Lots of cool stuff - Show your old servers

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Andreas

Member
Aug 21, 2012
127
1
18
Memories, memories.

Looks like this community is full of seasoned IT-cracks. So you might find an old picture of a server you have a "special" relationship with. Show a pic or two and if you want to tell the story why you think this machine deserves a story. Feel free to enter multiple posts, but it might be easier to dedicate one post per machine.

I start.

Compaq ProLiant 6000 - The database workhorse

Seen from a PC perspective, this server was horrendously expensive, loud, had ample storage capacity, was rock solid, had legendary Compaq support. This machine was a dream to work with. Appeared in those days, where customers were torn between Token Ring and Ethernet networks, this server had 3 SCSI channels for the 18 HDDs, 4x 450 MHz CPUs and up to 4 GB main memory.

I did the initial business request for this particular server to the management in those days to embark on a new service offering line and eventually this machine was approved. Time moved on, the machine served its duty for many years in some other parts of the company and last year I saw it again, prepared for the scrapyard.

The final destination had to change and 15 years later, it ended up in my collection of last millenium Compaq servers. Out of 21 servers Compaq introduced until the year 2000, 15 found a place in my house. All of them are fully functional with the respective software of their time. A Proliant 8000 (remember the first 8-way server with the Profusion chip set?) was a real barn find on the countryside.

Last supported Windows Server version by HP was WS 2003. A fresh install last year triggered 120 automatic updates :)


18x 18.2 GB SCSI drives with 10.000 rpm. If everything went well, 100MB/sec was the maximum bandwidth.


For those who don't know:
bitsavers.org is an excellent place to see the brochures and manuals from the early days of computing. Be it the Eniac computer, or Lisp machines, the BBN Butterfly supercomputer or the famous Cray-1, or the funny ashtray option in the operator console of the super expensive SAGE system, there is enough reading material for even a long rainy weekend.


Had been funny days,
Andy
 
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Patrick

Administrator
Staff member
Dec 21, 2010
12,513
5,804
113
Wow... I need to find pictures of my old SGI O2 (with LVDS flat panel monitor and color calibration) and Sun UltraSPARC machines!
 

dba

Moderator
Feb 20, 2012
1,477
184
63
San Francisco Bay Area, California, USA
My "oversized server at home" story goes like this:

In the very early 1990s, Kodak wanted to create a division that sold high-end pre-press equipment to compete with Scitex, etc. Their first offering was a $300,000 retouching station based on a massive Sun server with custom image processing hardware and a highly calibrated monitor. They sent my employer two of them to test.

The product was a miserable flop and Kodak abandoned their effort - and the two Sun workstations. The CEO didn't want them around, so I helped out by giving them a new home - my home. So I had two servers, each still worth a huge amount of money, running in a rented house in San Jose. eBay didn't exist back then and I was not smart enough to try to sell the servers - I'm not even sure I knew that they were worth money - so some friends and I used them the worlds most expensive file server and Internet terminal respectively - remember Gopher, TIA, and The Well?

Were they Sun 4/390s? I wish I had a photo!
 
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