Donations

[Widar]

richieu Wrote:If your dong stickers I'll buy some and put them on the 4 drift school cars

[banpei]

Yonzie Wrote:Looks good, but should the expenses to date not be under the income/expenses thing?

Well, actually I'd like to keep that separated: we have already spent that money and the connection is going to stay as well. If we are colocating the server it will require extra funding. That extra funding is the reason why we ask for donations and we would like to show it will be spend wisely.

Yonzie Wrote:I understand that it's hosted at home somewhere? Be more explicit about how crappy the current solution is! Include pictures of the box under your bed ;-)

Good point... I'll try to make some crappy pictures with my phone (my digicam died a few weeks ago) and place them here.

Yonzie Wrote:You should go for a 1u box... Don't know about the places you are looking at, but it's usually cheaper. The case is also cheaper, if you know what to get. Go for a Chieftec 1u case. Not the best in the world, but solid and the cheapest available. You may need to fix up a little ducting (depending on the CPU) since the fans are badly arranged, but that's nothing more than the price of a bit of tape. A PCI riser card is included with the case.
It's (probably) not a problem with the hw, since normal unbuffered non-ECC memory is small enough to fit. You can get a 1u heat sink & fan for ~40€.
If the motherboard in use does not have integrated graphics, an extremely stable intel (as in made by) p4/celeron desktop board can be had for <100€, although you have to remove the sound header at the back for it to fit. I've had about 30 of those in my hands, 0 DOAs, 0 defects the first 6 months.
Tyan has some even nicer ones, but they are twice the price (or more).

The problem is that the current motherboard of the server requires atleast 2U (risercard + memory). The motherboard uses onboard graphics already and has a risercard as well (3 slots). So, essentially it is just a simple swap into a 2U case. I was planning on a chieftec as well, but I see the prices have dropped a bit during the past three months. I didn't recon the casing had a power supply as well. Saves another 50 euros.

richieu Wrote:You dont get anything in this world for nothing!

I've only just joined the group and have paypaled money over the first week, why? Because hosting a forum and actually running it costs and you will only get out what you put in.

Yup. I noticed that, and I was very amazed a new member donating so soon.

richieu Wrote:You guys have a great forum, far better than any rally forms I'm a member of

If your dong stickers I'll buy some and put them on the 4 drift school cars

Aww... That's also something which is still on the "to-do" list.

[Yonzie]

banpei Wrote:The problem is that the current motherboard of the server requires atleast 2U (risercard + memory). The motherboard uses onboard graphics already and has a risercard as well (3 slots). So, essentially it is just a simple swap into a 2U case. I was planning on a chieftec as well, but I see the prices have dropped a bit during the past three months. I didn't recon the casing had a power supply as well. Saves another 50 euros.

Be aware that the current riser card will not fit in the chieftec, a new one is included though. Even has an ISA connector ;-)
If you are interested, I might have one of boards I mentioned lying around, might even have a CPU for it. No memory though, nor the 1u cooler (a PSU is included in the 1u chieftec box as well).
If it works (it should), and you are interested, it could be yours (need to clear out the apartment in preparation for the gf to move in, and I have plenty of stuff (she has too ;-) ) to flog off for money so...).

Anyone want antistatic bags? Got a whole box full (~30x40x20cm)...

[banpei]

No pics yet. I'll make some tonight.

Yonzie Wrote:Be aware that the current riser card will not fit in the chieftec, a new one is included though. Even has an ISA connector ;-)
If you are interested, I might have one of boards I mentioned lying around, might even have a CPU for it. No memory though, nor the 1u cooler (a PSU is included in the 1u chieftec box as well).
If it works (it should), and you are interested, it could be yours (need to clear out the apartment in preparation for the gf to move in, and I have plenty of stuff (she has too ;-) ) to flog off for money so...).

Sounds very interesting.
Might be a good idea to do a complete rebuid.

Yonzie Wrote:Anyone want antistatic bags? Got a whole box full (~30x40x20cm)...

May I ask what you were planning do do with it in the first place?

[Mux213]

banpei Wrote:

richieu Wrote:You guys have a great forum, far better than any rally forms I'm a member of

If your dong stickers I'll buy some and put them on the 4 drift school cars

Aww... That's also something which is still on the "to-do" list.

Yeah art, whats keeping those stickers

Need any help with it? I have a couple of free days coming up in a couple of weeks so I could go and run around some printshops. The design of the sticker has been ready since automaxx so

[jamiemirror]

banpei, I often take some outsourcing software projects. I and my coleague (the designer) bought some hosting quota@USA servers. If applicable - we can host the forum there.

[banpei]

mux213 Wrote:Yeah art, whats keeping those stickers

Need any help with it? I have a couple of free days coming up in a couple of weeks so I could go and run around some printshops. The design of the sticker has been ready since automaxx so

I know... I'll send you the images.

jamiemirror Wrote:banpei, I often take some outsourcing software projects. I and my coleague (the designer) bought some hosting quota@USA servers. If applicable - we can host the forum there.

Well, it depends on their capacity in bandwidth, diskspace, cpu usage and ofcourse what they have installed over there.

Current statistics:
Hits / bandwidth:
Month Unique visitors Number of visits Pages Hits Bandwidth
Jan 2005 3925 8954 125599 1048137 7.16 GB
Feb 2005 3673 8301 107502 837334 4.85 GB
Mar 2005 3224 8035 89169 673140 3.84 GB
Apr 2005 4281 9842 98929 840314 6.25 GB
May 2005 2749 6088 53995 460866 6.13 GB

MySQL usage:
Max # of questions: 204 q/m Average # of questions: 75 q/m Current # of questions: 96 q/m

As you can see: the usage is going up. We currently use about 400MB diskspace and the database is about 30 megs (which is not that bad). It's not like we can go for cheap shared hosting anymore.

The ISP I work for has a shared hosting product, but they already limit MySQL usage to 50 queries per minute (average). Most forums with more than 100 users go way over that limit. I know a lot of other providers with shared hosting do something similar.

[Yonzie]

banpei Wrote:

Yonzie Wrote:Anyone want antistatic bags? Got a whole box full (~30x40x20cm)...

May I ask what you were planning do do with it in the first place?

Well... they might be useful... sometime... I'm a hoarder 'k? I've improved though ;-)

Oh and you might want to check out The Planet for that Drift video streaming server... Dual Xeon/1GB RAM server with 2TB of data transfer for only $249 per month

[banpei]

Yonzie Wrote:Well... they might be useful... sometime... I'm a hoarder 'k? I've improved though ;-)

Okay, I'm a horder as well... My GF made me throw out half of all computer stuff I gathered within 10 years: about 10 pc's (in parts) were thrown away.

Yonzie Wrote:Oh and you might want to check out The Planet for that Drift video streaming server... Dual Xeon/1GB RAM server with 2TB of data transfer for only $249 per month

Auch! That is a lot of money and a lot of bandwidth!
Noway we can do anything like that, unless I go with a different donation system.

[banpei]

As promised: pics of the server