Just gifted G3 + Sonnet Encore

[JessH]

Hello all,

First post in the PowerPC forum, really at all, but I have been enjoying your PPC forum here for about a year now. You guys remind me of why I loved Macs when I first got into computers. You guys are like the cool video gurus in the 80s-90s on Quantel Paintboxes, Amigas, and SGI machines (and classic Macs as well). You know your hardware and use what you like, machines that excite you, rather than go out and buy the newest thing held up at a WWDC.

Rant aside,
I was gifted a Beige G3 Minitower from an engineer here at work and I was so excited to see a bit of purple in there when I opened it up. It turns out it's got the Sonnet Encore 1Ghz chip, which I guess is actually a G4? I don't have a DB15 adapter here so I can't see the machine specs until I get home. I will post pics as well! It powers on and chimes, I hear the HD spin up. All seems well.

He even gave me a (I am the only one who thinks this in the world) NICE Beige 21" Trinitron with VGA/SDI.

Is there anything I should be leery of? This is the first time I have used a G3 since before the DA G4's came out. Regardless of what most people think, I LOVE the way these things look and I would like to hold onto it for a very long time. Any cap/battery issues? How are the power supplies?

Excited to show you some pictures. It will be joining a collection of 5 G4 Towers, a B&W G3, iMac G4, iBook G3 Clam, 4 PowerBook G4 12"ers, a PowerBook 17", G4 Cube, a G5 Quad, DP G5 2.0, DC G5 2.0, 2ci, 2e, 2gs. Of course, I won't mention any Intel Macs.

Jess

PS, is there ANY hope of finding an AIO G3 to compliment it? They were the first Mac I ever used, the single computer that got me into computers. Or are those things just so rare to find without insane shipping costs?

Thanks!

 

[Gamer9430]

Hello all,

First post in the PowerPC forum, really at all, but I have been enjoying your PPC forum here for about a year now. You guys remind me of why I loved Macs when I first got into computers. You guys are like the cool video gurus in the 80s-90s on Quantel Paintboxes, Amigas, and SGI machines (and classic Macs as well). You know your hardware and use what you like, machines that excite you, rather than go out and buy the newest thing held up at a WWDC.

Rant aside,
I was gifted a Beige G3 Minitower from an engineer here at work and I was so excited to see a bit of purple in there when I opened it up. It turns out it's got the Sonnet Encore 1Ghz chip, which I guess is actually a G4? I don't have a DB15 adapter here so I can't see the machine specs until I get home. I will post pics as well! It powers on and chimes, I hear the HD spin up. All seems well.

He even gave me a (I am the only one who thinks this in the world) NICE Beige 21" Trinitron with VGA/SDI.

Is there anything I should be leery of? This is the first time I have used a G3 since before the DA G4's came out. Regardless of what most people think, I LOVE the way these things look and I would like to hold onto it for a very long time. Any cap/battery issues? How are the power supplies?

Excited to show you some pictures. It will be joining a collection of 5 G4 Towers, a B&W G3, iMac G4, iBook G3 Clam, 4 PowerBook G4 12"ers, a PowerBook 17", G4 Cube, a G5 Quad, DP G5 2.0, DC G5 2.0, 2ci, 2e, 2gs. Of course, I won't mention any Intel Macs.

Jess

PS, is there ANY hope of finding an AIO G3 to compliment it? They were the first Mac I ever used, the single computer that got me into computers. Or are those things just so rare to find without insane shipping costs?

Thanks!

On behalf of the PowerPC community, welcome! I hope to be seeing you around often on here, this is a fun and very tight knit community.

I, for one, still enjoy CRTs, being that they are very customizable in terms of resolutions.

There isn't really anything to be weary of, other than removing the battery from them and replacing it if you want to. Power supply should be fine, as well as the caps for the time being.

That is a very impressive collection. I would love an Apple ][ of some sort. Feel free to mention any Intel macs being that we usually talk about those here as well. We're much nicer than the people in the Intel section that will tell you to upgrade the second they hear about your problem.

