Luckybob was kind enough to throw up another video from the haul. This one showing him powering on one of the many new old stock FIC dual socket Pentium Pro motherboards that were acquired and how to modify the ALR server HSF units to work with standard motherboards. Skeletor makes an appearance AND bonus footage of what 22 year old thermal paste looks like at the very end. Now that's entertainment folks!

https://youtu.be/eehBSTzYBb4

Luckybob, let me know if you need for your ALR server's the Infor Manager software. I have an ALR Revolution 2x server (little one compared with 6x6) and I just found this monitoring software. It's rebranded Gateway (they bought ALR) but it runs perfectly. I didn't remember where I managed to find it (it was a few years ago) but I can upload on a wetransfer or something.

That would be awesome. Yes please.

After giving Luckybob his new old stock ALR 6x6 dream machines I am gearing up to populate the other three floor models. If you have not watched Luckybob's Pentium Pro haul video yet I gave him two NOS ALR 6x6 floor models and a NOS ALR 6x6 rack model. I kept the other three NOS floor models. We are making sure we have six fully working ALR 6x6 systems before selling off the rest of the extra parts.

Golly. I don't think I've ever had a hype man before. Its exciting!

Golly? What is this? Leave It To Beaver?

So I just opened the second of five sealed OEM boxes of new old stock Pentium Pro 200MHz/1MB cache CPUs since I am running low in the first box. I noticed that Intel was not too concerned with blemishes on the tops of these CPUs since they are OEM and were meant for server use. I guess they figured they were going into multi-core systems in bulk and the customer would not care how pretty they looked. In one of the photos you can see where one of the CPUs is actually discolored from the factory. Anyway, at least they are minty new just not going to win any beauty awards.

Update: Now you can watch me unseal one of these factory new CPU cases.

So what the actual hell were these supposed to go in, originally? Does anyone know the providence of these? Were these leftovers from Ascii Red or some other giant system of that era?

I mean, just one of those trays I think would have been worth $10k back in the day and I see 5 of them just sitting there, and Liqmat is saying there are 5 sealed boxes. How many trays were there per box?

I'd really be interested in knowing the story behind these...you don't just spend $50k or so on processors to let them sit (or maybe you do, if you're Uncle Sam).

snorg wrote:

So what the actual hell were these supposed to go in, originally? Does anyone know the providence of these? Were these leftovers from Ascii Red or some other giant system of that era?

I mean, just one of those trays I think would have been worth $10k back in the day and I see 5 of them just sitting there, and Liqmat is saying there are 5 sealed boxes. How many trays were there per box?

I'd really be interested in knowing the story behind these...you don't just spend $50k or so on processors to let them sit (or maybe you do, if you're Uncle Sam).

The gentleman I bought these from stated his company was going to discard all the extra parts as they were doing a major upgrade from what I understand a couple of decades ago. These were stockpiled for their ALR 6x6 servers and smaller 4 and 2-way PPro servers as well. They also had a large amount of single PPro desktop workstations. He kept all the spare parts and servers in his basement for two decades as he was also a collector. LB and I were floored not only by this haul he sold to me, but he had a massive library of computer books as well. Unfortunately not a lot of software as I would have grabbed that as well. We left the books behind. Heavy and no room.

I actually just reread his PM to me. I guess his successor in the company he worked for wanted nothing to do with building and stockpiling their own equipment as they were doing at the time and wanted to farm everything out to HP. Basically, it sounds like they wanted to standardize. So he was offered the equipment and he took the windfall and kept it in boxes for all those years. Luckily, not many items had leaking batteries so 90% of the equipment is mint still.

liqmat wrote:

snorg wrote:

So what the actual hell were these supposed to go in, originally? Does anyone know the providence of these? Were these leftovers from Ascii Red or some other giant system of that era?

I mean, just one of those trays I think would have been worth $10k back in the day and I see 5 of them just sitting there, and Liqmat is saying there are 5 sealed boxes. How many trays were there per box?

I'd really be interested in knowing the story behind these...you don't just spend $50k or so on processors to let them sit (or maybe you do, if you're Uncle Sam).

The gentleman I bought these from stated his company was going to discard all the extra parts as they were doing a major upgrade from what I understand a couple of decades ago. These were stockpiled for their ALR 6x6 servers and smaller 4 and 2-way PPro servers as well. They also had a large amount of single PPro desktop workstations as well. He kept all the spare parts and servers in his basement for two decades as he was also a collector. LB and I were floored not only by this haul he sold to me, but he had a massive library of computer books as well. Unfortunately not a lot of software as I would have grabbed that as well. We left the books behind. Heavy and no room.

I actually just reread his PM to me. I guess his successor in the company he worked for wanted nothing to do with building and stockpiling their own equipment as they were doing at the time and wanted to farm everything out to HP. Basically, it sounds like they wanted to standardize. So he was offered the equipment and he took the windfall and kept it in boxes for all those years. Luckily, not many items had leaking batteries so 90% of the equipment is mint still.

Wow, that is amazing. I can't imagine what company he must have worked for (and you don't have to say, obviously, I wouldn't expect you to reveal any information about this guy) but I can only imagine they must have had deep pockets if they were sitting on that much spare hardware.

I'm glad you guys found it and were able to grab the gear rather than it getting sent to a recycler. It would have been a colossal waste for sure.

