Exploring a Dell PowerEdge 2400
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- Опубликовано: 8 сен 2024
- I've made so many videos now that I've started to forget some of the older ones. This is not actually the first time I've talked about proper server grade hardware, outside of the IBM PS/2 models that were intended for use as servers. That honor would probably go to the PowerEdge 600SC video.
I have no idea what attracted me to this. I do, however, know what I'm likely to do with it. Dell actually supported this system under Windows Server 2003! (So much so that that two years after the previous BIOS update had landed, they issued another to provide WS2K3 compatibility. I think I'll pick up a cheap secondhand copy of WS2K3 when circumstances permit and use this machine as a "playground". And I'll get some larger, newer hard drives along with a few extra caddies as well. I've already got a line on enough RAM to max this thing out.)
Yes, I could virtualize. No, I don't want to. (You can't throw a virtual machine out of a window when it annoys you, and that is a very important feature to me. Not that I've ever thrown a computer out of a window. That's actually the truth. I've gotten even with computers in other ways, but never have I thrown one out of a window.)
Check this space, there will probably be more corrections, amplifications and clarifications to come.
The chip I didn't recognize is actually part of the system's ServerWorks chipset. (I thought it was Intel based prior to reading the specs.) Also wrong was my expansion of the DRAC acronym..it's actually "remote assistant" instead of "remote access". Oh well, close enough. I might try to find a suitable DRAC card, if they don't require extra licensing to unlock all of their functionality.
Other mistakes and clarifications: When referring to the add-in NIC, I meant to say that A) it is not installed as a replacement for a failed NIC and B) that it is placed into service while the onboard NIC is ignored. As for my "lost train of thought" (hey, it happens!) I was going to mention the added depth of the power on self test being a result of a server's focus on data integrity and reliability. And then I got distracted by a fan. :-)
I've updated the BIOS, flashed the latest firmware to the management controller hardware and resolved all of the errors relating to the "out of date" software. It's the middle hard drive that has failed. When I upgraded the management controller firmware, the power supply fans actually stopped running for a while!
I may, depending upon how things work out, set the SCSI backplane aside and go with a SATA solution in a PCI slot. It's hard to tell. I'd rather not go through "battle of the aged hard drives that want to do nothing other than lay down and die" as I did with my old IBM PC Server 500.
I don't mean to say that proper server grade computing gear doesn't bring something useful to the table, only that I don't find much utility in those extras. Having a system that was designed to be paranoid about one's data (with support for ECC RAM and other features) can certainly be a valuable feature! I don't hold true with the notion -- based on empirical evidence -- that regular computer hardware isn't up to the task.
You know spring is here when uxwbill is running computers on picnic tables in front of the garage... :)
+Aarocision lel
@Extundo BAHAHAHAHAHA HOLY SHIT THIS IS SO OLD
@@nFiveTech lel
"Why go outside when you have a computer to play with"
My pale visage reflects that statement.
+Geardos I realized how ironic that might sound while I was saying it, what with setting up a server on a picnic table outside my garage.
Normal people play sports, garden, maintain their lawn, work on their vehicles and other things while outside. UXWBill sets up a server. What's next? Active directory? (Close. There was the 12-odd-node IBM ICLAS setup I had running on the driveway once.)
Outdoor computing with vintage systems means the dust just blows outdoors, a good thing.
2300 owner here. i'm going to be removing it from my collection soon and scrapping it due to the loss of certain key parts. when I get around to sending you that Macbook lid+screen I can chuck in what I have: 5 caddies with drives (2x 18GB, 1x 36GB, 2x 146GB IIRC), 2x 750MHz Coppermine PIIIs (which do work with the latest BIOS installed despite the box not officially being certified for them, thank you 440GX!) and a 2-bay 5.25" DDS4 6-tape library. there's also some RAM, but it's double-stacked ECC PC100, and the 2400 calls for ECC PC133. Thankfully 4x512MB of ECC PC133 is cheap these days on ebay if you look for it.
the 2300 and 2400 are amongst the most reliable of the olden Dell servers because of their lack of electrolytics on the motherboard. most of the board uses discrete caps instead to do the job, making them utter workhorses. there was a picture of one 2300 on Flickr that lived most of its life outside in a shipyard, and when it was taken out of service after many years of use and abuse, it was found that there were mushrooms growing in the dustcake build-up around the hard drives! and yet the system just did not care one bit. they might be inefficient, but you will never ever find a more reliable server.
