+MrTVintro Good idea :) . I have a HP Blade server with a plexi glass cover. Used to belong to Blizzard once. Were selling them for a good cause and I managed to obtain one.
dispatcher7007 the Pi does have lower power consumption going for it... not to mention, you can run an ass-tonne more disks on it just by whacking a load of powered hubs on it! As long as the Pi gets its 1000mA of power it's fine! The disks can all be run on external power... might be more plugs, but you shouldn't run into any errors with regards to limitations in the maximum storage pool capacity!! With an XServe, you're limited to 500GB per drive since it's IDE based!! The Pi will happily control more than 5X that capacity through ATAPI bridges to SATA disks!!
Used to have a couple of these at a company I worked at. The hard drive trays were spring loaded making it super easy to break the RAID if you forgot to engage the lock... and if you did lock it, the USB ports were disabled which could be quite inconvenient such as having software that required USB dongle for licensing.
Apart from the power supply and the fans, the case itself with some modification would work great for a fileserver, or external SATA raid drive case of a file server. I mean rack cases start from at least 100e.
aserta Yes, but those fans, known as "blowers", have been around for over 15 years. One would think someone with his experience would have seen one before. :P
These were great hardware-wise back then. Still got one running after 10+ years of service. (they get louder when starting back up after a power failure)
Ziginox Mainly serving files through AFP and creating postscript files with osx-exclusive outdated software, which I believe was the main reason that people bought these
+Ziginox were useing mac minis for netinstall and ast just much better and faster now of days, not sure if we ever had a xserve before the mac minis were using a white macbook lol it worked
I think you might be a little slow on blower fans they suck from the bottom and blow out the side although you were kinda right they did have tight ventilation on the intake
Old hardware like this is actually quite useful to the right people. I'm a programmer, and a lot of software out there has a 20+ year lifespan. The oldest code in Android dates back to 1991 at least. Desktop Linux systems have GNU software dating to the mid-80's. Hardware has become so fast as of late that you can simply run the same old software, with security updates, on the same old hardware for 10-15 years without any problems whatsoever. With RAID it doesn't matter if hard drives die. Everything else is equally modular. In the rack you aren't running modern, bloated Windows applications. Instead, you're running efficient, purpose-built software that runs great on 1 GHz processors.
+John Gotts Yep, for sure. And before there was Linux there was Unix, developed back in the '70s. FreeBSD is a notable descendant of the BSD variant of Unix. And, in turn, OSX contains a large amount of code derived from FreeBSD. Good stuff!
+John Gotts I'm not sure there's any original code left in todays (running) linux kernels, especially for the arm architecture and the Android needs. Maybe in the input layers, and possibly some relating to memory management and/or process management. That said, the kernel as a whole is that old, of course.
blitzwing1 I certainly don't consider it a POS. For one thing I don't know any more cost effective choice. It has it's problems for sure, though. Did Linus call it a bloated POS?
blitzwing1 If you are looking for high performance and SMP, have you tried DragonflyBSD? Check here: www.dragonflybsd.org/performance/ Also, Scientific Linux (a rebuild of RHEL): www.scientificlinux.org/
blitzwing1 Are those slides available somewhere? Not contending any particular point, it's interesting to know what the devs think about it so it'd be a nice little read :)
Are you sure the fans are not sucking up air from below and blowing it through the heatsink? Oh, and could you tear apart a Delta power supply once? I've heard you say that Delta power supplies are good quality in multiple videos, but I'd like to know what you think it is that makes them good quality.
+Naomi Baron Jonnyguru does PSU teardowns and excellent reviews. He's done a few delta server units. Worth a read to be sure. www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReviews&op=Story4&reid=312 www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReviews&op=Story&reid=314 More recently premium quality retail places have gone for Delta OEM units. Here's an excellent review of an excellent unit. Top quality for sure. www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReviews&op=Story&reid=101
+Naomi Baron I'm pretty sure the fans sucks the air up from below as you say. He probably screwed up about which way the air goes through these types of fans.
+Naomi Baron I have a couple old Delta ATX PSUs, a 350 and 400 that I pulled out of HPs. They are at least 10 years old and still work perfectly, I use them as backups and for testing purposes. Can't kill em
Correct: the intake region for high-speed (i.e. 15krpm+) blower fans on the bottom of the fan itself. There is little room between the fan and the bottom of the chassis. The intake air comes from the front of the chassis, and the exhaust blows across components (CPU HSF, RAM, MB, etc.) and out the rear of the chassis. This requires the chassis be as "airtight" as possible, forcing "linear" airflow from front to back. It also requires that the MB and HSFs be designed to cater to said airflow (e.g. fins of HSFs must be aligned front-to-back, DIMM slots must be placed the same way, etc.). A MB not designed that way, or an HSF installed wrong (rotated) can/will result in overheating. The design shown is still used today in 1U boxes (see any of Supermicro's 1U servers). Decent datacentres also cater to this through "hot-cold aisle" design, where cold air is pumped in through the floor of the aisle where the fronts of servers are (which in turn requires all open/unused areas of a rack be filled with panels (i.e. no open slots in a rack)) -- Google search and you can see what I'm talking about. Overall, the design works quite well.
About the size and noise: both are normal even for modern servers. Mainstream servers are typically 700-800mm deep (can be over 900mm for larger, say, 4-socket servers). As for the fans - if they spin up to maximum RPM (e.g. if a fan failure occurs and the other fans compensate for it) typical rack devices are deafeningly loud.
This is almost painful to watch, I feel so old... And those beautiful boxes at the end, genuine dream machines! And I'm not even a fanboy, never having owned a single Apple device m..
+Stein-Erik Dahle Haha, I bought few of these, thou' the bit never PPC variants. They'll look nice as coffee-table in my living room someday when I have the time.
