Re: Inexpensive, good gigabit ethernet NIC?

From: Nathan (nathan_at_nospam.org)
Date: 09/28/05 

Date: Tue, 27 Sep 2005 18:21:06 -0500
To: Dan Stromberg <strombrg@dcs.nac.uci.edu>

1) no idea

2) I assume this is a single p655 node with a RIO drawer? I thought the
p655's only took Federation SP switch adapters, not SP2 (Colony), but I
could be wrong.

Installing cards can be a pain with the blind swap cassets (You will
need to find cassets also if your system is missing them). It works if
you have enough patience. Also, there are several different styles of
cards, the type that have screws are the most difficult to assemble, the
  "screw-less" are easier to work with. If you've never done it before
give yourself 2-3 hours to get the card in the bind swap adapter and
into the machine (That's no exageration). More if you aren't mechanicly
inclined.

Dan Stromberg wrote:
> We're looking for the following information about a (probably) 3rd party,
> gigabit ethernet NIC for a P655 running AIX 5.1 (5.2 is possible but
> unlikely, last I heard 5.3 was not possible in this case).
>
> 1) What vendors have good deals on GigE NIC for a P655 (price/performance
> would hopefully be low). We'd even consider a refurb, if they're
> available.
>
> 2) What precisely would be involved in installing that NIC? The machine
> has 5 NIC's right now, all from IBM. They are 2 * 100BaseT, 2 *
> 1000BaseT, and 1 * an SP2 interface. I understand the SP2 wiring is
> pretty sensitive to being giggled.
>
> Thanks!