Note to you: as with most Dells of this era, they're very picky about what goes in what slot and gets what IRQs. I remember this from when I was originally messing around with NICs in the 2300. Dell has BIOS and daughterboard firmware upgrades on their website for these as well. if you detatch the ribbon going to the motherboard, the BIOS has a fit and says the firmware is out of date; the 2400's may also do this.
I almost got one of three 2400s to take home to do a full hardware swap with, but it never happened; I got sick the next week and it went to scrap.
and as a final remark: if any upgrades are to be done to that box in the expansion slots provided, get a cheap quad-port Intel-based gigabit PCI-X card off eBay (Sun branded ones are what to look for, as those do look like PCI-X slots and they do go for cheap; look for Gigaswift cards) and add in a Radeon 7000 if possible. it makes for the best framebuffer to use with Linux of any kind, and even with Server 2000 or 2003 for that matter, and is fathoms faster than the onboard ATI graphics these systems were plagued with.
more old pc tinkering i love it man
I am learning so much about computers from your fabulous down to earth videos. Keep up the great work. And as a Brit I'd love to know more about the fleet of vehicles on your front drive!
your long-form videos are my absolute favorite! Very well done job. and it gives you a chance to show off how much minutiae you know about these things. Apparently a lot of people agree since just a day later you've got 2300 views already.
I had a PowerEdge 6100 with Dual Pentium Pro-200s. I named it "Cube" because well it was a big block. About twice as wide as one of these, and just as deep. It was a monster for sure. It barely could run Windows 2000, but had 512MB of ram. The ram ended up being mostly pilfered to go in my Silicon Graphics Indy 5000SC
I decommissioned one of these that was in fact rack mounted and it did look ridiculous. A couple decades ago my workplace used one of these as a PDC back when you'd call them that. That one you had in the video was a high roller model with dual PSUs, Someone where I worked was extremely paranoid, because a ton of old hardware just wasted away in racks when they didnt have the gall to get rid of it... I kept one of those slotted Pentiums because I thought they were neat...
I had a Proliant 3000, with dual 333Mhz P3s. The power supplies were hot swappable as well. If you didn't have one plugged in it'd use it as another system cooling fan.
the gpus in these systems ( servers) are almost always a mobile variety of a vintage ( even at the time of manufacture of the system) because those gpus will not only be on their final revision, with the kinks ironed out. It also ensures the drivers are reliable etc etc.
I used to have the exact same model as my home server. Brought it a flea market back in 2005 with a whole bunch of 18 gb drives. It's great to see this system again.
And yes, with the help of an angle grinder it is possible to fit a second drive cage under the main one. The second SCA backplane I used came from a different PowerEdge, was slightly different and didn't have the extra connector for managing hotswap. Two of the original ones wouldn't fit.
The diagram under the harddrive slots tells you to turn a metal plate around to make place for 4 double height drives instead of 6 normal height ones.
@26:30 What's funny is I just got two of these servers from a server rack I just purchased, they took up 3 Us each. I found your video doing research on them before I open them up and see what's inside them. Great channel!
I cant wait for the Dell E310 video. Good or Bad that is the computer I grew up most with and have many fond memories using that machine. I believe my mother purchased it for our house around 2005-2006ish.
I have a Dell Poweredge 2900 Gen 3 server box, primarily because it is a nice unit, I hate to toss it, and to make a video editing machine out of it, at least try to. That box also has redundant hot swap power supplies, each rated at 1KW and I did some messing around with them while one was connected to the wall with a Kill-A-Watt meter, and I noticed that both power supplies were sharing the load pretty much equally between them. When I pulled the power to one of them, the wattage from the other nearly doubled. I don't know if Dell was doing this back when this server was built, but I would bet they were. It makes sense to me to share the load between both. Didn't know they did that honestly, I always thought the redundant supply was up and running only in case the main supply failed, and never had a load pulled from it, so I learned something from that experiment!
Entering that service tag CXBVB01 at Dell's support website shows a ship date of January 25, 2001.
One of my clients is still running a PowerEdge 1300 (shipped October 26, 1999) and it's running Windows Server 2000.
Those old Cheetah drives are cool, but honestly, I think I'd have to put them in a drawer. Maybe play with them as singles somewhere in the future but I wouldn't run them on a constant basis.
I had an old model 9.1GB 6-platter Cheetah in a ~1998 HP workstation that I bought used a long time ago. I used it for a few years as my daily PC up until the mid 2000s. That behemoth has always amazed me for it's build quality and longevity in light of how hard it runs - and it still works - but as mechanically impressive as it is, it's just really noisy, slow, and hot. HP had a fan blowing over it which traded the heat for even more noise.
