On 2/3/2011 1:52 PM, m.roth at 5-cent.us wrote: > Les Mikesell wrote: >> On 2/3/2011 12:38 PM, Chuck Munro wrote: >>> >>> Less than $500 for a Supermicro box? Holy crap, Batman! >>> >>> I'm using one of their motherboards (X8DAL-3) in a home-brew >>> configuration, which has turned out to be somewhat less expensive than a >>> factory-built Supermicro, but still not cheap. I'll say one thing for > <snip>> >> If you are building your own stuff, I kind of like trayless hot-swap >> sata bays. And if you care more about size and power than speed and >> capacity, you can get them for laptop size drives too. > > Trayless is nice. All the sleds mostly use *different* screws. The ones > that drive me crazy are the Penguin boxes we have, that use screws no one > else uses... *and* we have a good number that came with only one or two > drives (for use in clusters).... It has been a while since I used Penguins, but as I recall they used to ship a bag of those screws with every unit, so if you don't have them it may be because you threw them out. And they put working carriers in the bays. The ones that irritate me are the IBMs and Dells that ship dummy carriers that take just as much material in the empty bays and charge a bundle for working ones if you add drives later. -- Les Mikesell lesmikesell at gmail.com