IBM

So I finally made time and tested the Intellistation 265.

First impressions:

The system I have is in decent shape, not perfect though as the front door is broken off. No matter, got it for $125 so it was a decent deal overall and I intend to drive it into the ground.

Has a copy of AIX 5.3 installed, so I booted into that. I was pleasantly surprised at smit, the management tool. I don't usually care for menu based config, but they give a surprising degree of flexibility. Already impressed! Added a user and started X. Well they didn't install CDE and I don't have the orginal CDs. Checked RPM for a compiler... nada. So I'm going to be busy obtaining an AIX 5.3 copy to install the missing pieces.

System is overall pretty quiet, but its obnoxious that I have to plug in two PSUs... Other than that it is quiet while running and not running. Heavy as a motherfucker, though, the thing clocks in at 82 lbs.

Plans for the system currently are to mess around and learn AIX. Once I learn AIX comfortably I'm going to try getting FreeBSD running on it and using it as a ZFS/SAS host controller. It actually only should consume a max of 480W according to the PSU ratings so not bad at all.

I've got a 285, really nice machine, but I haven't really got round to doing anything with it yet, I plan to run PostgreSQL on it. The only thing I've done, is put AIX 7 on it.

And yes, my system is so quiet I have to check the green light on the front to see if I've left it on.

One of the things I didn't learn quick enough was the 'on the fly' disk repartitioning. Had I known about it, I possible wouldn't have stayed at AIX 5.whatever.

How is the 285 cooled?

AIX's "soft" partitions are part of what makes JFS great.

Without pulling the side off, just some big orange fans I think. Nothing special.

Interesting you ask that, I wonder if anyone has water cooled their Octane?

Well, I guess compared to the Quad, the POWER5+ in the 285 is clocked slower, and I imagine there were power utilization improvements between generations (though both the POWER5+ and the 970MP are 90nm).

uunix wrote: Without pulling the side off, just some big orange fans I think. Nothing special.

Interesting you ask that, I wonder if anyone has water cooled their Octane?

Watercooling is a ripoff, its louder and if you have a good heatsink, less efficient.

System is now reloaded with a full AIX install, unfortunately I can't find a copy of the AIX cc, so I will deal with GCC... oh how I loathe it so. Oh well

xlc is licensed anyway. Get used to gcc. xlc does generate better code in some situations, but IBM has contributed quite a bit to gcc, and remember that gcc was part of the Apple PowerPC toolchain as well.