I agree that a decent power supply should handle spinning up 6 typical hard drives in parallel, but I'm not sure that can be said with Cheetahs.
Personally, if I was going to really use this machine, I'd probably put a SATA card in it. There are some 66MHz capable PCI and even faster PCIX controllers that come up pretty cheaply on eBay. Software can signal the drives to spin down when not used. In all I think a lot of power and certainly noise would be saved.
If power consumption is a concern then it could also probably afford to lose one of it's CPUs and convert to a single more conventional PSU (if possible) - but maybe all that would kill the fun of the machine, and undermine how it was designed to be used.
A couple years ago I bought a PCIX Supermicro AOC-SAT2-MV8 SATA card on eBay. It seemed to be pretty common at the time. Although it's POST information doesn't properly indicate sizes larger than 2TB, it works with larger drives (my largest on the machine is 4TB) and it's very fast. 32-bit 66MHz capable cards are surely much more common though, probably a dime a dozen at this point.
Personally I really dislike hardware RAID, especially for a home environment where 100% uptime is not required. Software redundancy schemes are more flexible, practical, and less prone to spontaneously explode IMO. Although I'm not sure how well those software schemes perform on a P3.
I generally like server hardware though. Not only is it built to a high standard, but the parts are usually cheap to get on the 2nd hand market. Obsolete server parts get liquidated in such massive quantity that they often end up cheaper than the consumer equivalent. Probably not true for SCSI hard drives, but frequently true for RAM, CPUs, PCIX addin cards, and sometimes motherboards. Sure, there will always be some high priced listings for any item, but those can be ignored.
I just noticed - that Rage chip calls itself "AGP". I would have expected something on the 32-bit 33MHz PCI bus. I've read that ServerWorks' AGP implementation is craptastic, but haven't had experience with it myself.
I've had abysmal performance from integrated PCI ATI Rage XL on my server. In my case, I think the problem is lack of proper driver support, it's just "kind of" working probably through an unaccelerated VESA mode. Even getting it to that point was a headache that had me cursing Linux.
Kind of funny how the "3D RAGE" moniker started life as to imply ferocious gaming performance, and ended up as the whimper of a small kitten tucked in the corner of servers. The later derivations are so weakly supported and utilized that they can hardly even run a 2D GUI anymore. The chips could be half broken and nobody would know the difference.
+yorgle11 I've had some very mixed results with old server drives. And of course, by the time a tinkerer such as myself gets them, they've usually done a lot of sometimes hard hours. Back in the days when I had an IBM PC Server 500 in regular production use, those hard drives were the bane of its existence. That was especially true of the IBM DFHS series. (In something I felt was a great irony, the Quantum drives that tested good when I got them were so much better than the IBM units.)
I really came to hate the IBM/Mylex "Cheetah" RAID adapter in that thing as well. If a single drive dropped out of a RAID5 array, it'd keep things going just fine. Yet it would never manage to rebuild the array. Someone later told me that the adapter didn't automatically maintain the parity information. (I didn't find a copy of IBM's ServerGuide until much later, so keeping that up to date involved dropping out of the operating system and using the DOS utilities disk for the RAID adapter to update the parity data.) The whole situation made no sense -- if the adapter could keep the array contents available using parity information, how could it possibly be out of date and unusable for a rebuild? I finally parked the system because it was too much hassle.
I started to rebuild the thing a number of years later (around 2010 or so) and at that point, decided to ditch both the RAID card and the flaky backplane boards. Plan B was to install a plain fast/wide SCSI board and run power and data cabling directly to each installed drive, since the backplane could not accommodate an SCA hard drive wearing an adapter (and it didn't use SCA to start with). It never came together and I've not returned to that project. I don't imagine that I ever will. No contemporary operating system could ever run on it. (Mylex RAID with firmware below the 3.x level isn't supported in Linux, and Linux dropped Microchannel bus support some time ago. Windows 2000 dropped it in the beta stage. That *might* leave NetBSD, I don't know.)
Other RAID adapters have been quite good to me over the years, doing what they were supposed to do without all that hassle and unreliability.
Well, that kind of turned into a bit of a story, didn't it?
If I were to put this Dell server in anything more than occasional use (which I don't expect to do), I would probably park the backplane board and the SCSI drives in favor of a PCI-X SATA adapter and some cheap, quiet and cool running modern hard drives. I'll leave the second processor in place since I don't see it making a whole lot of difference in power consumption and actual multiprocessor machines are an interesting rarity in my collection.