In fact this kind of "Squirrel-cage"-fans is used very often in 1HE server cages. It sucks in the air from the base panel and throws out the air with pretty high speed to the back (here, through the cage with the CPU(s). Therefore it sucks in cold air from the front through the hard drive cages because hard drives can't stand that heat and the fan then blows in direction of the hotter modules, like RAM, CPU and expansion cards.
+Slartibartfas042 I ever came across one in an HP workstation. That thing sure was noisy. Never understood why someone would put one of those in a workstation.
+Naomi Baron Oh yeah, you're absolutely right for a workstation. On the other hand - for servers this kind of "hair dryers" are pretty common. In fact, the 4cm diameter standard fans that you could use at the 1 Height-Unit servers (widely known as pizza boxes) as maximum size are even louder than the radial ones. :-)
+Slartibartfas042 Yeah the 40mm ones you get can be quite long and have 2 counter rotating impellers. In many cases they draw 1A + at 12V and are indeed loud (decent airflow and monster static pressure though) But squirrel cage are just about deal for this application. They're also common on graphics cards where they had been part of the standard reference design for years. I think people underestimate how much air they can pull from a very narrow width below the fan, they are quite different beasts than "normal" fans (also called Axial I think?)
problem is, you can't really double up blowers. dual 40mm fans are for improved reliability as well as performance. one dies - cpu heats up, alerts go off, someone stops and services the box. blower dies - server stops unexpectedly.
I used to go to RPI, which had several locations around campus where you could drop off electronics for recycling. Dumpster diving was very popular there, with much cool stuff to be had. (I assume this is still the case, but the administration seems to have a goal of eliminating everything good at RPI, so maybe they're gone now.) I think the electronics recycling program was established by one guy in the waste department many years ago, so if your school doesn't have something similar, talk to people about setting it up. And be sure to mention that allowing dumpster diving will reduce the amount they have to pay the recycling company to take.
In my area they have recycling centers but they wont let you take any thing because they want to sell it and if there are any dumpsters open you can actually be fined for taking stuff out of them if you get caught of course, but lots of places have been getting thoughts crusher dumpsters sigh.
really cool that it still works!! that means companies CAN make modern equipment that can work for longer periods. Reliable for 10 years or more and not die on you within 3 years !!
3:52 Those are blower type fans - they suck air from below and blow hot air to the back of the chassis. Those are popular on 1U type servers, but sounds like hairdryers.
One thing about the G4s is they ran cool. I had an emac back in the day, massivly overclocked it and no additional cooling was required. A great CPU. Shame MS chose intel.
When my employers downsized we ended up sitting on a huge pile of surplus computer stuff, much of which (e.g. 32 bit Sun workstations) we couldn't even give away. Some ended up as props in movies. One of our downsized servers was a Sun E450, hostname kenny. One day we killed kenny...
i worked in server rooms for a couple of years and only ever saw two of these in the field on two separate occasions. they were very expensive compared to their similar spec linux/windows based counterparts so basically nobody deployed them.
They weren't very popular for "general purpose" stuff. Most of the time they were simply used as a file server speaking the apple file protocol or for remote user profiles so you could log in to your desktop from every Mac in your company network.
Any fan shaped like a snail shell is centrifugal, and the suction is always the center opening and the discharge is the part with the largest tangental cross-section, ie., the rectangular outlet. Source: many successful rebuilds, and a few mistakes.
most servers go into a failsafe mode thermally when it detects the case is off which causes all fans to go to 100% RPM. It tries like heck to save itself. Once the case is put back on, it should ramp back down to normal, quiet (for a server) mode. Also, racks are designed to pull cold air from the front, hot out the back.
That board the HDDs would attach to is generally referred to as a backplane. If the HDD are IDE then it could be IDE link, or could be aggregated into some proprietary thing. Usually you see things like this they are using SCSI, SAS, FC, SATA backplanes.
Man Dave, for the love of god. Do more teardowns of all the stuff you have laying around. I'm still waiting for your microdrive teardown for instance, and all the stuff that people are constantly sending you in that you briefly mention in your mailbag videos but then they vanish into storage or something.
The Apple server is a headless, rackmount server. It does not generally have video of any type. The PCI slot is mostly for networking , FiberChannel and scsi raid disk drive array controller.. The disc tray on the front isn't ide, it's sCA SCSI . Hot unplugable. The configuration I evaluated cost around $15,000. W8gb, dual giganit network and FC RAID.
Where I live it is illegal to throw away these things to a dumpster. You need to take them to an e-waste disposal site. Where is this dumpster located?
I have a bunch of "ancient" PCs around here. One is set up as a jukebox and TV unit in the shop. Couple others hold service manuals, tool manuals and such. Those old machines work well for that type of stuff. Putting a .pdf on the screen doesn't take a lot of power..
The bridge board you're talking about at 5:27 probably it's the IDE RAID controller. I see a chip marked *Promise*, which is a famous manufacturer of disk storage controllers. Probably it's just a software RAID controller (all the RAID stuff is processed by the main CPU which is running the controller's firmware), because "true" RAID controllers have their own CPU and buffer RAM, which here appear to be both missing. That chip it's just an IDE interface chip.
+mima14031985 Apple for years sell renamed Promise devices (like Vtrak ...) so it is not surprise that they use their solutions. It is not so uncommon practice, Dell did same with EMC (now Dell own EMC) only problem with Apple that they sell Promise products with their badge for 5 times greater price then Promise. And you are right Promise at that time did not made hardware RAID controllers, they did all in software (and in their SAN solutions they used i860 processors for RAID).
