+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.
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Ziginox Mainly serving files through AFP and creating postscript files with osx-exclusive outdated software, which I believe was the main reason that people bought these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
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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 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.
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.
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 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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
+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?
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.
A single core (core solo) 1.5 ghz mac mini from 2006 was faster than a dual G4 1.25 ghz MDD from 2003 in Geekbench 2. But comparing x86 to RISC isn't fair, the software optimized for PPC and altivec could make it faster.
+oldmac6 Well good point but I was just thinking for a general usage performance. I'm just thinking it would be fun running a machine with a different architecture, maybe as a Linux box
I had power PC Macs and they desolated x86 probably cause of software optimisation. to the CPUs but my old 400mhz one will outperform a 1.8 core 2 duo :)
+Skräcken For floating point math they're very good even compared to modern Intels, as an example the 2.5Ghz G5 Quad (2005) delivers around 76 GFlops, (that's 19 GFlop per core). the Intel 4Ghz 4790K (also a quad; 2014) delivers around 96 GFlops (that's 24 GFlop per core) yet almost 9 years difference. For integer/general purpose they are pretty slow- about the same as budget laptops has these days. The biggest problem is the I/O is really slow compared to todays standard- that is both memory bandwidth and device access- otherwise they could probably still be used... and of course almost no one cares about CPU computational performance these days as a regular GPUs runs circles around any CPU for pure math- thanks to their high parallellism (like the Nvidia GTX 980 has around 2000 "processors")
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.
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.
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.
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
does the unit work as it might be possible to get it working and get a version of GhostBSD 10 (EVE) for the Motorola MC680040 or PowerPC and you could use it as a file server, or if you could get a APPLE OS X hard-drive you might be able to get them to boot up.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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
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..
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..
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!
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...
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!
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
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.
+Marcel Robitaille. The same things you do with any linux or windows server. Database, NAS, Directory Server, render farm, web server, custom number cruncher, etc. The xserve was a pretty nice machine and actually at a reasonable price, but you would probably only get one if you had an office full of apple computers. If your whole office was windows machines, a dell server just integrates better.
+Michael Wilkes Why get this pile of shit when linux is free? I don't see why you would want an os like osx running on your server, even if all you had was apple computers.
+Marcel Robitaille . Well yeah, thats what most moderately skilled people did. thats why the xserve is not very popular. If you know what you are doing, you run a linux server. There are a lot of people and companies that run windows servers because it is more familiar to them. xserve is specifically for people that would rather never touch windows or linux. I think to computer itself is quite nice, and the os is pretty nice, but it is a bit expensive and really designed for a niche market.
+Marcel Robitaille Simple: When you needed an Apple file server (for Time Machine, for example), you needed MacOS X. Linux didn't really support that in ~2002.
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
+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.
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)!!!
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 🎚⌨
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.
I installed an XServe G5 back in 2004. It was solidly reliable - never missed a beat! It stayed in service for about 8 years!
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.
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.
In rackmount gear airflow is front to back. The fans are blowing towards the rear.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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 :)
Blower fans work the opposite way to how you described. :)
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.
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.
Intel chipset for a PowerPC G4?? Maybe an ethernet controller?
squirrel cage suck from the center, the use centrifugal force to move air.
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.
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
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.
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 !!
What's the purpose of the oscillator on the front switch board ~@5:05?
I wonder what books there are stacked at about 6:50.
The blowers suck the air in thru the front and blow it thru the CPU Module
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?
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.
We still are using one in my office as a file server. It crashes multiple times a day, UGH!
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.
I sincerely hope you put them back in their native habitat.... The Dumpster!
Where do you dumpster dive at ? I always wonder what kind of businesses or school would be a good place to look?
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
What arme these connectores called which connect the CPU to the motherboard can not find them anywhere
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.
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!
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.
6:11 These little FANs are FANtastic
How do these CPU's compare performance wise compared to the x86 counterparts from AMD and Intel?
A single core (core solo) 1.5 ghz mac mini from 2006 was faster than a dual G4 1.25 ghz MDD from 2003 in Geekbench 2. But comparing x86 to RISC isn't fair, the software optimized for PPC and altivec could make it faster.