I don't dislike server gear per se, I've just never felt that owning it was overly practical due to all the noise, energy used and so on. There are certainly some very unique and interesting things in the vintage server world. And most of it is certainly very well made.
Beyond the issue of hampered performance in server video implementations, I have wondered why thoroughly obsolete graphics chips are still very often seen. There must be some reason why they don't simply implement the graphics core as part of the system chipset. (Intel's Copper River chipset did have integrated graphics and Supermicro implemented them on their excellent P8SCT motherboard. They perform no worse than any other Intel integrated graphics solution of the time, and have the added bonus of excellent driver support under almost any operating system since Intel made their technical documentation publicly available.) I'm sure the outboard chips cost very little. Can they really cost less than a chipset resident solution that doesn't require a special place to be carved out on the board?
Most recently I saw an Intel server board pushing 16 logical processor cores across two physical CPUs...a very nice setup indeed. Yet for some reason Intel opted to put an obsolete Matrox (!!) video chip on the board. It has drivers for modern operating systems, but they are a bare bones effort at best. I've never seen a Matrox graphics solution that didn't have oustanding 2D performance even many years after it was made. They really got that one right. Yet this one followed the trend of server graphics: it was very slow.
Maybe server makers do end up buying partially broken or cut down chips? Or perhaps they're paired up with bottom of the barrel, very slow video RAM?
The plastic encapsulated BGA chip with the R logo is the southbridge of a Reliance Computer Corp ServerWorks chipset, The chip near the processors with the 4 exposed silicon quadrants is the northbridge.. Reliances ServerWorks chipset's where renowned for there memory bandwidth and performance when it came to PCI throughput.
I had a PowerEdge 2400 and a dual P3 777Mhz about 11 years ago which I paid about £20 for. I didn't use it for long as I got sick of the noise and very slow POST so I covered it with a table cloth and put a fish tank on top.
Thanks for doing these videos. I always learn something and I definitely always smile. Can't wait for the next one.
When I was 6 I thought the hard drive indicator was showing a can lol.
+Ryaninator 54 I thought it was a cd drive indicator because it looked like a stack of cds.
lel
Me too. Lol.
The original icon looked like a can with horizontal lines, resembling a set of HDD platters but they eventually just used a silhouette of the icon and dropped the lines so it didn't really resemble anything. Progress...
The manufacture dates are decoded exactly like standard dates - 012501 is January 25, 2001.
40:36
36:40
You mention large fans making racket. From what I noticed, the smaller the fan, the more noise it makes. I have a couple of 200mm fans (which also have mesh filters) in my regular use desktop that are very quiet even at full speed. Most of the rack-mounted servers I have worked with have 40-60mm fans to fit into a 1U or 2U rack space, they are run at a very high RPM and are very loud. I believe servers in a "tower" form factor can be made to be much more quiet, just because they do not need to be made to fit in a standardized opening.
I am in the south Chicago area and this warm weather is great.
I really enjoyed watching this video.
Many old computers still have great potential for a new lease of life in them.
My Dell Dimension 4500 recieved a present last week, with a Western Digital 250GB hard drive.
12 years on and now running like a brand new computer!
The dust is nothing that a good vacume can't take care of. :-)
37:56. Sounds like a jet engine shutting down. Sounds very cool!
Looks like this is of a similar vintage to the PowerEdge 1400sc that I should drop off tomorrow for recycling.
I'm getting a Dell PowerEdge 1600sc and some other servers from a company in the UK. The Dell has 2 power supply's just like the dell in your video and it also came with 5 hard drives, 2 Intel Zeons and the keys to the machine. Also your using the same test monitor I use to test my computers.
I've got an IBM eServer (I think that's how it's stylized) that's lower-end than this machine, and probably cost less when new. In comparison, my IBM eServer has only one processor socket (I think it's a Socket 478, but off the top of my head I'm not sure), fewer expansion slots and room for only 4 hard drives; one primary and three others, but I believe that those drives are also hot swappable SCSI drives as well. It also has only one power supply. Interestingly enough, it came with dedicated graphics: it had two (yes, two) Matrox Millenium G450 32MB GPUs installed, which I robbed and put into other machines. Unfortunately, though it still runs, it has some bloated caps on the motherboard. It's not bad considering I picked it up off the side of the road for nothing, but to me it's a fun machine since it's the first true server-grade machine I've ever had. It's full of dust bunnies, even after I took it to the air compressor.
