quote:

The Apple Network Server (ANS) was a short-lived line of PowerPC-based server computers manufactured by Apple Computer from February 1996 to April 1997, when it was discontinued due to poor sales. It was codenamed "Shiner" and originally consisted of two models, the Network Server 500/132 ("Shiner LE", i.e., "low-end") and the Network Server 700/150 ("Shiner HE", i.e., "high-end"), which got a companion model, the Network Server 700/200 (also "Shiner HE") with a faster CPU in November 1996. They are not a part of the Apple Macintosh line of computers; they were designed to run IBM's AIX operating system and their ROM specifically prevented booting the classic Mac OS. This makes them the last non-Macintosh desktop computers made by Apple to date. The 500/132, 700/150, and 700/200 sold in the U.S. market for $11,000, $15,000 and $19,000, respectively.

a guy on 68KMLA posted:

Yes, AIX 4.1.5 with my own security patches. I shouldn't be too hard on it, it's a pretty busy server, considering (the web server handles around 10,000 transactions a day -- not bad for a vintage server).

Part of the problem is probably the RAM. It uses the parity FPM option, and when it heats up, a bit probably flips somewhere and AIX MCHKs since it doesn't do ECC. The system stays up, but it forces a reboot and kicks me off. This happens a couple times a week and it's enough to finally annoy me sufficiently. However, NSDU can't handle more than 256MB of RAM and the RAM always passes the ROM-based Long RAM test because nothing's hot yet, so I've never been able to track it down (and try finding parity FPM RAM today!). Cache had also occurred to me, but I would have expected more than just an intermittent fault for that, and it kernel-panics with a stock PCI Power Mac cache stick so I'd have to wait around for another 700 1MB cache.

By comparison, the Power Mac 7300 that runs my Gopher server is rock-solid, but there's no parity RAM (let alone ECC), and it's got a G3 card and I've got plenty of spares for that (I bought lots of Sonnet's CPU cards when they were blowing them out so I would have parts). I think the issues I'm seeing are more specific to the ANS, because after all it was intended as Apple's "big iron."

At one time trag was looking at designing a CPU card for the ANS, but he never was able to get far enough with it, and I think there would be exactly two people who would buy it (he and I). I'm sure there are people still using ANSes in production environments, but very few, and I'm the only one I know of that still runs AIX.

atomicthumbs posted:

atomicthumbs posted:

Displeased Moo Cow posted:

I use a Mac mini as a home server op

pram posted:

Apple BackOffice Server

Farmer Crack-rear end posted:

what's the power draw on that big sumbitch?

graph posted:

what the gently caress? ive never heard of this thing

atomicthumbs posted:

lancemantis posted:

r u ready to WALK posted:

I miss the mid-2000s apple that made really nice expandable mac pro models and pretty nifty rackmount servers.

I wonder if we'll ever see that kind of apple again in the future

Farmer Crack-rear end posted:

what's the power draw on that big sumbitch?

The Management posted:

AIX, gross.

Notorious b.s.d. posted:

not particularly bad

it's a single processor PReP box. it is very similar to the regular desktop macintoshes of its day

lancemantis posted:

infernal machines posted:

i used to have a 2-way ibm f80 that was about that size. thing sounded like a beast but i'm pretty sure it only drew about 600 watts

Farmer Crack-rear end posted:

i heard the place i work at now used to have a bigass RS/6000 system back in the 90s handling the ERP software. took up something like two or three full racks by itself

Silver Alicorn posted:

When I was in early college, before I could afford things like up-to-date computers, my dream was to use an xserve as my desktop machine