AND
We have Arizonas own Mr Sexy himself 
Hello Everyone:wave:
I have been enjoying my retirement and taking it easy getting on with Real Life. Seti was becoming an all consuming thing for meā¦at the expense and exception of all else.
Then Bob comes and displays somthing like this. It makes me want to join back in and kick some A$$ with some old friends:rolleyes:
Bob, that has got to be one of the tastiest crunchers i have ever laid eyes on and if i was wearing a hat, iād take it off to you:nod:
Special K
Hello Special K, nice to see you again 
hiya spesh m8 
good to see you
i agree, Bob has done a great job
Thats a darn sexy rig =-Drool-=
Well this is what mine should look like once complete
Only an artists impression so far as only 2 layers
have been made up, however after seeing that
sexy rig I might start having a rethink over how
my completed stack will look.
Thanks folks, the reaction was everthing Iād hoped
Some brief answers to questions in this thread:
The Rack
This came from RS - search for 519-087 and then navigate up a level to see the range of bits available. Itās not cheap but is incredibly rigid and looks the biz. Sort of the Coolermaster ATCS of shelving. The best bit it that you get to assemble it by hitting stuff VERY VERY HARD with a rubber mallet.
The adjustable feet worked very well.
I have a lot of the 2m plain tube left if anyoneās interested.
The Power
Iāve been running one 8-layer module for a while so I know the power consumption. Yes, this sort of thing will always be expensive to run. Iām not short of money and have good reasons for wanting to do something rather self indulgent right now. Iāve always liked building complicated-looking things. Iād prefer to spend the money on this sort of craziness rather than e.g. a flashier car.
Wealth warning - work out how much each WU costs and be honest with youself about how much youāre prepared to spend on this āhobby.ā Donāt spend more than you can afford just to keep up in the stats. :nono:
Iāll be putting in a ring main in the garage, because things are close to the limit right now!
Cooling
Itās in a double length-garage - plenty of air volume but ventilation is poor. I currently use a pedestal and a desk fan. With the recent hot weather itās clear that I need to exhaust the hot air. Iām about to buy an extractor fan. Fortunately thereās a window which is by a shady corner at the back of the house, so that should be a source of cooler air.
The CPU coolers are cheap but under specced for the processors. Iāve not had any problems yet, though.
OS and Boot
I had planned to go netboot, NFS etc. but impatience got the better of me. I managed to get a load of old IDE disks and NT4 licenses, so theyāre mainly Windows on local disk. The disks are in a ācageā (ally angle) at the back between each block of 4 PSUs.
I plan to experiment with Linux/WINE and NFS, if only to reduce the power consumption.
Interestingly the M841LR mobos have an āF12 for network bootā feature built into the BIOS. To be investigated.
Network
The two hubs at the bottom are cheapo Scan offers of the day: 16 port 10MBps hubs 18 quid inc VAT. The one at the top is a 10/100 MBps switch which is uplinked to a similar switch which the rest of my stuff uses. Internet connection is an ntl cable modem on a NAT router. I use SetiQueue on a UPS-protected PC.
:cheers:
:eek: :eek: :eek: :worship: :worship: :worship:
I think that covers everything 
SB
Originally posted by PMM
Well this is what mine should look like once complete
Only an artists impression so far as only 2 layers
have been made up, however after seeing that
sexy rig I might start having a rethink over how
my completed stack will look.
Go for it 
Itās worth giving the whole project a lot of thought up-front (is that called planning or something?). Thatās part of the fun.
A suggestion. The layers get surpisingly heavy when you have a lot of them. I find that 8 layers including HDDs are about the most that I can safely manoeuvre. Iād be concerned about supporting the weight of the stack on the PSU - Iād be messy if the bottom one buckled under the strain.