Apparently some did hit the recycler before us. A load of 386/486 gear we were told got scrapped. Someone told him the stuff was worth money, so the rest he took the time to tell the community. Long story short.

luckybob wrote:

Apparently some did hit the recycler before us. A load of 386/486 gear we were told got scrapped. Someone told him the stuff was worth money, so the rest he took the time to tell the community. Long story short.

Too bad about the 386/486 stuff, but at least the PPros were saved.

snorg wrote:

luckybob wrote:

Apparently some did hit the recycler before us. A load of 386/486 gear we were told got scrapped. Someone told him the stuff was worth money, so the rest he took the time to tell the community. Long story short.

Too bad about the 386/486 stuff, but at least the PPros were saved.

A little bit of the 386/486 parts did leak through to this haul, but we were both very sad faced about hearing most of it went to the silicon rainbow bridge. Considering I found one ATI Mach64 VLB video card in this haul (not working unfortunately) I can only imagine what goodies were tossed.

Also, remember, by the time they decided to get rid of this equipment it was pretty dated already and had been sitting at the company for awhile from what I gather so it was not even close to being worth retail value. Back in those days no one imagined this stuff would be worth something to a collector or preservationist. I remember in the early 2000s you could still pick up XT machines for free at the curbside and Pentium Pro CPUs were almost worth nothing since no one was thinking about scrapping them for gold.

The incredible part of this haul was not that a company got rid of a bunch of new old stock equipment they viewed as outdated and not worth much, but the fact this guy kept it all these years untouched. As I said in an earlier post here at Vogons I remember someone in Orlando, FL came across a warehouse of Amiga 2000 HD machines just sitting new in box. They started to sell them off for really cheap in the late 90s and I picked one up. I then, like an idiot, sold it a year later for almost nothing as well. If I had known of the coming retro tidal wave I would have probably purchased a bunch of them.

This is why I felt it so important for me to go the extra mile and pick this up before some reseller or scrapper nabbed it. I wanted to sell this stuff directly to the collecting and preservationist community for very reasonable prices, but still make my money back and maybe a small profit would be nice. I've got bills like everybody else. If a reseller who could care less about this hobby had grabbed it you know the prices would have been astronomical.

mmx23 wrote:

Luckybob, let me know if you need for your ALR server's the Infor Manager software. I have an ALR Revolution 2x server (little one compared with 6x6) and I just found this monitoring software. It's rebranded Gateway (they bought ALR) but it runs perfectly. I didn't remember where I managed to find it (it was a few years ago) but I can upload on a wetransfer or something.

luckybob wrote:

That would be awesome. Yes please.

Luckybob, I already have all the ALR 6x6 software. No worries. I'll send it over to you.

When Luckybob and I met in Chicago, the first order of business was to get the hardware before the rain cometh and cometh it did. I arranged with the seller to pick it all up a day early and he agreed. The next morning, as LB describes in the original post, we went behind the hotel and loaded up LB's truck full of gear before I took off in the rental truck. He ended up grabbing a box of CPUs that neither of us noticed until LB got back home and he went through all his boxes. He had scored the rarest of the Penitum Pro CPUs which is the 166MHz 512K processor and he had three. So of course I said gimme one and he mailed it out to me. Thing of beauty. I've seen the 150, 180 and all the variety of 200s, but never the 166. Nor did I know the 166 was a 512K variety. Very cool to have as a curiosity piece and it's in really good shape with just a minor scratch on it.

The HP sticker on it makes me wonder if only resellers had the 166MHz CPUs as I don't remember ever seeing those in retail channels back in the day.

That was the nicest of the three, btw.

luckybob wrote:

That was the nicest of the three, btw.

I figured as much. We treat each other well.

To those of you who collect drivers, system software, etc. this might be of some interest to you. Since we picked up those ALR 6x6 servers in this haul LB and I had zero software for the systems. Luckily in the ALR sub channel I started over at Discord we got some Vogons members that had ALR systems themselves and had collected the software over the years from various websites that are now defunct. One of those websites was archived, but most of the documents and software were not archived. This is the archived site:

https://web.archive.org/web/20031030111834/ht … chive/index.htm

Well, thanks to Vogons members hard1k and gbeirn we have roughly 95% of that website's file content and extra files to boot. I have compiled both hard1k's and gbeirn's files to make as complete of an archive that is possible. Having that archived website allowed me to create folders with descriptions of what each file was so I basically mirrored that website's index structure via a Windows folder structure. If a file is missing or corrupt (luckily not many are) I put that in the folder's description and created a text file or left the original corrupted file in that folder as a placeholder so others can research or hunt for those files in the future. I did not change the actual filenames so others can search for the original files that are missing or corrupt. Luckily, since most of the files are there, there is more than enough resources to easily get an ALR 6x6 system up and running.

There is one folder in the zip file that is not on the website which I named "Various Other ALR Resources". Those are the extra files that were not on that archived website and are additional resources for or relating to ALR systems. I'll leave it up to the community to sort through that. My main goal was to try and combine all these resources together and rebuild as best as possible the archived "Gavin Hubbard ALR 6x6 Software Archive" file structure and content.

Thanks again to Vogons members hard1k and gbeirn for sharing their files since ALR drivers and software are not easy to come by anymore and hopefully by posting it here those files wont be elusive for future ALR system collectors.

Here is the link to the archive:

http://www.vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=1472

^^^ The ALR Archive has been updated with some added resource files ^^^

Make sure to download again for the latest collection. Thanks.

@KCompRoom2000

They just came in today. Really well done sir. They are beautiful. Thanks again!

A side by side comparison with the original on the left.