I have a 2600 I just rebuilt into a NAS. The system has Dual Xeon dual core CPS @ 2.8GHz each, 6 SCSI HDD's in it on it I added a PCI-X Sata raid card and four 2 TB drives and gave it 4GB of ECC RAM and she runs Windows server 2003 Enterprise edition. I made a couple videos about it (One when I got it (Free) and one when I got it back running)
By the looks of the inside I hope no wildlife was injured or disturbed by the making of this video!
Oh the days of IBM true blue PS/2 "Micro channel" proprietary systems... I think I had at least a dozen or so PS/2's back then.. Damn good machine weight a ton of bricks and built like a Sherman tank. Dropped one down a flight of fire escape steps at state collage and no lie... didn't even hesitate booted right up. Don't make 'em like that no more. It's not every day you get to use the term "Micro Channel" any more...lol Thanks for the videos
It's funny because when I started collecting and buying up older computers, if I had come across the same machine, also for $40, I certainly would have paid for it. Now I'm sort of like you; I'll only pay for an older computer if it's dirt cheap ($15 or less). All else, it'd better be free. Unfortunately, even though I live in a large city, free computers are hard to come by. Here, you won't see them in landfills or thrift shops and it's rare to come across them on the classified ads and on the side of the road. In fact, I've only come across a curb-side computer by chance just once, and it's because it was for a recycling program. The only curbside machines I've ever come across were thanks in part to classified ads. In fact, the vast majority of the machines I have in my possession are machines that I paid money for.
Hi Bill, I have a D PE SC440, very heavy duty. Thanks for the egekashun. I had an IBM Piii server long ago, it weighed a ton. Fascinating captain, most illogical. Don.
I went through the video description when it arrived in my email and as I read - I heard the text in Bill's own voice - sometimes saying "or something along those lines"! I think I watched a little too many of your videos Bill :) But keep it coming!
I had a 2400! I got it in a lot of servers I was selling off for someone. The condition was poor and it did not POST, apparently because the voltage regulator for the CPU failed, I couldn't sell it and eventually they said I could do what I wanted with it, I decided to grab parts from it and then scrap it, too bad the 24 pin power supply's voltage layout is different as it was very well built and was shaped like a regular PSU
I used to use dual ethernet cards back in the day for gateway/firewall purposes.
I have always preferred Dell's iDRAC to HP's iLO or IBM's RSA/IMM, the latter being my least favorite!
:/
That moment when you've been into vintage computers and hardware for more than 5 years, but you know nothing that's mentioned on a comment :P
Speaking of a work space with noisy equipment. I used to be stationed aboard a diesel-electric submarine called USS Wahoo (SS-565) as a Radioman, and we had an HF transmitter/amplifier called URT-23..and THAT thing was LOUD! ..lol!.. but I made little muffler for it out of some cardboard, maintained the airflow and helped reduce the "RRRREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!"... LOL! :D
It was an excellent rig too.. I always dreamed of getting one on the surplus market and having an excellent amateur-radio transmitter... and an even better home-brew muffler. ;)
Got a 2400 today, has 2 x 1gig pentium 3’s, 2gig ram, 4 x 73gig hdd’s with space for another 2, and has the case keys, runs windows 2003 r2.
In regards to the amount of cache for the RAID controller, given the timeframe of when that machine would have been produced, I'd hazard a guess that the cache is probably between 64MB, 128MB or 256MB. I definitely don't think it's as small as 8MB or 16MB.
We have an HP a735w with Windows XP installed. It worked pretty much every day for 12 years or so. It said boot disc failure. Given the age and hours this machine worked for, I just bought a new shebang for dad. Things just got worse for the old PC. It got to a point where it would just sit there and beep. Tonight I removed the CMOS battery, unplugged every cable from the motherboard except those connecting it to the power supply and power button. Something on the motherboard let out the magic smoke. I think I'll keep the case, power supply and a few other odds and ends for a day when bank accounts get a little fatter and build a computer.
My old PC is 14 years old and it's still working like a glove.
I don't know what was it made from, but it literally runs flawlessly.
Whenever passwords are discussed on videos I always think to the scene on the Dilbert Animated TV Show where they were trying to get a password from one of the guys and he always responded with "Password" (The Password being Password) and confusing them.
