kramlq wrote:
I saw the odd system offered for crazy money as Buy-It-Now on eBay, but I thought that was just the usual eBay thing - resellers/recyclers trying to hit the jackpot.
That sort of thing goes on either way. It doesn't help if these usual suspects take notice, nor if certain systems are apparently already fairly rare, on top of that.
My interest was due to the fact that it is pretty much the end-of-the line for HP-UX on a true workstation form-factor system. The zx6000 seems to be essentially a rackmount system that's not in a rack.
You're probably thinking of the zx6000s with the so-called “deskside pedestal” mounts. By the way, which are in turn also rather rare. You'll either way still end up with a fairly deep system and, as a result of that, something that's perhaps not as versatile and comfortable as a more conventional-sized system like the zx2000. (Especially as the ‘feet’ of one of these “pedestal”-mounted zx6000s also stick out a bit and much more so than a zx2000 or c8000, in order to properly stabilize the chassis.)
Alver wrote:
I disagree with Hoff there
What's there to disagree? (In so far I recall he said
one of the
, not
the
.)
It has double the CPU power, and is still very, very quiet.
One of the problems is that it isn't always clear which zx6000 is a ‘true’ zx6000, particularly in the used/second-hand market. For instance, there are also rx2600s, even some with the aforementioned so-called “pedestal” mounts (which the rx2600, rx2600-2 and several similar form-factor systems also accommodate).
Although still reasonably quiet, certainly for and compared to other 2U rack-mounting server systems, a rack-mounting configured zx6000 or rx2600 will still not be
too
quiet and dissipate a fair amount of heat... Not to mention when compared to modern-day PCs.
It might be a problem in homes without air conditioning during summers. As purely a ‘hobby’ system, running for shorter periods of times, it might be okay of course. I ran systems like rx2600s (see my signature to get a taste of how many I once owned) for longer periods and it wasn't always practical, or fun, I can tell you.
I've had mine for a few years now and it's one brilliant machine. Just make sure to get the actual desktop versions - it was created as rackmount too, and those are a bit less quiet.
Although that isn't always easy to tell, as I mentioned above. So with a zx2000 it's more straightforward, as I believe zx2000s were never really offered with different fans (not even the rack-mounting configurations, as far as I'm aware).
The extra processing power provided by a zx6000, rx2600 or even rx2620 without dual-core processors is rather negligible in my opinion, let alone the necessity for it at home or as a typical ‘hobbyist’, since IPF (IA-64) is a fairly dead-end architecture. Even VMS will see an x86-64 port in the near future (which came as a pleasant surprise to many people, when those plans were announced). Something similar was promised for HP-UX once, but that seems uncertain now (read: rather unlikely), especially because HP seems to not mind to help their customers switch to Red Hat Linux x86-64 instead. (This is fairly enlightening on the subject: «
HP's x86 Plan to Replace Itanium and HP-UX with x86 and Linux
».)
Perhaps I'm not in tune with the true commercial value of these things though.