+Stein-Erik Dahle You can get excellent server PSUs on eBay for practically $shipping. Some are better than others, and many have proprietary connectors. The best one I've scored is a sony APS 112 form a sunblade workstation. I does 5V @ 70A and 3.3V @ 90. Thing is a monster and beautiful inside. www.flickr.com/photos/dork_vader/albums/72157638625275205
Sam Fedorka Oh, what a beauty... Maybe you have some photos of PSUs with more amps and some huge bus bars? Btw, does it have Synchronous Rectification or just Schottky diodes? Oh, i see diodes, are they soldered to bus bar? Power transformers secondary windings consist of litz wire?
Intel 21154 is a PCI bridge chip, probably just expanding the PCI bus for more slots. Interesting that it uses the Digital (DEC) part scheme (many Digital semiconductors before they were bought by Intel used 21xxx), so it may be an older part they inherited and rebranded. Other examples are the Dec Tulip ethernet chip 21140, Alpha processors like 21064, 21164, and 21264
I have a large HP Proliant DL160 G6 rack server, it's even bigger and a LOT noisier. Pretty similar inside though, they haven't changed much through 2000-2016 in terms of layout.
Clock speed has nothing to do with processor performance. Those processors were fairly powerful for their time despite having a low clock speed. Today of course they wouldn't do too well
I would like to take that case- scrap all of the [cr}apple stuff, and build a nice socketed dual processor machine within it. That would be a nice challenge...
TrainMasterMan I strongly suspect Apple had an alternative processor module with Xeons, available only to the secret team that created the X86 port of OS/X. The use of a generic industry connector and an Intel chipset are the biggest clues. Maybe they even considered making those modules available to early adopters if there was enough market. Personally I have only a bit of experience with the outside of a model that had two huge air intakes on the front, between 3 (not 4) drive bays, but I don't remember if it was x86 or PPC based.
Bloody hell you must have some of the best dumpsters in Australia. The best I have ever found in a bin was an empty Power Mac G5 case. I turned it into overclocked gaming system 🎚⌨
Unfortunately Apple didn't continue 19" computers at all. But these computers shrunk massively, so it's clearly a simple task to fit the motherboard of a modern Apple server in there. And since you don't really need any PCI cards in a standard server, you could use the space to fit another server in there! Either for redundancy or just simply having two machines in there. It also can't be tough to exchange the IDE connectors and fit 4 handsome 6TB HDDs in there. You'd have a neat little BEAST in a small 19" rack device! Lovely!
Huh, never seen the inside of one. I do have around 6 of these still operating in the data centre I work at, among some other prehistoric equipment. The fans would have been sucking from the bottom and blowing out the back, at least that's how most with that style fan work.
I know these things are old and out of date...but I think they are awesome. I don't really know why Apple discontinued their Xserve series. I know the MacPro uses Xeon processors and that's what most modern servers use these days, however the Mac Pro can only go up to 12-core where they have servers capable of handling dual 22-core CPUs
I have a brand new sealed one from the same year, got from an old electronics thrift store slash scrap yard for $10. I thought it looked too pretty for it to go to waste like that. I'm thinking of lighting up the interior with a few soft white LEDs and give it a glass top and turning the whole thing into a table, but just taking it out of the packaging feels like a sin...
Hi Dave, I have one similar of this, with the dual G4, i use it as a rendering machine, i cut some videos on a PowerMacG4 and let the hard stuff do the Server, but you are right, the System is very loud. But in the dark the Machine is very cool and if you have a few of this working in a dark server room, it looks really impressive. Kind regards from Berlin.
Two separate single core IBM G4 chips! think about how far we've come. I have a core i5 quad core gaming system and recently built an 8 core PC. Its just insane to think about..
10 years ago we had a few of these at the newspaper I worked for. Now they are not worth the power they consume but in the day those machines were the cat's ass. We also had a few Sun E450 server that I worked on. Now that is big server!
Really seems like they should have made these 2U height and used the extra space to improve cooling. I have seen video of these things running and they are LOUD
+omfgbunder2008 Nowadays they take many more cycles to execute, even assuming the operands have already been fetched... Pipelining, superscalarity, out of order execution, speculation, etc helps a LOT.
Nowadays the same power can be found in smart phones :! Sure you can't hook up 4 HDD's to a smart phone but still. IF someone offers you a big old dual processor server your own pc probably is better.
Almost all servers tower or rack models will suck the air in from the front past the HDDs then cool the CPU, etc. I can only assume they are just ducting it somehow. Parts of the design seem cool other ways it just seems dumb. A lot of the IBM, etc servers the fans are just modules you pull out and work like normal case fans but are modular and small.
I keep dell poweredge server for electronics parts. Im already making in-circuit ESR meter(based on mkII that Dave owns) and I needed 22uF and 220uF tantalum SMD cap, I got them from that server. So we can sell server for 20$ or keep it and have 500$ of electronics parts(100$ from only tantalum caps in my case).
3:25 Dave, that's what happens when you have a 1U server ... XP 4:21 ... Wow, look at how the PCB has burnt around that regulator (looks like a linear regulator)!!!
I'm no fan of apple but its always nice to see computer stuff. I wonder if these things could run a version of linux made to work with PowerPC processors, unless Apple made it immpossible to install anything else other then Mac Server OS or what ever apple called it.
1U servers typically are insanely noisy. They have to move a ridiculous amount of air to keep cool, especially when you consider the wattage to rack ratio. From my perspective, the industry has moved away from 1U units, for the most part. They're just too inefficient for the amount of space and power they consume.
1. So are you a "Windows fanboy?" 2. The blowers blow INTO the CPUs, not out of them. And noise is not an issue for servers in a server room. 3. As you noticed, the design is excellent. But you still can't stand Apple. 4. At the time of the G4, PowerPC kicked Intel's ass. All Intel had was the Pentium. 5. Remember these are dual processor, and Mac OS X could actually use them. Not so Windows 98 or ME. 6. You make a big deal out of the minimal graphics card. Surely you are aware that servers don't NEED a graphics card? This is intentional.