+oldmac6 Well good point but I was just thinking for a general usage performance. I'm just thinking it would be fun running a machine with a different architecture, maybe as a Linux box
I had power PC Macs and they desolated x86 probably cause of software optimisation. to the CPUs but my old 400mhz one will outperform a 1.8 core 2 duo :)
+Skräcken For floating point math they're very good even compared to modern Intels, as an example the 2.5Ghz G5 Quad (2005) delivers around 76 GFlops, (that's 19 GFlop per core). the Intel 4Ghz 4790K (also a quad; 2014) delivers around 96 GFlops (that's 24 GFlop per core) yet almost 9 years difference.
For integer/general purpose they are pretty slow- about the same as budget laptops has these days.
The biggest problem is the I/O is really slow compared to todays standard- that is both memory bandwidth and device access- otherwise they could probably still be used... and of course almost no one cares about CPU computational performance these days as a regular GPUs runs circles around any CPU for pure math- thanks to their high parallellism (like the Nvidia GTX 980 has around 2000 "processors")
+Fredrik Andersson Wow that's pretty impressive FPU speed actually!
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.
those actually look pretty cool for back in 2003 better looking that some servers other than how long it is from front to back
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.
was that potting compound surrounding the cpu die? interesting.
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.
If I wanted. to buy an electronic components from wholesale suppliers , what do you recommend? digikey or alibaba or ....?
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
does the unit work as it might be possible to get it working and get a version of GhostBSD 10 (EVE) for the Motorola MC680040 or PowerPC and you could use it as a file server, or if you could get a APPLE OS X hard-drive you might be able to get them to boot up.
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?
Very cool video! That bootloader looked pretty dated, I wonder if it ran some form of OS9?
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
Fun to see how Apple's thermal dissipation was already crap back then. Even today it's no better.
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.
Dave, where are those dumpsters in Sydney?
That's funny, I actually scored a few of these last month. Almost broke my back carrying them home.
There is a decent market for these on eBay. Looks like $100-$500 depending on specs.
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.
These are old, but I know people who still use them for all sorts of stuff. great machines
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.
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.
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
When guessing the scale, you have to remember Dave is small.... haha
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.....
Those psu are prone to dropping voltage on the 5volt rail which leads to unexpected shutdown of the cpu
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
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..
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..
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!
1U = 1.75 inches. I love the POWER Architecture.
What's going to happen when you move to your new location about your dumpster diving series??
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 UA-cam in 720p
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
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
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!
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
The first server used for a PBX asterisk server for the office or a Nas server
how much would it cost to ship to me in the states?
I wish I would find a server or even something like that in a dumpster.
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!
If you install a good linux on it, you'll have a neat server. I always wanted a Xserve.
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.
So how would a Raspberry Pi 3 compare to this?
Maybe you could call this your "Dumpster Appreciation Days." :)
What's the point? What do you do with an apple server?
+Marcel Robitaille Serve apples
+Marcel Robitaille. The same things you do with any linux or windows server. Database, NAS, Directory Server, render farm, web server, custom number cruncher, etc. The xserve was a pretty nice machine and actually at a reasonable price, but you would probably only get one if you had an office full of apple computers. If your whole office was windows machines, a dell server just integrates better.
+Michael Wilkes Why get this pile of shit when linux is free? I don't see why you would want an os like osx running on your server, even if all you had was apple computers.
+Marcel Robitaille . Well yeah, thats what most moderately skilled people did. thats why the xserve is not very popular. If you know what you are doing, you run a linux server. There are a lot of people and companies that run windows servers because it is more familiar to them. xserve is specifically for people that would rather never touch windows or linux. I think to computer itself is quite nice, and the os is pretty nice, but it is a bit expensive and really designed for a niche market.
+Marcel Robitaille Simple: When you needed an Apple file server (for Time Machine, for example), you needed MacOS X. Linux didn't really support that in ~2002.
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...
good find Dave
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
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 ?
OMG!!! I have been dying to get my hands on these hawt servers :o
great find :D
nice scrolling down, how did you do that?
great vid btw ;)
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!
So this dumpster is at a repair shop or something? Cool old server
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)!!!
Apple: " Soldering Processors to boards since 2003 "
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 🎚⌨
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.