10 Jan
2004
10 Jan
'04
3:25 p.m.
At 10:37 AM 1/10/04 +0000, you wrote:
At 18:46 09/01/2004 -0500, you wrote:
yeap, that looks just like the one that does not have the exposed
expansion slot. The one with the slot looks the same except the top is flat
(and has the slot). Funny thing, the one with the slot doesn't have
"Motorola" or "PowerStack" on it.
Anybody know where I can find an expansion box and/or a internal hard
drive? The drive is standard but it's mounted on a sled that slides into
the machine and the sled has the wiring that connects the drive to the system.
I picked up two of these yesterday. I searched
the net but didn't find
much information about them but I did find enough so that I know what they
are. However one of the ones that I have doesn't have the rounded top.
Instead the top is flat and it has a rectangular opening in it and a
circuit board sticking up into the opening. It looks like it was made for
an expansion chassis to mate with. Anybody know more about that?
Joe
Ah ha someone else :-)
If it's one that looks a bit like this (googled) one here:
http://www.itsinfonet.com/e_gif.htm then yep, you just stacked expansion units on top until
you were done.
I had a customer in the early 90s that had one of these with about five
expansion units on top; mostly hard disc expansion. I remember it having
several 600Mb hard discs, the biggest they could get at the time. ISTR it
ran a Unix SVR4. I wrote some very nifty software that scanned their
previous sales history, and could do tailored mailshots depending on such
curious parameters as products that customer had NOT bought previously :-)
[only send special offers on a product to people who didn't buy it already,
that way you don't offer discounts to people you don't need to, who carry
on buying at higher price! sneaky] Their sales director had some really
daft combinations of conditions I ended up writing a RPN based language to
drive the reporting engine in order to accommodate them
Anyway, I've actually got one too, with one expansion unit on top, sat in a
box that I picked up elsewhere, which I've not so much as powered up
yet.
I powered up one of these (minus the expansion cards, drives, etc) and it
comes up and the lights sequence so I think it's working or at least close
to it.
Is there anything to worry about with these ones? I KNOW it's not
been touched for at least eight years, and possibly
longer. At some point
I'll hook it up to the network and see if I can get it to do something
useful! At least it's small enough to have out and I can hide it in my
server cupboard. I'm presuming it's got a serial tty connection on it
somewhere?
Possible. But mine have PS/2 keyboard and mouse ports them. And one of
them has a Matrox Millenium VGA video card in it. Somewhere on the net, I
found a review of the PowerStack and it listed the various video cards that
would work in it.
I've no idea what IP address it might have (though could find
out, if it broadcasts anything, by watching the
network, I am sure.)
Anybody have any info on getting root on these things out there?
That's one thing that I'm wondering about too.
Would it
be better to put NetBSD on it?
FWIW There is a Debian Linux port for it. Found LOTs of postings on the
web about that.
Joe
(I use FreeBSD for most everything else
network-wise, so probably less alien to me than
anything else.)
Rob