[ot] seeking usa vendor of two_year_old technology

[soralx at cydem.org]

> i --did-- find one vendor, "ncix",
> [...]

I'm not saying "stay away", but... Once upon a time, I had an urge to
get a working SATA controller before the weekend [cheap, nothing fancy,
no fake|not_fake RAID (if possible at all these days), just to make use
of freshly acquired WD5000YS]. So on Flyday evening, I buried myself
deep in Google, and dug out one site, ncix.com, which had a _huge_
inventory list along with passable prices. "Whoa!", I scratched my head.
Then it occured to me that this might be just like the computer junk
source "oemexpress.com" I so missed at the new location. So I start up
the engine and race to their local "store" minutes beforce the
troublesome 'closed' time. What was there to be seen? Anything, but the
huge stock I figured! Out of the ~20 SATA HBA's I saw on their web
site, they had only one, so I was forced to buy it. Later, whole
evening and night were wasted trying to make the damn thing work:
first, make FreeBSD recognize it (backport to 5.4-R some code from 6-R,
add pci-id, etc), and then figuring out what caused _*data corruption*_
-- driver, PCI bus, the card, or the new HDD? In the end, I restrained
my anger, calmly returned that garbage back to NCIX (without too much
hassle, to their credit, -- must be a very common procedure to them, I
suppose; BTW, at the same time someone was also returning faulty memory
stix), went riding around the city and found a friendly small store who
don't sell cheap junk, have better prices and _much_ better stock, and
got a card that Just Works.

A week later, I had to deal with some 'high-end' (performance-wise)
workstation that had a cooked power supply. The case showed off a fancy
'NCIX' badge on it, and it was one of the worst cases (both computer
cases, and cases of brainless design) I've ever seen (no exxageration
here, folks): thin walls, sharp edges, and riveted covers (except one,
of course). To replace a PSU, you've got to take the mainboard and
everything else out. Very creative design, I tell you.
I don't blame 'em for using a poor-quality PSU (almost everyone does),
but I'm usure how intelligent it is using using such a crap case on a
performance workstation. Maybe the bright color LEDs on fans (WTF???)
made it all look in rose-colored light.

> rob

[SorAlx]  ridin' VN1500-B2