@uxwbill I have one of these and the current specs are 2x P3 1ghz, 2gb of PC133 SDRAM a Geforce FX5500 PCI card, Intel Gigabit Ethernet PCI-X card, Dell Cerc SATA Controller card PCI-X (have made a custom bay for 3 SATA drives) and a VIA V-Raid PCI controller to drive a SATA DVD-RW. It's running Windows Server 2003 and is used as a file server and runs pretty well although it wont install any version of windows higher than Server 2003 so your stuck with either NT4, Windows 2000, Windows XP or Server 2003.
I had a PowerEdge 6300 that had 2 Compaq SCSI drives, 3 Seagate Ultra 3 SCSI drives, SCSI CD drive, floppy drive (now in my retro box), 3 PSUs (all died of cap failure), 1GB PC100 server memory, Intel 100Mbps card, 2 Intel Pentium II Xeon CPUs at 400MHz a piece, and the fans ran so loud my neighbors could hear it. And I'm trying to figure out how much the CPUs are worth. They're in great shape, even the SCSI drives are in great shape, minus the CD drive. It'll be cool to use a SCSI drive in my old Pentium MMX PC in place of the 32GB HDD since the SCSI drives only power on when the SCSI adapter is initialized at boot up.
Another great episeode. Keep up the amazing work :D
The BIOS password locked / unlocked setting probably is used in conjunction with the password itself. On newer Dell systems, if you set a BIOS password, and then attempt to enter the BIOS, the system will let you in to view settings, but the settings will be "locked". To unlock the settings and allow changes, the BIOS password is required to be entered.
Thank you. Your videos inspired me to start a pc collection of my own. :)
Whoo-hoo! I was so glad to log on to RUclips and see a new video from uxwbill :)....that 42 minutes went by so quickly though :(
the e310 is not to bad of a machine i think though i think the one i picked up could maybe do a little better with the samsung drive replaced for a WD
Nice neighborhood Bill, spring framework spring two,VMware ,ESX.
ah the adaptec 2940 ultra and ultra 2 scsi, card. I have 4 or 5 of them. they're everywhere!
Great video! Thank you for that.
I like tower servers, but I wish they weren't so scarce compared to rackmount ones.
Vintage gear is definitely cool.. My everyday computer is my Dell D-630 laptop. Runs great. :)
Speaking of Gateway Servers, I just revived my Gateway 975 this afternoon. BTW, Intel made those server boards
I know someone who turned a desktop server case into a custom lite gammer pc rig.
His is one of the taller ones he put dual power supplies one for the system other fod fans/lights.
I really am surprized how long the hard drives need to spin down to a complete stop hence having ball bearings!
+Bandicoot803 Different hard drives have vastly different spindown times. Some of them use the spindle motor as a generator during spindown to assure that the heads end up being parked correctly. These are also coming down from 10,000 RPM.
*****
Just another question: What interface do the hard drives have? Could it be SATA1 already?
+Bandicoot803 Fast/Wide SCSI (20 MHz/16-bit) delivered via an 80-pin SCA connector (combines power with SCSI data, making hot plugging very easy).
*****
I hope these disks will last a long time, because I'm not sure wether it will be easy to get new ones of this type in near or far future.
Well, if the Optiplex GX400 that powers your site ever kicks the bucket - this could make for a more than suitable replacement. ;)
Ooh that's a pretty looking case it's got there.
LegoJKL For a time, my main computer was in a Dimension 2400 case.
i have dell dimension that works when its in the right mood
My iMac G3 233 rev A from 1998 has a PCI based ATi Rage IIc with 2 Megabytes of video memory
Expandable wooden SG RAM card up to 6 MB total
With a 4 MB SG ram sim
Nostalgic Hard Drives
+HDXFH From another time, when not only was it obvious that the drives were running, you knew that they were working (or not). These even have an actual relay unlocking the headstack!
Second NIC would be management or OOB backup I would guess.
Nice, i use a poweredge 2900 still. 8 cores and 20gb of ram still works fine in 2016
Just noticed, albeit quite childish, that the silhouette of the keys on the back, kinda looks like someone taking a whiz :P
Yeah this is a pretty nice computer!
No 720P or 1080P? in 2017? wow amazing :D
High definition video isn't going to help you read the video upload date.
Published on 8 march 2016
Wow... that's like... last year XD
Yes bill, i think you have a problem lol :-D
Why on earth do you want an old spacewaster like that, im booking you into "Servers anonimus" lol :-D
+zx8401ztv My primary reason isn't very good: I liked the way it looked. (I've since seen an even *larger* PowerEdge that I'd love to get my hands on, but I think it's safely out of reach and budget alike.)
