card and everything a regular PC person needs is on the motherboard.

It's the super user that hates Mac and won't switch that needs the more slots. Plus I'd say 70 - 80% of the consumer market for PCs are the Mini-ATX boards that only have 2 - 3 PCI slots as well.

I know, I know, this system is supposed to be the 'high end' one. But really, for regular 'high end' desktop use what do you need more than maybe one or two 1GB/s PCI-X 133MHz cards for?

 

[rjstanford]

Originally posted by tjwett
probably wouldn't have any use for another optical drive but i would love to see a standalone network HD using ethernet and airport rather than firewire.

You can buy these today from your favorite computer supply place. Most of the low-end ones are SMB only, and relatively expensive, but they do exist (think about $3-5 per GB last time I checked). CDW, et al, should have them in stock.

On the higher end, companies like NetApp, EMC, HP, Sun etc make multi-terabyte monsters that use multi-gig-e connectivity to a network (or FC-AL to a couple of hosts). Or (probably overkill for you) you've got the combination of an XServe + XServeRAID to do it.

I just noticed that there's a 25% off special for ADC members on the XServe gear, by the way -- good through the end of July. That could be a pretty good indication as to when the new XServes are arriving. It also means that you can pick up a pretty nice 2.5tb storage solution for $11,223 (including ADC membership). Pretty sweet!

-Richard

 

[tjwett]

Originally posted by rjstanford
You can buy these today from your favorite computer supply place. Most of the low-end ones are SMB only, and relatively expensive, but they do exist (think about $3-5 per GB last time I checked). CDW, et al, should have them in stock....

-Richard

thanks, this is great and i've already located a few online. now, how do i get it to operate wirelessly with AirPort? would it need to be connected to it's own base station? i'm psyched to set this up. we're moving into an awesome loft space and we're attempting to go "all wireless". thanks again!

p.s. sorry everone else if i'm pulling the thread off topic. just ignore me, i'll be gone soon.😉

 

[WannabeSQ]

Re: Re: cool, but...

Originally posted by illumin8
The only reason why you need a second optical drive is to copy a CD or DVD without writing it to your hard drive first.

That is not entirely true. While it is much easier to make direct copies with two drives, there are many more reasons to have seperate optical drives. The Superdrive only burns CDs at 16x, and the Combo drive only burns CDs at 32x. What if you want a 56x Burner because you burn a lot of CDs, but don't use the DVD drive at all? I personally have only used the DVD drive in my computer to watch a movie once. Id much rather watch a movie on my TV which has a bigger screen.

 

[Pete_Hoover]

It would be alot better if they would just include another drive bay IN THE FIRST PLACE. Give me a break, Apple. You should know better than that. These things had better be cheap or I aint buyng. People already spent $3000.00 on a "pro" machine that should have already come with another drive bay. Maybe they will get it right in Rev. B. I don't mind the 3 PCI slot thing. It already had alot of ports and other things that you buy PCI cards for ie: Firewire, USB2, another cheap PCI video card for dual monitor support, etc.

 

[nuckinfutz]

Originally posted by Pete_Hoover
It would be alot better if they would just include another drive bay IN THE FIRST PLACE. Give me a break, Apple. You should know better than that. These things had better be cheap or I aint buyng. People already spent $3000.00 on a "pro" machine that should have already come with another drive bay. Maybe they will get it right in Rev. B. I don't mind the 3 PCI slot thing. It already had alot of ports and other things that you buy PCI cards for ie: Firewire, USB2, another cheap PCI video card for dual monitor support, etc.

Pros realize the benefits of storage solutions like External Raid, SAN and NAS. The only people I see complaining about the bays are the "small potatoes" PRO working out their bedroom.

And external chassis will be expensive. They always are.