Finally, there is very little hope that you will get a G3 AIO. They were short lived and very unsuccessful, hence the reason they are so hard to find.

 

[bunnspecial]

Great find!

I think that Sonnet did make a 1ghz G3, and I don't think that they ever made a 1ghz ZIF G4(although I could be wrong about that). In any case, be sure you bump the ram all the way up to 768mb(if it's not there already) and it should be a screamer.

The onboard video-by today's standards-is pretty crummy. I suggest finding a PCI video card with VGA and/or DVI out so you can use a flat panel or any standard VGA monitor.

Your three main options for this computer are the Rage 128, Radeon 7000, and Radeon 9200. The Rage 128 was the standard card in the B&W G3 and Yikes! G4, so these are easy to find and cheap. The Radeon 7000 is not that much more expensive and also relatively easy to find. It can(grudgingly) drive a 1080p display. The 9200 is the best, but the Mac edition is rare and expensive.

You can also officially install up to OS X 10.2.8. If you're so inclined, it's not a lot of work to put 10.4 on them using the free program Xpostfacto. If it does have a G4 upgrade, you can even put 10.5 on it, although it's a fair bit more work. Personally, though, I keep mine on 9.2.2.

For maximum utility, I recommend installing USB and Firewire cards, or a combo card(that will leave you one slot free to do something else). Get one a USB card with an NEC chipset and it should be plug and play in 8.6 or later(albeit at 1.1. speeds). I'd suggest a 10/100 or even gigabit card for your third PCI slot. Do all of this, and you will actually have a computer that's still completely useable.

I love the G3 minitower design. It's easy to work on, and has a lot of space inside. I also have a couple of desktops(I have a 400mhz G3 out of B&W in one), but plan to do something fun with my towers. One of mine is the server version with the factory "Jackhammer" SCSI card and three 68 pin 10K drives in RAID. It sounds like a chainsaw, but is fast.

"Molar Macs" are out there. I actually passed on one from the guy who sold me my G3 minitowers(along with my 8600 and 7350). I sort of wish I'd taken it, especially since I could have made room for it in the car.

 

[JessH]

Gamer, thank you for the warm welcome! I really look forward to engaging with the community here and learning some cool tweaks/hearing some cool stories! I have been fortunate enough to make enough money to buy some of the older computers I was so fascinated with in the past. Especially ones I was never able to get my hands on! I really like Intel Macs, although I prefer not to run anything later than Snow Leopard, Mountain Lion if they are connected to the internet. I like PowerPCs because I do not think of them as work computers anymore (even though I do a fair amount of FCS 3/CS2 work on the G5s still). More, gateways to the past, toys but in the best possible sense of the word. Like how a BMW is a toy to an investor. I also have a soft spot for PCs somehow. I have a few cool Gateway 2000s, older Dell XPS' and totally forgot to mention a NeXTstation, I will take a nice big pic to introduce myself in front of all of it, as long as it wouldn't be seen as asinine.

I keep my work on my two 17" MacBook pros, an 8,3 and a 2,1. The 8,3, is a screamer with an i7/16GB, Dual SSDs in a R0 (optical drive replaced), but I love the 2,1 design so much more than the unibodies. At work I also have my life savings in a single machine: a 12 Core 2.66 Mac Pro with 64GB/Nvidia 770/SSD R0 in the optical drive bays/4Disk R0 in the drive bays. And I still love my dual 30" ACDs hooked up to it,. Got them so cheap! Man, I love craigslist!!!

I hope you guys don't think I am bragging. I am just really into hardware and want to show you I like getting my hands dirty is all.

Bunnspecial, thanks for the advice! It has a video card in it with S Video, DVI and VGA so I hope it works! If not I have a few Rage 128s, but I think they are AGP . I was also lucky enough to have it included with a USB card and Firewire Card, did the non-server versions have BTO SCSI cards? It's got a card with an UltraSCSI port on the back, I want to check that out, too. Would you recommend pulling the expansion cards if they don't have NEC chips on them?

