Computer of the week...

[monoflap]

This might be a stupid question, but what kind of operating system would you run all that gear on. Because I know Windows has problems getting just 4Gb of ram to work.

[ajmilton]

This might be a stupid question, but what kind of operating system would you run all that gear on. Because I know Windows has problems getting just 4Gb of ram to work.

the upper-end windows server 2003 products can apparently handle massive amounds of RAM. from what i saw on msft's website, server 2003 RC 2 SP 2 is supposed to be able to handle 2 TB of ram. i'm not sure what sort of configuration that's running though. it wouldn't surprise me if that was part of a cluster design.

of course, it wouldn't surprise me with that hefty a system that it's being used for database management or some sort of hardcore numbercrunching and running some *nix for that purpose.

but yeah, i doubt it's going to be running winXPPro

[a.Bird]

How did you get a photo of my mobo? Did you sneak into my house or what??

Unfortunately, I'm having trouble running Duke3d on this thing. Any help??

[Airbozo]

This might be a stupid question, but what kind of operating system would you run all that gear on. Because I know Windows has problems getting just 4Gb of ram to work.

Well they were going to run windows server 2003 x64 on these systems but found better performance under linux. I think they are running fedora core on these systems with a custom built kernel (stripped down except the necessary bits). Currently they are not doing very much clustering as each system services a specific customer or small group of customers. They also found that 16gb of memory is the "sweet spot" for thier applications. Meaning that more than 16gb does not provide much more performance for the $.

[Airbozo]

OK Time for the next system. I may post 2 this week since this is an oldie.

This system is old (1993 era) by computer terms but I thought I would post it since there are a couple of interesting features that I like. Instead of posting pictures I am posting a link to a site that has all the pictures I was going to take, but much better quality.

The system in question is the SGI Indigo2 High Impact.

http://hardware.majix.org/computers/...2/purple.shtml

This system is cool because of the way it breaks down for service and some of the cooling features it has. The "feet" that transform the system into a tower model have built in cooling ducts that allow the airflow to be directed to the front. The drives are all sled mounted (sometimes the sleds are more expensive than the whole system), including the cdrom (you could also mount a third hd there). The side of the chassis opens to install graphics and option cards (yes that IS an EISA bus). This system also takes "normal" memory instead of proprietary memory like most sgi and sun workstations, and even though it takes 4 dimms at a time (for a total of 12), it does not matter if you install them from the front or back, the system will recognise and use what is installed. Originally the system was only capable of a maximum of 384mb, but with some of the newer dimms will actually work with 1gb. This is however unsupported by sgi, but then again the whole system is too old for support anyway. I personally have one of these systems and used to use it alot. Mine has the higher end graphics installed that take up 3 slots, plus a digital video option card. This chassis and case could be modded to hold a regular atx mobo.

Discuss....

[nzcubey]

wow thats oldschool awesome

[nil8]

That cpu heatsink is badass.
What do you use that thing for? Doom?

[DaveW]

Philips made a graphics card? Wow!

...that thing could well be one of the first ever case mods. Did anyone think about that?

-Dave

[bigbaddog]

Purple Computers ...reminds me of the surplus Intergraph workstations I used to buy/sell from Alabama DOT a few years ago. Old dual PII SCSI machines. Made a pretty good gaming tower back in 1999, except for the dual PCI graphic card...lots of memory for the day (80mb) but slow GPU.

[Airbozo]

That cpu heatsink is badass.
What do you use that thing for? Doom?

Hehe I personally only use the one at work for testing/validating parts for customers. I used to use the one I own for some video editing until I wiped out the hard drive and lost the license key for the software. They would not renew it because I could not prove I owned the license (lost the receipt). It will run doom though. Doom 1.


DAVE: The graphics card was designed and spec'd by sgi, but alot of the chips were made by phillips and intel, then manufactured by sgi. That was the best video card ever made for the EISA bus...

These Indigo2's were direct competitors to the Integraph machines. At one point sgi was going to buy Integraph but instead only bought the rights to one of thier machines (zx10 I think).