# Two new PC's for me!



## Ashful (Jan 13, 2014)

Expecting delivery on some new computing power this week.  Two Dell T7610's, each populated with two eight-core XEON E5 processors at 3.1 GHz (8.0 GT/s), 32 GB RAM, and NVIDIA Tesla K20C 5GB GPU units (just for crunching data, the graphics card is actually just Nvidia Quadro K2000 2GB).  Picked up another four 24" Dell U2412M monitors and two APC 2200VA UPS's to go with 'em.

The downside is, this should pick up my work pace quite a bit, as I sit here most of the day waiting on my current computer (single T7500 with two quad-core XEON processors at 2.8 GHz / 24 GB RAM) to crunch numbers.  Less time for reading at hearth.com!  

Any other interesting computers at work here?


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## PapaDave (Jan 13, 2014)

I need that setup so I can surf the web and play Solitaire gooder.
WTH do you do Joful?
I haven't kept up with the latest and greatest for several years, and always got a generation or 2 behind that.
Serious firepower.


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## bubbasdad (Jan 13, 2014)

Joful said:


> Expecting delivery on some new computing power this week.  Two Dell T7610's, each populated with two eight-core XEON E5 processors at 3.1 GHz (8.0 GT/s), 32 GB RAM, and NVIDIA Tesla K20C 5GB GPU units (just for crunching data, the graphics card is actually just Nvidia Quadro K2000 2GB).  Picked up another four 24" Dell U2412M monitors and two APC 2200VA UPS's to go with 'em.
> 
> The downside is, this should pick up my work pace quite a bit, as I sit here most of the day waiting on my current computer (single T7500 with two quad-core XEON processors at 2.8 GHz / 24 GB RAM) to crunch numbers.  Less time for reading at hearth.com!


 
Just curious, what do you do that requires that much gear?


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## jharkin (Jan 13, 2014)

Reminds me that I need to bug IT about replacing my laptop... They are glacially slow about doing that until it breaks...


Nice hardware there.. Been ages since I had lots to play with at work, we are going cloud and virtualizing everything into a couple large regional data centers.  Heck even my home box I haven't updated in years.. Still just a basic quad core i7 w 8gb. Other than adding some SSD goodness I haven't changed much.used to be a habitual 18 month upgrader...


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## webbie (Jan 13, 2014)

Yeah, you must be doing some serious rendering! My 2009 Mac Pro mid-line model is by far the most powerful in this house......


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## BrotherBart (Jan 13, 2014)

I just for the first time in twenty years quit using five years or older machines and sprung for dual core hyper-threaded machines with a boat load of RAM for me and the brown haired girl. No touch screen junk but I am starting to believe that I am the only person in the country that actually likes Winders 8.1. After I beat it into submission.


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## PapaDave (Jan 13, 2014)

Got a new lappy a few months ago with windows 8. Did some stuff to make it gooder, then backed it up and put 7 on it.
I may put 8 back on and update to 8.1 just to check it out. I like the desktop though...not the tiles, since it's not a touch device.
Joful must be on pins and needles with a package like that coming.


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## bag of hammers (Jan 13, 2014)

BrotherBart said:


> I just for the first time in twenty years quit using five years or older machines and sprung for dual core hyper-threaded machines with a boat load of RAM for me and the brown haired girl. No touch screen junk but I am starting to believe that I am the only person in the country that actually likes Winders 8.1. After I beat it into submission.


 
Should have stopped by your place on my way to return my recent Win8 laptop.  About 2000 miles and 1 border crossing with expired passport but probably still worth it to witness the proper beating it deserves.


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## BrotherBart (Jan 13, 2014)

I can easily see where for most people Winny 8 would be infuriating. All the stuff is there, and good stuff that never was before, but they have done a great job of hiding it all. The search function finds it though.

And not including a migration tool for moving stuff from XP and a comparable desktop was just absolutely stupid. Killing off their own OS and not giving a tool to move off of it is inexcusable. I fully intended when I bought the boxes to move everything to Linux. But reconsidered after using it for a few days.


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## begreen (Jan 13, 2014)

I've been using 8 and 8.1 for a while now. Still prefer 7, but I can deal with 8 fine though Win 8/8.1 make much more sense on a tablet than on the desktop. They need to stop trying to make one shoe fit all IMO, but that ain't happening. Today they announced the advent of Win9. Loverly.