I didn't know these didn't have fast ethernet. Is the onboard NIC just 10Mbit? If it has 100Mbit that's fast enough for what I will be using it for. Although I do have some PCI gigabit cards, I wonder if they will work...

I prefer keeping OS 9 on these too, I just like the feel of the classic environment on a beige machine.

I am FREAKING JEALOUS you found a server version! I would love to find one sometime. I am a big fan of 10K drives too. I am a very old fashioned youngin in that I have the classic build-quality mentality. Loud and heavy means powerful and fast! I have a nice card with 2 Seagate Cheetahs in an MDD.

Thanks for the molar mac advice you guys! (I wasn't sure if that was a widely-used term). For the sake of my excitement, I hope you are more right, Bunnspecial! But I have yet to see one after months of combing Craigslist.

Thanks again for the warm welcome, guys. I look forward to posting in this community.

Jess

 

[Gamer9430]

Gamer, thank you for the warm welcome! I really look forward to engaging with the community here and learning some cool tweaks/hearing some cool stories! I have been fortunate enough to make enough money to buy some of the older computers I was so fascinated with in the past. Especially ones I was never able to get my hands on! I really like Intel Macs, although I prefer not to run anything later than Snow Leopard, Mountain Lion if they are connected to the internet. I like PowerPCs because I do not think of them as work computers anymore (even though I do a fair amount of FCS 3/CS2 work on the G5s still). More, gateways to the past, toys but in the best possible sense of the word. Like how a BMW is a toy to an investor. I also have a soft spot for PCs somehow. I have a few cool Gateway 2000s, older Dell XPS' and totally forgot to mention a NeXTstation, I will take a nice big pic to introduce myself in front of all of it, as long as it wouldn't be seen as asinine.

I keep my work on my two 17" MacBook pros, an 8,3 and a 2,1. The 8,3, is a screamer with an i7/16GB, Dual SSDs in a R0 (optical drive replaced), but I love the 2,1 design so much more than the unibodies. At work I also have my life savings in a single machine: a 12 Core 2.66 Mac Pro with 64GB/Nvidia 770/SSD R0 in the optical drive bays/4Disk R0 in the drive bays. And I still love my dual 30" ACDs hooked up to it,. Got them so cheap! Man, I love craigslist!!!

I hope you guys don't think I am bragging. I am just really into hardware and want to show you I like getting my hands dirty is all.

Bunnspecial, thanks for the advice! It has a video card in it with S Video, DVI and VGA so I hope it works! If not I have a few Rage 128s, but I think they are AGP . I was also lucky enough to have it included with a USB card and Firewire Card, did the non-server versions have BTO SCSI cards? It's got a card with an UltraSCSI port on the back, I want to check that out, too. Would you recommend pulling the expansion cards if they don't have NEC chips on them?

I didn't know these didn't have fast ethernet. Is the onboard NIC just 10Mbit? If it has 100Mbit that's fast enough for what I will be using it for. Although I do have some PCI gigabit cards, I wonder if they will work...

I prefer keeping OS 9 on these too, I just like the feel of the classic environment on a beige machine.

I am FREAKING JEALOUS you found a server version! I would love to find one sometime. I am a big fan of 10K drives too. I am a very old fashioned youngin in that I have the classic build-quality mentality. Loud and heavy means powerful and fast! I have a nice card with 2 Seagate Cheetahs in an MDD.

Thanks for the molar mac advice you guys! (I wasn't sure if that was a widely-used term). For the sake of my excitement, I hope you are more right, Bunnspecial! But I have yet to see one after months of combing Craigslist.

Thanks again for the warm welcome, guys. I look forward to posting in this community.

Jess

No problem. Also, brag away! I personally find it fun to hear about people's collections. I'm very envious of your Intel macs and your dual 30 ACD. I was going to buy one, but Bunn got to the listing before I did, lol.

Molar mac is such a fitting name for them. I originally found out about them through that name.

