Sun

Just wanted to give the heads up that if you're in the market for a T-1000 or T-2000 server now is the time. Prices on Ebay have fallen dramatically as many leases are up. Some are being sold for ~$100.

Did they ever make a T-1000 or T-2000 machine in a normal (workstation) cabinet?
I don't need (or want) any server-grade fan noise here...

Yes and no, maybe I can elaborate a little here.

You can run the Sparc T1 cpu on a Xilinx ML410/ML411 "motherboard" if you flash the fpga with the proper T1 microcode (available). Then you can throw all that in a pc-case.

FYI: a T1k or T2k is much cheaper, and way less trouble, much faster too; the other one is good for troubleshooting cpu issues really.

The loudest of fan noise. I would search the forum for other T2k threads. Unless you can host it out side in your shed far away from your ears, you wont want to take this disaster home with you.

Cool to play with, but performance is terrible and ridiculously loud.

Loud is an understatement. My Sun box is in a small storage room in my basement that was once used for storing coal. The room is not sealed off completely so I had to stuff fiberglass insulation along the top.

If you're into extreme case modding you could probably mount the motherboard somehow in a normal case. You'd have to do away with the stock fans and create your own airflow scheme. The power supply seems pretty simple. A couple amps at +3.3 and then way more at +12. A normal ATX supply can handle that. You'd need a bracket of some kind to hold the riser card and video card. I'm not too familiar with SAS drives in regards to cabling.

Its certainly do-able and I'd enjoy the challenge but can't justify spending any more cash at the moment.