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## Ashful (Jan 13, 2014)

Not rendering!    Those big GPU cards are for pure number crunching, not graphics.  I run large electromagnetic / microwave simulations, and occasionally thermal simulations on high power microwave circuits.  I design equipment for high power RF and microwave test applications, such as ensuring our missiles and fighter jets don't fall out of the sky when flying past high power radar installations or are bombarded with high electromagnetic fields such as electromagnetic pulse weaponry.

These PC's will really help me work a lot faster, as I can run smaller problems on the CPU's, and larger problems on the GPU cards.  My current computer is very fast, but in some benchmark testing I did on these machines, I found my simulation time will be 2x faster on smaller problems and 80x faster on larger problems.  Solutions that currently take me 100+ hours on my eight XEON microprocessor cores might now finish inside an afternoon on two GPU's.

_edit:  Oh... and I did ask about installing win.8.  Unfortunately, the software I'm using is still optimized for performance on win.7 x64._


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## Jags (Jan 14, 2014)

BrotherBart said:


> ...but I am starting to believe that I am the only person in the country that actually likes Winders 8.1.



So YOU are the one.  I will pass this along to the IT community.

Windoz 9 coming around the corner in 2014.  8 has been Vista X 2 for computer sales.

(Joful, I look over my monitors at a new IBM Power7+ with lots of junk in the trunk.)


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## Ashful (Jan 14, 2014)

Jags said:


> (Joful, I look over my monitors at a new IBM Power7+ with lots of junk in the trunk.)


Nice!  Would be fun to run some benchmark tests between these two!  My four Xeon E5-2687W's + two K20C's against your Power7+!


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## Jags (Jan 14, 2014)

IBM rates them different.  It is based off of throughput.  If you want to geek out:
http://www.spscicomp.org/ScicomP16/presentations/Power7_Performance_Overview.pdf


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## Ashful (Jan 14, 2014)

Thoroughly geeked.  I actually have a BS in computer engineering.  Never used it much, though... quickly realized I'd rather be doing real electrical engineering than playing with bits.

What's the application for those machines?  Seems to be more database operation and banking than scientific computing or design.


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## Jags (Jan 14, 2014)

Joful said:


> What's the application for those machines? Seems to be more database operation


Zactly - running a business (13 locations).
And data crunching.


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## firefighterjake (Jan 14, 2014)

And here I am at work still using Windows XP . . . well XP Professional. 

Windows 7 at home though.

My biggest gripe as a very occasional computer buyer is with the change in operating systems . . . and not being able to play some of my old computer games on them.


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## Ashful (Jan 14, 2014)

Hah... I'm still using an old copy of Adobe Photoshop 5 on my home PC (with winXP-32).  That particular piece of software is probably older than some of our forum members.

I play high-tech at work, so my home is kept decidedly low-tech.


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## jharkin (Jan 14, 2014)

Pretty sure I have Photoshop 4.0 on CD somewhere... probably got it illegitimately in college


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## Jags (Jan 14, 2014)

Joful said:


> I play high-tech at work, so my home is kept decidedly low-tech.



Agreed.  I am the same way.


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## bag of hammers (Jan 14, 2014)

Wow - old school IT guy here - thoroughly outclassed in the home office dept.  But I don't have the need...



BrotherBart said:


> I can easily see where for most people Winny 8 would be infuriating. All the stuff is there, and good stuff that never was before, but they have done a great job of hiding it all. The search function finds it though.
> 
> And not including a migration tool for moving stuff from XP and a comparable desktop was just absolutely stupid. Killing off their own OS and not giving a tool to move off of it is inexcusable. I fully intended when I bought the boxes to move everything to Linux. But reconsidered after using it for a few days.



+1   My frustration is similar to what you describe.  I've followed every incantation and incarnation of MS operating system (and variants) since the DOS days.  This one was easily the worst experience of all (and some were pretty bad).  Hours loading / installing all the necessary updates (@ 100) from the out of the box state (ok not necessarily a win8 issue but a PITA),  then creating / customizing an account (for my son), many other tweaks, etc. Only to be followed by a blue screen with absolutely no (clear) information other than "we found a problem" ,"we're diagnosing" etc..  Yep - without success.  No (apparent) way to get to a boot menu, get to safe mode, break out of the thing.  Arrrgggg.  Christmas evening.  Complete restore (good thing I built the system restore USB), then start over.   Then hours spent digging for the necessary "fixes", etc.  More time on Google and support sites than on the actual apps on the laptop.  Finally somewhat closer to sanity, a half of boxing day with this (as bgreen eluded to) "tablet pretending to be a laptop".  Sure it was pretty easy to figure out how to use it, but as I did, I truly hated the way it behaved.  Charm bar? 