Most of us either collect or use the PPC macs for specific tasks. I do both, I enjoy collecting them, yet just about every one I collect has a specific purpose and usage. These machines have a sense of uniqueness, something that makes them special compared to today's machines as well as machines that were out at the same time as these were current. While everyone was still beige and black, Apple had white, silver, and colors. Today, everyone copies Apple. I wish Apple would have another design revolution. Put it this way, there has never been a computer designed like an iMac G4, besides the iMac itself.

Damn it, I'm rambling again, But feel free to look though other posts and comment on them or start new ones, lol. Also, don't forget to set a profile picture, being that anyone can, .

 

[eyoungren]

I hope you guys don't think I am bragging. I am just really into hardware and want to show you I like getting my hands dirty is all.

When you have more Macs than bunns has then and only then will you be bragging.

 

[Gamer9430]

When you have more Macs than bunns has then and only then will you be bragging.

When you have more G4 cubes than Bunn, then you're bragging,

 

[JessH]

Yes!

Looks like I have found a few mentors!

 

[MacCubed]

When you have more G4 cubes than Bunn, then you're bragging,

Haha now there's a task!! Also with the OSes, you could dual boot OS 9 and maybe Tiger, depending on the upgrade card. I would use 2 hard drives, tiger on one and OS 9 on the other.

 

[bunnspecial]

I hope you guys don't think I am bragging. I am just really into hardware and want to show you I like getting my hands dirty is all.

Bunnspecial, thanks for the advice! It has a video card in it with S Video, DVI and VGA so I hope it works! If not I have a few Rage 128s, but I think they are AGP . I was also lucky enough to have it included with a USB card and Firewire Card, did the non-server versions have BTO SCSI cards? It's got a card with an UltraSCSI port on the back, I want to check that out, too. Would you recommend pulling the expansion cards if they don't have NEC chips on them?

I didn't know these didn't have fast ethernet. Is the onboard NIC just 10Mbit? If it has 100Mbit that's fast enough for what I will be using it for. Although I do have some PCI gigabit cards, I wonder if they will work...

I prefer keeping OS 9 on these too, I just like the feel of the classic environment on a beige machine.

I am FREAKING JEALOUS you found a server version! I would love to find one sometime. I am a big fan of 10K drives too. I am a very old fashioned youngin in that I have the classic build-quality mentality. Loud and heavy means powerful and fast! I have a nice card with 2 Seagate Cheetahs in an MDD.

Thanks for the molar mac advice you guys! (I wasn't sure if that was a widely-used term). For the sake of my excitement, I hope you are more right, Bunnspecial! But I have yet to see one after months of combing Craigslist.

Thanks again for the warm welcome, guys. I look forward to posting in this community.

Jess

Heck, we love to show off hardware here!

If the video card has DVI, VGA, and S-Video, it's more than likely a 9200. That being the case, consider yourself lucky!

If the FW/USB card is working fine, I'd leave it as-is. The main issue with some cards is that they don't allow the computer to sleep, although admittedly no OWR Mac has "deep sleep" anyway. Not even all NEC cards are immune. As I said, if it works leave it alone.

I think there was a BTO SCSI card for these that had an internal 50 pin connector and an external high-density Centronics connector. I think that it's an Adaptec 2930, but couldn't swear to that p/n. I've had several NWR G3 and G4 towers that had that card from the factory. Of course, the 50 pin internal isn't a huge deal for a beige G3 since they have it on the logic board, but the external high-density Centronics is nice.

I'll have to photograph my server. It's a neat piece of equipment, and also quite fast considering how old it is.

The onboard ethernet is indeed 10baseT. I don't know of any OWR Mac with anything faster. I do have some OWR Macs that have(working) 10/100 cards. I can pull those and get p/ns if you'd like. Asante is usually a safe bet, but sometimes it can take digging to find the extensions/drivers for OS 9.

All the Gig-E cards I've seen are 64 bit. Of course, a 64 bit card will generally work fine in a 32 bit slot, but you don't get the full bandwidth. If you can find drivers for it, you'd be okay to use it(I expect it would be a fair bit slower than GigE, but probably faster than 100baseT) but again drivers are going to be your limiter. I ended up ditching the last GigE card I had-it worked fine under OS 9, but caused a KP under Leopard(it was in a G4 with onboard GigE anyway).

