Getting a small cluster running - PC-Chips 810

[Andrew Ip]

Jonathan,

> Background: I want to get the most CPU power out of a limited budget, 
> for use with a research project involving signal processing.  So far, 
> apart from buying a refurbished Mac, the best solution seems to be 
> building an OpenMOSIX cluster using Athlon-XPs.
> I plan to use a "master" computer with a slightly faster CPU than the 
> slaves, and fitted with a full-function m/board and peripherals.  The 
> master does not need to run LinuxBIOS, but it's existence means it 
> should be easy to build kernel variants to test, without risking loss 
> of machine functionality.
> To keep the cost of each slave as low as possible, I want to 
> eliminate all storage hardware from them, including floppy drive. 
> This means booting Linux over NFS, and/or installing part of it in 
> the BIOS chip.  Hence my interest in LinuxBIOS.  If I will need 
> significant extra hardware to reliably install LinuxBIOS, I might 
> just as well boot from floppy.
> So far, I've identified a PC-Chips 810 board from one of my suppliers:
> http://www.aria.co.uk/ProductInfoComm.asp?ID=2050
> which will be fitted with an Athlon-XP 2000+, some RAM, a case, a 
> PSU, and nothing else whatsoever.  Total slave cost in this 
> configuration is under £160 including VAT.
> Because this will be used in an academic Engineering department, 
> there will probably be a Flash and/or EEPROM programmer lying around 
> somewhere, that I can use rather than swapping BIOS chips.
> Can anyone provide guidance on my chances of success, and how easy 
> this is likely to be?
You can try our romimage for PC-Chips 810 + etherboot, then setup a dhcp
server and proper elf kernel image.  It should be enough to get you started.
FYI, PCCHIPS also has a newer 810 
http://www.pcchips.com.tw/product/M810DLUv52c.html which has ddr, but I 
don't think it is supported at the moment.  Ollie, do you have any info about
this board which is using 730D chipset.

-Andrew
-- 
Andrew Ip
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