Not a slam against anyone who meshes with it or likes it, just a matter of principle for me.  I didn't pay $$$ for a 2 day project.  This was a horrible experience.  I avoided it last year 'cause I figured my son wouldn't adapt to it too well (and he's the king of gadgets) - I was right - it kinda frustrated the hell out of him too.  It was a decent piece of hardware, nice touch screen, great sale price.  And not much available without win8 installed.  I took the leap this year.  I don't mind change - I try to embrace it - but I could not get myself to like this at all.   I refused to invest any more time or frustration into it.  I bought the parts to rebuild his previous laptop, refurbished to like new state, and he is happier with that (Win 7 home premium - hardly an issue in 2 years).   I may give Win9 a look see but I dunno.  I'd like to send MS a bill for my time @ $250 / hour.


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## Ashful (Jan 20, 2014)

The new hardware has arrived!


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## jharkin (Jan 20, 2014)

Holy UPSs Batman 

Now you need to tell the boss you need a bigger office to hold all that gear


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## Ashful (Jan 20, 2014)

jharkin said:


> Holy UPSs Batman
> 
> Now you need to tell the boss you need a bigger office to hold all that gear


heh... I forgot to show the rig on the other side of the desk, another T7500 with another two LCD's.  That'll go probably away once I get this hardware up and running, tho...

I did not choose (and would not have chosen) those UPS's.  That was our IT guys.  Each requires a dedicated 20A circuit, so now the facility guys are pissed they have to run two more circuits to my desk.


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## Jags (Jan 20, 2014)

Hehehe
Pinky: so what are you gonna do tonight, brain.
The Brain:  The same thing I do every night....try and take over the worrrld.


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## BrotherBart (Jan 20, 2014)

Have fun with the stuff. Place is gonna look like my basement data center did soon. Had four HP Xeons hulking in the server cabinets and two com racks running with a T1 into the place.

Just completed the retirement downsizing today. Two new laptops and a tiny little router. And the basement is cold and dark.


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## Ashful (Jan 20, 2014)

Jags said:


> Hehehe
> Pinky: so what are you gonna do tonight, brain.
> The Brain:  The same thing I do every night....try and take over the worrrld.


Coming from the guy who's middle name might be, "more horsepower."

"Moderate" my arse.


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## Ashful (Jan 21, 2014)

Okay... question, guys.  I have my own 8G managed switch between my three PC's now, with a single 1G uplink to the rest of our network.  The more thruput I can get between these two machines of mine, the faster my work can run, as I'm splitting calculations between these two machines, and reassembling the data on the tale end.  I see each of these T7600 has two Ethernet ports, and ipconfig reveals two 1G NICs in each machine with two separate MAC addresses.  I know that 2G trunks between switches rely on using two 1G cat5e links... so is that what I have here?  I can find no good literature explaining why the T7600's have two NIC's, and if they have 2G capability.  I'm not really strong on keeping up with the latest networking stuff, as I was many years ago.


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## Swedishchef (Jan 21, 2014)

Joful said:


> Okay... question, guys.  I have my own 8G managed switch between my three PC's now, with a single 1G uplink to the rest of our network.  The more thruput I can get between these two machines of mine, the faster my work can run, as I'm splitting calculations between these two machines, and reassembling the data on the tale end.  I see each of these T7600 has two Ethernet ports, and ipconfig reveals two 1G NICs in each machine with two separate MAC addresses.  I know that 2G trunks between switches rely on using two 1G cat5e links... so is that what I have here?  I can find no good literature explaining why the T7600's have two NIC's, and if they have 2G capability.  I'm not really strong on keeping up with the latest networking stuff, as I was many years ago.


 
From the bit of IT experience I have, my feeling is that you have two 1G cat5 links.

Those are sweet number crunchers. I build my own PCs for fun but nothing that powerful.

One of the most interesting things I have ever seen was 13 years ago: SGI (silicon graphics inc) had a 53 foot semi trailer travel unit. It was a beast od a demo trailer.....they had a 128 processor super computer for number crunching and graphics rendering. At the time, supposedly, Pixar were using their machines (they used to sell desktop models, my supervisor in University bought a couple for molecular 3d rendering ). No bus on their computers, straight connections between hardware therefore no bottlenecking on a bus for transfer speeds. Quite impressive.