"Hello, I'm William and I have four PowerEdge servers..." (this one, another one whose model number escapes me, a 2500 and a 600SC)
+uxwbill
Ahh welcome to PowerEdge anonimus william :-D.
We will wean you off this addiction, your in the advanced stages of "Collect-a-serverus", your only one step away from dressing up as a server and having food delivered in many hard drive boxes in raid form.
Your going to be here for a looooooooooong time :).
+zx8401ztv Hi, I'n Max and I have two home-built servers (and my daily driver workstation/gaming rig is built using some server-grade components too)
i found a dvd player two day with a bad hard drive i turned it on and the magic smoke came out as soon as it got power but i have three digital recorders for security systems with the same hard drive
***** sorry about that
"And we'll have that smoke test you all in the audience seem to love so much" You know your audience well xD
I would make a sleeper system with that retro case! or samba A/D endless possibilities!
+NewAgex Prime They don't have a ATX style case I'm quite sure!
Cool!.. that server was made around January 16, 2001.. my b-day is January 22. '57 ..lol..
For basic 2D tasks and .mpeg stuff a 3D Rage II is perfectly adequate. However, the 3D core of it is very slow - around S3 ViRGE DX speeds. Great for pre-3dfx 1996 tech, but very low-tech for '01 when the world had the GeForce 3 unleashed on it.
At least you can play a sweet 3D accelerated version of MechWarrior 2 that is compatible with the hardware. :)
You should see what's on those hard drives if you can get past the password but maybe you can put the drives into another machine. I did that with a USB external HDD case. Found Doom 3 full version on one of them.
+coondogtheman1234 I'd really rather not know.
Hard drives operating under the auspices of a real hardware RAID controller usually cannot be taken to another computer unless an identical controller is available. This is especially true when the drives are striped and don't contain a complete copy of a given file.
great video bill
I know you've stated you have little use for server gear, beyond what you need for your home network, but do you still have this one? I can't seem to keep my hands off of server gear since my workplace is a combination of 90's networking and early 2000's server/client computers and this little server just catches my attention every time I watch this video.
Personally I'd slap a fresh copy of NT Server 4.0 back on there and mess around with it. But that's only because we *maintain* a server with that on it at work. Have you ever found a derelict server sooo far beyond its expiration date that was running the backbone of a business before? Even though we have an IT person at work..she refuses to touch that system even though it literally runs a part of the plant. So..that falls onto us Automation nerds lol.
I'm happy to do it though! It's just like being at home with my hobby.
Small rant over!
I don't use server grade stuff even for my personal/home/etc. network. It's way too loud, expensive to maintain by compare and power hungry. And I still haven't managed to get my hands on an equipment rack of any kind.
Having lived through the days of NT Workstation and Server by configuring, supporting and administering both, I've little desire to revisit those days.
Dell officially supported Windows Server 2003 on this platform, and that's probably what I'd go with (or Windows 2000 server). It's got a bad hard drive and I'm really on the fence about replacing it. Unfortunately, this machine got rather wet in a sudden and unexpected basement flood. It still works, but given that I never had any plan to put it in any serious role, I'm not sure what I will do with it.
I've seen countless examples of technology pushed too far past its expiration date, in all manner of different roles. I've also had to recover from the wreckage after those systems collapsed or people who had no business working on them due to lack of knowledge about the older platforms made a huge mess of things.
Very nice video! Would appreciate more server related ones.. :)
I have a power edge 840 with a blinking orange light above the dell badge what could it be
Boy I want that Ranger! lol. I do enjoy your computer videos though sir!
I got this exact machine out of the trash!
I would think now even a Zbox or Intel Nuc can serve as home or small business server now that cpu, ssd and ram technology has out striped software.
+Sean Metivier Nice though NUCs are, they don't usually have the redundancy or cooling for server work.
Why does this machine have a black boot screen that shows firmware versions, POSTs of other devices in the system, when every non-server machine just has the POST?
+windows8er Size of the primary system BIOS is limited. Some devices need to provide, extend or replace system BIOS routines with their own. Devices needing to do so have their own option ROMs that the system BIOS will load during the boot process. It's basically a means for added functionality.
A few of the devices that sign on in this server are computers in their own right, particularly the system management and RAID controllers.
Regular desktop and laptop computers support this same method of expansion, it's just a lot less commonly used outside of the video card. All video cards have their own BIOS. Most video BIOSes don't display a sign-on message when they start. Install something like a bootable SCSI card in any computer and you'll probably see it display a BIOS sign-on message.
Yup, you and I are alike ... Never heard of licensing the raid controller? Not anymore ...