+JL Software 1. he is not an apple fanboy thats for sure 2. it could have better cooling if it had some vents underneath 3. design is a copy of somebody else s but prettier typical apple 4. true he even said so 5. true 6. now servers can use big gpus for some computations
+JL Software I don't think there was anything in this video to show that he cant stand apple specifically, he is this critical in everything he takes apart because NOTHING is perfect and the moment someone tells you it is, they are usually biased.
+JL Software 1. m8 he never said anything about os's 2. that is still a bad thermal design 3. he never said that 4. he said now about the xeons he didn't comment on the possessors other than that they were g4's and no im not windows fan boy i dont use windows
+JL Software 1. Does it matter? 2. Correct, and blowers make a little less noise. Can't say I like the restriction on the intake, but there isn't exactly a lot of space to work with. 3. The design is so-so. Having the processors on a joined board with the VRMs means if one of four parts goes out, all four are replaced, that's a lot of waste. 4. It actually was the time of the PIII Xeons, and performance was dependent on workloads and OS, properly written, it made little difference between RISC (Apple) and CISC (intel) architectures. 5. Why would anyone use a consumer desktop OS for a server? And the 9x series OS was already outdated, MS had moved on to NT exclusively. 6. True enough.
+curtis preston You should watch the video again. 1. You're missing the point. 2. As compared to what? 3. You lack context & miss obvious cues. 4. You're wrong. He referred their speed as though it were poor. Just sayin'
That's pretty normal rack design, suck air in from the front (cold aisle of Data Centre) and throw it out the back through the CPU and into the hot aisle. Sweet video... these servers still give me nightmares... I very much hated Apple Xserve migrations!
I have one of them processors in a mdd g4 all kitted out 3 ide drives raid array , super drive, Bluetooth and airport card, GeForce gpu, still excellent for video editing
Those look like 64bit PCI slots. Why would you use that for a server graphics card.... Ha, Google says the AGP slot is shared with PCI slot used for the ethernet card. That's a really odd setup.
Those were such a painful rack install. Apple clearly never had seen a rack before and used some off the wall ideas to mount that server. And those fans stay loud! All around as those servers were very limited in their capabilities.
Plexi top cover on it, some legs and they might make a nice table.
+MrTVintro Good idea :) . I have a HP Blade server with a plexi glass cover. Used to belong to Blizzard once. Were selling them for a good cause and I managed to obtain one.
+MrTVintro Would make a good table that also does file shares...
dispatcher7007 the Pi does have lower power consumption going for it... not to mention, you can run an ass-tonne more disks on it just by whacking a load of powered hubs on it! As long as the Pi gets its 1000mA of power it's fine! The disks can all be run on external power... might be more plugs, but you shouldn't run into any errors with regards to limitations in the maximum storage pool capacity!! With an XServe, you're limited to 500GB per drive since it's IDE based!! The Pi will happily control more than 5X that capacity through ATAPI bridges to SATA disks!!
you believe in angels..
Used to have a couple of these at a company I worked at. The hard drive trays were spring loaded making it super easy to break the RAID if you forgot to engage the lock... and if you did lock it, the USB ports were disabled which could be quite inconvenient such as having software that required USB dongle for licensing.
Apart from the power supply and the fans, the case itself with some modification would work great for a fileserver, or external SATA raid drive case of a file server. I mean rack cases start from at least 100e.
The "MAC-thing" was actually standard FireWire, IEEE-1394
+666Tomato666
Yep, I was really surprised that Dave dont know FireWire...
+666Tomato666 Well Firewire was developed by apple......Probably stolen tech but
yeah, especially given that FireWire was basically the dominant interface for connecting the video cameras to PCs for quite some time...
+Arek R. It it's Apple, he freaks out.
+666Tomato666 Firewire was an excellent means of connection and far superior to crappy USB 2.0.
I installed an XServe G5 back in 2004. It was solidly reliable - never missed a beat! It stayed in service for about 8 years!
Surely, those blowers draw air from the space below and blow it across the processor?
+Rob Fenwitch I noticed that too. And you are right. He has the fan direction backwards
+D Cheverie It's physics not electronics.
aserta
Yes, but those fans, known as "blowers", have been around for over 15 years. One would think someone with his experience would have seen one before. :P
+D Cheverie He hates Apple so much that he intentionally won't learn it.
JL Software
Those were really common in PC's as well. Next.
These were great hardware-wise back then. Still got one running after 10+ years of service. (they get louder when starting back up after a power failure)
+Azenet I'm glad I'm not the only one that has a G4 XServe in production. What's yours up to?
Ziginox Mainly serving files through AFP and creating postscript files with osx-exclusive outdated software, which I believe was the main reason that people bought these
Ah, ours is a repair shop NetInstall server. :)
+Ziginox were useing mac minis for netinstall and ast just much better and faster now of days, not sure if we ever had a xserve before the mac minis were using a white macbook lol it worked
FrostyExchange True, but when one falls in your lap with a 10.5 server license affixed... :)
I have found so many great electronic items in the trash over the years. Some I repaired and sold for a very good price. Great video.
The cost would be way too high to ship these to the Hydraulic Press Channel but you should definitely send him something!
+John Drachenberg You sure they'd fit? XD
I think you might be a little slow on blower fans they suck from the bottom and blow out the side although you were kinda right they did have tight ventilation on the intake
Intel chipset for a PowerPC G4?? Maybe an ethernet controller?
Old hardware like this is actually quite useful to the right people. I'm a programmer, and a lot of software out there has a 20+ year lifespan. The oldest code in Android dates back to 1991 at least. Desktop Linux systems have GNU software dating to the mid-80's. Hardware has become so fast as of late that you can simply run the same old software, with security updates, on the same old hardware for 10-15 years without any problems whatsoever. With RAID it doesn't matter if hard drives die. Everything else is equally modular. In the rack you aren't running modern, bloated Windows applications. Instead, you're running efficient, purpose-built software that runs great on 1 GHz processors.
