IBM

Thank you for the hint. I think you're right, booting the machine will also work with 4.1.4, so getting rid of the root pw will most probably be possible.

In case that one needs to reinstall the OS, 4.1.5 will be the only AIX Version which was fully supported for these boxes. There are posts from other forums indicating that using other versions keeps you stuck to the command line, no X.

Anyway, my problem is that my AIX archive at home goes back only down to AIX 5.1 - I tried to boot the machine with 5.1 but, of course, with no success. So any help in getting my hands on a 4.1.4 CD 1 or, better, 4.1.5 CD 1 is highly welcome.
I hope that I'm not breaking any forum rules with this request. AFAIK an AIX 4 CD was bundeled with the systems, so I think that the use of a medium from another source won't break any EULA's.

BTW, I found an interesting information about using backup copies here: http://www-aix.gsi.de/~kraemer/COLLECTION/IBM/rs6k860.html . It seems that these machines are picky regarding CD copies which for sure will make the recovery more difficult.
Next week I'll start a safari through our AIX archives at work but with little hope to find some original 4.1.5 CD's.
Again, I would be really thankful if someone helps me with getting this fine little piece of IBM gear back to a fully operational status.

i have:

POWER IntelliStation 9111-285

specs:
2-way POWER5+ 1.9Ghz L3 36MB cache,
12GB of DDR2,
4 x 73GB SCSI 10.000rpm,
GXT6500p

here is the video of it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9K6CviWnGA
its powered on and it's quite quiet workstation...

running AIX 6.1 on it

Intellistation 275:

1GHz Power4
4GB DDR2
36GB HD + 72 GB HD (broken)
GXT4500P

Intellistation 285: got it really cheap and the description on ebay was a bit of understatement

1,9 GHz Power 5+
8GB DDR2 (The description said only 4)
72GB HD (mentioned in description) + 3x36GB HD (not mentioned DD)
GXT6500P

The 285 is really quiet in comparison to the 275 and faster at booting.
I found it awesome that the guy I bought it from also packed three more HDs in the workstation.

Quite interesting: The 72 and one of the 36 disks are quiet....with only those turned on the 285 isn't louder than an average desktop.
But...switch in the other two 36 disks (same IBM OEM) and they go LOUD...they're even louder than the Seagate Cheetah in my SGI Fuel, although the noise is not as high pitched.

Any idea why those 36 GB disks have that different noise levels?

Probably just age.

Oh what the heck.

Intellistation A Pro 6217 - my dev machine - Dual Opteron 290, 6GB DDR333, Ubuntu 10.04
Intellistation A Pro 6217 - wife's main desktop - Dual Opteron 285, 6GB DDR333, Win 7 Pro
Thinkpad T60 - mine - C2D T7200, 2GB, Win XP Pro
Thinkpad T60 - wife's - C2D T7200, 2GB, Win XP Pro
Thinkpad X41T - mine - P-M 1.5GHz, 1.5GB, Win XP Tablet

Hrm - sure, why not. I don't generally have a lot of interest in IBM hardware, but I have a healthy respect for POWER and much love for Thinkpads. In odd corners I've got:

1 x Thinkpad 600X (PII @ 500MHz, 1024x768 panel)
2 x Thinkpad T23 (P3 @ 1.13GHz, P3 @ 1.2GHz; both with 1400x1050 14" panels)
1 x Thinkpad R52 (latest acquisition, Centrino @ 2GHz, 15" 1400x1050 panel)
1 x Thinkpad T61p (Penryn Core 2 Duo @ 2.4GHz)

Oh yeah, and one 5170 PC/AT that I saved from being recycled, state unknown.

I don't have any fancy server or mainframe IBM stuff, but I do own a PS/2 Model 25 (8086) and a ThinkPad T21.

Thinkpad 365X (Pentium 120, 24Mb RAM, 810Mb HD, 10.4" TFT 800x600 panel)
For network access it has a 3Com 3c589 PCMCIA card fitted.

This was my first laptop and actually the only one I've ever spent my own money on.
Even though I bought it used it was a not insignificant investment for me at the time (1998) but well worth it.

-tgc

An update to mine I now I have a Thinkpad 720 which is an MCA one...it's pretty interesting but the screen is awful.

IBM PS/2 model 25SX and ThinkPad A21e - both saved right from the dumpster in really bad shape

A book I recently read nicely outlined this

Sounds interesting - would be great if you could cite the title...

Thank's a lot!

Cheers

HDC

eMGee wrote: As I may've posted already, I used to own a POWER4 system. Well, I hated it ( or , ended up hating it) and got rid of it! I'd say the qualitative spirit of IBM died somewhere in the 1970s, since then they've been not much worse or better than M$ in my book. The only IBM system I still own is a boring xSeries 346 (that I use for network-distributed render jobs). I used to have a quad-processor xSeries 365, but I got rid of it because it (as a mere 4U system) produced almost as much sound as a fully-populated Origin3200 system and it didn't have EMT64 Xeons.

I only have this system because I found it real cheap. It makes terrible noise. HP and others makes far superior 2U RM systems, in my humble opinion of course.

SAQ wrote: IBM POWER kit holds its value entirely too well.

What do you mean? I often see n-way POWER4, and increasingly POWER5, stuff thrown on eBay for under $ ~150. I can certainly understand why (I got rid of my 9114-275 real fast), it's such low quality trash and IBM is just the worst company second after M$ in my opinion. Many people (read: private individuals, i.e. enthusiasts), clearly, don't care for AIX. There's absolutely no community and extremely little F/OSS porting work in progress. I guess IBM doesn't care much (read: at all), which shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone either. IBM only got into the UNIX business because DEC, HP, Sun, SGI and such were involved and were possibly endangering IBM and its aging mainframe racket. (A book I recently read nicely outlined this.)

