[AG-TECH] Equipment list on community portal (was: How to post?)

[Darran Edmundson]

Thomas D. Uram wrote in response to Jeff Miller's query:

> The AG community does lack a current equipment list, mostly because 
> such a list is difficult to maintain when the hardware changes so 
> quickly. The Hardware Specification on accessgrid.org/agdp will tell 
> you what components are needed, though the specific hardware 
> references are out of date.  I have had some discussions recently 
> about having the community maintain a hardware list, but that will 
> take some time.  For now, you can get many of the answers you need by 
> looking through the mailing list archives, asking new questions where 
> necessary.  Also, I've had several discussions with the folks over at 
> the Institute for Theoretical Sciences at Notre Dame lately, while 
> they've been planning their node; they might be a good, local source 
> of information.
>
Well this seems like the perfect time to discuss an equipment listing 
for the portal
(www.agcentral.org).  As with the node listing, the approach would be to 
have
the equipment list maintained by individuals.  This list will be addable 
within
each of your node listings.  Questions then:

- it would be nice to understand which equipment is being used successfully
  on which platforms/OSs, how to gather this info?
- what are useful ways of aggregating/presenting this data

We need to stay away from open-ended forms.  Selection boxes work
best because the portal search engine can be guaranteed of finding
matches.  (Given a text field, humans will find all possible permutations of
writing the same info ;-)

So lets here your suggestions ...  I'll try and code it up this weekend.

Cheers,
Darran.