EEVblog #882 - Dumpster Dive Apple Xserve Computers

[kc8apf]

Apple with dubious or worse cooling? color me surprised Also, hope that non-ECC ram wasnt standard and was someone upgrading it to more ram for cheap in the past.

U2, the northbridge for G4 machines, doesn't support ECC.  U3 and U4 used in the G5 systems does.

[kalleboo]

But only because the CPU(s) have truly massive heatsinks sandwiched between no less than four fans. I have never seen a CPU heatsink that large. Fans included they are the length of a grown man's forearm, about 20x20 cm in cross-section.

For anyone who wants to see these, Dave actually did a video on some Dumpster Dive PowerMacs a while back

[Fungus]

Even modern servers can be noisy at power on.

My twin tower Silicon Graphics GTX laughs at your definition of "noisy". 

[uncle_bob]

Even modern servers can be noisy at power on.

My twin tower Silicon Graphics GTX laughs at your definition of "noisy". 

Hi

My PDP-11/45 blows your GTX away 

Bob

[Fungus]

My twin tower Silicon Graphics GTX laughs at your definition of "noisy". 

My PDP-11/45 blows your GTX away 

Did you actually own a PDP-11? That's cool.

When I was younger I had four big SGI machines in my bedroom. I knew an SGI salesman who used to sneak traded-in machines out of SGI offices late at night. It's where I learned to program 3D graphics. I don't think I ever switched all four on simultaneously, I didn't have enough monitors/keyboards. It would have been unbearable if I had, and I'm not sure if the wiring would have taken it.

[uncle_bob]

My twin tower Silicon Graphics GTX laughs at your definition of "noisy". 

My PDP-11/45 blows your GTX away 

Did you actually own a PDP-11? That's cool.

When I was younger I had four big SGI machines in my bedroom. I knew an SGI salesman who used to sneak traded-in machines out of SGI offices late at night. It's where I learned to program 3D graphics. I don't think I ever switched all four on simultaneously, I didn't have enough monitors/keyboards. It would have been unbearable if I had, and I'm not sure if the wiring would have taken it.

Hi

My first "home computer" was a PDP-8/E. After a few months I traded up to a PDP-11/20 (not an 11/45). The 11/45 was the machine I ran at work. This was back in the days when all computers had "minders". Eventually the 11/20 became a bit of a bear to keep running and I moved on to other machines. I passed it along to a buddy who kept it running for a few more years.

Bob

[Fungus]

Eventually the 11/20 became a bit of a bear to keep running and I moved on to other machines. I passed it along to a buddy who kept it running for a few more years.

I can't say I was sad the day I replaced the SGI machines with a PC graphics card. The 3DLabs Permedia II graphics chipset was the killer. It was the first PC card with a real OpenGL driver, it was cheap, it ran under Windows NT 4.0. Game over, SGI.

The big machines machines ended up in the dumpster. I don't know if anybody dived them or not. I also had a little Indigo2 which I gave to a local guy who wanted it.

[uncle_bob]

Eventually the 11/20 became a bit of a bear to keep running and I moved on to other machines. I passed it along to a buddy who kept it running for a few more years.

I can't say I was sad the day I replaced the SGI machines with a PC graphics card. The 3DLabs Permedia II graphics chipset was the killer. It was the first PC card with a real OpenGL driver, it was cheap, it ran under Windows NT 4.0. Game over, SGI.

The big machines machines ended up in the dumpster. I don't know if anybody dived them or not. I also had a little Indigo2 which I gave to a local guy who wanted it.

Hi

Well "graphics" on the PDP-8 or PDP-11's that I had access to involved using a lot of paper on an ASR-33 teletype. Mean time between failure on the PDP-11 at the start was in the week or three range. Fortunately the local DEC repair guy would do repairs for pizza and coke.

Bob