Why can't it be M$ and IBM to die, instead of DEC and SGI? There's clearly no justice, LOL.

I have to disagree with you... There is a lot of opensource software being compiled and packaged in .rpms for AIX.. and it's fairly up2date http://www.perzl.org/aix/
Also my 9111-285 is build like a tank and it works very well.. currently the fastest RISC box i own.

eMGee wrote: I'd say the qualitative spirit of IBM died somewhere in the 1970s, since then they've been not much worse or better than M$ in my book.

Blasphemy! Kill him with fire!

But seriously, POWER has blown everything away for a long time now. SPARC and Itanium aren't even competitive in performance. If you absolutely need the fastest systems money can buy, IBM delivers. Just because it doesn't get featured in movies doesn't mean it isn't an interesting platform. AIX is a solid operating system, albeit it is probably only intended as part of a DB2, WebSphere, or Oracle stack more so than for general use these days (with the exception of government HPC). It still does have some interesting features such as HACMP and hot patching the kernel. PowerVM is the real kicker. IBM has a long lead on virtualization. Mix and match AIX, Linux, and 'i' depending on what needs and legacy apps you need to support. Also, the xlC compiler is top notch.

In general, I find IBM gear nice to work with once you've learned the tricks. It may lack some of the personality of SGI, but I've never found quality lacking in the high end IBM gear. Sure, the PC biz went south after the PS/2, and there were a couple mediocre RS/6000s like the 43p but that was also a sub-$5k workstation. Modern X servers are pretty nice IMHO - I place IBM and HP on level ground at the top of the heap.

For many years AIX has been at the top of the heap in terms of things you could do to tweak the OS without having to restart. Granted, my experience has been with POWER1 and POWER2 hardware, so say more about why the new stuff is trash (I do like to know before I waste money on it, but have been considering a POWER4 for a while to see what IBM's done since '95).

published in 1997 by DIGITAL Press.

Why not read a few IBM books published by IBM press or Microsoft books published by MICROSOFT press?

It may lack some of the personality of SGI

One of the best (certainly most amusing) understatements, ever.

IBM gear has lots of personality... my thinkpad just oozes that perfect badass thinkpad look that ALL thinkpads have, IBM or Lenovo. I even customized it with some contact paper over two years ago and that turned out nice IMO and has held up surprisingly well, thinkpads (ALL Thinkpads) are so sexy to begin with they are hard to improve and easy to screw up. Sometimes the paper is darker than the thinkpad, and sometimes the paper is lighter than the thinkpad. It depends on the light

ot: eMGee, you might not approve of what I did to my alpha to spruce it up viewtopic.php?f=18&t=16719149&p=7289091&#p7289091 yes, you might call me a 'modder' but rest assured, it is still an alphastation 600 inside, and always will be. I also added black foam air filters to my octane, more of a practical thing but it greatly improved the aesthetic as well. the thread/post eludes me.

It worked the other way around for me, once I learned about IBM gear, I became more and more agitated and repulsed. But especially after learning about IBM itself! (And having to deal with its personnel.)

I guess you have never tried to deal with SGI! IBM was quick to sell me that replacement battery when I called, call under 10 minutes, but I tried to talk to SGI about a monitor cable a few years ago (back when they were still SGI) and I got shuffled around their sales people a bunch, put on hold, talked to the same guy twice, and eventually hung up and bought the damn cable on ebay. Good riddance to SGI, may they rot in hell for having such an incompetent sales team. How do you expect to stay in business when you can't sell your customers your product? HP is the best though. Get your service manual, look up the part number (for me it was dv8000 hinges), type the part # into their site and your CC and address, and the part magically appears a few days later.

I will agree their desktop PCs are crap... for me it came down to the Intellistation A pro or HP xw9300... the IBM was $200, the HP was $500 (for about the same spec, the big difference being IBM had quadro 4500 and SCSI disk, and HP had radeon x300, sata disk... easy to upgrade myself) but the difference was immediately obvious in person. It was just missing on something intangable, and the non-standard two-piece planar (mainboard) turned me off.

So I may be a big thinkpad fan, and a big windows fan, but at least we can agree on something!

I will say it is pretty stupid to base a whole company on one product or bad experience. BUT here we are!

No.

No where near there yet but play nice.

I am neither defending or attacking IBM.
My 9114-275 has a poor build quality on the plastics..
The older white RS/6000s like the J30 were built like tanks..
My 7025-F80 isn't too bad build quality wise..
i am a registered IBM partner for all the good it does me.

R.

PymbleSoftware wrote: No where near there yet but play nice.

PymbleSoftware makes a good point. Being involved in a conversation here is not much different than doing so in real life. If you can't abide opinions other than your own, or all of your responses are sarcastic or condescending, you soon find you have no one to talk to.

eMGee wrote: Have you ever used AIX and POWER/PPC systems, or had to deal with IBM's customer support for those?

Haven't had to deal with IBM's support for UNIX, but when I did deal with them (Thinkpad, pre-Lenovo) they were courteous, fast and efficient. Of course you have to pay for that, once the warranty/service agreement ran out they were pretty much none of the above - but then again that's the official policy of most companies. The helpful people who were at SGI support and DEC support were doing that pretty much "under the table".