+John Gotts Yep, for sure. And before there was Linux there was Unix, developed back in the '70s. FreeBSD is a notable descendant of the BSD variant of Unix. And, in turn, OSX contains a large amount of code derived from FreeBSD. Good stuff!
+John Gotts I'm not sure there's any original code left in todays (running) linux kernels, especially for the arm architecture and the Android needs. Maybe in the input layers, and possibly some relating to memory management and/or process management. That said, the kernel as a whole is that old, of course.
blitzwing1 I certainly don't consider it a POS. For one thing I don't know any more cost effective choice. It has it's problems for sure, though.
Did Linus call it a bloated POS?
blitzwing1 If you are looking for high performance and SMP, have you tried DragonflyBSD? Check here: www.dragonflybsd.org/performance/
Also, Scientific Linux (a rebuild of RHEL): www.scientificlinux.org/
blitzwing1 Are those slides available somewhere? Not contending any particular point, it's interesting to know what the devs think about it so it'd be a nice little read :)
Are you sure the fans are not sucking up air from below and blowing it through the heatsink?
Oh, and could you tear apart a Delta power supply once? I've heard you say that Delta power supplies are good quality in multiple videos, but I'd like to know what you think it is that makes them good quality.
+Naomi Baron Jonnyguru does PSU teardowns and excellent reviews. He's done a few delta server units. Worth a read to be sure.
www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReviews&op=Story4&reid=312
www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReviews&op=Story&reid=314
More recently premium quality retail places have gone for Delta OEM units. Here's an excellent review of an excellent unit. Top quality for sure.
www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReviews&op=Story&reid=101
+Naomi Baron
I teared down quite a few delta server PSUs, all of them use nichicon/nippon caps, and other high quality parts.
+Naomi Baron I'm pretty sure the fans sucks the air up from below as you say. He probably screwed up about which way the air goes through these types of fans.
+Naomi Baron I have a couple old Delta ATX PSUs, a 350 and 400 that I pulled out of HPs. They are at least 10 years old and still work perfectly, I use them as backups and for testing purposes. Can't kill em
Correct: the intake region for high-speed (i.e. 15krpm+) blower fans on the bottom of the fan itself. There is little room between the fan and the bottom of the chassis. The intake air comes from the front of the chassis, and the exhaust blows across components (CPU HSF, RAM, MB, etc.) and out the rear of the chassis. This requires the chassis be as "airtight" as possible, forcing "linear" airflow from front to back. It also requires that the MB and HSFs be designed to cater to said airflow (e.g. fins of HSFs must be aligned front-to-back, DIMM slots must be placed the same way, etc.). A MB not designed that way, or an HSF installed wrong (rotated) can/will result in overheating. The design shown is still used today in 1U boxes (see any of Supermicro's 1U servers). Decent datacentres also cater to this through "hot-cold aisle" design, where cold air is pumped in through the floor of the aisle where the fronts of servers are (which in turn requires all open/unused areas of a rack be filled with panels (i.e. no open slots in a rack)) -- Google search and you can see what I'm talking about. Overall, the design works quite well.
Blower fans work the opposite way to how you described. :)
squirrel cage suck from the center, the use centrifugal force to move air.
About the size and noise: both are normal even for modern servers.
Mainstream servers are typically 700-800mm deep (can be over 900mm for larger, say, 4-socket servers). As for the fans - if they spin up to maximum RPM (e.g. if a fan failure occurs and the other fans compensate for it) typical rack devices are deafeningly loud.
The blowers suck the air in thru the front and blow it thru the CPU Module
This is almost painful to watch, I feel so old... And those beautiful boxes at the end, genuine dream machines! And I'm not even a fanboy, never having owned a single Apple device m..
+Stein-Erik Dahle Haha, I bought few of these, thou' the bit never PPC variants. They'll look nice as coffee-table in my living room someday when I have the time.
Intel FW 21154 is a PCI-PCI bridge. IIRC 64 bit. TSB81BA3 is a Firewire controller of some sort. M3062N.... seems to be a Renesas microcontroller.
So it had only 4 memory slots? Thats low for a server board :-)
+snajperSLO It's an apple, be glad it doesn't have soldered down memory, with the only upgrade path being "Dump it and buy new one".
+Pieh0 here come the boi
+Ursa Paws o shit waddup
+snajperSLO In the 1U product space for that era, that was quite normal.
+snajperSLO Completely normal for early 2000s; a later IBM server x3550 M1 had 8 slots, and modern M5 has 24.
In fact this kind of "Squirrel-cage"-fans is used very often in 1HE server cages. It sucks in the air from the base panel and throws out the air with pretty high speed to the back (here, through the cage with the CPU(s). Therefore it sucks in cold air from the front through the hard drive cages because hard drives can't stand that heat and the fan then blows in direction of the hotter modules, like RAM, CPU and expansion cards.
+Slartibartfas042 I ever came across one in an HP workstation. That thing sure was noisy. Never understood why someone would put one of those in a workstation.
+Naomi Baron Oh yeah, you're absolutely right for a workstation. On the other hand - for servers this kind of "hair dryers" are pretty common. In fact, the 4cm diameter standard fans that you could use at the 1 Height-Unit servers (widely known as pizza boxes) as maximum size are even louder than the radial ones. :-)
+Slartibartfas042 Yeah the 40mm ones you get can be quite long and have 2 counter rotating impellers. In many cases they draw 1A + at 12V and are indeed loud (decent airflow and monster static pressure though) But squirrel cage are just about deal for this application. They're also common on graphics cards where they had been part of the standard reference design for years. I think people underestimate how much air they can pull from a very narrow width below the fan, they are quite different beasts than "normal" fans (also called Axial I think?)
problem is, you can't really double up blowers. dual 40mm fans are for improved reliability as well as performance. one dies - cpu heats up, alerts go off, someone stops and services the box. blower dies - server stops unexpectedly.
if squrrel is mail service an air is ado be,watt sine gong soft hard cross word ant fleas?
where can I find these types of dumpsters?