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## jharkin (Jan 21, 2014)

Oh I remember those SGIs well.  We had desktops at work for CAD workstations, for a few years in the late 90s my primary machine at work was an SGI Octane.  Interesting machines, but their own flavor of unix (IRIX) was a little quirky and we ended up having to remember slightly different commands if you where on and SGI, or a Sun Sparc, or and IBM or a DEC.

In fact I below the motherboard on that SGI once and it took IT a couple months to get a replacement.  Those things used to cost the company more than my car was worth.


Anyway back to Jofuls question, as far as I know you are right Sweedish, if both NICs are enabled in windows it should be able to run them in duplex for a 2Gbps connection.  Its been a long time since I messed with this stuff either.. once right out of college a bunch of us had this idea to build a distributed supercomputer bewoulf cluster using cheap PCs in our apartment and sell time on it.  We had looked at piggybacking network cards for more bandwidth between the machines, but back then a 100mbps card was spendy (thinking 98 or '99 here, some of hese machines where still on coax ethernet). Idea never got off the ground.... too bad maybe we would have been a "cloud" pioneer if we had pursued it.


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## bag of hammers (Jan 21, 2014)

Joful said:


> Okay... question, guys.  I have my own 8G managed switch between my three PC's now, with a single 1G uplink to the rest of our network.  The more thruput I can get between these two machines of mine, the faster my work can run, as I'm splitting calculations between these two machines, and reassembling the data on the tale end.  I see each of these T7600 has two Ethernet ports, and ipconfig reveals two 1G NICs in each machine with two separate MAC addresses.  I know that 2G trunks between switches rely on using two 1G cat5e links... so is that what I have here?  I can find no good literature explaining why the T7600's have two NIC's, and if they have 2G capability.  I'm not really strong on keeping up with the latest networking stuff, as I was many years ago.


Sounds like you may have an opportunity to team those NICs for link aggregation off your switch (get your 2G) or use them for redundancy (failover).   You have some smoking' hardware, please don't start cracking p-words ....


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## Ashful (Jan 21, 2014)

bag of hammers said:


> Sounds like you may have an opportunity to team those NICs for link aggregation off your switch (get your 2G) or use them for redundancy (failover).   You have some smoking' hardware, please don't start cracking p-words ....


hah... never thought of that.  

These things are just for hardcore solving of complete 3D field distributions.  Some of these simulations, which would take 110 - 120 hours on my old PC with two quad-core Nehalem Xeon's at 2.6 GHz will solve in 14 hours on these new CPU's, or 1.5 hours on the new GPU's!  It's really a quantum-leap in performance.  Good thing, too... I was just asked to quote time and cost on the largest structure I've ever tackled in my life.

... or as one of our IT guys put it to me yesterday, "man, this rig can surf porn really fast!"


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## Swedishchef (Jan 21, 2014)

Joful said:


> "man, this rig can surf porn really fast!"


 
LOLOL
aHHHHH...the basic computer functions. Who cares about pioneer research: just make sure it loads videos and pictures quickly.


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## Treacherous (Jan 21, 2014)

I thought you were doing some Bitcoin mining when I first saw those machines 

You need to get some 10GB ethernet or 16GB Fibre Channel in the mix

 I think some of the 40GB ethernet stuff is just now coming on the market.


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## Treacherous (Jan 21, 2014)

[quote="jharkin, post: 1642473, member: 11939"

Anyway back to Jofuls question, as far as I know you are right Sweedish, if both NICs are enabled in windows it should be able to run them in duplex for a 2Gbps connection.  Its been a long time since I messed with this stuff either.. once right out of college a bunch of us had this idea to build a distribute.[/quote]

NIC needs to support teaming.


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## Treacherous (Jan 21, 2014)

Other than some monster SGI server I can't remember the model name of in mid '90s...this is the only SGI workstation I ever played with.  I was far stronger in Solaris than Irix.  I think Solaris was easier though.


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## Ashful (Jan 21, 2014)

Treacherous said:


> I think some of the 40GB ethernet stuff is just now coming on the market.


I was actually designing 40 Gb/s transmitters and receivers back in 2004!  That was for back bone / long haul stuff, though... figured it might be making into the SAN market by now, but had no idea anyone was setting up business servers or workstations on those links!  Fast stuff.

