2006-09-22 #1

Enter The Dragons

The search for the ideal OasysPCI host continues, after the reliability problems with the PowerBook-plus-Magma approach. The OasysPCI works fine in Mac towers (I'm running an OasysPCI in a Sawtooth G4, and have a blue-and-white G3 in the US for gigs there), but the towers are big and heavy.

Enter the ITOX Expanding Dragon, a 1U rackmount PC with full-length PCI slots, available until recently on eBay for $100 a pop. The boxes apparently work fine as OasysPCI hosts (under Windows 98SE, naturally); the only problem with them is that, being designed as servers, they have multiple noisy fans. Other folks on the OasysPCI list (notably Scott Harris) have made progress with alternative power supplies and utilities to control fan speed.

Meanwhile, my two Dragons (pictured) are sitting in a basement in Colorado, while I'm in London, trying to determine a cheap and reliable shipping option. Once they're here my plan is to configure them to dual-boot Windows and Linux, and use the latter for backing up and synchronising Windows partitions. Then I have to find a good 2U flightcase solution, prior to our (tentative) gigs in Lisbon and Prague…