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Years ago I bought a linux server from a company in Edmonton, and they seem to still be around. Their site is woefully out of date though.

http://www.harddata.com/

Hard Data Ltd. will build the IDENTICAL system and deliver to your door for $4,200
And they have been building Linux systems since 1993
http://www.harddata.com/

I had to laugh. The Monarch System defaults to Windows config on their page, and when I selected Fedora Core 4 it popped up some lame tech note claiming that FC4 would not support dual core CPUs.

Never mind the fact that there ARE no duals listed as options on this configuration, they are simply wrong!

Lame Alert!
Lunux builder wanna-bes!

Buy from a REAL Linux shop!

Hard Data, for example, is such a retailer -- in Edmonton, Alberta. Some of the guys there are active on the ELUG Linux mailing list, and certainly know what they're doing -- and encourage their customers to, as well.

Does anyone know of a product like this?

Yes, but you won't like the price generally, for the real plug and play units.

ACNC

Makes external boxes that you hook to a normal SCSI controller card, comes in the form of boxes that can take ATA drives, or SCSI drives. Also makes fibre channel boxes of a similar nature. Appears as one large SCSI drive to the host OS, compatible with basically any OS.

HardData

Same deal as ACNC basically, but is more of a VAR of AXUS products of this type. Penguin on homepage a plus.

Promise

Low end crappy standalone ATA-to-SCSI boxes, similar to the above ones, also makes very crappy contoller cards, only useful if you are using them for software RAID, don't use thier hardware RAID for anything. Promise cards are also picky about the BIOS on the motherboard they are installed on. Their standalone box prices are way overpriced for what you get. Their controller cards are cheap, but acceptable, for software RAID. More than one 6 channel controller per computer is not supported, more than three two channel cards is not supported. Linux kernel module is mature though.

3ware

3ware makes hardware ATA RAID controllers that are very fast, and relatively expensive. "Unlimited" number of controllers per computer, I've ran up to four 8-port cards in a single computer. Cabling is a mess when you get a lot of drives in a single system, if you need that many, seriously consider one of the above standalone boxes. Linux kernel module is open source and vendor maintained. Management software for Linux is free but closed source.

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Of course, Linux has software RAID built right in, and with a distro like Red Hat, you can set up software RAID when you install the OS in a simple GUI. You can use whatever disks you have installed, but for good results, you need to only have one disk per ATA channel, be it on your motherboard or a Promise card.

You mean the modified connector wasn't made in that fashion just to sell cables??? You mean the connector was customized to prevent clueless computer operators from plugging in the wrong cable?

In the case of the debug port, which is really just a serial port, it prevents the clueless and clueful alike from repairing the flashrom--unless they want to shell out for a proprietary cable, or spend an insane amount of money to have Compaq do it. Unfortunately, apparently no one at Compaq seems to know anything at all about the motherboard. Fortunately there are third parties that have a clue. BTW, someone from Harddata contacted me in response to a Usenet post and helped me determine the pin-outs for the port. No charge, and I wasn't even a customer. Gotta like that. Unfortunately my homebrew cable didn't do the trick (it was pretty ugly looking so I'm not suprised.) I also found rumors that some of the revisions of my mb have a defective debug monitor which could account for the problem. Thus the search for a cheap/free cable to do it with. It sucks watching those Alpha boards just sitting there and rotting.

Hold on. You didn't contribute anything productive to our Microsoft/Proprietary HW hatefest.

Hmm. I admit, I don't have anything productive to contribute today. -1.

numb

see this

HardData sells alpha boxes. They're not exactly cheap...but they're priced ~ the same as the PII boxes they sell. So it's Alpha Powered for an Intel(igent) price. ;)