Stackable Macs?

[Bifrost]

cluster needs

kansaigaijin,

I can tell you what I am currently buying for the Mac cluster that I am building. Space is not a big issue for me (I have a good size lab room and nothing but computers to put in there). So I don't need to pay extra for rack-mountable hardware. I just buy from the Apple online store, but I remove as many bells and whistles as I can. Currently I have two machines that have larger hard drives, one with a Superdrive for archiving data. The other machine in the cluster, and probably all future purchases, are as stripped down as I can get from Apple. Cheapest graphics card (these machines don't even have their own monitor, what do I need a good graphics card for?), no modem, smallest hard drive, etc. I don't think I could do without the hard drive entirely, since running physics simulation code on the cluster occasionally requires individual nodes to do a local write to a file. My main concern is for two things: gigabit ethernet and the processor. I'd love to see more cache on the processor and a faster system bus (currently my large scale jobs have to write to the hard drive, which eats up a ton of time).

Anyway, it would be nice for Apple to address the cluster/server crowd directly. It looks like, for the links given above, that the server crowd does have some good options. To be honest, I think the scaled-down versions of the PowerMac G4s at the Apple store are a pretty good buy for someone building a mac cluster. So no complaints here. Saving some extra $ with cheaper graphics cards or smaller hard drives would be nice, but not essential. The benefits of Apple hardware and OS X entirely outweigh those considerations.

 

[kansaigaijin]

clusters vs servers

Bifrost,

thanks very much for the informative post.
I guess the Wired people aren't rooting around too hard for computing bargains. My brother bought one of those 733's a year ago, now they sell for much much less. Nice to be able to buy from the edu channel. The are available on the used market here in Japan (Sofmap) also.

and from the server crowd?
Don't need graphics either, but . . .

I think most of the posters cant get away from the mac perspective of doing different things with thier computers, while the serious servers desired by some only serve.

Anyway, I think it is early days yet for OSX, we would not have had this kind of thread in the 9 era. We could see all manner of weird and wonderful things come out of Cupertino in the years ahead.

 

[swahilibill]

anybody know?

anybody know where I can get parts to build my own Power Mac G4 tower. I dont know crap about building a computer but I would love to make my own. Dont laugh at me but can i get G4 towers that are empty. If anybody knows real information about this, email me at robertherman87@earthlink.net

 

[kansaigaijin]

buildyerown

not laughing, but that is a kind of PC thing. You could check eBay or the mail order places for repair parts etc, you can also check out xlr8yourmac.com , people there are posting stories about all kinds of mods to thier machines.
Generally they are taking G4 boards and putting them in PC towers to get the extra drive bays etc. Not an easy thing as you will see if you read some of the posts. But could be an interesting project.
as per the thread I am thinking about a G4 board in a Centris 610 box, the original pizza box Mac (1993). You can propbably buy an old one for $10 or so (or a 6100). But how to fit the video card in at ninety degrees? Nah the processor card would be too high also, I think it really would a totally new motherboard.
and other problems!

 

[AlphaTech]

It would cost you more to build a G4 then to buy one from Apple. I was looking into building a G3 a while back, and to buy just the motherboard was about a grand.