Cathedral Keep

Cathedral Keep Workstation (cathedral_keep) Cathedral Keep

Cathedral Keep is my primary system, as of January 2002. It is a dual Pentium-III processor, multi-hard drive system that is designed to handle large graphic data as well as general computing. This workstation is where I do the bulk of my work. Castlerock has become the family and guest's workstation. Cathedral is my workstation.

Primary Workstation:

Sysads have full network connectivity
Sysads have full privileges
19" flat screen/custom desk/sysadmin's chair
Legal-size SCSI scanner

The Need for Multiple Workstations.

In this day an age, just about everyone either has email or friends online. Visiting family members and friends were no exception. The kids' computers were available, but they do use them. Moreover, the kids have full access to their own systems. So any and most activity on their system can be readily read, if caches aren't cleared. Secondly, the kids' rooms don't offer privacy. Their computers don't either. Windows 95/98/Me were designed for home use and are not as natively secure as Windows NT or 2000....or Linux.

Also, at the time, I only had dial-up access. So that put a limit on which computers could be used for Internet access. Often times, guests would tie up Castlerock, meaning I had to go through Bailey's Keep to do any work. I could work on the web site, but I would not be able to ftp anything up until my main system was available. Castlerock was a powerful machine and folks, once on it, did not want to give it up. I needed another workstation.

In March 2001, Merlins Rook became a reality and I moved the modem to it. I could call out via the Bailey or Castlerock workstations. But it was slow and I still had only one line.

DSL Arrives.

In October 2001, a god-send came along called DSL. It took a few weeks of growing pains with DSL, as I did have a both a Cable/DSL router and a live server active on the network. One computer was easy. So I reconfigured Merlins Rook for DSL. Once I had that down, Castlerock was next and then Bailey. By the end of December 2001, I had all computers downstairs hooked up to DSL via the server and the router. With wireless network cards, the PC's would have the same access, later.

With both workstations capable of DSL connectivity, now was the perfect time for a new workstation. Seems everyone wants a big screen and a fast machine. My mom, especially. ;)

Drafting the New Workstation.

With the success of Merlins Rook, I wanted to have the same performance advantage of dual processors in a workstation. While the Pentium 4 had come out since November of 2001, I did not see a dual Pentium-4 mainboard available and it is now January 2003 and I have yet to see a dual Pentium-4 processor board, that is not Xeon. Nothing wrong with Xeon, but that is alot of money for home use. I already had one Pentium-III 733 CPU. It was just a matter of getting another one that matched.

I also wanted a steady platform. Another mainboard like Tyan Tiger 133 in Merlins Rook was a first choice. Ironically, the cost of the Tiger 133's is still at $140.00+, even after more than 2 years of production. I was on a tight budget and wanted to keep the costs down. The plans were to start with a single hard drive as the system drive and add another hard drive later as a data drive, later. There was a Tyan Tiger 230 at Microcenter (Fairfax, VA) available $129, and it fit the bill. As much as I would have liked the Tyan Tiger 200, which had IDE Raid onboard, I was on a tight budget. The Tiger 230 would be my new board.

Both The Tiger 200 and the Tiger 230 boards have very good reviews, minus overclocking issues. Tyan developes its mainboards for realibility and stability, so that company has tends to have jumperless mainboards that limit the ability to overclock. The good thing is that along with reliabiltiy and stability, their mainboards are easy to install. I personally do not overclock my server and my workstations. Realibility and stabilty are my key issues.

The other items, such as DVD, soundblaster, and graphics were already solved by Castlerock. I would simply get the same items, again. However, the Tigers are large mainboards and I did need a new case and a large one at that. Thanks, Mom!

Specifications:
Motherboard: Tyan Tiger 230 from Microcenter in Fairfax, VA
(On the board)

CPU(s): Two Pentium-III 733Mhz 133FSB FCPGA (SL3YX) from eBay

Memory: 512Mbytes 7.5ns SDRAM from Crucial

AGP Graphics: eTNT RIVA Nvidia 32MB SDR

Network: Netgear FA312TX network card

Sound: Soundblaster 128

SCSI: Adaptec 2940 UW2

(Drives)

System Hard Drive: 40GB Maxtor ATA100

Data Hard Drive: 80GB Maxtor ATA100

DVD/CDROM Drive: 16x/40x

Utility: LS-120

Utility: SCSI ZIP 100