I had one of these several years ago! A guy gave it to me! Worth a 30 min drive into South Carolina. It had 2 physical P3 CPU's. But was so loud and very power wasteful. Mine was unlocked, but sadly no keys. What was in almost like new shape like it had never been used. I have slowly sold off some of the old 10GB swappable drives it came with. If you need any Drives with the plastic swapable piece I still have about 3 or 4 of them left if you want any. I believe they are 10GB each that came out of mine.
Not trying to advertise my own videos, but this was a video of that exact machine long ago ruclips.net/video/yY9yH0vv6lU/видео.html
a place to get cheap cmos batteries is dollar tree they have a twin pack for a buck.To bad i don't still have the dell powervault it had 4 drives still in it.traded it for a laptop ,btw i still have two drives you can have for gratis
"Helpful Audience Member' says that when the service tag is keyed into the Dell Website it says that the system Shipped on January 25th 2001 in the United States and that no more information is available on the original configuration.
+Septim's Productions Initially I thought that the video would end up being published before I had a chance to look up the service tag. Instead, I ended up checking it out before the video was even edited.
Lately I've noticed that Dell's web site has been unable to pull the configuration for many of their older computers. I'm not sure if this is an error, oversight or something else...
***** Given the modern market I would put a vote against the something else. For the most part I haven't run into this with anything I've worked on (yet...)
Wow. Such a beautiful case!
What are you planning to do with it? Are you maybe going to try to put Linux on it or something?
+Mr. McSpookington Tentative plans, if I keep it, would be to find a cheap secondhand copy of Windows Server 2003 and maybe a few CALs as well for use with this system.
I'm not sure how well Linux is supported on a ServerWorks chipset, nor any of the BSDs. And the Linux servers I've got, which are few in number, are running on much more powerful and quieter desktop class hardware.
"you should always assign a hot spare" i disagree completely for RAID 5. it matters less for older, small arrays like this one but as drives and arrays got larger, secondary drive failures became unnervingly common because of the chances of a URE during the rebuild which flags the drive that URE'd as bad as well... then your array is dead.
you want to be able to do a backup of everything important before a RAID 5 rebuild begins because of this risk. i've also seen arrays spontaneously rebuild with a hot spare for no reason with no drive failures.
basically, you should NEVER be using RAID 5 nowadays. with the size and prices of disks, the best RAID to use as a general rule of thumb is RAID 10. RAID 6 has its place if you're limited on cash, but i feel RAID 10 is a bit more reliable while also being much faster.
Talking about weather when I'm in the Philippines where I pay for megabytes for video streaming and your going on and on about weather :-). Just messing with you. Anyway thanks for the video !!!
I had a friend who bought one of these back in the day to run his personal website. I believe that was 1999. It cost him close to $5,000.
35.25 - All I can think of is Archer...did you try "Guest".
hi to all i pick one up at a carboot sale many years ago i was very lucky the seller left the windows server software and code
in the cd drive. i was very pleased and it that 6 scsi all working drive and a very big scsi card 4 port card bob
i thought that something that loaded for the time would be running windows 2000 server instead windows nt .
Man those CPU's are like 13€ on amazon but i cant find any Slot 2 Mainboards.. even on ebay
You sure love ya computers lol you should open up a PC museum
tfw you read the service tag wrong and end up on a page for a dimension 8100
Windows 2000 a great OS
When I first saw the title I thought it said "exploding"
I wonder if it is possible to get a dual LGA2011 board that can fit into this chassis, throw in a pair of used Xeon E5-2670 processors (happen to be fairly cheap now for a dual-processor 8-core chip,) some SAS (or SATA) backplane that works with that chassis, and add a newer RAID card like a used IBM M5015 or an LSI 9260-8i.
+FP5Reviews I doubt this. Recent chips like Sandy Bridge are fairly efficient and as long as you don't hit it too hard it would at most just thermal throttle.
***** At this case volume, I doubt it will cause any thermal throttling as long as the heatsink have enough sheer surface area and airflow. I really think it is a good idea to retrofit this case with a dual Xeon E5-2670 setup with two AMD R9 380 graphics cards and 128GB of RAM. Gaming, server and GPU calculation al in one rig.
***** I almost always use huge tower coolers 150mm tall, with 4-6 heat pipes, tens of aluminum fins, and 120mm fans so that is not really an issue.
I had one of these last year
Let's be honest, if it didn't let you shut down, then it kind of deserves that
2 power supplies.....dayum!