The collected works of [[C|-|E]] - Page 2

That card was a monster back in time. Reminds me my old Elsa Gloria XXL, although the Elsa was less powerful by far. I would take it if it was PCI .

It is great that everything is back!

Veeeeeeeery nice!! It is nice to see my background image

I remember to accidentally plug a 125V computer PSU in a European 220V socket. The PSU was mounted in a SuperMicro dual Xeon Pentium III, very expensive at the moment, and it literally exploded (it was great because they did not install a fuse). I had to replace most of the components, substitute some tracks in the circuit and also the BIOS of the motherboard. Luckily, the computer resumed operation after this . There are many other horror histories because I am usually repairing old stuff but this was, by far, the worst.

Jesus Christ, that is a huge collection man, I am very sorry to hear that you have to part ways with it. I have the space to take it all but... in Spain, hehe . Anyway, have you consider to donate the most valuable machines to a museum?

Jesus, I could not be more jealous, jesus...

It is amazing the amount of great software that was available for the SGIs. Thank you for sharing this!

Funny enough, the plastics of the O2 are kinda delicate, but the internal structure of the computer turns out to be very robust . If you replace those plastics, it will probably work perfectly fine for ever and ever . If you need it, I have the top cover of the computer, it is not perfect, because the plastic tab was broken and I had to glue it with epoxi resin. However, if you just put it on top, nobody will notice.

I have a question, have you tried the computer with Pymol ? . I am using the program like crazy in the lab and I guess that it should be really fast running in that girl .

OMG, that is really a huuuge guy.

Hello guys!

I am considering to sell my server because I barely use it in the lab anymore. The machine is very dated, but also completely new. I mean, I assembled it some months ago using brand new components that I bought here and there.

These are the specs:

Mainboard: Intel SE7501HG2 (3 PCI slots; 2 PCI-X slots at 100 Mhz; 1 PCI-X slot at 133 Mhz and I think that two Gigabit Ethernet ports) . Anyway, it is better to check the official web page:
( http://www.intel.com/support/motherboar ... 007344.htm )
I have updated the BIOS and everything that can be updated.

Total Memory: 12GB ECC DIMM DDR266 Registered

Processors: 2 x Intel(R) Xeon(TM) MP CPU 3.00GHz (2T 3GHz/ 3GHz, 2x 512kB L2, 2x 4MB L3). They have one core, but two threads. They are NOT x64 CPUs

Hard disk drives: 2 x MAXTOR ATLAS10K5_146WLS (146.8GB, SCSI, SCSI-3, 10002rpm)

Graphic cards: Zotac NVIDIA GeForce GT 430 with 512 Mb (it is PCI, not PCI-E) and ATI Rage XL/XC (integrated in the motherboard)

Sound card: Creative Labs SB0570 [SB Audigy SE]

Other cards: two PCI cards, each one with 4 USB 2.0 ports

Storage: DVD-RW recorder and floppy disk drive .

Case: it is a big Supermicro with a nice 400W power supply. It has redundant fans and I checked it before mounting the other components. The case was a gift from a member of the forum that gave me an old server and it is NOT new.

The computer happily runs many operating systems: Windows 7, Windows 2008 Server, normal Linux distributions, etc. It can be used as a normal desktop computer and it is not even extremely noisy for a server. I my hands, it has been very reliable, although the mobo beeps quite a lot when you switch on the computer. This does not mean that is faulty. It first beeps because it does not find some cables that it is expecting to have connected when an Intel PSU is installed (they are for auxiliary power). Then it beeps because the BIOS does not “officially” support the CPUs, they are newer that the mobo and it cannot be updated anymore so you will have to live with the beeping warnings.

I am asking for 125 pounds , because all the components are basically new, including the hard disk drives and the DVD drive. It is quite heavy so, ideally, you should come an pick it up. I am actually living in London and the computer is located in area 2 (Hammersmith Hospital Campus). I have never had a problem with it but I cannot offer you any guarantee . However, you can come and check it just to be sure that it is as described and it is in perfect condition .

Hello!

I have some old components I saved from a PC that was going to be recycled. They are from 2001 but maybe somebody can find useful among them. So, I have:

- A Pentium 4 CPU . It has a Northwood core, 512 KB of L2 and is socket 478 FC-PGA2. It runs at 2,2 Ghz. I also have the CPU cooler for this guy (without fan).

- A P4 Xeon CPU . It has a Prestonia core, 512 KB of L2 and is socket 603, but also fits in the socket 604. It runs at 2,2 Ghz. I might have the cooler as well (also without the fan)

- One module of PC133 RAM (256Mb) . It was made by Samsung.

