VOGONS


First post, by mrwho

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I have four old servers lying around the house. As they are heavy power-hungry breasts, I rarely play with them (and I'm not even sure they are functioning correctly as I write this).

Is there any scenario where they might be fun to play with, something that can't be done with "ordinary"retro machines?

“Hey, you sass that hoopy MrWho? There's a frood who really knows where his towel is."
My home retro drivers repository: ftp://retro:drivers@mrwho.duckdns.org

Reply 1 of 31, by Caluser2000

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You'll have to give us some details of the systems before we can make suggestions.

There's a glitch in the matrix.
A founding member of the 286 appreciation society.
Apparently 32-bit is dead and nobody likes P4s.
Of course, as always, I'm open to correction...😉

Reply 2 of 31, by mr.cat

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They're very good for heating your room in the winter time, if you can deal with the noise. I guess that's the answer you're looking for 😁
Other than that...well...
So what kind of hw/what era you're talking about? Old P4's? Old Unix servers?

Reply 3 of 31, by konc

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mr.cat wrote on 2021-07-14, 13:40:

They're very good for heating your room in the winter time, if you can deal with the noise. I guess that's the answer you're looking for 😁
Other than that...well...
So what kind of hw/what era you're talking about? Old P4's? Old Unix servers?

Oh they're not only heaters, don't underrate them so much.
Most of them are also good leaf blowers.

Reply 6 of 31, by mr.cat

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konc wrote on 2021-07-14, 14:17:
mr.cat wrote on 2021-07-14, 13:40:

They're very good for heating your room in the winter time, if you can deal with the noise. I guess that's the answer you're looking for 😁
Other than that...well...
So what kind of hw/what era you're talking about? Old P4's? Old Unix servers?

Oh they're not only heaters, don't underrate them so much.
Most of them are also good leaf blowers.

Really? I guess I'll have to try that the next time I get my leaves blown then 😁
Come to think of it, they might also make a decent anchor, being heavy and all.

Reply 7 of 31, by chinny22

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Do ordinary retro machines support multiple CPU's, hot swap hard drives or impress girls? Nope!
Ok it's true retro gaming rig has no need for multiple CPU's, Downtime is hardly an issue negating the need for hotswap, and the girls impressed by servers may not be the kind of girl you want to impress but that wasn't the question 😜

I like playing round with Enterprise level hardware though. Gaming on a dual socket P3 600 which would have cost 1000's just feels cooler then the standard P3 1Ghz next to it.
I also like playing around with old versions of Windows Server which is more fun on an actual server. I just started playing with my Dual PPro running NT 3.51 today, it may sit dormant for 6 months or longer but it's nice to to tinker with when I get the urge.

Reply 8 of 31, by chrismeyer6

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I love to play with older servers and enterprise network equipment. It's all a fun part of this hobby we all share. It's alot of fun to play with older server operating systems and things like that.

Reply 9 of 31, by megatron-uk

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I must be in the minority - for a large chunk of my career I looked after server infrastructure (Dell, HP, Compaq, Sun) ; unless it's something really special (and almost none of the usual x86 stuff falls in to that category) it just doesn't do anything for me. Too big, too power hungry and too noisy.

My collection database and technical wiki:
https://www.target-earth.net

Reply 10 of 31, by Intel486dx33

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Back in 1995 I had an old HP Netserver I was going to use Novell netware but I never ended up using it.
Technology advances so quickly these become obsolete. I think it had a 486dx2-50 CPU.

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Reply 12 of 31, by mrwho

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chinny22 wrote on 2021-07-14, 16:17:

I just started playing with my Dual PPro running NT 3.51 today, it may sit dormant for 6 months or longer but it's nice to to tinker with when I get the urge.

That gives me an idea! I never got around to trying OS/2 - maybe one of these servers is a good candidate for that!