Corporate business parks.
+EEVblog What about on a college campus?
I used to go to RPI, which had several locations around campus where you could drop off electronics for recycling. Dumpster diving was very popular there, with much cool stuff to be had. (I assume this is still the case, but the administration seems to have a goal of eliminating everything good at RPI, so maybe they're gone now.) I think the electronics recycling program was established by one guy in the waste department many years ago, so if your school doesn't have something similar, talk to people about setting it up. And be sure to mention that allowing dumpster diving will reduce the amount they have to pay the recycling company to take.
My university at the end of each year they throw a lot of stuff away, i was able to find some oscilloscopes this year.
In my area they have recycling centers but they wont let you take any thing because they want to sell it and if there are any dumpsters open you can actually be fined for taking stuff out of them if you get caught of course, but lots of places have been getting thoughts crusher dumpsters sigh.
really cool that it still works!! that means companies CAN make modern equipment that can work for longer periods. Reliable for 10 years or more and not die on you within 3 years !!
In rackmount gear airflow is front to back. The fans are blowing towards the rear.
3:52 Those are blower type fans - they suck air from below and blow hot air to the back of the chassis. Those are popular on 1U type servers, but sounds like hairdryers.
One thing about the G4s is they ran cool. I had an emac back in the day, massivly overclocked it and no additional cooling was required. A great CPU. Shame MS chose intel.
When my employers downsized we ended up sitting on a huge pile of surplus computer stuff, much of which (e.g. 32 bit Sun workstations) we couldn't even give away. Some ended up as props in movies.
One of our downsized servers was a Sun E450, hostname kenny. One day we killed kenny...
+Laura Halliday oh my god!!! you killed Kenny????
This makes me cry, and not for the SouthPark reference. ;)
i worked in server rooms for a couple of years and only ever saw two of these in the field on two separate occasions. they were very expensive compared to their similar spec linux/windows based counterparts so basically nobody deployed them.
I sincerely hope you put them back in their native habitat.... The Dumpster!
They weren't very popular for "general purpose" stuff. Most of the time they were simply used as a file server speaking the apple file protocol or for remote user profiles so you could log in to your desktop from every Mac in your company network.
Any fan shaped like a snail shell is centrifugal, and the suction is always the center opening and the discharge is the part with the largest tangental cross-section, ie., the rectangular outlet. Source: many successful rebuilds, and a few mistakes.
most servers go into a failsafe mode thermally when it detects the case is off which causes all fans to go to 100% RPM. It tries like heck to save itself. Once the case is put back on, it should ramp back down to normal, quiet (for a server) mode.
Also, racks are designed to pull cold air from the front, hot out the back.
That board the HDDs would attach to is generally referred to as a backplane. If the HDD are IDE then it could be IDE link, or could be aggregated into some proprietary thing. Usually you see things like this they are using SCSI, SAS, FC, SATA backplanes.
6:11 These little FANs are FANtastic
Man Dave, for the love of god. Do more teardowns of all the stuff you have laying around. I'm still waiting for your microdrive teardown for instance, and all the stuff that people are constantly sending you in that you briefly mention in your mailbag videos but then they vanish into storage or something.
those actually look pretty cool for back in 2003 better looking that some servers other than how long it is from front to back
The Apple server is a headless, rackmount server. It does not generally have video of any type. The PCI slot is mostly for networking , FiberChannel and scsi raid disk drive array controller.. The disc tray on the front isn't ide, it's sCA SCSI . Hot unplugable. The configuration I evaluated cost around $15,000. W8gb, dual giganit network and FC RAID.
4:33 I remember my brother having a ridiculous video card back in the day - it was the first GPU I saw that had a FAN on it!
These are old, but I know people who still use them for all sorts of stuff. great machines
Where I live it is illegal to throw away these things to a dumpster. You need to take them to an e-waste disposal site. Where is this dumpster located?
2:29 Is that drier than a dingo's donger, or not? I don't have my Aussie measurements standards book with me :P
+Pieh0 Not that dry. It'd need to be half a bee's dick drier.
I have a bunch of "ancient" PCs around here. One is set up as a jukebox and TV unit in the shop. Couple others hold service manuals, tool manuals and such. Those old machines work well for that type of stuff. Putting a .pdf on the screen doesn't take a lot of power..
The bridge board you're talking about at 5:27 probably it's the IDE RAID controller. I see a chip marked *Promise*, which is a famous manufacturer of disk storage controllers.
Probably it's just a software RAID controller (all the RAID stuff is processed by the main CPU which is running the controller's firmware), because "true" RAID controllers have their own CPU and buffer RAM, which here appear to be both missing. That chip it's just an IDE interface chip.
+mima14031985 Apple for years sell renamed Promise devices (like Vtrak ...) so it is not surprise that they use their solutions. It is not so uncommon practice, Dell did same with EMC (now Dell own EMC) only problem with Apple that they sell Promise products with their badge for 5 times greater price then Promise.
And you are right Promise at that time did not made hardware RAID controllers, they did all in software (and in their SAN solutions they used i860 processors for RAID).
+mima14031985 Seems to also have the disk backplane on it, which the sleds connect to.
+Keenan Tims Yes it looks made in this way.
Teardown of Delta PSU?
+Антон Южаков caps resistors and transformer and some diodes
not much else going on in the PSU's
Great idea! I'd love to rebuild that PSU to a rather powerful bench top power supply! These units are awesome!
