Went plundering through junk storage and guess what I found....

Notice: Page may contain affiliate links for which we may earn a small commission through services like Amazon Affiliates or Skimlinks.

Fritz

Well-Known Member
Apr 6, 2015
3,370
1,375
113
69
A complete intact HP NetServer LC-3.

So I dung it out, plugged it in and fired it up. To my surprise it came to life and Windows 2000 Advanced Server loaded from SCSI. Got to the login screen and there was a password. :mad: Had to hack in. :p So now I'm in but I don't have, can't find a PS2 mouse and for some reason a USB to PS2 adapter doesn't work. I know I have some PS2 mices around here, just don't know where at the moment.

So now It has occurred to me, why am I wasting time on this dinosaur? Of what possible use can it be? It's got a couple of Pentium III 500mhz processors, not sure how much memory. Keyboarding around at bit it became apparent that's it's painfully slow. A Raspberry Pi would run circles around this behemoth. So at this point I plan to throw it it the back of the truck along with a Supermicro SC933 that's already back there and donate them both to the local dump.

Unless somebody can suggest an alternative that makes sense. :p
 
  • Like
Reactions: Rock

Markess

Well-Known Member
May 19, 2018
1,146
761
113
Northern California
The HP NetServer.....no.

But I do have an SC933 that I still use. I got it locally a couple years back for $25. I replaced the PDB and bottom PSU with a single fixed PWS-605P-1H platinum PSU (which is almost exactly the right width for the hole). That PSU has threaded screw holes in side for mounting, so it was easy to secure it to the side of the chassis PSU cage. I left the remaining two original hot swap PSUs in place just to "keep the hole plugged". With the right fans/fan curve for the chassis fans, its very quiet.

Mine has a non-expander backplane, so wasn't limited to SAS-1. Runs fine at SAS-2 speeds.

Until recently, it had an X10SRH-CF that has since been transplanted into a newer chassis. My teenage son and I are going to build out the 933 for him to use in his Computer Science elective for school, using (mostly) recently "retired" parts from my home lab. An Asus Z9PR-D12 and a pair of E5-2651v2s won't be fast, but he'll have 48 threads to work with when spinning up VMs and what not.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Fritz

Fritz

Well-Known Member
Apr 6, 2015
3,370
1,375
113
69
The HP NetServer.....no.

But I do have an SC933 that I still use. I got it locally a couple years back for $25. I replaced the PDB and bottom PSU with a single fixed PWS-605P-1H platinum PSU (which is almost exactly the right width for the hole). That PSU has threaded screw holes in side for mounting, so it was easy to secure it to the side of the chassis PSU cage. I left the remaining two original hot swap PSUs in place just to "keep the hole plugged". With the right fans/fan curve for the chassis fans, its very quiet.

Mine has a non-expander backplane, so wasn't limited to SAS-1. Runs fine at SAS-2 speeds.

Until recently, it had an X10SRH-CF that has since been transplanted into a newer chassis. My teenage son and I are going to build out the 933 for him to use in his Computer Science elective for school, using (mostly) recently "retired" parts from my home lab. An Asus Z9PR-D12 and a pair of E5-2651v2s won't be fast, but he'll have 48 threads to work with when spinning up VMs and what not.
The MB in the 933 decided to take a dirt nap a good while ago and it's been collecting dust ever since. As I recall, it was quite noisy. I don't know what MB options I had so I just decided to junk it. Did you have to make an mods to get the X10SRH-CF to work? I hbave a couple of them. One is in a Fractal Design box and the other is in a 825TQ box running FreeNAS with 8 6TB spinners.
 

Wasmachineman_NL

Wittgenstein the Supercomputer FTW!
Aug 7, 2019
1,871
617
113
Wipe the drives and e-waste it.

Or part it out, there are enough nutcases out there that want old big iron hardware like this.
 

Markess

Well-Known Member
May 19, 2018
1,146
761
113
Northern California
As I recall, it was quite noisy. I don't know what MB options I had so I just decided to junk it. Did you have to make an mods to get the X10SRH-CF to work? I
No mods to the motherboard, but the case required a bit to make it more "acceptable" for being in my home office.

1. Power Supply: As mentioned above, I ditched the ancient triple redundant PSUs in favor of a single fixed one. The originals were old, noisy, and inefficient. Sadly, they were also the wrong size and slot configuration to simply replace them with something better. No way you can simply slide in a 920SQ or anything like that. But the PWS-605P-1H, which I found on Ebay for around $30, fit pretty well, is quiet, and the cables were long enough for reaching the X10. I did have to put in a molex to molex splitter for the backplane power because the PSU didn't have enough molex connectors. As noted above, I left two of the old PSUs in place and not connected to anything just to "fill the hole in the case".

2. Backplane: My backplane is a "T" model, so it has individual SATA connectors. Seven SATA cables for the motherboard's onboard SATA plus two SFF-8643 to SATA breakout cables for the onboard LSI SAS 3008 took care of that. The chassis front panel connector ribbon cable is long enough....but just barely.

3. Fans:

a. Chassis fans were SUPER LOUD with the X10 even when set to "Optimal" (30% Duty Cycle) in IPMI. The chassis was originally produced to take dual CPU motherboards at a time when 130+watt CPUs were pretty common. My case came with an old Supermicro H8 board and a pair of 137W Opterons and passive heatsinks. The included fans were designed to keep something like that cool, so they move a TON of air.

b. My X10 had a single, much lower wattage, CPU with an active cooler, plus a 40mm fan on the LSI 3008's heatsink (I think you and I both posted about cooling the onboard 3008 on another thread?). So I figured I could run those fans a LOT slower. I set up a boot script to take the midplane fan duty cycle down to 12% using IPMI tool and removed the 80mm rear fans completely. That kept everything fairly cool and quiet Admittedly I wasn't running with all 15 drive bays full, and I was using SATA SSDs and 5400RPM drives, so not a lot of heat there. Admittedly, I'd have had to run the fans up a lot more with 15 bays full of SAS3 SSDs or something like that.

c. When one of the mid-pane fans started to lose a bearing, I replaced them all with something different. On a whim, I got Arctic Thermal Control fans. They are 3 pin fans controlled with a temperature probe, which I stuck in the airflow coming from the drive bays. That's worked well too, and if anything is even more quiet. Although, they don't move enough air for really high wattage situations or passive cpu cooling, and I doubt those fans will have the reliability of the SanAce ones.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: Fritz

Fritz

Well-Known Member
Apr 6, 2015
3,370
1,375
113
69
Wow, that's grabbing the bull by the horns. I think the reason I decided not to pursue the use of this case was the noise and chassis power consumption. It was a long time ago but I think I replaced it with a 846.

Yea, the fan on the 3008 made a tremendous difference and isn't audible at all. I put one on both of my boards.
 

Markess

Well-Known Member
May 19, 2018
1,146
761
113
Northern California
Since I'm purely a hobbyist when it comes to this stuff, any effort or work I had to do on this is technically "fun" right?

I'd actually just replaced mine too, someone local was selling 826s each with SAS3 backplanes & a pair of 920SQ for $100 each and I grabbed the last two. But we needed a chassis for my son to use for school, and the 933 still works just fine.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Fritz