Actually, the network traffic I'll generate is probably not that extreme.  A 2G link will surely do me well.  My real bottleneck is processing, hence the 32 Xeon cores and two K20's!


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## Swedishchef (Jan 21, 2014)

Treacherous said:


> Other than some monster SGI server I can't remember the model name of in mid '90s...this is the only SGI workstation I ever played with.  I was far stronger in Solaris than Irix.  I think Solaris was easier though.


 those are the basic desktops they sold. I used to call them r2d2......nice little machines, we had 6 of them.


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## Swedishchef (Jan 21, 2014)

Joful said:


> I was actually designing 40 Gb/s transmitters and receivers back in 2004!  That was for back bone / long haul stuff, though... figured it might be making into the SAN market by now, but had no idea anyone was setting up business servers or workstations on those links!  Fast stuff.
> 
> Actually, the network traffic I'll generate is probably not that extreme.  A 2G link will surely do me well.  My real bottleneck is processing, hence the 32 Xeon cores and two K20's!


I wish I had your new computers for making CDs and DVDs....lol.


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## Jags (Jan 22, 2014)

Joful - you should be able to duplex the two nic outputs.  The real trick is gonna be designating the traffic on each one so that on the back end you can re-assemble the data into something that makes sense. A typical config for dual nics is when serving data.  Such as...you would connect one to a dedicated internet drop, then use the other to hit network traffic.  I am not real sure how it would/will work trying to parallel output data, unless you could actually dedicated a specific "traffic" to each side of the card.  It would almost make sense to think of the thing as a router.


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## firefighterjake (Jan 22, 2014)

Hehheh . . . when I read you computer technies going back and forth I feel like my cats when I am talking to them.

Words words words words Jackson words words words words good boy words words words dinner time words words words words.


Words words words words computer words words words words fast words words words expensive words words words words.


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## Jags (Jan 22, 2014)

So far it has been pretty benign.  Wait till we start talking about the IPv6 protocol with its 128 bit address space that can support 3.4W1038 unique ip addresses.


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## jharkin (Jan 22, 2014)

Does anything actaully use IPv6 yet?  I still turn it off in the windows network stack on new installs.....


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## Jags (Jan 22, 2014)

Not so much (yet).  Sometime in the future we will be forced to.  Gonna run out of IPs using the current architecture.  And this really only affects the "public" side of the IP world.  Internal networks aren't really affected (not big enough to run out of addys).


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## firefighterjake (Jan 22, 2014)

Jags said:


> So far it has been pretty benign.  Wait till we start talking about the IPv6 protocol with its 128 bit address space that can support 3.4W1038 unique ip addresses.


 

Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?


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## Jags (Jan 22, 2014)

Thanks for the giggle, Jake.  Needed that.


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## jharkin (Jan 22, 2014)

Jags said:


> Not so much (yet).  Sometime in the future we will be forced to.  Gonna run out of IPs using the current architecture.  And this really only affects the "public" side of the IP world.  Internal networks aren't really affected (not big enough to run out of addys).



Yeah, i know its coming just havent seen much. We only had change requests to start building in support to our server software at work last year, have not heard of customers using it much yet.

I'll miss IPv4. Its easy to just memorize the address of my DNS, netmask and gateway and type it in when setting up new machines on the network. How the heck am I going to remember these 28 digit hex adresses??


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## BrotherBart (Jan 22, 2014)

firefighterjake said:


> Words words words words Jackson words words words words good boy words words words dinner time words words words words.



Don't kid me Jake. All paid and volunteer firefighters are computer experts. At least they were when I was implementing a dispatch and records management system. They all knew better ways for me to do it.


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## firefighterjake (Jan 22, 2014)

BrotherBart said:


> Don't kid me Jake. All paid and volunteer firefighters are computer experts. At least they were when I was implementing a dispatch and records management system. They all knew better ways for me to do it.


 

Not this guy . . . but I have a friend who is a firefighter who I think is just as capable if not more so of doing the IT's guys' job.


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## Ashful (Jan 22, 2014)

Well, after more digging, there's a driver from Intel, which puts these NIC chip's into the right configuration for 2G.  Then my router has to be reconfigured for 2G trunk on the ports for these two machines.  Not the most straightforward thing, but doable.

Since the software I'm using is node-locked by MAC address, now I just have to figure out how the licensing will be handled with four NIC's between two machines.


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