+Stein-Erik Dahle You can get excellent server PSUs on eBay for practically $shipping. Some are better than others, and many have proprietary connectors. The best one I've scored is a sony APS 112 form a sunblade workstation. I does 5V @ 70A and 3.3V @ 90. Thing is a monster and beautiful inside. www.flickr.com/photos/dork_vader/albums/72157638625275205
Sam Fedorka Oh, what a beauty... Maybe you have some photos of PSUs with more amps and some huge bus bars?
Btw, does it have Synchronous Rectification or just Schottky diodes?
Oh, i see diodes, are they soldered to bus bar? Power transformers secondary windings consist of litz wire?
+Sam Fedorka, I can't believe I haven't thought about that... Thanks mate!
those would still be pretty nifty as a router or firewall, and their main issue was the powerPC architecture when everything else was X86 or IA-64
Intel 21154 is a PCI bridge chip, probably just expanding the PCI bus for more slots. Interesting that it uses the Digital (DEC) part scheme (many Digital semiconductors before they were bought by Intel used 21xxx), so it may be an older part they inherited and rebranded. Other examples are the Dec Tulip ethernet chip 21140, Alpha processors like 21064, 21164, and 21264
I have a large HP Proliant DL160 G6 rack server, it's even bigger and a LOT noisier. Pretty similar inside though, they haven't changed much through 2000-2016 in terms of layout.
Clock speed has nothing to do with processor performance. Those processors were fairly powerful for their time despite having a low clock speed. Today of course they wouldn't do too well
That's funny, I actually scored a few of these last month. Almost broke my back carrying them home.
I would like to take that case- scrap all of the [cr}apple stuff, and build a nice socketed dual processor machine within it. That would be a nice challenge...
TrainMasterMan I strongly suspect Apple had an alternative processor module with Xeons, available only to the secret team that created the X86 port of OS/X. The use of a generic industry connector and an Intel chipset are the biggest clues. Maybe they even considered making those modules available to early adopters if there was enough market. Personally I have only a bit of experience with the outside of a model that had two huge air intakes on the front, between 3 (not 4) drive bays, but I don't remember if it was x86 or PPC based.
Bloody hell you must have some of the best dumpsters in Australia. The best I have ever found in a bin was an empty Power Mac G5 case. I turned it into overclocked gaming system 🎚⌨
Fun to see how Apple's thermal dissipation was already crap back then. Even today it's no better.
1U = 1.75 inches. I love the POWER Architecture.
Unfortunately Apple didn't continue 19" computers at all.
But these computers shrunk massively, so it's clearly a simple task to fit the motherboard of a modern Apple server in there. And since you don't really need any PCI cards in a standard server, you could use the space to fit another server in there!
Either for redundancy or just simply having two machines in there.
It also can't be tough to exchange the IDE connectors and fit 4 handsome 6TB HDDs in there.
You'd have a neat little BEAST in a small 19" rack device! Lovely!
There is a decent market for these on eBay. Looks like $100-$500 depending on specs.
Huh, never seen the inside of one. I do have around 6 of these still operating in the data centre I work at, among some other prehistoric equipment. The fans would have been sucking from the bottom and blowing out the back, at least that's how most with that style fan work.
I know these things are old and out of date...but I think they are awesome. I don't really know why Apple discontinued their Xserve series. I know the MacPro uses Xeon processors and that's what most modern servers use these days, however the Mac Pro can only go up to 12-core where they have servers capable of handling dual 22-core CPUs
I have a brand new sealed one from the same year, got from an old electronics thrift store slash scrap yard for $10. I thought it looked too pretty for it to go to waste like that. I'm thinking of lighting up the interior with a few soft white LEDs and give it a glass top and turning the whole thing into a table, but just taking it out of the packaging feels like a sin...
+War_Destroyer Sounds good. And you're right, they are pretty.
Please, make it into something nice and come back to show us! 😉
+War_Destroyer
Lol, you apple fans, you are really crazy :D
knowing apple collectors just hold on to it sealed it'll gain some sorta value in the end
Carbon cricket FX
I dont have fucking clue what you said, too hard for my english xd
Nice.... for a quick second I thought these things were still running OS 9, but no OS X came out just 2 years before these.....
Hi Dave, I have one similar of this, with the dual G4, i use it as a rendering machine, i cut some videos on a PowerMacG4 and let the hard stuff do the Server, but you are right, the System is very loud. But in the dark the Machine is very cool and if you have a few of this working in a dark server room, it looks really impressive.
Kind regards from Berlin.
We still are using one in my office as a file server. It crashes multiple times a day, UGH!
Had a few of these that came by, I thought they were interesting, but after opening up various IBM, Dell, Sun, HP servers, it was nothing new.
Two separate single core IBM G4 chips! think about how far we've come. I have a core i5 quad core gaming system and recently built an 8 core PC. Its just insane to think about..
10 years ago we had a few of these at the newspaper I worked for. Now they are not worth the power they consume but in the day those machines were the cat's ass. We also had a few Sun E450 server that I worked on. Now that is big server!
Really seems like they should have made these 2U height and used the extra space to improve cooling. I have seen video of these things running and they are LOUD
If you install a good linux on it, you'll have a neat server. I always wanted a Xserve.
4 instructions per cycle? back in my day, each instruction used to take 2-3 cycles. :)
That's called superscalar!
+omfgbunder2008 Nowadays they take many more cycles to execute, even assuming the operands have already been fetched... Pipelining, superscalarity, out of order execution, speculation, etc helps a LOT.
omfgbunder2008 are you a Trumptard ?
Nowadays the same power can be found in smart phones :!
Sure you can't hook up 4 HDD's to a smart phone but still. IF someone offers you a big old dual processor server your own pc probably is better.
