My IBM server from 2000s

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itsasnowconemachine@reddit

Picture 3 is an interesting combo of English and German. Out of curiosity, in terms of SMP, does anybody know what AP and BSP mean?

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davegsomething@reddit

I love IBM servers! You missed the front panel shot!

I like to think of the businesses that still have them hosting some proprietary app from a closet still running today. I know that is the case for a lot of the old AIX boxes.

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I used to work for a company that had a shitload of AS/400 stuff stored in the basement simply because they had a lot of archived data from antediluvian times and were by law required to have hardware that could read it.

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CzechWhiteRabbit@reddit

Oh yeah. Archive! I'm a sometimes retired IT guy, sometimes retired therapist. Bounce back and forth these days. But one of my temp contracts do an IT, there was a locked room, that apparently, I needed to get the key for, because I was updating laptops. Well, walk in the room, turn to my right turn the light on, about the size of a classroom. And there's just these endless cardboard boxes that I have to navigate around, to get to the laptop bunker.

Stamped on the side of the box, it said, I omega, 250 zip. I thought to myself no way. Factory sealed. I gently open one of the ones that's already opened, there was a carton, full of nothing but 250 zip discs!

And each one of these cartons, there was still sealed, five pack of 250 meg zip disks! And one box, had about I think they said 120 zip disks. And they were stacked five high, six wide! In a room with a 15 ft ceiling. Endless cardboard. The site manager asked me if I wanted to take one home, because they're like useless now. And they couldn't care less. I said if I had a zip drive! Lol.

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DeepDayze@reddit

One I know of kept a System 34 around for that purpose too.

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Bs0Dd@reddit (OP)

https://imgur.com/a/LH0j327

It's a little dirty and I haven't gotten around to cleaning it yet.

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davegsomething@reddit

Cool front panel!!

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DeepDayze@reddit

IBM made some great server hardware for sure!

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alex_hedman@reddit

Those 1 GHz Slot 1 CPUs and 1 GB PC133 sticks are pure porn, even for a collector

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monkeyboywales@reddit

I managed to keep a few 512 sticks, but 1 GB Dimms. Oh my.

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CzechWhiteRabbit@reddit

Yeah 1 gig dims, those must have been a pretty penny back in the day. I thought I was rocking it, when I had 512 MB

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CzechWhiteRabbit@reddit

rocking that PC-133! 😂

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Ok_Calligrapher_9281@reddit

Are those hot swappable power supplies?

I worked for about two years selling PCs to corporate accounts. We mostly sold Compaq (pre HP) and IBM, including a big AS/400 business, although I did not sell the midrange products.

I once did a configuration for a rack mount Compaq server that was well over $30,000. The customer said, "Great. Order us two." Those were the days.

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Haig-1066-had@reddit

Where are the SCSI drives?

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Ok_Calligrapher_9281@reddit

They should be inside the black cage located at the bottom right of the case in the first photo.

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Savings_Art5944@reddit

Let's seer her from the front as well.

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Bs0Dd@reddit (OP)

https://imgur.com/a/LH0j327

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Savings_Art5944@reddit

Nice. I have always like the IBM style of the 00's. I'd keep the case and put a modern mobo in it.

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SaturnFive@reddit

Badass! I always thought dual P3s, ECC, and SCSI would make an awesome retro server.

Would be a good host for Server 2000, OpenBSD, or an older version of Debian.

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UsefulChicken8642@reddit

Why are pcs from that era so aesthetically pleasing And they didn’t even mean to be. The coolest air cooled cpu coolers I’ve ever seen always come from 2000 era pcs

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ZappySnap@reddit

I mean, I built several in this era, and I definitely don't think they were aesthetically pleasing. My Athlon XP machine I built in 2001 was a good machine, but it looks like a rats nest of cables and wires.

https://imgur.com/uq9UD9G

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UsefulChicken8642@reddit

Yeah when I got into pc building RBG and clear cases was starting to take over. Gotta say even with the wire nest that thing is beautiful. It’s bigger than my first apartment and it had that ADORABLE 40mm fan. What’s that thing even cooling? The purple pci slots, the 400w PSU that’s bigger than my current 850 watt PSU. I lOVE It. Cheers to the generation that did so so much with what now would considered so so little 🍻

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zeno0771@reddit

The market was considerably different back then. Also, nostalgia.

The air coolers from back then had an advantage in that CPUs really didn't need to do enough to justify hanging 3 lbs of Noctua off your board (Intel's 90nm Prescott CPUs changed that; they were nicknamed "Press-Hot" for a reason).

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PigletNew6527@reddit

put on debian or alpine on it and it will run okay lol

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rjchute@reddit

I have this exact same server! But the onboard VRM is toast, so I can only use the CPU slot with the modular VRM... consequently, mine is single CPU only (I have two IBM-branded P3 733, but one Slot 1 terminator installed..) why both don't use the modular VRM I don't know, and I've been too lazy to try and do some board level repair to see if I can fix the onboard VRM.

In any case, it serves me well as a Windows 2000 domain controller and file server.

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abagofcells@reddit

Did you have to do any configuration to only use the second CPU? Because I also have one of those, that doesn't boot, and only give an error about the VRM.

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rjchute@reddit

Yup that's what mine did as well. I bought a new modular VRM off eBay for maybe $20 (don't remember exactly), and a Slot 1 terminator. Put the terminator in the first slot and actual P3 733 in the second slot that uses the modular VRM. Seems to like that well enough and boots with one processor. I happened to find all IBM-branded parts, but I assume generic VRM and terminator would work fine too.

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