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Junk Super Computer Assimilates All
VonGuard writes "The ACCRC is the relatively famous computer recycling non-profit in Berkeley that builds clusters out of old hardware. Make Blog has an article about the Center's plans to build a cluster out of the equipment people bring to recycle at Make Faire later this month. The ACCRC geeks are now able to integrate PII's or better into the cluster, which will be powered by Vegetable Oil and run Parallel Knoppix."
State-of-the-art computers are probably about 15 times as fast as Pentium II-based computers, and consume maybe twice as much electricity.
Or take Pentium M-based computers, they consume less electricity than Pentium II-based computers and are probably about 10 times as fast.
Just my 2 cents.
Dedicated Linux servers (root access) $45 p.M.
The biggest problem you can run into with older machines is the lack of support for things that make building a cluster easy. The two biggest things I ran into were:
-Wake On LAN support is huge, so that rules out the old machines with the clicky power switch.
-Trying to do anything with less than 32 megs of RAM is a PITA.
On top of that older machines don't always have a NIC, so you're stuck scrounging for parts. Plus who knows what kind of cryptic Acer-Packard Bell-eMachines crap hardware you're going to get via donations (so building a boot image can be a pain), so you're opening youself up to tracking down odd bits of unsupported yet essential hardware drivers (PCI Controllers stand out.)
Clustering gets way easier when you can stick to at least the same general system brand (e.g. Dell) or even better, identical systems.
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.