Quote:
Or, what makes you think that the Multia was not intended to be useful as a standalone machine?
I think that the multia was a great machine, yet, physically too fragile (unlike the sun LX/IPC/IPX, notably). It was very versatile (scsi, ide, floppy, network, pci slot, and a great video card); and so quiet! I owned 2 by 1996. Unfortunately, they're not so modular, and when they break, they break; and there's not much to do about it.
Amazingly, another system I really liked was the DS10L (and NOT the clunky desktop DS10), it was a great server, I'd gladly trade a few DS10 for a DS10L. Running Digital Unix or OpenVMS in 1U of rackspace was neat, and those boxes are pretty snappy and well designed. I wish they had made a DS15L.
I also wish it would be possible to run OpenVMS on Altix 350, that would be... interesting; unfortunately, too much SGI magic in there that would prevent it to work.