- A pair of Kingston KTC-ML370G3/4G DDR PC-2100R ECC Registered Server memory modules . It think that each module is 2Gb and I do not know it they are in perfect working condition or not. They look physically OK .

- An ATI RADEON 9200 SE /128Mb . It is AGP and does not need fan.

- A Geforce 8800 GTS OC / 320 Mb . This one is, of course, PCI-E and quite power-hungry (around 100W).

- I should also have a Geforce 8600 GT / 256 Mb . It is PCI-E as well and the fan on top of the card does not work. Anyway, I disconnected it and it was working perfectly fine .

- A PCI card with a Cirrus Logic CL-PD6729-QC-E chip . I think that is a PCI-to-PCMCIA Host Adapter and it should be able to control two PCMCIA devices.

Everything is for free, you just need to come and collect it, because I do not think that any of the pieces are worth sending anywhere . I am in London .

P.D: I have not tested these components, although the should work because they were removed from working computers.

The C64 is awesome ( O_o)

Well, the other day I saw some kids fascinated because one of them had played with something called Megadrive (SEGA Genesis). The others were not believing him ( ·_·). I am just 34...

Congratulations! Retr0brite works really really well is some cases and that computer looks better than new I recently used it to restore an old calculator and the difference was also amazing. However, it took me 3 days to restore the "original" condition.

I bought the Silverstone TJ-09W many years ago and I think that is still an extremely solid and very nice case:

http://silverstonetek.com/product.php?area=en&pid=94

I will keep if for the years to come, that is for sure

It would be a wonderful system for the lab where I am working! We run a lot of protein folding predictions and these require tons of Monte Carlo simulations. A system like that one would cut our running time to one week per simulation (it takes months with the clusters we are using nowadays) . Too bad we do not have the money to buy it!

jan-jaap wrote:
I usually don't keep PC hardware around long enough to compare it to my SGI's in terms of reliability. It's easy to complain about the (un)reliability of the PSU of a 1990 vintage 4D PowerSeries, but the truth is I have no idea whether a PC from that era would still work because I just don't have them. My experience with 'PC' server hardware is quite good as far as reliability goes, but I use Tyan or Supermicro boards, Xeon CPUs and ECC memory, and I retire them after ~ 5 years, before they fail. My current PC workstation is an HP Z600 with two hexacore Xeons and 48GB RAM -- best PC I ever saw. Side panels in solid aluminum, sounds like a vault door when you close them.

This is a very interesting discussion and I think that you really have a very valid point here. I know that we tend to mock Dells and many other PCs from particular vendors but in my hands they are super-reliable work-horses. My workstation in the lab is still a Dell T5400 from 2008 and it has been working 24/7 since we bought it, only stopping for the upgrades. It is a rock-solid machine and still quite fast for today standards. The same is true for many other old Dells, like the Optiplex 745 or 755 we have here, that have been silently working for many many years in a dark corner full of dust. I could say the same of the HPs or the Lenovos. I am running a cluster of many little Quad Core M57P Lenovos with 8Gb of RAM per unit and they have been performing flawlessly for years and years. My O2 has never failed, but I would not dare to let her ON for such a long time .

mopar5150 wrote:
Take any bad ass Dell and throw it around, store it out side for two years, ship it 3000 miles poorly packed and then tell me how reliable it is.

I am not completely sure about this... some of our Dells and HPs have been working in cold rooms (4ºC) for many many years and there they are, without any problem. And I am talking about cold rooms with lots of humidity because we are opening and closing the doors many times a day .

In fact, it would be interesting for the lab I work in, the problem is that Ebay is officially not the best source to buy this kind of HPC stuff (I think that we are not even allowed to use it) and then we would have to pay the collection of the monster, install it, make space in the datacenter, check if it still has some support from SGI and bla, bla, bla. At the end it is just easier to use one of the clusters we have available, they are much more powerful as well. I would love to have it from a pure hobbyist point of view but keeping it on would be extremely expensive. Moreover, you cannot have this in a normal room because of the heat and the noise level (even if you manage to plug it).

All in all, I think that I understand why the price is so cheap. It is not be best option for an institute or a company and it is a bit crazy to have it just for fun, it would cost like 1200 pounds per month to keep it running 24/7, and I am not even considering the amount of money that would be required to keep the room cool enough .

And you only need 28 of those generators to power the Altix! (not considering the air conditioning)

Good that I found a proper one to keep everything running!

http://www.generac.com/all-products/gen ... 00kw-250kw



It only needs around 70 litres of diesel per hour at full load, not bad.