 

[DZ/015]

Nice computer!

Sonnet did indeed make a 1GHz G4 zif upgrade. They also had them in 500, 700, and 800MHz. The 500 looks like the original processor and uses the stock heatsink. The others use the larger purple heatsink. Powerlogix made high speed G3 zif upgrades. I believe the fastest was 1.1GHz.

Another SCSI card that came in these was the ATTO ExpressPCI PSC card. This has both 50 and 68 pin internal connectors as well as a 68 pin external connector that Apple disabled. There is a sticker covering the port. Luckily, Atto still has drivers and firmware available on their site. When flashed, the external port becomes available.

Looking forward to some pics.

 

[bunnspecial]

BTW, one last thing. You commented on getting excited over the 21" Trinitron-

A few weeks ago, I spent over $100(including shipping) on a CRT-in this particular case a 17" Diamontron. It's the last(separate) CRT Apple made, and has all the "goodies" like built-in calibration, a true-flat screen, and the like. It's also an ACD monitor, meaning-as you may or may not know-there's only a single cable coming out of it that plugs into the back of a Powermac G4/G5(Sawtooth, Yikes, and late '05 G5 excepted) to provide power, display, and USB. There's also a USB hub on the side of the monitor. Unfortunately, UPS managed to screw it up, and there's a permanent green spot in the upper right hand corner.

I've also been on the hunt for one of the "blueberry" or graphite 21" Trinitron CRTs that Apple made to go with the B&W G3. I've actually had a couple offered to me for free if I come and get them(I hate the thought of shipping a 77lb monitor). These also have built-in lifetime calibration.

 

[JessH]

Thanks, DZ. Everyone: it's so exciting to see other people get as excited about stuff like this as I do!

Bunnspecial, I have had such a hard time finding an ADC CRT, they are one of the most beautiful peripherals Apple ever made. I currently have 15", 17", and 22" ADCs (without the chrome trim), and dual 20" ACDs, newer, with the chrome. I would probably trade all of them for a flawless CRT ADC.

The B&W-matching CRTs are, thankfully, a lot more abundant, I still need to pick one up as well!

You guys have such good taste!

 

[eyoungren]

Everyone: it's so exciting to see other people get as excited about stuff like this as I do!

Stick around.

You will get tired of hearing about my Quicksilver and my six displays.

 

[JessH]

I don't know about that! I think I could hear about that for a while!

Do you just have 3 PCI video cards in there on internal power? Do you have a thread on it?

 

[bunnspecial]

Thanks, DZ. Everyone: it's so exciting to see other people get as excited about stuff like this as I do!

Bunnspecial, I have had such a hard time finding an ADC CRT, they are one of the most beautiful peripherals Apple ever made. I currently have 15", 17", and 22" ADCs (without the chrome trim), and dual 20" ACDs, newer, with the chrome. I would probably trade all of them for a flawless CRT ADC.

The B&W-matching CRTs are, thankfully, a lot more abundant, I still need to pick one up as well!

You guys have such good taste!

I have the 17" B&W, but I'd love a 21" to go with it. I'm also looking for the B&W LCD.

I have finally managed to put together a collection of all the ADC displays. I like the 23" ones so much that I have two of them. AFAIK, the 15" and 22" never had chrome trim, as they were part of the "first wave" along with the 17" CRT.

 

[eyoungren]

I don't know about that! I think I could hear about that for a while!

Do you just have 3 PCI video cards in there on internal power? Do you have a thread on it?

LOL.

Yes, a few threads. It comes up a bit. If you click on the "6 Displays" link in my signature you can see it.

I've got a Radeon 9800 Pro in the AGP slot, a Radeon 9200 and a Radeon 7000 (flashed) in two of the PCI slots.

I removed my IDE drives and my QS runs off a PCI SATA card I got for $10 and flashed. Two, 1TB hard drives.