The ones I got are:
- One HP NetServer LCII
- One Acer Altos G700
- Two Dell PowerEdge 2600

“Hey, you sass that hoopy MrWho? There's a frood who really knows where his towel is."
My home retro drivers repository: ftp://retro:drivers@mrwho.duckdns.org

Reply 14 of 31, by Unknown_K

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I have a bunch of old servers and workstations(mostly dual processor) that I load old operating systems on. It is fun to run NT 3/4/2k on these machines with exotic hardware and raid cards. If you collect EISA cards for example you generally need a server or high end workstation machine to install them in. Same goes for PCI-X cards like a bunch of video capture and editing ones I own that generally need an old Opteron or XEON based system to run on.

The old Linux distros seem to have been tailored to run on old servers since they support all the hardware nicely. Same with old UNIX OS.

Servers used to be specially designed and have form factors unlike the common white box builds so they were different and pricey back in the day.

Collector of old computers, hardware, and software

Reply 15 of 31, by chinny22

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mrwho wrote on 2021-07-14, 22:33:
That gives me an idea! I never got around to trying OS/2 - maybe one of these servers is a good candidate for that! […]
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chinny22 wrote on 2021-07-14, 16:17:

I just started playing with my Dual PPro running NT 3.51 today, it may sit dormant for 6 months or longer but it's nice to to tinker with when I get the urge.

That gives me an idea! I never got around to trying OS/2 - maybe one of these servers is a good candidate for that!

The ones I got are:
- One HP NetServer LCII
- One Acer Altos G700
- Two Dell PowerEdge 2600

Seems like fate has you covered 😀
https://support.hpe.com/hpesc/public/swd/deta … wItemId=ns996en

OS/2 is still on my todo list, still haven't played with it to this day.
So is Netware 3 or 4 (the dos based ones) I played with this back in the late 90's and liked it. but much like ESX boxes of today not much to tinker with once setup.

megatron-uk wrote on 2021-07-14, 16:59:

I must be in the minority - for a large chunk of my career I looked after server infrastructure (Dell, HP, Compaq, Sun) ; unless it's something really special (and almost none of the usual x86 stuff falls in to that category) it just doesn't do anything for me. Too big, too power hungry and too noisy.

Nah think most people think like you. I'd say the small subset interested in Enterprise hardware are people who were interested but never worked in IT that can now afford to check out what was locked away in the server room or the old Sys admins that miss the good ol days.
For me this was mid 2000's. Windows 2003 with maybe a 2k box or 2 still kicking around all running on physical hardware. I loved my job.
Not saying I want to go back to those days (staying past midnight rebuilding a server that failed during the day is not fun for anyone) but newer stuff stopped exciting me starting from Windows 2008 onwards really.

Reply 16 of 31, by chrismeyer6

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chinny22 wrote on 2021-07-15, 11:02:

Nah think most people think like you. I'd say the small subset interested in Enterprise hardware are people who were interested but never worked in IT that can now afford to check out what was locked away in the server room or the old Sys admins that miss the good ol days.
For me this was mid 2000's. Windows 2003 with maybe a 2k box or 2 still kicking around all running on physical hardware. I loved my job.
Not saying I want to go back to those days (staying past midnight rebuilding a server that failed during the day is not fun for anyone) but newer stuff stopped exciting me starting from Windows 2008 onwards really.

I fall into that category. I went to school and got my CompTIA A+ and Network + back in the 04-07 time frame and even took classes and studied for my Cisco CCNA but in my area those jobs were quickly drying up and being outsourced to external IT companies. So I started my own business building gaming systems as well as doing on-site computer repairs as well as setting up people's DSL or cable internet and networking their homes by setting up their WiFi and a few Ethernet drops. That lasted a few years before that dried up as well. I miss those days they were fun.

Last edited by Stiletto on 2021-07-15, 18:00. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 17 of 31, by Intel486dx33

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Actually, I had this one with a 486 CPU.
Not sure what it could be used for other than a file server ?
I really liked these HP Netservers. They were very reliable.

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Reply 18 of 31, by Errius

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Cool. Did you save the manual or any other docs? HP no longer hosts this stuff online. It's really hard to get the docs for these old machines nowadays.

Is this too much voodoo?