If only shipping to the other side of the world wouldn't be so astronomically high, I'd pay to give them life as a cool looking PFSense box
Those fans are actually blowers and pass the cooling over the heatsinks not pulling the heat into the fan
I use a daul Xeon version with the Xserve raid as a media server, works great!
Almost all servers tower or rack models will suck the air in from the front past the HDDs then cool the CPU, etc. I can only assume they are just ducting it somehow. Parts of the design seem cool other ways it just seems dumb. A lot of the IBM, etc servers the fans are just modules you pull out and work like normal case fans but are modular and small.
Very cool video! That bootloader looked pretty dated, I wonder if it ran some form of OS9?
I keep dell poweredge server for electronics parts.
Im already making in-circuit ESR meter(based on mkII that Dave owns) and I needed 22uF and 220uF tantalum SMD cap, I got them from that server.
So we can sell server for 20$ or keep it and have 500$ of electronics parts(100$ from only tantalum caps in my case).
Those psu are prone to dropping voltage on the 5volt rail which leads to unexpected shutdown of the cpu
When guessing the scale, you have to remember Dave is small.... haha
Cooling might have been fine, cpus don't consume that much power.
G4 7455 (180 nm) 1.0 GHz: Typical 15 Watts, Max 22 Watts
I've got a HP Proliant DL380 G5, which uses Xeons like the later Intel Xserve servers but has 8 fans-and starts up very loud!
It's not intended for "office use", you know. Those things belong to a server room!
I am envious of your dumpsters
3:25 Dave, that's what happens when you have a 1U server ... XP
4:21 ... Wow, look at how the PCB has burnt around that regulator (looks like a linear regulator)!!!
Maybe you could call this your "Dumpster Appreciation Days." :)
Where do you dumpster dive at ? I always wonder what kind of businesses or school would be a good place to look?
These are actually still pretty capible, I have two of them and I still use them to this day for storage and my G4 can actually play RUclips in 720p
Honestly the actual software part of the Xserve lineup was cool but the Xserve and Xserve raid where really limited
the second fan is probably for a second processor mountable on the empty slot just near it, corresponding to the other one...
+squalazzo and it's loud because it's open, so the temperature regulators don't work as expected and keep the fans at max...
I'm no fan of apple but its always nice to see computer stuff. I wonder if these things could run a version of linux made to work with PowerPC processors, unless Apple made it immpossible to install anything else other then Mac Server OS or what ever apple called it.
The first server used for a PBX asterisk server for the office or a Nas server
1U servers typically are insanely noisy. They have to move a ridiculous amount of air to keep cool, especially when you consider the wattage to rack ratio. From my perspective, the industry has moved away from 1U units, for the most part. They're just too inefficient for the amount of space and power they consume.
1. So are you a "Windows fanboy?"
2. The blowers blow INTO the CPUs, not out of them. And noise is not an issue for servers in a server room.
3. As you noticed, the design is excellent. But you still can't stand Apple.
4. At the time of the G4, PowerPC kicked Intel's ass. All Intel had was the Pentium.
5. Remember these are dual processor, and Mac OS X could actually use them. Not so Windows 98 or ME.
6. You make a big deal out of the minimal graphics card. Surely you are aware that servers don't NEED a graphics card? This is intentional.
+JL Software
1. he is not an apple fanboy thats for sure
2. it could have better cooling if it had some vents underneath
3. design is a copy of somebody else s but prettier typical apple
4. true he even said so
5. true
6. now servers can use big gpus for some computations
+JL Software I don't think there was anything in this video to show that he cant stand apple specifically, he is this critical in everything he takes apart because NOTHING is perfect and the moment someone tells you it is, they are usually biased.
+JL Software
1. m8 he never said anything about os's
2. that is still a bad thermal design
3. he never said that
4. he said now about the xeons he didn't comment on the possessors other than that they were g4's
and no im not windows fan boy i dont use windows
+JL Software
1. Does it matter?
2. Correct, and blowers make a little less noise. Can't say I like the restriction on the intake, but there isn't exactly a lot of space to work with.
3. The design is so-so. Having the processors on a joined board with the VRMs means if one of four parts goes out, all four are replaced, that's a lot of waste.
4. It actually was the time of the PIII Xeons, and performance was dependent on workloads and OS, properly written, it made little difference between RISC (Apple) and CISC (intel) architectures.
5. Why would anyone use a consumer desktop OS for a server? And the 9x series OS was already outdated, MS had moved on to NT exclusively.
6. True enough.
+curtis preston
You should watch the video again.
1. You're missing the point.
2. As compared to what?
3. You lack context & miss obvious cues.
4. You're wrong. He referred their speed as though it were poor.
Just sayin'
Still the prettiest rackmount servers in existence
I really am feeling old now, I still use a blue-and-white G3 at times, and also a couple of PowerMac G4s. Can I have the RAM and Radeon? LOL
That's pretty normal rack design, suck air in from the front (cold aisle of Data Centre) and throw it out the back through the CPU and into the hot aisle. Sweet video... these servers still give me nightmares... I very much hated Apple Xserve migrations!
What's going to happen when you move to your new location about your dumpster diving series??
Case has nice cosmetic and functional design.
So I think with a lot of modding it could be repurposed.
I have one of them processors in a mdd g4 all kitted out 3 ide drives raid array , super drive, Bluetooth and airport card, GeForce gpu, still excellent for video editing
Those look like 64bit PCI slots. Why would you use that for a server graphics card.... Ha, Google says the AGP slot is shared with PCI slot used for the ethernet card. That's a really odd setup.
I have a few of these a G5 and two 2009 Xeon ones I use the G5 as a media server and the Xeon to back up my pc and mac
good find Dave
Those were such a painful rack install. Apple clearly never had seen a rack before and used some off the wall ideas to mount that server. And those fans stay loud! All around as those servers were very limited in their capabilities.
I wish I would find a server or even something like that in a dumpster.