Last, but not least is a Sonnet FW400/USB 2.0 combo card (PCI).

I'm using two 17" Studio Displays, one 20" Cinema Display, two 18" Gateway monitors and one 20" HDTV. The Studio Displays and the Cinema Displays required three A1006 ADC/DVI converters. You can see two of them under the displays (the third is behind the 20") in the link.

Also, I'm using a Sonnet 1.2Ghz upgrade processor. The Mac has 1.5GB ram (maxed).

Bunnspecial has my old dual 2.0Ghz G4, but neither he nor I have ever been able to make 1.8Ghz dual stable on the processor let alone 2.0.

I'm always on the lookout for a 2.0Ghz Sonnet dual though. Unfortunately, I never seem to have about $300 lying around to use.

Oh yeah, I also have Bluetooth. Bought a Belkin 2.0 BT adapter for less than $15. I use a Magic Mouse with my QS and the scrolling feature where you swipe two fingers on top of the mouse is completely functional (the reason I got the BT adapter).

 

[JessH]

Oh thanks bunnspecial, the first gen ADCs are the ones I like better as well. The touch buttons are cool but my favorite is the 22" with the 3 push buttons on the bottom right under the screen. Is there a term for the second wave? For example, a pair of 20"ers I ordered in 2004 with my G5?

eyoungren, very cool setup, how much did those ADC/DVI adaptors set you back? In my experience, people either don't know how useful they are and let them go with ADCs, or try to charge a fortune for them.

Is your Quicksilver your main desktop? I am betting your MBP makes it seem pretty slow for daily stuff. I do prefer having a tower than everything in a laptop that can break. It seems like you are still trying everything you can to keep it modern.

 

[eyoungren]

eyoungren, very cool setup, how much did those ADC/DVI adaptors set you back? In my experience, people either don't know how useful they are and let them go with ADCs, or try to charge a fortune for them.

The first one was free. A member here had no use for it and gave it to me. The other two…well, I found an eBay auction where the seller (a business liquidator) had about 20 of them and was selling them off for $25 a piece. I got two.

Is your Quicksilver your main desktop? I am betting your MBP makes it seem pretty slow for daily stuff. I do prefer having a tower than everything in a laptop that can break. It seems like you are still trying everything you can to keep it modern.

Yes, it is my main desktop. My 17" PB is my main laptop (it goes with me to work). I use the MBP at home on the couch and for trips to Starbucks.

My QS though is my design machine. All my graphic design apps are on the Mac (hence six displays). My MBP is a 2006 model so it could be argued that it is not significantly faster than my QS, especially since the main drive is a 5400rpm drive.

There are some tasks that my MBP is quite faster at, but in aggregate it does not really seem overly faster than my QS or my PowerBook. I have a tendency to optimize things so I can squeeze out the most performance from my PowerPC Macs so that may be the balancing factor here.

 

[JessH]

Hey guys!
Sorry to take so long in replying. I actually drove into NYC to try to meet a guy on Craigslist who had a few SGI 320 boxes, but he fell asleep and I wasted about 4 hours of driving for nothing.

No worries though! I am still in a good mood as I got the G3 up and running and it purrs!

Sorry for the terrible pictures, my good Canon is at work and I had to use my phone. Are the images better posted as thumbnails or full sized images? I don't want to overload you guys.



640MB of RAM, Video Capture Card, some noname firewire card, and a Belkin USB card. I pulled the SCSI card because it had bulging caps on it, I will grab a pic of that soon.



Comforting...



Isn't the disk supposed to have a SCSI bus? Or do I just have a version that had ATA standard?



So you guys know I'm not lying! Sorry for the mess, everything is being moved around as I am making huge big shelves high up on the walls for all of the towers. (So my friends don't touch).



It's just so beautiful...



The 15, 17, and dual 20's are in a closet, that's my coveted 22"!



Precision fun, and very sexy xRAIDS.



More Xserve Madness. Hopefully getting a 42U rack soon for all of the Xserve stuff. Also a SANbox.



