unless you have a need for a small slow nas, i dont see any real use here.

still cool board though. i'd put it on a shelf for a bit and sleep on it.

luckybob wrote:

unless you have a need for a small slow nas, i dont see any real use here.

still cool board though. i'd put it on a shelf for a bit and sleep on it.

Sounds uncomfortable... 😀

I thought I saw someone selling those recently. Wanted to buy it, but no money. Personally I like anything dell. If it's a purely ROM based system then there isn't much you can do unless it's been hacked. If you can boot a standard OS then it would make a great DOOM or Quake server. If you can boot off of the main controller then set up a drive to boot to a network console then if it works you can load it up with whatever you need. You could even use it as a basic firewall if you want.

Neat! It reminds me a lot of the old Cobalt Raq3 servers; like, really, a lot. I used to have a rack full of 'em.. I still have 2 or 3 of them. The Raq3 was also Socket7 but ran K6-2 processor. Standard PC hardware, but a really (really) custom BIOS with a built-in (non replaceable) boot loader. They would only boot off of an ext2 formatted hard disk and load a 2.2 or 2.4 Linux kernel. I had old versions of Debian 4 on them (replacing the custom RedHat based OS that was on them) but... thats about all they could do, just a basic, under-powered, headless Linux server. Certainly no DOS or Windows or anything else retro PC'ers like ourselves are generally interested in. Consequently the ones I still have are collecting dust on a shelf and have been for some years.

Neat hardware though.

RJDog wrote:

Neat! It reminds me a lot of the old Cobalt Raq3 servers; like, really, a lot. I used to have a rack full of 'em.. I still have 2 or 3 of them. The Raq3 was also Socket7 but ran K6-2 processor. Standard PC hardware, but a really (really) custom BIOS with a built-in (non replaceable) boot loader. They would only boot off of an ext2 formatted hard disk and load a 2.2 or 2.4 Linux kernel. I had old versions of Debian 4 on them (replacing the custom RedHat based OS that was on them) but... thats about all they could do, just a basic, under-powered, headless Linux server. Certainly no DOS or Windows or anything else retro PC'ers like ourselves are generally interested in. Consequently the ones I still have are collecting dust on a shelf and have been for some years.

Neat hardware though.

If you are serious enough with retro hardware then the networking gear becomes interesting. It's an amazing feeling to have almost 40 years of computing all talking to eachother.

IDE RAID is always interesting to see. I assume this was for small businesses that couldn't afford SCSI gear. What would it have cost?

Errius wrote:

IDE RAID is always interesting to see. I assume this was for small businesses that couldn't afford SCSI gear. What would it have cost?

https://books.google.com/books?id=yhsEAAAAMBA … 0review&f=false

PowerVault 735N [SCSI] = $10,000
PowerVault 735N XP [SCSI] = $12,000
PowerVault 705N [IDE] = $4,300
PowerVault 701N [IDE] = $1,200

Quite a difference

It looks like a NAS with x86 processor to me.

Welp, I ended up hanging on to the entire board for now, although I'll probably just harvest the CPU & RAM for something else at some point. It would be really nice if this thing had some kind of video out, but it is what it is. Incidentally I cut my finger on the pizza box which annoyed me enough to make me recycle it. Can't save everything. 😜

RJDog wrote:

Neat! It reminds me a lot of the old Cobalt Raq3 servers; like, really, a lot. I used to have a rack full of 'em.. I still have 2 or 3 of them. The Raq3 was also Socket7 but ran K6-2 processor. Standard PC hardware, but a really (really) custom BIOS with a built-in (non replaceable) boot loader. They would only boot off of an ext2 formatted hard disk and load a 2.2 or 2.4 Linux kernel. I had old versions of Debian 4 on them (replacing the custom RedHat based OS that was on them) but... thats about all they could do, just a basic, under-powered, headless Linux server. Certainly no DOS or Windows or anything else retro PC'ers like ourselves are generally interested in. Consequently the ones I still have are collecting dust on a shelf and have been for some years.

Neat hardware though.

I do like old networking gear for some reason 😜 I'm still kicking myself for passing up a free Cobalt Qube 3 (similar to the Raq 3, also K6-based but 100% cuter) a while back. Ah well, I'm sure I would have gotten it set up and working, and then put it in the back of my closet with 80% of the other stuff like that I've gotten my hands on.

lazibayer wrote:

It looks like a NAS with x86 processor to me.

Did you figure that out from reading the first post, where I stated that was exactly what it is, or the thread title? Just curious.

xjas wrote:

lazibayer wrote:

It looks like a NAS with x86 processor to me.

Did you figure that out from reading the first post, where I stated that was exactly what it is, or the thread title? Just curious.

I read the manual from DELL and some internal pictures. It doesn't seem to have boot disk nor I/O ports like VGA, USB, PS/2. All configuration must be done over LAN. I reckon it runs on customized firmware. Not sure if the board can give you some I/O via the onboard pins or SSH access to the OS. Anyway according to the hardware features and configuration interface it's much like a customized NAS to me, rather than a full-blown x86 computer.
Just for curiosity... Is it regular MMX or tillamook?

Are those IBM Deathstars?

Errius wrote:

Are those IBM Deathstars?

Are they fully operational?