We're still wrangling with the Union over our membership grant, but with some
luck it should come through RSN. Assuming everything works out we will
have about $3500, maybe $4000 (remember, this is our equipment budget saved up
over the past 4+ years!).
I've spoken the Union and it should be OK for them to purchase equipment
on our behalf tax exempt. It's still not 100% definite, but should be the
case.
Please bear in mind that we won't know exactly how much money we have to
spend for another 2-3 weeks, and that any prices given below are from my
dubious memory and consequently *very* approximate.
The figures aren't so important ... what I really hope to get out of this is
some kind of idea of what you lot's priorities are.
At the moment our options are:
+ Install two modem lines plus 6 months rental, cost $504. Rental is
$204 a year per line, so I think eventually we'll have to start
charging an access fee (not much, like $10-$20) ... perhaps next year when
we've got a better idea of how they are being used.
+ Buy two modems. Around $600. We should be able to borrow two
slower speed modems in the interim.
+ We could by a high end 486 and run Linux on it. We realistically need to
spend about $3000 to get a decent multi-user system. Ftoomsh can
handle a fair load, but is slooow for interactive use (especially
at the moment because it's bust).
+ Alternatively we could buy some SCSI discs and put them on ftoomsh.
Reputable SCSI discs are about $1200 per Gig ex tax (very roughly).
+ Wait until something cheap, bigger, better faster comes along.
Comments? Either mail me (chrisf@nospam.sw.oz.au) or post the group.
Cheers,
Christopher.