The 2C, and 2GS. The rest of the stuff is in boxes, hopefully this weekend I can get it all out and take a silly picture in front of it all or something.

Thanks for looking guys! I will take much better pictures and dive into it this weekend! And really see how it is.

Jess

 

[bunnspecial]

Your stack of Xserves is making me jealous, as is the SGI Octane on the shelf

I've been close to snagging a couple of those, but it's always fallen through at the last minute.

The G3 looks great! Did you figure out what the processor is?

BTW, the SCSI bus should be listed under Apple System Profiler. Some of these had SCSI CD-ROM and/or ZIP drives.

 

[Gamer9430]

That

Hey guys!
Sorry to take so long in replying. I actually drove into NYC to try to meet a guy on Craigslist who had a few SGI 320 boxes, but he fell asleep and I wasted about 4 hours of driving for nothing.

No worries though! I am still in a good mood as I got the G3 up and running and it purrs!

Sorry for the terrible pictures, my good Canon is at work and I had to use my phone. Are the images better posted as thumbnails or full sized images? I don't want to overload you guys.

View attachment 560739

640MB of RAM, Video Capture Card, some noname firewire card, and a Belkin USB card. I pulled the SCSI card because it had bulging caps on it, I will grab a pic of that soon.

View attachment 560742

Comforting...

View attachment 560743

Isn't the disk supposed to have a SCSI bus? Or do I just have a version that had ATA standard?

View attachment 560745

So you guys know I'm not lying! Sorry for the mess, everything is being moved around as I am making huge big shelves high up on the walls for all of the towers. (So my friends don't touch).

View attachment 560744

It's just so beautiful...

View attachment 560746

The 15, 17, and dual 20's are in a closet, that's my coveted 22"!

View attachment 560747

Precision fun, and very sexy xRAIDS.

View attachment 560748

More Xserve Madness. Hopefully getting a 42U rack soon for all of the Xserve stuff. Also a SANbox.

That is one of the greatest monitors I have ever owned right there. Dell 21in (I think) Trinitron monitor. Had that with my first computer, Dell Dimension XPS T500 from '98.

 

[Gamer9430]

Also, if you don't mind me asking, are you in the tri-state area? I don't know anyone else on here that's in the tri-state besides iModFrenzy and I, lol.

 

[JessH]

Wow, first day posting and I already have some credit from bunnspecial! The Octane is actually still a project, I was leaving work (I work at a high-tech incubator) and I saw it by the dumpster. It has a few scratches on it, and I had a friend test the PSU and that works. I will open it up soon and see if I can figure out if it's dead!

I will post a screenshot of the system profiler tomorrow! It's going to take a lot of discipline to focus on work instead of posting around here this evening.

Gamer I am glad you think so! I have never used this specific model but it's in great shape. The enclosure and bezel are pristine. No scratches on the screen, the refresh rate is insane, and the colors really make me remember how exciting Photoshop was with a real display. I always loved the Sony Artesian ads on the back cover of Mac Addict/ Macworld magazines. With the insanely highres photos of flowers, I couldn't believe how tiny the OS9 menubars looked, it was so sharp. Too bad those things are still half the price of a new MacBook.

It was nice talking with you guys, have a good night!

Oh gamer sorry I missed your post. I am on Long Island, and I didn't mean NYC this evening, I just got stuck in terrible traffic there and actually went to Jersey. I can't complain about NY having a great amount of craigslist scores, especially since it's only an hour and a half away. But the prices these people ask are INSANE.

 

[bunnspecial]

I've always been fascinated by SGI machines. We have several around the department, and they are still used pretty much daily to do protein modeling. Most of them are MIPS Octane-series computers.

There is an Altix 3000 minicluster stashed in a lab somewhere, though. It is Itanium powered, and the best I can figure probably has about 40 Itaniums in it. It's the only Itanium computer I've ever encountered.

If I had the room and a spare 212V service in my apartment(plus the utilities paid for), I might have been tempted to grab it

BTW, that's not a NeXt sitting on the shelf next to the Cube, is it?