Iāll freely admit to being very impressed and inspired by the OcUK STOMP MONSTER - but waited until the DDR mobo came out ;). But I think that their 7 high stack is rather unmanageable in a domestic environment. I also thought that the high stack of PSUs with disks stuck to the sides looked unstable. If they get it to 3 * 7 layers then I think that the flimsy computer desk itās on is in risk of collapse 
Originally posted by BobW
[B]Unleashed at last, the latest addition to the TPR bestiary :bounce::devil: The Crunchy Hog :devil:
Mainly XP1900+ on M814LR mobos, 128M DDR.
Should get me past the 200 WU/day mark
[/B]
omgā¦ i am a dead man. As you go blazeing past me at 1900+ XP speed try not to take my head off.:scared: 
Holy Moly, Iāve just done a quick sum in my head, and I make it that your Hog has just underā¦
40 Ghz
ā¦of crunching power.
:eek: :scared: :scared: :eek:
Originally posted by BobW
A suggestion. The layers get surpisingly heavy when you have a lot of them. I find that 8 layers including HDDs are about the most that I can safely manoeuvre. Iād be concerned about supporting the weight of the stack on the PSU - Iād be messy if the bottom one buckled under the strain.
[/B]
My layers wonāt be resting on the PSU its just how it came
out when I made the pic up as the 2 layers I have for first
stage experiments (Me being a Linux Noobie) were resting
on the PSU the final design subject to change was to have
each board layer connected to a rack so each could be slid
out on runners for ease of upgrading.
As I say lots to think about, I am trying to keep the costs
as low as possible 1 server in stack + hopefully 9 diskless
systems.
The only things still to purchase are CPUās & Ram & 1M network
patch leads apart from that I have 10 of everything else except
a suitable network hub, hoping to get one from work very
cheap.
So far
Floppy Drive
HeatSink
G/fx card
Nic
M/board
PSU
Have costed Ā£83 per layer
Only Ram & Cpuās to add but being what I regard as high cost
Items these will be carefully chosen at will.
feck meā¦ now if there ever was an inspiration for all to go power madā¦ here it is
Wow! :eek: That is beyond wordsā¦ reallyā¦ :cheers:
-Jeff
:eek:
What more can I say reallyā¦ :eek:
So youāre telling me that I donāt really stand much of a chance of stomping youā¦ But a rather nice bit of crunching powah!
hmmm please tell me you nicked all that gear!! must of cost a BOMB.
notices a fan in the corner of the piccy
bet that room gets damn hot!
Well BobW that is truly amazing!!
:headbang: :rocker:
Well you really should look into a Linux platform and diskless. The removal of the HDs will reduce the temps and power draw.
I love your setup though. Neat and to the point. Do the MBs have a setting to fire up on power on. That is one of the draw backs with using the ECS boards that I selected but they are very cheap at $50 a pop. The other is they refuse to boot without video and the sis900 chipset has problems with network booting. The booting issue is about to be fixed in the next LTSP release and the etherboot code can be blown directly into the BIOS to make the Stompinator completely diskless. I canāt wait for that as the floppies are a pain in the @ss.
They donāt auto power-on. However the power-on pins are wired to those panels of tiny push switches (bottom front of each block (apart from one I havenāt done yet)). Connection is standard push-on molex sockets so something clever could be done later with relays if I felt like it. Woouldnāt want everything powering-up at once, anyway.
Total pain is that I canāt work out how to disable the "Keyboard Error, press F1 to continue"error if the keyboard is missing on boot. Thereās usually a BIOS option but I canāt see it for these boards. Whatās the connection of a PS/2 plug to fake a keyboard?
Otherwise, I think they boot without a monitor. Video is onboard - I havenāt tried disabling it to see if thereās a performance boost.
I agree, plenty of work to do. I just got impatient and wanted to get crunching.
I did plenty of Unix stuff 10ish years ago, but not much recent Linux. Got several distros ready to try out.
I just wanted to say well done on building that beast. Sure shows a lot of commitment:)
Awesome:cool:
is there not a setting in the bios called
HALT ON ERRORSā¦ options:Keyboard,keyboard and mouse etc?
i got it on my junky packard bell*** mobo and my asus a7v & a7v133