Geobabe you rock[sup]1[/sup] me!
[sup]1[/sup]rock
- a naturally occurring bound aggregate of minerals
- a damn groovy feelin’
Holy crap! I am not worthy, for giving up so easily! 
Anth, I think you’re being, as is your wont, a little bit too hard on yourself. 
I haven’t been here very long, but I spend too much time here–and just reading through this thread has given me a warm, fuzzy feeling inside. 
Thus, I pledge $30, bringing the total to $4450
LL
BUMP!!!
I will donate $50.
For all of the time that I spend here and all that I have learned I think it is a bargin. Think of all the books I didn’t have to buy because I was too busy reading the SDMB.
That brings the total to $4,500.
Toss in another $20 from me…should bring it to $4520, yes?
I guess since I am now officialy a regular I should add another $20.
Keith
I’ll throw in $20
Total: $4,540
Feel free to correct my math.
odieman beat me to it -
total: $4,560.
I will donate $25 - more after the holidays. I’m not sure what the total will be - I’m soooo bad at math.
That’ll be $4585 with Sax’ pledge.
i will add another $20 and ask after xmas, fwiw
I’ll pledge $20, so with anya marie’s $20, that comes to $4625.
In in for 100 - total to 4725.00
You really should ask the mods if you can receive a forum topic exemption to cross post this to GQ etc (maybe one of those administrator “forum header” type posts). Not that MPSIMS isn’t a happenin’ joint full of the most interesting bipeds ever to breathe air, but some folks, like myself, only wander by occasionally. I had no idea this thread was active.
[mock protest]
But this is an underground thread! A grass roots movement! It coudl lose all of its personality being cross posted to the (shudder) cold, hard world of the mainstream threads.
[/mock protest]
Yea, the other, serious people need to get a view of this somehow.
I don’t do servers, so this is obviously an amateur attempt at pricing one out. I just went to Dell’s website and got an automated price for the following:
Dell Poweredge 2400 server
• Pentium III 1GHz w/256K Cache
• Single 330 Watt Power Supply
• 1GB RAM 2X512 SDRAM DIMM
• 6 Bay Hot Pluggable Backplane (1.0" or 1.6" drives)
• RAID 1,Duplex Hard Drive Removeable Bay
• (2) 18GB SCSI 10K RPM HD
• Onboard Intel Pro 100+ NIC
• Red Hat Linux 6.2 with Associated Documentation
• INTERNAL 20/40GB DLT-4000
• Arcserve Standard Tape Backup Software for Dell Power Suite
• 17/40X SCSI CD-ROM Drive #1
• Standard Windows Keyboard
• Dell M570 Monitor,15"(13.8"VIS)
• Logitech System Mouse
• Electronic CD ROM Documentation
• 3 Yr Next Business Day On-Site Parts & Labor,Getronics
• APC SMART UPS 1400 Watt, Black
This prices out at $7,854.08 without sales tax and shipping (I don’t know what Chicago’s sales tax rate is; shipping I’d guess at ~$100)
So, not an expert configuration by any means, but a traction point.
Well, the Thursday night crew was obviously not impressed, but we’ll still give it a bump for the day shift to consider.
Guys, we’re seriously impressed (and touched) that you’re willing to pony up nearly five grand toward a new server - and yes, $8K is pretty much what we’re thinking it’s going to cost. But we have to decline for a variety of reasons, the foremost in my mind being that as a for-profit entity we just feel weird accepting donations. We would also have the somewhat ticklish problem of trying to collect on all those pledges, plus the fact that this might not be a permanent solution - we’ll probably have to upgrade the comm lines next, and that runs into a pretty steep monthly charge. So we’d be taking money from people without necessarily being able to deliver top quality service.
Lest you despair, however, you should know that we’ve just embarked on a new ad program that MAY enable us to take advantage of our high traffic (we’re close to a million page views a week on the MB alone) to generate some significant revenue. We’ll know in six months. If that’s no go, well, there’s always Plan B. But we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.
Thanks for your patience and support. Someday we’re going to figure out how to make this thing pay.
[Edited by Ed Zotti on 12-05-2000 at 03:03 PM]
As was apparently the case with the ~100 or so who viewed this since Ed posted, I really had nothing to add. But I thought I might bump it for the benefit of the manny who chimed in and may have missed it.
My favorite part:
I can easily understand that, Ed.