[rescue] best rackmount Sun (used) for $1k

[Patrick Finnegan]

On Sunday 30 July 2006 00:33, Sridhar Ayengar wrote:
> Bill Bradford wrote:
> > On Sat, Jul 29, 2006 at 10:07:17PM -0400, Patrick Finnegan wrote:
> >> On the other hand, for well under $1k you could get a rack of blazingly
> >> fast IBM boxes, which'll run AIX swimmingly (and do a decent job at
> >> Linux too).
> >> http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ih=012&item=220009243044
> >> Someone please buy some of these from me so they don't have to go to the
> >> scrapper :(
> >
> > I would *love* a decent AIX box of some sort (not a RS6K 320), but
> > everything that seems to have decent performance and will run the latest
> > AIX is beyond my price/size/power consumption/"usability at home"
> > requirements. 8-(
>
> A good entry level AIX box that's readily available nowadays is the
> RS/6000 44P-170.  Pretty cheap too, and the 450 MHz POWER3-II is plenty
> quick enough.

Of course, finding one for a reasonable price (less than a few hundred $$) 
isn't easy.  Ebay seems to be overloaded with sun stuff in comparison to IBM 
stuff (which mostly seems to be put on by dealers who don't care that they 
have the same thing listed for over a year, without it selling).

About the best chance for getting IBM stuff for cheap (as I've learned) is to 
work the educational surplus market...

Can anyone say "rack of 12 x quad 375MHz POWER3-II SP thin nodes for $80"?  I 
know I have. :)

For some stuff I'd rather have the 4-way thin nodes than a 16-way high-node, 
anyhow (like reduced power consumption, for instance :).  The nice thing 
about the high node is the high-speed SP Switch2 card slots (1GByte/sec 
interconnect) and the 4 x 64-bit PCI (and single 32-bit) card slots, compared 
to the pair of 32-bit PCI slots in the thin nodes.

Well, and if you're lucky enough to find the RIO expansion drawers for the 
high nodes, that gives you up to 6 more rack-mount chassis full of PCI slots 
that you can play with.  Unfortunately, while I've got a BUNCH of cables, I 
have no expansion drawers to use them with (which is typically the OPPOSITE 
problem that most rescuers have... having the equipment but no cables...).

Pat
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