Development Workstation Advice

Thomas_F_Divine · January 28, 2001, 10:04pm

I need suggestions for a cost-effective dual-processor “standard”
development station.

I currently have two dual-processor workstations - the newest about a
year-and-a-half old. These machines are just SuperMicro P6DBE motherboards
boxed up and have served well until recently.

But I am getting bitten lately with hardware/BIOS incompatibilities.

Millennium (yep, I use a removable boot drive and use the same workstation
for Me…) and Whistler both seem to just searching for weak points.

I know I can “go to the HCL” and “pick one”. However, I’d certainly like
pointers to machines to avoid and any real love stories would be equally
appreciated.

What does MS development team use most heavily?

Regards,

Thomas F. Divine

PCAUSA - Toolkits & Resources For Network Software Developers
NDIS Protocol - NDIS Intermediate - TDI Client
http: - http:

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Paul_Bunn · January 28, 2001, 10:44pm

I’ve had great success with the Dell series. I’ve had one of the “Precision 610”
series with two PII Xeon 450s. This is a fabulous high end (Intel wise)
workstation, everything is gorgeously designed; the power supply swivels out of
the way with a push of a button, the disk subassembly removes without any screws
equally easily – *everything* seems to be easily accessible. I also have a Dell
Optiplex GX300 with 2x PIII-733 which is much better value than the Precision
Workstation series. The Optiplex design isn’t quite as high-end as the
Precisions, and you do lose the built-in Ultra160 SCSI controller and disks and
64bit/66Mhz PCI slots, but you save big $$$ and the performance difference is
marginal (the Xeon processors are a rip-off price-wise). I’ve been exceptionally
happy with the GX300, and I typically specify it when ordering new dev systems
now. I would prefer that the systems could use 133Mhz RAM instead of overpriced
RDRAM (which offers little performance advantage in real-world development use) –
with NT especially it is better to have twice as much memory, than faster more
expensive memory.
Both machines have had *excellent* compatibility (when kept up-to-date with the
latest BIOS release) with NT4 and Win2K.
MS Developers typically have Compaq or Dell machines, but a lot of times a
developer (esp one with standing) at MS can put in an order for exactly what they
want from any manufacturer and as long as their manager approves it, it’s done.
Also, both Compaq and Dell (and others) have full-time employees on-campus and
they provide a *lot* of hardware to MS for evaluation and developer assistance
(what better way to ensure that Whistler works great with *your* hardware?!).